Unknown: Hey guys, we've got a very special episode of Circling
the Drain. In fact, it's going to be a couple of episodes for
you with a very special guy. I'm talking about a country music
legend, Trace Atkins.
Man, what? What a treat that everybody is going to be in for.
We talked to this man for three episodes worth
at least, at least,
so gracious in giving us all of that time, and man, the stories,
and the well, you're just gonna have to stick around and check
it out,
yeah, because he's the, he's probably the nicest hostage
you've ever seen, so I hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to a podcast about music and entertainment. Before it all
goes down the disposal, this is Circling the Drain.
Welcome back to Circling the Drain. It's Johnny Bozeman, but
you know me as Johnny B. J. Harper, right there.
Hello, mr. Bozeman. John Earnest Bozeman, little hidden, a little
secret there. And, of course, we have the.. I'm not even gonna
say, I'm not gonna say James Patrick, even though I just did,
but Jim McCarthy.
Thank you.
Running the running the show here,
yeah, he does. He pilots it to keep it from smacking into the
into the sand to
do something. Yeah, whatever. I'm smacking
into something. Please forgive me, man. I've just got out of
the hospital, so you know,
so many good things going on,
yeah, there are, there's so many things going on, but we this
time, and we've had guests on the show, you know, a lot of
musical guests, a lot of people in the music industry, but this
time we've got a legitimate country legend, ladies and
gentlemen, and
he walked right in like it was superstar, like it was just like
we're old butts. Well, he is no presumptions. He is that way,
and that's
why I have a lot of respect for this man. Not only do I dig his
music, but I dig him as an individual. And it's an honor to
have Trace Atkins with us. Yeah, you doing, brother? Good to be
here, man.
Hitting the big time, Johnny B, always. Yeah, you don't
see the audience, they're over there.
Come on, treat, you never, you never get tired of hearing that
applause, though, right? I mean, the audience, I mean, that's
kind of the one of the one of the reasons you do what you do,
right, is you enjoy making people happy.
Well, you know, hopefully, yeah, you know, but that applause,
yeah, that's that's that's the only tangible result you get
from what you do in this business, and, and the weird
thing is, I mean, you know, it's great, but it lasts about as
long as that did, and then you go back to the bus and go, well,
what was that all about,
no.
I miss you. That's the reason I work like I do. You know, when
I'm not on the road, I'm on the farm. I just.. I came over here
from.. I've been working. I'm sorry, but no, I live right down
the road from here. So, anyway, so I worked right up until the
time I had to get here, and then I came on over, but I like to do
physical stuff, and then at the end of the day I can look back
and say I can tell what I did today. I have tangible results
from what I did, and I need that, you know. So that's what
you know having to farm gives me, and that's the way I grew up
with blue collar jobs. I still need that in my life, but this
other gig is just, yeah, you know, tangible results are not
there. You just get off the stage and go to the bus.
Well, the thing is, I one time I looked at Twitter, or I guess,
which is X now, and Victoria had put up your wife and put up this
video. Now, see, this is the thing with Trace. I always.. I
feel like a man, you know, at this point in my life, but every
time I get around this guy, I feel like a little boy. Listen,
I feel like a.. but I'm looking at this video, man. This dude's
taking down this huge, huge ass tree. Yeah, and I'm thinking, I
don't do that, you know, I feel like country boy, but yet this
guy's doing the hard work.
Well, there was a reason I was doing that, though. I don't post
stuff of me working in there. No, you do
not. But
this guy, this regional rep for Steel, had given me this big, I
mean, a big chainsaw. Oh, it was cool with like 42 inch bar on
it, or something big, huge change, though. Because after
the Beatles came through a few years ago, killed all the ash
trees. Oh yeah,
you know, and man, I got some ash trees on my place, they're
massive, and I had a 24 inch bar, but it wasn't quite big
enough to handle, so you know. Reached out to the steel guy,
and he said, "Yeah, I'll hook you up. So he hooked me up with
this saw, and then I was like, "You know, I should do voiceover
stuff for steel. And so my wife was like, "Well, let's just do a
little video of you cutting down one of those big hash trees with
that new steel saw, and then we'll give it to them, and
they'll probably give you a gig, is you know, voiceover stuff,
and I was like, yeah, let's go. So we did it, and I thought the
steel people would be able to use it, but they couldn't, you
know why? And I thought I had everything right, man. I had, I
had the helmet on, and the face guards, I had all the stuff, but
I didn't have on glove, and so they wouldn't, they couldn't use
it. That's what the dude said. He said, "We can't use it. You
didn't have gloves on. Sorry about that. I didn't get the gig
anyway. And then I heard it the other day, they got this new
commercial with this gravelly voice. Dude sounds kind of like
you made me mad. I told Victoria, I said I'm gonna go
take that saw and throw it in the pond, because I didn't get
the voiceover still, man.
But, man, you've had a good run with Firestone, though, right?
Had a
great run, I think I was almost 1214, years. Yeah, yeah, they
let me go, and every year when they kept re-upping the
contract. I thought surely these guys are going to this campaign,
they're going to go in a different direction at some
point. So I had, I had probably seven or eight years more than I
thought I was going to get, and the contract just ran out this
past year, and they didn't re-up, and I was like, it's
about time, man.
But you did some stuff for KFC too, didn't you?
Long time ago. Yeah, I did a little KFC stuff. Yeah, that
didn't last too long, but you know, I've done things over the
years. There was a fast food chain in Southern California,
Farmer Boys. I did that for a while, and so I've been
fortunate to do a lot of that stuff, and I still do a lot of
voiceover stuff for Wounded Warrior Project. Right, right,
yeah. I've seen you on. I
appreciate you doing that kind of work.
Amen. I love those guys. That's a great ordinance. Yeah,
anything for the vets, brother?
