Get out the paperwork.

Yeah.

Let me crack this thing for you.

There we go.

That's the official start of the episode.

That's how it starts.

Cracking our cone with the boys.

Shotgun start.

Oh, man.

So, very special guest with us via the interwebs.

Tristan Tritt.

What's going on, guys?

Son of Travis, musician extraordinaire.

Thanks so much for joining us from old Nashville.

Man, I'm happy to be here.

Happy to be a part of this.

Yeah, so you heard the episode from a few, it was about a month or so ago, where we uncovered a lot about your father.

But then apparently, he, for listeners that maybe missed that episode, it was a country music 90s episode, and we spent a significant amount of time, ironically, on a song that was not released in the 90s at all.

But it was recorded in the 90s, I think, but I think it dropped in 2000.

Yeah, 2000.

It feels like a quintessential 90s country song anyway, so it fits the bill there.

But we discovered through that song that there is, he just laid it out in front of us, we feel like, that he is a werewolf, your father, Travis Tritt.

And your family, the whole family, I think you may have been the first one that found it, and then your sister, and then we got your dad's Instagram account, which I can't imagine that he runs.

He does.

He actually does.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

He does.

So he has seen the video, the evidence laid out before us.

I'll let him know we're sorry.

That's incredible.

What was his reaction to it?

Were you with him when he saw it?

Yeah, I was.

I showed it to him, and he started breaking out in a cold sweat, and he just got up and left.

He's like, I got to leave real quick, and I didn't know what the hell that was about.

I was like, that was kind of strange.

But funny enough, after that episode, I kind of like took a long look in the mirror and I was like, oh, God, is this genetic?

And then I looked and there's a werewolf tattoo on my arm.

Oh, OK.

Inadvertent to me.

Yeah, that was completely by happenstance.

So I guess it is genetic.

You don't remember that?

No, I think I just blacked out and it just appeared on my arm in 2019.

Yeah.

Woke up naked in a field with the tattoo on.

To be fair, that's how some tattoos get there.

That's my Saturday night.

That's my Saturday night.

Pretty sure that's where two or three of these came from yeah I didn't wake up in the field but I woke up in the bed of a truck yeah there you go, So that song, Great Day to Be Alive, classic song, is that, do you know if the werewolf reference is in there?

Is that intentional?

What is that?

I don't know because I hate to break hearts.

I think a guy by the name of Daryl Scott wrote that song back in the late to mid-90s and then dad actually cut it.

It wasn't that big of a song to begin with and then it became obviously a huge song in the 2000s.

But Daryl might have been the actual werewolf and he was, you know, trying to get it out there.

And then it just so happened that, you know, dad, dad kind of had the same affliction.

Yeah.

I like to think that there's a community of werewolves and that's how he came about getting the song.

I mean, if you spend any time in Nashville, that's that's very apparent.

Very, very true.

It was made very obvious to us that Daryl Scott wrote the song.

We're like, look, just let us run with it.

A lot of people told a lot of people told us, yes, Daryl Scott wrote the song.

Yeah.

And we ignored him.

For all these reasons.

He may have wrote the song, but it's Travis's.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

All day.

Travis sang it.

Exactly.

Oh, man.

So you've got a great music career.

You just had a single that dropped this month in June.

Yeah, last week.

Yeah, and we were listening to that earlier, and that sounds fantastic.

But your music, it sounds great, but it definitely does not sound like your dad's music.

It's got this more modern there's some country elements to it but it also feels more rock than it does country but it it can some of the songs you've done in the past they kind of you know it leans a little heavier one way than the other yeah who who would you say that your, musical influences were growing up, Definitely a lot of the same influences my dad had just because of what he exposed me to as a kid.

And a lot of it was, you know, Leonard Skinner and Marshall Tucker Band, even Waylon Jennings and obviously the greats.

But towards adolescence, about the age of like, you know, 10 or 11, when you start finding your own music sound, you start really getting into it, building your identity.

Black Sabbath, Motorhead and rock, like old school rock really got my attention.

And I just love loud guitars and, you know, live drums and all that, you know, aggressiveness to it.

But in in recent years, and I've had the fortune of hanging out with them quite a bit.

Ko Wetzel and his sound and all these dudes from Texas has really like I think they found the perfect blend of mixing in that country sound and still having rock elements.

Like if you've seen any of those guys shows, even the Red Clay Strays, it's very rock based.

