The Clay Walker Interview with Matthew Kelly

Matthew Kelly:

Welcome. I'm Matthew Kelly. I'm here with country music legend Clay Walker. Clay, thank you. It's great to be with you. We appreciate you coming to be with us. I got some serious questions to get started. How much coffee do you drink each day?

Clay Walker:

Three or four cups.

Matthew Kelly:

Yeah?

Clay Walker:

Two in the morning. Two in the afternoon.

Matthew Kelly:

Doesn't keep you awake at night?

Clay Walker:

I like coffee.

Matthew Kelly:

All right. Very good. Second serious question. Favorite movie?

Clay Walker:

Oh, that's easy, Tombstone.

Matthew Kelly:

Tombstone?

Clay Walker:

I love those cowboy movies.

Matthew Kelly:

Yeah. What do you love about Tombstone?

Clay Walker:

It's quick and witty, quotable. A lot of my friends know the lines. "I'm your huckleberry, you're no Daisy," just funny lines that always stick and make for good humor.

Matthew Kelly:

Excellent. Favorite city in the world to play a concert?

Clay Walker:

That's tough. I would say Houston at the Woodlands in particular, we just did it. We started our tour off this year. The show there, it was sold out and pandemonium and it's always great to see a lot of bodies in the seats and see them enjoying. There's lots of places I love playing. We were in Kansas City last night and that was a phenomenal show. So there's all over, but Houston, just because it is home.

Matthew Kelly:

Does it matter more who you're with then where you're at? Does the crowd make the concert?

Clay Walker:

There's always a, either to me, what makes a great show is when the energy of the audience matches the energy of the entertainer. And you can go out sometimes and you know that you're having a phenomenal show vocally, singing great, the bands playing great. And then the crowd is just kind of there. But I always look at it like an elephant, you don't just try to move them all at once, you just take your time. And, I can say that there's been very few concerts in my life that didn't end up where I wanted them to by the last song.

Matthew Kelly:

Fantastic. Favorite city in the world to visit for vacation.

Clay Walker:

I like Rome and I've only been there once, but we were there for a couple of weeks and that was an incredible experience. But here in the states, I would say that I really like San Antonio. It's got all the charm to it, the river walk, food, people, language. You can speak Spanish there, which I love Spanish. And I just really like the feel of San Antonio.

Matthew Kelly:

You grew up in Texas, what was life like as a child?

Clay Walker:

Life as a child was, as I look back now the innocence of it was I think we all miss that as adults. I like to say that I might grow, but I'll never grow up. I grew up as a child on a ranch or farm that was passed down in my family for generations and generations. And there's, I take a lot of pride in that. We were poor. We worked for everything that we got. I tease my kids that I grew up hunting because we had to. We killed whatever we ate and that might be a squirrel, it might be a raccoon. My kids look at me like, I mean with tears in their eyes, a raccoon? Really dad? But there's something to be said for feeling hungry, and my kids will most likely never experience that, but I look back and relish how I grew up that we had to learn how to survive and that's good.

Matthew Kelly:

When you were nine years old, you got your first guitar. What do you remember about that?

Clay Walker:

My dad as early as I can remember played guitar and sang, and all of my aunts and uncles, they all played instruments and would sing, I just thought everybody did that. And I wanted my dad to teach me how to play guitar. And so at age nine, he bought me this Catalina guitar. This thing was a piece of junk. And the strings were so far off of the neck that I could barely press them down. Then later on in life, I'd asked my dad why would he give me a guitar like that? He said, "Because I knew that if you really wanted it bad enough, that you would realize that there's pain in it." And he ended up buying me a great guitar later. But it was a moment for me, that getting that first guitar. It was like getting your first horse or first, get your first car. It was exciting, but that was just the beginning, there was a lot of work that went into becoming a musician.

Matthew Kelly:

When did you first think, that's what I want to do with my life?

