Irreverently Illuminating...

That's Adeem the Artist in a nutshell, and their interview on Americana Curious is an absolute must-listen.

Adeem joins us to share a raw, unfiltered look into the experiences that led to their breakout song, "Rotations"....and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Americana music scene is a microcosm of the larger cultural and societal conversations happening right now, and it's messy, complex, and evolving.

Are we ready to embrace artists who challenge our assumptions and push us out of our comfort zones, even within a genre rooted in tradition?

This episode dives deep into the tensions between tradition and progress, expectation and reality, humor and pain.

You'll also discover:

Playing Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell filled stadiums to Intimate Bars: Navigating the Energy Shift.

The Power of Laughter in Bridging Divides.

When Art Becomes a Mirror: Facing Uncomfortable Truths.

The Unexpected Impact of a Single Fan.

Legacy Beyond the Self: Bending the Arc of History.

What's your take on the role of artists in sparking dialogue and challenging the status quo, even if it makes us uncomfortable?

Share your thoughts below!

Check out Adeem the Artist here: https://www.adeemtheartist.com/home

---

We'd love to hear from you. Please share a review on Spotify and Apple.

AND follow Americana Curious on Instagram for the latest interviews and the behind-the-scenes with your favorite artists! https://www.instagram.com/americanacurious

Do you really want to go to heaven?

When we get disruption started do you want to go to hell?

Children with Dean the artist we gonna dance around on the fire ground Ever gonna fiddle out of bluegrass sound or cause it'll make Charlie Daniels Brown they play country songs in heaven but in hell we play on.

The fact that I have such a heavy southern accent on stage, the fact that I'm wearing lipstick but also have facial hair, there's a lot going on and it's intentional.

I mean, that's part of the artistic experience for me is to have people feeling a little unsure of what I might say at any point and people from really divergent and maybe even combative perspectives feel acknowledged.

If I can teach two sides of an issue in a way that makes both of them feel seen and honored while also like mocked kind of lovingly, that's the sweet spot because if you can get people laughing together, then that's a real time.

Now we're disarmed.

Now we're just being here together.

Americana music transforms the world and unfortunately, too many are unaware of its profound impact.

Americana musicians are the unsung heroes and here you'll join us in exploring these passionate artists and how they offer inspiration and hope for the future.

This show makes it happen in a fun and entertaining way.

You'll discover new music that you'll love, hard earned Lessons from the Road, the story behind Favorite songs, a big dose of inspiration for you and your friends, and a good laugh along the way.

I'm Ben Fanning and my co host is Zach Schultz.

It's time to get Americana Curious.

Foreign.

Hey there everybody.

Welcome back to Americana Curious, your favorite podcast and mine.

Zach and I.

Well, we've got someone that we've been hoping was going to join us and we've been so excited.

We're incredibly honored to be hosting A Deem the Artist.

A Deem the Artist is a dynamic and introspective singer songwriter who blends sharp wit with raw emotional depth.

Hailing from the South A deam's music, it bridges the gap between traditional country storytelling and contemporary social commentary.

As you'll hear today, their critically acclaimed albums White Trash Revelry and Anniversary Showcase.

A fearless exploration of identity crisis and culture offering a fresh, inclusive perspective on Americana music.

Now, Brandi Carlisle yes, that Brandy stated on her Sirius XM radio show A Dean is one of the best writers in roots music that I've ever heard.

No pressure.

Jason is both Tyler Childress, among others, and tours as a festival favorite and headliner.

So whether delivering moving ballads or tongue in Chee anthems, a dean the artist continues to push boundaries, connecting deeply with fans and carving out a space in Americana music.

Adim welcome to Americana Curious.

Thanks for having me.

I'd love to ask about Rotations.

That song was.

It's heavy.

I feel like I had to ring it a rag to get all the emotion out of it for myself before I could play it.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this with like a song or a film or something where you just, like, you keep going back to it over and over again or a TV show or something that there's something.

It's drawing me right back.

I got something.

I'm getting out of it and I need to get out of it.

I think you can.

I think you can keep.

Keep ringing new stuff out of some art for a long time.

