Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw), a Grammy Award-winning entertainer, author, and actor who has sold more than 106 million records worldwide, with 49 number-one singles and 19 number-one albums. You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour at TimMcGraw.com.
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Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity
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Tim Ferriss: Tim, it’s so nice to finally meet in person.
Tim McGraw: You as well, Tim.
Tim Ferriss: Really fantastic.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely. Big fan.
Tim Ferriss: Likewise. And I have not been to Nashville in so long and it’s just lovely around here.
Tim McGraw: It’s incredible and it changes every day. I mean, I get lost. Anytime I come downtown, I get lost because everything looks so different.
Tim Ferriss: Franklin looks like it’s just had facelift after facelift after facelift.
Tim McGraw: I know. And when I first moved here in ’89, all of that, Cool Springs, all that stuff was still all countryside. And I remember land being not very expensive out there, and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, I’m thinking, “Man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin, find me a club gig, everything would be great,” and then cut to two years later and it’s just everything’s through the roof. I mean, it’s just going crazy. And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all.
Tim Ferriss: You just offered me the perfect segue because —
Tim McGraw: Well, that’s what I’m here for.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you. You know, I appreciate this tango that we’re getting started here. I was looking back, you were kind enough to answer some questions for Tribe of Mentors.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, your book, yes.
Tim Ferriss: My last book. And I was going back to reread it and I looked at your bio, and at the time it read, “Tim McGraw has sold more than 50 million records,” dot, dot, dot, and all of these amazing accolades. And then I looked at the more recent and it’s more than 106 million records worldwide. Your longevity is mind-boggling on a number of different levels.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, me too. It’s mind-boggling to me too, people are still putting up with me.
Tim Ferriss: And I’m wondering, how have you thought about, or how has your creative process changed over the years? What has remained the same? What has changed? Because there’s so many ingredients that you have to get right for you to, not just last, but succeed over the decades that you have.
Tim McGraw: Well, one thing that doesn’t change is great songs. That’s the first check — should be the first check on any artist’s list. I mean, I write, I write for every project and I’ve been lucky enough to have some success with some of the things I write. But for me, the song always has to win. And wherever the song comes from, that’s what it’s going to be. And I listen to songs constantly. I’m constantly listening. Constantly writing, constantly listening. I’m hard on my own songs, that’s probably why I haven’t cut as many.
But my process is pretty much the same. I think material wise, I look for different kinds of music than I used to. I still like fun songs, and if I find the right fun song, I’ll do it, but it’s tougher, at a certain age, to sing about Daisy Dukes and tailgates all the time. It just doesn’t quite ring true to me. But every now and then something comes along that’s funny and you just do it because you’re an artist and you’re telling a story and you do it. But I gravitate more towards songs now that not only have meaning to me, but I think people can find a deeper meaning in their own situation, in their own life.
Tim Ferriss: I would love for you to, if you could, maybe unpack for us a song.
Tim McGraw: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: It could be any song. And what I’m angling for is, of course, the genesis, but also what do you do when the muse goes a little quiet, right?
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Because you can’t just, as a working musician be like, “Well, I’m going to wait a year for lightning to strike.” There’s probably some process behind it. And I am not a musician, but I’m deeply interested in it. One of my favorite albums of all time is Graceland by Paul Simon.
Tim McGraw: Oh, God, yes. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I was listening to his backstory as he explained how a number of those songs came together and I was just mesmerized.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So could you tell the story of any song that comes to mind and the genesis?
Tim McGraw: Oh, wow. Probably “Live Like You Were Dying” would be a good place to start because that song came to me, it was right after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma, and Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman sent that song to me. They wrote it about my dad when they found out that that was happening and sent it to me, and I never played it for my dad. He was sick at the time, I just felt that it was not appropriate to play a song about dying to your dad who was dying.
Although I’m sure he would have loved the idea of having a song that was about him or inspired by him. I didn’t play it for him, I had the song, and in his last days, he was at our farm, in the cabin at our farm, that’s where he wanted to be for his last days, and spent a lot of time with him. And I think it was right around two to three weeks after he passed away that we went to the studio to record. And we recorded in upstate New York at a place, right outside of Woodstock, at a place called Allaire Studios.
It’s beautiful. It’s an old Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of a mountain. Beautiful. We had like three foot of snow. We were there for three weeks. We sent two semi trucks full of Persian rugs and furniture and just decked the place out for the band and myself for three weeks while we were cutting. And my dad’s older brother, Hank, I invited him to come hang with us because Tug had just died and I know he wasn’t doing very well. So I invited him to come hang with us while we were recording. And it was probably six or seven days into the recording process, and we would start late and we’d go till three or four in the morning recording.
And I remember it was about one in the morning and I had this glass booth built in the middle of the studio so I could see everybody. And there was fireplaces at each end, and the fireplaces were roaring. I had my glass booth in the middle, we were cutting this on. My uncle Hank was smoking a joint. If you know my uncle Hank, he’s passed away, he passed away last year now, but he was an All-American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for 13 years, greatest guy in the world, looked just like Sam Elliott, but was a pothead from day one. So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to thinking, I thought, “This might be a good time to cut ‘Live Like You Were Dying.’”
So we’d just finished a song, we were doing some overdubs. I gathered everybody around and I gathered Hank around and I asked everybody what their opinion was, if they felt like tackling that song. And so about 2:00 in the morning, we cranked it up and then before the sun came up, we had that song done and it was so tough because I’m sitting in the booth, in the glass booth, recording the song, directing the band, getting the parts right. And I can’t help but watch my Uncle Hank the entire time that we’re doing it. And he’s just in a puddle over in the corner. And then he’s laughing. And then he starts telling stories about Tug after.
So we recorded the song, we got finished probably about four or five in the morning, and then we just sat and listened to Uncle Hank tell stories about Tug for the rest of the night. And I have to believe that all that magic of that night, of Hank being there, Tug had only been gone for a couple of weeks, and then Hank telling the stories afterwards, I have to believe that all of that went into that record.
Tim Ferriss: There’s so many different aspects to that, each of which you could unpack. When you mentioned it seemed like a good time or it might be a good time, why did it seem like a good time? Was it a feeling? Was it a feeling inside of you —
Tim McGraw: It was a feeling.
Tim Ferriss: — as you looked at your uncle?
Tim McGraw: As I looked at my uncle, it just felt like that I was being told to cut this song. Everything, the vibes coming off of him, what I was feeling at the time, and I think we had just cut something really up-tempo and pretty rocking. And I don’t know, it was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplaces, my uncle sitting there, being so late at night maybe, there was a melancholy that sort of struck at that time. I’m sure there were some other factors that might have been involved that struck about that time, when you’re in the studio that late. But it just felt like there was magic in the air at that moment and we wanted to capture it. And we always like to say, “You could have the greatest song in the world, the greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world — which I am not — but you could have all those factors and it still not work.” And we always say, “Sometimes God just walks through the room.”
Tim Ferriss: All right, I want to pick up on that thread and then we’re going to go back to some of your family history.
Tim McGraw: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: Because I mean, millions upon millions —
Tim McGraw: That could get convoluted.
Tim Ferriss: — upon millions know your music, but I think fewer know the origin story. So we will get to that. But I also want to ask, when is the first time when you felt God walk through the door with one of your songs, where you’re like, “Oh. Oh, okay. I think maybe we have some lightning in a bottle here.”
Tim McGraw: I would like to say it was “Don’t Take the Girl,” but I didn’t feel that way after we recorded it, because I never felt like I captured exactly what I wanted on that record. Until we finally finished it. When we finally finished it, I felt like we had it, but in the process of it, I felt like a struggle on that song. But “Indian Outlaw,” because I had that song for my first album and nobody liked it. The label didn’t like it, James Stroud didn’t like it, Byron liked it, but I couldn’t talk James into letting me record it and I couldn’t talk the label into letting me record it.
Tim Ferriss: What were the reasons they gave you?
Tim McGraw: They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn’t country music, it won’t work on radio. All the things that they were right about. I heard that song the first night I moved to Nashville. I got to Nashville at one or two in the morning on a Greyhound bus, walked down to the Hall of Fame lounge and hotel where I ended up staying for a couple of weeks, walked into the bar and everybody was closing down, the band was packing up, and Tommy Barnes and Max D. Barnes were sitting at the bar. I think it’s Max D. Barnes. He’s sitting at the bar, the bar’s closing down. So I walk in and just ordered a beer and she said, “We just had last call, but I’ll give you a beer.” I sat down, so I started talking to these two guys.
So Tommy says, “Do you have a room?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Let’s go and play some music.” So me, Tommy, and Max Barnes went up and started playing music.
Tim Ferriss: Within stepping off the Greyhound.
Tim McGraw: Within stepping off the bus and Tommy played “Indian Outlaw” and “I Don’t Want To Be There In The Morning When She Wakes Up And Finds Me Gone,” which I ended up cutting both of those. Have three more songs of his that I heard that first night that I’m going to cut eventually. But “Indian Outlaw,” heard that first night and I started playing it immediately. Learned it, started playing it in all the clubs around town, the honky talks around town. When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song and we’d end up having to play it two or three times a night, four times a night because people loved it so much. And I kept telling the label, when I was going in to cut my first record, this was before I had a record deal or anything.
Tim Ferriss: So you knew it worked.
Tim McGraw: I knew it worked. I didn’t have any say so on the first album.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: So when we went and cut the second album, “That’s what we’re cutting. Period.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: And when we cut it, I felt like, “This is either going to work in a huge way or it’s going to ruin my career forever.” Luckily it worked.
Tim Ferriss: And it worked.
Tim McGraw: And I think the fortunate thing, it worked, and I think that what kept me from being sort of a novelty act, that had this sort of funky, weird song that made some noise, was being able to come right behind it with “Don’t Take the Girl.” I’ll forever believe —
Tim Ferriss: It was the one, two.
Tim McGraw: — that the combination of those two songs is what set my career in motion and gave me momentum that I probably couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Tim Ferriss: How would you describe both of those songs as a one, two punch? So the first one for people who don’t know, why was it potentially controversial or different?
Tim McGraw: Well, because it was, and I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical and it was sort of a play on Native American stereotypes and there was a lot of controversy around it. And I understood the controversy and I wasn’t upset about the controversy. In fact, I met with several Native American leaders that some liked the song, some didn’t like the song. And my answer was, “Look, I understand what your concerns are, the song’s not meant to be that way. I understand your concerns. My opinion, if you need to go after me in order to raise attention and awareness to your cause, by all means, use my song for that.” So if you like it or don’t like it, if you could make something good happen for it from it, then by all means I’m not going to be offended.
And now when I play Native American casinos, I always, when I meet with the elders or the chiefs before the show, I always say, “I have “Indian Outlaw” on my set, but I’m happy to take it out if it’s offensive,” and invariably, 99.9 percent of the time, “That’s why we hired you is to sing that song,” so they love it. So it’s been really good to me.