Clay Walker:

When I was 15 years old. I was in this talent contest at South Park High School in Beaumont, Texas. And I had the choice of either doing this country song by John Conlee called Rose Colored Glasses, or this song by Lionel Richie called All Night Long, which is a huge Lionel Richie song. And my dad was a stone cold country singer. I mean, he believed in two kinds of music, Country and Western, and that's all we listened to in the truck. It's just the way I grew up. But I tried different genres, especially Lionel Richie, I love Lionel Richie. So I sang all night at this, predominantly African-American high school. And I learned something about myself, that I wanted to please the audience in front of me. I wasn't just doing it for me.

Clay Walker:

There was this deep desire to please the people in front of me. And so I did this song and the crowd was going bezerko. I mean, standing up yelling, screaming in the middle of the song. I mean, it was, it literally was like, I could feel, my only time I've ever had stage fright was that night when I first started out I was having stage fright. Never have I had it since. The audience cured me of that. Would replace the stage fright with this voracious appetite to please and become an entertainer. And I knew that night and I was 14 or 15 and that this is what I was going to do this my life.

Matthew Kelly:

So 17, you go to Nashville, but between that night and going to Nashville, what did you do to set that up? Or what are the steps you took toward that dream?

Clay Walker:

I think there's a misperception a lot of times, and rightly so, of the public. Even myself, of what is the protocol for trying to have a career in the music business or an entertainment business? And there's no exact way, but Nashville was and still is the hub of, if you're going to be a big time country singer, you can't bypass Nashville., It's the gatekeeper. And when I went the first time I was 17. I'd been playing all the way up from 15 to 17. I was playing every spot that would let me play for free. For free. I just wanted to go in and sing in front of people. And I started writing songs and I ended up liking writing songs more than I liked singing.

Clay Walker:

And there was just this, I don't know, it's a wonderful comfort, if you will, to know what you were born to do. And you know that you're in that spot, the right spot. And it is a gift, the talent is a gift, but it will not propel you to where you want to get, you have to put in the work, you got to put in the time. And I had done that and I went to Nashville and got rejected by every label in town. Nobody thought I wasn't good enough to make it. And what did that do to me?

Clay Walker:

It's like chasing the girl that tells you no a lot, you just keep chasing and finally, she's going to give you a shot. And I remember reading a quote by Willie Nelson who didn't make it until he was like 40. And he said, "If you keep knocking on the door, eventually someone's going to answer." And so I just kept honing what I was doing, my writing skills, my performance skills. And one day a producer walked into a bar I was playing in and he was producing Clint Black, Charlie Daniels, a group called Little Tech, Kenny Rogers, he had tons of acts and he walked up to me and he said, "I want you to come to Nashville and I want to make a record with you." And two weeks later, I was in Nashville making a record.

Matthew Kelly:

And where was that? Where were you playing that night when he came to see you?

Clay Walker:

I was playing in this club called the Neon Armadillo in Beaumont. And there were two other country music acts, Mark Chestnut and Tracy Byrd who had already gotten record deals. And we were competing against that club, country music is really alive and well in Beaumont, Texas in the late '80s and '90s. And my bass player at the time said, he said, this is before the producer walked in, my bass player at the time said, "You know, they say lightning never strikes twice in the same place," he goes, "But I think it's about the strike three times."

Clay Walker:

And it wasn't very long after that. When James Stroud that producer, the biggest producer in Nashville at that time walked in and said, what he said, "He listened to me play some songs." And literally two weeks later I was in Nashville and we were recording my very first album.

Matthew Kelly:

How long between the first visit to Nashville at 17 and this second trip to Nashville to record?

Clay Walker:

It was five years.

Matthew Kelly:

Okay.

Clay Walker:

It was five years later that I'd been rejected by all the folks in Nashville that this happened. And my mom and dad begged me to go to college. I graduated high school at 17, and I told my mom and dad that if they would just ease up and give me four years, let me have four years trying to make it in the music business. If I don't, I will, I promise you I'll go to college. Because no one in my family much less, I mean, not just my immediate family, but no one carrying the Walker name had ever been to college. And they wanted to see that happen. And it didn't happen. But in that fourth year, we started to see the traction, getting attention. And then in year five that was, look I went one year over, what can I say?

Matthew Kelly:

So first trip to Nashville, you're 17. You got no money. You're sleeping in your car. It doesn't work out. You're driving back to Texas. What's that drive like, what are you thinking?