I kind of see Lululemon in your future, you know? Maybe, oh my
gosh, you know what they owe me. I've got five
daughters, and they love, and I mean, they'll go in there, and I
can't believe it, they'll buy a pair of tights, right? Yeah, I
mean, just regular, like $80 a pair, right. Oh my god, like,
are you kidding me? It's unbelievable how much this stuff
costs in there.
But the funny thing is, is that, of course, I'm joking, but I
mean, as I'm thinking about it, that's actually not a bad idea.
If Lululemon, or a brand like that, is listening to have a
voice like yours, like the juxtaposition, I mean, yeah, you
know, right? Exactly. Plus,
you've got five daughters, man, right? Always makes me think,
too. Every time I hear about your daughters, have you had fun
with the boyfriends? I mean, can you share some of those stories
with us? Yeah, please. I know I don't want to embarrass your
daughters, or
no, my oldest when she was in college, she had a boyfriend one
time that he wanted to hunt out on my place, and I was like, oh
yeah, okay, so I didn't normally let people do that, but I went
out in the woods with him, and I took him back in the back where
there was this huge white oak tree, and I was like, you know,
this would be a good spot for you to put a stand, and we were
just out in the middle of the woods, and I turned to him, and
I said, you know, I could kill you right now, nobody would
ever, ever even know what happened to you, I just run your
truck off in the pond, and then I'd just go, I ain't seen him,
I'll take my backhoe, dig a big old hole, bury you in, and I
was, he was nervous looking, you know, but I was like, I'm just
kidding, you know, yeah. And then later that night I was
sitting at the dinner table in the house, and my daughter came
home from college, she was going to MTSU at the time, and she
came into the house just since she came in the door. You're a
psychopath. Yeah, he didn't stay around, and there was another
one one time that you know, I can't remember his name. I don't
even remember what he looked like, but he.. I just.. he'd
been around a few times, and I could just tell it was like, you
know, he's not gonna make it, she's not, he's not gonna make
it,
right?
You know, and so I just told him, you know, like, dude, I'm
trying to help him right now, you should just go ahead and.
Just get out, you're not gonna make it, you know. Yeah,
you're just not gonna make it. So, you need to cut your losses
and get out, yeah. Brother out, and he did,
yeah. Well, he's smart, he listened to you,
yeah. Well, you know, he, you know, he should, he should be
grateful. I knew he wasn't gonna make it. He wasn't gonna make
the cut.
So, do you understand women more having five? No, I tell
people all the time, you know, having five daughters and three
ex-wives. You know, I'm more confused. I'm five times more
confused about women than you are, because I have five
daughters, and it's just.. I don't understand them. I still
don't
see.. I still don't either. I've been married a couple of times,
and
yeah, and
at one time was even a stepfather to some girls, and
girls were sweet as can be. They were ornery, but I'm like you,
man, I still don't understand.
Yeah, well,
I love them, but I don't understand. I don't
understand them either, man. I don't.
So, when you got started, you grew up in Serepta. Am I
Louisiana? What got you into music? What, what drew you
well? well, my first memory of music appreciation was standing
beside my granddaddy in church, and he, he had a beautiful, rich
bass voice, and he would always sing the bass parts on all the..
that was back in the day when the whole congregation knew
their parts,
yeah,
and when they would sing, it was everybody was singing parts. My
mama sang alto, my granddaddy was singing the bass part. You
had a few tenor singers around, you know, and the sopranos, and
it was just beautiful. But I remember standing by my
granddaddy and just listening to him sing and thinking, man,
that's what I want to do, I want to sing bass like my granddaddy.
And then that's what I started doing in a gospel quartet early
on. I was 17, I started singing bass in a gospel quartet. Did
that for a few years, and I absolutely loved it, you know.
And that was when I kind of started to realize, oh my gosh,
man, the chicks dig the bass. Oh yeah, they do. Chicks dig,
they don't
care about the tenor singer, they like the bass. Oh yeah, so
that, that, that started it, man. It was over after that, you
know, I really, that's what I wanted to do. So,
well, as far as country music, what'd you get into at that?
I was doing little, like, you know, Saturday nights around
where I grew up, there were all those little hay rides and
jamborees, right, where they had a house band, and you just go in
and, you know, get up and do haggard tunes or buck Owens or
whatever, and you know that's what I kind of, what I started
doing, but I didn't get a break until I was working offshore on
a drilling rig, and I would take my guitar out there, and you
know, when I worked my 12 hours, I'd go up to the wheelhouse up
at the very top, where it was quiet, and I'd try to write and
stuff, and then guys started coming up there wanting me to do
certain songs, whatever. And then I met this dude out there
that knew a guy that was in a band in Lafayette, Louisiana,
and he said, "Me introduce you to him when we have our two
weeks off, and he was on my crew, and so you know I liked
him a lot, and so I said, "Okay, man. So we went on our two weeks
off, and I went down to Lafayette and sat in with these
guys in a club one night, and then it just went from there,
man. They said, "We're doing this competition, we've already
won the locals, we're going to the regionals in Dallas. Want
you to go with us and sing some, and so we went out there, and we
actually won. The thing
was that the country showdown,
it was the Wild Turkey battle. Okay, Wild Turkey
had won, that's right, yeah,
a long time ago. So we came to Nashville for the finals, and we
didn't win, but it was, it was a good experience. But when we
played in Dallas, there were some booking agents in the
audience. They booked us to start playing clubs in Texas,
and so that's what I took a leave of absence from Global
Marine, and when did that for about four years, just played
the club circuit in Dallas, New Mexico, he went as far as
Arizona, and then we played a couple of places in Louisiana,
and one in Mississippi, and Jackson, but we just ran that
circuit, you know, where you'd start on a Tuesday night and
finish on a Saturday night, it's five nights a week, four hour
dance.
Years, that's some dues paying, right? Yeah, you know.
Well, I, you know, I was doing a lot of drugs and staying drunk
all the time, and it was just, man, it was a nightmare.
