4 Massive Mistakes Musicians Moving To Nashville are Making… (and how you can avoid them!)

Transcription of “4 Massive Mistakes Musicians Moving To Nashville Make (And How To Avoid Them)”

 

[00:00:00] So welcome to the Singing Success Show with Brett Manning as your host and my co-host. I’m Dustin Small, and I’m not quite as radiant today, even though we do have a lot more lighting. Did you just not moisturize this morning? That’s exactly right. I mean, a little quick. You know, I mean, we’re very rural, sexual, not metrosexual.

[00:00:30] We’re like, go out into the woods, kill something and eat it type of guys. But you know, flannel and moisturizers. Yeah, but, but we still moisturize because your skin is the largest organ in your. Also your kidney

[00:00:47] I’ll go with it. So, uh, we got a couple announcements to make. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Oh, actually, let, let, lemme first talk about what our podcast is going to be talking today. Our topics are four [00:01:00] massive mistakes. Uh, I, I’m actually looking at paper, so in case I’m. Pretending to not to look. I’m looking. It never happens.

[00:01:07] Never happens. Four massive mistakes. Musicians moving to Nashville are making. That’s some alliteration and that’s the songwriter. Massive Mistakes. Music, Baba Babababababa. We never do that either. Yeah, we never do that. We never alliterate. Um, , look, an Eminem move there, Eminem and. and how you can avoid making these horrible mistakes that are so consistent with everybody we run into, including ourselves.

[00:01:36] So announcements, you wanna take it? Should we start with our friend Wendy? Yeah, go ahead. All right. Well, I just wanted to let everyone know that our friend, Wendy Moten, has a new record that’s coming out called I’ve Got You. Produced by a little known artist named Vince Gill. Oh, I think I’ve heard of that guy.

[00:01:53] I mean, what does he have? More Grammys than Years of life probably. And then he, he’d been known to pick a song or [00:02:00] two. Mm-hmm. Couple. Couple as they’ve been told. The legendary Vince Gill. A quick Vince Gill story, once I was, uh, I was a New Year’s Day. New Year’s Eve day, whatever day Eve. So it was on New Year’s Day in that in the evening and I had no place to go and I was, didn’t have kids with me or anything like this years ago, about 10 years ago.

[00:02:22] Mm-hmm. and I went down to, to station in where they do all this cool bluegrass music. I walk in there, I’m feeling just a little on the downside, like Nashville show me something good and I just wandered in there and there’s these killer bluegrass players. And then I’m, I’m watching this show for about half an hour.

[00:02:42] I’m like, I’m just digging it. This is so authentic. And then out of. The crowd. Vince just walks up, puts on acoustic and starts singing man of constant sorrows. Oh gosh. And just strumming that thing and just his voice, just so pristine. Every note. Perfect. And I’m sitting there. I love [00:03:00] Nashville. Thank you God for Nashville.

[00:03:02] This is the most wonderful experience. It was one of those things that you, when you are looking for a sign, you know, and then a sign drops outta heaven that. Sign . Correct. Oh, that’s the sign I needed. Exactly. Isn’t funny how this town can do that. It can sometimes just when you need it. That’s right. This town can smash you and it can build you back up.

[00:03:23] It just kind of depends on how you respond to it. And that’s the, I mean, that’s a life lesson you, it’s not the fact that you think you’re going to get out of here alive, cuz everybody dies. 10 out of 10 joggers die. 10 out of 10. . That scares me cuz I jog . Believe what’s pronounced. Yogging. Yogging Yers. . You need to get the Yo

[00:03:48] Um, . I think we’re gonna talk about that. Have we have a yo So we’re gonna talk about that a little bit. So we got, we got Vince Gill producing Wendy’s, uh, records, kind of a. man. She’s got [00:04:00] a lot of jazz and country influence now. She’s recently been inducted to the, uh, the, what you call it, the, the Opry Club where she gets to sing at the Grand Ole Opry.

[00:04:10] I don’t know what they call that. Well, she meant her voice on a few of your projects. Yes. I seem to recall you were there and being blown away. Yeah, yeah. Listened to Wendy sing on my, listen to the man. You can just go on there and just say, Siri play or whatever, you know, play Brett Manning or go on my on.

[00:04:27] What do you call it? Your little thing. You call it Amazon fire. What do you Oh, Alexa. Alexa. Alexa. Hey Alexa. Make me a cup of coffee. . Alexa, do my taxes . Oh, for sure. Jesus. I draw the line at taxes. Takes the season. . Yes. Oh my gosh. Don’t remind me. So . So, uh, yeah, so go listen. The listen is this called, and it’s the title track that we talked about in our first podcast over how we were playing that little.

[00:04:55] That little ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That little fun little chord progression that you came up with, how [00:05:00] that came about. Yeah. So amazing. And the last song we record. about last song we recorded. Mm-hmm. and the first song on the record, but she sings on there and she’s killing it. And then we also did a remake of Shine, which I didn’t want to do, if you remember.