So as of recent my my last two singles have been a little bit more down the country lane but there's still obviously the the aggressiveness and sort of the melancholy and the lyrics and stuff like that that rock has always you know been known for i could kind of sense some grungy texas in that music and especially your later music absolutely have you guys ever heard of a uh an artist named austin mead by chance oh yeah he's fantastic i got to play some shows with him a couple months back.

And to be honest, I was so inspired after not only hanging out with him, but just seeing his shows.

And I was like, oh, you can blend this in the right way because I'm born and raised in the South.

So at first, when I started doing music around 2020, I started coming out to.

From nashville from georgia where i'm originally from and i was working with some people and i really had no identity yet i didn't know who i was what i wanted to do other than the fact i just want to do music and at first they were like well you got to go down this alternative rock scene you got to do all this stuff you got to paint your fingernails you got to do all this stuff that normally like i don't i just don't do and it just felt i felt like i was just pretending to be someone else so in the last year and a half or so since that song sick of it dropped last year and And now these new releases, it's been a lot more of a comforting feeling to just kind of blend in the stuff that I want to, as opposed to like appeasing to people who are trying to get me to go one way or the other.

When did you realize that you wanted to get into music?

And then was your dad ever like, no, you don't want any part of this.

Like, do something else, please.

I've always wanted to do something.

I worked in music since I graduated high school.

So literally since the day I graduated, like I was on a bus working as a production assistant for my dad for two years.

Did that, had a blast doing it, but it was like, I thought I was going to basically go into like an administrative role or learn how to tour manage or something like that.

And I, I, I went from there, went to a audio engineering school in Arizona.

And I like to say I'm an engineer.

I'm not, but it sounds cool.

But I went, I went out.

You didn't have to clarify.

You could have said that right now.

And I wouldn't have questioned it at all.

But I went out there for nine months, Did the trade and then ended up working for a manager who's managed guys like Korn, Lincoln Park, Dirty Heads, all that stuff, and moved out to California for a couple of months.

Around that time, that was right at the end of 2019.

COVID happened, all that stuff.

I moved back to Georgia.

Thank God we didn't shut down completely and there were bars open.

So I was like, well, okay, well, I've always kind of in the back of my mind wanted to do music, but I've got like this stage fright problem that I don't know if you know, with live music, that's kind of an issue if you can't get up there to begin with.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So I was like, okay, I got to get this out of the way.

So I just started doing open mics.

And from then on, I just got a guitar player, got a drummer, got a bassist and just it grew from there man that's that's awesome do you feel like your music engineering audio engineering do you produce your own music absolutely not i'm terrible at it good man good man it's like i can speak the lingo kind of just so i'm not talking in sounds where i'm like i want that drum to have more you know what i mean i can say i can say the technical terms to a degree but no it's one of those i realized when i was in school for it's it's like a second language like If you don't use it, you lose it.

These people are so proficient in it.

If you see someone who really knows what they're doing, even with your podcast setup, someone who's proficient with audio equipment or how to run the system, it's like a second nature to them.

They have to spend so much time on that.

I just knew straight out of the game.

I'm like, I'm not built to hear songs over and over and over again, just one piece a thousand times to get it right.

I think it'd drive you crazy a little bit.

Oh, it's got to.

Do we have one of those?

Is we have a joey yeah joey knows everything oh okay well questions he said he was an engineer too well god bless you joey god bless you listen you say anything with enough confidence around us we'll believe it that's all it does that's my entire family is just saying dumb things with confidence yeah i feel like an extension already is your sister your sister has some albums out too she's got a great voice is it.

Does your mom sing too?

Is this a whole musical family?

And if not, why have y'all not gone on the road together?

My mom is...

Full Partridge family.

I love her dad.

She can't hold a tune in a bucket.

But she's always been very supportive in that vein.

But I told in the beginning when we first started doing shows, me and my sister did a couple together.

And I was like, dude, I love you to death.

I was like, first off, it feels a little Osmond-y.

Like, it's kind of corny.

You know, I would love to hop on stage and do a song or two with my dad, but, like, doing the family tours and stuff, it's just never been my style.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and y'all have two different sounds, too.

You and your sister.

They're both great, but it's just kind of two different worlds a little bit there.

Absolutely.

And we're all control freaks, too, so that's not a good combo.

No.

No.

Definitely not.

The trick here is nobody wants to control anything here.

It's kind of— I love that.

Yeah.

On and off.

Yeah.

But so you grew up smack dab in the music industry, but was there anything that you kind of learned once you went out on your own?

You know, after COVID, you're out there playing some shows on your own.

