How To Stay Real & Succeed In A Fake World - Dylan Gossett (Live Performance)

Dylan Gossett 0:00 Well, well, I'm headed back to Austin, trying to find me again. Something to keep me busy, keep these hands from trembling. Ain't it something like the weather to try and mock my mind. I try to think of something clever to keep me satisfied. Well, I'll take burning on the weekend straight down 29. Past the sinners and believers on a Reagan drive. Way to get out of the city and past the smell of the bar. Watch the planes go on by, babe, in the sky leaving scars. What do you believe in? 'Cause I've been having trouble sleeping. The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find. So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes. Well, if you want me at my best, then I'll proudly hang my dude. Trying to focus what's ahead tonight, winter blues. Takes a simple kind of moment to put my mind at ease. It takes a girl who says she loves me to make me weak in the knees. What do you believe in? 'Cause I've been having trouble sleeping. The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find. So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes. What do you believe in? 'Cause I've been having trouble sleeping. The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find. So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes.

Chris Williamson 3:29 That's fucking gold. [clapping] Woo-hoo.

Dylan Gossett 3:32 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 3:33 Dude.

Dylan Gossett 3:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:34 Unbelievable. So good.

Dylan Gossett 3:36 Thank you very much. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:37 Great to see you.

Dylan Gossett 3:37 That, uh, that one's about Austin, Texas, [laughs] obviously.

Chris Williamson 3:42 Very timely.

Dylan Gossett 3:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:43 Did you write most of Coal in 25 minutes? Is that right?

Dylan Gossett 3:46 Yeah. Yeah. Coal, Coal was written one, one of the fastest ones I've probably ever written. Yeah. It, uh, it started, I can kind of show you. So it, it started just with [guitar playing] uh, maybe not this exact chord progression. It was a little bit different. I might have a old video of it I could show you. But I think I almost, I think it started with kind of that hook, the, "They say pressure makes diamonds." How they hit. You know, I was like, "That's, that's great. That's a song. We gotta build around it." And, uh, and then, yeah, verse by verse, and it was just, I remember, I was like, had my phone typing on top of our dog kennel in the apartment at the time, and it was, like, right before we, we went out with, like, some work friends, and none of my friends knew I sung, like, at all. I didn't... I don't know. I just don't go around telling people. And, uh, wrote C- wrote Coal, went out, and Julia, my wife, was just stoked on it. She was like, "This is so sick." Um, and she was just showing people, like, Snapchat videos of the song.

Chris Williamson 4:40 [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 4:41 She was like, you know, just, "What do y'all think about this?" And they're like, "Dylan, you sing?" And I was like, "Cat's out of the bag, I guess." Uh, and then didn't do anything with it for, like, a year or two.

Chris Williamson 4:51 No way.

Dylan Gossett 4:52 Yeah. And so I-

Chris Williamson 4:52 You sat on that, you sat on a song that did, like, half a billion streams-

Dylan Gossett 4:56 Yeah

Chris Williamson 4:56 ... for a year or two.

Dylan Gossett 4:57 Well, well, I just, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't on socials. Like, I wasn't putting anything out. Uh, I, I, I didn't do anything until we were on a camping trip, um, with my buddy Caden and his now wife, MK, and my wife and I, Julia. And, uh, I brought my guitar and was just playing some songs, and Caden has, like, the best ear of anyone I know. He's, like, in A&R that's not, doesn't work in A&R, and he heard Coal, and he's like, "Please sing it again." He, like, voice memoed it, and he's like, "You gotta do something. You have to do something." And my wife was like, "Dylan, you should just post on TikTok." And I was like, "Well, I'm not, you know, I'm not a TikToker." I was like, "I almost can't stand it. Like, I don't, I, it's just not my, it's not my thing." Um, but yeah, I started doing it, and then Coal became this thing, [laughs] which is insane.

Chris Williamson 5:39 One of my buddies, I was best man at his wedding, godfather to his kid, and he was playing. We were at a friend's house who has a karaoke machine, and I don't even know why there was a guitar there, and he'd been doing exactly the same thing.

Dylan Gossett 5:54 Mm.

Chris Williamson 5:54 And I bullied him, bullied him. I was like, "No, come on, come on." 'Cause the choice was between him playing acoustic guitar with a beautiful voice and one of our friends sad emo rapping.

Dylan Gossett 6:03 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:03 And I was like, "Hey, look-

Dylan Gossett 6:04 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 6:05 "... the, the decision is really easy for me to make in terms-

Dylan Gossett 6:07 Yeah

Chris Williamson 6:07 ... of a pressu- the fucking floor, dude, is so low-

Dylan Gossett 6:11 Yeah

Chris Williamson 6:11 ... for you to get over here.

Dylan Gossett 6:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:12 Uh, so I'm interested Where were you in life when you were doing those lyrics? Like, what, what-

Dylan Gossett 6:17 Uh

Chris Williamson 6:17 ... what is that song 'cause-

Dylan Gossett 6:18 So, so I was living in Austin. I, I worked in... Are you talking about Coal? You're talking-

Chris Williamson 6:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dylan Gossett 6:22 ... Yeah, Coal. We- So I was living in Austin. Uh, I, I was working at the racetrack, the Circuit of the Americas down here. So I was, uh, at the time, I was in event operations. I think I was, I was out... I, I started as an intern. I used to live there in, like, a, a trailer ha- in my parents' RV for months. Um, and I just lived at the job site. Um, but I, uh, yeah, I was working there, and I might have just kind of been through, like, a, a, a tough season. Like, F1 season's just kind of brutal, especially for, like, the outside guys. Uh, you're just... I mean, it's just, like, 20-hour days. Like, you're living out there when it's F1 time. And, um, I don't know. It's like that. It might've been some, you know, inter-interpersonal family thing or, you know, whatever it might've been at the time. And, um, you know, I always try to say, like, it's, it's, it's a, it's a pretty deep, kind of dark s- song, but I try to tell people I, I wasn't in, like, the worst spot of my life, you know? But I'll... You know, I was just going through everyday struggles, you know, just like, like everybody does. And, um, that's kind of what it was. It just felt like I was in a pit. I was like, "I'm not going anywhere."

Chris Williamson 7:24 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 7:24 It's noth- I'm not really, like... I don't know. I don't feel like I'm chasing anything right now. Like, I'm having a great life. Like, me and my wife and our dog, we're having great... Like, we're very happy. And, uh, I was like, but a lot of other stuff, we were just like, you know, whatever, you know? So [laughs]

Chris Williamson 7:38 It's interesting. There's, like, a input-output equation I think a lot of people feel, and if you're putting lots in, the goal, the hope is that something's gonna come out on the other side of it.

Dylan Gossett 7:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:49 But you have this sort of latent leverage after a while. Like, you build up... You know, you pull back an elastic band, and you pull it back and pull it back and pull it back-

Dylan Gossett 7:55 Yeah

Chris Williamson 7:55 ... and pull it back. And we hope that life is gonna be a bit more linear, but a lot of the time, you're kind of just accumulating reps or doing something-

Dylan Gossett 8:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 8:05 ... maybe not even doing what... and putting in more work than you will do in future and not seeing the rewards. I think that's why... You know the top comment? Y- Cole's got 22 million plays on YouTube.

Dylan Gossett 8:14 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 8:14 The top comment says, "This song has the feeling when you're working on yourself and making progress, but you still feel lonely and like a failure."

Dylan Gossett 8:21 Yeah. That, honestly, that's a great way to put... Like, that, that's how it felt, I guess, is like, it just felt like we were putting the hours in almost. You know? It's like we're, we're doing it, but I don't know. It's like we don't... Nothing... We don't feel any different. But now, I, I almost see now it's like without... Like, if Cole happened... Let's say, let's say I w- you know, I was writing about other stuff, and Cole happened five years earlier. No way. There's no way that I, that I think we, I would be touring doing the same thing that we're doing right now.

Chris Williamson 8:48 Why?

Dylan Gossett 8:48 Because, because without, I think without going through that job and understanding even personal relationships outside of college, like, just kind of real world items, like, I, I don't know. I feel like I can't even imagine being thrown into the music industry or trying to write songs or, or any of that without, I feel, like, having a real f- frame of reference to come back to.

Chris Williamson 9:11 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 9:11 Does that make sense?

Chris Williamson 9:12 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 9:12 Like, I... D- dude, even music as an artist, I think people don't understand it is such a business. Like, I, I think people imagine artists and myself just being like, look, I strum the guitar. I show up to shows. We collect our money, and that's our lot. Like, that's... I feel there's times where I feel a lot more like a business manager-

Chris Williamson 9:32 Mm-hmm

Dylan Gossett 9:32 ... than, than an artist,

Dylan Gossett 9:34 for sure.

Chris Williamson 9:35 There's a book called The E-Myth Revisited by, uh, I think it's Michael Gerber. It's, like, just a business book.

Dylan Gossett 9:40 Uh.

Chris Williamson 9:40 It's quite, it's quite well done, and he tells this, uh, fictional story in there of a woman who runs a bakery, and this woman loves making cakes.

Dylan Gossett 9:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:48 She loves to do. And she's made cakes for the family, and she makes cakes for her friends, and it's her passion, and she's great at it, everyone's best cakes. I'm gonna open a bakery. Wouldn't that be cool? Small local bakery. So she opens a bakery, and then it gets popular 'cause she makes great cakes.

Dylan Gossett 10:03 Yep.

Chris Williamson 10:03 But she needs to hire some staff. Then some staff come in, and the staff start to make some of the cakes, and, you know, she's involved in the ingredients and the recipes and the releases. But then there's accounts to do, and-

Dylan Gossett 10:13 Yep

Chris Williamson 10:14 ... she grows a little bit more, and then she gets a factory, and, you know, she's spending a little bit less time making cakes.

Dylan Gossett 10:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:19 And before she knows it, she hasn't made a fucking cake in years.

Dylan Gossett 10:21 It... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:22 And this, no matter what industry you're in, you have to learn to be able to say no to things or to focus on stuff that previously you would have begged to have had the opportunity to say yes to.

Dylan Gossett 10:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:35 I want to be in the room with the A&R person, or y- you're a, a, a writer, and you have all of the opportunities to go and do speaking gigs.

Dylan Gossett 10:42 Mm.

Chris Williamson 10:42 It's like, why were you great as a writer? What made you great as a, a blogger on Substack or as an author that writes books or whatever it is? It was because of the time that you spent, like, stewing in your ideas.

Dylan Gossett 10:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:52 Right? Like marinading in this stuff. It was the walk, the three-hour walks that you took with the dog.

Dylan Gossett 10:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:56 And all of that time gets squeezed because we can't see, uh, basically, like, obvious productivity is really easy to track.

Dylan Gossett 11:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:05 How many hours did you spend on Slack today? Or how many-

Dylan Gossett 11:07 Yeah

Chris Williamson 11:07 ... emails did you send? I've got a full back-to-back day of scheduled calls. This must make me really important.

Dylan Gossett 11:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:12 And we go, well, how useful is it for you to go fishing for an afternoon with nothing else happening?

Dylan Gossett 11:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:18 You go, "Well, I worked really hard today. I went fishing."

Dylan Gossett 11:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:20 You know, the, the Puritan work ethic, the guilt that comes up because it's like, "I should be working harder," but that's not what necessarily got you here.

Dylan Gossett 11:27 No, and it, it's so strict 'cause, yeah, 'cause, like, expectations change from everyone involved too, right? Like, it's, the fans have different expectations of the listeners. I have a different expectation as myself as, as I put out more and more albums. Back when I was writing Cole, I was not writing it for anything. I was just like, "This is my outlet. This is what... This is my passion. I love playing guitar. I'm just gonna pick it up and write." I had no reason to do that.

Chris Williamson 11:53 Hmm.

Dylan Gossett 11:53 But I wanted to 'cause that was just what I was so passionate about. Kinda like the bakery. Like, she wants to just bake.

Chris Williamson 11:57 Wanna bake some fucking cakes.

Dylan Gossett 11:58 And now, and now it's like, dude, like, three years, three and a half years later, or I guess from Cole writing, it's like five years, but looking back, like, if I wrote that exact same song today, and I... Like, if I hear the version of Cole right now, I would be like, "What is this demo?" I would never put that out.

Chris Williamson 12:13 Hmm.

Dylan Gossett 12:13 You know? And it's like I, I try to remind myself, like, when I'm in the studio and 'Cause like that was just, that, that song was just made on my laptop on the edge of my bed. Like, that's where Coal was recorded, engineered. The only thing I didn't do on that song was master it, which actually I put it out. We had to retake it down to remaster it because it was so-

Chris Williamson 12:32 The levels were all over

Dylan Gossett 12:33 ... yeah, it was just off. It, like, didn't blend in with other music. Um, so yeah, it's, it's so, it's so strange. Like, you have to... Yeah, you've gotta find that passion, which I still have it. And like, I think, you know, obviously I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about the struggles of music 'cause there are some.