Clay Walker:

Defeat. Totally. I was destroyed. I mean, I won't lie to you. I was, it was, the journey was, to Nashville. I was driving, I left Beaumont in the middle of the night, I ended up in Nacogdoches Texas, about two o'clock in the morning. And I got pulled over for an expired inspection sticker on my car. And the police officer pulled me over and he saw my guitar in the back of my seat there. And he said, "Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going to Nashville. He said, "You've been drinking." I said, "No, sir." And he said, "I play fiddle." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "I'll tell you what," he said, "I won't write you up. If you'll come back to the police station and pick with me a little bit." And I said, "Okay." I didn't have any money to pay a ticket anyway.

Clay Walker:

So we go back to the police station. And he gets his fiddle out. I get my guitar out. We played for about 30 minutes. And he said, "Well, good luck." I went to Nashville. I was there two days sleeping in my car. And went around to all the labels, took my little tape into all of them. And only one of them actually said, "I think there's something here, but it's nowhere close, you're going to have to work a lot harder." And I left and I drove back through Nacogdoches and stopped off at the police station and I asked that cop to be in my band and he joined my band.

Matthew Kelly:

Really?

Clay Walker:

That's the way music works. It really is. It really unites people. And now we've got a lot of stories that music has contributed, it's been a great journey.

Matthew Kelly:

So your family was a huge influence in your music, who we were other influences, who were the people you looked up to, musical heroes?

Clay Walker:

I have a lot of the musical influences and icons, that really helped me be who I am as an artist. And none more than probably George Strait. I don't know him that well, I did tour with him a couple of years, but he just, it wasn't just his voice, which his voice is phenomenal. It was his ability to be a complete artist. He knows who he is. He knew that from the very onset of his career, and he knew how to pick songs. He knew his audience and he knew what was authentic to himself. And I'm still trying to be that good. He's always been that good at doing that. And I learned just by observation, but I would say that most, the most influential person would be George Strait, but I've loved people like Bob Seger, Lionel Richie, Keith Whitley, Merle Haggard to me is the greatest singer of all time. I mean, I wouldn't want to emulate his rough lifestyle, but definitely the greatest singer that ever lived.

Matthew Kelly:

I've heard artists like Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw describe your voice as one of the purest in the industry. When did you realize that you had that sort of gift?

Clay Walker:

I was just having this conversation with my daughter this morning and, I wasn't really what I would say a great singer until the last few years. I say that with confidence that I wanted to learn how to get better. And at our church, there was a Christmas concert being put on about seven years ago. And I was asked by the pastor to sing in it. So I said, "Yes, of course." And I went to the choir room and there was 25 people in there who sing in the choir. All of them sing better than I do, and I'm not being humble. I was flabbergasted at the control that they had, and the power, and just the ease that they sang with. And when it came on, turned to sing, I actually felt nervous.

Clay Walker:

And after this exercise of being in there, seeing what songs we were going to sing, I singled out a lady that seemed to be helping others with some certain warmups and things. And I asked her, her name was Margaret Rose. I said, "Miss Margaret," I said, "I need to ask you something." I said, "Is there any way you could teach me to do what they have?" She goes, "Yeah." So we worked together for, we've been working together for four or five years. And now I can go out and do 10 shows in a row and never get tired and have this control and stuff.

Clay Walker:

I'm always flattered by someone who thinks that I sing good. And especially somebody like the guys you named Garth Brooks or Tim, and it's, those are two of my favorite individuals, by the way. They're very humble, we're not best friends by any means, but they know who I am, I know who they are. And they're really great people.

Matthew Kelly:

So when you've got a gift like that, what sort of responsibility do you feel around protecting the gift, exercising the gift, sharing the gift?

Clay Walker:

I pass on information. I would say if I'm good at something in particular, it would be having information that can bless people's lives, and try to deliver it in the shortest amount of time that you can, because people don't want to hear a lecture. I'm always available I would say to anyone, that's seeking some information that I have and taking care of my voice that, it's taken me my whole career to learn how to do it right. And I only want to get better at it.

