She makes an appearance on- All

the 90s stuff, I'm pretty much an encyclopedia on, and my wife even more so.

And then the Dixie Chicks, I was a big fan of them.

in their heyday.

And I liked, you know, by that time I was getting into a little more of the bluegrass sound and I started getting into, I've never been a hardcore bluegrass guy, but I really love acoustic instruments, mandolin and fiddle and so, and flat picking.

So Tony Rice and Tim O'Brien and Daryl Scott and, you know, singer-songwriters in that bluegrassy vein.

And so I kind of bring the country and the bluegrass.

I had to sit down, take a breath, listen to that one.

It's like a playlist record, like you said.

I love that vibe.

It's that western.

It's kind of wide open.

I'm not a cowboy.

Willie Nelson's not a cowboy.

But that vibe is just...

Sometimes a little too interesting in some of these spots, but yeah.

How did your relationship with my buddy Bird come about?

Well, I first opened for T-Bird in my Zane Williams days, so probably 2019 or 18.

And I remember walking up.

He was sound checking, and I walked up to get an earful, and he was like, hey, man, is that Zane Williams over there? Hey, buddy, I'm a big fan.

And I was like, holy crap, he knows my name.

So it turns out he had been a fan of my solo stuff, and I ended up hanging out with him after the show at that.

And then since then, he came and did my little concert series that I host in my hometown of McKinney, Texas.

So a lot of the stuff that's going on in that world really appeals to me because, like you said, the kind of classic rock thing has gotten a lot of those sounds and ideas and stylistic things have been absorbed by this other music that I happen to be involved in, which is very good for me.

Yeah.

And one of the, I guess, straws that broke the camel's back, I remember I had a conversation with Josh Keer one time at Big Yellow Dog.

He's written a bunch of hits for Carrie Underwood and Lady Antebellum.

And I asked him, because...

I'd been there a year, year and a half, and none of my songs had gotten recorded except for this one called Hurry Home.

It's the only song as a songwriter I've ever had on mainstream radio as a single.

It was called Hurry Home.

Was that what it was?

What do you think it is about Texas that really keeps pushing the envelope in country music? It just seems to be more popular and popular and popular, which is amazing.

Yeah.

Well, we Texans like to do things our own way.

And we got kind of an independent nature.

We don't like being told what to do or what to listen to or how to do things.

And so I think what you get is a little bit more diversity and maybe a little bit more authenticity.

when you can kind of, artists feel a little bit more free to be themselves.

Can you share a couple of those crazy road stories that come with all bands?

How did you get into songwriting and how do you go about bringing a song to the band, saying, hey, let's do this?

Yeah, so I've just kind of always written songs.

Started doing it for fun in college, and then, like I said, I had seven solo albums.

That was pretty much all stuff I wrote by myself.

I dabbled with co-writing.

I lived in Nashville for nine years, but...

A lot of ideas come to me while I'm driving the bus or in the shower and stuff, and I usually don't have a co-writer there.

Great