Tim Ferriss: And what about the follow-up straight, the one, two?
Tim McGraw: Oh, “Don’t Take the Girl.”
Tim Ferriss: Exactly.
Tim McGraw: That song was just so powerful and such a great story. It was the epitome of what country music is all about. A great story that gets right to the heart of the matter, that hits right to the emotion, that leaves it a little open-ended and makes you guess a little bit about what happened. But to this day, singing that song, there are times where it chokes me up, still, every time.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: And that song was one of my first stances as an artist to where I wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not, but it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs after “Don’t Take the Girl” came out. And Walter was the guy who used to run the CMAs. Remember Walter? They wanted me to do “Don’t Take the Girl,” but they only gave me three minutes and the song’s five minutes. And I was trying to explain to them that there’s no way to sing this song without telling the complete story or it wouldn’t make sense. So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs —
Tim Ferriss: That’s wild.
Tim McGraw: Because I couldn’t do the whole song.
Tim Ferriss: Was that an obvious choice or did you second guess that choice after you turned it down? The next day or the next hour, were you like, “Oh?”
Tim McGraw: No, I think it was an obvious choice.
Tim Ferriss: It was obvious?
Tim McGraw: Yeah. And I wasn’t too worried because the song was doing so well. And I just thought there’s no upside here to doing part of this song. It’s not going to do anything for me and it’s not going to do anything for anybody else.
Tim Ferriss: A few things come to mind for me. The first is that in a digital world, or what we perceive to be virtual, folks try to do a lot virtually, and you can do a lot in terms of testing and this, that, and the other thing. But still, if you can get front of live audiences to test your material, whether you are a musician, a comedian, even in my case, as a writer, my first book was turned down 30 plus times by publishers —
Tim McGraw: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: Not an exaggeration, but because I had taught the material in front of classes for years and years and years, I knew that it worked.
Tim McGraw: You knew it worked. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I knew it worked. That is the only reason that —
Tim McGraw: You had a practical sense that it worked.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I could see it and I’d honed it and I’d taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn’t work, doubled down on the ones that did. And that still is just so incredibly valuable having that real time feedback, especially when you’re playing multiple times a night.
Tim McGraw: So in your process, when you’re writing a book and you’re talking about trying material out people, do you have an idea or a nugget of what you want to do and then you just start riffing on it around people just to sort of get feedback?
Tim Ferriss: I do. I would say that these days I will often test on the podcast to see —
Tim McGraw: Like segments or parts?
Tim Ferriss: Exactly. See what resonates or doesn’t resonate. So for instance, I’m considering doing a huge collection of case studies from the first book, because of course people hear “The 4-Hour Workweek” and they’re like, “Bullshit. That guy is a liar.” And I get it, I get it. It’s a controversial title, and deliberately so, but there are hundreds and thousands of case studies. And so for every reason someone might have why they object to the title, “I’m a single mom, I’ve got five kids, I have this, I have that, I’m 60 and not 20,” I have an example that has walked the walk in their shoes, right?
Tim McGraw: Right.
Tim Ferriss: So that said, a book is a huge commitment. I still find writing so difficult and I know you’ve had experience with this. So I will put together a few episodes on the podcast where I’m basically testing different sets of questions with case studies and I’m going to see, all right, look, I enjoy doing this, but how does the audience respond? At the same time, I would say for me, I think it’s very dangerous to ask your audience, or really anyone, if you have developed a creative muscle and you value it, “What should I do?” Because then you can get shaped by the masses in a way that really leads you down, I think, a lost path. In my case, I might have two or three things I’m excited about. Then it’s a question, which of these three? And I will feel good about any of these three, then it’s okay.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So I test that. I still think to this day, and I’ve thought about potentially approaching UT Austin to do a class, it’s because the feedback is so fast, they can’t fake it. Even if they say they like it, if you look at their face and they are spacing out, checking their phone, you’re like, “Mm-mm.”
Tim McGraw: Yeah, it’s not working.
Tim Ferriss: Not working.
Tim McGraw: Not working. Yep.
Tim Ferriss: It is not working.
Tim McGraw: Like you said, you try things out, musicians, comedians, writers, I do the same thing. If I run across a new song that I really like, I would have the band work it up and say, “Let’s play it a couple times live and see what their reaction is.” Now, there’s a caveat to that, because I’ve been doing this for 35 years now, so when you have songs people expect to hear and then you throw a new one in on them, sometimes the reaction’s not exactly what you want it to be, but it’s not necessarily the reaction that you’re going to get if they know the song. So there’s a little bit of a —
Tim Ferriss: A balance.
Tim McGraw: — a curve that you have to put on it when you’re doing it. Yeah. Back again also to not letting the audience determine what you do is a big — that’s really true because, like you say, you can get lost. If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you’re, I think you’re in trouble.
I think you’ve got to chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. And look, my taste is not going to match up with everybody’s taste and probably less and less people’s tastes as the days go forward. Who knows? It may grow more, I don’t know. But I have to cut stuff that speaks to me. If it doesn’t speak to me, especially if I didn’t write it, if it doesn’t speak to me and I can interpret it in a way that speaks from my heart and speaks to someone else, if it doesn’t speak to me first, there’s no way I’m going to make it speak to somebody else.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It turns into a guessing game.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Tim McGraw: And people can spot that a mile away. Whether they realize it or not, they can.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. It just strikes me how similar. If you’re pursuing creative expression and longevity, by the way, in so many disciplines, it’s the same thing. It is just the same thing, right? Whether it’s podcast, whether it’s music, whether it’s writing. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, hilarious cat, Breakfast of Champions, et cetera, people can pick up any of his books, they’re really fun to read. And he used to say, along the lines, I’m paraphrasing, but “If you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you’re going to catch the flu.” Basically —
Tim McGraw: You catch more than the flu.
Tim Ferriss: If you’re trying to — catch more than the flu, if you’re trying to appeal to everybody, you’re lost.
Tim McGraw: You’re lost.
Tim Ferriss: And at least you know you have an audience of one if it’s resonating with you and the personal can be so universal.
Tim McGraw: Well, and again, we’re so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that’s therapy. You have your own built-in therapeutic machine.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. So there’s the aspect of creative longevity, right? How many years you’ve been doing this again?
Tim McGraw: 35, I guess. Somewhere around there.
Tim Ferriss: 35.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: All right. So 35 years. So you have creative longevity, right? How do you continue to follow the right scent trail, which is very personal, and not get lost? Because there’s going to be a lot of temptation, a lot of external forces, expectations, right? So there’s that, which we’ve spoken to a bit. Physically, I know a lot of people are going to want me to talk about this, I want to talk about it. How do you think about physically being capable to do what you do? I mean, you are still performing. That is intensely physical. I have never performed as a musician on stage, but I know a few and it’s jaw-dropping —
Tim McGraw: Even when you’re not running around, it’s physical.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, it’s physical.
Tim McGraw: Because of the energy that you’re exp — and in my case, I can’t sit still when I’m performing, so I’m all over the place. But yeah, focus is the biggest word I think in my vocabulary when it comes to what I do for a living, because the times where I’m not focused are the times things aren’t working. And I tell you that the last three years have been tough to focus with what I’ve gone with —
Tim Ferriss: With surgeries and —
Tim McGraw: With the surgeries. I’ve had four back surgeries and double knee replacements. And tried to work through all of it, and did work through all of it. But there was a moment in time back in the spring this year, after my third back surgery, that — or was it last year? All the years are running together. Anyway, after my third back surgery, when it just didn’t work. That I thought that I was going to really be looking at not being able to do this anymore because I can’t imagine not doing it the way that I do it. I can’t imagine — there’s no way that I’m going to go out there and sit on a stool and sing for an hour and a half. It’s physically impossible for me to do.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, you’re a kinetic creature.
Tim McGraw: And I don’t know that anybody wants to see that from me. And so if I can’t go do the shows the way I do shows, and the way that I have fun doing shows, then I’m not going to give everybody what they’re paying for, and I’m not going to get satisfaction out of it. So there was a time where until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood, that I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it back. And not make it back the way I wanted to make it back. But now my focus is back, my body’s back, my brain fog’s clearing up from all the anesthesia. So I’m feeling like I’m back on a good path. I’m actually feeling like I’ve got a second wind now and something to prove. Which is good for me because I need that. I want to be the underdog. I want to be the guy nobody expects for it to work. I want to be that guy.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Make yourself a little hungry.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, absolutely. Metaphorically. And literally when I’m working, I like to be hungry. I don’t like to eat before I go on stage because I like to be hungry for that reason, because metaphorically it works for me.
Tim Ferriss: I just had my first real experience with falconry and —
Tim McGraw: Oh, wow.
Tim Ferriss: And the falconer was very clear, he’s like, “You need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt. It will not perform otherwise.”
Tim McGraw: If you’re sated, you’re not going to do much.
Tim Ferriss: And actually, “Fed up with someone,” is an expression taken from falconry because if the bird is fed up, it won’t listen to you.
Tim McGraw: Ah.
Tim Ferriss: Fed up with. It’s from falconry.
Tim McGraw: I’ll have to remember that, that’s just a good little piece of knowledge.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: I love those little details.
Tim Ferriss: There are all these little words from falconry. Hood winked also, when they put the hood on —
Tim McGraw: Ah.
Tim Ferriss: Also from falconry. So focusing in Tribe of Mentors, you mentioned, “My gym is how I get refocused.”
Tim McGraw: That’s my meditation.
Tim Ferriss: And you talked about this five rounds of 12 exercises with the bar complex, kind of adding weight and then going back down.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Do you still do that or has your training changed over time? You also mentioned a pool workout. I’m not sure if you still do that —
Tim McGraw: I do.
Tim Ferriss: But what is the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now?
Tim McGraw: Well —
Tim Ferriss: Maybe it’s changed.
Tim McGraw: It’s changed a little bit. I have to be a lot more deliberate and a lot more careful. I’m sure that my workout routine, my three workouts a day, and that’s how —
Tim Ferriss: Three workouts a day?
Tim McGraw: That’s what I did for a long time, especially on the road touring.
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Tim McGraw: So look —
Tim Ferriss: Was that just like before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner?
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Really?
Tim McGraw: Yeah. And they were distinctly different exercises. And the afternoon exercise was sort of an outdoor CrossFit thing with the whole band. So that was like an hour and a half. Then I would do my two-hour workout in the morning.
Tim Ferriss: Which was mostly weights?
Tim McGraw: Mostly weights and some cardio. And then before lunch would be running the arena or stadium stairs and doing a discipline at the top of each stairs.
Tim Ferriss: What’s a discipline?
Tim McGraw: A pushup or a squat.
Tim Ferriss: I see. I see.
