00:00:05
Speaker 1: And I remember writing it and playing it acoustic for people, and nobody knew what to think about it, because it was just this sort of long thing that was hard to grasp onto And I remember thinking like that, I know it’s good.
00:00:17
Speaker 2: You know.
00:00:18
Speaker 1: I think that we released it as a single, the first single off that record, just as like a sort of punk rock idea, Like nobody tells us what to do.
00:00:26
Speaker 3: So we’re going to release a.
00:00:27
Speaker 1: Five minute waltz about bird hunting the country radio.
00:00:31
Speaker 2: You know. On this episode, we’re riding horses with Evan Felker, the front man of the Turnpike Troubadours. Then we’ll go to a live show at the legendary Canes Ballroom in Tulsa. I’m trying to understand what connects us to the music that we love, specifically the lyrics, and I’m trying to figure out why I like the dang much the Turnpike Troubadour’s music. But really my questions are around Evan’s songwriting, his connection to rural America, and I’m hoping to get a peek into the authenticity that exudes from his music. In the end, Evan opens up about some of his personal trials and we’ll see that when he talks about the price of admission, he’s talking about pain. This is a unique episode of bear Grease. I really doubt that you’re going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Nukem, and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that’s dying to be as rugged as the place. As we explore, I’m on a sandy back road in central Oklahoma with a canopy of post oak limbs arching above the horse trailer like the ceiling of a cathedral. Oh you got the side door over there, she’ll get out of it. Come on, baby, tell me about that horse, Evan.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: She’s a metallic malice owned. Daughter’s got about thirty rides on her.
00:02:40
Speaker 2: So who trains them for you?
00:02:42
Speaker 3: I put all the rides on this horse.
00:02:43
Speaker 2: Oh really, so you train that one from the ground up. Yeah, that’s all I didn’t know you were.
00:02:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s why I like riding them. Mate.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: Some have said that Evan Felker is one of the best songwriters of his generation. That’s the reason that I know his name. He talks about Browning, Auto fives, old bird dogs, and elk. But more than that, he’s really good at pinpointing peculiar familiar moments in normal life. But his songwriting isn’t the main thing that I’m interested in. I’m on my paint mule Izzy and Evan on his bay roam Philly. He calls Alice, We’re gonna make a big loop through some least cattle land.
00:03:24
Speaker 3: It’s funny you ride this. You ride this Philly by herself.
00:03:26
Speaker 1: She boggers at everything, and you put one horse runner and she’s fine when you break them, Evan, do you We all go real slow with them, and so.
00:03:35
Speaker 2: You don’t really ever expect him the buck or do anything.
00:03:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of kind of missed the step. Hopefully some of them will, but you want to keep them from it.
00:03:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well that was kind of the old method of just kind of like you. Yeah, not many people do that anymore because it’s not as good. I guess horsemanship has come a long way in the last generation. People aren’t as likely to just jump on an untrained horse and ride out there buck. It’s because there’s a better way. It’s slower, more methodical, and you just can’t gain the trust of a horse by extracting it by force. And in a way, this is kind of how Evan writes music. He writes it the old fashioned way, and that has separated him in a crowded haze of musicians. He doesn’t write mainstream stuff like the creative song think Tanks of Nashville. His songs are allegories from his life, uniquely connected to this place that he lives, rural Oklahoma. We’ve opened a barbarier gate limp from the summer heat. There aren’t many country music stars that train their own quarter horses.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: Back when you go.
00:04:55
Speaker 4: To lose a little sme.
00:05:04
Speaker 5: Reputation haven’t met that much to.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: Me, Evan, tell me about your horse training, you.
00:05:13
Speaker 1: Know, try to get them where you can ride them around two year old, and then man, we just kind of start them, start them in the round pin a little bit.
00:05:22
Speaker 2: Have you been doing that a lot of your life or kind of?
00:05:25
Speaker 1: I really got serious about it in my mid about six years ago, five years ago, got really really into learning a lot more about it.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: The trail road.
00:05:35
Speaker 1: I like it because it’s one way to not worry about anything else other than what you’re doing. And I mean it being horsebacks just and it’s just good exercise. It’s good for your patients, you know, because you can’t rush them, you can’t push on them. You pay you can push on the even training those dogs, you can push them too hard, but I mean I can’t.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: I’m not going to push your horses too hard. Just Number one, it’s too it’s kind of dangerous. Number two, it’s too much work to fix.
00:06:05
Speaker 2: So why why is that therapeutic?
00:06:07
Speaker 3: I don’t know.
00:06:08
Speaker 1: It just relaxes all the relaxes a part of your mind that is active all the time. And then you know, obviously you’re a lot of time. You might be like on that first ride and doing stuff like that, you’re you might be a little bit nervous there, but it’s it’s a healthy kind of being overaware. You don’t have any anxiety about your electric bill, you know, or whatever it happens to be.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You really have to be present. You have to really be present.
00:06:32
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. You have to be present and it once you’re there, don’t have to worry about. You don’t have any anxiety about anything else because you are actually in the in the moment that you’re in.
00:06:43
Speaker 2: I guess there’s different leaves. I use the word fear.
00:06:46
Speaker 3: Oh, I use the word fear.
00:06:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you got to fear and respect.
00:06:51
Speaker 3: You’re pretty pretty close cousins, you know, Fear.