Chris Williamson 12:48 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 12:48 But the last thing I'm gonna be is ungrateful for what it is. Like I- I'm living my dream. Like e- whenever I have struggles in this industry, 'cause there are, um, kinda like you said, it's like four years ago I would've killed to be stressing out about putting my album out. You know? Oh, I have to go sign vinyls in Nashville. I would've died for that, dude. You know? So I, I, I don't know. I, I just... I have to remind myself that. My wife has- reminds me that all the time. She's just like my, my number one supporter and just like the greatest teammate in the world. So, um, yeah, it, it's such... Just it's the goalpost just changed and the expectation of it.

Chris Williamson 13:26 Isn't it crazy 'cause you, you know about habituation and hedonic treadmill, right? Like you get... You can't wait to get a new car. You spend all of your time thinking-

Dylan Gossett 13:32 Mm. Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:32 ... about this new car. You get the new car, and then after six months you're sort of bored of it.

Dylan Gossett 13:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:35 You're looking after the next one. What nobody really talks about is the same thing, but with goals and problems.

Dylan Gossett 13:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:42 Right? That you wanted to have to do soundcheck. I just wish that I had-

Dylan Gossett 13:47 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:47 ... a team of people who would maybe tune my fucking guitar-

Dylan Gossett 13:51 Yeah

Chris Williamson 13:51 ... before I go out there, and then you've got to negotiate because one of the fucking r- the guitar techs has had to leave, so we need to get a new guitar tech.

Dylan Gossett 13:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 13:58 Oh, hang on. So you're telling me that the person I pleaded, like pr- begged, prayed to have, I now need to get a replacement for, and that feels like a burden to me.

Dylan Gossett 14:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:08 And we get accustomed to a different quality of life, a different, you know, level of, of ease or-

Dylan Gossett 14:16 Mm

Chris Williamson 14:16 ... something. And yeah, I, I've always thought it'd be really cool if you could take photos of your own mind and go back-

Dylan Gossett 14:21 Yeah

Chris Williamson 14:21 ... and visit them like you can with a, with a photograph. What would it be like to go back to the texture of your mind from four years ago?

Dylan Gossett 14:27 Even just plug it in for a sec.

Chris Williamson 14:28 What problems... Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 14:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:29 What problems were you thinking about?

Dylan Gossett 14:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:30 What, what, what concerned you as you fell asleep?

Dylan Gossett 14:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:32 Money worries. Sta- Am I gonna make-

Dylan Gossett 14:35 Yeah

Chris Williamson 14:35 ... I'm at the fucking Circuit of the America. I'm boiling hot on the fucking golf cart-

Dylan Gossett 14:38 [laughs] Yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 14:38 ... you know, taking pi-... Can we do verse chord, a little, a little Coal?

Dylan Gossett 14:41 Yeah, let's do it.

Chris Williamson 14:41 Beautiful.

Dylan Gossett 14:42 Yeah. This was like the w-... 'Cause you know what's funny? I, I posted a video of Coal way early on, and no one cared. Uh, it didn't do anything. But I was fi- I was fine with that. I was like, "I already stuck to it." I was like, "I'm just gonna keep posting." I didn't post Coal and again until after To Be Free happened, the first song I ever put out, 'cause I was like, "I have a little traction now. I should try to..." I was like, "I really, really believe in this song."

Chris Williamson 15:03 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 15:03 "Like, the writing on it's really good." And then it was like, yeah, over, like that video changed everything.

Chris Williamson 15:07 Why did you do that in Coal? Why did you do that pre-chorus? 'Cause you don't drop like the line until the second time it comes around. Why did you make that creative decision?

Dylan Gossett 15:15 Two things. At the time on TikTok, I hated what music promotion was. Uh, I hated that it was like, "Okay, we're gonna hear this 15-second clip of bad ly-" lyrics weren't even on the screen really at this time. Like, people weren't like... I don't know. It was just like all about a 15-second clip that people can just repost and redo videos to dance or whatever it was, and what they would do is they would get all these pre-saves lined up, pre-save, pre-save. They would... And they would just extend this thing for just months.

Chris Williamson 15:46 Hm.

Dylan Gossett 15:46 And what I did with Coal was like, I think the strength of this song is in the writing. It's not necess- I think the hook is like this huge payoff at the very end that the people who listen to it are going to get. At the, at the, the mo- at the time, I wasn't thinking like, "Oh, I should probably shave that off," because a 20-second video is gonna have a lot more views than a 45-second video like you're saying.

Chris Williamson 16:06 Yeah, yeah.

Dylan Gossett 16:07 But I also just liked the, the writing of it. Like I don't know, like the, "I've seen heaven without dying, met the devil without trying." Like I was super proud of that, and I was like, "I think that's a good hook to bring..." You, y- uh, who knows? If there, if I started with the chorus, it might have never happened. Like, you know, if, if it was a, a dark sky instead of a sunny day-

Chris Williamson 16:25 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 16:25 ... when I was recording, it might have never happened. Like I think about that stuff all the time. It, it's... I, I took that v- like I did like five different videos that day, and I just chose that one, and I was like, "There's a chance that that video didn't go, I never posted Coal again, and I'm... We're not having this conversation." You know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 16:41 Wow.

Dylan Gossett 16:41 So it's, uh, yeah, I don't know. I also like... I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very... I'm, I'm a big believer in that things happen for a reason. Um, so that also gives me peace of mind. I don't know.

Chris Williamson 16:53 Unreal.

Dylan Gossett 16:53 But yeah, so [singing] Well, I've seen heaven without dying, met the devil without trying, and they both seem to wanna talk to me. But I'm all out of luck now, and my dreams aren't worth a buck. How it's tough trying to land on my feet when this game of life plays heavy on my heart. And love is tough, but loneliness is twice as hard. And I'll carry that 'bout everywhere I go. They say pressure makes diamonds. How the hell am I still coal? [singing] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:47 Unreal, dude.

Dylan Gossett 17:47 That was the clip.

Chris Williamson 17:48 So

Chris Williamson 17:49 good. So, I mean, do you think deliberately looking unpolished is now its own kind of marketing?

Dylan Gossett 17:55 For sure.

Chris Williamson 17:55 'Cause as soon as you fi- as soon as somebody-

Dylan Gossett 17:56 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 17:56 ... does it on the deck and it's successful, like everything becomes commercialized. Like authenticity is really difficult to survive once a team recognizes it's got commercial value, and then that kind of-

Dylan Gossett 18:09 Sure

Chris Williamson 18:09 ... kills what authenticity is 'cause people are now performing authenticity.

Dylan Gossett 18:13 Yeah, I mean, I... So that was something... I, I mean, it's honestly, it's still something I obsess over of like... And I don't obsess over it in a way of like, how do we make this look and feel, you know? 'Cause people are smarter than they ever are. Like, dude, [laughs] you're not gonna fake it And people do, and maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe people do believe a lot of stuff is authentic when it's just absolutely not. But, um, I don't know. I, I just feel like I try to stay true to what my mind was thinking when I first got into this thing, of, like, there's lines I won't cross. Uh, like, well, like, I would never sacrifice, um... For a while, I wouldn't even run ads. I wouldn't do anything. I would not... And I, and I drove my team crazy, and I, and I guarantee I probably took a hit on a lot of things for that, and maybe I was overthinking it. But I was just like, look, I just, I don't want to just all of a sudden... Like you said, it's like we know this thing works. I don't want to all of a sudden just dive in. Everyone's telling me, "Well, wait, don't-"

Chris Williamson 19:18 That's the formula.

Dylan Gossett 19:19 Yeah. "Here's the formula. Don't post, don't, don't put it out right now. Wait three months. Get your pre-saves up. Post it 30 more times." I posted Coal in total, even, like, today I think it's been, like, 7 to 10 times ever.

Chris Williamson 19:32 You're kidding.

Dylan Gossett 19:33 Ever. Now, when, when it came out, I think I posted it four times, and what people would tell you now is like, "No, you gotta post, you gotta post that song 50 times."

Chris Williamson 19:41 I'm right.

Dylan Gossett 19:42 You know? And it's like, I don't know. It's just such this weird thing in the, in, in music right now where there's so many people doing it, so, like, you've gotta get out there somehow-

Chris Williamson 19:52 Mm

Dylan Gossett 19:52 ... and you've gotta, you've gotta separate yourself somehow. Like, it's, it's even 10X of whenever I... like, Coal came out, of, like, the amount of people kind of playing this type of music. Um, and I, I, I don't know. I, I really don't have the answer to, like, how to separate, 'cause everyone's doing the authentic thing now, and everything, everyone's doing the polished thing. Like, there's just so many things, and-

Chris Williamson 20:10 I think in your world and in my world, um, the ends of the barbell are where people are succeeding. So-

Dylan Gossett 20:18 Yeah

Chris Williamson 20:18 ... very, very produced, right? Like super, super-

Dylan Gossett 20:21 Mm

Chris Williamson 20:21 ... polished or very raw and stripped back, and I think the middle is where people seem to go to die-

Dylan Gossett 20:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 20:26 ... at the moment.

Dylan Gossett 20:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:27 Um,

Chris Williamson 20:28 but looking at, talking about the growth of mu- the music industry, Billboard Top 10 from 2020 to 2023, rap music 34%, country music 7%. '25 to '26, country music 27%, rap music 17%, so rap music's gone in half and country music's 4X'd.

Dylan Gossett 20:48 That's incredible. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean-

Chris Williamson 20:50 Wild

Dylan Gossett 20:50 ... it, I think it's the natural way of things. Like, I think, uh, at some point country will be back down and rap will be back up. Like, and that's, that's fine.

Chris Williamson 20:58 They're the two ends of the-

Dylan Gossett 20:59 You know what I'm saying? Yeah. [laughs] Yeah

Chris Williamson 21:00 ... slope. [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 21:01 But also, like, it's... Country is not what country was in 2020. Like, I, I mean, I hear songs right now that are charting or whatever that I'm like, "That's a great song. I love it. I wouldn't call it country, but sure," you know? Uh, a- you know, it, it's got acoustic guitar in it. Let's do it. Let... That's country.

Chris Williamson 21:19 Close enough.

Dylan Gossett 21:19 But yeah, it, it's cool. I think, I think at some point it'll go back. There, there'll be, like, a whole new wave of hip hop or something that comes in-

Chris Williamson 21:27 Mm-hmm

Dylan Gossett 21:27 ... which is cool, too.

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Chris Williamson 22:25 at checkout. What's interesting is how virality can reward different behaviors.

Dylan Gossett 22:30 Mm.

Chris Williamson 22:30 Because as soon as you find a way to make something become effective, everybody's going to start to play that. I guess, how do you tell the difference between a song that's good and a song that's just algorithm friendly?

Dylan Gossett 22:42 Ooh. I mean, [sighs] I feel like I have a, I feel like I have a bad view on this because I'm in it. So, like, I feel like I can pretty easily see when something has something pushing it.

Chris Williamson 23:00 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 23:00 You know? Like, I, um, like I, I kind of know what the markers are of, like, when I hear a song that's trending, and like I'll go look at the audio or whatever and I'm like, "Okay, they got a team. Like, they're, they're running this thing. Like, they're-"

Chris Williamson 23:12 What, what are some of the indications?

Dylan Gossett 23:14 Like, okay, you'll see, you'll see a song come out and there's 1,000 truck edits to it or something, and I'm like-

Chris Williamson 23:22 What's a truck edit?

Dylan Gossett 23:23 Like, okay, for, uh, like, you'll see, you'll see a new song come out and it'll be, like, a video o- of a, an account that all they do is just truck videos with, like, cool, moody lighting-

Chris Williamson 23:33 Okay

Dylan Gossett 23:34 ... l- lyrics on the top, and they put a song to it.

Chris Williamson 23:38 I didn't realize this was an ecosystem on-

Dylan Gossett 23:40 Oh, it's not just truck

Chris Williamson 23:40 ... Instagram. The, the truck ecosystem.

Dylan Gossett 23:42 There's... [laughs]

Chris Williamson 23:42 The truck Instagram ecosystem is going.

Dylan Gossett 23:43 Yeah, that's a big thing.

Chris Williamson 23:44 Reckon.

Dylan Gossett 23:44 Like, and again, it's a-

Chris Williamson 23:46 Truckstagram

Dylan Gossett 23:46 ... it's a smart thing because a lot of people follow those accounts for music.

Chris Williamson 23:49 Sure.

Dylan Gossett 23:49 So, like, what teams will do is, you know, they'll, they'll pump someone's song on stuff like that. Now, I'll say now more than ever, that doesn't mean that you're gonna have a hit song. It, it might put more ears on it, but, like, if the song is not that great and if it kinda sounds like something else, like it just won't... It still won't really catch. But-

Chris Williamson 24:08 But you know, this is the kind of, uh, escalation of firepower when it comes to marketing-

Dylan Gossett 24:15 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 24:15 ... that how much harder is it to break through if every moderately good song has now got an army of Clippers and truck edits and-

Dylan Gossett 24:23 Oh, yeah

Chris Williamson 24:24 ... boat edits behind it.