[00:05:13] And then, um, Malcolm Springer said, man, I originally did this for a collective soul. I think we just needs to be redone. And I’m just like the undertaking it. It was quite a thing and Paul Allen just murdered the guitar on there and, uh, David Santos ended up redoing the bass. Who was Wendy Mo’s? Yep. Guy, whatever.

[00:05:36] I fiance, whatever. She’s got a guy. She’s got a guy, her guy. A guy. So anyway, you can listen to her on there. She just, her bgv are, she slays it on there. Um, well what about Ed? Let’s talk about Ed for a second. Oh yeah, ed. Ed Cash. If you go ed cash.com you understand why it’s so important that he saved that U R L before anybody else could get it?

[00:05:59] [00:06:00] Because there is really truly only one Ed Cash. There’s only one Scott Cash. And there’s only one Franny Cash. Scott is his brother, and Franny is his daughter, and the three of them are fantastic singers and artist musicians. Also, his son plays drums for them, and I think they got some other family cousin or someone like that playing keyboards or extra guitars.

[00:06:24] Space, maybe something like that. Anyway, three phenomenal singers, but Ed is known as a producer and he wrote, if you happen to be in the kind of religious circles, he wrote that How great is our God? Yeah, that’s a, that’s a big one. That’s huge. And you know what, and the funny thing is it sits here,

[00:06:51] which is,

[00:06:56] or shows up again or, and, and, uh, [00:07:00] I will always love you that little simple chord progression. And he using that simple chord progression, he wrote one of the biggest hits of all time in Christian wor in the Christian world, the worship world. And he has continuously just pumped out, hit after hit also in country also, he, he, I was at his house coaching him and his daughter, mostly his daughter actually at this time.

[00:07:27] And, uh, who’s phenomenal, 20 years old, and her voice is, It’s insane. You hear this girl like, I don’t know how you do it. I still, I look at her and think, you’re 20 years ahead vocally from where you should be at 20. Um, she’s like a 40 year old in a, in her prime. But, uh, uh, ed says, Hey man, I gotta show you something.

[00:07:48] It’s really cool. And he, and he comes over and he plays this bocelli song for me called Gloria. And it was Unbel, it was glorious . Ah. And I looked at him and. That’s really, that’s a nice [00:08:00] song. He goes, yeah, I wrote it. Isn’t that cool? I got a Elli cut. So even though he’s had all this major success as this big, beautiful studio at his house and even a stage in his own basement, it’s just amazing everything.

[00:08:11] His setup is phenomenal. He’s still like giddy like a school kid when he gets a cut, like I gotta cut. Yay. And it’s got youthful passion about it. That’s right. Still there, which will be one of our points on the four Fs of this that we’re gonna talk about that fun. We’ll talk about that later. But music, Industry should be fun.

[00:08:31] So you’re gonna see three people singing that will blow your mind, and the whole group is great in this. We The Kingdom with Ed Cash, they’ve released a few singles. I don’t believe the record has come out. Maybe by the time this is put up, you will hear the whole record, but you can look for them in your city, especially if you’re looking for songs to add to your playlist, just to feel inspired in the morning, whether you’re religious or not, you’re gonna.

[00:08:55] And, uh, is that our announcement? Anything else? I think we have a camp that we’re Oh, yeah. [00:09:00] Gosh. He’s, he’s my alter ego reminds me of the, all that. What are they called? Things that I need to remember, work stuff. So we had these two vocal camps last year, and if you have following us online at all, you’ve seen, we did a retreat camp in May and did another one in October.

[00:09:18] It was wildly successful. People’s lives were changed. You hear the testimonials, you’ll look into people’s eyes and see the sparkle, the life that has been recreated in them because they just experienced something. could, they couldn’t really explain what happened. They said, all I know is you just have to go.

[00:09:36] There’s kinda like a YouTube concert. You can’t talk about it. You just like, if somebody else went there, oh you two. You know? Or like having kids. We both have kids. So when once you finally had the first baby, you say, now you know it all makes sense. Yeah. Little Denver knows you, you know that you hold that child.

[00:09:52] You can’t really explain until you have one. Mm-hmm. and. It’s the same thing with anybody going to this exact same thing. Just like if a [00:10:00] kid, it’s a musical baby. It’s a musical baby. , keep it alive. Yes. Feed it now. And so this, this next one we’re doing here will be in June. And it’s going to be, uh, June 7th through the 13th.

[00:10:16] So going to singing success.com, you’ll see the information on there and, um, go get your life transformed, your music and your career transformed. Do something for yourself. I find that people don’t, you feel like sometimes if you’re doing something for, we talked about this in our private conversations, is like, it can be so.