00:06:56
Speaker 2: And respect are pretty close cousins. And when you’re on the back of a young horse, it takes all of you. There’s none of you left to worry. We’re an open pasture and at the edge of the woodline I heard of white spotted Corriente cattle spook into the timber, acting like they’ve never seen a man on horseback. Evan has been through some hard times in his life. I wonder if he’s going to open up to me about that. Sometimes cowboys don’t trust mule guys. It’s too soon to tell. The next question is kind of a gamble for this early in the ride. I want to ask him about his dad. And if you’ve listened to the song on the Red River, you know that his father passed away. Now, your dad was a The way he made live in was cowboy. Is that right? Oh?
00:07:46
Speaker 1: He worked here for a little while he worked for some ranches and stuff. But he’s a he’s a welder and a he’s still pipeline welds and stuff.
00:07:54
Speaker 2: So your dad’s still alive.
00:07:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad’s it’s a sandwich with you yesterday, Dad. It’s a matter of Yeah, it’s.
00:08:00
Speaker 2: Like he’s been RACI for the last three months. Listen to that album. I thought Van he felt for me.
00:08:07
Speaker 3: Huh.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: I was like, man, no, he’s.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s all kind of a That story is pretty well fiction. I mean it’s like a composite, composite story.
00:08:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he did some day working.
00:08:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, day working, And I mean he was he was a ranch hand for a guy that had a bunch of land up here.
00:08:29
Speaker 2: What I just did would be equivalent to meeting an actor and being surprised to learn what you thought was a documentary about them was actually a fictional drama. I’m slightly embarrassed, but it’s a compliment to how good the writing is. But then we have another awkward moment. We’re riding with a couple of Evans buddies and I ask one of them how old he is. Evan kind of thinks that’s a funny question. Now, how old are you.
00:08:59
Speaker 1: It’s just a weird thing to ask your buddies.
00:09:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can ask you on your birthday, but I flipped the script on him. Now, how old are you having?
00:09:08
Speaker 3: Forty one?
00:09:09
Speaker 2: Forty one?
00:09:10
Speaker 1: Okay, I’ve had more fun so far in my forties than I have, I think, than I had probably in my thirties combined.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: I don’t know.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: My late thirties were pretty cool.
00:09:19
Speaker 2: What have you been doing that’s been fun?
00:09:21
Speaker 3: Oh? I don’t know.
00:09:22
Speaker 1: I mean I’ve been had kids, been sober, got to go do more. I mean, I’ve been overseas once and rode some good horses, broke some cabs.
00:09:35
Speaker 5: You know.
00:09:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrote this.
00:09:41
Speaker 1: For my kiddos, for my lovely wife, and for my mother. I grew up in a little sawmill town done in southeast Oklahoma called Wright City, Oklahoma. It’s the entire town of Wright City, Oklahoma’s here.
00:10:05
Speaker 6: I think.
00:10:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, the saw Eliza shown so bad.
00:10:17
Speaker 3: You see Stu we.
00:10:21
Speaker 6: Gotic to fall.
00:10:23
Speaker 3: Down linked in the yard. You’re winding down.
00:10:29
Speaker 5: From the leadership down at the nursing home, and I feels so good to be of late, attending that I’m growing.
00:10:42
Speaker 2: Some stuff happened in Evans’ life that made it better. Well, he made some hard choices and has done a bunch of work that has made it better. More on that later. I’m backstage at Caine’s Ballroom in Tulsa. I’ve got some questions for somebody that I know will have some answer. Tell me your name, what you do?
00:11:05
Speaker 7: Yeah, So, my name is Patty Scase and I am a Turnpikes manager. I’ve been managing them since they came back, so I think kind of summer twenty twenty one was when we started.
00:11:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:11:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, Patty’s wearing a flatbell hat and a pearl snapshirt with a saguaro cactus on the chest. He’s unpretentious, the kind of guy that makes you feel comfortable. You may have noticed him saying since the band came back. Something happened around twenty nineteen. The Turnpike Troubadours are a country band, but they sure are different. I ask Patty why.
00:11:44
Speaker 7: I mean, I think that it’s it’s the way that the lyrics interact with the music, which sounds crazy, but like you know, I think that the way that the band really helps feature Evan’s lyrics and the lyrics are and the other writers that they that they work with but like it’s the songs have a surface level kind of like bop. They’re like easy songs to listen to that have really kind of deep, complicated meanings when you start to listen, when you start to really dig into the lyrics. And I think the way that those two things work is what makes turnpeit great. Yeah, So I think that the way that he writes paints a picture and it feels very like literary. So it’s it’s he’s able to in a couple of words like paint an entire picture and create a whole scene like like you know, like in Before the Devil Knows You’re dead at Square hay on the Meadows, second cutting of the year. So just that just sounds good. But you’re like, Okay, so I know that the that the Hayesmen cut twice, the work’s done, and it tells you so much while saying like with so few words, it tells you so much. And so I just think that the way that Evan is able to do that in his writing really paints the pictures for you know, for for the music.
00:13:12
Speaker 2: So but how do you how did someone get that? Like how do you write like that? You pretty much have to be there. You have to know, you have to you have to actually be what you are singing about.
00:13:26
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, exactly like you can’t. You can’t fake it, that’s for sure.
00:13:31
Speaker 2: We’re an hour out from showtime and Evan’s picking his Gibson guitar. I’m pretty sure that he’s wearing the exact same blue Wrangler button up shirt that he wore when we went riding. He mentions that he brought dress of your clothes, the figures he’ll just wear his work clothes tonight. That’s pretty turnpikey.
00:13:51
Speaker 5: I doubt it.