Finally, I just had to get away with it. I knew I was getting
away from it. I was, I knew I was going to kill myself. I
quit, but you know it was a great experience, but I said
once I've moved up here and, and, and got lucky and got a
record deal. I said, you know, I've all the thing that I have
is I've, I've learned everything that you're not supposed to do,
right?
You know, and I think those lessons are just as if not more
important than what to do, I'd already learned what not to do,
you know, and the way that you shouldn't conduct yourself and
everything, so yeah, I got all that out of my system back then.
Well, you know, you say you kind of got the itch singing with
family in church, I mean, in terms of instruments, I guess
was the guitar the first one you picked up.
Yeah, my daddy bought me a guitar when I was 10 years old,
and I don't even remember. I never talked to him about it
either. I don't, I didn't get a chance to ask him why he did
that, but one Christmas I had a guitar, and then I was 10 years
old, and a couple of weeks later I started taking guitar lessons
from this guy in Spring Hill, Louisiana. Took guitar lessons
for a few years, and that's how it started.
Were they like guitar gods that kind of you drew influence from?
Any rockets listened to? No,
man. man, I'm a lazy guitar player. I got to the point where
I could accompany myself,
right,
and I knew I knew the chords and everything, and I could just,
you know, I could learn songs and, and pretty much accompany
myself, and that was good enough for me. Three
chords and the truth, yeah. I didn't,
I didn't have a dream of shredding, you know, I wasn't
going to be that
too late when, then when, when I
cut this finger off, you know, there's cords I can't even make
anymore, I can't reach up the neck, you know, and just there's
stuff I can't do right now, so, and plus, I don't have any
feeling in this finger, you know. So,
well, you brought up something interesting, too, that man,
you've had a lot of, I mean, a lot of accidents, a lot of
things happen to you. I mean, you even got shot by a wife, I
mean, that's, and you survived,
yeah, obviously, you're a tough,
you're one tough sob, Johnny. Yes, sir.
In this life, I have been a participant, not a spectator.
That's why I'm scarred from one end of my body to the other, you
know, because I have been in the game, dude. Well,
you have. I mean, you like I said, you got shot by an
ex-wife, which might.. and you didn't press charges, which
was.. I thought big of you.
Well,
well, I mean, if it were me, very honorable, because I mean,
if someone shot me, yeah, you're going to jail.
Well, you know what, man. Though, I mean, this is somebody
that supposedly loves you, and I love you. And when that happens,
it's like, oh my, you know, of course she didn't mean
to do it. No,
you know what I mean, right? It's like she didn't mean to do
that. Yeah, I'd never seen her shoot a gun ever. Yeah, I knew
she had one, but I'd never seen her shoot one. And so,
boy, when you did, she.. yeah,
it was.. it was
glad you survived it.
Yeah, well, if it hadn't been for Life Flight and Vanderbilt
Medical Center, I wouldn't have, I swear, if I'd been anywhere
else, you know.
And by the way, Vanderbilt, if you'd like some, you know,
people to do some commercials for you. A couple of guys right
here, there's your guys. Yeah, you can. Yeah,
I got on a Life Flight, they picked me up in Mount Juliet and
took me to Vanderbilt, and so I've stayed in ICU for a long
time, and they didn't really expect me to make it. I don't
think.
Wow,
you know, I mean, the bullet went in under this army, came
out under this arm, that's crazy. Wow, went through my
straight through my heart, went through both lungs, and so it
was, it was bad. So,
what was.. I mean, what's the feeling like that? I mean, as
you know, you're being shot at the time. Is it kind of.. do you
feel it?
Oh, I knew. I knew I had been shot. I just remember getting up
off the kitchen floor. And I walked down to, I don't even
know where I was going, I was just in complete shock, you
know, and, and I had this house we were in, there were two steps
that went down from the kitchen and went into this living room,
and we had just put this new Berber carpet in there, and I
remember I went down those two steps, and I looked at that
carpet, and I went, "Oh my god, I can't bleed on this new Berber
carpet, so I went straight through, and we had a room off
the back of the house, and it's kind of a atrium kind of thing,
had tile floor, and we had plants, and they had a glass
roof, and you know, it was just a little atrium with a lot of
plants and stuff, and I saw that tile floor, and I was like, this
is a good place to bleed. So I laid down there, and easy to
clean. Yeah, that's all I remember,
really. You know, I don't remember the paramedics loading
me up and putting me in the ambulance and taking me to that
church parking lot, which is where we got on a helicopter and
went, went to Vanderbilt. I don't remember any of that. So,
how old were you when that happened?
I see I was 32 Okay,
so you were still a relatively young, strong. That's the only
thing
that saved me. I was working construction at the time, I was
still young and strong, right? Yeah, and you know I don't think
the devil was looking forward to the way I was going to run the
place, you scared him, so
he said, keep him up there, will you?
seems that you have a lot of trade tattoos, that's what I
call them, when you cut your hands open, I mean, I just did
it last time we recorded them open, you knew that cutting your
thumb opening, almost lobbing your thumb off, adventures in
podcasting, right? Yeah, but I've, like, I said, I don't want
to have it stitched. I want it to scar, because that's a, oh
yeah, I like my scars. Oh yeah, I got my electrical days.
See, I've got this hand, you can't see him too much now, but
I got really pissed off. It's back when I was doing music,
yeah, but they kept me off a gig that I was supposed to be on,
and I got mad, and I was in the Hank Williams' house, my parents
had to Hank Williams house at one time, and it had these big
doors that they had double, you know, paying glass in, and not
thinking, and plus back in those days I was doing drugs, and so
I, you know, was on cocaine high, and I mean I took my fist
and ran it right through one of the panes of glass, and it hit
me. I thought, "Why did I do this? And as I pulled it out, I
mean, blood just flying out like a.. so, yeah,
hands are very vascular.
Yes, they are. Yeah, I've
cut my hands all up. I got scars all over my hands, you know.