Izzy Dale is balanced flexing talon on a chair Looks at me in between locks of golden hair Improvising wordless harmonies to all my songs Grabs a ukulele and begins to strum along I know it goes fast Everybody says that just a thing you're supposed to say.

But.

It'S real and you can't know how it feels until you're well on your way how many rotations am I gonna get with you to share with you.

The wisdom.

And magic spells I have.

Acc.

All the laughter and the longing sunsets and early dawnings Bad jokes and silly drawings on any misadventure that you choose When I'm gone you carry on Carry on There is left of me.

With you I don't know.

I think.

Did you guys watch the.

What is that movie with the substance?

Did you guys watch the Substance?

Not yet.

I know what I know about it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I hear.

That movie is largely about how after a certain age you get forgotten about and everybody kind of moves on.

You no longer are seen as valuable to society.

As a guy, you're, like, too old to know what's going on and you don't have.

You're not worth listening to anymore because you don't understand the modern world.

And as a woman, your beauty's gone and you're just like kind of an old hag.

That's the.

The sort of social perspectives or whatever.

And it's interesting to me, reckoning with all the ways that people look at the eclipsing of self, because, like, the reality of all of our mission is that we're doomed.

We just are.

We die.

That's what's.

That's the only thing that we know for absolute certain about human beings is that all of them die.

They always have, you know, and so there's something about knowing that you're born and you die and you have the space in between to connect yourself in the most important ways to the stories that came before you and the stories that will come after you.

So that you're bending that arc when.

When Martin Luther King talks about the arc that bends towards justice, I think it must be bent.

I think that's the work that you're on.

You're born.

And we're taught, especially here, that we're born and that's the beginning of our life and that we get to choose what we do or that we have a destiny.

There's kind of a couple variants of that, but ultimately, here it is.

It's your story, and you're telling it, and you get to write the script.

And there's no real direction towards cognizance of how much of the story that started way before you got here.

And the best way for you to succeed and actualize and find yourself is to find out where you are in that bigger story and who and where everybody else is in that bigger story, you know?

And that's kind of how you find the alignment of the folks that are doing the work that you want to be plugged into and everything.

There's something to parenthood that is choosing your own eclipse.

I wrote that song Rotations because when my kid was born, I was in the middle of my Saturn's return, which, you guys don't strike me as astrologers, so I'll give you a small.

We're here to learn.

We're Americana curious.

Astrology curious, you know, about like, 27 Club or the idea that artists die around a certain age, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Janis Joplin, Morrison, Hendrix.

Yeah.

Saturn's return, it's between 20, 28 to 32 years of life, is when Saturn starts to come back to the position it was in the universe when you were born.

That's how long it takes for a single rotation.

So when you get to that first rotation from an astrological perspective, or maybe.

Yeah.

You begin to return to the sense of origin of self.

Some people have what's called a Midlife crisis, because they begin to reckon with who they were as a child and who they were.

Now they're nearly 30 or they're turning 30, and it feels like, oh, the clock is ticking.

I only have so long to accomplish the things I want to accomplish.

Or, I mean, I will say one of the scariest moments that I had.

I've had a couple of really hard mental health experiences last year, but when I opened for Tyler Childers the first time, I walked off stage and I walked back and I sat down, and it's just like, over and over again.

I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.

I want to die in my brain just like a pounding drill.

And it was just the sense of this being the biggest thing that I could do as far as, like, performance.

This is bigger than anything I had ever imagined doing.

Playing this stadium with Tyler Childers and then being up there, and the frailty of being up there by myself and the strangeness of the disconnection between me and the people there when I'm so used to the intimacy of a small room and hugging people and touching them and being together.

It was really dystopian for me.

And by the end of the little leg we had, I saw it in a different light.

I began to really appreciate it, and I got my sea legs.

But that first show was really, really wild.

And I think one of those things is.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Around.

Around that first marker.

It's.

The two thoughts are.

I think, one, I haven't done anything that I thought I would do or.

And it took me a lot longer than that first rotation to get here.

Well, I did everything I wanted to do.

I mean, I had made a list that I wanted to do, and I did it.

And then I was like, what am I doing now?

People would say, what's next?

And I'd be like, I don't know.