00:13:56
Speaker 3: Probably not there, Yeah, it might be too. Twelve thirteen.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: He’s got a piece of cardboard in front of him and he’s writing a bunch of songs down the playlist for the night in Black Sharpie, I want to talk to Evan about his music in life, I don’t really hang out with a ton of musicians, and I start this interview off all wrong, but I just can’t help it. I go straight in with a cliche question about my favorite song that he’s written, probably similar to the same thing a fan might say if they met him in an airport. I felt like I had no choice. I think the greatest song ever written for sportsmen. And I would have said this before I knew you is the bird Hunters. I think that that song it connected with me because of my grandfather was a bird hunter. But what I’ve found about my grandfather’s story that surprised me is that a lot of people, if not one generation too, generations back in the Southeast and in the Midwest and this part of the country have somebody that was a bird hunter.
00:15:07
Speaker 7: Yep.
00:15:08
Speaker 2: When did you write that?
00:15:09
Speaker 1: Probably twenty fourteen or something, whenever we got We’re getting ready for the.
00:15:14
Speaker 2: Self titled record twenty fourteen.
00:15:16
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: I was here in Okema when I finished it, and I remember writing it and playing it acoustic for people, and nobody knew what to think about it because it was just this sort of long thing that was hard to grasp onto at that point in time. And I remember thinking like that, I know it’s good, Like I know it’s got potential.
00:15:36
Speaker 6: You know.
00:15:36
Speaker 1: I think that we released it as a single, the first single off that record, just as like a sort of punk rock idea, like nobody tells us what to do, So We’re going to release a five minute waltz about bird hunting the country radio, you know, did it immediately take off pretty much? Yeah, that song resonated pretty quickly.
00:15:58
Speaker 2: Now in twenty fourteen, by that time, you were pretty established or were you?
00:16:03
Speaker 1: You know, it’s been a long, gradual trip, but yeah, we were able to play a lot of places. We weren’t big, you know, I mean we had we had some big shows in Texas and stuff, but we weren’t.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: We were just a club band.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: Was that a song that set you off? Or am I are we fixated on that song because we’re hunters?
00:16:23
Speaker 3: You know.
00:16:23
Speaker 1: It’s not like it was a commercial success. And in that era sort of before COVID, I mean most of us were all just playing bars or like thousand seaters maybe playing you know, we felt like we were pretty lucky playing theaters. We weren’t really getting any radio play, you know, like we played it was a single in Texas. You know, we’re an independent band, so it wasn’t as though it was like going to get national airplay. Not that it would have mattered either. Maybe it’s probably not that kind of song anyway.
00:16:51
Speaker 2: Is that one of your most popular songs?
00:16:53
Speaker 3: Yeah? I played every night, played every night.
00:16:56
Speaker 2: Did you get tired of people talking to you about it?
00:16:58
Speaker 3: No?
00:16:58
Speaker 1: I’m surprised anybody. I’m surprised that it got to have as much life as it has. It’s it’s one of my favorite.
00:17:04
Speaker 2: Is it one of your favorite?
00:17:05
Speaker 7: Oh?
00:17:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, maybe my favorite one that I’ve done. Now.
00:17:08
Speaker 2: Is it your favorite because it was a success or is it your favorite just because it was your favorite?
00:17:14
Speaker 1: It’s my favorite because it was sort of exploring new territory for me, and it resonated, you know what I mean. It was like an experiment that resonated, and that’s always.
00:17:23
Speaker 3: A really good feeling.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: I still sort of live that through that song every time I play it, even though it’s not necessarily about like not totally about my life per se, but all the characters in it are based on people, you know, like me or my buddies or you know, these things that happened that’s allegory for you know, like the love story is not necessarily a love story, but it’s it’s allegory for some stuff, and it’s it’s personal to me in its way, you know, little.
00:17:53
Speaker 5: Cooby tooling shotguns, singing fun the old love Danny Got three, I look back grin in a fumbled around, tried to reload the country was cold with the sun westward, singing it’s good to be back in this face with.
00:18:23
Speaker 8: Mys around the Belgian maid brown and the mind on the lines of her face.
00:18:36
Speaker 7: Ys.
00:18:37
Speaker 2: In the song, two Buddies go quail hunting, and the narrator recounts about when he left their small town for a girl in the city. Now he’s back, broken hearted, thinking about how things might have been different. Danny, the narrator’s friend, has gotten older. The bird dog gym is now much older, but the land they’ve hunted since they were kids hasn’t changed. The story and the characters developed quickly. But I’ll tell you what stood out most of me, the narrator, who I in my head as Evan Felker.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: It’s not far off.
00:19:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, you left your bird dog, though, to go to the town with this girl. Yeah, and that anybody from rural America, they may not have had a bird dog, they may not have actually left town and haf their dogs. But I’m just a just a data point in America, Okay. Yeah, and listen, When I turned eighteen went to college, Yeah, I left my coon dogs at home and ended up selling them my first year of college.
00:19:43
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:19:43
Speaker 1: I think that’s just a common thing, and then you know, you grow up doing this stuff and then just then life happens and you have to figure out how to make a living and whether you’re going to be the guy that hangs around town or whether you’re going to be the guy that is going to go try something that nobody’s you know, that nobody knows has has done. And yeah, that that period, I think a lot of a lot of bird dogs get stay in the hometown, you know, yeah, yeah dogs too.