And you're like, oh, wow, I did not.

Nobody told me about this.

Was there any hard lessons you had to learn?

People had this misconceived idea that basically I got in and it was like, OK, like immediately record deals are on.

So basically, as soon as I announced or I told my dad, hey, this is what I want to do.

He was like, hey, good.

That's awesome.

And that was about the end of the conversation because I had to go buy my own gear.

I had to figure out how to set it up.

I had to just start playing.

I like there was no help at all.

Nothing.

Zero.

And I'm thankful for that.

But, you know, as time went on, you start having issues with band members.

People, you know, quit.

You fire them.

Whatever happens.

I or with management or PR, which I've had all those issues in the past.

I had a conversation with him one time and it was probably the best advice he ever gave me.

It was very vague, but it was good.

And he just goes, you need to learn how to carry a briefcase in one hand and a guitar case in the other and know how to use them both well.

And I was like, okay, like you got to, you can't have this.

And you see it a lot in Nashville where you meet a lot of these artists that are super, super talented, but they're like, I don't want to get involved with the business side at all.

And it's like, okay, you're kind of, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot because in any industry, more particularly in show business, if you leave yourself open to that, the predators are going to come in.

They're going to they're going to find a way to take advantage of you if you're not paying attention.

So it was always drilled into my head to first off, learn from my mistakes and then just have more of a business sense that no one else in this in this field is going to care about your career more than you.

Yeah.

And that's just something else you have in your arsenal as well.

I mean, that can't hurt.

No, not at all.

What, doing some of these venues and stuff, I'm sure you've seen some wild things.

What's probably like, what's the craziest thing that caught you off guard, like the most country thing that you've seen playing a show somewhere out in the country?

Man, I've seen all different walks of life, different types of people, but there's definitely the occasional show where someone throws out their bra or something weird like that happens.

I'm not going to go into detail, but there was one bar we played at that they had a rather large appendage that was behind the bar, and I asked what the reason that was for, and they said when bar fights happen, they would throw it, and apparently if you get smacked in the face by one of those, you stop fighting.

I'm like, that's a pretty good tactic.

Yeah.

That would work.

Fair enough.

The logic sounds perfect there.

It does, yeah.

I like it.

That's a very similar tactic to what I would do to make my dogs stop fighting.

I mean, I wouldn't throw that at them, but you just do something to get their attention.

But I never thought about that.

This is why you don't want people knowing where you live.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was about to ask you questions.

I wanted to find large appendages on the porch.

Do you, does anybody ever like come to a show where they, they, they meet you and they're like, wait a minute, Tristan Trit, are you related to Travis?

And then you just say, no, I am not.

I don't know.

I said, no, I'm actually Billy Ray Cyrus's kid.

Very nice.

When all else fails.

I like that.

Somebody, somebody's believed you before when you told them that.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Like I said, it's, it's, it's saying dumb things with confidence.

They'll believe you.

Yeah, very true.

You've seen this podcast, I guess, then.

Yep.

Oh, yeah.

That's how I've made it through life.

Yeah.

Dumb things with confidence.

Sometimes it's not confidence.

They have to change the name.

What's a...

Before you go on the show, I'm just curious, like, is there...

What's a pre-show ritual for you?

Is there some kind of...

I don't know.

I don't know.

Some people eat something or I don't I don't know what people do.

I would eat.

I really drink a lot probably before I get on stage and sing.

See, I had to stop.

I had to stop doing that because, you know, I start singing in cursive way too early in the show and it becomes an issue.

It'll get you.

It'll get you.

But now I really just try to, you know, get out of my own head and just think positively before.

It's really cliche, but you just try to stay out of a negative headspace.

Tell yourself this is going to go great.

And just psych yourself up before you go on to at least like that first moment, which you've seen all y'all have seen plenty of concerts, you know, that first moment, an artist walks on stage, like whatever they're giving off to you, you're going to give it back.

So if you're psyched and you're positive and you're, you know, excited and they can feel you actually want to be there, then they're going to, they're going to reciprocate that and hopefully do it for the rest of the show.

And that's, that's all I'm trying to do.

I'm just trying to make sure they know I'm just excited as they are, even if they don't even know who I am, I'm just, I'm thankful to be there.

So that's just all I try to prepare myself to, you know, do before I go on stage.

You kind of isolate yourself or do you try to hang out with your band?

Do you all sock each other up?

It all depends.

For the most part, me and my guys are normally just cutting up and, you know, hanging out, drinking a couple of beers and all that.