Tim McGraw: Or an ab or something. And so you run all the stairs and then we’d take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever. And then at 2:00, 2:30, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff.
Tim Ferriss: Border collie. You needed a working dog that’s got to run.
Tim McGraw: So that being said, I’m sure that I hastened all of my injuries. But I remember specifically when it happened, when we shot 1883, that was pretty physically demanding. And that wore us out pretty good. That was six months, six days a week, 16 hours a day, pretty much solid. And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing, because I’d had shows booked. So I would work ‘till filming until 7:00, run and jump on a plane, go do a show, get back at 3:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the morning, get up at 4:00, try to get a workout in and then be in the makeup trailer and go to the next day.
Tim Ferriss: Can’t imagine why you wore yourself out.
Tim McGraw: Not only was I tired though, I was strangely uncomfortable on stage during that because I had this big beard on and people didn’t know what I was doing because we were filming a show that wasn’t out yet. So people didn’t know what I was doing. And I’d put on about 10 pounds.
Tim Ferriss: So you didn’t explain it?
Tim McGraw: No. I tried to a couple times, but — then I’d put on about 10 pounds of weight because there’s just protein everywhere. I mean, it wasn’t fat or anything, but because I was working out steady work, but they always had steak and stuff.
Tim Ferriss: It wasn’t fat for people who haven’t seen the series. I mean, that hotel scene with the, I guess kind of like the pajamas or whatever it is. “You want to fuck with anyone else? Want to fuck with my family?” You do not look fat.
Tim McGraw: But I’m standing on stage and I’ve got this big dyed black beard and I’m thinking, these people are thinking that I’m dying my beard to look young because my beard’s gray. I mean, my beard’s snow-white. And I had this big black beard on and then I would put on this — I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired of this.
Tim Ferriss: Were you uncomfortable because it didn’t feel right to you or because you knew the audience was a little off kilter?
Tim McGraw: It didn’t feel right to me. And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on too. So it was uncomfortable. But we got through them and it wore us out. And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee. And I’d had some knee trouble before. And at 20, I had a meniscus done, scoped on my left knee. And at 30, I had a meniscus on my right knee, but they hadn’t bothered me.
And I think my problem is I have really high pain tolerance. And then I remember specifically we were in Montreal and I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour, we were in Montreal and my knees were hurting, my back was hurting, things were starting to fall apart.
And I remember turning, just a normal turn and felt both my knees, just felt like they exploded. And I went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and from my hips to my ankles, my legs were twice the size that they were before I went to sleep. Swollen.
Tim Ferriss: That’s terrifying.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. And so I got up and went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym just on the treadmill, doing anything I could to try to stay in shape where I had to lean over the treadmill to walk because I couldn’t stand up straight, just to get walking.
Tim Ferriss: Brutal.
Tim McGraw: And then doing the show, we finished out the tour where they literally had to carry me backstage. I’d get on stage, fake it through the show without acting like I was limping too badly, and then they would carry me back to the bus after the show. And then right after that tour, I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery. And then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements.
Tim Ferriss: Brutal.
Tim McGraw: And then another back surgery after that.
Tim Ferriss: I don’t want to turn this into a Tim Ferriss confessional, but so I have the pain tolerance you mentioned, having high pain tolerance, blessing and a curse.
Tim McGraw: It’s a curse.
Tim Ferriss: Because I’ve had multiple, just had elbow surgery a few months ago, which I should have had probably 15 years ago.
Tim McGraw: I’ve had one of those.
Tim Ferriss: I just kept like, “I walk it off. It’s fine.” And shoulder reconstruction, and I won’t turn this into my litany of complaints about things, but —
Tim McGraw: I just did.
Tim Ferriss: But the back in particular, I’ve had crippling back issues for the last three to five years, which were precipitated by this crazy accident long ago where I basically caught a huge dresser falling off the loading bay of a shipping truck because I wanted to prevent it from shattering on the ground and it twisted my body around and basically tore my lat off of my body. It was a horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, because I’ve wondered this, I have a friend, his name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of WIRED magazine, great guy. I would say for his entire life has basically done no offense, Kevin, no exercise, except for lots of walking. That’s it. Lots of walking. He has, as far as I can tell, no aches and pains.
Tim McGraw: Well, walking is the best exercise you could do.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, he’s in his got to be early to mid 70s now. And so I look back and I’m like, I wonder what I would’ve done differently because I had a lot of intense training back in the day. I used to compete in judo and all these various things, took quite a few lumps from all that. And I look back and I’m like, “All right, what would I have done differently?” And I think there are certain things I would’ve toned down, probably would’ve given a slightly different prescription, would’ve still been pretty aggressive because I don’t know if I would be where I am now otherwise without that. So looking back during the, just over the decades, what would you have changed about your training in retrospect, if anything?
Tim McGraw: I would’ve been smarter about it probably.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. In what way?
Tim McGraw: Well, I would’ve trained less for sure and paid more attention to small aches and pains instead of waiting until they were debilitating.
Tim Ferriss: Big aches and pains.
Tim McGraw: And big aches and pains. I would’ve waited for that. Although, as you said, I honestly believe that if I hadn’t decided that I was just going to get myself back in shape, because I’d always stayed in shape, but after having kids and stuff, you’re eating chicken nuggets all the time. I sort of let myself go for a little while. And then I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I’ve never seen, still haven’t seen to this day.
Tim Ferriss: Why is that?
Tim McGraw: Because I think I weighed 215 when we shot that movie.
Tim Ferriss: How much do you weigh now?
Tim McGraw: Right now I’m 170. But we went to see another movie and I’d taken my kids and they were small and completely not even thinking about my movie. And of course, the very first trailer that pops up is Four Christmases, the movie that I’d just done, and my face pops on the screen. And my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me. She said, “Geez, Dad, you need to do something.” Because it looked like you could stick a pin in me and I would’ve just flew across the room. And that’s when I decided to get back in shape. But I do think that, and people will argue with me about this, but I believe it to my core, that had I not done that and decided to change my lifestyle, changed my workout routine, the way I looked and took care of myself, that I don’t think my career would’ve lasted this long.
Tim Ferriss: When was that?
Tim McGraw: Early 40s. Like 42, 43, somewhere around there.
Tim Ferriss: How old are you now?
Tim McGraw: I’m 58 now.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I mean, that’s insane, man. You hear this, I’m sure, from lots of people, but you are in great — I mean, you look like you’re in great shape and not hitting on you, but I —
Tim McGraw: That’s okay.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. But what has your workout looked like? And I won’t belabor this too much longer, but I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They’re all a super-organism.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what has your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let’s call it year or something?
Tim McGraw: Year. Well, there was about six weeks where I didn’t do anything at all, which was almost impossible for me to do. And that’s probably why some of my back surgeries didn’t work as well as they should have because I tried to go back too soon and get back in shape.
Tim Ferriss: That’s the story of my right meniscus too.
Tim McGraw: I’ve tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes — I usually walk an hour or 30 minutes to warm up because for my knees to get going, my back to get — so walking is always my start out, whether it’s 30 minutes or an hour just to walk, to loosen everything up and do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching. I’d never lift heavy weights. I don’t do heavy weights at all. I try not to do dead lifts anymore because of my back. Although the doc says I can do them light, but I’m still scared of them.
I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training and then just try to do everything I do with intent and purpose and discipline and make sure everything’s lined up properly when before I never would do that. I mean, I knew what I was doing. I’ve had some good trainers in my life, so I knew what I was doing, but you get in a hurry and you fall back and start doing the same old stuff and you don’t think, you don’t put your head into what you’re doing. Now I just have to be a lot more conscious about how I move and what I do.
Tim Ferriss: And are those two hours all in the morning typically?
Tim McGraw: In the morning, yeah. If I don’t do it in the morning, it’s tough for me to do it. And then that also includes, because the older you get and especially with injuries, you got to really try to — every advantage you can get. I do a lot of red light therapy, red light, hot therapy, steam, cold plunges. I do a lot of that. So that’s a good 30 minutes at the end of the workout to get all that stuff in because I do multiple circuits of that.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We have a similar recipe and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym. I mean, they are power cleaning, 300, 400 pounds, I mean, just monsters, front squatting, 400, 500 pounds. And now they do lighter weights. These are guys now, I would say kind of late 40s, early 50s. They do lighter weights. They use blood flow restriction cuffs, and they are in fantastic shape. They’ve lost a little bit of muscle mass because they’re not eating like 12 chickens a day, but that’s fine. Probably good for your longevity too.
Tim McGraw: For sure. And my goal when I work is I never want to be big. I don’t want to be a big —
Tim Ferriss: Muscle cube on stage?
Tim McGraw: No, I want to be athletic, you know what I mean? And yeah, the whole big muscle thing, I don’t want to — I’m not going to fall into that. I’m too skinny for that anyway.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think there’s a point where probably as a musician, it just raises more eyebrows and more distracting than helpful. So let’s go way, way back as promised, my delayed gratification for the audience. Sorry, it took me this long, guys.
Tim McGraw: No worries.
Tim Ferriss: But the exercise for me is so present every single day and would love to talk. Maybe after our recording, we can talk more. But for the deadlift, for instance, like Zercher deadlifts or Zercher squats where you’re holding the barbell in front really has protected my back in an interesting way for a lot of good reasons. But we’ll see if we come back to that.
Tim McGraw: Okay.
Tim Ferriss: If we go way, way back, I would — I mean, not to —
Tim McGraw: Back far enough that I can remember.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, back — oh, you’ll remember. You’ll remember. So could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate?
Tim McGraw: Oh, God, yeah. Wow. Yeah. I’d gotten home from school and Mom kept —
Tim Ferriss: How old were you at that time?
Tim McGraw: 11. I was 11 and Mom had kept in her closet like a Crown Royal bag that was full of coins, but she always put it in different places because we were always — because you had the concession stand at school, for a quarter you could get a candy bar back then, or like 10 cents, you could get a Coke.
Tim Ferriss: And just so people can put you in space, where were you at the time?
Tim McGraw: In Louisiana, a little town, Start, Louisiana where I grew up, a little farming community. I mean, it’s just a caution light and a cotton gin. That’s where I grew up. And so I was in her looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. And I found the bag and there was a box right next to it, opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn’t think much of it. And I started looking at it and I saw McGraw where a line had been drawn through it and right above it written by hand in pencil with Smith, which was my stepdad’s name. And then it said Dad’s occupation, professional baseball player. And of course, being 11 years old and growing up, we were like low, low, middle class and didn’t have any money and seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register.
It didn’t seem real. And oddly enough, I had three baseball cards on my walls and on my wall in my room. His was one of them because he was one of my favorite players.