Dylan Gossett 24:25 So yeah, that's, I mean, that's... And that's what I mean is al- it's almost like in my, in my case, right? Like, I'm, I'm very blessed to be in the position that I am, is, like, selling tickets. That's what we've always based this thing off of. Like, we've never really- Outside of Cole, we've never really had, like, viral moments. Like, that was it. Like, we haven't really had one since before. It... And but what matters to me is that our shows keep growing. Like, that's all I've always cared about, is, like, getting people to buy tickets and seats, and, um, I mean, even that's getting harder with just how many... Everyone and their mom is touring right now, but-

Chris Williamson 24:55 Yes

Dylan Gossett 24:55 ... um, it's, uh-

Chris Williamson 24:56 Blue Dot Fever's happening.

Dylan Gossett 24:58 Yeah, and that's just, like, that's a whole nother crazy thing. That's, uh, that's just, like, that is a mixture of just everything going against people buying tickets. So, like, you know-

Chris Williamson 25:09 But then the, part of the re- for the people that don't know, Blue Dot Fever is a wave of artists, many of whom are pretty big, doing some pretty large venues, some stadiums, some arenas, not selling out or often not selling enough to even maybe continue with the-

Dylan Gossett 25:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 25:25 ... show or perhaps killing the tour entirely.

Dylan Gossett 25:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:29 And part of it is, is this person as relevant as they thought? Have they overcooked it? But another huge part of it is, what are the fucking ticket prices?

Dylan Gossett 25:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:38 Like, what's happening with Ticketmaster-

Dylan Gossett 25:41 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 25:41 ... and Live Nation, and how much are people getting squeezed, and dynamic pricing.

Dylan Gossett 25:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:47 It's all cohesing at the same time, but one of the most common things I'm hearing on the show is how much real-life events are gonna come back. Like, everyone's bullish as fuck on live music.

Dylan Gossett 25:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:57 Everyone's so bullish on comedy-

Dylan Gossett 25:59 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 25:59 ... on real-world events, on, you know, slow phone, tech-free Sabbaths, uh, trying to touch grass and, you know, fucking see the sky again. And at the same time, you have this other force, which is cost of living. People don't have as much money as they want anymore.

Dylan Gossett 26:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:13 And Live Nation and Ticketmaster and every venue on the planet knows, "Okay, well, I've got to squeeze, but I can't squeeze too much."

Dylan Gossett 26:20 Yeah. J- I, I... Yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, you wanna go see a massive stadium act, right? It's like, cool, for me and my wife to go, that's going to be a four-figure day. Like, the... it... And that's if I'm in the nosebleeds. That's if I'm in the worst seat in the stadium. I gotta go get a hotel. I gotta park for $50. I gotta... If I wanna buy a shirt-

Chris Williamson 26:38 Babysitter

Dylan Gossett 26:39 ... babysitter. I mean, you're talking about thousands of dollars to go see a show in a really bad seat.

Chris Williamson 26:44 From row F.

Dylan Gossett 26:45 And, and then they go, "Well, hold on. This tick... this TikTok artist that remember we have on our s- on our playlist, he's playing down the road for a $15 ticket, and there's 200 people going." And it's like, "Let's just do that." But there's 1,000 people now. So to have... A- a- a- and t- I feel like it-- like agents' jobs are getting harder every day too 'cause it almost... Like, you, you build touring off of, like, sellouts and coming back and, and revamping, like, your show that you did after an album. You come back to the city you crushed, and it's like, all right, well, now you can do 20% more tickets 'cause your album's doing well and people are enjoying it, so let's do it. But now it's almost at the point where it's like, [inhales] "Oh, you know, Dylan's coming to Chicago. We saw him last year. Great show. Loved it, but we saw him."

Chris Williamson 27:31 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 27:31 "And what about this new artist that's coming? We should go see him because we can only choose one show this-"

Chris Williamson 27:36 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 27:36 "... month or this year 'cause everything's so expensive." So-

Chris Williamson 27:38 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 27:38 ... it's just, yeah, dude, it's such a... it's such an interesting landscape. Again, we're just, we're just very blessed we get to keep doing it. So that's what we just try

Dylan Gossett 27:45 to do.

Chris Williamson 27:45 Overnight success used to be a bit of an insult, and now it kind of feels like what everyone's chasing.

Dylan Gossett 27:50 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:51 Isn't it strange?

Dylan Gossett 27:53 Very strange, but I, I also think a lot of people aren't ready for it maybe. Like, I mean, I wasn't ready for it, but luckily, like, it didn't happen in such a way th- when I was too young, or, like, it kinda happened, like, in the perfect moment. Like, my wife and I just got married six months earlier, like, felt settled down, moved into a house together, um, and then it happened, you know? And I, uh... Yeah, it... You know, I, I think the hardest part is maintaining it. I feel like that's, that's what does not always happen, is someone will have a really big moment, and you'll know the song. Everyone in the w- everyone in the world knows the song, and then in a year, it's like they can't sell shows 'cause maybe they just had that one song that was getting pushed out.

Chris Williamson 28:35 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 28:35 I don't know. It's, it's a weird world. I, I feel lost in it all the time. That's why I... Dude, I... Like, I've deleted so much social media. Any, like, like, country account out there, I've pretty much just unfollowed.

Chris Williamson 28:47 Why?

Dylan Gossett 28:47 I, I just, I just... It's just overwhelming. It's just too much.

Chris Williamson 28:51 What's the s- what's the sensation that you feel when you get exposed to that, when you were getting exposed to that stuff?

Dylan Gossett 28:57 Uh, I mean, my sensation, it's not like I'm, like, getting anxious or stressed about it. It's more of just like, dude, I gotta have a life outside of, like, everything. Like, Instagram used to be like, oh, what are my friends posting? And now it's just like ad, ad, promotion, promotion. Oh, there's my buddy, you know, let me scroll through that p- And it's just... It just gets... And where, like, when people are, like, reviewing other country artists, and it's, like, these people that hide behind a... It's just weird.

Chris Williamson 29:23 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 29:23 And I'm like... Like, it, it... obviously, it's, it's good for the music industry. It gives a lot of eyes, but as someone that's in the industry, it's like I'm trying to separate a little bit my life and my work, which I feel like I've done a really great job on. Like, again, I'm not, I'm not, like, very social media forward. Like, there... I mean, I've... We have an album coming out, so I've kind of been trying to [chuckles] I've j- I'm, like, trying to post more, but, like, I'm like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I don't... You know, it, it, it gets lost out there a lot of times anyways, and it's just, yeah, it's just a lot.

Chris Williamson 29:54 It's another element of what we were talking about before, that as you become successful, your ability to do the things that made you successful become harder to access.

Dylan Gossett 30:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:03 Um, in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

Dylan Gossett 30:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:07 This is why comedians, as they get bigger and bigger, all of their acts are about airports and dinners and shows and hotels-

Dylan Gossett 30:15 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 30:15 ... because that's all that they know-

Dylan Gossett 30:16 Yeah

Chris Williamson 30:16 ... because they're now a big touring act.

Dylan Gossett 30:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:18 Every single weekend, they're away playing two or three shows.

Dylan Gossett 30:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:21 Maybe they're matinee-ing, and all of their friends are in the re-

Dylan Gossett 30:23 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 30:23 ... industry as well. And before you know it, you go, "Uh, what is the wellspring that I'm drawing from?"

Dylan Gossett 30:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:28 And this is the same for anybody. You're a marketer, right? You're, you're, you're a branding person. You're trying to come up with really interesting insight for a new campaign for a client that you work for-

Dylan Gossett 30:37 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 30:37 ... or for your own company that you run or whatever. Where are you drawing that from?

Dylan Gossett 30:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:41 If all that you're consuming is just derivative work of other people talking about the same thing. Well, I'm big in the branding industry.

Dylan Gossett 30:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:48 It's very important that I spend time at the conference. Okay. So-

Dylan Gossett 30:50 Yeah

Chris Williamson 30:50 ... you as a marketing guy spend all of your time talking to marketing guys about marketing. Where is the new-

Dylan Gossett 30:56 'Cause it, 'cause it-

Chris Williamson 30:57 ... inspiration coming from?

Dylan Gossett 30:57 'Cause then it's like, yeah, who... You used to be the person that you would market to. Like I, I used to be the guy that I would want to be like, I want, I would want Dylan to be a fan of Dylan, right? Like I'm trying to, I'm like, I think this guy would love this music.

Chris Williamson 31:09 Same thing with the show.

Dylan Gossett 31:09 Yeah. And now it's like-

Chris Williamson 31:10 Exactly the same thing

Dylan Gossett 31:10 ... again, like even like, like you said earlier, how can you tell what's a good song and what's something that's been pushed? I'm like, I think I can tell, but-

Chris Williamson 31:19 You might have been finessed as well.

Dylan Gossett 31:21 Yeah. Maybe I have because I, you know. And then I start to believe certain things, right, where again, like you just kind of keep pushing the line back of like, oh, I hate... I, I don't like how they promoted that or whatever. And then your next record comes out, and you're like, well, do, you know, do we need to do-

Chris Williamson 31:39 I need to play that again.

Dylan Gossett 31:40 Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's, it's, uh, it's... That's such a good way to put it, of just y- yeah, the f- the, the farther, I guess you could say, quote-unquote, the more success- successful you get and the more away from where you started-

Chris Williamson 31:53 Mm-hmm

Dylan Gossett 31:54 ... y- yeah, you gotta find time to get back. I think Miley Cyrus might have said that one time in an interview, was just like she requires certain time off the road so she can just, just live. Like just off. She's like, "I just, I just have to live a little bit." So

Dylan Gossett 32:07 yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:08 Where does your process usually start? Is it like a line, a melody, an emotion?

Dylan Gossett 32:14 D- It'll be, it'll be stuff... Like, okay, like, I don't know. I'll be on the couch. Julia will be watching TV or something like that, and we'll be watching something, and I sing gibberish. Like I'll try to find a melody that I think is like [singing] But I'm not saying anything. And eventually, maybe like a word will come to me that it feels very thought-provoking or something, you know? Like for, okay, for like, headed back to Austin, the one I played earlier, um, I think it was kind of that line. Like I knew where I wanted to go, but I didn't have anything, and that just started with, again, me on the couch, probably for like 30 minutes, not because I'm trying to write a song, but it's 'cause I'm just noodling. Like I don't know. I just like doing it. [guitar playing] So I started just... Or... And I'll look at Julia like, "That sounds cool." She's like, "Yeah, I like that." And I'll like, uh, you know [singing] And then y- you just kind of start gibberish, forming consonants and vowels until they become a word.

Chris Williamson 33:21 Hang on. So the, the writer's room is you, whatever bullshit's on TV-

Dylan Gossett 33:27 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah

Chris Williamson 33:27 ... the wife, and presumably now the kid-

Dylan Gossett 33:29 Yeah

Chris Williamson 33:29 ... who's just like flailing in the background.

Dylan Gossett 33:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 33:32 Right. So the difference between this sh- this and a Nashville engine, a little bit different.

Dylan Gossett 33:36 Yeah. Very. But that's why like, uh, and ag- again, I have, I have nothing against those guys. They're very talented in their own right.

Chris Williamson 33:41 Fucking animals, all of them.

Dylan Gossett 33:41 It's, it's incredible what they can do, but it just doesn't... I can't do it. That's like I said, like-

Chris Williamson 33:46 Have you tried? Have you tried to be in the, like the engine like that?

Dylan Gossett 33:51 No. No. I've-

Chris Williamson 33:51 Interesting

Dylan Gossett 33:52 ... I've... The closest I've come to that is like I write with my brother, uh, our like multi-instrumentalist, Colton. Um, and even then it's just different. It's a whole different way of writing. Um, I can't say if I like it more or less. Like I, I, I still think just me on my couch in my living room, usually at night, is like, that's where I get the stuff I like. Like, but then like my brother has a song, uh, that he wrote called "Ramblin", and it's on the album, and it's actually the title of the album, Ramblin'. Excuse me. Um, and it's like one of the best songs on the album. Like it's written so cool, and all I did was write like the chorus and a little like melody for the chorus.

Chris Williamson 34:29 Can I hear a bit?

Dylan Gossett 34:30 Yeah. Uh, he's way better at playing it on guitar, so I'm probably gonna butcher it. [guitar playing] Also, I haven't played it in so long. Jeez. [singing] Listen to the wind. It calls me by name. Same old dirt from where I was raised. Ain't no rambling man oughta cause all this pain. Listen to the wind. Listen to the wind. No. Listen to the wind. It calls me by name. [speaking] Like, I don't know. It-

Chris Williamson 35:14 So cool

Dylan Gossett 35:14 ... it's v- it's a beautiful song. I butchered it. Sorry, Blake. He's probably listening. He's like, "You messing up my song bad."