00:20:09
Speaker 2: Well, it’s so cool the thing that attracted me to your music, and like, when I heard that song, there were so many connection points and that’s really what makes a cool song. And I guess is what made that song kind of a gamble for you, because it’s like, how many guys are making good country music about bird dogs? Yeah, like not very many, and so the specificity of it was just right to connect. Specificity is a gamble and can be limiting. The lyrics of some of the most popular mainstream songs of all time are usually generic in the details, but that gives them the possibility of wide appeal to a lot of people. Being specific in songwriting is a gamble. Narrowing the options of who might connect with it. But if you get it right, specificity can produce authenticity. But this song doesn’t just connect with the rural audience that left behind their hunting dogs. It has a lot more.
00:21:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was.
00:21:17
Speaker 1: It was real enough and like the observations were valid enough that they have somewhat of a universal quality to them, right, I mean, those things happen, and even if they didn’t happen in just that exact way, there’s something comparable and a lot of our lives, you know.
00:21:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, this song has two things that are themes in Turnpike music, specificity describing rural America, but also the universal appeal of a human story, in this case a loss of relationship and a rekindling of something nostalgic that reminds us of home. When you type into Google, why is Evan Felker’s songwriting good, it says vivid storytelling, autobiographical depth, and connection to his Oklahoma roots. I’d say that’s pretty accurate. But there’s more. The other thing that’s in that song is the browning auto five. Yeah, that’s what I hear most about from from hunters, because you got to be pretty deep in the weeds to know what a brownie and auto five is.
00:22:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s very much like it’s funny because there’s so many people that that was sort of this bourgeois status symbol of like you know, you didn’t have a whole lot, but you had this really nice shotgun, right and then so like that was my first shotgun that my That was my grandpa’s, who was also a bird hunter.
00:22:40
Speaker 2: By the way, Well, I was afraid to ask you if you had one that’s real. If you tell me you didn’t, I was gonna be like, uh oh.
00:22:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s that’s legitimate. I still have that one.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: And that was the gun that I learned how to shoot quail in the hills with too, you know, so it’s laying around here somewhere. But yeah, my mom’s dad kept kept some bird dogs and he the way when she was younger. But they she wound up with that and and I got I got that one. They gave it to me on I turned whatever fourteen. You got your grandfather’s Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have my grandfather’s browning out of five still yet still shoot it.
00:23:14
Speaker 3: That’s real.
00:23:14
Speaker 1: So that that’s me just sort of putting my own sentimental thing in there that I think is neat.
00:23:21
Speaker 2: I made a huge mistake in not asking Evan to see Is Brown in Auto five, But I didn’t want to be intrusive. But I’m trying to understand something about pop music, radio and songwriters like Evan. I asked Patty Turnpike’s manager, what the difference is between their music and much of the mainstream stuff on the radio.
00:23:45
Speaker 7: Yeah, So in the difference, I would say is is in Nashville, A lot of the music, not all of it, but a lot of the music that comes out for radio is built is purpose driven for radio. It’s built to be verse chorus, verse chorus, verse chorus.
00:24:03
Speaker 2: Why does that have to be for radio?
00:24:04
Speaker 6: Like?
00:24:05
Speaker 2: Why why when you’re driving down the road listen, do people want that and not something more a little a little just different than that.
00:24:13
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I think it’s it’s why it’s it’s the format was developed to feature music that’s written in a really specific way. So it’s like it’s like, you know, ultimately, what these radio stations want is just people who will continue to listen, oh like throughout the day and almost have it as a background music. So when they want you to like stuff, but they more than anything, they don’t want people to not like stuff. They don’t want people to dislike the music that’s playing on the radio. That’s the whole goal of the radio. So people aren’t making there’s.
00:24:45
Speaker 2: No where they don’t want them taking a chance on doing something wild that may not work, but maybe the greatest thing ever written.
00:24:53
Speaker 7: Totally they don’t want. They would rather have something safe and have something that is is down the line that doesn’t that keeps people from turning the radio off.
00:25:03
Speaker 2: A song like The bird Hunters was a gamble. Most people who write songs like that you’ll never know their name because their music never makes it mainstream. I asked Evan what he learned from the success of The bird Hunters.
00:25:20
Speaker 1: It just reaffirmed that, like, if you’re making the right you know, if you’re making the right observations for the right reasons, and if it’s captivating to you, then it’s probably valuable enough to do, you know, and to it’s worth taking a shot putting it out there to see if it really is.
00:25:37
Speaker 2: When you say making the right observations, do you mean like in life?
00:25:40
Speaker 1: Like literally, yeah, what’s interesting? What’s captivating? Yeah, that’s what I mean. So much of songwriting and being creative is trusting yourself to pursue an idea, because it’s so easy to have an idea go through your head and just let it go. The more that you go out on a limit and any of these songs that work that reaffirm that that’s a valid idea, that’s a you know, go for it is good for me. You know, it makes me more productive.
00:26:10
Speaker 2: And I keep I keep talking about this bird Hunter song as if that’s the only song you’ve ever written. But am I hearing you say that that was a pinnacle moment.
00:26:19
Speaker 1: Yes, because it is sort of out on a limb. It is like not safe. It’s not necessarily safe territory, right, yeah, yeah, and not not that it’s like outlandish, but it’s it’s not it’s not necessarily pedestrian either, you know.
00:26:33
Speaker 3: It’s it’s sort of weird pedestrian. Well, I mean like commonplace.
00:26:39
Speaker 1: It’s like a love story set in the middle of the hunt of quail hunting.
00:26:44
Speaker 2: Did other stuff that you have written, did you take cues off of what worked there?
00:26:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, using like concrete imagery and set in a scene and then you know, telling a very broad stroke story with a lot with breadcrumbs.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:27:04
Speaker 1: I like doing that. I mean, because that’s even though that sounds formulaic, it’s not necessarily easy enough that they all come out the same necessarily. So it’s like nice to having that approach in your back pocket when you go sit down somewhere, you know.