Tim Ferriss: Tug.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. So I instantly called my mom and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was at work and I’m like, “Mom, what is this, my birth certificate? What does this mean?” And then she was like, “Oh, my God.” That’s all she said. And she said, “I’ll be right home.” And then she came home and we went for a ride and she told me the whole story.
Tim Ferriss: What was the story?
Tim McGraw: Her junior summer in high school and her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa, and they were staying in a motel that had a pool with the outdoor, like a motor court motel they were staying in. And it just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that the minor league team, Jacksonville Sons, the minor league team for the Mets, all the ball players were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left and got called up or whatever and left, she found out she was pregnant. My mom was a dancer and she had just gotten invited to try out for Where The Action Is by Dick Clark, which was like his first show, the precursor to American Bandstand and all that stuff.
So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to audition for it, and she had just found out she was pregnant with me. And then I have her senior portrait that she took that they always take at the beginning of the senior year. And she had just found out two days before the senior portrait that she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her.
And she told me the whole story and said that she hadn’t talked to him since and hasn’t heard from him. And I said, “But I’d like to meet him.” So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow or his agent somehow and he was still playing at the time. And they arranged somehow, Mom borrowed a car from her boss and some money from her boss. He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us. And we drove there, he met us for lunch. We talked for a little while and he just said, “I’m not your dad. I don’t think I’m your dad, but we can be friends,” kind of deal.
And went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record, that I brought with me, and he took me in the clubhouse, and Pete Rose signed that. So I got to meet Pete Rose. Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice. And my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So she had me all decked out. So the next year, we met, never saw him after the game or anything, never heard from him again. So of course I was obsessed, as an 11-year-old kid would be about something like that.
Tim Ferriss: What were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt?
Tim McGraw: I think at the time, I don’t think there was anger. I think there was some affirmation in it because we grew up in a very dysfunctional life. The guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mom and to me. And then the second stepdad was worse than the first one. So we grew up in really scary — the commercial you see now when footsteps are coming home and kids are scared, that’s the way our house was when you’d hear the truck drive up. So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn’t belong with that guy.
So it wasn’t a confusion. I don’t think I was young enough to register confusion. I think I was more, certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad’s a professional baseball player, and certainly in the circumstances that I was growing up in. So for me, it was sort of a ray of light in a lot of ways.
So the next year they were playing in Houston again, and I asked Mom if I could go see the game again. So she got in touch with the agent again and said he would leave two tickets, but he’s not going to see us. So he left two tickets and then it was in Houston, which was the only time I’d seen him play. Cut to the first time I saw him play, he came in and gave up a grand slam. The first time I saw him play.
But the bullpen is right along right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is.
Tim Ferriss: 10, 12 feet away.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, you’re right there. So he was warming up. So he wouldn’t see us before the game or anything. So he was warming up in the bullpen and my mom says, “Why don’t you go down and say hi to him? He’s warming up in the bullpen.” So I walked down to where he was warming up and I was as close to me and you as you were to him and he’s warming up. So I was yelling at him, “Tug, it’s Tim.” And he wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t look at me or acknowledge me. And so I just sort of dropped it after that. Went back home. I didn’t use McGraw. I used Smith.
Just sort of forgot about it. Didn’t forget about it, but not even — only a handful of my friends even knew about it. I didn’t tell very many people about it. Then I got embarrassed, I think, after that, that I was just sort of thrown away.
Tim Ferriss: What happened? What changed?
Tim McGraw: Well, when I was 18, graduating high school, we didn’t have any money for college. I was counting on sports scholarships and I had a few, but I was small. I graduated high school. I was 5’10” barely and 140 pounds and getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships thinking this is probably going to work out when I get to the next level, at my size. So she was going to call about paying for college, see if he would pay for college. This is a long story. She was going to see if he’d pay for college.
I was staying out of it. I was too busy with my life. And then I remember the last high school football game, getting ready. I’m down on the field, getting ready for the game to start. We’d already ran through the banner and done all that stuff. And somebody taps me on the shoulder and it was my mom. I’m on the sidelines getting ready to go out and play. I’m like, “Mom, what are you doing here? We’re about to play a game. You can’t be down here on the sidelines.” She goes, “Well, I heard from Tug’s lawyer today.” And I said, “Okay, Mom, can we wait until after the game and we get home to talk about this?” Played the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it, and then we talked about the next morning, and the deal was they’d sent a contract and they said that he would pay $300 a year towards my college, and that I would never be able to contact him again.
And if I did, the money would — anyway, $300 a year for college, and you can’t contact me anymore. And that to me was enough to say, “You know what? Fine. My only request is I don’t even need the money. $300 a month is not going to do anything. I don’t need the money, don’t need anything. My only request is that he has to meet with me one last time, and then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I’ll do whatever.” And so we flew to Houston or drove to Houston, drove to Houston. He had retired at this point, and I just graduated high school, so I was as tall as him. And we walked into the hotel and Mom said, “Well, there’s Tug standing, checking in over there.” And he had somebody with him who was his lawyer/agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around and looked at me and said, “Hi, Tug. I’m Tim,” because he hadn’t seen me since I was 11.
And I introduced myself to the guy standing next to him, and the guy standing next to him turned completely white because I looked just like him. So he knew that the gig was up.
Tim Ferriss: The gig is up.
Tim McGraw: So we sort of spent the day together hanging out a little bit, and then we went to dinner that night, he, Mom, and I. And then there was a point during dinner, just small talk where I asked Mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute. And of course, Mom didn’t want to do that. And I assured her that I had this, this was fine. And as soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and says, “Look, I’ll sign your contract. I’ll never talk to you again. I won’t bother you. I just have one question for you.” And I asked him, “Do you think you’re my dad?” And he says, “Yes, I believe I am.” And he said, “We’ll tear the contract up.” And then I didn’t hear from him for a year after that.
But after that, we ended up starting to see more of each other. And me going while I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother Mark and my little sister, Cari, which was great to come out of that. But this is what I’ll get back to. At the end of the day, I get asked a lot, and you said it right. A lot of people now don’t know the story. They knew it at the beginning of my career, but a lot of people that know my career now that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up in that world and I didn’t. So I’m glad we’re talking about this because a lot of people can understand now that I didn’t grow up in that world. But the long and short of it is when people ask, “How could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him?”
My answer always is he gave me something that was so precious and that was hope. Whether he meant to and he didn’t or knew it or any of those things, he gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in, that if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn’t hate him.
Tim Ferriss: Hope. Man, it’s a bedrock of everything else.
Tim McGraw: If everything else is gone, if you’ve got hope, you’ve still got a chance.
Tim Ferriss: I remember talking to a friend of mine, he’s got a couple of kids now mostly grown. I think they’re all grown, if I think about it. I mean, the older I get, the younger people seem.
Tim McGraw: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But, they’re adults.
Tim McGraw: Tell me about it.
Tim Ferriss: And he said, and we went for a hike at one point, and he’s just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him, I’m like, “All right, what would your advice be to an aspiring parent?” Me. I don’t yet have any kids, but I really am looking forward to that, building family. And he said, “It’s really simple. Your job is to love your kids. They don’t owe you anything. It’s not their job to love you. Number two, you have to teach them to be optimistic. That’s it.”
Tim McGraw: Yes. Those two things make perfect sense.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life, don’t let it cloud your love and guidance for them.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: I have lots of questions about family because it’s top of mind for me, but I want to ask you about guitars. Here’s why. Because I was looking up on the way here, Yo-Yo Ma, famous cello player. Picked up cello, probably got handed a cello, at age four.
Tim McGraw: Wow.
Tim Ferriss: All right. My understanding is you did not do that with guitars.
Tim McGraw: No. No.
Tim Ferriss: So how did this music thing come about?
Tim McGraw: Well, the music thing came about because of my mom’s love for music because from my earliest memory of the time I can remember my mom was always singing and playing records around the house and always had the radio wide open. So I knew every song on the radio and she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the radio. So I knew every song on the radio, would sing with my mom all the time. We’d walk around the house singing, singing in church. I mean, my friends used to give me shit all the time playing baseball because I played shortstop and the whole time I’m out there, I’m singing songs and playing around. So I was always singing to the point to where my sisters were always like, “Shut up. Just shut up. Just stop singing.”
And I still do it to this day. Somebody can say a word and I’ll sing a song that’s got that word in it. It’s just in me, I can’t get it out. So it was always something, but I was in the same category that you were thinking, that the guys you hear on the radio, guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old, they’re trained musicians. They’re guys that —
Tim Ferriss: Jackson Five.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. This is something you can’t just do unless you’re trained to do it since you were a little kid. So I got into college, that’s when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football sort of round up and to see everybody when I looked around and thought, “All right.”
Tim Ferriss: I’m going to get killed.
Tim McGraw: “I’m going to be meat on the practice squad, never see the field and get the hell beat out of me and spend all of my time here.” So I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for 20 bucks.
Tim Ferriss: Why did you decide to get the guitar?
Tim McGraw: Because I thought, I love music, I love singing, chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learned to play a few songs.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So it wasn’t so far ahead as to, “This is my career plan.”
Tim McGraw: It wasn’t a career move. This was —
Tim Ferriss: A social move.
Tim McGraw: It was a move, but it wasn’t a career move. And I thought I could play some clubs around town. It’d be fun to do. I even thought, look, my biggest dream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I’m making money every week and playing music.
Tim Ferriss: And remind me where were you at the time?
Tim McGraw: I was in Louisiana, Monroe.
Tim Ferriss: In Louisiana.
Tim McGraw: At Northeast Louisiana, which is ULM now, but back then it was Northeast Louisiana University.
So I bought the guitar and all of my friends had moved away for the summer. It was my freshman summer in college. I had a job where I worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings, just moving stuff. And I’d come home and I’d watch CMT and watch where their fingers were on the guitars.
Tim Ferriss: Early YouTube.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, early YouTube. And then on music sheets, they’d had these little guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers went. So I spent a lot of years where my fingers were in the wrong position, but I would still make the chord. And my buddy, my roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time because I was so bad. But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn’t find it. But when chicks would come over to the house, they would grab my guitar and bring it to me and want me to start playing songs.
Tim Ferriss: Dance, monkey, dance.
Tim McGraw: Exactly. So over that summer, I learned about 50 songs and I just started playing, just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Walk. And that was my first gig. And that’s how I paid my rant for a while.
Tim Ferriss: Okay. So what was the first —
Tim McGraw: And by the way, I am still a terrible guitar player. I can play well enough to write my songs and play —
Tim Ferriss: You made it work for you. When was the first inkling or the first sign, feeling maybe where you’re like, okay, I think this could be a thing?
Tim McGraw: First off, the encouragement I got from my friends in college, my fraternity buddies, which that could go either way. When you’re trying to play guitar and sing songs from your buddies in a fraternity, that could go the wrong way. But when it didn’t, when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and telling me how good I was, to me, that was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell you, your friends to tell you that when you’re just trying to figure it out and you don’t even know anything about it really. For them to tell you that you’re good and they want to hear you do it and they ask you to sing all the time. So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds and then the owners would come over and say, “Hey, would you want to come back?”