Chris Williamson 35:20 Fucking idiot.

Dylan Gossett 35:21 Um, but yeah, no, he, he does this like finger-picking style that like I just can't even do, and, um... 'Cause he's, he's a way better guitar player than I am. But, um, dude, it's just so cool. Like that's the stuff that I love. Like I, I'm not... I, I was early on, but especially like now, like I'm very open to collaboration and, and I'm not as like sacred about every word's gotta be mine. Like I, you know, I, I'm very... Writing is my passion almost more than singing, so like I, you know, I'm very particular of like what I want the songs to say and sound like, and I don't know, I just like, I like writing.

Chris Williamson 35:57 Would you ever do it for someone else?

Dylan Gossett 35:59 I think so, but it's har- maybe. I don't think I could write, I don't think I could write a song for someone else that I think that I could sing.

Chris Williamson 36:06 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 36:06 Because I just wanna sing it.

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Chris Williamson 37:06 Well, I had, uh, Bellion on the show last year, and he's just so fucking g-... I mean, there was a guitar in the backside of the room, and I'm thinking, "Okay, John motherfucking Bellion."

Dylan Gossett 37:16 Mm.

Chris Williamson 37:16 Okay, right. I, uh, uh, gestured to a guitar, like, "Hey," you know, "Explain how he did..." And he looked at it, he goes, "I don't know how to play that thing."

Dylan Gossett 37:23 No way.

Chris Williamson 37:23 So I go, yeah, well, he's like, "I fucking... It's not my, it's not my bag."

Dylan Gossett 37:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:26 Like, "I'm just here to do the thing."

Dylan Gossett 37:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:28 But he was telling me about how he'd taken all of his time off, five years maybe-

Dylan Gossett 37:32 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 37:32 ... this big break away from producing any mu- uh, publishing any music himself, and he just wasn't fussed.

Dylan Gossett 37:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:38 He'd had this altercation, pretty public altercation, I think, with his label.

Dylan Gossett 37:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 37:43 Didn't want to, "I'm not gonna play the game. Just gonna make music for other people, and this will be great." And he's just creating banger after banger. And I said, "Well, how did you know that you wanted to get back into making music again?" He said, "Well, when I had my stack of tracks to show whichever artist was coming in," like little demos and stuff that I'd cut together for them to have a little listen to, "I'd find myself, you know, going down, going down, and then I'd, I'd double tap over the top of a couple of them."

Dylan Gossett 38:10 Mm.

Chris Williamson 38:11 And he's like, "That one's for me."

Dylan Gossett 38:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:12 And he could f- hear in the back of his mind this bit of almost kind of a selfishness or maybe a bit more swagger or kind of ownership coming back in-

Dylan Gossett 38:20 Yeah

Chris Williamson 38:20 ... because he wanted to do that. But yeah, I, I think about, um, a lot of my friends that are writers, you know, they do versions of ghostwriting for people-

Dylan Gossett 38:28 Mm

Chris Williamson 38:28 ... and they'll shape ideas, and then sometimes they'll come up with the synthesis of an idea. And every so often they put out one, they feel a little bit aggrieved that they didn't get to put it under their own name. And the same goes for comedy writers.

Dylan Gossett 38:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:41 You know, all of the roasts that you see, every big roast that you see online, a lot of comedians now are opening up in the caption of their Instagram post if they put one of these huge big like, you know, clips up-

Dylan Gossett 38:54 Yeah

Chris Williamson 38:54 ... that completely rips. They put the credits in that of all of the writers that have contributed.

Dylan Gossett 38:58 I did not know that.

Chris Williamson 38:59 It's not them. I'm right here, right, Jared? Like this is the-

Dylan Gossett 39:01 Well, 'cause I, I always thought it was like, I always thought it w- it was like rap and comedy. Like, like country was like the... Country and pop were like, they had writers, but I thought it w-

Chris Williamson 39:10 Robin Engine.

Dylan Gossett 39:10 Yeah. I, I thought like, I thought like rap, comedy was more like you are what you write.

Chris Williamson 39:15 No, I mean, what percentage of comedians now, touring comedians, do you think are using, just off the top of your head, what percentage of com- touring comedians do you think are doing their entire sets less than 10%?

Dylan Gossett 39:26 No way.

Chris Williamson 39:27 Yeah, yeah.

Dylan Gossett 39:28 That is crazy.

Chris Williamson 39:29 At the roasts, I would probably guess probably less- It's big. It's ar- it's fucking armies of people-

Dylan Gossett 39:37 Uh, yeah

Chris Williamson 39:37 ... to put these together. I mean, y- I mean, you'll even hear them call it out now. Shane at, uh, the ESPYs-

Dylan Gossett 39:44 Uh-huh

Chris Williamson 39:44 ... just gave a line and he said, "I, that, that wasn't mine. I didn't write that one."

Dylan Gossett 39:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 39:48 Like he's calling out-

Dylan Gossett 39:49 Yeah

Chris Williamson 39:49 ... the meta of the whole-

Dylan Gossett 39:52 Wow

Chris Williamson 39:52 ... engine process. And, um, yeah, I saw, I saw another roast that came out a couple of days ago, and the fucking Instagram caption's 10 lines long.

Dylan Gossett 40:02 It's crazy.

Chris Williamson 40:03 Uh, like writers and then other contributors, uh, you know, it's got the dog in there. Like everybody's c-

Dylan Gossett 40:08 Yeah

Chris Williamson 40:08 ... although you could say, you could say the writers' room. It's good it's not Nashville credits, or else your kid would be like tapping you up saying, "Hey-

Dylan Gossett 40:13 Yeah

Chris Williamson 40:13 ... I was in the room when you wrote that lyric."

Dylan Gossett 40:14 Yeah, you were in the r- you were in smart 33.

Chris Williamson 40:16 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 40:16 Yeah, [laughs] yeah. Dude, it's... Wow. Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I think what you said earlier, I take ownership-

Chris Williamson 40:23 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 40:23 ... in, I try, I don't think I'm a very egotistical person, but the one thing I think I do like take pride in the most is probably my- the words, and it's just, I don't know, it also just, I... If somebody, I'm trying to think, like, if someone came up to me with just an absolute amazing song and was like, "Do you wanna sing this?" I've never had that, I've never had that except for Blake, my brother, with Ramblin'.

Chris Williamson 40:50 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 40:50 And I was like, "That's a no-brainer. Let's put that on the album." Like if-

Chris Williamson 40:53 Maybe it feels a little different that it's come from so close to home.

Dylan Gossett 40:56 Yeah. Yeah, and I guess may- or even, or even if it's a person that's just, like, a really great songwriter and like, "I have this song. I want you to sing it," I'm like, "Cool, I can't... You know, let's do it. I'll do it," but-

Chris Williamson 41:03 What about in reverse? What about you writing for someone else?

Dylan Gossett 41:07 Again, I, I think, like, it's the ownership thing. Like, I think if I write a song that I think is just so good, I almost get to the point where, like, if I have a chorus and, like, a verse and all I need is, like, a little bridge, and I'm almost like, "P- I, I'm so, I'm sorry, like, I really don't want help with this." Like, I, I want-

Chris Williamson 41:23 Because you want to own it

Dylan Gossett 41:23 ... I want this to be like, yeah, I w- I want to f- complete my thought almost.

Chris Williamson 41:27 So that's, that's a really interesting point, and I've found this with, with writing, that there is always, at least now in the world of writing, and maybe increasingly it's gonna start creeping in in the world of music-

Dylan Gossett 41:37 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 41:37 ... the contribution of AI.

Dylan Gossett 41:39 Mm.

Chris Williamson 41:39 So I've got this idea that I'm, I'm playing with at the moment. I have a friend, and he bumped into an ex of his a little while ago, and he made the decision that he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore a good while back, and he was certain. He'd really done the work, spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not he wanted to, to leave, decided to leave. Saw her, gets completely knocked sideways.

Dylan Gossett 42:02 Mm.

Chris Williamson 42:02 Just bumps into her randomly, and his head's in a whole spin. And he was saying, "I can't work out how I was so certain at the time and so regretful now."

Dylan Gossett 42:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:12 And there's an idea from psychology that's called the fading affect bias, and what it says is that bad memories fade with time, but good ones don't tend to, and that's great because it means we have a psychological immune system.

Dylan Gossett 42:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:24 It protects us from being still at the mercy of some horrible thing that happened in our past.

Dylan Gossett 42:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:29 Your dog dies when you're 10, but when you're 15-

Dylan Gossett 42:32 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 42:32 ... it doesn't sting quite so much. Hooray for that, right?

Dylan Gossett 42:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:34 You have a psychological immune system. You distance yourself. You distract yourself. You have, uh, reframes. Uh, tragedy plus time equals comedy-

Dylan Gossett 42:43 Yeah

Chris Williamson 42:43 ... is about as close to an algorithm that psychology's got.

Dylan Gossett 42:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:46 So bad things fade with time. Good things tend not to so much.

Dylan Gossett 42:49 Oh.

Chris Williamson 42:49 And in fact, sometimes bad things can kind of become funny, right?

Dylan Gossett 42:52 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:52 You can have a tragic situation that becomes funny in future. But one of the weird side effects of this, as you get a little bit older, is that you assume wisdom compounds with age. As I get older, I know more.

Dylan Gossett 43:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:05 But in matters of emotion- As you get older, you're just further from the evidence.

Dylan Gossett 43:10 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:10 So what he had encountered was a situation where a future version of him had less information than a previous version of him.

Dylan Gossett 43:18 Mm.

Chris Williamson 43:18 The person that was closer to the emotion understood what it felt like to not fully be in this relationship, to be uncertain-

Dylan Gossett 43:24 Mm

Chris Williamson 43:24 ... to be sat on the couch and not have anything to talk about, to always be going to bed worried about whether or not he was making the right decision. And the version of him now isn't more experienced. They're further from the evidence.

Dylan Gossett 43:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:37 And I was like, "Fuck." I lo- like I, I n- love the fading affect bias. I've got this story from a friend. Sent him this like series of texts, and I was like, "Trust that the previous version of you was stewarding the future version of you appropriately."

Dylan Gossett 43:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:49 Like, do you trust that you had your best interest in mind-

Dylan Gossett 43:52 That's a great-

Chris Williamson 43:52 ... at the time?

Dylan Gossett 43:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:54 And I've been fucking fighting with this idea for ages. And yesterday is my writing day, or Sunday's writing day. So I'm sitting down and I've got fucking 1,000... And it only needs to be 500 words. It needs to be a short little essay, snappy. That-

Dylan Gossett 44:10 Mm-hmm, yeah

Chris Williamson 44:10 ... basically what I've just said, a little bit more formed. And I've got 1,000, 2,000 words of just like bullshit, and I'm like, "I can throw this into ChatGPT-

Dylan Gossett 44:18 Mm

Chris Williamson 44:18 ... put it on deep research, and it'll take my words and it'll re- it'll put them together, put them into a flow. Maybe it'll tell me a story about Charles Darwin and it'll be done."

Dylan Gossett 44:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:27 And I knew that if I did that, I would get the essay out today. It didn't, but shock horror for the people that subscribe to the newsletter, it didn't go out today.

Dylan Gossett 44:33 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 44:33 Uh, it was something else. I put something else up that was easier for me to write. The reason that I didn't do it was that that idea will be concretized for the rest of time. That will be-

Dylan Gossett 44:42 Mm

Chris Williamson 44:42 ... the reference that I use for whatever the name is I come up with it-

Dylan Gossett 44:45 Yeah

Chris Williamson 44:45 ... or the story, the way that it's formed, the examples I use, and they stick in my mind, and I'll always know that it wasn't me that did it.

Dylan Gossett 44:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:52 I'll always know that it wasn't me that put the fucking finishing garnish on the dish.

Dylan Gossett 44:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:57 I did all of the hard work, and there was this bit at the end. And I wonder whether... That might be ego. I think it probably could be ego, that I'm not-

Dylan Gossett 45:03 But, but I also, but I also think it's like this, it's this, you see where the world is going a little bit with, with the... I mean, you s- like you can't even open your phone without it just begging to be like, "Well, let me do it for you." You can't even... Like someone will email you and I-

Chris Williamson 45:15 [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 45:15 ... I haven't even read it.

Chris Williamson 45:16 Do you want me to respond to it on your behalf?