My new goal is to get knighted by Queen Latifah.

I wrote that down.

Well, we're knighting you on Americana Curious today.

After, after, after the show.

Yes, I guess.

I guess that's beautifully said.

Yeah.

That is so powerful.

What is the experience for you as an artist performing rotations for 50 people versus 20,000 people?

I was really surprised by how universal that song hit Aaron's.

Yeah, well, I remember we were kind of workshopping it.

I don't mean to pull the curtain back too far on how the meat's made.

We like that conversation with Kyle Crownover, who is managing me at the time.

My.

My dear friend who is with Tyler Childer's crew over there.

I'm going to start talking about all musicians in their teams like NASCAR drivers do.

Yeah, we had a good run.

We had Kyle.

Kyle Crowner was running coach.

He's over there with children's team now.

And they've been doing good work.

They've been doing an international tour.

But Kyle, you sweated out there in a pit and anyways, so Rotations and.

I've got something I want to share about Rotations a second.

But rotations.

50 people in a bar.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Versus 20,000 open for Tyler Shoulders.

You're playing a song.

I mean, you got middle of the heart.

That's in that same sweet.

That it just seems like in a deem sweet spot of something that you're bringing.

Your other music is powerful.

But to me, those two, for me, just.

Just like have a family.

We had so care is also on the record.

And.

And Kyle was kind of pushing for why don't we use Carry you down for a single?

Because it's so much.

How did I make those balloons come out?

I was like, what's that balloon?

What?

The record show.

You can't see this.

A dean had balloons fly up.

Okay, so wait, all right, now we threw you off again.

All right, so I got.

I want to hear this.

I want to hear this.

Oh, yeah.

So Kyle had said that carry you down seemed to make more sense.

And I told him.

I was like, listen, I've been playing this in bars.

And I'm telling you, for whatever reason, when I play this Rotation song, it really cuts through the room.

And Kyle was surprised by it too.

Not because he didn't like the song or the song as an earnest.

But because down is so much more universal and so much more, I don't know, consistently tender.

Whereas rotations has a sort of sadness to it.

Talking about your Rotations.

My kid was born during my Saturn's return, so I was having to go through that kind of first hiccup with them and thinking, how many of these do you even get?

How many times do we get to watch Saturn go around?

3 times at most, if the odds are really, really good.

And it's just that it's parenthood is just choosing Eclipse.

It's choosing your own eclipse, deciding that it's happening.

And I think.

I think that song, for whatever reason, really cuts through the static.

And I think it distills something really universal in a way that kind of cuts through the fog a Little bit.

I mean I felt that way when we were doing stadiums and I felt that way.

I mean we were open for Jason Isbel and we'd have the band and we'd be killing it and then I'd do that song by myself and that song would be the moment from the show and it was just so the thumbnail.

I don't know.

It's a special kind of magic.

I don't know when it's not.

I don't want to take any credit for it.

You wrote it.

So the things about that we.

My kid went to Montessori school for a long time and other schools may do this too, but on their birthday they have the kid go that they have like a planet Earth and then.

Or they.

They have a.

Sorry, a sun in the middle with a candle and then they have the kid walk around with the earth as many times as they are old.

So if it's a seven year old kid, the rotation.

They physically walk around and so the kids understand their life in terms of the.

The rotation around the sun.

And I.

As soon as I heard.

The first time I heard that song I was like, I.

That.

That image came up for me and I've got lots of times where like the parents come and you video it and they're saying Happy Birthday and I was just getting choked up with nostalgia.

I really love that.

Oh my God.

The one thing that every fan should start doing at Nadim show and one thing that a fan should.

That fan should stop doing at a deemed shows.

Nobody ever like I was gonna do something funny, but then I was like, oh man, people are gonna do whatever it is I say hit us with it.

It's okay.

Yeah, more people, more people should.

More people should bring me drawings.

I always love when people bring me drawings.

That's like I've got like a bunch of pictures kids drew of me that I just collect on every tour.

It's the best.

And then next time noted for next.

Time I'm gonna bring it.

Stop doing what?

What should they stop doing?

Man, people bring drawings their kids made and they.

What a confusion this is.

This is metaphysical.