Well, you all over too. I've broken both my arms, both my
legs. Oh my
gosh,
busted my ribs several times. Hell,
you, you had a didn't.. didn't you flip a tractor? Or
yeah, that just separated my sternum. That's all it was. was
on top of me, and then you know, and I had my phone right here in
my overalls, and everything else was just that's the only thing I
could reach. Wow, and I could only move one arm. This one was
pinned, somehow I don't remember, but then I just got my
phone out, and I called my neighbor down the street,
because he had a backhoe, and I said, "Bobby, get on your
backhoe and come down here and get this damn track girl. And I
remember when that happened, a friend of mine that worked at
KDF did some kind of comedy bit about that. Well, you're a brave
new.
he's like, 'Hey, you just, you know, busted a sternum open.
What's he gonna do to me? Yeah, even worse than a bullet wound.
Yeah, that bullet didn't hurt really. Now, I guess it kind of
cauterizes it as it goes through. I guess, no, no,
you just in shock. Yeah, the body shuts down and protects
you, and you just don't feel it, you know, yeah, that was my
experience anyway, you know, the healing process hurt,
yeah, I could see that, oh
yeah, that hurt when they crack you open, you know,
yeah,
when it's a trauma surgery and they don't take their time, they
just rip you open and pull it back, it hurts once you heal up
from start healing from that, yeah, it really hurts. The
second open heart I had didn't really hurt that bad, because
they took their time and they were very careful and gentle,
and so I walked out of the hospital a couple days after my
second open heart, but that first one was bad because of.
Was trauma surgery, and they're just, you know, digging.
Yeah, I mean, have any of these wild experiences contributed to
your songwriting in one way or another? I don't
write about that stuff. I mean, just, well, you
know, just the maybe the pain, figuratively, or whatever, maybe
just
I flip my tractor. Your love is like a torn open sternum.
I would think just maybe about mortality and things of that
thing. Maybe you know
consciously some of it is found its way in there, but not
consciously. I don't,
yeah, no, you
broke my heart. Then you shot it, quite literally. Well, you
got started. It was Capitol Records. What is Scott Hendrix
that always did? He seemed to be a cool guy. I
love Scott, always have you. I met him at the baggage claim at
the airport, and I was introduced to him, and he asked
me, you know, where I was singing, and I said, I've got a
little weekend gig at a little joint in Mount Juliet Hermitage,
actually, and we told him when it was, and come on out, and I
didn't expect him to, but that Friday night he was out there,
and I did my first set, turned around, put my guitar down to
take a break, and when I turned back around, he was standing on
the stage,
wow,
and he said, "I'll give you a record deal, just like that,
yeah, pointed right in my face, and he said, I'll give you a
record deal.
Oh, wow.
And I said, Where the hell have you been? Yeah, wait for you.
I've been looking for you for five years longer. Yeah, but and
then he told me later, he said, he said, when I met you at the
baggage claim, he said it was the timbre of your voice, and I
thought, man, if this guy can actually sing on pitch, I want
to hear that. Yeah, that's why it came out. And,
of course, you know, you're such a big striking guy. I mean,
you've got such a presence. I mean, I would think that that
would also play into it to some degree.
I don't know. Yeah,
I mean, you know, from a, from a visual standpoint, up on stage
again, you know, that's that's quite a presence up there.
Well, you know, if it is, then nothing. I didn't do anything to
deserve that. It was just how I am now. Did you come from a
family of giants? My
granddaddy on my daddy's side was tall. My dad was about 6263
something like that. So, you know, I ended up a little
taller, you know, six six, but I don't know how. I'm not six six
anymore. I've shrunk. I didn't even stall, because, yeah, the
cartilage in your joints and in your spine, and everything
starts to compress, and, and what I was at the doctor a while
back, you know, and and they asked me how tall I was. I used
to be six six, but I don't think I am anymore. And my wife was
like, yes, you are, and I was like, no, I'm not. And I, they
measured me, and I was like, six five, I've shrunk an inch, man.
It's unbelievable. It
sounds like everything's shrinking, you know. We were
talking about Scott Hendricks, but it seemed like after Scott
was.. and it really, to be honest, it really made me mad
the way they were handling you on Capitol after Scott left, I
thought you did. You ever just want to hang those people out
the window? For it just didn't seem like they were promoting
your stuff, not doing what they should.
They weren't.
Yeah, I mean it was obvious.
Yeah, Scott was my cheerleader. Out, see, when he got named,
that was when Jimmy Bowen left Capitol, Scott got named the new
president of Capitol Records. I was the first person that he
signed to Capitol after he became president of Capitol
Records, and he, he had to put the juice behind me,
right?
You know, his first signing had to be successful, and so I
enjoyed that kind of support for the first two albums,
yeah.
You know, and then, yeah, and then politics reared its ugly
head, and you know, things happened, and Scott got let go,
and they brought in some other guy, and it was just like, yeah,
I didn't like that dude at all, man. Then we ended up, there
were a couple of years where I didn't even go back to there
were two years that I didn't go back in the building,
don't blame because
there was nothing that I needed to talk to him about, because
they're, you know, there was a point where we were on that 11th
floor at that building that Capitol used to be. End on West
End, West End. Yes, yeah. And I was up in his office, and, and
my man, one of my managers was there with me, and we were
having a meeting, and it got to the point where we were yelling
at each other, and she was crying. And then he was like,
'Who you think you are? And I said, 'I'm gonna tell you who I
am. I'm the Confederate son, bitch is gonna throw your Yankee
ass out that way. Wasn't this the same
guy, too, that he wanted to have Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline as
a..
he wanted to do it. He wanted Patsy Cline to sing on
somebody's record, yeah, Nashville, and he asked
somebody to get in touch with her. Yeah, tell him that she was
dead. I don't want to personally hear that, but the people that I
heard
it from that were in the room, he did say that.