Dylan Gossett 45:17 I, yeah, I had to turn it off on my phone. It was like summarizing my messages. And I'm like, "What? I'm just gonna read it." Like, uh, hey, I got a email reply. How about this reply? And it's this whole reply. And I think, I think we're in a, a s- da- at least I am. I am... It's like this yearning to be like, it's so great to work your mind. You have to try to work your mind. 'Cause dude, I feel like there's days that go by when I'm on tour, I'm on autopilot. I'm not, I'm, I'm not doing anything beneficial. I get tired. I'm just on my phone. I'm doom scrolling. And like, I'm like, "I'm getting dumber by the day." Like I just, and like I'm not-

Chris Williamson 45:53 Getting cognitively fast.

Dylan Gossett 45:54 Yeah, yeah. And I'm, I'm not, yeah, I'm not, uh, exercising my mind. Like I'm not... And I'm, I'm not trying to make it this big thing where I'm like, you know, "Gotta exercise my mind," whatever. But yeah, I, I think I just yearn for having the s- having that stamp. And like it's, it's such an accomplishment. Like growing up as a kid, like that's why so many people are against participation trophies, right? Like I, I'm in there myself as like against it. I've just... There's not a better feeling than when you do get it.

Chris Williamson 46:25 Earn the win.

Dylan Gossett 46:26 Earn, earn the win. Instead of being like, "We're all winners," it's like, no, you wrote a bad song, it's bad.

Chris Williamson 46:30 Yep.

Dylan Gossett 46:31 But I promise, in two years when you write that song and you know you did it and you crushed it and you put it online and people resonate with it, and you think that they're just resonating with it 'cause it's a different... No, it's because you failed and failed and failed. You made the right song. And that is like, that's the whole... I don't, I feel like that's almost just the point of everything. Like it's, it's, it's the payoff. Like if you just write AI the rest of your life, like there's, there's, I don't know, there's no, there's no like highs and lows in that. You're just very... Yeah, I don't know. Does that make sense? Like I-

Chris Williamson 47:02 It's, it's-

Dylan Gossett 47:03 It-

Chris Williamson 47:03 There's a line from Mark Manson that I've been fucking obsessed with this year, and it speaks to this AI thing.

Dylan Gossett 47:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 47:08 "Do hard shit, not because it's fun, but because the win actually means something. You bled for it, you broke for it, you earned it. Easy wins are forgettable. Hard ones change you. That's the point."

Dylan Gossett 47:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:19 It's like that's, that's everything, and I, the more that I think about that line, "Easy wins are forgettable. Hard ones change you. That's the point."

Dylan Gossett 47:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:27 I'm like, oh, that's the choice that everybody's gonna make when it comes to AI, and it's gonna be in small ways as well.

Dylan Gossett 47:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:34 I've got to write a letter, a thank you letter to somebody-

Dylan Gossett 47:36 Yeah

Chris Williamson 47:37 ... saying, uh, "I really appreciate you, um, taking care of the kids this weekend," or the, the, the dog walker on her birthday or whatever.

Dylan Gossett 47:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:44 Like do people care about receiving a card or do they care about the fact that you went to the effort of having to write it by hand?

Dylan Gossett 47:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:54 It's one of the strange things about... I, I don't know whether you guys have got Moonpig or Magpie. They're like, um, card sending services.

Dylan Gossett 48:00 Okay.

Chris Williamson 48:01 But you, you sort of type in what you want and I... It's very nice to receive a card. Like it's kind of rare-

Dylan Gossett 48:05 Yeah

Chris Williamson 48:06 ... to receive a card.

Dylan Gossett 48:06 Yeah, yeah. Very.

Chris Williamson 48:07 It's at least twice as nice when it's been written by hand.

Dylan Gossett 48:10 Oh, ab- well, 'cause-

Chris Williamson 48:11 As opposed to something that's got printed off on the internet, somebody typed it in, and it got shipped to your door. It's like, no, go to the fucking post office.

Dylan Gossett 48:17 'Cause yeah, it's, it's, it's not like, it's not like I receive a n- like yeah, a letter in the mail and I'm like this, this 2.99 piece of paper is what I've been looking for. No, it's like okay, they put in e- like they're just showing you love from afar because they can't. They're showing you effort from afar. So yeah, it's like-

Chris Williamson 48:31 Thank you

Dylan Gossett 48:32 ... and again, I'm not saying that like AI doesn't have its place in certain parts of the world. Like obviously the, I mean, the, it's just technological advance. Like for example, I don't, I don't go hand wash my clothes and hang them up on the clothesline outside every day.

Chris Williamson 48:44 Yeah, we're not churning our own butter.

Dylan Gossett 48:45 You know what I'm saying? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I gotta live hard.

Chris Williamson 48:48 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 48:48 You know? 'Cause like obviously we advance, but there comes a line where it's like, all right, yeah, I can, I can... Especially I, I think where I, the line crosses for me is when it's like artistic or sentimental, right? Or-

Chris Williamson 49:01 Mm-hmm

Dylan Gossett 49:01 ... I'm sure there's other stuff, but artistic it's like the whole point of art is that it's not perfect and it feels like something only humans can do, right? So it, it feels very natural. And then with the sentimental stuff, that's the whole point of like you said, writing a letter. I'm not writing you a letter just so you can have the piece of paper. I'm writing you a letter and putting something in here that I think is gonna have an emotional effect on you, just like it, I'm having an emotional effect writing it, and I'm doing it... And I'm not, like, saying that writing a letter is hard, but I don't know. I think we're saying the same thing. If-

Chris Williamson 49:33 It's harder than putting the prompt into ChatGPT and getting it to do it

Dylan Gossett 49:35 ... it's better than just checking the box.

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Chris Williamson 50:40 The decision that everybody's gonna make is, "Okay, do I want to do the harder thing?"

Dylan Gossett 50:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 50:46 And it's weird because do hard things is kind of this tagline that everybody likes to lean into.

Dylan Gossett 50:52 Yep.

Chris Williamson 50:52 The 4:30 AM cold plunge, and the runs, and the weightlifting, and the, you sticking to your diet. But the decision of do I want to do the harder thing or the easier thing is gonna encroach into every area of life.

Dylan Gossett 51:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:04 It's gonna encroach into whether or not you want to ord- Like, if you one-click order flowers that goes to your missus' door-

Dylan Gossett 51:12 Mm

Chris Williamson 51:12 ... because she's having a hard day, or if you drive to the fucking florist and pick them up and hand deliver them to her-

Dylan Gossett 51:18 Yeah

Chris Williamson 51:18 ... there is just a, there is a, a, a explicit real-world difference-

Dylan Gossett 51:22 Yeah

Chris Williamson 51:22 ... right? A tangible difference between those two things. But as things... Convenience begins to encroach on the rest of life, everybody's gonna have to make that decision for more and more and more stuff.

Dylan Gossett 51:32 Y- Oh, yeah. Uh, like, yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's, it's not... I saw this one picture where it was like, it started as sit-down restaurant, it turned into drive-through, and now it's Uber Eats.

Chris Williamson 51:45 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 51:45 It, you know, it was movies, and then it's YouTube, and now it's YouTube Shorts.

Chris Williamson 51:49 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 51:49 Like, it's just, it just keeps going. Yeah, and it just keeps expanding.

Chris Williamson 51:52 It's derivative. It becomes distilled down.

Dylan Gossett 51:54 Yeah, and it's like, even, I mean, I, I find myself... I used to never do this, but I found myself literally this week, and I, uh, of... I was watching an Instagram Reel, and I was wa- I was watching it, and I was like, "Let me hold down. Let me go times two speed here." You know? And I'm like, "What am I doing?" Like, I just... And, again, it's like-

Chris Williamson 52:11 I need to, I need to speed fuck myself-

Dylan Gossett 52:12 Yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 52:12 ... to get the algorithm harder. Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 52:13 And it's like, and it's like you're saying. It's not just that. That might not be the bad thing. I don't know. Maybe you're, you're, you're on, you're on a bathroom break, and you're like, "I don't know. Get, get to the point." You know? [laughs] I, you know, I get that. But it starts creeping into everything. 'Cause yeah, 20 years down the road, you know, with, with a, with a musician, and they're like, "All right, we gotta pay the bills. We need a new song." I just don't have it in me. What... Write a song.

Chris Williamson 52:35 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 52:36 It's pretty good. It's gonna sell. Like, what's, what's stopping people from doing that if it's just every, every year it's just one extra thing?

Chris Williamson 52:43 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 52:43 You know?

Chris Williamson 52:44 Well, so you know, think about how songs are recorded now. You go into a studio. You can play a song, like pluck by pluck, and just chop that together.

Dylan Gossett 52:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:54 And then you got the perfect take-

Dylan Gossett 52:56 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 52:56 ... the perfect take. Whereas it would've been, what, 50 years ago, a single fucking room.

Dylan Gossett 53:01 Yeah, well c- yeah, 'cause they were also on tape.

Chris Williamson 53:03 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 53:03 So they... I mean, they, they l- they legitimately had to make a decision right there in the moment and say, "Hey, either we're running out of tape," or, "Hey, it's literally not worth our time to go..." They had, like, X-Acto knives. They would have to cut these things together, splice it physically, tape it up, run it through the machine. Like, it, it's... And now it's just, "Yeah, just hit it again. You're fine."

Chris Williamson 53:27 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 53:27 So that's why you hear on so many of these old records, like an Elton John record or something like that, you'll hear, like, in the background some, like, a, a hat fell on the keys, but it was a great take. And they're like, "We can't-"

Chris Williamson 53:39 Keep the hat in.

Dylan Gossett 53:39 "... keep it." Like, you'll hear, like, the little key hit. Like, you know? And they'll just keep it in there, and it kinda gives records life a little bit. Like, there's, there's certain things... Like, I think in, in the records that I make, I think, like, my... I think the imperfections almost make it perfect sometimes.

Chris Williamson 53:54 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 53:54 And it, it's just-

Chris Williamson 53:55 But you know as soon as you say imperfections give something a degree of life, the imperfections then begin to be engineered.

Dylan Gossett 54:03 Oh, so... Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:03 Everything becomes marketable, right? The authenticity, the stripped back-ness.

Dylan Gossett 54:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:08 "Well, oh, uh, this great story about Elton John. We must have a hat."

Dylan Gossett 54:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:12 "Has anyone got a hat in the room? We can make the hat fall at the right time."

Dylan Gossett 54:14 It's, it's very... So okay, uh, and look, I... Whoever's listening to this, I don't know if any Nashville producers are listening to this, I'm probably not talking about you. I've had a lot of great experiences in the whole Nashville production thing.

Chris Williamson 54:25 Disclaimer out of the way. Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 54:26 But there are a lot of that, a l- a lot in that setting that it's very performative, like you said. It's very... Uh, it's like they want it to be natural so bad that they're gonna make it natural. Does that make sense?

Chris Williamson 54:45 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 54:45 Like you said, like, it, it's going to be-

Chris Williamson 54:46 Engineered naturalness

Dylan Gossett 54:47 ... artificially natural, like you're saying.

Chris Williamson 54:49 Yes, artificially natural. Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 54:51 And it's like, what's the craziest thing we... Get your car keys. And, you know, that's how they did it.

Chris Williamson 54:54 [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 54:55 You know? And that, that's how they did it on whatever it's called.

Chris Williamson 54:58 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 54:59 And no, we need to be living in the m- And I'm like-

Chris Williamson 55:00 I think it's-

Dylan Gossett 55:01 Yeah

Chris Williamson 55:01 ... it's just this sort of commodification of everything. And as... If it's less gatekept by technology or by expertise, it means that more people are gonna be tempted to do it. The problem is going to be, can we remove drudgery from people's lives without taking away the stuff that actually matters to them?

Dylan Gossett 55:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:20 Without taking away Not just, like, you want to be involved in this thing, but it is genuinely better for you to take a longer route round, to take a higher friction route from where you are to the outcome of this thing because it's going to be better for you.

Dylan Gossett 55:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:36 Maybe the work will be worse-

Dylan Gossett 55:38 Yeah

Chris Williamson 55:38 ... but the win will mean something-

Dylan Gossett 55:40 Yeah

Chris Williamson 55:40 ... and it won't be as forgettable. Uh, you know, yeah, it, it, it's strange. I guess it's w- it's weird in music because for such a long time there's been teams of writers-

Dylan Gossett 55:48 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 55:48 ... and, you know, bands even. It's like, okay, so you said the lyric, and maybe the fucking guy that wrote the lyrics left.

Dylan Gossett 55:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:54 It's like a 10-year-old song.

Dylan Gossett 55:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:56 Right? And the guy, maybe he's dead.

Dylan Gossett 55:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:57 You know, he's, oh, well, y- he's, he's not even a part of the band anymore, but we're still singing it and it's ours. We get to own it.

Dylan Gossett 56:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:02 So it's... There's been more fluidity, but that also, I think, means it could be a slipperier slope.

Dylan Gossett 56:07 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:08 Mastering. What do you... Fucking, you must be able to one-click master track. Not as well as a elite audio engineer now, I'm guessing.