But like two, three minutes before the show starts, I do need a little bit of like, you know, isolation just so I can not be distracted.

It's like that quiet drive to work you need before you have to actually do your job.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Or like when you almost get into a car wreck and you turn off the radio and you just drive in silence for a while.

Yeah.

I have been there.

Absolutely.

It's all now.

I'm like, oh, I about ruined it as a state trooper.

Yeah.

That could have been bad.

The red lights were actually green.

World may never know.

So what you got going, you get that single that just dropped last week.

What else you got down the pipeline that you can share with everybody?

We just did some Florida shows about a week and a half ago, which were fantastic.

Central Florida, where my mom's family's from and stuff.

So I got to, I haven't been over there in over two years to that kind of area, which is where I really got started playing.

Like those were the first paid gigs I ever did was in like the Ocala area near Orlando and all that stuff.

So I did some shows over there.

and now it's just kind of these one-off festival dates we're doing something in indiana on saturday geneva indiana which i'm super excited about and basically for the rest of the year it's just kind of spots picking up over here over here halls over here and i i can't say anything right now but there's like announcements for like opening slots for larger artists which i'm super excited for awesome yeah yeah very cool so you've been playing some up north and indiana loves country music the and we're big on you know southern culture and stuff on this podcast do you notice a difference at all when you play like a smaller like honky-tonk type venue in the south versus a bar or something up north is there vibes the same or do you is there little things that you notice there's there's little things obviously the uh the i i'm born and raised in you know northwest georgia so yes ma'am no sir that's burning in my brain i can't have a sentence you know typically if I'm talking to someone face-to-face where that doesn't come out, but that's not as apparent with the northern states.

But they also, from what I could tell, like with Indiana, parts of Pennsylvania and stuff like that, and even Ohio, they love when you throw in like the more rock stuff in it too.

That's just what I've seen from my end.

A lot of venues are different, but they like a little bit more of that rock stuff than some of the southern parts.

Some of the places down here in the southeast, they really want to hear like the honky-tonk and more...

Swing western style which I totally get but it's just it's cool to see the difference with that so you you will switch up your set list based on kind of where you're at oh absolutely yeah absolutely I'll try and gauge it out and like I have specific songs like I if it's a longer set then you do a little bit a couple more covers but for the most part we you know we run off the originals but based off of where I'm at I'll either throw in more of the rock covers of something you know like people like like a three doors down or even something heavier like a seether and in other spots i could do something like a co wetzel song or you know an old hank jr song it just really it just depends you just want you want to give them something they enjoy too but you gotta you gotta really read that room because if you don't do it correctly and you give them something they don't like you can completely kill the vibe of everything so you're on the fly you just got where this is this part we're going to do a cover and i'll we'll get the feel forward or do you you know ahead of time it depends a lot of the times i mean the last probably 15 shows we've done i'll just i'll have a set list i always have one but i'll just call it out to my guys on the fly just based off of what the you you can read the crowd pretty easily and see what they're vibing to it's like okay well if they like this song chances are they're probably going to like.

This next one so instead of you know you don't take a hard left if you're going you know right the whole time like you just want to you want to keep it cohesive yeah so when you're doing rehearsals and stuff if you want to keep certain songs queued up and like we got to stay top on this one just in case we got to pull it out of the bag absolutely absolutely because i i noticed that too with opening for larger acts like you're you're unknown for the most part and your set time is between 20 and 30 minutes that's not a whole lot of time that's like six seven songs at the most you just got to make the most of it and obviously if they don't know who you are you're doing originals it's great that you're exposing them to those but they don't there's there's almost zero chance of them singing along if they've never heard of you so you want to be able to throw in something that actually gives them a sense of familiarity and you best believe you better do it right otherwise that's going to just it's going to leave a bad taste in their mouth and as an opener it's your job to hop up the crowd for yeah the main act so exactly fall off a little bit you're like dang i'm killing the vibe for these guys that brought me out on tour with them exactly and yeah that's the last thing you want to do is upset the the headliners that's just it's a bad bad way to start.

What's what's your what's your favorite cover to do that usually just crushes it regardless of audience oh that's a good question i mean i'm a huge sucker for dad rock and divorce dad rock so doing kryptonite is one of my favorites i bet you crush that i was listening we were talking earlier about how you've got this, Puddle of Mud Stained, that whole genre.

You've got that infused with your music.

And man, I bet that's good.

Yeah, I love stuff like that.

But my favorite, and we'll typically close out shows with this.