And, “You guys are the best band we’ve had.” Stuff like that. And then I took a military science class and —
Tim Ferriss: Military science, like strategy —
Tim McGraw: Yeah. Strategy.
Tim Ferriss: Studying past generals.
Tim McGraw: And I got to know the instructor, Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an army guy and head of the ROTC and everything there. And all the guys in the class were ROTC guys, ROTC. And anyway, we took the class and it was tactics and we were in the field doing stuff. We’d spend the weekend tracking, even doing all the stuff, repelling, all kinds of stuff.
Tim Ferriss: Cool course.
Tim McGraw: It was a great course. And at the end of the course, everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader. Well, I got voted by all the ROTC guys as the platoon leader for the class for the year, so I was the top student in the class. And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine, so he kept taking me to the Marine Recruiting office. So I visited the Marine Recruiting office quite a bit, filled out all my paperwork. And one night I decided I had everything packed. I sold everything I had, sold my car, water skis, shotguns, sold everything I had.
I think I ended up with about $3,000. I had my guitar, one suitcase and my Marine paperwork sitting on my dresser. And I said, “When I wake up in the morning, I’ll decide whether I’m going to move to Nashville or join the Marines.” And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, looked over, got up, picked up the Marine paper, tore it up, put it in the garbage and went and bought a Greyhound bus ticket and ended up in Nashville.
Tim Ferriss: I have so many questions. Why did Captain Whitehead think you should be a Marine?
Tim McGraw: I don’t know. I guess because I did well in the class and we got along well. He kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played, it had to have been 15 years later after I had a lot of success. We played the military base in San Diego and it was huge, it was packed. And I’m singing and playing and I’m standing in the front of the stage. And I look down and Captain Whitehead’s right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards. He just says, “You would’ve been a good Marine.”
Tim Ferriss: “You missed the boat, son.”
Tim McGraw: No, I didn’t.
Tim Ferriss: I’m kidding. The platoon leader piece is interesting to me. What do you think, even if you had to speculate, why did that happen? Why did they vote you platoon leader?
Tim McGraw: I don’t know. I mean, I just enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it.
Tim Ferriss: What do you think? Because presumably, a bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. I think there were a few obstacles that I was able to figure out in moving stuff and how to build a bridge across. Just little things that I was able to figure out, or if I wasn’t able to figure out, just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done. But I don’t know. It’s one of those things that was really interesting to me and it made sense to me. And when you step into something you don’t know anything about and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense, it just made sense. And it really sparked my interest into being in the military because I thought, “Wow, if I can be around all these guys who want to do this and this works out, maybe this is a career path for me.” Thank God I didn’t. But I have so much respect —
Tim Ferriss: I mean, who knows?
Tim McGraw: My sister was in the Army, she was Army Intelligence. Cousins, uncles, so I’ve got a long history of military family.
Tim Ferriss: What was it that morning? It was a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a Sliding Doors moment. Such an important fork in the road. What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork?
Tim McGraw: I thought that I could always go back to that and I can’t always go back to the music. Because there’ll come a point where that’s just gone, that’s passed. But the hardest part was having to call my mom, because my mom was really intent on me making something out of myself because of how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was. I mean, she worked three jobs and going to work with black eyes and busted lips and just all the struggles that a single abused mom — well, not single, but abused mom has to deal with. She was pretty single for all intent and purpose. But I had to call her, I was in pre-law. My joke now is that I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would’ve ever made as one.
Tim Ferriss: I believe that is probably true.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, so I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school and I know how badly she wanted that for me. And for her, because of the sacrifices that she had made, because people had wanted her to give me up for adoption, all sorts of stuff. And she was a 17-year-old girl then that hung onto a kid.
Tim Ferriss: Tough woman.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. But I called her and told her what my plan was, and braced myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to give me a good wearing out, because she can do that. And what she said, it’s going to make me cry, what she said, but she said, “Son, I’m surprised you haven’t done it already. And if you don’t, you’ll never know, so you should go.” And it was so shocking and unexpected that it gave me all the confidence in the world that I needed. And then when I first moved here, back to where you think everybody grows up since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing, and that’s how they become famous, when I first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in, I was thinking, “Wait a minute, I can hang with these guys. I can hang with these guys. I can find my niche here.”
Tim Ferriss: How many shows do you think, how many gigs had you played up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus?
Tim McGraw: I mean, a year or two of gigs. I don’t know, 100 maybe at clubs. Mostly just me and a guitar, some with a band. I actually went to Jacksonville for about six months, because my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college because she had just went through another divorce and it was a terrible divorce. So she moved to Jacksonville, which is where she grew up. Jacksonville Junior College had just won the Junior College World Series. Coach heard about me a couple years ago back in high school. He knew my mom somehow. Anyway, invited me to come to play baseball at Florida Junior College.
So I thought, “All right, this is getting old here. I’m playing music, I’m not really going to class like I should. Maybe I should go out there and try and play baseball, see what happens.” So I moved to Florida, same thing. Showed up, was going to play baseball, hung around for a little while. Realized that I really didn’t want to do that because I was playing clubs at night there too, and just decided to go full-time, start playing clubs in Florida. Did that, then I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months and then moved to Nashville.
Tim Ferriss: I’m curious what Nashville did for you, because it makes me think of Bob Dylan before he was Bob Dylan. But moving from Minnesota to, I think it was Greenwich Village, moves to the epicenter. He’s like, “I’m going to find Guthrie and I don’t know how I’m going to make it work, but I’m going to figure it out. And I’m going to the center of the action.” And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very impressive investor and fascinating human, Bill Gurley, who is in Austin.
But he has a book coming out soon called Runnin’ Down a Dream, which is about pursuing passion and finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself. But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, going to where the action is. And I would love for you to describe what effect Nashville had. I mean, in a sense, you already sort of showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer after last call and then bodda-bing, bodda-boom —
Tim McGraw: You hear a great song.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. And songs that end up making my career. I think instantly it just lit a fire under me. And when you jump into a pool of people who are like-minded and who are all chasing the same thing, there’s just such an energy that you get from everybody that’s doing it. Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney, and I were best friends, and we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals and we would compete. All these clubs, you could get up and sing and you could win $50, whoever got the most hand applause. So we were always competing to get real money.
Tim Ferriss: That’s cool.
Tim McGraw: Try to outdo — Tracy usually always won, because he was the best singer out of all of us at the time. But just running around, being involved. Every night, being at somebody’s apartment, playing music, writing songs every day, out every night, singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience of art where you learn so much, you learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing and you think, “Wow, how did they do that? How can I?” You imitate people, you figure things out. You see what somebody’s doing on stage, you see how somebody’s singing, you see how somebody’s songwriting.
It just becomes this sort of gumbo of all this magic that you find. And it just comes into every pore of your body and you just open yourself up to it and just try to learn as much as you can. And it can be heartbreaking too, at the same time. And then also recognizing where you’re getting held back. It’s where you start realizing you need to put more aspirational people around you, as opposed to people who are just being happy doing what they’re doing. And I try to tell this to my daughters all the time.
Tim Ferriss: That sounds like it could be very difficult.
Tim McGraw: It can be difficult because it’s not about dropping friends, but it’s about gathering friends that inspire you to be, that people that you want to be like, they have traits that you want to emulate.
Tim Ferriss: Could you describe an instance of when that happened and how you navigated it?
Tim McGraw: I don’t know if I can describe an instance.
Tim Ferriss: Or just why that even occurred to you, I guess, and how you went about finding those people.
Tim McGraw: Well, because I needed to learn, for one thing. Because I knew nothing about the music business, how to make a record. I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio and then play some songs I learned on the guitar. And I was an amateur, period, at everything. And so I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing and people who could teach me things and people that were willing to teach me stuff. And people that, if I wanted to compete, if I can’t compete with this guy who’s playing in a club in downtown Nashville, then I’m not going to compete with the guys who have record labels that are selling millions of records.
Tim Ferriss: How did you find those people to learn from?
Tim McGraw: I think it’s just a matter of just being out and being around people, and just learning who the people are, who are going to be aspirational to you and inspirational to you, and who the people that are going to hold you in place.
Tim Ferriss: Do any people kind of stand out in those, I don’t know, first five years, let’s just say?
Tim McGraw: Well, Mike Borchetta stands out. Mike Borchetta is who signed me to my first record deal at Curb Records. And he was somebody who I walked off the street, had a demo of a few songs. He tried to kick me out of his office and I made him listen to the songs.
Tim Ferriss: How did you get into his office in the first place?
Tim McGraw: The way I got into his office, and oddly enough, it was because of Tug. Because a guy named Bruce Windell was a friend of Mike Borchetta’s and he happened to be a friend of Tug’s. So Tug was talking to Bruce Windell one day and Bruce says, “I know a guy named Mike Borchetta down in Nashville. Maybe I can get him a meeting with Tim.” And that was it. So I got his phone number and that’s all they gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him, I couldn’t get a meeting with him. So it was during Fan Fair one year and —
Tim Ferriss: What is Fan Fair?
Tim McGraw: Well, Fan Fair, now it’s the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays. But back then, Fan Fair was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through. This was going on when, of course, I wasn’t signing autographs, I didn’t have a record level. So I decided I’m going to go by Curb Records and see if Mike Borchetta is in his office. And I’d had a demo of these —
Tim Ferriss: After him not returning anything.
Tim McGraw: After him not returning my calls. And I have to back up just a little bit because there was this little place called Po’boy Don’s in Tallulah, Louisiana, that was in the middle of a cotton field. And it was just a little wood frame shack, but it was like a convenience store/deer butcher shop/crawfish boil kind of place. And in the back of the store, they had a bunch of stumps and an old wood stove, and there were a bunch of guys all in their 70s and 60s that were all playing country music. And I happened to be out in that area one day and it was in the middle of nowhere. And so I stopped in and sat down and started playing guitar with these guys, so they kept inviting me to come back.
It was about 30 miles from school. Every Thursday night, it ended up being five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We’d all go to this little hole-in-the-wall place with all these 70 year old guys and they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I would sit back there and sing with them. And it ended up that place getting packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night, and it just became a really fun thing.
So when I moved to Nashville, Po’boy Don, who owned that, and it was a farm or two and he owned all the farmland around and just, he played the bass in the thing. And it’s his store and he just really loved me and loved to hear me sing. So I needed a demo. I didn’t have a demo, didn’t have any money for a demo. So I called him and he sent me $3,000 to record a demo. So I recorded a demo and that’s the demo I played for Mike Borchetta when I walked into his office. Anyway, I sit down, he said, “Well, leave the CD with me.”