[00:10:37] To actually do something for yourself. Like you feel guilty, like, no, no, no, no. I’m supposed to be responsible, but you gotta be responsible to yourself as well, just in general. Yeah, I agree with that. But I mean, you mentioned having kids before, just whatever you know, or whatever distractions life may be thrown at you at this time.

[00:10:55] It’s still extremely important to be able to set time aside for yourself. Cuz I’ve, [00:11:00] I’ve fallen prey to that too, you know? Mm-hmm. , you, you have a little bit of free time and all you want to do. Probably nothing cuz you need that time to relax and mm-hmm sort of recoup. But if you’re not investing in yourself, really easy to watch.

[00:11:14] That light dwindle down to nothing because you’re not putting in the reps. Oh, that was well said. Watch that light dwindle down to nothing cuz you’re not putting in the reps. That’s a good, write that down. That’s a good meme. Your life is dwindling to nothing cuz you’re not putting in the reps. You have to show up.

[00:11:30] You have to make hard choices that you don’t want to do because inside you’re like, oh, I dread this. I just wanted to sit and and watch Netflix. eight hours at a time. Man, that’s what they want you to do, Brett. That’s what they want you to do. Do you realize that if you took and counted all the hours you’ve wasted on social media, and, uh, just, just thumbing for no reason.

[00:11:55] There’s one thing to have a purpose. You’re gonna be on social media, have a purpose, do connect with your [00:12:00] friends and your people. But, uh, but just to sit there and kill time. , ows, , . Really rip that bandaid off. . If you hear us making Christopher Walkin references, it’s because years ago I was obsessed with his.

[00:12:18] Delivery and I got so obsessed that he ate my personality. And every now and then when we hang out, it happens. Yeah. He comes back, the both of us. So let’s gotta keep walking away for Yes. A while, isn’t he? So He doesn’t eat our personality Well, is this a good transition into, let, should we just jump straight into the friends section of what we wanted to talk about?

[00:12:38] Of the four? The four F’s? Yes. Of, of, uh, today’s topic, if you will. Yes. What are the massive mistakes? Musicians moving to Nashville are making that’s so allergic to so many s . M and m should be sponsoring so many s is so little time . Um, so [00:13:00] how you can, how you can avoid them. Why don’t you, uh, kick off the first So we want, do we want to jump straight into friends?

[00:13:07] Let’s go right into it. Let’s do friends. . It’s interesting to start with friends, even though we have a lot of other fun things we want to talk about, including fun. Fun as we alluded to earlier, but typically, most people are not moving to this town alone. I mean, some do. Mm-hmm. But usually you have connections that at least plant the seed and get you here in the first place.

[00:13:30] Mm-hmm. . But making sure that once you’re here, those relationships are the right ones. Mm-hmm. to help things blossom and move in the right direct. is paramount to where you’re gonna end up. Mm-hmm. starting things off on the right foot. I’m sure you. Plenty of things to say on that topic. Oh gosh. Yeah. So part of the idea about friends that we say is as we talked about, you keeping the wrong friends and being around party or some people who just want to go out and get drunk every night and [00:14:00] go out and, and what happens is they, you see these people growing more and more shower like one guy came to me, and I’m not gonna mention his name, it was years and years ago, but he was in a lesson and he was like, yeah man, I love Nashville.

[00:14:11] He goes, man, I’ve been with. 40 women in the first year here. And I went like this. I went, . Yeah, man, but what are you doing with your music? And I just went like this. And he was in there in a lesson with me and he was, he was using his music to get that, you know? So I said, yeah, man. Uh, did it feel that void inside you?

[00:14:33] I was just laughing. And he goes, probably not. He goes, um, yeah, I just made it deeper. And then he couldn’t even hardly do his lesson. He was, . I mean, you’re the first person who’s said anything to me about it. But no, I just, I like, I wake up in the morning and there’s like a fog over my eyes and I don’t like myself.

[00:14:52] Well, well they, they’ve lost the, the passion to begin with, or at least, yeah. They may have never even had it. They’ve just, music has just been a distraction [00:15:00] for them. And you get put in the pressure cooker of this town just cuz it seems like, oh, let’s move to Nashville. We do music. Yeah, why not? Yeah.

[00:15:06] That’s part of the, the process of like weeding out, you know, the actual. You know, fruit? Mm-hmm. , that, that should be represented in your life, both personally and musically, right? I mean, you moved here and you were doing music immediately. Oh yeah. I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have left my situation if it wouldn’t have been that case.

[00:15:27] I just, I had, I had a good situation going, going on at home. I’m originally from the New Orleans area, which I’m sure many people know is just a melting pot of, of so much culture. Mm-hmm. , and within that as music. I learned a lot. I got thrown into the wolves very quickly. But, um, I wanted, I wanted something more.

