- All right, y'all, time for my first guest.
He's a country music legend,
he's had 10 number one albums,
and sold over 50 million records all around the world.
He's back now with his first solo album in half a decade.
It's called, "Here on Earth," you gotta check it out.
Tim McGraw, get on in here!
Hey!
- Did I get it working?
- Yes, you did, congratulations, well done.
- I am so technically unsavvy, it's unbelievable.
- Oh my gosh, me too.
I'm, this is not my forte whatsoever.
How are you?
How have y'all been in quarantine?
- Doing well, I mean, you know, it's,
I get bored pretty quickly and pretty easily,
but other than that, it's been good.
Watching a lot of movies, cooking a lot.
We're lucky we have all three of our daughters
are at home right now,
so we've had had them home for like a week.
So it's good to spend some time with those guys.
And you know, it's been a tough year for everybody.
I mean, we've had two graduations this year and you know,
they've been a little odd and a little different,
but you know, you're trying to make
the best out of everything.
- It kind of stinks too, though, when you're a graduate.
'Cause I know one I graduated college
and one graduated high school, right?
- Yes, one graduated, our youngest graduated high school
then our middle girl graduated college, yes.
- Yeah, that's kind of a bummer,
you worked so hard, especially the college kid.
And then you're like, okay, cool.
Like, no celebration. (laughs)
- None at all, for sure.
I mean, we had some like social distancing
and some Zoom kind of thing celebrations,
and here at the house, we had an outdoor,
with just our immediate family, you know,
our kids and my sister and her kids.
So, and everybody's been tested.
And so we did the whole, we did it all right,
but we stayed away from each other,
and sort of said hi across the yard to each other.
- Oh, that's really, that's good,
though I feel like everybody has their little pod,
you know? - Yeah.
- That everybody, you don't go outside of it,
then you all should be good.
- For sure.
- Well, I hear that Faith put you to work in the garden.
Are you cooking?
Are you cooking with the stuff you're growing?
- No, no, I was doing some flowers for her because-
- Oh, flowers!
- Yeah, because two of our girls were driving home,
you know, nobody's flying, really,
so they were driving in from California
to just to be home for a little while.
And so, Faith wanted me to redo the front door
and all of that and did flowers all around the place.
So I spent a couple of days doing some gardening,
trying to make it look nice for when the kids get here.
- Are you that guy that kinda gets out there
and you can do that pretty easily?
- I mean, I, if I have all the equipment there
and all the stuff picked out and I'm told what to do,
then I can do it.
But if I have to come up with too much on my own
then I'm not very good.
But I just, when I was in high school,
my mom's pretty, pretty artistic and has a green thumb
and always worked with plants and stuff.
So when I was in high school,
I spent a lot of time working at a plant nursery,
mostly just hauling stuff, you know,
but I spent a lot of time doing some yard work,
and you know, that kind of thing.
- I feel like foliage,
I feel like it can just change the landscape
in such a beautiful way and like make it
so pretty and calming.
And it's, I'm the same way. - Yeah.
- So, which daughter is this, though?
Singing with the dog?
(singing) (howling)
(laughing)
Oh my God, that's so cute.
Which daughter is that?
- That's Maggie, that's the middle daughter.
Yeah, and Stromboli's the dog's name, yeah.
- Very Italian, I like it.
- Yeah, well, he's just, he's a glorified bird dog's
all he is, but he's Italian.
I think it's called an Italian Brocco.
So we had a family of those dogs
and he's the last one left.
Well, we have one more at the farm,
but so we named 'em all Italian names.
- I love that y'all are both singers
and even your dogs sing.
That's awesome.
(laughing) It's like,
it really is in the family.
- To be fair, Stromboli sings a lot better than me,
I'm probably the worst singer in the house.
- Oh, shut up, I've seen you live,
you, that's that's what I found so funny though,
I've seen you live, you and Faith,
and you came backstage and you were like,
oh man, if I'd you were here, I would've sang better,
I was like, you did an awesome job, I was singing along.
I was like, y'all both killed it.
Like, you're so humble, whatever.
He has just released his first album in five years,
it's called "Here on Earth."
So Tim, when did you actually finish the album?
I hear you tinkered all the way 'til the end, right?
- Yeah. I mean, look, as you know,
are you ever really finished with making a record?
I mean, you sort of put it in a barrel, right?
You know, 'cause you can always,
and then you go back a year later
and you hear something, just dang,
I wish I would've fixed that,
or I wish I'd have did that a little different.
It's always, you're always, art's always a work in progress,
you're never finished with it.
But yeah, I've been working on it,
gosh, it's been, Faith and I did our Soul to Soul Tour
a couple of years, we our first duets album,
so this is the first solo album in five years
that I've done.
But I worked on it like the last part
of our Soul to Soul Tour's when I started working on it.