Yeah, he
did say that.
Shows how how in touch he was with country music.
Yeah, well,
well, at least things worked out well after that, and then you
start, yeah, they
brought Mike Dungan in, and I love Mike. I'd known him from
the early on in the Arista days, because Arista Rickards was the
first ones that signed me, Tim Dubois signed me to a
development deal,
yeah,
but I had a very cagey lawyer that had been recommended to me,
and he, you know, he was like, 'Look, dude, you know you're 32
years old, you can't be. He said, 'I, you know, artists
sometimes stay in development for years on these labels, and
so we're gonna, we're gonna sign with them, but we're gonna have
this clause that says this is a six month deal, if you can't
find what you want to do with him after six months, you got to
cut him loose, and that's what we did, and, and so I stayed in
development at Arista for six months, and then you know they
didn't ever do anything with me, so they cut me loose, and that's
when Scott came in, just right after that,
very cool,
and actually Tim talked to Scott, you know, about me, and
said I really believe in this guy. I think he's great. I think
he's got a lot of potential. I just had a full roster over
here, didn't have any place to put him. So, yeah, so I thank
Tim for that.
Well, you came up with some great stuff too, like Chrome. I
love that album. I love the tune.
Yeah, it was.. that was a
cool video too, with you. Now you're always on a bike. It
seems like you, you played some bikers in movies like Girls
Night Out and Lincoln Lawyer.
Yeah, and
you do a good job, because I've known a lot of bikers in my
time, and
there's two styles of acting that I have two methods, one is
on a motorcycle, another one's on a horse. I'm a method actor.
Two methods.
Oh no, I've seen you in the one with Mark Wahlberg. Oh
yeah, that was funny.
Yeah, I mean, it was at the end. I'm trying to think of the name
of the.. it's.. it was about the Deepwater Horizon. That's right,
that's right. See, I was
supposed to be the crane operator in that movie.
Oh, you played a pissed off parrot, and I was like, holy.. I
mean, it comes through.
They were gonna.. well, I'll tell you what happened.
Like, oh my gosh, so Peter Berg, Peter
Berg was direct in that movie, you know, Peter Berg did, yeah,
and all, yeah, so anyway, I was supposed to play the crane
operator, but something, my itinerary, I just couldn't do
it, they wanted me, they wanted too much of a time commitment
from me, so I couldn't do it, and they said, well, we still,
we were, you know, one of the consultants on the movie,
actually the guy that Wahlberg was portraying in the movie, he
was a consultant on the movie, and he wanted me in the movie
because he knew that I had worked in oil field for 10
years, and so he wanted me in that movie, and I'd worked on a
drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. I knew, you know,
anyway. So they said we'll just let you do this little thing
here, and you'll only have to be here for one day. And I was
like, cool, I can do that. And they put it on a day that I
could do it. So, so we get in this hotel where it actually
happened, where this scene actually took place when
Wahlberg comes in, and there are all these people waiting to hear
about their loved ones, whether they had been killed or were
okay or what, and so I was supposed to grab, grab Wahlberg
and put him up against the wall and go, "You're going to tell me
what's going on? You know, so we did the scene a couple of times,
and then Peter Berg comes out from behind the cameras and
comes up to me, and just looks at me, and he just stands. He
goes, "What are you doing? I said, "Well, I'm just doing the
thing. And he goes, "No, you're not. That's not why we brought
you here. He said, "We brought you here. I want you to grab him
and throw him up against the wall battery. And I was like,
"Dude, I don't want to hurt the guy, you know. Oh, and he goes,
you can't hurt him, and I said, oh yeah, and then he started
poking me in the chest with his finger and pushed me up against
the wall, and he had me up against the wall, just dog
cussing me in front of all those people, and then I was, and it
finally, it was just like, hey, man, I don't care who you are,
you know, and he goes, action, you know, he just ran off and
yelled 'action' and then Wahlberg came in, and I grabbed
him, and you know it
was like, 'What are you doing? Say hi to your mother for me.
I couldn't believe that, man. How long was he in the hospital?
I didn't really hurt him, but they slung him around pretty
good. Was it
because he was from Boston? Is that the Yankee guy? He was a
good guy. He seems
like a really cool. They all
do, really.
Yeah,
he's a nice Kurt Russell.
Seems like a hell of a dude.
Yeah, that was my highlight of the day, was meeting Kurt
Russell, man. Yeah, now he seems like a
really down-to-earth guy. Yeah, it was strange because
he was all made up, and he had, you know, closed prosthetics on
his face, and he was like, "Dude, it looked real. Yeah,
have you guys seen
that movie?
Have not. Oh, it's
great, but it's one I've probably seen about four times,
so if I see a movie that likes multiple times, it's a good
movie. It
was well done, and it was, and you could tell, too, that that
one, that the main consultant on the on the movie was a real
oilfield guy.
Yeah,
you know, he got that stuff right. That's
Peter Berg.
Yeah, I mean,
he really, it's like almost like Taylor Sheridan, the detailed
studies that they do on these shows, and everything you watch
Land Man, I mean, what a show. Well, who
would be more perfect for it, Taylor Sheridan, or
even Dutton Ranch, the new one that came out? Yeah, he's got a
smile on his face, you've been reached out to, or you got a
scoop, you should be, I know.
Yeah, but it's not what you think. No, I've kind of been
told that Taylor and I probably wouldn't get along too good.
Oh, really?
Well, he looks like he'd be kind of.
he's a big dude.
No, he's not.
Oh, really? No, he's not big. I thought he was like Musk. He's
big, yeah. He's built not
big,
okay? But he looks like, but he
wants to be big,
right?
Well, he looks like he'd be an ass.