Clay Walker:

And I feel the same way about, a few different things that I'm very passionate about. Don't like wasting time. I hate the fact that we're all going to die, not trying to be morbid, but I just wish there was enough even more and more time to learn, to be better at the things that I love. And I'm constantly, constantly seeking to do that.

Matthew Kelly:

So you release your first album. It's mega, it's huge, triple platinum, three number one hits. What was that like?

Clay Walker:

I still feel so excited when one of my songs comes on the radio. It's not ego. It's the greatest joy that happens because I know that I'm listening to it. Somebody else is hearing it too. It's on the radio, whatever area that I'm in, they're hearing it too. And they're having memories with that song, they grew up with it or they're just learning it, but I still cannot believe how fast the time has gone. I still can't believe that I've had that kind of success if you want to call it. That just sounds like such an ugly word, success. I can't believe that all that's happened because I still feel like a kid that's still trying to make it I really do. And I never have even remotely thought of myself in the same breath as some of the other singers out there, some of the ones you've named, I still don't think of myself like that. And I hope I never do.

Matthew Kelly:

But you have this huge year, you released your first album, it's enormous, three number one hits, you get named Best New Male Artist. What was that like?

Clay Walker:

Trying to find out why you do something, is I think a big part of, the why is important. Whenever my first, the first song I had written that went, number one was the song called Live Until I Die. And I wrote that song for my grandmother, that's the way I grew up. Muddy roads, muddy feet. I didn't live on the blacktop street, every line of that is my autobiography.

Clay Walker:

And when I got my first check for writing that song, it was an enormous amount of money. I thought that a mistake had been made because I was still poor. I still didn't have any money because I was just trying to make it. And that song had gone number one. And the first time that I got, went to the mailbox and that check was in there, I opened it up and I just was like, I literally thought someone made a very gross error.

Clay Walker:

And I called my agent. I said, "Hey," I said, "I got this check." And I said, "I'm really nervous about it." I was even looking over my shoulder. And he said, "How much is it?" And now I told him how much it was. He goes, "Oh yeah." He goes, "There's a lot more coming then that." I was just, I couldn't believe it. But first thing it did was I bought my grandmother a house. I built my grandmother a home because, we very humble beginnings. We lived in a house that she and my grandfather paid $20 for right out of the depression. So it was a moment.

Matthew Kelly:

You mentioned your grandmother, she played an enormous role in your life. What is one of your fondest memories of her?

Clay Walker:

I have so many memories with my grandmother. She, her name was Mary Elizabeth, I named by my daughter after her, Mary Elizabeth, but she was the greatest human being that I've ever known. And she was a saint. She raised kids, my dad was one of them who put her through hell, literally. She lost her husband when she was 40. She never dated, never remarried. And she loved me. I mean, I knew that I was her favorite, but I think all of her grandkids thought that they were her favorite, but I knew I was.

Clay Walker:

Some of my greatest memories with her and there's too many to count, but would be feeding chickens. She loved her chickens and she'd throw the scratch out, and I was just, I was three or four, and she loved me so much and she loved roses. And she had these roses that were called seven sisters. And she taught me how to trim them back.

Clay Walker:

Her Blackberry cobbler, I would go pick blackberries and bring them back to the house. And she would make Blackberry cobbler. And the smell of it to this day is seriously, probably the greatest smell to me on earth because it gets all those memories come flooding back of being at her table or sitting by her rocking chair. I'd sit on the floor and I'd sing and she would cry when I would sing. I would sing this song called Sunshine on my Shoulders. And she would just say, "Please, don't sing that I'm crying now." And I would just sing it that much more. I was only four or five, but now that I look at it, it just, yeah, it brings back a flood of memories. She was a great lady.

Matthew Kelly:

She gave you the name Clay.

Clay Walker:

She did. There was a movie called Spencer's Mountain. One of the main actors on it name was Clay Boy. And so to my whole family, to this day, they call me Clay Boy. And it used to embarrass me to no end in school, because all my cousins would call me Clay Boy. And I hated it. I just, I would just cringe, but now I kind of like it.