We talked about Saturn.

This is.

Seems lately like really need things to be.

So I straddle a weird line between kind of sincerity, anthropology and absurdist comedy.

It was a strange triangle to occupy and I think if you get it then it makes sense and if you don't, then I just seem like an absolute mess.

And maybe two things can be true.

But so many people come to a show of mine and they Think I'm gonna do 30 minutes of their favorite songs the exact way they heard them before.

And that's what it is.

And I don't understand.

I think that's fine.

It's not what I do.

I remember two dudes that I look up to a lot, a folk duo called Aztec Two Step.

You guys probably don't know these guys.

Appalachian folk duo from the 70s who kind of tour on bicycles.

He gave me this advice.

He said, people will tell you whether it's five people or 5,000 people, give them the same show.

And I'm telling you, if you get to a concert hall and there's five people in there, you're gonna have a way bigger impact if you just say, take those people to pizza.

And that's hung with me for a.

Long time, because I think there is something to that spatial awareness of knowing sometimes the night just changes direction.

And it's.

And it's not even.

I'm saying, you guys need to come and let me do whatever I want, because that's stupid.

What I'm saying is you gotta.

You gotta.

You gotta stop having so many expectations of what everything's supposed to look, how it's supposed to be structured.

Everything bleeds over into everything else, and that's okay.

And also, you gotta be willing to surf into some uncomfortable territory and see it through before you.

Before you make up your mind about something or before you.

You turn your energy on somebody.

It's just a really.

I don't know.

Yeah.

The way we compartmentalize things is really peculiar right now.

And every deemed show is different than the other.

The last one, you had a magician open, and I wish I remembered the name, but he was fantastic.

And it was so kind of not what you expect when you're going to a rock show, but I really appreciated it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was.

I mean, that's part of.

I think, what we've been trying to do.

At the release show in Knoxville, we had a comedian and then we had Flamie Grant, definitely experimenting for a long time with the idea of vaudeville in the modern age.

How do you create moments of significance that can't exactly be replicated or duplicated?

Because that's.

I think that's really something people crave.

And I think the more we see artists who are going to be forced to reckon with AI in their social media marketing and their rollouts, because there's not going to be any way to survive without doing it.

There's going to be an increased demand for organic real in the person.

It's stuffy in here, let's go get pizza type of nights, you know, And I think that, I think that.

And I want to actually take back centering myself in this because this is true.

When you go see BJ Barham, when you go see his golden messenger shoe, when you go see any band, if they're doing their jobs, and I know all these guys and they are, they're listening to the room and they're following that and they're engaging with something meaningful.

And your presence is part of that.

You're playing into that.

But being open to letting it subvert your expectations and letting it surprise you, I think is really important.

I was talking to some friends of mine about Dave Chappelle is going to be on Saturday Night Live.

And a lot of folks I know will not watch Saturday Night Live with Dave Chappelle on there because personal reasons about his comedy and stuff.

I love Dave Chappelle so much.

He's one of my favorite comedians.

I have loathed his past few comedy specials.

Not because they're offensive, they weren't that funny.

But I think there's a real weird expectation in modern audiences that you're gonna agree with everything or that by experiencing some art, you're co signing everything about it.

I'm not gonna watch Dave Chappelle because I think it's good that he says everything he's ever said.

I think his perspective is really important.

I think he's.

I mean, he's probably made 40 to 60% of the audience that loathes him right now woke when they were younger.

He's probably the reason they had like epiphanies about racial, systemic oppression.

So there's something to that where it's so important that we're able to hear somebody say something that we disagree with is so important.

And I think that Dave Chappelle, although he's really ham fisted with the way he's handling this issue especially I think his ability to talk about a thing that nobody else wants to talk about.

His willingness to engage at least one trans person about this stuff, even if he didn't seem to learn a whole lot from that experience.

I think, I think it's really this idea that you can't entertain the ideas of people you disagree with.

And I think it's really fun.

You can't hear people.

People out and try to understand where they're coming from.

It reminds me a lot of the church growing up and the idea that if they start talking about something that sounds not Christian, you need to tell Them.

You don't have space in your brain for that.

That's not like, I'm not trying to poison my heart against God.