And you remember Stone Temple Pilots with Scott Weiland.

He would grab the megaphone and stuff.

I do something similar, but we do it with Ain't No Rest for the Wicked, which I love Cage the Elephant.

But that song, no matter how bad the show goes, if you finish on that one, it just gets everyone in the right mood.

I don't know what it is but it's just it's the chaos it's the energy and it's it's it's one of my favorites to do out of all of them oh yeah yeah but that's a lot of fun it is it's a blast, well i hope you don't mind i uh did some research on werewolves and uh let's hear it we really wanted to settle this yeah yeah i really wanted to just really we end this podcast but definitively whether or not Travis Tritt is a werewolf.

So a lot of these, these are very specifically tailored to you, that you experienced growing up with your dad.

Big train.

Yeah, yeah.

First of all here, growing up when you were little, did your dad ever tuck you in at night and then howl at the moon, just nonstop, like he would warm up at the Grand Ole Opry?

Not that I was aware of, but I'm sure there were incidents because I would hear it kind of outside in the distance, but we always were told we have, like, coyotes or a stray dog walking around, so you never know.

Good cover-up.

That is a good cover.

Yeah.

Did he ever disappear for, like, three days at a time sometimes?

Maybe your mom was like, he's on tour, and it was like, why does he only go for, like, full moons?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

As you're saying that, now it's starting to connect, and now I'm, you know, I've got a lot of questions.

You've never seen him laugh.

If you ever played, like, you know, fetch or anything, was he like really good at going and getting the ball incredibly and and competitive with it but would never give it back he was you know big catch guy not a big release yeah growl at you sometimes trying to pull out of his mouth yeah sometimes yeah dad you don't have to put the ball in your mouth yeah uh any of any jewelry sometimes if you notice might have the consistency or you've just seen the package that is in fact a flea collar that he's wearing and, At any time.

That is a good question.

I'm, there's leather bracelets sometimes.

So isn't it typically like on a leather collar or something?

That would make sense.

You could maybe.

I would, yeah, he could fancy it up.

I would think that'd be the best way to do it.

You conceal it a little bit.

Conceal it in leather.

It could be laced with pesticides.

Yikes.

Whoa.

And I guess the only other thing that could definitively, we could decide this is whether or not he's ever bitten the UPS driver.

Not, not UPS, but I think FedEx.

Oh, FedEx definitely has that.

Does that count?

Is that the thing?

No.

I mean, if you're watching this and you've never bitten a FedEx driver, what are you doing with your life?

Yeah.

Personally, I like the taste of Amazon.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

You don't know what you're going to get.

It's different, folks.

Yeah.

Amazon Prime Rib.

Yeah.

That was good.

That was good.

That's why he's here.

That's all I do.

Those jokes right there.

Oh, man.

Signed a hell of a contract just for a one-liner.

Is he definitely afraid of wearing silver jewelry?

Actually, yes.

He's a big gold guy.

Now it makes sense.

It makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

You got to match them Grammys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't see a lot of silver records on his wall.

That's for sure.

There you go.

Absolutely.

Rightfully so too.

More platinum.

More platinum.

Yeah.

There's lots of those, I'm sure.

So back to your music career real quick.

Where did you, how did you take, how did you learn how to write songs?

Was it with your dad or did you kind of learn on your own?

Nah, I just, it was just trial and error.

Just you, you, I don't know.

I've been doing it in one shape or form since I was in middle school.

You know, you'd listen to a bunch of artists that you like and you try to start writing like them.

I think that's kind of how it starts, but it just, it became a version of storytelling where you just like, you want to have fun, but you also want to make it.

You want people to relate to something so you can take something that's obviously very personal and things like heartache and falling in love and things that we you know we've heard a thousand times in songs but it's it's such a universal concept that everyone understands it and you just want to put it in a way that's it sounds like it's coming from you as opposed to like just you know cut and paste or an ai developed song like i can't stand how every song nowadays just basically sounds like it's coming from the same chatbot checklist song really does yeah because wannabe kind of was like a typical every every man here has been like i want to do something different than my father and you kind of harped on your father's shadow in that yeah and then and then and i think it was also like the the the thing that all young men struggle with with like okay you're in your dad's shadow and stuff and then towards you know the older you get there are moments in your life hopefully if it was a good if he was a good role model to you where you're like oh man i have become my father and like this is like it's the little things you do whether it's your appearance or whether it's you know anything like that like the way you act or the way you you're motivated about things so at the end it's like a you know a tip to the hat to that but i wanted to have the word play in the beginning where it almost sounded like not negative but i wanted i wanted it to grab people's attention enough for them to listen to it to begin with because you kind of formed your way out of the shadow as the song progressed yeah exactly exactly and that's just once again it was just it's a very universal thing and when when I first was dropping the song.