Matthew Kelly:

Talked a lot about memories. You spoke about how people come to concerts and songs stir memories in them. Some songs take us into the past. Some songs take us into the future. Some songs pull off both. I think Live Until I Die is one of those songs. You spoke about it, being biographical, telling your story, but it is also very much forward facing. When you record a song like that do you know that you've got a hit?

Clay Walker:

I didn't know how special that song was going to be at the time. I think the most flattering thing that ever happened with that song was in school, I hated school, hated math, but I loved creative writing and I flourished in that. And after I wrote the song Live Until I Die, there was a high school in Beaumont, Texas that used that song as a model for creative writing, they had it up on the board.

Clay Walker:

And when I found that out, it was the most flattering thing that I think I, to this day, I don't think anything will ever come close to the way that made me feel, was that a teacher who taught creative writing used that as the model. And, I learned in school, writing essays, a thesis, that the thesis was, it was real important that every line in the paragraphs pointed to that thesis, and that's the same, that is what songwriting is.

Clay Walker:

You find the hook of the song and every line should point right at it. And no matter how cool it sounds, if it doesn't point at it, it has to go. And through a lot of trial and error, I was able to formulate, get to that point of being able to write it. When I wrote that song, the foundation's already in there, but I didn't write that song going, "Oh, I need to make this line, do this or that." It just came out of me in the form that it needed to be in. And I look back on it and go, I was only 17 when I wrote that song and I go, "How the hell did I do that?"

Clay Walker:

It just it's crazy, but very blessed to have a good teacher, first of all in school that taught me how to, the form creative writing, but then very blessed from above to have those words come out on that paper.

Matthew Kelly:

So when you're first touring with your first album, the crowds getting bigger and bigger and bigger, what does that feel like?

Clay Walker:

Well, I remember, I guess this is kind of an egotistical moment, but why not just be honest. I was doing a show with the big superstar and not George Strait, but I was doing this show and it was the only show I ever did with this guy. And he had one of the biggest songs of all time at this moment. And I had just had What's it to You, and Live Until I Die. And I came out on stage and I opened for the guy.

Clay Walker:

And I came out on stage and I opened for the guy and there was probably 15,000 people there and I left the stage and while he was on stage singing his gigantic, ginormous, smash monster of a hit, people were chanting, "We want Clay!" and I was embarrassed, I was on the bus and I thought that's what I was hearing, but it was that moment of, "Hey, I've arrived", and it was kind of… sometimes when I hear, or when we're in the Bible, and you hear Jesus and he's going on the donkey or the colt and it's Palm Sunday, and people are chanting and somebody said something to him and he goes, "I'll tell you what if they weren't chanting, these rocks would cry out."

Clay Walker:

And it was kind of like that moment only unlike Jesus, I think I had an egotistical moment. Very unflattering.. But I think also it's important to tell the truth, and I wouldn't even call this an interview, just call this a moment between two friends, you and I talking, and that's more refreshing to me then, I'd rather hear an artist just tell the truth rather than trying to be as everybody and make it sound all polished.

Matthew Kelly:

What is the mood on the bus before a show and what is the mood on the bus after the show?

Clay Walker:

I think you could ask any of the guys individually and separately, and they would all say this I've been to the Kentucky Derby a couple of times, and I've actually gotten to go down on the track and walk the horse up to the gate. I didn't hold the horse, but I was there when they were walking the horse into the shoot to get ready for the Kentucky Derby. And I'm watching one horse walk in gate close, and another horse walk in, and I mean, I'm starting to get chill bumps just talking about it right now. There is an energy, and you can see these horses, their whole demeanor changes when they get in that gate, it's like this, they are alive. I mean, you can see the blood pumping through their veins and you can see these jockeys just getting in because they know that it is going to be an explosion that come out of that gate.

Clay Walker:

That's exactly what it feels like before we step on stage. We have a routine just before we walk on, we all pray The Our Father, we get in a circle and I say to the guys, okay, let's be mindful of our sins. That's forgiveness, and I'll make some comment like, and I know there are many because I live with you and we will say The Our Father, and we'll put our hands in the center after the prayer and whatever city we're in, we come up with some name, right? Some slogan right there, like if we're in a city, just say Beaumont, we might say go big and Beaumont time, we always have a little say in it that we all break like a football team or something.