00:27:19
Speaker 2: Now, tell me about your actual experience.
00:27:21
Speaker 3: With bird dogs.
00:27:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve had a kind of a love affair with with pointer dogs since I was seventeen or eighteen.
00:27:28
Speaker 3: When I got my first dog.
00:27:29
Speaker 1: I went hunting in kind of the pine timber and stuff down in southeast Oklahoma with some friends, and I remember I was just talking to a friend of mine about this because he took me and I realized at that point in time that I couldn’t shoot. I was not nearly fast enough to shoot a Bob White Noptember because the first covey your eyes went up and I never shot. They were gone before I even like had the wherewithal to even.
00:27:51
Speaker 3: Think about it. And I was like, oh, this is this is hard.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: It’s really challenging to get to that point where you can really you know, get your get up and shoot them and the effective and on top of that, you know, train these dogs. And I’ve always liked messing with dogs so, but yeah, it’s there. It’s just it seemed like magic or something.
00:28:10
Speaker 3: I don’t know. It still still does every once in a while. And yeah, bird dogs today, Yeah.
00:28:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, we had bird dogs today.
00:28:28
Speaker 2: What about the song the uh your house fire song?
00:28:33
Speaker 3: Is your house burned down?
00:28:34
Speaker 7: No?
00:28:36
Speaker 3: No, I’m a fraud. I’ve told you, I’m a fraud.
00:28:40
Speaker 1: That is based on one of our neighbors’ account of their their house burning. I think they had I think their house burned twice, oddly enough, but he just talked about like waking up and it was happening, and they got outside and then by the time he got back in, they couldn’t get anything, you know, and how quickly it happened.
00:28:59
Speaker 2: What inspired you to write that song? Like, and I think that’s a great example. That song is a great example of you picking out something that’s interesting that we wouldn’t think was, Like if you just looked in my head, there’s no place that I would think about a house fire. But when when that song makes us all think what it would be like to lose everything, well.
00:29:24
Speaker 1: You know, like so the person that was telling me about it when I was and I was a kid too, and maybe they weren’t even telling me maybe they’re just talking to somebody, and I overheard it, and it seemed it’s just like this huge event in someone’s life on top of like I don’t know how to say what I’m what I mean necessarily, like it has so many layers, Like there’s loss of possessions, there’s you know, danger, there’s action, and there’s like the sentimentality of this stuff and the uncertainty of knowing what you gotta do. And so to put yourself in that spot seemed interesting.
00:30:03
Speaker 2: And so you but you were able just to like pick that kind of.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: Out of the air, yeah, because it was interesting.
00:30:10
Speaker 2: House Far probably was the first Turnpike Tribudoor song that I consciously remember listening to. And I’ll tell you the verse that hooked me. It was when Laurie takes the baby outside and wraps the child in a car heart coat that she found.
00:30:27
Speaker 8: In my ride.
00:30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and man, again, that was one of those connector moments. It was as if I was the only person in America that had a car heart coat in their truck. And I remember just being like, who are these guys? But I think that’s the detail in any good song, But to me, it stands out in your work is finding specificity that’s kind of obscure that really stands out, and if you probably hand pick your audience in a way by what you talk about. Because now now car Heart of all things today is like a hipster gear. So funny, I was I was like me and you were like pre hipster car guys. But you probably kind of select for the kind of people that would identify that’s.
00:31:15
Speaker 1: What my dad would have in this truck, that’s what guys in this area and tax bracket war in the wintertime. Yeah right, and yeah, car Heart did all the heavy lifting. But the brand, the brand name that had been around for eighty Yeah that man, Well, yeah they ought to get you know what they they should behind you, they I think they should think. I don’t think they need anymore with the hipster hipster stuf. Yeah yeah, well you probably helped make them hipster.
00:31:47
Speaker 2: How did the how did growing up where you did affect the way that you write and play music?
00:31:53
Speaker 1: I you know, I don’t know, I know that it did, but uh, it’s something that like now looking back, and I think a lot of people feel this way, probably especially if you’re kind of from a rural environment. You grew up in a pretty special place, and you know, we were far enough from cities and stuff that I feel like the people were particularly interesting because they grew up a different way or they you know. I feel like, you know, everything was like a generation behind, you know, so you know, I grew up like the same as like reading a field and Stream article about some kid in the seventies.
00:32:32
Speaker 3: Or something like that, you know what I mean.
00:32:33
Speaker 1: Like, I don’t feel like my life was my experience with childhood was that much different than that stuff.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: But the normalcy of it, I mean, that’s kind of the beauty of it is that for this part of the world, you probably did have a normal child.
00:32:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:32:49
Speaker 2: But somebody that can turn that into art that paints a picture of a culture that’s really powerful.
00:32:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:32:57
Speaker 2: And so oftentimes you think that somebody that’s making art might have some like super unique insights into something, but maybe they don’t. Maybe they’re like really good at just observing the common things and making them noble or maybe not even noble, but just interesting. It’s wild how tickled people get when they connect with the song, even at the most base level. Yeah, like me saying you singing about a car heart jacket watered up in your truck, like told me a lot about who this guy was whose house burned down, And I like that.
00:33:34
Speaker 3: Like be one of my buddies, or that could have been me, or that could have been my dad or whatever.
00:33:38
Speaker 2: Why does that make me like the song? Because I see Carhart coats wadded up in the back of the trucks all the time. It’s like not even that special, but there’s something about making it, making it into art.