People were like, are you calling yourself that?

I'm like, no, I'm just, I'm trying to explain something that everyone feels.

Cause we all have that imposter syndrome at least once in our life, you know?

Yeah.

So some form or another, for sure.

Of course.

I think it's a great title alone.

It's.

I really like that.

I appreciate it, man.

Is there, in the songwriting process, I'm fascinated by, because I can never in a million years do that.

But is it like, do you have some songs that are like halfway finished, and then you just, you're like, I'm not ready to finish this yet.

You just kind of put it back in the notebook, and you're like, maybe one day I'll get back to it.

Or is it pretty much like, I'm writing a song, I'll finish it, and then, you know, we're going to record it.

Or does some stuff just get, you put it on the back burner, you like it, and you want it to be perfect.

And so you just you don't feel like you're ready quite yet for it it's it's a it's a hit or miss with some of them some of them can be written in two three minutes and then other ones like you said can be you know you might have a line or two that you like from it and then it just kind of sits on the back burner which is what I did with wannabe there was a line that I wrote we were on the road me and my guys and I was sitting in the back of the van and I was just typing on my phone and I put neck deep head above the water I'm too short in the shadow of my father but it was for a different song, but I like the line.

So when I came back and started writing it again with a producer named Brad Wagner out here in Nashville, once we had that line, it was pretty easy to start putting the pieces back together because I didn't know where it was supposed to go from there.

But then he said something about wannabe and he wanted it to almost be a braggadocious song like they want to be me.

And I was like, no, no, no, flip that and make it more of the imposter syndrome, this is the, you know.

And this is, make it more of a real thing than like, you know, a braggadocious song.

Yeah, make it relatable.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly, exactly.

So it just, it kind of turned like that.

But it was, what you said earlier, it was just one of those lyrics that just sat on the back burner and I didn't know what to do with it.

And then as soon as we started writing, that line came back in and then the rest of the song just fell into place within like 15 minutes.

Yeah, nice.

What's your favorite restaurant to eat at while you're on the road?

Not Waffle House.

I was going to say Pilot or Flying J, honestly.

Man, what is that restaurant?

You had Hunt's Brothers pizzas?

Let me tell you something.

Yeah, I've had more Hunt's Brothers breakfast pizzas than I care to count.

Let's go.

Be careful of those Hunt's Brothers tornadoes, though.

You don't mess around with them.

Don't touch those.

Don't touch that.

Not if you're traveling.

If it's on a roller, I don't touch it.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

That's a smart move.

Gas station hot dog don't hit her up.

Yeah.

What is that?

Yeah, it's the something skillet that's in, or used to be in there.

Iron skillet.

Iron skillet.

Flying J, yeah.

Is that what you're talking about in the iron skillet?

I'm not sure.

I'm just talking about whatever processed meats that's been sitting there for probably three years that they've taken out the expiration date with a Sharpie.

Yeah.

That's basically what I'm living off of.

At least start going to the canned goods.

Get yourself some Vienna sausages or something.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

My guitar player, he loves them damn things.

Oh, stay away from that guy for sure.

No bus bathroom for you yeah no no i'm like dude we're not going to deer stand we got to be sitting in here for about six hours before so the tour but how long have you been on the tour bus i'm in a i'm not even a tour bus right now i'm in a minivan sometimes sometimes many yeah we're rucking it but yeah it's a tour bus if you call it a tour bus same thing with engineer yeah oh Well, yeah, it's the Soccer Mom Tour Bus.

They love it.

Yeah, that's right.

So right now, when you take that thing on the road, what's the motto of the van here, the tour?

I'm going to call it a tour bus.

If you had to slap a motto on the side of that thing that pretty much defines what life is like inside that Soccer Mom Tour Bus, what would it be?

Bring orange slices and Gatorade because the hangovers are real on those.

Like you gotta you gotta you gotta be prepared if we're gonna travel like a soccer mom we gotta be packed up like one yeah honestly that's a great call yeah very true everyone needs a little Gatorade at some point absolutely absolutely, what's your what's your go-to Gatorade, Honestly, I'd go with the blue flavor.

Is that even a flavor?

Yeah, no one knows the flavors, man.