So if you've got some kind of Muslim or Jew stuff, I don't want to hear nothing about it.

I mean, I'm characterizing it because it's.

It's.

It's ultimately just.

It's ignorant.

It is just ignorant.

And it.

And it's intentional in its ignorance.

Well, this has been amazing.

So, Adeem, I got to become a fan of yours through our previous guest, BJ Barham.

How was it to have somebody like BJ in your corner?

It's been.

I mean, it's so funny.

So I had worked different straight jobs over the course of my life just to make ends meet.

And when I.

I had finally built up to kind of doing music full time right before the pandemic hit.

And so when the pandemic hit after three or four months, I was like, well, that's the end of that.

Didn't work out.

There's no way to do this now.

And so I went and got a job working for a software company here in Knoxville called Scan Store.

They sell scanners.

It's pretty sick.

And scanner accessories as well.

And so I became.

My shtick was like, that was my day job.

That was how I was keeping the lights on.

And then I started doing journalism online, and I just kind of let go of the idea that I was going to be able to have a job just doing that, you know?

And I was at work listening to the Working Songwriters podcast, Joe Pug's thing.

His guest was BJ Barham.

And BJ Barham went on a rant about how the most important thing that ever happened to him was having somebody vouch for him.

I think he talks about Isbull producing that Burn Flicker Die record, and how that was a moment where he had somebody give him sort of a credit credibility.

And I thought, man, that really is something.

I bet if I had somebody vouch for me, it would mean a lot just having somebody boost what I'm doing.

And then a year later, BJ Barham was the.

Was the cowboy that became my.

My Rootin Tootin hero.

Yeah.

And what's it like being on stage, opening up for American Aquarium?

Your style of music versus BJ's and the.

And the crowd and whatnot?

Man, it's the best.

It's the best.

I love.

I love touring with them.

I mean, first of all, American Aquarium is so goddamn electric.

They.

They have an energy that's so palpable and driving from start to finish.

But I think, I think BJ has done a good job.

I think BJ has done a uniquely good job at facilitating conversation with open hands.

I don't think that BJ is somebody who pulls punches or plays nice, but I also think that he's somebody who really holds space for a better south and the reality of a better South.

And I think that.

I think that anybody who's taking that seriously knows that you got to treat everybody with the degree of dignity.

And BJ's somebody who I've seen consistently do that, but he is.

What a journey you've had.

I mean, growing up like you grew up in North Carolina, right till 13 years of age, boom.

Then you go to New York City.

So what was your journey?

What's the story there?

Because, I mean, that's a huge jump.

Yeah.

So I was.

My dad got a job working for.

For a company called Tech Terror.

My dad ran lathe in Charlotte.

That was kind of what brought us up there.

And so when I was, When I was 13, we moved to Baldwinsville, which is like, they call it central New York, but it's upstate from the city, so I was probably five hours from the hustle and bustle of New York.

But they were weirded out by your accent, I'm assuming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if it was weirded out as much as it's funny.

Actually, I think I.

I find it easier to identify because I'm traveling so much lately.

I.

I've busted out of my usual well worn paths.

And one thing that I got to open for Ray Wiley Hubbard.

Y'all know Ray.

So if, if you listen to Ray Wiley Hubbard outside of Texas and you're in the Southeast especially then your association of Ray Wiley Hubbard is probably with Americana because that's kind of what they call is music here.

To Brandon, if you're out west, it's private bulk.

In Texas, it's red dirt.

But if in Texas, if you're talking about Ray Wiley Hubbard, that just means you're in Texas.

That's like, that's all that means he's.

He's a God there, you know?

But I didn't have that context yet.

I just knew of him as this kind of spooky lefty blues guy, you know, And I just thought that that was going to be.

His audience, was going to be kind of an Americana type crowd out there to open for him.

I spent a week up in the Hill country writing for Anniversary.

Actually, I was working on the songs up there in Texas.

And I came down and I opened for him and the crowd was all starched, like pressed button down shirts and crisp jeans.

There's just a.

There's like Texas type of person that I didn't know yet, you know.

And so in real time, I just kept feeling the room tighten up and tighten up and I couldn't place what was going on.