[00:15:47] I wanted an industry town. I wanted to be put into that situation that would either make or break me and either confirm things that I’ve, I’ve wanted to do since I was a, a teenager, or, you know, be like, [00:16:00] Hey, maybe this is not the path for you. Hmm. Which is equally as important. Hmm. You have to know when it’s time.

[00:16:07] Pull the plug. That’s right. That’s true. That’s true. Um, something else we were talking about with these friends, I wanna talk about the, the partiers and the, the people who, the talkers, the people who don’t really le help you on your path because you are the average of the five people you hang around the most.

[00:16:28] Yep. And so when you hang around people who are just, that’s all they want to do, they have no real, if you a, if you ask your. I’ve done this, like literally went through some stuff, as you know, fairly recently. Mm-hmm. and I just, out of the blue just said on Facebook, I just wanna see what people would say and on Instagram and well not Instagram, um, on Twitter, which I almost never tweeted, just it’s a spacey space.

[00:16:50] Just the, uh, that, and I wrote, what is the meaning of life? Like literally want to know, like we all talk about the, what is the meaning of. [00:17:00] and the amount of vacuous answers I got from people that I thought I respected was disheartening. That’ll weed ’em out quick. I weed? Yeah. Like, remind me to never write a song with you, right?

[00:17:14] 1 1, 1 person said meaning of life is fun. Oh, good. Well, what happens when you’re not having fun? What happens when life is just struggle for most people, it is struggle, and I’ve, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, that you will learn more from one huge trial than a thousand acts of joy and fun and celebration and, and peace.

[00:17:36] Yeah. A thousand days of peace. Do not do as much as one trial that you have to go through that will transform you. Trials transform you. Mm-hmm. , the gym hurts. It hurts to lift. When you’re, tell your, your muscles are shaking. Yeah. But that’s when you get stronger and you actually feel better. So I would say train your voice.

[00:17:54] Train your body. Train your mind not to just be smarter, not to be stronger. Not to sing [00:18:00] better, but actually feel. You feel better after you work out. If you’re just trying training for vanity, you can leave the gym and like, yeah, look at me. And then that vanity just sucks out your soul. But if you’re like, man, I feel good.

[00:18:13] Uh, my engineer here, I’m not gonna mention his name, but one day you’ll see him cannon’s like this. I didn’t know for a long time because he wasn’t like, oh, the gym was that way, you know, never saw. And I said, dude, look. She said, oh. , that person has way more character than the person walking around. Always just flu and just every time you see ’em just has to flex.

[00:18:36] There’s nothing wrong with looking good, nothing wrong with paying attention to your own physique and being able to be a product because in this industry you have to be in shape. But you have, unfortunately, it’s uh, unavoidable. Yes. But you have to wait cuz your ego will do what? Eat you. Yep. It’ll eat you.

[00:18:54] It’s that twitch you and you can never. I learned this in Jiujitsu parasite. Brad said yes. [00:19:00] He said, your ego is a twitching zombie. You stab it and he’ll come back to eat you. You just keep stabbing it. But it’s a headless zombie. You, you can’t even, you can’t kill it. All you can do is be aware of it and try to keep it down.

[00:19:13] And I know I got a huge ego and I always have to like remind myself, you’re gonna get humble if you keep this up. And that’s, your friends should point that out to you. They should, you know? Well, you know. Stepping aside from the friends topic for a section for a second. Pardon me. Um, I think a lot of the circles that we surround ourself with, uh, and the quote unquote friends that we have can determine where our attention and our resources Hmm.

[00:19:43] Go from time to time. So I think it’s important to talk about, you know, if we want to go specific into the resource category, finances. Yes. How does that affect our journey here from the beginning all the way. Fruition. Yeah. Finance is too fruition. There’s so much [00:20:00] alliteration being that our four things are, you’ll see ’em in the description written below, or our friends Financial failure and fun

[00:20:09] Well, financial, I, I think the biggest thing I find is that people will get themselves into debt to get a career, and then when they get the career, they’re making every mistake because they will take the money and. And some of the best musicians, a girl I just coached, who’s a fantastic singer, um, she’s in a band called Tennis and she said that, uh, you know, she said, we, we, we sold 50,000 records.

[00:20:35] Without a, a record table. And she, she walked away from a record deal. And these days, that’s, I mean, that’s not a number to sneeze at. No. 50,000 is, you know, that’s $500,000 gross, you know, unless it’s a 1299 record. Then of course, um, they iTunes and whoever takes a, their percentage. But still, it’s pretty dang good money, I would say, because a lot of people aren’t selling music.

[00:20:57] So if you can sell that much music, and she [00:21:00] did it on her own because she didn’t just, she wasn’t desperate. For money. When you’re desperate, you’ll take any deal possible. And so it is important that your, with your financials, that you save as much money as you can before going moving into a music city.