00:33:49
Speaker 1: That’s I think that we’re all looking for some kind of connection with that stuff, you know, and it’s nice when you get to get to feel that.
00:33:59
Speaker 2: Turnpikes started in two thousand and six in obscurity, like thousands of other bands, maybe millions, But by twenty fourteen, even before the release of The Bird Hunters, the band was in a category that few musicians ever find themselves in. They were popular and successful by anyone’s metric, But in twenty nineteen things came to an abrupt stopped when something happened to the Turnpike Troubadours. This is a clip from the YouTube channel Country Cast, published about six years ago.
00:34:34
Speaker 9: The Turnpike Troubadours have recently canceled several shows abruptly again over this past Memorial Day weekend, and according to an article by Whiskey Riff earlier in May, there were rumors circulating that Turnpike Troubadour’s frontman, Evan Felker, appeared to be under the influence and has had a hard time performing, and after a benefit concert in Guthrie, Oklahoma, fans of the band turned to social media to share their thoughts and prayers. During that show, Felker appeared to have a very hard time throughout the performance and now a post was made to Turnpike Troubadour’s official Instagram page where it read, this weekend shows are unfortunately not going to happen for Turnpike Troubadours. On behalf of the band, we apologize for all the cancelations previously and this weekend. We are saddened by the situation and what you ought to know. We tried our best to stay positive during this stressful time. However, we have been standing at the crossroads optimistically in hopes of healing, but it was not meant to be. We ask for your prayers and support as it is our hope that our brother receives the encouragement and the help he needs. Thank you for all the sold out shows, the memories and support fans have since.
00:35:48
Speaker 2: Gone to social media. I remember when this happened. I didn’t know Evan at the time, but I’ve got to admit that my response was quite self interested. I thought, that’s a shame. I really like those guys music, and there was this assumption that they wouldn’t be making any more of it. I was disconnected in my empathy or thought about Evan and his family were non existent. Evan was living out his own words. He was paying the price of admission, which was pain, something every human can relate to. Evan was an alcoholic, and for the first time in his life, he knew he had to change. When the band broke up in twenty nineteen, when you stopped playing, what was that like? How did you How did you know you had a problem? How did you know how to fix it?
00:36:39
Speaker 3: Well? I didn’t.
00:36:41
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a problem. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was me. Turns out it was. But I just just did some deductive reasoning came to the conclusion that I was a part of the problem, No, the whole problem. Yeah, m so it was one of those things. I’ve just been in the bar so long, and like all this stuff was going on, and I said, with everything to do with the public, like I just wanted to go live off the grid somewhere, not maybe not off the grid, but like hide out somewhere, you know.
00:37:18
Speaker 3: And so I did, and things were pretty good for a while. You know, where did you go?
00:37:23
Speaker 1: I went down to southeast Texas to to my buddy’s place down there, and I just lived down there and we duck on.
00:37:30
Speaker 3: It, and I mean, life was great.
00:37:32
Speaker 1: But then eventually, you know, it caught back up with me, you know, and I just still just drinking.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: Too much and everything, and so you thought you could It’s just a shift in geographic location, yeah, which is.
00:37:45
Speaker 1: Like z textbook first thing anybody with a drug or alcohol problem does is they change where they are. Yeah, And you know, like we, I lived in this situation where you know, I was like hanging out somewhere every two or three months, and it was a party every time I went there. So it didn’t matter for a long time. And then finally it caught up with me where I was just not really able to play very well or I couldn’t keep my act together well enough to keep from getting like two truck before I played, you know, And so then it started to cause problems there, not that it wasn’t causing problems everywhere else.
00:38:24
Speaker 3: It just caused problems on the stage too, And it was just turning into too much.
00:38:30
Speaker 1: And we played so much, like over and over and over, just never ending, and like it really did feel like I was never gonna we weren’t ever gonna take a breath.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: You were your bandmates trying to talk to you. Did you have people around you that are like drinking?
00:38:48
Speaker 1: They all drink way too much too, I mean, you know what I mean. Like it wasn’t like I wasn’t the only I mean I might’ve been the main problem, but I wasn’t the only person. Like it was a good place for a person with a drinking problem.
00:39:01
Speaker 3: We were, yeah, just out of the.
00:39:04
Speaker 2: Job description.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: We were a drinking band, Like we were a drinking bar band, drinking whiskey on stage, you know, just like it.
00:39:11
Speaker 3: Was just live.
00:39:15
Speaker 2: How do you how do you feel about alcohol now? Like even with your like with your kids, with with other people’s kids, Like you’re influential guy, how would you want the message that you would send about alcohol, what would that be in general?
00:39:34
Speaker 1: I don’t think that there’s any problem with alcohol other than I can’t have any like that’s the only problem with alcohol. Like I don’t I don’t care. I mean, people do do what they want, but it’s not for me, you know. And there’s a And the message that I would send is that that’s not a big deal. There are going to be some people that hear this that should probably assess their drinking. And there is like a really good life on the other side of put of not drinking anything.
00:40:04
Speaker 2: So the not big deal is you don’t need this to have a great.
00:40:09
Speaker 1: Remove one little thing from from your life and it solves ninety seven percent of your problems. That’s not a bad trade off. Yeah, I mean life is is kind of amazing, and it’s it doesn’t seem normal.
00:40:24
Speaker 3: You know.
00:40:24
Speaker 1: You see stuff on TV about like, you know, everything to do with the recovery community and like everything to do.
00:40:31
Speaker 3: With post addiction.