And then finally at some point I was like, oh, these are all conservative Christian Republicans.

It just, oh, that's what's happening.

And I think there's something to.

When you don't have context for certain archetypes, it's easy to misinterpret them.

And so I think part of the weirdness of being in New York was that in the South, I had always been a misfit.

I was.

I didn't belong, actually.

I never thought about a list before.

But then in New York, I think at first glance I was just a redneck.

And all the associations that the people in school had of me were of rednecks.

We're rednecks.

And so being in junior high and.

And kids telling me racist jokes and I was like, what is going on with this?

And they're.

We just thought you'd like that since you're from North Carolina.

Like thinking about that moment in Texas, that really planted it.

Like, I can imagine that scene.

Oh, yeah.

What song did you choose to play and why in that moment?

To sort of get back in with the.

Get back in or I guess reconnect with the audience.

You know what I did, I said this, I said Texas.

I'm a non binary singer songwriter.

And the liberal media wants me to be afraid to come here.

Wants me to all the people who are going to hurt me.

And the liberal media wants y'all to be afraid of me and think that I'm coming here to hurt your children or prey on their minds.

But I don't believe the liberal media, and I hope you won't either, because I believe in y'all and I know that you're good people.

And it worked.

And then what happened?

What happened?

I mean, I sold at least three records to people who for sure started thinking about beating my ass as I walked on stage.

I don't know, I.

It's.

And the thing is, I want to clarify something.

It's not a bit.

That's not a line either.

It sounds like a nice save the show.

But the reason it works is because I mean it.

I don't, I don't believe in the distance between us.

And I have to choose to believe that you're bigger than I'm being told you are.

If I'm going to hope that you believe that I'm bigger than you're being told, I.

You know, the liberal media bit is obviously a little silly, but you know what?

In different parts of the country.

Is your music related?

Different?

I don't think I played well with the Isbil crowd.

I didn't feel I was connecting well, especially on the west coast.

But my take was that I don't think they knew how to read me.

I get this in the Northeast too, when I'm playing rooms of people who don't know anything about me.

I think the fact that I have such a heavy southern accent on stage, the fact that I'm wearing lipstick but also have facial hair, the fact that I'm teasing liberals about things.

There's.

There's a lot going on where.

And it's intentional.

I mean, that's part of the artistic experience for me is to have people feeling a little unsure of what I might say at any point.

People from really divergent and.

And maybe even combative perspectives feel acknowledged.

What.

I mean, if I can.

Two sides of an issue in a way that makes both of them feel seen and honored while also mocked kind of lovingly.

That's the sweet spot.

That's kind of the juice for me.

Because if you can get people laughing together, then that's like a real.

That's a real time.

That's.

Now we're disarmed.

Now we're just being here together.

And that's when.

And that's when I stab them right in the throat.

These people.

No, I'm just kidding.

Oh, wow.

We're a non violent show.

A deem, y'all.

Y'all just.

Y'all just heard what a deem does, right?

And you've been quoted.

I've heard you say, hey, you come see Me.

It's 60% comedy and 40% songs.

It's.

Yeah, it is.

One of the most special things that has happened through that kind of set of circumstances was I had a kid come to my show.

He was 17, and he.

He said, hey.

My family kind of kicked me out of their life for me and queer.

And I want, I want you to be my new mom.

You can be my.

You can be my mom.

And that kid's so special to me.

I've gotten to know him a lot and I'm really proud of him and getting to watch his art grow and see the person that he's growing into the ways that he's taken the lead on activism.

And he still calls me mom.

And it's, it's.

There are a lot of people that I get so much.

I get so much from just.

Just hearing the way people see the world and experience the world and being able to just share and vulnerability like that.

The songs have serious undertones in.

In most of your.

Your songs about social justice.

And how do you toe that line of bringing it, the humor in with the seriousness?

I don't.

No, that line.

No.

I.

I think the thing that drew me to the.

The artists and writers and creatives that have inspired and created the artist that I am was a sort of disregard for the.

For the difference in those ideas.

Like John Prine, the way he slips jokes in between lyrics about this man's destructive heroin addiction and Sam Stone is stunning because it's not different.