[00:21:18] And not everybody has to move here. You know a lot of people that don’t live here Correct. That have careers, correct. Um, Alan Jackson lives mostly in Alabama. Um, Georgia. Georgia. Yeah. I’ve actually seen, seen his place out there on the, on the lake? Yeah. Yeah. Great, great. Private lake. You know, I would work out of that place too.

[00:21:35] Yeah. . Yeah. So not everybody’s gonna. I mean, Bruce Willis, um, the actor, I taught a masterclass in Keem, Idaho. Um, it’s by Sun Valley, Idaho, that little resort town. Out of his bar out there, I taught a little masterclass. He, he wasn’t able to make it because he had to fly out and shoot. Some movie about, I see dead people.

[00:21:57] Yeah, he was too busy crawling through the air conditioner, down [00:22:00] glass, walking glass, regular glass . Remember when you were in, remember that? That was awesome, . But, uh, I said I didn’t get the chance to meet him, but, um, oh my gosh, I digress. My point about Bruce Willis about going there. , uh, not, not having to work, you know, necessarily in an industry town.

[00:22:24] Oh, yeah, yeah. That he’s, that he just gets on his private plane and flies out to LA and does his thing and fly back. Thank you for bringing me back. It was just a beautiful rabbit trail. Sometimes the rabbit trail is a little fun to go on anyway. Occasionally. Yeah. You get to see more of the forest . Just straight path, you know.

[00:22:44] Let’s get off the beaten path a little bit, which is, We’ll, we’ll get back to that on fun. Sure. But so financial, make sure that you have put aside that the amount of cash, three months of living expenses is good. I had that when I moved to Nashville. [00:23:00] It was gone in a month. . I believe that. And you know, you struggle.

[00:23:04] And you struggle a lot and you, the struggle can make you stronger or can make you weaker. If you start piling on that debt, man, then you’re just chasing the past instead of building the future. Well, it’s even worse now than it was when we, you know, you moved to town and then I moved to town. Um, , I think with how predominant the social media society is now, we’re even more so driven to keep up with the Joneses and, and, and the Joneses here could be our, our musician friends, you know?

[00:23:32] Mm-hmm. , they’ve got this piece of gear, they’re working with this person, I have to work with this producer. I have to drive this car, I have to wear these clothes, I have to have my hair cut by this exact person, or I’m irrelevant, which is a huge. Yeah, exactly. The, the, they, the, and that’s, I’m so glad you said that cause we were talking about that yesterday when we were discussing this podcast, is that people need that brand new car.

[00:23:59] [00:24:00] Now, I’ll tell you a quick, quick financial story. This guy got some investors, he got a, I believe it was $200,000 worth of the investment. and he promised each investor this percentage. Plus he had a manager, plus he had all these riders and producers that, and everybody, he promised a percentage to his career, uh, for his career.

[00:24:20] So he ends up doing this $40,000 record, wasn’t very good. Ends up buying this $60,000 deluxe custom Jeep. It was just Jeep Wrangler with the big tires and everything. And he just looked the part, yeah, different boots all the time walking around. Looked like a. His voice was pretty good. His project was okay.

[00:24:42] The problem is he had promised 115% of his career. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he had to make that money and would still have to get a side job. So if he makes a hunt for every a hundred dollars he was gonna earn, he was gonna have to pay $15. Wow. So he just bailed on his investors and [00:25:00] left. Yeah. Schmuck. You’re a schmuck.

[00:25:04] Stamp that one. Yep. And kept the car, kept, everything else just belted on them and they were like, wow, we just trusted this guy. So the joke about the music industry is how do you make a, uh, if people off camera laugh at this, it would be good for the podcast. But they say, how do you make a small fortune in the music?

[00:25:25] Start with a large one. Nah. Ah, . I feel the vibrations of a constant applause. from you guys. Thank you, . Thank you. But it’s true. These people that. They are not being smart with their finances and that’s why just read a Dave Ramsey book, and then, you know, balance that against some other people that are maybe a little de deeper risk takers cuz he’s not the biggest risk taker.

[00:25:53] He’s super conservative and you have to have a, I think 80% conservative, 20% risk taking. [00:26:00] Because that way you’re saved from by this 80% where you know you can move freely because you got all your needs taken care of. And then that 20% is me like being outrageous and taking a chance and something great could happen because you’re here anyway.

[00:26:16] You’re already taking a chance. That’s right. It it has to be calculated. Yes. Can’t just be frivolous. That’s right. So maybe cut it down on the bar tab a little bit when you’re out with, Friends. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. Keep that to yourself a little bit and, um, you know, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s just more important to stay focused on why you’re here in the first place.

[00:26:37] That’s right. We talked about Keith Urban. It would sit in his house, and this will go back to the idea of fun. Um, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll bring him up there about his, remind me. Okay, so we’re gonna talk about Keith. Uh, actually it’s on my notes. So, uh, what’s the next. , uh, do we want to talk about failure?