Dylan Gossett 56:15 W-

Chris Williamson 56:15 But you must be able to one-click master tracks now with-

Dylan Gossett 56:18 For sure. I, I mean, and again, like, some of it is good. So I, I wanna say, like, I, I wanna be... It's important I say that some of it is good because there's also a lot less gatekeepers nowadays in music.

Chris Williamson 56:29 Mm-hmm.

Dylan Gossett 56:30 It is so sick that I can write a song called, like, Coal that I believe in, and I can record it on my laptop. I put it out, and it does better than 99% of all the money-pushed multi-songwriter songs. I love it.

Chris Williamson 56:48 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 56:48 That's awesome. I love it. That's, that's great. I think that is a great side of, like, entry access.

Chris Williamson 56:55 Yes. Yes.

Dylan Gossett 56:56 Um, but like you said-

Chris Williamson 56:56 It's democratized it so that you can compete.

Dylan Gossett 56:58 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 56:59 Yep.

Dylan Gossett 56:59 But you're right. Like, it, it's a slippery... 'Cause as soon as people go, "That works. Hold on." And it's like, [laughs] "Hold on, we're the millionaires." Like [laughs] yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:06 Where's fucking, where's, where's Gossett AI? How do I make-

Dylan Gossett 57:10 Y- yeah. Dude, but it's like, that works. It's only a matter of time. That, that's the th- maybe that's what I'm trying to get at. I'm not trying to sound, like, bleak. Like, everything that's good, it's only, you-

Chris Williamson 57:19 Yeah. It'll be commoditized eventually

Dylan Gossett 57:20 ... you know, it's only a matter of time. Yeah. But it kind of feels like that, like, in, in the industry. There are thousands of people working every single day to find the next new thing.

Chris Williamson 57:26 Yep.

Dylan Gossett 57:27 So when you have something like Coal or something, like, I don't know, anyone else in this industry that has a song, people are going to be like, "What did they do? Why did it work? How can we replicate it?"

Chris Williamson 57:37 How do we do it? Yep.

Dylan Gossett 57:38 "And how do we just dump a truckload of money behind it and just make it happen?"

Chris Williamson 57:43 Did you see, did you see that, uh, was it Variety piece about Geese? You know that band, Geese?

Dylan Gossett 57:46 Uh, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:47 Yeah. And-

Dylan Gossett 57:48 I didn't see the, I didn't see the piece you're talking about.

Chris Williamson 57:49 It was, like, a big article about how the engine, the clipping engine and stuff was-

Dylan Gossett 57:54 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 57:54 ... behind that band. I think the band were pretty successful beforehand.

Dylan Gossett 57:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:56 And then it's just, you know, you really put the fucking fuel-

Dylan Gossett 58:00 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:00 ... nitrous boost button on. Between where was this song originated, who wrote the lyrics? Because is it an AI song if AI helped you to craft the lyrics, and then you sang them? What about if-

Dylan Gossett 58:14 I believe, I think so.

Chris Williamson 58:14 But my point is-

Dylan Gossett 58:15 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:15 ... like, at what point, how far back do you go?

Dylan Gossett 58:17 Uh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:18 Okay, so I'm really struggling with, um, Rhymers Block, the t-

Dylan Gossett 58:21 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:21 ... it's an app for iPhone. I'm really struggling with a, a word that rhymes with small, but fits this... Oh, I'll just go and-

Dylan Gossett 58:28 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:28 ... it's like, at what point-

Dylan Gossett 58:29 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:29 ... where do you draw the line?

Dylan Gossett 58:31 That, I think that's a great question.

Chris Williamson 58:32 And as technology begins to democratize it, the only place that you have this, that, that you can make this decision is my own kind of moral gauge-

Dylan Gossett 58:41 Yeah

Chris Williamson 58:41 ... for what I want on the other side of it.

Dylan Gossett 58:43 Yeah, I think, I do... I mean, there's a gray area, but I think it's one of those things where it's like, you know. You know what I'm saying? It's one of th- like, I, I feel like-

Chris Williamson 58:52 The ick radar.

Dylan Gossett 58:52 Yeah. A- and it's, it's, I mean, I, I even th- i- it's... I'm not trying to get, like, too deep, but I think this goes with a lot of things. I think there are people that are just going to always push the envelope of being like, "Well, what am I, what am I allowed to do?" Like, always trying to be like, "How much wrong can I do before I get in trouble?"

Chris Williamson 59:16 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 59:16 And I try not to look at it that way. I try to be like-

Chris Williamson 59:19 'Cause you don't wanna moralize it.

Dylan Gossett 59:21 Yeah. And I also just, I just, like, I, I don't have... I don't, I don't think I have that thing in me where I'm like, how f- how, how much can I squeeze out of this t- with AI to help me write this song without people thinking that it's AI?

Chris Williamson 59:34 Yep.

Dylan Gossett 59:34 And it's like, I think if you're doing that, like, you know what you're doing. But I think if you're, if you're, if you're a kid at home and you're trying to, like, you wrote this song, and you're like, "Dang, what's that word?" Open up the dictionary, open up, like, a, a rhyming-

Chris Williamson 59:48 Yeah. Yeah

Dylan Gossett 59:48 ... uh, website or something, and you find, you're like, "Oh, cool." That kid has no intention of being like, you know, "Oh"-

Chris Williamson 59:54 This, this fucking word was written by AI.

Dylan Gossett 59:56 Yeah, like, that, that's his song. You know? Like, I, I... Because he's... I don't think that that, that someone like that's pushing the env- like, I don't know. I, I don't, I don't know how to, like, word this correctly, but I, I just think, I think you know. You know. Like, i- i- if... Or do you? I mean, like, there's also the debate about, you know, uh, producers and m- mixers and engineers and stuff, like you said. Like, what if they use AI to kinda, like, help them with the EQ?

Chris Williamson 1:00:23 Oh, the side chain's really hard.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:24 The EQs.

Chris Williamson 1:00:25 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:25 Yeah, and it's like, yeah, okay. I, you know, as long as the meat and potatoes, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 Well, there's an argument, there's, hey, there's an argument to be made that as soon as you've got doors and you're like, "Hey," back in the day, dude, we used to take a fucking lead, take it out of that synth, put it into that synth.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:39 You wanna chain those things together-

Dylan Gossett 1:00:40 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:00:40 ... go and get your fu- go and, go and get your quarter jack.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:42 Yeah. It's like, it's losing an electric piano. You know? So yeah, again, I, I think it comes down to, like, you just know in your gut. Like, you're, you're either making music or something else is making the music for you.

Chris Williamson 1:00:52 It's sick.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:53 And it's like,

Dylan Gossett 1:00:54 I don't know.

Chris Williamson 1:00:54 It seems like, uh, you take a very sort of emotionally informed approach to music.

Dylan Gossett 1:00:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:59 It's quite self-deprecating.

Dylan Gossett 1:01:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:01:01 Sort of stark sometimes-

Dylan Gossett 1:01:03 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:01:03 ... I think. Is that fair?

Dylan Gossett 1:01:04 Yeah. Uh, I think, I think it kind of depends. Like, and I also think it really changes the mood of the song itself. Like, uh, I don't know. I, I find those songs can be easier to write. I feel like when I write my happy songs, they come off cheesier. When I, when I feel like it's the same level of lyrical writing, um- Dude, and it's also-- Yeah, it also... If I put, if I put Coal in, like, an EDM track, I guarantee people would be like-- They wouldn't really care about what the lyrics are s- Again, it's like it doesn't feel sad.

Chris Williamson 1:01:35 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:01:35 It's like, have you seen, have you seen people that play, like, s- ballad piano like the Drake & Josh theme song?

Chris Williamson 1:01:40 [laughs] No.

Dylan Gossett 1:01:41 And it, it sounds like a beautifully written song, and you're like, "It's kinda deep."

Chris Williamson 1:01:45 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 1:01:45 Like, it's kind of a sad, you know, what- whatever. But it's like, it's all how it's framed. I, I, I think-- I mean, I think of, like, Jason Isbell when it comes to this, but if you put his type of lyricism into his type of guitar playing and his voice and the raspiness, like, it's gonna come off that way-

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 1:02:03 ... um, whether it's intentioned to be or not. Or then you, you can go listen to, like, a Turnpike song, who I think is some of the best writers in the world, but maybe they're four on the floor, and it's kind of a more upbeat groove, but he's talking about how, like, "My dad's gonna whoop my ass if I'm ever back in this county." Like, it's, it's might be a sad feeling song or whatever it is. I'm not trying to say that song specifically, but, um, and it feels upbeat. You're like, "Oh, I can get down to this. This is a party." You know? It's a good time. So I think-

Chris Williamson 1:02:28 Yeah. Forget the, forget the lyrics or remember.

Dylan Gossett 1:02:29 Yeah, I think, I think it's... Yeah, I think it's sometimes the way that it's played on the guitar. You're playing different, like, minor chords and stuff like that. Um, but I, I like to lean into that. Like, I feel like I love listening to music like that. Even when I'm, like, happy, I'll be, I'll be the happiest guy in the world, and I'll be like, "Let me put on a sad one.

Dylan Gossett 1:02:46 Let me put on a slow one."

Chris Williamson 1:02:47 Why do you think male sadness is dominating modern country?

Dylan Gossett 1:02:51 I think, I think two things. Uh, I think, for one, um, I think it's the only place where I feel like a lot of guys, a lot of males, um, feel like they're allowed to talk about it, like, without being, without... You know, like, for example, if I went up to, like, my buddies or in our group chat and said how I felt in Coal, it would come off of like, like, "Brother, get it together. What are you talking about?" But you put country music behind it, and it's like, "Dang, that's a beautiful song. I actually connect with that," but I'm not gonna, like, say I do. You know? It, it feels like it's guys', uh, almost like a dude therapy session, and I think that's why so many people write about it is that it connects really deeply. It almost like it says the feelings that a lot of these dudes, I think, feel, but they're, like, blue collar fellas. They're like, "I'm not telling, I'm not telling nobody how I feel." But like, dude, when-- At our shows, the, the people who are s- like, heart and soul singing it out there in the crowd are the, are the dudes. Arms around each other. The-- I promise they would leave that show, and they would never tell each other about their feelings. But they come to the show, and they're looking at each other screaming these lyrics, and it's like, yeah, it's, like, cathartic. It's like it's their-

Chris Williamson 1:04:00 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:00 It's, like, a thing. So I think... I don't know. I think it just comes off well. It's, like, the way to, way to do it as a dude-

Chris Williamson 1:04:07 But I wonder if it's-

Dylan Gossett 1:04:07 ... while still being cool. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:04:08 I wonder if it's a weird comment on masculinity that men feel comfortable seeing their emotions reflected in lyrics but uncomfortable exposing them in daily life.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:17 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:17 It's like this guy has said this thing that I feel. He's put words to it. I'm happy to sing it.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:23 I'm hap- I'm happy to sing it at his show.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:26 And I'm still... It, it feels like there is room for that. It's a, it's a really interesting sort of balance between those two things.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:36 Yeah. It, and it almost, it almost feels like sometimes the opposite for women. Like, it almost feels like-

Chris Williamson 1:04:42 Female songs are empowering, and male songs are about vulnerability.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:45 Yeah, but, but and it's, and it's the opposite too, where it's like when women sing about vulnerability, almo- it's almost like the male crowd is like, "Here we go. Another, you know, another female country artist talking about a breakup."

Chris Williamson 1:04:57 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:04:57 But it's like when guys do it, it's like, "Brother, I'm, you know, [laughs] I got you."

Chris Williamson 1:05:01 [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 1:05:01 So it is. It kinda feels like that's, that's the male outlet sometimes-

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 Mm

Dylan Gossett 1:05:06 ... is, like, through music. And then I feel like the girl outlet... Again, I'm, I'm not trying to be the guy speaking on behalf of all the women out there. I would never [laughs] do that. But-

Chris Williamson 1:05:15 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 1:05:15 ... um, yeah, it kinda feels like it's the opposite, where it's, you know.

Chris Williamson 1:05:19 I thought-

Dylan Gossett 1:05:19 I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong

Chris Williamson 1:05:20 ... I thought, uh, I Sit in Parks by Kelsea Ballerini was such a fascinating fucking concept for a song.

Dylan Gossett 1:05:25 I, I haven't heard that.

Chris Williamson 1:05:26 Oh, dude. So it's her talking about, um, a relationship that she used to be in, and she didn't go through with it because her partner wanted to have kids, and she wanted to focus on her career.

Dylan Gossett 1:05:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:39 And then a few years later, she's sitting in the park on a weekend looking at this family playing with the kid, and she's asking, "Have I made a mistake?"

Dylan Gossett 1:05:47 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:47 "Have I m- made a choice that I can't reverse?"

Dylan Gossett 1:05:50 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:51 Uh, "So I take my Lexapro, and I, uh, puff on my vape," and the album's due in March, and m- my next tour's coming up, and my friend's about to have a kid, and I'm worried-

Dylan Gossett 1:06:03 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:06:03 ... I'm worried I missed this thing. And that was really, like, fucking raw.