No, it's Gibran.

It's Khalil.

Gibran has a quote where he says, the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more water the well of your soul can contain.

So basically, the experience of suffering is the preparing of the body to receive joy.

This is really beautiful.

And in some ways, he opines that your capacity for actualization, for achieving richness in life is almost measured according to how much you're willing to experience pain, suffering and loss and sacrifice.

Let me ask this, because you did.

To kind of fund it, crowdfund that album, you did your white trash.

What did we call it again?

Fundraiser.

Fundraiser.

And you asked four quarters from anybody who could help, basically, and it went pretty quick to your goal.

So was that kind of overwhelming too, to say, oh, my gosh, I built this following that I didn't know I had, but here it is.

That was in many ways the start of the ride that I'm on right now.

Was that because I had that album and I had been sitting with it for a long time, I didn't have the money to make it, but I also didn't really have the vision exactly for it.

And when I sat down and I just thought, okay, imagine you had unlimited money and you were going to make the dream record that you want to make and you want to spend as little money as possible.

That's the criteria.

Yeah.

So I.

I made a list of all the musicians that I like wanted to work with.

Jake Blunt, Joy Clark, Giovanni Carnuccio, Ellen Angelico, Mia Byrne.

So many folks I had Lizzie no and Jett Holden and tons.

Tons of incredible people on that album that I couldn't Believe said.

Yeah.

Thinking about the performing at a church worship service versus a bar, what do you think would surprise people about doing both of those in the same day?

When I was in worship, I was very into.

I am, I still am.

I mean my Christian faith as it exists right now is still very tied to a super social activism perspective of the Jesus of the Bible.

It's still deeply rooted in that stuff.

But I think because of my admiration for guys like Shane Claiborne and Jay Baker, Jim.

Jim and Tammy Faye's son who.

Who ran a bar church with a rock band, there were a lot of people who was.

Because I was like 15 maybe when relevant magazine kind of came out, which was huge, kind of like contemporary emergent youth perspective, the first millennial directed Christian perspective that was produced.

Cool was Relevant magazine.

And I'm filtering it through the lens of a 14 year old conservative Christian me.

So I don't know how cool it actually was.

I'm describing it as best.

All that to say, I mean, I think for me, I mean, when I was a teenager, I also was obsessed with Johnny Cash and I poured over.

I listened to that San Quentin, that live San Quentin record over and over and over again.

Every, every fluctuation in his voice, just trying to nail it.

Listening to Folsom Prison, going through his collection.

I was obsessed with Cash.

And so I think there was just a real sense of this is the same thing that existed in my brain from like pretty much the set.

The first time that I played at a church with my guitar, I think I already had kind of some sense of like when I go to the bar, I'm doing this same thing.

And that's what I was just gonna.

If you don't mind me, interrupt.

That's kind of what I'm thinking about.

You should have been a Cowboy is Toby Keith is writing.

You're a fan in the 90s from what I know of that type of country.

And Toby Keith is writing songs about being a regular person.

And you are slapping back at him like, no, I wish you would have been a cowboy and helped out the people.

You are the people that love you the most.

Basically, that's what the brilliance of that song.

I was only five years old when your song came out.

I heard should have Been a Cowboy on the road radio screaming from the dash of my daddy's pre own Camry in between Dwighty Oakum and Diamond Rio.

It was the first of many verses that I memorized loosely.

Hell, it ain't like you but you were one of A hundred favorite artists on the country charts.

I know this is a long time coming.

Mailbox money isn't gonna go away.

It's hard to know where to start.

But I've got a few things to say.

Your 20 minute song, props of Fascists, while you brag about kicking asses with a boot in your mouth, exploiting the American South.

You helped turn my culture into a parody.

Milking laborers for your prosperity.

I wish you would have been a cowboy too.

Yeah, that's exactly it.

It's the idea that it's not.

We talk about appropriation, right?

When you're talking about white people appropriating black culture or the appropriation of west of Eastern cultures by Western folks, all these sorts of things.

The idea of appropriation is so rooted in the oppression of the people that you're borrowing ideas from.

And I think that's what gets in my throat with Toby Keith.

It's not that he's not real country.

