How Sturgill Simpson Avoided Record Company Meddling | Joe Rogan

Now is this because you guys don't have, I mean how much of influence do record companies have on new bands? Like when new bands are coming up and they're trying to put together their music, how much influence do record companies have on their creative process? It just depends, did they discover them or are they jumping on board with something that's already working? Well, I mean, someone, like as an artist, like someone looking at you as an artist, they go, yeah, you let them do whatever the fuck he wants. You know, like let them let them... No, that's a very rare thing. It's rare. You're dealing with record companies. Right. Yeah. I had got it contractually written into my contract that nobody could tell me what to do. So it's common that you get fucked with. Well, everybody's gonna have their two cents, their input, there's gonna... Here's what we really want you to want to do. Right, because like, probably I would think there would be executives who go, stop, stop fucking with it right there, just leave it right there, trust me. Put it out like that. Those would be like actual record men, the guys that used to run the record business. Like they knew what the real shit was and you don't fuck with the real shit. But there's very few of those people actually working in the record business anymore. It's all like 25, 30 year old bottom line quarterly report motherfuckers. You know. It's all about the money. Yeah. But wouldn't you think that excellence would bring money? Especially today, in this day and age with the internet? They could sell excellence. Then they have to work and find it. As opposed to like formulating this tried and true Mrs. Butterworth recipe. Proven. You know, just give me 17 of those. I get it. I would suck to be in a business with art. You know? Or like thinking about it like a business. But it's art. It's a product. But your music is art. You get enough people involved, anything turns into a product. Right. But it's just the business aspect of it. Like someone trying to think about what's the best way to sell it. What's the best way to push it? What if we change this and added that? What if we put some gospel singers in the background? What if we did this? What if we, you know? Yeah. But you've avoided it. What if we get this person to like rap a verse on it? How'd you avoid it? What did you do to avoid most of that bullshit? Uh. Still figured it out. I don't know man. I just didn't do it. I say no a lot. I think that's the thing to say. Yeah. I'm lazy as shit too. I gotta really want to do something. Yeah. Especially when you don't have to, right? Right. Man. What were you doing at 35 when you quit? You were in a railroad shot? I was an operations manager at a rail yard, an intermodal yard out in Utah. Wow. I was running a rail yard just overseeing the switching crews that when the trains would pull in from the east and west side of the yard, we would break those trains apart and like look at other manifests and drag cars off other rails and build them into those trains and then crew them again and get them on the line. Damn. So I was working like 90 hour weeks. Mostly cleaning up train wrecks and derailments or like they blew a switch and put three cars on the ground. We were the central artery in the Midwest. Really, that corridor is kind of the cross section of the entire country's shipping commerce. So if we fucked up and tied up the main lines, then we kind of shut down the railroad. Do you know what's fucked up? You could never tell a kid, hey, you want to make meaningful music? This is what you gotta do. You gotta struggle in like difficult jobs till you're about 35 and barely get to where you want to be, where you're really kind of freaking out about your future and then pour yourself your heart and soul and then find success after that. That's a good move. If you want to have impactful music. But if you get into music like early on in your life and make a career early on in your life, you miss everything that you did by being an older, like you're a 35 year old man that makes a jump. That's a bold move. That makes sense, but there's been a lot of incredible artists that made some truly visionary shit at 20. For sure. But there's a life experience aspect to your music. Well, yeah, I wouldn't have any of this shit to write about if I'd done it at 20. I'd be right who God knows what I'd be right about. Probably pussy. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. And you're young? What else? What are you thinking about? You know, if you're talking about stars and horoscopes and shit, you're probably bullshitting people.