And I spent a lot of time flying in and out
from being on the road and spending the night in the studio,
working on it.
And yeah, we tweaked it and worked on it
and kept messing with sounds and messing with mixes
up until the last minute until it just
finally had to be turned in.
- Yeah, no, I'm, I'm the same way.
I think they're all, like for artists,
it's like your little babies.
And then you go out on the road and you tour with it,
like you said, and you get out there and you're like,
oh, you start doing something live,
you're like, I wish I'd had done that in the studio.
But so this album is called "Here on Earth"
and it's about the meaning of life.
Which is awesome 'cause I literally have an album
called "Meaning of Life," but has that changed?
Which I didn't find it, by the way,
but it has that changed for you this year?
Like, what life is?
I feel like all of us have been put in this situation,
like, literally every human on the planet
has been put in this like quarantine kind of pandemic mode.
And there's just so many challenges
that we're being faced with right now.
And also like bringing back family
to kind of those simple kind of forms
and us not being able to be as busy, most of us.
Like, is that, do you think that
kind of affected you with this?
- Yeah, for sure.
Did you know, it all came together, you know, post,
we were working on it, the pre pandemic, I guess,
but a lot of the songs started making more sense
contextually, after the pandemic started happening,
we were in the middle of mixing and we remixed a few things
after it all happened just because we thought
it just needed a different emotional pull to it
because of the things that were going on.
And what I wanted to do with this record, from the beginning
what I started out doing was just sort of wanted to create,
I didn't wanna do sort of a linear story
or anything like that, or do any kind of concept album.
But I did wanna sort of lay out a tapestry of life
in a lot of ways and indeed have each song
sort of reflect these vignettes that are part of your life.
And then as you go through life, as you mature,
from times, the things that you did as teenagers
to the things that you do, you know, as an older adult.
There's even a song about losing your dog,
you know, on this album.
- But it's your song, I love it.
- I know, so it's just, you know,
it's just about, it's about the things
that we go through in life.
And certainly now is a very reflective time in a lot of ways
because of what we're all going through
and what we're all dealing with.
And there's, you know, certainly people are going through
some terrible times with it,
but also I think there is a reconnection with family
and a reconnecting with your kids
and a reconnection with being at home
and sort of learning more about each other
and paying more attention to each other
and being a little bit more respectful of each other's space
because of the sort of the world we're living in now.
- Yeah. I mean, perspective is definitely,
I think, the word for 2020.
You know, I mean, 2020, I mean,
it's been a tough year, obviously.
We've been talking about it,
but it's been a tough year for country music too.
We've lost a few legends.
One of those was actually Kenny Rogers.
I know that was an idol of yours, right?
- For sure, Kenny Rogers was a big guy,
well might, and such a nice guy.
And I got to sing with him,
you know, which was really incredible.
The funniest memory I have with Kenny Rogers,
a couple of memories I have with Kenny Rogers,
but he came to one of my shows and he was,
we sang "She Believes in Me" together.
He came to one of the shows
and it was one of the Soul to Soul shows,
and we had our stage was in the round and in the center,
and the only way to get out to the stage
was to be in some sort of road case
or so we was tried to get Kenny Rogers out
to under the stage to do this song with me.
So he gets into a laundry hamper.
So, imagine Kenny Rogers getting into a laundry hamper
and laying down, and covering him up and rolling him out
under the stage and him coming up and just you leaves a bit,
which was really a special moment for me.
And then another Kenny Rogers memory I have
is he played the Monroe Civic Center
And my mom was a huge Kenny Rogers fan.
And so, she took me out of school that morning,
I think I was in the sixth grade,
seventh grade, or something like that.
She took me out of school that morning.
I got, put me in line at the Monroe Civic Center
and I made it all the way to the window
before it sold out and I didn't get to get tickets.
(groans)
But later on, I was in college and I was working,
selling popcorn at the Monroe Civic Center
and I got to see a Kenny Rogers concert selling popcorn.
- Oh my gosh, that's so, I have sold popcorn too,
at a movie theater.
All our previous jobs.
- Yes, for sure.
- But wait, before we go,
I wanna ask about some rad cowboy skills that I saw.
So, who taught you how to rope?
- Oh, well, (laughs) I grew up riding.
I could, I mean, my whole life was spent,
my stepdad was a cowboy and spent a lot of time on horses.
God, that was funny.
I could ride and rope before I could walk, practically.
So I spent a lot of time doing that
and now, I spent some time in a high school rodeo
when I was a kid, rode some bareback horses
and some team roping and some calf roping.
So, I've done a little bit of that my life, for sure.
- It's so great to see you again, Tim,
please tell your lovely family I say hello.
And y'all be sure to check out Tim's new album,
it's called "Here on Earth."