Yeah, no, it's color.

Even the color was right.

What color?

Blue, red, orange, that's all I know.

Gatorade or Powerade could stop putting the actual flavor names on there and nobody would notice.

No, I don't think I've ever said the word of what the actual flavor is one time.

No, crack sells itself.

Hey, let me tell you something.

I grabbed a green one one time and I thought it was a green apple and chugged it.

And it was cucumber melon.

I've done the same thing.

Who's buying that?

I don't know, but it did.

It scared me.

It's almost like when you drink, you drink water and it's Sprite and it just like you don't, you're not expecting it.

Yeah, it's not right.

No, it wasn't.

I'm glad we agree on that.

Yeah, I kind of thought I had been poisoned, to be honest.

Yeah.

Somebody in Gatorade thought that was a good idea.

Yeah, they got fired.

So the concept of this show is hooting and hollering, which is we usually, everybody brings something to the table about the subject at hand that they like, and then one thing that they dislike.

And, you know, from that episode, this is almost a continuation of that 90s country episode, which we did in music videos, right?

Right.

Was that all music videos?

Just 90s country in general.

No, I— Eric brought in a specific genre of music videos, which is your dad's— The trilogy of your— I would actually, we want to get to the bottom of that.

The trilogy of your dad in the wheelchair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

which is the best series spanned it out over a decade an entire decade almost the entire yeah he stuck with it it was his it was his avatar yes, yes, Does he still have that wheelchair?

Oh, gosh.

God, I hope not.

That thing sitting there dipped in platinum somewhere at that house.

I hope so.

Oh, my goodness.

With all the records, yes.

Yeah.

Just hanging up like a Cracker Barrel.

I remember him telling the stories about shooting those videos when I went and saw him at the Alabama Theater, and I'll never forget that.

Yeah, and he had a blast doing it, And, and it's, it's always cool hearing those stories.

And I've actually seen some of the people that like worked with him years and years ago.

And a lot of them were like, you know, movie special effects people and stuff like that.

That would like, it was just, it was just cool to hear them tell the tale too, of like how monumental all of these, not just his, but all those nineties music videos were like back when CMT was CMT, like it was insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we joked about that a lot, but it really is top-tier video of that time period, or all three of those videos.

Yes.

The fact that there's telling a story through the three videos is just, you'd never see that, really.

It was pretty incredible.

Especially in country music.

I feel like they're, music great, but sometimes they don't put a lot of effort into it.

They go to the old, well, let's do cuts of the tour as the music video way too often in country music.

Yeah.

Not Travis.

No, Travis.

He's like, we got a budget for this thing.

We're shooting a video.

Yeah, he's had a couple music videos I've seen where I'm like, there was one where I think he was like an old man and then a ghost.

I'm like, are you M.

Night Shyamalan?

I'm like, what?

But he loves it, man.

He loves it.

But, you know, I give props to anyone that, like.

Gets excited about doing something different you know i wish a lot more people nowadays obviously there's there's great artists out there they're making really you know off the wall kind of stuff but i just wish there was a lot more of that storytelling in videos as well because i'm i can't tell you the last time i've seen a music video like an actual and i've sat down and watched you know what i mean that used to be that was an event i was gonna kind of go along that back then And you're, you created fans from music videos for sure.

Because a lot of times we would see the music videos way before you would hear them on the radio or anything like that.

So they sold them.

They really sold those videos for sure.

Yeah.

And that was, I mean, that was, to this day, like if I'm, if I've got people hanging around and, you know, we're chilling in our room or whatever, and I've got like my TV on, I'll put on old VH1 or MTV and just have like the music videos going through just because I love that.

I missed that as a kid walking in and just, you know, seeing music video after music video for all these artists.

You know, some you've heard of, some you didn't.

Like, that was just cool to me.

It was a great time for having music videos around.

And now you just got to search them on YouTube and hope that they've made a video for it.

Yeah, YouTube Vivo.

It'll be a lyric video.

Try to avoid the fan videos that people have made.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they just default to, we're just going to throw a lyric video out there.

Lyric video is the new hotness.

Yeah, I don't.

And man, we have regressed so far when it comes to music videos.

Yeah.

Sad i hate to shoot myself in the foot but literally 30 minutes before we started this my manager sent me the video that i'm about to release and it's a lyric video for one of the okay well good how dare you tristan.