00:40:32
Speaker 1: People that you see is like this, these sort of sad zombies that are sort of drifting through life and like don’t have happiness, and you know, my life is extremely full and like I get to go. We got to have this morning today, you know, like I get to I got to go to Alaska with Steve this. You know, if I was drinking at all, that would have not happened. Like every opportunity that I get now is direct correlated with the fact that I don’t drink anymore.
00:41:02
Speaker 3: You know, how do you how.
00:41:03
Speaker 2: Would you describe so briety, Like as I understand just hearing you, I mean, like you were drinking a lot, and just the clarity inside of life that comes when you’re not, when you’re not using this thing to cope with the difficulties of life.
00:41:20
Speaker 1: I don’t know, like, yeah, so there there’s one thing that happens. So like I drink a lot, and number one, I didn’t do a whole lot of anything, and it was still fun. Like alcohol makes doing nothing fun. So the only answer to that is, like, do something that’s actually fun, actually.
00:41:39
Speaker 2: Be actually go like actually be productive. Yeah, And I mean, isn’t that the lie of any kind of addiction? Is Yeah. I had a guy one time that I worked with, Yeah, that was kind of an old druggie and I had never used drugs, and he told me something I’ll never forget. He said, drugs, And it was just like this simple thing. He said, drugs take a normal day and make it the most incredible day you’ve ever had in your life. And that’s obviously the biggest deception, like of all time exactly because you’re sitting on your couch having like a trip. Yeah, I mean that’s I guess that’s the the fallacy of the whole addiction world is that.
00:42:16
Speaker 1: It might make it seem interesting or lend it lend the illusion of interest, but you see it. Listen back to a conversation that you have, Like, do I know that nobody that drinks wants.
00:42:28
Speaker 3: To hear themselves talk while they’re drunk? Ever? Come on? You know, so what I’m hearing you say is that like now.
00:42:35
Speaker 2: You’re you’re you’re going out and actually doing interesting things.
00:42:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:42:39
Speaker 1: I do my best, you know, I try to and productive can be some days I’m productive too, Yeah, but on my on my worst day, now, like I’m still ten times more productive than I ever was.
00:42:53
Speaker 2: When you know, well, what’s the difference between somebody that can handle it and somebody that can’t.
00:43:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there’s so there’s like a part of addiction is physiology, and there are those of us who are going to be more prone to that. You know, part of it’s maybe just overexposure to that that happens too, But the question was what’s the difference in people that can handle it and people that can’t. Well, if it’s causing you problems, or let’s say, this is a very very simple way to do it. If when you start drinking you can’t control how much you drink after you’ve had one or two, then you have a drinking problem.
00:43:31
Speaker 2: So you’re saying, just that loss of control exactly the signal. That’s the signal, and that’s probably where people get screwed up because they it’s so hard for somebody to admit they have a problem any part of life.
00:43:42
Speaker 3: It’s the worst.
00:43:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean not even with alcohol, but like just a human problem is a condition where we have difficulty assessing our own issues to say, okay, I have a problem, whether it’s a anger problem, or a problem with your finances or ab album with the relationship, or a problem like we have a hard time saying, okay, this is a problem because it’s out of control.
00:44:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s not necessarily the admitting that there is a problem, it’s admitting that you need help solving it.
00:44:11
Speaker 3: Hence the whole help thing.
00:44:13
Speaker 2: What brought you to being able to do that?
00:44:16
Speaker 1: I tried everything on my own and it and my life was just becoming more and more unmanageable.
00:44:23
Speaker 2: Where Evan were you were you really like miserable?
00:44:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, just you know, and mine was a pretty cut and dry case of it, which I’m very grateful for. It’s something that I don’t want to go back to. Yes that I’m not, you know, I would never ever want to.
00:44:43
Speaker 2: Evan’s life is a lot different than it used to be. In April of twenty twenty two, the band reunited and played their first show since the breakup. I think we were all surprised. It was like the ultimate comeback. Even fellow Oklahoma Zach Bryan was surprised. And then the song east Side of Sorrow he mentions the band’s comeback, and it became the stuff of legend. When guys like Zach Bryan start writing songs about your band’s come back, you’re beyond the tipping point of influence on the culture. I want to talk to Evan about this new chapter in his life.
00:45:25
Speaker 3: Pretty much risk.
00:45:29
Speaker 2: So this is Kanes is where y’all came back to.
00:45:33
Speaker 3: First show back yeah, we played here.
00:45:35
Speaker 1: Is it’s only like three years ago, right was it?
00:45:41
Speaker 7: So?
00:45:42
Speaker 2: What was that like? Coming back here?
00:45:44
Speaker 3: It was amazing?
00:45:45
Speaker 1: I mean, and it was it was a big like because we weren’t all like crazy shit we were gonna do it again and then like really get out on the road and play and so coming back and this stuff was packed out and everybody was crying. Everybody was crying, groaning, crying, girls crying. Everything is children crying, old people crying. No, it was it was something else.
00:46:14
Speaker 2: On April eighth, twenty twenty two, Turnpike played their first show back after the hiatus. Now three and a half years later, here we are and today, in late August twenty twenty five, Evan is playing an acoustic show back at Cain’s. This is his hometown.
00:46:32
Speaker 3: Crowd.
00:46:34
Speaker 2: Misty and I walk in the back door and sit within thirty feet of Evan on stage. We feel really cool coming in that side door. The place is going wild, all right. Evan just went on the stage.
00:46:49
Speaker 1: Crowd’s cheering, Caine’s Ballroom. How are you doing tonight, ladies and gentlemen, And I really appreciate y’all packing the place for us.