[00:26:56] Failure while we’re kind of somewhat on the subject already? Gosh, yes. [00:27:00] Oh man. Uh, like your guy with the Jeep, like most people living and working here may consider that to be a massive failure, but you can always look on the other side of that and say, well, what are the things that were done wrong in the first place?

[00:27:20] Mm-hmm. . . Yeah. You got promised X amount of dollars. I believe you said it was like 200,000 or something like that. Um, depending on where that came from, uh, that would be the main thing that I focused on, um, as to why people wanted to invest that type of money. What was their end goal? Mm-hmm. , why are they coming to you?

[00:27:41] What did they have to gain from this? Mm-hmm. , because after all, it is the music industry and yeah, it’s really hard to make money in the music industry. So if you’re being used as a product or something to. You’re almost like a flip house, you know? And somebody , somebody buys a house, wants to renovate it and flip it.

[00:27:58] You’re, you’re, you’re just a [00:28:00] commodity. So why even go there in the first you go flip this artist. You just kind of just gimme a little flip there. He just flipped an artist, you know? Yeah. There he goes. There, go on the sidewalk. I’m tumbling. Tumbling. Called me the tumbling dice. Why don’t you ? I won’t go there.

[00:28:15] Um, so my point is, . I feel like if you were a hundred percent focused on what your thing is, you gotta have the identity in the first place. You have to know who you are and what you are and what you wanna rep. Represent yourself as to the public. Mm-hmm. . If you never deviate from that, you hold that close to you.

[00:28:36] Ain’t no amount of money in the world that’s gonna be able to change that. And yeah, maybe you passed on $200,000. , but maybe you got 2 million coming to you down the road. Ooh, yeah. If you would’ve just stayed the course and done what you were meant to do. Mm-hmm. and all along the way, when you were in that failure, quote unquote period mm-hmm.

[00:28:54] where nobody saw the fruit of what was happening, you were developing that thing that was [00:29:00] gonna truly make you an artist, which is why we’re here in the first place. We’re here for artists, not glorified karaoke singers. That’s right. We’re here to build artists and build ourselves in the process. So the more we focus on.

[00:29:14] Conquering our inner laziness. Mm-hmm. and focusing on becoming the artist we’re truly meant to. This, this goes for anything. This doesn’t. If you’re not trying to be a, a, a well-known singer in this town, it doesn’t matter. This can be applied to any concept. Mm-hmm. . But staying true to yourself is gonna always land you on the right path.

[00:29:33] And no other distractions, money being included. Uh, $60,000 custom Jeeps that are pointless anyway because the Jeep you really want to drive off road is not $60,000, probably $6,000. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. And why not? Why not? It’s a more useful tool for the job and why not get a used car? Because guess what?

[00:29:53] It’s gonna be used the second you have it anyway. So my, my kind of bought my dream car recently and it was two years old and I [00:30:00] saved about 30,000. 45, 50,000, about close to $50,000 cheaper than it would’ve been brand new by just getting it two years. Mm-hmm. , you know, and I waited for a really, really sweet deal too.

[00:30:12] Yeah. Um, but uh, that’s half the car payment that I wouldn’t normally have By doing that. Well then, then the car becomes fun. Yeah. It’s not a burden to drive. That’s right. You don’t have to worry about how you’re paying for the card in press, you. Whoever’s looking at you cuz it really shouldn’t matter anyway.

[00:30:32] Well it’s like the house poor, have you heard the expression, the house poor? It’s like when people get these homes and they, they’re some professional athlete gets this, he just barely sign this deal and he gets a house way too big and he can’t even put furniture in it. And his friends come over and party the trash, be eating ramen noodles in their, you know, in their mansion essentially.

[00:30:50] Yeah. And we’ve seen that over and over. Let me talk a little bit more about failure. what I had in some notes. I said that, uh, you know, people say they view failure [00:31:00] as well. I tried, but I’m going home. You tried. You don’t try music. You are music. You know, that’s, you are, you’re, you are a musician. You can’t stop doing that.

[00:31:09] You can do other side gigs and everybody’s got side gigs, and we’re gonna talk about that in the future podcast. Mm-hmm. . Yep. But right now, it’s important that you understand that if this is who you. That can’t, you can’t change that. If you’re a dog, you can’t become a cat. Uh, I am a musician, I’m a vocal coach, I’m a songwriter.

[00:31:29] And those are things that I, it’s not just things that I do, it’s things that I am correct and what you are, you do what you are. And so when people say, yeah, I did the whole country. Some, some girl said, I did the whole country thing. I thought, I think we talked about that in the first one. And Keith e was like, was a judge there?

[00:31:47] And I coached him, so I know how he thinks and. What, wait, wait. You did the whole country thing. And how Absolutely frustrated he was with that when he’s a man who [00:32:00] we saw gave up everything to, to get where he’s at. I mean, that man has sacrificed, uh, another thing, Nashville, they call it a 10 year town. Um, It’s because you grow, uh, you know, you’ve been here 10 years, you know?