I don't know, man. I haven't met the guy. I don't know, but I
mean, it's just that's just like get out of me, and that's not
fair, because I'm judging it on what he's played on and what
you've heard, yeah, and the land
man thing, yeah, you know, I mean, you know, Billy Bob's a
friend of mine, and we talk, and he likes doing the show, but you
know, he's kind of frustrated right now, you know, the amount
of time that it's taken between season two and season three,
because you know, Taylor, he loves to start projects, and he
puts his heart and soul into that first season, puts a little
bit of it into that second season.
Yeah,
but then after that, he's on to something else to move
on to, right? He's
got a new shiny toy over here, you know, the Dutton Ranch
thing, and now Land Man's sitting over here going, "We're
waiting for a script for season three.
Yeah, where
is it? Well, I'm doing this thing. Oh, well, you know, never
mind us. We got the biggest show on television right now, and you
know, we just need season three. What's
kind of like lioness? You had two seasons, and then all of a
sudden, where's the third
Yellowstone? I think, well, I mean, if Yellowstone was his
baby, yeah, that's what made him, but all of a sudden it kind
of, you know, it kind of lost its energy, and yeah, it did,
you know, it
did.
Matt is certainly not going to Marshalls, that's for sure. No,
I haven't seen that one. Yeah, actually, I know that one of
those ladies that's in that show, she was in that I Can Only
Imagine Part Two. Yeah, she played Tim's wife, she was
sweetheart, but she was telling us about that show and how
excited she was about it. I can see that, man. Anything that
Taylor Sheridan does these days, I mean, he's got the Midas
touch. Yes, he does. Whatever he puts out there, it's gonna blow
up. And if you get an opportunity to be in one of
those shows, you should take it. When you were in a movie, too,
that I happened to watch, and it was more of a chick flick, but
you were great in it. It was girls, was it girls' night out?
Mom's night out, Mom's night out. That was, oh, but see, I,
they tricked me on that move, did they? Now that I got, I
didn't even get the whole script, I just got my sides that
I was supposed to, you know, look at and see if I wanted to
do the part, and it was a biker, and it was funny, and you know,
I was like. Go, this could be fun, you know, kind of a comedic
little twist. You were
bones that
I haven't had a chance to do, and so let's, let's do this. And
so went down to Birmingham, and the first day I was on set, CMT
was there, and they had a room set up, and they wanted, they
were doing interviews with people, and they took me in,
won't do an interview, and I was like, yeah, sure. So I go in,
and the first question that dude asked me, he was like, Trace,
what, what, what, you know, led you to do a faith-based movie?
And I was like, what are you talking about? I didn't know
this was a faith-based movie. I just, I thought I was playing a
biker, you know, and because that's the signs I got, I didn't
read the whole script, I didn't know, so I didn't know what the
whole movie was about, but man, it was a lot of fun, and I've
since done three or four movies with those guys, man, I love the
way they make movies, they did the I Can Only Imagine stuff,
and they're great people, and they do good work, and I've
never been embarrassed by one of the movies that I've done with
them, I can't say that about everybody. I've done some real
stinkers, but you know, I just sometimes they just, some,
they'll call me up and they'll go, "Hey, man, we need you on
this movie, you'll be here for three days and you'll ride a
horse and shoot a guy and we'll pay you this, and I'm like, I'm
in. Yeah, put me in. Let's go.
Thing is, even on the stinkers, I like your.. I just like your
acting. You just command the screen, yeah?
You do. You got a cool persona on screen. I've known a number
of musicians and entertainers over the years that have
transitioned over and done acting, and they've all said
that, you know, the hurry up and wait thing kind of takes some
getting used to. I mean, how was that for you?
That's why Toby quit doing it, you know. And I always thought,
man, the movies that I, that Toby did, I thought he was good,
man. He was great. He had acting, he had acting chops, he
could do it. Yeah, he just didn't want to, and he hated. He
just got so frustrated because of that, the hurry up and wait,
just sitting around all day, wasting time between one shot to
the next, waiting on them to set everything up, and you know, and
I get that, man. But that's just how it is, you know. You just
got to take the good with the bad, you know, or the bad with
the good, and you know, I just.. I guess I've just had the
patience to not fret about that stuff, you know. It's just.. it
is what it is. It takes them as long as it takes them to light a
scene, and you just got to wait on them to do it, and you know,
so yeah, that doesn't bother me.
Has it intrigued? Does that experience intrigued you enough
to maybe want to direct something one day? No. Yeah, you
just want to be
that's like the guy producing. You don't want to do. I've seen
the producer's job, I don't want it, you know. Same with the
director, I've seen the director's job, I don't want it.
You know, no, no thanks. Kind of like a
producer's job in radio.
Yeah,
I don't want tremendous perspective. Yes, I do. Well,
you spent
considerable time in the oil field, like doing a lot of trade
work and stuff like that. I mean, is that that gives you a
basis of comparison? Hey, it beats.. I mean, unless you
enjoyed that kind of work. I loved it, I bet, because you
know, honestly, Deepwater Horizon really made it
attractive. I was like, you know what, I could, I could see
myself doing that.
I just liked, especially, you know, working on a drill crew,
you know, working on a drilling rig, it's it's a team sport,
camaraderie, and it's dangerous. Yeah, that roughnecking
is, yeah, it is. It's
dangerous. I got hurt several times, and busted my head, and
busted some ribs, and my elbows, and you know, and cut my finger
off. And I mean, there were things, you know, you got hurt a
lot, but, but that was back in the day when it was still
throwing tongs, and you know, it was still real oil field work
nowadays, it's all so robotic, not a lot of that stuff anymore,
but I don't know, man, I just like that whole, you know, being
on a crew like that, and then being the cock of the walk, at
least that's what everybody wanted to be, yeah, you know,
and and that's that's what I, that's what I was, man. I was, I
really believed was, I was still, are I was the best Derek
can in the Gulf of Mexico. And if you don't believe it, let's
come on, yeah, let's bow up and see which one of us can do it
the best, because I think it's me, and that's the attitude I
had, and I just, I loved it, man, and it kind of, you know,
because I played football for too long, and but I still had
that competitive nature about me, and it just kind of bled
over into the oil field.