Dylan Gossett 1:06:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 Like, very, very complex.

Dylan Gossett 1:06:08 I guess, yeah, maybe I might, I might have missed the mark 'cause also Penthouse by Kelsea Ballerini, like, that's also a great song.

Chris Williamson 1:06:15 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:06:15 And it's, like, uh, kind of about a relationship. So yeah, may- maybe I'm wrong, but-

Chris Williamson 1:06:20 I just th- I, I think that you're right. I think that the, especially a lot of the country music tropes, maybe that's the reason. Maybe that's one of the reasons why, that if you hear a guy talking about vulnerability, it feels rarer.

Dylan Gossett 1:06:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:34 And it's now being done through this vehicle-

Dylan Gossett 1:06:36 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:06:36 ... which is music, and it's, uh, almost like the tortured hero. The only way that he can even open his heart is to do it to a chord.

Dylan Gossett 1:06:45 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:06:45 You know? It's like-

Dylan Gossett 1:06:46 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 ... that's the, the excuse-

Dylan Gossett 1:06:48 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:06:48 ... that's being given. But it's also a defense mechanism. It's a defense mechanism because if guys aren't comfortable about talking about it normally, this frames it in an artistic and romantic way that just creates a little bit of distance.

Dylan Gossett 1:07:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:02 That I don't actually need to show myself in the same way as you said yourself.

Dylan Gossett 1:07:04 Yeah. And it's accepted.

Chris Williamson 1:07:05 If I open up in the, in the group chat, it's different to what's gonna happen-

Dylan Gossett 1:07:07 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:07:08 ... if I open up in a song. What, uh, the kinda thing that blows my mind is how many guys would love to have that outlet but aren't singer-songwriters-

Dylan Gossett 1:07:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:07:17 ... and how difficult it is to find something else 'cause I think, yeah, writing songs, maybe poetry-

Dylan Gossett 1:07:26 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:07:26 ... but that's perhaps even more inaccessible than, than some singer-songwriting.

Dylan Gossett 1:07:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:32 Essaying, microblogging stuff on Substack, and you can write in the third person, and that feels... That's probably a little bit more accessible. But fuck me, beyond that, it's like you're into the world of YouTube and-

Dylan Gossett 1:07:43 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:07:43 ... conversations with your therapist.

Dylan Gossett 1:07:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:45 So it's r- I don't know, it's a-

Dylan Gossett 1:07:47 And I guess, like, that, that might be, like, the dudes that come to those shows, you know, that's like-

Chris Williamson 1:07:51 It's group therapy

Dylan Gossett 1:07:52 ... it's like, "Man, I can't sing it, but I'm gonna t- like, I'm gonna-

Chris Williamson 1:07:55 Just gotta

Dylan Gossett 1:07:55 ... try to," you know, in or out, get in the car or do it or, um, yeah, drink and then talk to the buddies, like, you know. [chuckles]

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Chris Williamson 1:09:03 What, uh, what emotions have you found to be the hardest to write about?

Dylan Gossett 1:09:09 Ooh. Probably, like, happy, I think. And, uh, not, not in a way it's like, "Oh, man, I can't write about being happy," 'cause I can, but I feel like it, it doesn't come off the tongue as easy as, like... As, like, a sadder, more heartfelt song. I feel like I can really paint that picture versus, like, when I'm singing a song... And, and maybe, like, and I mean, like, happy. I don't mean, like, love. I feel like I can write really well about lo- I, I feel like I can write about my wife, like, a lot.

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:09:43 I have. I've written a ton of songs about her, and I feel like those are some of my favorites I've ever written. Um, but I'm talking about just straight up this one's gonna come in, come, come on in the bar.

Chris Williamson 1:09:55 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:09:55 I struggle with that. Um, I don't know why. I, I think some people nail it, and I've just... I, I, I'm, I can't. It's not always there.

Chris Williamson 1:10:04 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:05 I, I, I mean, I spoke to Dan and Shay about this. Luke Combs, fucking unbelievable.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:11 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:11 Like, got as much swagger as it's possible for a white guy to have.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:15 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:16 Like, he's the Blackest white guy-

Dylan Gossett 1:10:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 1:10:17 ... that you can think of.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:18 And, um, but when you think about the, that sort of arc over the last, what, decade or so-

Dylan Gossett 1:10:24 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:10:24 ... of his, of his songwriting, you go from very sort of tortured, uncertain, tumultuous, get in his crises, and now there's a bit of me that wants him to smoke some crack.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:35 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:36 There's a bit of me that wants him to, like, have that friction again in life-

Dylan Gossett 1:10:41 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:10:41 ... because, uh, things are going well, and my son misses me when I go away, but I do come back, and, like, my dad's getting older, and that's-

Dylan Gossett 1:10:47 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:10:47 ... gonna be hard when it doesn't happen, and he's still fucking ripping it.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:51 But how much harder you have to work-

Dylan Gossett 1:10:53 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:10:53 ... to make a banging song when you don't have that friction in your life.

Dylan Gossett 1:10:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:00 And you're almost beginning to concoct stories or you're hearing things that have happened to other people-

Dylan Gossett 1:11:06 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:06 ... or, you know, confabulating ideas and, and, and tales of an, a, an imagined world.

Dylan Gossett 1:11:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:11:11 A different world that you could have lived in.

Dylan Gossett 1:11:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:13 Right? This is what I could have been. It's like your life's so good that you-

Dylan Gossett 1:11:16 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:16 ... have to imagine-

Dylan Gossett 1:11:16 Yeah, yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:16 ... what you don't have in order-

Dylan Gossett 1:11:17 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:11:17 ... to be able to create. Because for some reason, people seem to resonate a lot with that pain and that vulnerability.

Dylan Gossett 1:11:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:24 And again, if art is imitating life and your life's going really fucking well-

Dylan Gossett 1:11:28 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:11:28 ... what are you gonna be singing about?

Dylan Gossett 1:11:31 Yeah. What's, what... Yeah. What's, what's your sad song you write?

Chris Williamson 1:11:33 Show me your pain.

Dylan Gossett 1:11:34 Yeah. Yeah, and, and again, like, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world too when people like... 'Cause I, I also love being a storyteller.

Chris Williamson 1:11:39 Yep.

Dylan Gossett 1:11:39 I love writing songs about... I have a song called "Lone Old Cowboy," which is about, you know, a guy going and getting cheated on, killing the guy and on the run, and I'm like, I, I never did that, but I think I, I love the storytelling aspect, and that comes from, I think-

Chris Williamson 1:11:53 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 1:11:53 ... kinda more like that Western kinda swing, old mu- like Marty Robbins, like bal- like the gunfighter ballad and everything. There's like a whole album of just, like, ballads written about, like, gunfighters and stuff like that.

Chris Williamson 1:12:05 It's almost like fables-

Dylan Gossett 1:12:06 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:12:06 ... in a way.

Dylan Gossett 1:12:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:07 Mythology.

Dylan Gossett 1:12:07 Yeah. But then, but then there also gets to, like, yeah, you start getting into what feels like it could be a real story. Like, obviously no one thinks that I went and shot this guy and ran away. But, you know, when I, when I sing a song about maybe some- a stranger that I see, that I'm like, "I'm just gonna make up what I think his life is like and tell that story," um, I think that's also sick. I think that's really cool.

Chris Williamson 1:12:29 Do you know where "Jolene" came from, the Dolly Parton song?

Dylan Gossett 1:12:32 I don't know. I, maybe I've... I, I don't think so.

Chris Williamson 1:12:34 I'm pretty sure it's written about a bank teller, bank assistant that flirted with her husband, and-

Dylan Gossett 1:12:44 That's cool

Chris Williamson 1:12:44 ... she didn't use the name of the bank teller but found a lady at a party who had the name Jolene-

Dylan Gossett 1:12:51 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:12:51 ... and placed the name of the lady. The story came from a beautiful bank teller who flirted with Dolly's husband, Carl Dean, shortly after they got married. Dolly said the woman was tall, redhead, and paid Carl a lot of attention. Carl enjoyed the attention. Dolly joked that he seemed to spend an awful lot of time at the bank for someone-

Dylan Gossett 1:13:05 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:13:05 ... with so little money, became the seed for the song. It was more of a playful thing. The name Jolene came from a totally different person, an eight-year-old redheaded fan who asked Dolly for an autograph. She thought Jolene was such a beautiful name that she told the girl she was gonna use. She wrote Jolene, and I will always love you. That's not right. She didn't write I will always love you. It was working 9:00 to 5:00. Um, she didn't write I will always love you, did she? That-

Dylan Gossett 1:13:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:28 Did she?

Dylan Gossett 1:13:28 Yeah, that was... That's her song. That's her song, and then Whitney Houston sang it on... What was, what was the movie? And then, and then I think Dolly Was, I think Dolly publicly said, like, "That's your song now." Like, it's... No, that was, yeah, that's, that's, that's Dolly's song

Chris Williamson 1:13:41 "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" in the same day.

Dylan Gossett 1:13:44 Talk about crazy.

Chris Williamson 1:13:45 Yeah, fuck you with your-

Dylan Gossett 1:13:46 [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:13:46 ... fucking 25-minute ball.

Dylan Gossett 1:13:47 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:48 Yeah, get on her level, dude.

Dylan Gossett 1:13:48 Yeah, she's like, "Let me just write some of the two cr-

Chris Williamson 1:13:51 Two absolute bangers. But yeah, um, s- again, you've c- concocted this story. You've taken, you know-

Dylan Gossett 1:13:57 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:13:57 ... one element from the other.

Dylan Gossett 1:13:58 Oh, and then I guess it was insp- so Linda Ronstadt sang it. Every song that ever she sings is just better. Um, that's so cool.

Chris Williamson 1:14:06 Whitney's record became the best-sell- one of the best-selling singles of all time. 14 consecutive weeks at number one. Pretty sure that, uh, this has just been knocked off the top by, uh, Ella.

Dylan Gossett 1:14:18 Really?

Chris Williamson 1:14:18 Yeah, uh, because it's Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey who both had the 14, and I'm pretty sure that 15 is now-

Dylan Gossett 1:14:26 Ella.

Chris Williamson 1:14:27 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:14:27 It's crazy.

Chris Williamson 1:14:28 Fucking wild.

Dylan Gossett 1:14:29 Good ver- That's, that's

Dylan Gossett 1:14:30 so sick.

Chris Williamson 1:14:30 I wonder whether there's any emotions that you want to sing about but you don't think that the market has an appetite for.

Dylan Gossett 1:14:37 Hmm. I mean, okay, here, here's a great example, and I know a lot of artists struggle with this. I'll play an acoustic song on my back porch, and I'll play it a certain way, but I know the studio's different. Studio version's different. It's got some drums, has a little, you know, slide maybe in it. It's just kind of more upbeat, and then you'll put out that version, and everyone's like, "Just, just don't change it."

Chris Williamson 1:14:58 Give me the porch version.

Dylan Gossett 1:14:59 Give me the por- You know, and it's like, I think you have to try to expand your sound. Like I, I was watching that Billy Joel documentary. So cool, by the way, if you haven't seen it.

Chris Williamson 1:15:09 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 1:15:09 It's like five hours long. It's incredible.

Chris Williamson 1:15:11 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:15:11 His life is just, it's what the heck. But he always made it a point to change the way his sound was. Bob Dylan did the same thing where he went to the Newport Folk Festival, and everyone was like, you know, "Get your harmonica out," and he's like, "I want to play an electric guitar." And it, it's, it's, uh, you feel like you don't want to get trapped in like your own trope. Like I, I'm not trying to get trapped in this like I'm an acoustic guy, I'm gonna sing about how hard my life is-

Chris Williamson 1:15:35 Yeah

Dylan Gossett 1:15:36 ... and, but you also want to service the people who listen to your music the most. Like, you know that's what they want, and that's, and it's like, yeah, it's this, it's a, it's like this push-and-pull thing. So I, I feel like, feel like I've done the best job that I can. Like I don't really put too much pressure on it. I'm still making music that I love. I really not, I don't try to overthink it.

Chris Williamson 1:15:55 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:15:55 Um, but yeah, I know a lot of artists that fall into that thing where it's like, "I want to put out different music, but I just know it's probably not gonna do well. And if I do it, if I put out this song, it'd probably do a lot better because that's what I'm known for. That's what people want to hear."

Chris Williamson 1:16:10 You know the idea of audience capture? Have you heard of that?

Dylan Gossett 1:16:12 Uh-uh.