[00:32:15] Yep. 12 12, 12. 12 altogether. Yeah. 12 this year. Yeah. Yeah. And getting to play with, uh, Essex County. Yeah. Formerly Bath Brothers was about two years ago. So that was one of your biggest gigs that that’s come your way after 10 years and you played tons of gigs besides that and some great artists. He played for a guy named Per Manning for a little bit too.

[00:32:34] That was that pretty fun. Fun. That was fun. He’s all right. He . I know he man, megalomaniac one of those lead men and you’re like, oh, roll my eyes. But, uh, you did that, um, 10 year town. It was set. I was 10 years before I ever played with a band out here. Mm-hmm. . I did songwriting nights, but I never played with the full band until Right at the 10 year mark.

[00:32:54] You remember back in the day with my old band? Yep. You went to watch that show? I saw one show and I immediately was on [00:33:00] board. You’re like, Hey man. Uh, I, I think I could be a, a better drummer. And you were? Oh, well, I don’t know. Sorry. The other guy hears this. I don’t care. , you’re good. He’s better. It’s fine.

[00:33:12] He’s, he’s different. As I was saying, you’re different there, there are tools. There are tools that are meant for specific jobs. That’s right. That I kind of thought I might’ve been meant for this one, you know? Well, and here’s the other thing too, is when you’re trying something, when you’re, when you’re actually doing something, they say it takes 10,000 hours to master anything.

[00:33:32] And if you do three hours a day, what’s that? Three hours a day and you take Sundays off. If you’re 52 weeks outta the year, um, the 356 days of the year, that gives you six extra days of vacation. If you only work three hours a day, that’s a thousand. Daisy or a thousand hours a year, 10 years, you’re a master.

[00:33:49] There’s your 10 years if you’re do it well. It’s uh, like singing, practicing, singing. You can practice for 10 years, get worse. But if you’re practicing with a good plan and you were practicing with a coach and you’re [00:34:00] practicing using my program, if you don’t have singing success, get it. If this is a shameless plug, If this seems like a shameless plug, it is a shameless plug because plug it in.

[00:34:11] Not having a good plan. You’re not gonna master anything. But what happens is you begin to work on your instrument or your craft, your songwriter, you grow deep roots. The bamboo plant sits there at about six inches tall from around 10 years, if I remember. I might have been longer than that. And it grows these deep, deep roots until.

[00:34:32] And people say, I don’t see anything growing. And then suddenly it grows a foot a day and just keeps shooting up until it’s ready to harvest. Waiting for its moment. Yeah, exactly. And you, that’s solid foundation. That’s right. And we see artists do that. They’re like, Wow. He came Chris Stapleton, he came outta nowhere.

[00:34:47] No, no he did not. That guy has been beating down the doors for a long time and then suddenly he did that, uh, uh, Tennessee whiskey with uh, the duet on the CMT Awards. Yep. And I posted up [00:35:00] right next day, ladies and gentlemen, Chris Stapleton, his saved country music. Now it doesn’t mean that No, nobody else was good.

[00:35:06] We just needed something deep and rootsy there’s plenty of talent out there. Yeah, absolutely. But, Broke country that I’m like, that’s great country, but we needed some original roots. We always gotta get somebody to hold, you know, those roots, like I say, to hold the ground down. Right. So the other trees can sit in it.

[00:35:24] Shade, . Oh gosh. Yeah, I would, I would love to be a part of something that’s sitting in the shade of Chris Stapleton. Oh my gosh. I would like just to open up for him. I’d. I’m gonna cry . I’m not gonna cry. Okay, next point. Probably will. So, uh, so 10 year town, don’t give up. Failure is the process of success. If you don’t, if you haven’t failed a thousand times, you haven’t tried much.

[00:35:49] Um, if you’ve got success, quick, it, it you, the tree that grew up and wind came and it fell over. Um, fun. Fun.[00:36:00] 

[00:36:01] You wanna talk about that? Sure. What form of fun are we talking about? In this particular podcast we were talking about, you know, earlier was saying it’s not partying like in Nashville. I mean, Keith Urban wasn’t, wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I remember some, one of my friends heard him play and he goes, that’s a guy who spent a lot of time alone.

[00:36:20] Yeah. In his room. Yep. And you remember my old studio where I think we wrote some songs up there on the very, very, very top level. And that when it had the three studio over on 18th. Did I ever tell you that used to be his apartment. You did? It’s so, you did Bizarre. Yeah. Here I’ve been to Nashville, literally.

[00:36:38] Uh, yeah, I moved here in 2008 and or um, 1998. In 2008, I opened my first, well actually my second music row studio, but I hadn’t been on the road in like seven, eight years. And so I moved it from my house over to the row and had a bunch of coaches working for me, and I find out that the very top floor, this is so.