It also bleed over in the music business, where you did you
have, is there, is there even like a competitive nature. Sure,
you know, I suppose there is, but nobody really talks about
it, right? If it is, it's nobody acts like that, you know. And
I've, I've never really thought about that. I don't begrudge
anybody's success, anybody that's, you know, been more
successful than I am. Good for you, man. You know, I like where
I am. I'm content. I'm happy with my career, and that's good
enough for me. I don't worry about what anybody else is
doing.
It's way it should be.
Yeah, you know.
So, this 30th anniversary tour that you're on, did you ever
think you would get to a 30th anniversary tour? I
thought, if I lived long enough, I would, but you know, it's..
I've been, I've been really fortunate, and I, I believe,
too, that my relevance is due to the fact that I have done as
much as I have done in, in other genres and other other mediums,
you know, I'll never forget my first manager in the business
was Gary Borman.
Oh yeah,
Borman Entertainment, and I went to his office in Santa Monica,
and I remember we were sitting up in his office interviewing
and each other, I was seeing if I liked him, and he was seeing
if he liked me, and there was a television sitting on the desk
over there across the room, and he said, "You won't know the
secret to being successful in this business, and he said that
he said, "You every time you get an opportunity to be on that,
you do it every time, and I never forgot what he said, and
I've, I've employed that philosophy over my whole career,
and I, and I think, you know, shoot, I don't, I don't even
remember the last top 10 record that I had. Oh my gosh, it could
have been 15 or so years ago.
Yeah,
but it's that, that television,
oh, sure, and
the movies, and all that stuff, that's what's kept me relevant,
really, you know, you think you know, you think people go to see
Kevin Costner's band because he's a great singer, no, no,
because he's not, no,
he's not,
he's okay, yeah, you know, they go sing him, because you know
Kevin Costner, all those actors
want to be singers, man, they
do, don't they,
and all singers and musicians want to be athletes, yeah, won't
be ballplayers or actors or actors, because some
of them, I mean, God bless them, you know, Waylon Jennings and
Johnny Cash, two of my favorite country legends, besides this
guy, but man, when it came to acting, I'm sorry, but for me, I
just thought they were kind of weak. No, they really weren't,
especially Waylon. Oral Wayland, Willie
was pretty good at it. Yeah, Willie was.. Willie would have
certain roles where he was just knock it out of the park, yeah.
But the first opportunity I had back, whenever we were doing
music videos, and music videos meant something, and the label
would put a lot of money into them, and all that. Anyway, all
those video directors wanted to be movie directors, and you
know, and then when one of them got a shot to make a movie,
Stephen Goldman, he wanted me to come be in his movie, and that
was the first shot I got at it, and he sent me the script, and I
was just playing the man, and it was really, I was playing the
devil, you know, or a demon, or something, I don't know, anyway.
So, the scene that I read about, I didn't even have a line, it
wasn't even a speaking part, but it said that I was standing in
the middle of a field, and I was peeing, and where the pee was
hitting the ground, smoke was coming up, and I said, I'll do
the movie just to do
that. That's
awesome. That's like life on the farm, man. I love it, man. So
I'm
standing out in that field, and they had this hose that, well,
they had some PVC pipe, and then a hose came up my pants, and
then they had this blood red stream coming out, and you know
it was awesome. So I was peeing, and then they had another pipe
that down on the ground, and the smoke would come up, and it
was.. I stood there for five minutes. Best scene I've ever
done in my whole career. You guys
are saying that's not normal. It happens all the time.
I was watching one day, it was hilarious. I was watching, I
don't know why, but I was binge watching, binge watching Gene
Simmons' Family Jewels, and all of a sudden he's in Nashville,
like producing some country rock band, and all of a sudden his
studio said, I got somebody over here that is going to guide you.
Guys, if you got out walks trace
Gene, man, that dude's a trip,
boy, he is, isn't he?
Gosh, I was on the apprentice with him, and I just.. the times
that I spent with Gene Sim.. Gene Simmons was the one that
changed the way that the celebrity apprentice, the way
the game was played.
Yeah,
I didn't. Nobody knows the story, you know. Whenever,
whenever Trump and them decided they were going, because they
had done The Apprentice for years, and then they were going
to do Celebrity Apprentice, but they were going to do it the
same exact way that they did the apprentice, you just are our
ideas better than your ideas, and let's see who wins. It
wasn't about money, it wasn't about, but the very first task
that we had when I was my first season on the Celebrity
Apprentice, we were going to stand down on the street corner
and sell hot dogs from a hot dog vending thing, you know, and so
we're all talking about, okay, where are we? Where are we going
to put the cart, and Stephen Baldwin knew where the most
traffic was, supposedly, and that's where we were going to
put it, and so we're all talking about that, and then we look, I
look over, and Gene is sitting in a chair in the corner, and
he's got a little black book out. He had actually a black
book. It wasn't a phone, it was a black book. And he was, and he
picked up the phone, and he called Steven Tyler, and he
said, "Steven Gene, hey, I'm going to be down here at this
address at this time today, and I need you to come down there
and give me $5,000 cash for a hot dog, okay? All right,
thanks. And he hung up, and I was just going, and then the
producers rushed into the room and stopped everything and said,
what did you just do? Because the goal was it was just us
against the ladies, we were going to see who raised the most
money?
Yeah,
well, Gene had an idea how to raise the most money.
That's smart. And
so that's when they came in, and they were like, what'd you just
do? And he told them. And then the light bulb went off above
their heads, and they went, oh, wow, we didn't even think about
that. We can raise a lot of money for charity stuff, if we
take this and start doing it like that, and then that's when
the whole thing just kind of blew up, and it became, you
know, how much money can you get in here from from your friends,
and and Gene Simmons changed the game, he changed the rules of
the game that day,
like he does everything,
yeah. Oh my gosh, and one day we were, we were all stressed out,
you know. And Gene comes over to me, and he goes, 'You okay, man?