Tim Ferriss: So you’re just, “Knock-knock, anybody home?”
Tim McGraw: Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office. And I walked past the secretary. She goes, “Excuse me.” I said, “I’m just going to say hi to Mike.” I walked in, I said, “Hi, Mike, how you doing?” He said, “Who are you?” Then I told him my name and he goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” He says, “Call me next week and we’ll meet.” I said, “Well, I have my demo here. I’d like for you to listen to it.” And he goes, “Well, leave it on the desk and I’ll listen to it.” I says, “Well, can you listen to it now?” And he goes, “No, I’m headed out to Fan Fair, I got to go.” I says, “Well, can you just listen to part of a song?” He goes, “All right, I’ll listen to a song.” So he put the song in and halfway through the first one, he goes, “You got a record deal, kid.”
Tim Ferriss: Wow.
Tim McGraw: And that’s how I got a record deal.
Tim Ferriss: Halfway through the first song.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, halfway through —
Tim Ferriss: Was it the first song on the demo?
Tim McGraw: Yeah, first song on the demo. And then it was convoluted after that, but I got a record deal. So I got my foot in the door, so it started from there. But he was somebody that, when a guy who runs a record label, and you know nothing about how that works, and it’s the first record label I went to, sits down and listens to half of your demo, which you’re not even sure is any good, and says you have a record deal, well, I think you get exponentially better in that instant.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, yeah. You’re given wings in a way.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: The mustard seed.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. We’re going to hop around a little bit because we could go a million different directions. I mean, we could spend 20 hours talking about your career and still not run out of material. I believe it might have been in Parade, it could have been in a different interview, but correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve said that your wife saved your life, along those lines.
Tim McGraw: Oh, God. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Why is that?
Tim McGraw: Because I was running pretty hard. I was running hard back in the day.
Tim Ferriss: What does that mean?
Tim McGraw: Well, I was drinking a lot, which, that didn’t stop after we got married, but she beat it out of me after a while. But I was just doing everything. I was a kid in a candy store, especially after I got successful. And never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before. And then all of a sudden it became a tool that was useful until it wasn’t. And when Faith came along, I was burning it wide open when we met. And she started tapping the brakes for me.
Tim Ferriss: How did she do that in a way that didn’t repel you?
Tim McGraw: Well, look at her.
Tim Ferriss: Well, right, yeah. I mean, she’s got a lot on offer, this is for sure. But I would imagine, we don’t know each other well, but that strong-willed guy, high-gear, high-intensity, high-velocity kid in a candy store. Faith is incredible on a million different levels and you also have a lot of options around. So what allowed her to dial some of those things back, which ended up being really important long-term for you and for both of you, without scaring you off in a sense?
Tim McGraw: Well, A, I knew that I was at a point where I needed to slow down.
Tim Ferriss: All right, got it. So you had the self-awareness.
Tim McGraw: I had the self-awareness that I needed to slow down at the time. B, when we met, we were 28 years old, so we were a little older and we both had success. And then C, once I met her, I didn’t want to lose her. I just didn’t want to lose her.
Tim Ferriss: What was it about her?
Tim McGraw: She’s just magic, she’s magic. Not just her singing and her looks and all that. Of course, that’s all a bonus, but as a person, she’s just magic. She just lights up a room, and she lit me up and still does. And I wouldn’t be the same artist had I not met her. I certainly wouldn’t have the career that I’ve had, had I not met her. I certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long. I wouldn’t have lasted as long. I would have burned out really quickly, I think. Especially if I had lost her during that time after I found her, if I had lost her because of not sort of bringing myself around a little bit. Then I definitely would have been in a downward spiral.
Tim Ferriss: You guys met at 28. When did you change the drinking?
Tim McGraw: It took a while. I mean, it certainly calmed it down quite a bit. And it fluctuated. It would be times where it was not bad, then times where it was bad. And then it just got to where it just got out of control, and that’s when she set me down. Well, actually, she sat me down a few times, but actually there was one morning in particular where I woke up and realized that it was 7:00 in the morning. I was going to have to take the kids to school soon, and I realized I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand at 7:00 in the morning.
I had the bottle in my hand and I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that I need help. And she goes, “All right, let’s do it. I’m with you.” And she stuck by me the whole time. And look, it’s not been a linear path, as anybody knows that’s ever gone through that kind of thing. It’s not a linear path. There’s always pitfalls and steps backwards and steps forwards, but she’s a rock. She’s a rock.
Tim Ferriss: You know, this is just a random thought, but at some point, if you haven’t met Laird Hamilton and his wife, Gabby, Laird Hamilton’s —
Tim McGraw: I know who Laird is, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. In any case, a lot of parallels in your lives.
Tim McGraw: Yeah?
Tim Ferriss: And I think also, Gabby Reese, who used to be a professional volleyball player. In any case, just a lot of parallels. I mean, intensity, right?
Tim McGraw: Yes.
Tim Ferriss: High gear. And it’s very common, at least among my friends, certainly, and even in my case way back in the day, it’s like that type of intensity can also get misapplied or reapplied to something like alcohol.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely, yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s not always a selective intensity.
Tim McGraw: No, it’s not a selective intensity. And then when it becomes a physical dependency, then you’re in trouble.
Tim Ferriss: Then you’re in trouble.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: How has fatherhood changed you?
Tim McGraw: Wow. Well, you certainly see with different eyes and it changes what your definition of love is, more so than even getting married, I think, when you have children. Because there’s such a responsibility and a weight that comes with all the brightness and the light and the love that causes you to realize that that’s your true eternal life, is your children, and how they carry their perception of you forward. And it’s a scary proposition because you’re not going to do it right, nobody does it right. You just hope you do 30 percent of it right, and you just show up. But I think the thing that it changed more than anything, and I think anybody would tell you this, and it’s pretty simple, is it takes a lot of the selfishness out of you.
And part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to succeed and to push forward, but boy, it takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion and responsibility and thinking of the future in your path, which provides more structure for you. And what I’ve also found out too, is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out, that structure was so good because you had to be on the ball, you had to get up every morning at 6:00, you had to make breakfast, you had to take your kids to school, you had to help with homework, you had to go to practices, you coach softball.
All those things that keep you in a good, balanced routine. So when the kids start leaving the house, all of a sudden you start, “What am I going to do with the rest of my day?” Now I don’t have to get up at 6:00.” So it can take away some of your focus and it can take away some of your routine and it can take away a little bit of drive once the kids are out of the house. And it comes back, but at first you’re sort of lost and sort of figuring out, “What do I do with my time here?”
Tim Ferriss: I’ve got a few chapters to get through before I get there.
Tim McGraw: And then after about six or eight months, a year, then you realize, you and your wife, you realize you’re home alone, then the fun begins.
Tim Ferriss: How did you decide to be a father in the sense, how did you set rules for yourself or goals, hopes without necessarily a model for it? Part of the reason I think that I’ve delayed building a family for as long as I have is that, God bless my dad in certain ways, but I wanted to do things differently if I did it at all, very differently. And since I felt like I had no role model, I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father. And so I was like, “Well, fundamentally, if I’m helping bring some life into the world,” if they didn’t ask for it necessarily, I mean, we can debate, gets into some deep philosophical territory and religious territory quickly, but I wouldn’t want to do a bad job or more harm than good. And so I’ve waited and waited and waited and —
Tim McGraw: Well, you’re going to do a bad job.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: I mean, everybody does a bad job. There’s no training manual, but I was in the same boat. I didn’t know if I was going to be a good dad or bad, I didn’t know what kind of dad I would be. I knew that I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to be a good dad, and I knew that I didn’t want my children’s life to be like mine was. So I think in a lot of ways, maybe that the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn’t want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don’t want to do and what doesn’t work for you is better than knowing what does.
Tim Ferriss: All right, I’m going to grab that and run with it because there’s an expression in Japanese — I went to Japan as an exchange student — called hanmen kyoushi. Hanmen kyoushi is like “opposite teacher.” It’s basically like an anti-role model and they show you what not to do. So I’m wondering if there professionally have been any experiences, a tour, how you made a song or even chose a song in the first place that really taught you what not to do? Like an event, a song, a performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you’re like, “Hmm, okay.”
Tim McGraw: Oh, I’ve put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn’t. I don’t know if I can specifically say what not to do. I can say be prepared all the time is always a good thing, but I can tell you my most embarrassing moment in the music business.
Tim Ferriss: All right, let’s do it.
Tim McGraw: It might be the best way to go, is Bruce Springsteen, who I’m a huge fan of. And he’s a friend and I’ve known him for a long time, one of the greatest guys in the world, just sweetheart. MusiCares, you know what MusiCares is? Where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money and it honors a specific artist and other artists come in and do their songs. Bruce was being honored, so he called and asked if Faith and I would do “Tougher Than the Rest” together as part of the thing. And of course we said, “Yes, we would love to do it.” So everybody’s doing their songs and there’s Sting, there’s all the big guys. Playing Bruce’s songs. So we do “Tougher Than the Rest” and we do a great job on it and everything turned out good. And we’re sitting at Bruce’s table and we’re talking, and Bruce says, “Hey, man, at the end of this, we’re going to do ‘Glory Days.’” He says, “Everybody’s going to come on stage and just sing along with the chorus.” He said, “You think you and Faith would want to come up to and do that?” And I say, “Sure, we’ll come up and we can do the chorus.” We sing along the chorus of ‘Glory Days,’ so we’re up there, we’re on stage and we’re all singing along. Bruce is in the second chorus, and he looks over at one artist and he’s like, “Hey, come sing the second verse.” And the artist is like, “Mm-mm, no.”
So he looks at another artist like, “Come sing the second verse.” And that artist is like, “Mm-mm, no, no, no.” On the microphone, he goes, “Hey, cowboy hat, come sing the second verse.” And in my mind, I’m thinking, “All right, it’s ‘Glory Days.’ I know it, but I don’t think I’ve ever sung it.” And Bruce’s phrasing is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes. And I thought, “All right, I can get through the second verse of this, I can figure it out.” The words were up there.
So I step up and I have no idea where to come in. I don’t know the phrasing, I don’t know anything. And everybody who is anybody in the music business is out there. And I’m standing there with that, when your mom has caught you doing something or your wife has caught you doing something really bad. And where all the blood rushes out of your body and you’re gut punched. So I couldn’t sing the song, I’m just like — and Bruce comes up beside me, he’s like, “Ba, ba, ba,” like that. And then he starts singing the song. So then I stepped back beside Faith. Can I stand up?
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: I stepped back beside Faith, embarrassed. And I stepped back beside her and this is what Faith does. She stepped away from me. Luckily, we were able to go, they shot it in a way because it’s always recorded and released and everything. So they shot it in a way that I could go back and fix the vocal where it didn’t look like I screwed it all up. But boy, I didn’t have fun that night at the hotel after the GrammyCares thing.