It's that I know there is no such thing as real country.

I know we're all putting it on.

I've stepped across the Grand Ole Opry stage.

I have laced up my boots alongside of Jason Isbel and Eddie Guevara.

And let me tell you, that's a good.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is it's not just that Toby pretended to be like us.

It's that he pretended to be like us and then he said a bunch of conservative and force fed Republican ideas at our parents that estranged us.

He helped support political ideas that really hurt families.

He ruined Natalie Maine's career.

He.

He ruined not just their career, but he ruined the ability to have dialogue within country music as a system of conversation within the country.

Garth Brooks was not celebrated in the early 90s when he said that we shall all be free, that there should be racial equity and that gay marriage should be legalized.

It was not a popular stance in pop culture.

He was a pop singer and he was blacklisted.

He never had another song on the American charts.

I don't know if you know Darren Hayes.

He was Savage Garden.

And he's got two albums, at least that are just as good as every Savage Garden album that came out that charted in the top 10 everywhere else in the world but America.

I grew up hearing that song.

That song was country music to me, you know.

And when Dixie Chicks had that experience where they were told, that's it, you're done, you fought, you stay in line or you're done, it made anybody that would challenge authoritarian conservative politics afraid of losing their livelihood.

The early aughts were just scared off in a lot of ways because that's what happened.

And so the stuff that we're seeing now where there are these aggressive political pundits who are uninformed about everything but charismatic, are getting behind acoustic guitars and pedaling.

We would all universally agree our drunk uncle should not be spewing at the.

At the Christmas table.

And they put it to a melody that they're recycling from some song from the early aughts.

I don't know.

And so how did that show up for you?

What was the stuff between Toby hearing Toby Keith listening to it and then coming out with that incredible song?

I mean, I left.

I mean, I left.

I did.

I think.

I think for me, and probably for a lot of folks, the stuff that happened, I wasn't.

I wasn't liberal.

I mean, I voted for McCain in 08.

That's my.

I consider myself a pretty hard leftist at this point in my life.

And for a long time, I did consider myself a liberal Democrat.

It was important to me.

But before that I considered myself undecided.

And before that I was Republican and very committed to it.

So I'm down to.

I'm down to.

I'm down to dialogue.

I mean, I'm never going to vote for a Republican again, but I'll probably never vote for a Democrat either.

So I don't know.

So.

Plot of land shifting gears.

That seems optimistic.

A deem blueberry bush coming at you.

When you play that, do people just get up and just lose their mind?

Yeah, yeah, sometimes.

Sometimes.

I mean, it's pretty punk rock song masquerading as a love song, I think.

I think my favorite might be the live performance of Going to hell when we get the Are you gonna go with a demon?

Yes.

I've been at one show where the crowd participation was lacking, but the other one was really good, so it was awesome.

Yes.

You called yourself your Jason Derula stage or something the last time I saw you.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, so good.

Dean, we're at the Restore.

Starting to run out of time here.

Stop this podcast for 10 minutes, please.

Yes, well, we can keep going.

We don't have any time left.

But I do have one.

One final question, and it's a big one.

Take any way you want to go.

But looking down the road, what does the deemed legacy look like?

There's no deemed.

Like, there is no legacy.

No, there's.

There is only that arc and the.

And the.

And the minuscule way that we affect how it falls moving forward.

And we won't be remembered for it either way.

So the only reason to do it is because it's.

It's what must be done.

All right.

Daddy's gonna buy me a brand new gun?

Show me how to clean it in the yard?

Papa says he can't wait to see me fire with that steady arm?

A couple hours of waiting and some heavy concentration?

Put a bullet through the middle of her heart?

Everybody's gonna be so glad to see the freezer full of fresh?

Dear me, my mama's gonna be so proud of me when we get back to the farm.

Night's getting longer?

Days get hard?

I learned to put a bullet through the middle of a heart?

I learned to put a bullet through the middle of a.

Thanks for joining Zach and I for this episode of Americana Curious.

Subscribe where you listen to your podcast so you are notified when a new episode is released.

I'm Ben Fanning, and it's been great sharing these artists and music with you.

Until next time, stay Americana Curious.