00:47:12
Speaker 2: Here we go let’s just let him play the whole thing.
00:47:17
Speaker 5: Little Covey two going the shotgu singing fun dog down, fel log.
00:47:27
Speaker 3: Danny got.
00:47:29
Speaker 5: I look back, grin in the thumbleed around.
00:47:34
Speaker 3: I tried to reload.
00:47:37
Speaker 5: The country was cold, with the sun westward, singing.
00:47:42
Speaker 3: It’s good to be back in this.
00:47:45
Speaker 8: Place with mys around the bedge and made brown and the mind on the lines of her face.
00:48:00
Speaker 3: And now Danny’s my buddy.
00:48:03
Speaker 5: We got up black family. We hunted this timber before we could drive in the old English poigner.
00:48:13
Speaker 3: He wants belong to me, but I gave him out.
00:48:18
Speaker 2: I moved to No.
00:48:19
Speaker 4: Five Hap with the girl Hap to the city of Fining.
00:48:28
Speaker 5: Game they can He’ll like God and play out just like some stories.
00:48:36
Speaker 4: And we fairly love a rodeo day.
00:48:43
Speaker 5: She said, gold on back Jerkee County. Won’t you crawl back with another butter raising and con says baby, if you need me, I’ll beware your family and go on.
00:49:01
Speaker 2: The hell hoy I headed.
00:49:11
Speaker 5: Then just look at old Jim a dozen decembers behind him. No worse for the world, and your time has been in told said not have your.
00:49:25
Speaker 3: Shooting, and look at the gray and your.
00:49:32
Speaker 4: How good doesn’t feel you belong in these is its best that you let it all in.
00:49:42
Speaker 5: You married thegger you to married a family. He does there bulleted my friend. She said, go on back to Jerkee Cawn. Won’t you cry back when another butter raisor come s baby if you need me, happy.
00:50:09
Speaker 4: Where you found me and going behead.
00:50:22
Speaker 5: Now was beginning to deal with it, and then the old dog upon it and bart of me dies. Then a flutter of feathers, then a sharp.
00:50:39
Speaker 4: Gun the shoulder fader for Julie. She’ll be home on fot July. Then we dance on the fo the jul.
00:51:21
Speaker 5: Dan says, hello, shot, looks like it still got it.
00:51:27
Speaker 3: That’s what we came here to do.
00:51:31
Speaker 1: Boy, it’s live and not still at the foot of the hill.
00:51:37
Speaker 3: You could kick up a single or.
00:51:40
Speaker 5: Two, she said, go on back to Jerkey County. Want your car back with another butter raisor and calm says baby, if you need me, I bey where you found.
00:52:04
Speaker 6: Hit home.
00:52:19
Speaker 3: A thank you. You guys are really really good at singing.
00:52:27
Speaker 2: It’s hard to nail down what connects us to the music we love. Everyone is so different and there is no standard for good music. It’s uniquely calculated, not in the head, but in the heart. Music is measured by how it moves us, elevates us, how it reminds us of what we value. It reminds us of the hard times the good times. It reminds us of who we love. Like riding a young cult, music momentarily extracts us from reality, demanding all of our attention, elevating us to our best self. Good music makes us feel like someone has written a soundtrack for our life. It reminds us of something familiar. It brings nobility to the mundaneness of the gift of normal life. The fruit of good music is simple and childlike, kind of like a nice ride on a good horse through open country. I can’t thank you enough for listening to this Bear Grease Feed with Old Brent’s This Country Life podcast and Lakes Backwoods University. Keep the Wild Places Wild, because that’s where the bears live. Tell me about your life here in Oklahoma.
00:53:44
Speaker 1: When I moved down to Texas, you know, I started getting really interested in ranching, getting really interested in cattle. My buddy let me run some cows down there on his place and help out with his And then I started from there. You know, we were talking about I’d just gotten sober, and so I had this like this blessing of having this sort of free time to learn like all this stuff that I had been missing out because it was stuff that I would have been too scared to do or too drunk to do or whatever. And I had this whole like sort of renaissance period of just like learning all this stuff about catt doogs, all this stuff about horses, riding, running cattle. I mean, life in general. I was back to sort of being a regular dude. Nobody gave a shit about my music. I didn’t stand out in any situation. I was very much humbled, regular guy, you know. And so it rocked on there and I stayed obsessed with it. I kept doing kept doing stuff, kept learning stuff, and we had our we found out we’re going to have our second baby. And that’s like some of the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life, was living down there, and I didn’t never want to leave, but I knew that my mom and dad weren’t going to get to know our kids. You know, we were kind of being selfish being that far away from everybody, and you know, Stacy’s parents would wouldn’t.
00:55:10
Speaker 3: Really get to know them either.
00:55:12
Speaker 1: So this place came up for sale and we threw everything we could together and got it together. Wasn’t any stitch a fence on it, hardly, and got it to where we could run some cows.
00:55:25
Speaker 3: I had cattle down there.
00:55:26
Speaker 1: We moved everything, moved, moved moved livestock and went from you know, running just a few heads to turn it into kind of a functioning kind of operation. I mean, it’s still got a long way to go, but we do everything we can with horses and dogs, and you know, it’s it’s something that keeps me busy all the time. You know, there’s always something to do, and that for me is a good thing to like have this stuff. And I’m I’m really I’m really, like really proud of it. My kids will get to spend a lot out of time out here horseback if they want.
00:56:02
Speaker 2: To, and this is a good part of the world to be a cowboy.
00:56:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s not bad.
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