Tim Ferriss: Did you get a lot of ball busting after that?
Tim McGraw: I did, I did. But none worse than mine, what I did to myself, because it was really the most embarrassing moment. There are a few moments where you feel like you’re over your head sometimes. And it usually works out well, but boy, I tell you, performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where everything just seems, your body defies you. You think you’ve got it under control and when you start, everything goes. It worked out, everything was fine. I did a good job, but in the moment you’re feeling like, “It’s falling apart on me right here in front of everybody.”
Tim Ferriss: I would love to flesh out the humanizing of Tim McGraw a little bit, because for people who may not know your career, they might be like, “Man, this giant just gets off the Greyhound bus and then it’s like he’s hitting a double and a triple and a home run and it’s just endless home runs. Green lights the whole way.” And I’m curious if there are any favorite failures, things that didn’t work, that ended up teaching you something important or laying the seeds for something later, or if there was ever a period of feeling plateau or stuck-ness and how you dealt with it?
Tim McGraw: There’s both of those. I think failure that I learned a lot from was my first album, which we always say went wood. I think we had one song that made it to 38 off of that album.
Tim Ferriss: Went wood.
Tim McGraw: Yeah, it went wood, so no hits on it. And so the label just sort of forgot about me after that. And so I was slowly gathering songs, but I learned a lot. I learned what I didn’t want to do.
Tim Ferriss: What was that?
Tim McGraw: The way to make music, I learned what I didn’t want it to sound like. So I slowly started gathering songs from songwriter friends of mine. Not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who were songwriters. Slowly started collecting songs. The label never even called me after the album came out because it didn’t do anything. Didn’t talk to them at all. So I collected these songs and I went to Byron. I said, “All right, I’m ready to go record these songs.”
Tim Ferriss: Who’s Byron again?
Tim McGraw: My producer, Byron Gallimore, that we produced together. I said, “I’m ready to cut these songs.” And he goes, “Well, has Curb heard them, are they approved?” I says, “Nope, we’re just going to book a session and go cut the album.” And so we booked the session.
Tim Ferriss: So it was like an album on spec?
Tim McGraw: Yeah, and we billed Curb. We billed Curb for the whole thing, we cut the album, did all the artwork. Had the CD ready with the artwork done and turned it in to them. And of course, they hit the roof because we had spent a bunch of money making an album that we weren’t approved of. And then they listened and it was the Not a Moment Too Soon album. And then they listened to the album and then they were all on board.
And the good thing about that is the first one didn’t work. The second one, I said, “I want to do this my way and to do this — and had “Indian Outlaw” — I’m going to do the songs I want to do. I’m picking all the songs, doing the songs I want to do. We’re going to cut them the way I want to cut them. And if it fails, it fails on my terms this time.” And luckily it worked.
Tim Ferriss: So that’s why you didn’t reach out for approvals because you’re like, “I don’t want some album by committee.”
Tim McGraw: No. No. It never works. Not for me. I’m sure it works for other artists, but anytime I’ve done that, anytime that I’ve let somebody else talk me into a song, whether it be a record label head or somebody else, talked me into a song that I knew wasn’t right for me, it’s never worked. It’s never worked. And there’s been tons of times where people didn’t like the song at all and it worked.
Tim Ferriss: How did you decide, or when you say you knew what you didn’t want it to sound like, can you say more about that?
Tim McGraw: Yeah. Well, you can go back and listen to my first album, you can figure it out. I just knew that there were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with.
Tim Ferriss: Well, they’re also like what other people hear and then there’s what you hear and what it means to you.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely. And you also realize quickly in this business that you think when you move to town, you find your producer, you get a record label, you get all those things and everybody knows what they’re doing. That’s not necessarily the case.
Tim Ferriss: Sounds a lot like book publishing.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. Most of the time the artist knows what they’re doing and then everybody sort of follows the artist that gets successful and starts doing what they’re doing. But there are great people like, boy, without Byron Gallimore, I wouldn’t know my right hand from my left. He’s my partner in the studio and I can’t imagine making a record without him. But you find out very quickly if you don’t have an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound and how you want your career to go. And if you don’t get into control of that and you don’t do it the way you want to do it, it might work, but it’s not going to work for long.
And there have been times in my career where I’ve sat back and decided, “All right, I’m going to let this float and let other people make the decisions. Everything’s fine for now.” And sure enough, if I don’t get involved, it doesn’t go the way I want it to go.
Now I’ve got people around me now that’s been around me for 20, 30 years that I trust. But even still, if they don’t get regular input from me, nobody knows what’s in your head. Nobody knows exactly what you picture, even though you might think they do. They don’t.
I mean, they can get close, but you have to stay involved. And I’m learning that more more, and these last few years have been tough for me to be involved as much as I want to be because I’ve been battling, just trying to get my health back. And I’m fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods. But when your focus is on and you’re paying attention to what you’re doing and you know what the path is, it makes it easier for everybody around you.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. What about the periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period and the surgical, obviously the multiple surgeries?
Tim McGraw: Well, the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought, besides this period where I thought it might be over is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records, that was a very dark period in my career. They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album that would be the final album for my contract, they would drop the greatest hits, which didn’t count against the contract. So I think they ended up putting like 10 greatest hits albums to keep me from dropping my album.
So finally, I decided I either had to bite the bullet and try to go to court with them and get out or be stuck with them. And either way, I’m taking a chance on my career.
And we battled for a couple of years and I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that. And that was a scary time because momentum’s a tough thing.
And I heard a quote the other day, it was actually a Landman. I was watching it and —
Tim Ferriss: It’s a great show.
Tim McGraw: A great show, and Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob and says, “You know that monkey at rodeos that rides on the back of the border collie and the border collie just runs around and runs around and the monkey’s just hanging on for dear life, and he can’t let go because he’ll die so he’s got to hold on?” He looked at Bill, he said, “You’re that monkey.”
And I looked at Faith, goes, “Jesus Christ, I’m that monkey.” So I feel like I’m that monkey. But I don’t know that if it’s intentional, if it’s innately in you, but there’s something about even when you know you need to take a break or even when you know you need to slow down, when things are rolling, there’s this sixth sense in your body that knows you can’t let the momentum stop because it’s so hard to restart, even if consciously you’re not thinking that, there’s something in you that keeps it driving because you don’t want the ball to stop rolling and it’s because you’re scared, because you’re scared if the ball stops rolling, you’ll never get it rolling again.
Tim Ferriss: For sure.
Tim McGraw: So that was a time when that was happening to me and I thought, “Boy, it’s going to be hard to restart the momentum.”
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: And then after these surgeries, it was another one of those times.
Tim Ferriss: Legal battles, it’s just exhaustion upon exhaustion.
Tim McGraw: Oh, it’s just crazy.
Tim Ferriss: And sometimes you can’t avoid it, but if you can avoid it.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. I don’t want to be involved in legal battles unless it’s just —
Tim Ferriss: Absolutely.
Tim McGraw: But I was at a point in my career that if I didn’t do something, my career was going to be over.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: And if I did do something, there was a chance it would be over.
Tim Ferriss: It was still a risk.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: What were some of the most important things in retrospect that you did to rebuild your career, regain that momentum afterwards?
Tim McGraw: Well, choosing the right partner, for one thing, which was Scott Borchetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borchetta, who signed me on my first deal.
Tim Ferriss: A small world.
Tim McGraw: I know. Who I signed with on Big Machine afterwards because I knew he was a hard worker. So that certainly being first, but I was also recording the best album I think I’d ever recorded in my life while all this was going on. Once I was cleared to record. And so I had an album ready to go by the time all the dust was settled —
Tim Ferriss: It was settled.
Tim McGraw: — I had an album ready to go and Scott Borchetta was ready and the album worked and the juice was back.
Tim Ferriss: Incredible.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. But a lot of that was my team, kept fighting for me the entire time. When I went to Scott, to his label, he knew what had happened and he fought really hard because he didn’t like what had happened either.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I would imagine that also injected a helpful amount of piss and vinegar to demonstrate, to really relaunch in a meaningful way.
Tim McGraw: Oh, yeah. I think it turned me up to 12 after that. I mean, it kicked me into high gear for sure. And that’s the way I feel now. After all of this and worrying about being able to come back and worry about if I did come back, what’s my show’s going to be like? How I was going to be able to perform? Was I going to be able to be me again?
Now I feel like that same way I felt after coming out of Curb and starting with Big Machine and getting the ball rolling again. I feel like that we’re right on the edge of just tipping that ball over the hill, that boulder over the hill and let it go again.
Tim Ferriss: I am so curious because you must get approached all the time one way or another from musicians at different stages in their careers. Maybe it’s the son of a friend or the daughter of a fill in the blank, or it could be someone who’s just coming up. Maybe they’re trying to be an opener for you. Who knows?
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Someone who is earlier in their career, I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time, but if they want to be more than a flash in the pan —
Tim McGraw: Take charge.
Tim Ferriss: — to really last. Yeah. What advice do you give them?
Tim McGraw: Take charge.
Tim Ferriss: All right. Can you say more?
Tim McGraw: Take charge of your career.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: Take charge of your career. Take charge of what you do. Be confident in your decisions. Listen, of course, you want to listen to people. Listen to people that know what they’re doing, but ultimately you have to make the decisions and you have to make your choices and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself.
And if you just coast, you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career, you’re going to have to take charge and ownership of it and you’re going to have to guide it. And you’re going to have to have your finger on the button all the time and you’re going to have to say yes or you’re going to have to say no. And you’re going to have to use your skills to manage people. You’re going to have to use your skills to be managed.
And both of those things can happen simultaneously and they have to happen simultaneously. You have to listen to smart people. But if you don’t have a vision about what you want to do, if you don’t have a plan about what you want to do, if you don’t act on it every day, it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen.
And you can do all those things and it’s still not happening.
Tim Ferriss: Right.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: But if you do all those things and it doesn’t happen, back to your second album, right? It’s like you’re taking the risk that you fail on your own terms, as opposed to gambling on something that doesn’t resonate for you.
Tim McGraw: Absolutely.
Tim Ferriss: That someone’s talked you into.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So that seems to be a piece of it. Right?
Tim McGraw: Mm-hmm.
Tim Ferriss: There’s, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no.
Tim McGraw: Be willing to say no is a big deal. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Why do you think people are bad at that?
Tim McGraw: Saying no?
Tim Ferriss: Sure.
Tim McGraw: Because people want to please people.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: They want people to like them. I mean, I want people to like me, but if you don’t learn to say no, not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say, “No, that’s not right for me.” And that’s back to knowing what’s right for you and what isn’t right for you.