[00:36:59] I [00:37:00] go in there and I see a Keith Urban cover on a people magazine in the, in the restroom. And I thought, oh, that’s cool. And they go, the person showing us, they said, yeah, this actually, funny enough, this actually used to be Keith Urban’s apartment. I said, what? I said, when was it? It’s around 99, 2000. I said, that’s when he was studying with me, and now I’m teaching out of the same place that used to be his tiny little apartment.

[00:37:23] Remember it was just one room. A little, a small kitchen. Tiny, tiny kitchen. Not much there. Nothing there. Yeah. And then a little bathroom, place to use the bathroom and shower. And then below where the law offices, where I think where his attorney was working out of, I believe. And you know, I kept that place for about three or four years and, and moved to a different place and moved to another place.

[00:37:45] And we settled right here on the main row. We were kind of off the row and we decided, yeah, this is, this is a wonderful place. Yeah, this is Fitz, you know, but that was cool. So finding out that that’s a man who spent a lot of time alone. So if [00:38:00] your ideas having fun is you move to Nashville to party like we talked about earlier.

[00:38:04] Friends. Friends. And fun. Fun is when you and I write that’s, that’s more fun than anything I can think of doing. Right. And I guess technically it is work. Yeah, I mean, we are, we are working. Uh, create something that could potentially take us somewhere. But you don’t feel that way in the moment. Yeah. Cause you’re surrounded by the right people who are able to pull the right things out of you key right there.

[00:38:28] Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, versus, uh, the old networking thing, whatever that means. It really just means getting in a room and looking over everybody’s shoulder. Mm-hmm. , you know, at who’s gonna walk in next. So that maybe that person could help me with my. , you won’t be here very long. That’s right. It’s building the solid relationships, genuinely caring about people doing things for other people instead of That’s right.

[00:38:52] You know, trying to get them to do it for you. Then guess what? The phone starts ringing when people know you actually care. Yeah. You don’t have [00:39:00] to go out, run up a hundred dollars bar tab every night and look for people over other people’s shoulders and make them feel like garbage. Yes, because you’re getting the phone calls.

[00:39:10] That’s right. That’s exactly right. And he’ll tell you he was there for the recording of my record. Love Justice. If you don’t have it, get it. Um, no. We’ll put it, we’ll put a link. Do somewhere phones and download. Yes. If this, if you’re watching this on Apple. Then it’s on Apple Music, just Brett Manning Love Justice.

[00:39:29] And that was an epic record with great musicians and great writers. He co-written three songs on there, wasn’t he? I think it’s three. Three I think ish or more. Yeah. I don’t know how many songs altogether. I dunno. Listen to the Man already Mine. Uh um, some others I know. I’ll have to think about it. , I’ve written like 2,500 songs in.

[00:39:51] but that whole experience, it was just a blast. I mean, working with Malcolm Springer, he was just such a fun personality [00:40:00] and in the juxtaposition of that compared to the group of musicians at the time, and your specific music was so odd, but, but that’s what created mm-hmm. that moment in time. We’re sitting here talking about today, 10 years later, and it, and it, and it really is, it’s one of those records that people continuously call me and say, man, I just, I, it fell off my playlist for some reason.

[00:40:24] I just created some new, and then it, I just randomized it. And then some, a song came on today and I was just like, oh, I remember just brought all that memory back, you know, and it just have a, the other day when I listened to your drum solo, uh, or your. Drums on, uh, the beautiful lesson after I left your house.

[00:40:41] I was, so, I can listen to that and then I’m sending you these messages like, dude, what a, what an experience. Thank you for being part of that. And I’ll say that again. Thank you for being part of that. Man. Honored. Yeah, man. Still to this day, dude kind of helped save my life in a way that I, it was just a very, very, very hard time.

[00:40:57] Not like, That I was gonna die, but you know what I mean? [00:41:00] You sometimes you feel like people come into your life to save a portion of it so that you don’t feel like you’re dying inside. And he was, dude, he was a blessing man. He’s a good, he was a life lifer friend. And, well, funny, funny thing is, is we all needed that.

[00:41:15] Yeah. At that time. Yeah. I was, uh, desperately searching for direction. Mm-hmm. , you know, in my career at that point, uh, we had just met. Oh, I don’t know, six, eight months before that. Yeah. And, and it was very obvious that we were meant to do something together because we were so focused on where we were going next.

[00:41:35] Mm-hmm. and not distracted by all of the thousands of distractions in any given moment that this town could, you know, dump on your head like a, you know, what was the ice bucket challenge? Oh, the ice bucket Challenge. Yeah. Cool. You off. That’s a great jump off point. Look, thank you for joining us again.

[00:41:56] Again, I am your host b Brett Manning, author of [00:42:00] Singing Success and Bret Manning Studios. Uh, and this is my co-host, Dustin Small. Dustin Small, Dustin Small.