I feel like you have to do that first but it's something are you gonna follow it up with a legit music video is that yeah i'd love to i've been working with a lot of youtubers recently like big big youtubers and we've we've discussed going out to texas and doing some really cool video shoots so that's that's definitely something that's coming down the line but for right now with my budget i was like just slap together whatever you can i don't care yeah well if you ever want to work with a medium-ish size youtuber that has a uh a good looking set here yeah yeah and you don't you won't come to walker county alabama i would love that does come on down why would you want i will give you some yeah listen i got some places you can play at that you'll come on with some stories no question for sure there'll be more thrown at you than just some undergarments Oh, man.

I love playing out in Alabama.

But have you guys ever played or been to, I think it's called The Nick?

Absolutely.

I work right next to it.

I almost got taken out by a homeless man with nunchucks at that show.

That is on par for Birmingham.

That's Peter.

Yeah.

No shirt on was just going to work on nunchucks.

And I was looking at my phone, and thank God one of my guys was standing next to me and just pulled me back inside because that thing, I felt the wind go by my ears.

I was like, oh, that was close.

The Knick is a wild, legendary place.

All types of music have played there.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And acts have played there.

I used to go to open mics there with one of the guys I used to work with and I was always, every time I'd walk out, I was like, one, I need a shower.

Yeah.

Two, I'm never going back even though I'd go back the next week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

As advertised.

Yeah, you'll smell, you'll smell like cigarettes for about three weeks, but that, you know, that'll go away.

Yeah, makes me want to smoke one.

It keeps the werewolves away, you know?

Exactly.

You got to do what you got to do to keep them away.

Hey, you're telling me.

Well, maybe they'll get you some shows booked out here, man.

I would love that, man.

And I'm always passing through most southern towns.

So, yeah, absolutely.

If I'm ever near y'all, y'all give me a holler and I'll come swing by.

We'll give you a hoot.

Hollers are bad on this show.

Okay, okay, deal.

Deal, give me a hoot.

Speaking of which, keeping that 90s country going and to put you on the spot here, you don't have to give us a holler, especially since that might be a family friend.

But hooting 90s country music, what stands out to you as maybe the greatest 90s country song?

What's a no-skip 90s country song to you?

Always got to let it play out.

I mean, just because it's such a tearjerker was Don't Take the Girl.

That was 90s.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, it was.

Yeah, that is.

Firmly in the middle 90s, actually, I think.

Let me go next to three.

Yeah, that was a, I think that you're talking about storytelling.

That's just one of those where it's hard to skip over that one.

You got to pick when you're going to listen to it, because obviously if everyone's having a good time, you throw that one on.

I was about to say.

Yeah.

I'm just over in the corner crying.

I got snot coming out of my nose.

Yeah, you could destroy the vibe real quick.

Yeah, the beers get real sad.

I just imagine that you were on the van, and you got this playlist going, and you just got some upbeat stuff after another one, and then that comes on, somebody goes to press, and you just slap their hand like, uh-uh.

Uh-uh.

No, you don't.

We ain't doing that.

We ain't doing that here.

That's good.

Well, yeah, man, really appreciate you coming on, setting the record straight, which is, I think we can definitively say, maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

It's a maybe.

It's a strong maybe.

I'm leaning more on yes, but it is a maybe as of right now for legal purposes.

But, yeah, true.

Because he does a briefcase in one hand.

He probably knows how to sue you.

And the werewolves have a tough lobby.

You know, they got real lawyers, man.

I appreciate you coming on.

And hopefully we get some new listeners out there for your music.

If they are just hearing about you today, what's a great way for people to go find your music?

Just basically all social medias.

Tristan Tritt on everything.

Tristan Tritt on Instagram.

TikTok, all that good stuff.

And yeah, just keep yourself in the loop.

But we've got new music coming out, new shows being announced, new, all that stuff.

So yeah, I can't thank you guys enough for having me on here.

Oh man, absolutely can't thank you.

Yeah, we appreciate you, dude.

Especially after the things we've said about your family.

I'll give you the opportunity to do it.

You'll have to do it.

Did you want to holler about something in 90s country?

We'll take it off the air.

We'll take it later.

We won't record it.

Two words, Garth Brooks.

I like it.

I'm with you.

Yes.

Careful.

He might kill you.

Yeah.

I'm going to be missing next week.

So thanks for that.

Chad's the one that handles the dirty business.

Absolutely.

Watch out for him.

Or Chris, sorry.

Chris, yeah.

I'm just messing.

Chad Gaines.

Chad Gaines.

Awesome.

All right, man.

We appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, man.

Thanks, Tristan.

Take care.

Music.