There could be something that on the surface, everybody that works for you says this is the perfect thing, but you’ve got to know whether it is or not. And sometimes you don’t. You know you can’t get it right all the time. There’s plenty of times you get it wrong, but I think if you go with your gut, there’s a caveat to all of this too, because there are plenty of artists who succeed, who don’t pick their songs, don’t have any involvement in their production, really don’t have any involvement in their management, don’t have any involvement in their stage design, and they just show up and do their thing.
There’s plenty of artists who do that and are successful. So there’s always exceptions to the rule, but I think for the most part, the artists who have been around for a long time, the artists I know who have been around for a long time, they take control of their careers.
Tim Ferriss: I interviewed quite a long time ago, he’s since sadly passed away, but Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from the UK, large religious figure, very well —
Tim McGraw: If you’re a Lord Rabbi, you’ve got to be a big religious figure.
Tim Ferriss: He’s a big deal and very good at conflict resolution, incredibly open-hearted man. And I recall at one point with me, he shared this quote, which I’m going to paraphrase, but it was effectively like one of the most important things in life is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.
Tim McGraw: Because they can look awful a lot alike.
Tim Ferriss: They can look very similar, and what I’ve seen over and over again with like all the startups I’ve been involved with, when I’m talking to authors who are just getting started, especially if they have a flicker of something that might ignite, is that as soon as there is a certain velocity of success, there are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing that you spent so much time getting good at that brought you to that point.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I’m wondering if there are any categories of things, so for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted, speaking engagements was one of those things where I was like, “I’m just going to end up on the road doing speaking engagements, talking about the same thing every day for the rest of my life if I actually continue to say yes to this.”
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And it’s very seductive because they pay really well.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I was like, “All right. So I’m going to say no for a year, that’s it, so that I can focus on these creative projects, writing.” Are there any things along those lines at a point where you’re like, “Okay, I need to say no to this, that, or the other thing?”
Tim McGraw: Yeah. There have been times where I probably should have said no and didn’t. I mean, there’s been times where I’ve got myself into too much work, but I’ve gotten pretty good, I think, at saying no. I think the older I get, I don’t know about wiser, but the older I get, the more apt I am to say no, mainly because you get to a point where I don’t care to be more famous.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. I think there’s a point of diminishing returns.
Tim McGraw: So you look at things under those lenses like, “All right. Well, this will give you higher visibility.” All right. I’ve got plenty of visibility. I don’t need to do that. The only thing that it gets into is, all right, you got to sell tickets to your concert.
So then there’s some things that you would probably say no to that you’ll say yes to just because you got to pay everybody. So there’s some compromises that you have to make to your, not principles, but to what you’re willing to do work-wise. But yeah, the older you get to more, it’s easier to say no because you know more about what the outcome’s going to be and whether the outcome’s going to be beneficial enough for the time or it’s not.
Tim Ferriss: So let’s talk about putting people in seats and tours. You have the upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar tour this summer.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: You’ve got new music in the works.
Tim McGraw: In the middle of working on an album right now. In fact, next week I’m in the studio again.
Tim Ferriss: So could you talk about, just tell us more about both, and then I mean, you’ve got family, you’ve obviously you have your lovely wife, you still have a lot going on.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: So I’d love to know, and I’m sure the audience would, more about both of these, right? Where can they learn more? When can they expect things? And then also how you actually schedule your time, structure your time, these days.
Tim McGraw: Yeah. Well, album wise, like I said, we’re in the middle of an album and the album’s going to be called Pawn Shop Guitar as well. It’s a song I wrote back to the story I told you where I got my first guitar where I pawned my high school ring my freshman year of college and bought the guitar.
Luckily for me, my grandfather found out about it and went back and got my ring for me, although I don’t know where it’s at now. I think my wife has it somewhere. So I wrote the whole song around that story and we were looking for tour titles, trying to find the right tour title. I thought Pawn Shop Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told and it conjures up some good imagery.
So we start that tour, I think it starts in July. The tour starts in July. I think we’re doing three or four stadiums and sheds. The Chicks will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I’m a huge fan of those guys.
We did a George Strait tour together years ago and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago and just a huge fan of their music. And I’m excited to get out with those guys.
And then we’re doing sheds for the summer and then we’ll do some more shows as well. We’ll be doing some fairs and festivals and it’s going to be a busy year. I mean, a lot, and there’s a couple movie and TV projects in the works.
And then my oldest daughter’s working on a Broadway — she’s a Broadway actress and singer, so she’s working on some stuff. My youngest daughter’s a singer. She’s an actor. She’s in Landman.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, no kidding?
Tim McGraw: She just toured, opened for Brandi Carlile on her European tour last summer. My middle daughter works for Earth League International, a big nonprofit. She sings as well, but she’s more of the brainy — actually went to Stanford, got her master’s degree from Stanford. Worked in Congress for a long time. So they’re all doing well.
Tim Ferriss: Seems like this fathering thing you’ve done pretty well. I mean, they’ve turned —
Tim McGraw: They really got a good mom.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah.
Tim McGraw: And then my nephew, Timothy Wayne, is out there doing well too. He’s a singer. I’m the worst singer in the family, for real. I mean, that’s legitimately not a joke.
Tim Ferriss: Why do it? Now that might sound like a strange question but —
Tim McGraw: Why do what?
Tim Ferriss: Touring. It’s so grueling. I have to imagine, right? Very demanding.
Tim McGraw: It is.
Tim Ferriss: It’s physically demanding. It’s psychologically demanding. Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can’t get any other way? What is it that keeps you going back?
Tim McGraw: Well, you can’t get it any other way, that’s for sure. And they’re always good, but every third show or so, you have that one show that’s like, “This is why I do it. This is why I do it.”
And you’re right, touring is more grueling. Touring is more expensive. You pay for everything. You’re doing three nights in a row, but it’s your stage, your design, your ideas, the way you want it to look, all those things. That’s the fun in it for me, is building the stage and putting the show together.
And that’s also the hardest part is putting the set list together because after 35 years and a ton of records, you’re never going to get everybody’s favorite song in. Somebody’s always going to miss a song that they wanted to hear because you can only do, what? 22, 23 songs in a show at the most, and when you’ve got 70 or 80 singles and a bunch of number ones, you can’t get them all in.
Tim Ferriss: You can’t. You can’t get them all.
Tim McGraw: So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience and that’s the fun part for me is try to create a movie for everybody to see.
Tim Ferriss: On those magic nights, just a few more questions and then we’ll land the plane, but what does that feel like? I’m so curious because I’ve played sports. I’ve had flow states in various contexts, but I’ve never experienced anything with that type of environment.
Tim McGraw: Well, that’s what it reminds me of is sports. It certainly reminds me of football before the games. And it reminds me of the locker room, it reminds me of just when you get your uniform on and you feel like you’re 10 foot tall and bulletproof.
It’s when I put the cowboy hat, it’s like Superman’s cape. You put the cowboy hat on, you’re ready to go. But there’s a symbiotic relationship that happens. And to me, art is magic. That’s what real magic is, is art, any kind of art.
And the magic happens when you’re up there and everything’s going great for you, and you can tell everything’s going great for the audience. And you have this symbiotic electrical relationship where you’re all in this groove together and you’re all sort of in suspended animation for a while, where you leave the world outside and all of a sudden we’re all in this fantasy world that we create, that we’re all living in for this hour and a half.
And when that happens, when the whole world just sort of shuts down and you’re in this make believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you’re in for an hour and a half, two hours, where nothing else exists except for that world, then you’re in a movie. Then you’re in this alternate universe that there’s nothing but joy.
Tim Ferriss: It’s like a utopia that you are able to create.
Tim McGraw: Yes. Yes. On the good nights.
Tim Ferriss: On the good nights.
Tim McGraw: And sometimes you think it’s not a good night because your ears don’t sound great or your voice isn’t doing what you want it to do. And sometimes those turn out to be the best nights. I mean, my best basketball game I ever had, I think I scored 52 points and I had the flu and it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because I thought I was hurting the team. I thought I was playing terribly. Then he showed me the book after the game.
Tim Ferriss: Tim, if you could have a billboard, metaphorically speaking, put anything on it for millions, billions of people to see, right? Could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be scripture, could be anything, right? It could be an image. So anything non-commercial.
Tim McGraw: “Humble and Kind.”
Tim Ferriss: “Humble and Kind.”
Tim McGraw: “Humble and Kind.”
Tim Ferriss: Tell me more about that.
Tim McGraw: Because that song to me represents so much, the video too, so much of what the world needs and what we don’t have right now is humility and kindness. And of course, love should be in that as well. But without humility and kindness, we’re lost and we seem to be lost right now. And so that song to me is a beacon in a lot of ways.
That one and “Live Like You Were Dying” to me are songs that don’t belong to me. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to sing them for people. They belong to everybody. Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: Hear, hear. “Humble and Kind.” Tim, we’re going to link to everything related to Tim McGraw on the show notes. You’ve got lots of that.
Tim McGraw: Not everything.
Tim Ferriss: No. We’ll leave out your OnlyFans page, but we have X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. You’re not hard for people to find. But is there anything else you’d like to point people to? Anything you’d like to say? Closing comments, public complaints, anything —
Tim McGraw: I have plenty of public complaints, but I’m not going to air them.
Tim Ferriss: — stand-up comedy, raw material, anything you’d like to say before we come to —
Tim McGraw: Well, first I want to thank you for having me —
Tim Ferriss: Absolutely.
Tim McGraw: — and allow me to be a part of your book —
Tim Ferriss: My pleasure.
Tim McGraw: — one of your books.
Tim Ferriss: Thank you.
Tim McGraw: And enjoy listening to you, and I hope we can do it again.
Tim Ferriss: Absolutely. It’s been such a pleasure. I’ve wanted to connect in person for years. So much fun.
Tim McGraw: Yeah.
Tim Ferriss: And I hope it’s not the last time. I love Nashville, so I’ll be back.
Tim McGraw: Good. Well, and when you’re back, we’ll talk again.
Tim Ferriss: Yeah. Absolutely.
Tim McGraw: I’ll cook dinner for you one night.
Tim Ferriss: I’m in.
Tim McGraw: Or have Faith cook dinner for you. It’d be better. Although I’m a pretty good cook.
Tim Ferriss: That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening, we will put links to anything and everything we can find. Obviously, all the ways to find what you’re up to, the tour, the music when it’s ready. And so —
Tim McGraw: There is one new song, to interrupt you, that people can find that we didn’t put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on my socials, but it’s a song called “Different” that I think people should listen to.
Tim Ferriss: All right. We will find “Different,” and we will link it in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast for folks. And as always, until next time, this is how I close almost every episode, a bit kinder than as necessary, not just to other people, but also to yourself. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete as Jack Kornfield has said. And also as always, thanks for tuning in guys. See you next time. Thank you, Tim.
Tim McGraw: Thank you. Adios.
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