I was like, 'Yeah, I'm fine, you know, fish out of water, kind of
thing. Here, this New York thing's starting to freak me
out. He goes, 'You know what? You need to do, need to go back
to my room. Here's the number, go knock on the door, spend a
couple hours there, and then come back, and you'll be, you'll
be great. I was like, what are you talking about? What are you,
what you know? He goes, yeah, just go to my room and knock on
the door, come back in a couple hours. I said, well, what's in
your room? He goes, don't worry about it, and so I went over to
one of the producers who was like the talent wrangler guy,
and I was like, "Man, Gene just said blah blah blah, and he
goes, "Don't go. I was like, "Well, I wasn't going to, but
what's he talking about? He goes, "That's a couple of ladies
in there. I was like, "No, there's not. He goes, "Oh, yes,
there
is. It seems like there's ladies around him all the time. I
swear, man, that dude's a
magnet. Yeah, he didn't.
He walked the walk, that dude.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, it wasn't just talk. Now, what'd you
think of? Because you got to be around him some. What'd you
think of Donald Trump?
Ah, man, he's just. he's whatever he is, what he is, I've
told people for years, what you see on television, you know,
that's him, that's
what he's like, he's authentic, it's not an act,
he's off it, no, it's an act, that's what he's
like, so whether you based on that, based on what you see and
hear from him, whether you like him or you don't. Well, that's
that's real, because that's that's who he is. Yeah, so if
you don't like that, then you don't like him, right? You know,
so you know you've had
an opportunity to sing the national anthem at a number of
really cool and high-profile events. Is, uh, has any of that
ever has there been an event or two that have kind of made you
nervous to sing that?
Always the national anthem makes me nervous,
I would think. So, I mean, trying to get the words right,
that's really the
only thing that still makes me nervous, man. Well, playing at
the rhyming and playing at the Opry House still makes me
nervous. I don't know why. You walk out on that stage, and it's
just the gravity of it, and the history of the place, and it's
just, you know, it just gets all over me. I've never, never
really gone on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, and felt like I
did my best performance, and it's because the juju gets on
me, and you know, it's yeah, but singing the national anthem
still makes me nervous. It doesn't matter if it's the
opening of a new used car lot or it's the World Series, it makes
me nervous, because if you mess that one up, you're on YouTube,
or what, you know, and so you can't live that down. So that
still kind of makes me nervous, and plus I have such respect for
the material, of course, you know, and for the moment, it's
yeah, the weight of that's never lost on me. It always means a
lot to me.
Yeah, I mean, Ingrid Andrus, you know, she kind of messed up the
anthem at a, at an event here a couple of years ago, you
had Vince Neil, and she,
man, she caught hell for us, you know. Yeah, it's
not an easy song to sing. No, it's not. No, it's a rangy song.
You have to, you know, and I start out in the basement. Oh, I
mean, if you can start there, then Land of the Free ain't
gonna hurt you, yeah.
Rockets' red glare is that go higher than the end, is that the
middle of the song? Is that that hits Land of the Free?
Is the high note that's the highest note, and it's like an
octave higher than the starting note. I want to say,
yeah, two two
octaves, or
three. That's why not everybody can do it. You got to have the
range, you know, it's a rangy song. So,
yeah, in fact, the way I saw that it was rangy was Jimi
Hendrix. It was Land of the Free when he hit that on the guitar
and let it kind of ring. Yeah, that's the high, that's the high
point.
I don't think guitar players worry that much about range.
Johnny, no, typically not. I can play you up here on the neck.
I'm not scared.
So, Trace, do you read music? Are you a three number system
Nashville number system guy, yeah, you know,
yeah, yeah, but yeah, I don't really read notes anymore. I've
forgotten all that stuff, you know. I used to play trombone in
high school band, but I don't remember any of it. Yeah,
if you're like me, you're trying to forget it. Play trumpet, is
that your first
instrument? Yeah, it was saxophone, really.
Instrument, it was that little flute thing. Do they even do
that anymore? They do that
anymore. They did for my kids, really.
I think it depends on where you go to school. A
lot of the music stuff has been cut out of public school. I hate
that. Yeah, that's that's that's terrible, man. That we shouldn't
have let that happen. No,
we shouldn't. Well, now you can be anybody, could be a musician,
soono.
Yeah, well, it's true,
you know.
Yeah, speaking
of musicians, who, who were your heroes like as far as country
music goes, when you were growing up, I mean, the
ones that my daddy listened to, you know, he had, he had a, he
was a country music fan, and he had a good collection of stuff,
and so, you know, I heard George Jones, Merle Haggard, and, you
know, and then Waylon, and on and on, you know, so just that
stuff, that's that's what I started listening to, you know,
early on,
and you, you've done some great duets too, and one of my
favorites has to be Hillbilly Bone with Blake Shelton, you
guys are you guys are hilarious together,
we have a lot of fun together, and it looks like you know Blake
isn't Blake, is one of those guys too, that much, much like
Trump. What you see, that's what he's like. Yeah, that's what
he's.. well, he's always going for the joke. He's when we're
together, he's just.. he's always trying to make me laugh.
Yeah,
you know, he feels like.. I don't know, he just.. it's a..
it's a compulsion that he has, he just, he can't not do it.
Yes, he feels like it's his job, he's supposed to make you laugh,
you know. He's fun to be around. Yeah, we had a good time.
He looks like he looks like the kind of guy, too, you'd have to
bail out at times, you know. Oh yeah, oh yeah. No, Blake, not
there, shelter. shelter,
yeah, that's him too.
Hey guys, thanks so much for sticking around, for circling
the drain, and enjoying this podcast episode. The second part
is coming next time, so be right here, get your bedonka donk
ready, because. Have more Trace Atkins on circling the drain, I.