Chris Williamson 1:16:12 Okay. So it's from my world's, uh, content creation, YouTube. Um, you test the ground with a bunch of different content. Maybe you start to pick up a little bit of speed.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:22 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:23 And then you find something that hooks a bit. You start talking about, uh, politics, but you talk about it from a libertarian lens, and you're, you're sort of, you're maybe a bit more bombastic than you used to be.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:34 Oh wow, they like that. Oh well, I, I'm being rewarded for that.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:38 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:16:38 I'll, I'll go again, and you get a bit more bombastic, and you get a bit more bombastic.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:42 And before you know it, you're like peak Alex Jones.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:44 Yeah. [laughs]

Chris Williamson 1:16:45 You know?

Dylan Gossett 1:16:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:45 Sort of shouting and screaming and, and-

Dylan Gossett 1:16:46 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:16:47 ... and doing the thing, and you begin to throw red meat to your audience. And instead of creating what you want to create, you give them what you think they want.

Dylan Gossett 1:16:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:16:55 The problem with it is that you can achieve success with it because you're basically taking audience feedback, which in some ways is, is important and good. Like movies screen test the versions-

Dylan Gossett 1:17:04 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:17:04 ... right? And they check how w- what were people's reviews. Should we change this bit? This felt a bit slow.

Dylan Gossett 1:17:09 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:17:09 People didn't understand that. So you know, audience feedback's important. But if you're not careful, especially if you're doing something that's very iterative, over time your audience doesn't fall in love with you. They fall in love with your projection of what you think they want you to be.

Dylan Gossett 1:17:24 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:25 And you're like this weird reverse puppet thing-

Dylan Gossett 1:17:27 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:17:28 ... where the audience has got their hand inside of you doing this. And reliably, every single person that I've seen do it, and there's a bunch of people that have done it in, in my world and probably tons in yours as well, every single person eventually has ended up resenting the audience.

Dylan Gossett 1:17:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:17:41 Because what happens is you contort yourself into this weird shape-

Dylan Gossett 1:17:48 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:17:48 ... that you think the audience has rewarded you for, and then if they don't like what you're doing anymore, you feel so aggrieved because you betrayed yourself-

Dylan Gossett 1:17:58 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:17:58 ... for an audience that doesn't even want the act that you're playing.

Dylan Gossett 1:18:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:02 And it is so, it, it's so fucking reliable. So that's one side. That's audience capture. And then Ethan Strauss has got this fucking unbelievable post where he talks about criticism capture-

Dylan Gossett 1:18:12 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:18:12 ... which is the opposite side of it. So audience capture was this big term for a long time. People do what they think the audience wants.

Dylan Gossett 1:18:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:18 It's the musician who denies himself the move from acoustic to electronic or-

Dylan Gossett 1:18:24 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:18:24 ... a, a total pivot in terms of singing style because he doesn't think that the audience is gonna want it.

Dylan Gossett 1:18:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:30 That's your audience capture. Criticism capture is behaving in a way to avoid criticism or front run it from your audience instead. So instead of-

Dylan Gossett 1:18:39 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:18:39 ... acting out of encouraging desire, it's acting out of defending against hate.

Dylan Gossett 1:18:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:44 So what are people going to criticize me for doing most likely?

Dylan Gossett 1:18:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:49 And how do I front run that so that it doesn't happen? So you see this in the same way i- in my world. Um, people start to caveat a lot.

Dylan Gossett 1:18:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:18:59 They'll, before they say anything, "Well, we must remember that this..." They'll do this sort of land acknowledgment-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:03 Mm

Chris Williamson 1:19:03 ... this throat clearing thing beforehand. Or in a different way, people sort of steam out of the gates really aggressively and they, they're super ardent and militant and they, they're, uh, no quarter given, no nothing.

Dylan Gossett 1:19:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:19:13 And that's another way to do it. They're sort of pushing people out. They're front running the-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:16 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:19:16 ... the complaint. They're either, um, making themselves so inoffensive that they don't say anything so that they don't-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:23 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:19:23 ... get criticized, or they kind of shadow box this imaginary opponent who doesn't really exist-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:30 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:19:30 ... in an attempt to scare off critics. So, and you see it's so fucking warping.

Dylan Gossett 1:19:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:19:34 So it's just audience dynamics.

Dylan Gossett 1:19:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:19:36 Reward ... and pain, and people are playing with these two levers in an attempt to try and get as much pleasure and as little discomfort as possible-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:43 Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:19:43 ... and-

Dylan Gossett 1:19:44 And it kinda, it kinda leaves you on eggshells where you're just like, "Ah, I c-"

Chris Williamson 1:19:47 "I dunno what to do."

Dylan Gossett 1:19:48 Yeah. And es- dude, especially, like, nowadays with social media, everything's so instant that, like, I think that messes with artists quite a bit of just the most instant feedback you can have.

Chris Williamson 1:19:59 Mm.

Dylan Gossett 1:20:00 You'll, you'll walk off a stage, uh, you know, sit in the green room, and you're getting tweets [laughs] or, you know, or you're getting your stories up, and it's ... Yeah. It, it, you know, in with the phones. Yeah, I used to... I dunno. But-

Chris Williamson 1:20:13 Have you seen... Uh, c- Jared, can you pull up that video? I want you to show you that there's two videos going back to back that I think are, are pretty interesting. There's this Morgan Wallen video that's floating around at the moment, which is him in a fucking huge stadium-

Dylan Gossett 1:20:25 Mm-hmm

Chris Williamson 1:20:25 ... and someone saying, uh, "The performance standard for male versus female artists is so different, is all I will say." [upbeat country music] [laughs] That's closer to a military reenactment, uh, is so much... So anyway, and then look at this. Pull that other video up, Jared.

Dylan Gossett 1:21:02 Is it the Tate McRae one?

Chris Williamson 1:21:04 Yeah. I mean, it is just-

Dylan Gossett 1:21:06 An insane level of-

Chris Williamson 1:21:08 Of pro- It's the most polished. Like, look at this. [upbeat music] Oh, I'm gonna dip myself in literal liquid gold.

Dylan Gossett 1:21:22 Oh my God. Is it-

Chris Williamson 1:21:26 Like, actual... [laughs] I'm sorry.

Dylan Gossett 1:21:31 Yeah. I mean, that's like the whole, like, the Coachella, like Justin Bieber, the Nia and Sabrina thing.

Chris Williamson 1:21:35 I'm waiting for you to do-

Dylan Gossett 1:21:37 Oh, yeah. That's, that's-

Chris Williamson 1:21:38 ... dipped in liquid gold

Dylan Gossett 1:21:38 ... that's in the, that's in the next set. And we're doing that.

Chris Williamson 1:21:40 That's the next album?

Dylan Gossett 1:21:41 Yeah. Well, it's just, I mean, it's different. Like, I've been, I've been to a Morgan show. It also... Like, the production is still crazy. Him himself might not be doing-

Chris Williamson 1:21:50 He needs a dance number

Dylan Gossett 1:21:51 ... you know what I mean? But-

Chris Williamson 1:21:52 He needs a dance number

Dylan Gossett 1:21:53 ... yeah, I guess, like, dude, it's also, it's also this recency bias thing where people just, they just have to keep doing the next big thing and make it bigger, which, like, i- in entertainment, that's a good thing. Like, yeah, obviously, you should be challenged, but I mean, you go look at the female acts from like, I don't know, 1950 or even the male acts, like everyone's just on, on a microphone and just doing the same thing.

Chris Williamson 1:22:14 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:14 Like, I don't know. But yeah, I guess, when did that separation happen? 'Cause, I mean, we used to have, like, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and they were doing full production. Like, when did it become-

Chris Williamson 1:22:23 I mean, MGK's bringing it back.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:25 He's got full dance numbers on stage.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:27 He's got u- c- choreography.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:29 But d- like, everything that's, everything that's new is now old, you know?

Dylan Gossett 1:22:32 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:33 It's like-

Dylan Gossett 1:22:33 It's like, oh, they used to do that. Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:22:35 ... that's cool.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:22:36 Let's bring that back.

Chris Williamson 1:22:37 All right, dude, let round this out. What's your... Give us a little something from the, the new album, whatever you like the sound of.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:43 I'll play, I'll play a song called Clothesline. Um, [guitar strum] should I sing this one? Yeah, this one's good. I think this, I think this is gonna be [guitar strum] a single maybe. I don't know.

Chris Williamson 1:22:54 That's something you could do this afternoon.

Dylan Gossett 1:22:56 But no, but I do it on purpose. I, I... But this, I guess this is what I'm talking about. Like, when I, I... Yes, I could choose the singles and have it all on the calendar and rock it and just go, but I, I don't... Again, I, I think this is something that I probably, I struggle with, is kind of the system formula thing. I don't know. Like, I, I, I would rather go, like, week by week or, like, feel it out. I don't know. Yeah. I, I don't know. I, I, I, I, I think it's gonna be a single.

Chris Williamson 1:23:30 Unreal.

Dylan Gossett 1:23:30 But again, I, I also... Actually, this... And I will... I'll, I'll sing it right after this. But this brings me back to a point that we were talking about earlier, uh, about, like, teasing music and crowdsourcing and being like, "What song does better?" Like, uh, there's a part of me that misses the way of, like, when an artist puts out an album, you don't know what the songs are.

Chris Williamson 1:23:51 They've not Waterfall released five in advance.

Dylan Gossett 1:23:54 Yes. You don't know what the songs are, and you're stoked to dive in.

Chris Williamson 1:23:57 Yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:23:57 And I'm trying to play this middle ground of, like, okay, business-wise, yes, we should be teasing songs and, you know, getting people excited, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But there's a side of me that's like, man, wouldn't it be great just to give fans just 12 new songs that everyone can be excited for? And you have no idea what it sounds like. It might be a whole new sound. Like, that's kinda what used to happen. Or, like, I don't know. Like, I just think that side of it's cool. Like, my favorite thing, I know I brought them up a lot, um, but Turnpike, when they dropped Price of Admission, they did no singles. All they did was put up a billboard in the middle of the desert, and it was like, "Album's out in two weeks." I think that is so cool. Now, I'm not saying everyone can do that. Like-

Chris Williamson 1:24:37 Algorithmicly might not be the most-

Dylan Gossett 1:24:38 Exactly

Chris Williamson 1:24:39 ... effective way to do it-

Dylan Gossett 1:24:40 But that... Yeah

Chris Williamson 1:24:40 ... but it's sick.

Dylan Gossett 1:24:41 But that, yeah, and that... But that's where, like, as an artist, you have to kinda weigh your options between, you know, like we said earlier, like, what's authentic, and at the end of the day, like, what is going to get people this music? Like, what's going to pay the bills and do... You know, there's a fine line. So-

Chris Williamson 1:24:55 Unreal.

Dylan Gossett 1:24:56 But anyways, uh, this one's called Clothesline. I haven't played this one in a while. I'll... I should... I'll, I'll remember it. That's another thing, I'm bad with lyrics, but-

Chris Williamson 1:25:05 [laughs]

Dylan Gossett 1:25:09 [upbeat guitar music] Oh, am I plugged in? Yeah, I am. Cool. [upbeat guitar music] Uh, this one's called Clothesline. [upbeat guitar music] Baking soda on the bedsheets. Make 'em smell brand new. I'm sleeping in and I'm going out. Trying not to think too much about you. Don't call me later when the light's off. I know just how you do

1:25:46 Soon. 'Cause I know you're just gonna hang me out to dry. So close to being left on that clothes line. Oh, second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby I know you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry. Out to dry. So stopping early at yellow lights. Said it ain't worth the risk. You used to tell me that I'm moving too fast with your hand tied around my wrist. So treat me like it was years ago. Before you changed your mind. Said I was nothing but a hopeless old lover and baby maybe you'd be right. I know you're just gonna hang me out to dry. So close to being left on that clothes line. Oh, second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby I know you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry. Out to dry. Now I know you're just gonna hang me out to dry. So close to being left on that clothes line. Second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby I know you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry. Out to dry

Chris Williamson 1:28:23 Let's fucking go. Dylan Gossett, ladies and gentlemen.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:26 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 1:28:26 Dude, you rule.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:27 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 1:28:27 Congratulations. New album's out when?

Dylan Gossett 1:28:29 September 25th.

Chris Williamson 1:28:30 Fuck yeah.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:31 Yeah, so. Excited to have it.

Chris Williamson 1:28:32 Appreciate the heck out of you, man.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:33 Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Chris Williamson 1:28:34 All right. Goodbye, my beauties.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:35 Dude.

Chris Williamson 1:28:36 That was a great time, brother.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:37 Far.

Chris Williamson 1:28:38 Thanks for having me.

Dylan Gossett 1:28:40 That was so much fun.

Chris Williamson 1:28:43 A quick note. Lots of people tell us that YouTube unsubscribes them from the channel even though they already pressed it, so just check down there and see if the subscribe button is pressed. You get access to episodes before anybody else if you do. Supports me and the show, helps me to bring you bigger and better guests, uh, and it makes me very happy, so just go and give it a tap for me. I thank you. [blows kiss]