Clay Walker:

And when we start walking to that stage, I'm telling you, you can see the posture, everything changes. And when we come off stage, it's like a runner's high, there are all these endorphins that are kicked in and so much joy is had there, and there's an order to it. We practice hard soundchecks, we have a bandleader, we have all of the elements that you have to have for greatness, and we expect it, every night, every guy's looking at the other guy going do your damn part. I want mine to sound good, do your part, and there's this expectation, but we come off stage, we have this runners high, and it takes us several hours for that to kind of simmer down where you can sleep, people.

Clay Walker:

They think that musicians party all night that's why they stay up. That's not why they stay up. Musicians stay up because that high won't stop, it's just there and you got to let it settle down before your own melatonin can kick in and put you to sleep.

Matthew Kelly:

All these years on the road, on the bus, do you have a favorite memory? Funny moment? I know there's lots of funny moments every day, but do you have one that just comes to mind?

Clay Walker:

Ah, bus stories? You know what? I don't think so. I don't think there's anything in, particularly lets say what happens on the bus stays on the bus. We got to observe the code.

Matthew Kelly:

So if someone says to you, hey, what's it like on the bus? How would you describe it?

Clay Walker:

Bus life? And this is my wife, Jessica and her friends cannot believe what I'm about to say. On the bus there could be 12 guys on there, and not one word said for three or four hours. Now you couldn't put 12 chicks on the bus and no conversation.

Clay Walker:

My wife always says, "you are joking?" I go, no. Guys are just.. they have their own thoughts and I mean, of course there's conversation sometimes, but I'm saying you could literally go for hours and no one even saying anything, and it's not because it's depressing, it's actually relaxing. But I prefer to be on the bus asleep, at night and wake up in whatever town you're going to be in. But there's some truth to road warrior. You know the name road warriors, and it's not for everyone.

Clay Walker:

Now, there's a lot of great musicians out there who would never go on the road and it takes a special demeanor to be out there, and for us, if you're going to be out there with people, they got to be cool. They got to be good people. We don't have any a-holes on the road with this. You don't last in our group and we've got most of the guys who have been here 25 years, and there's a lot to be said for that because these guys are phenomenal musicians that could go play anywhere.

Clay Walker:

I think it's one of the reasons why we're still together this long as we all do have some common interests. One of those which is important is being the best musician and always trying to get better, knowing that there's an expectation. You want to be somewhere where someone understands how good you are. Our wives are not musicians. They may think the world of us, but they don't recognize those little nuances that makes you great, and I would say that overall, that is the main reason why we've been together. This whole.

Matthew Kelly:

You talk about the nuances. Roger Federer is better some days than other days, you take the best at anything and they're better some days and other days, sometimes they are the only ones that know, and they're able to say, "it's a little off my game today". What is it that tells you that?

Clay Walker:

There are times when I'll be warming up getting ready to go on stage, and I can feel that it might not be a hundred percent. It's rare, but I pray through it. I just tell God, look, I know that you gave me this voice and however you want it to sound the night that's how its going to sound and I really don't stress over it, and most nights it gets better, but you as an individual, and the guys around, to where we've been, we've been together long enough that we all can recognize that. But we pull together as a group stronger when we feel that, and we pull towards that individual, that is not having their best night, but very few people are going to notice that out in the audience.

Clay Walker:

But that's a rule that I set early on, and as a leader in, and I'll be honest, I don't have to lead these guys. They have a band leader in, but they're all accountable.

Clay Walker:

But one of the things I say, if there's ever a mistake made, there's only one unforgivable sin. That's if you clam up and go in a hole, I say you're telling everybody else in this band that I'm better than y'all and that shouldn't have made that mistake. I said, you make a mistake I want to see you smile, cause that should be funny because it's basically an anomaly, and so we have constantly bred goodness.

Clay Walker:

I heard a producer say this one time, he goes, "I really like a band that will give to the center", and I thought, is that just some hippie saying or something? No, I finally get it. Giving to the center means we're all going to give to what keeps us together, and that is the center, that's wishing- not just wishing, but for the good of the other, what's the word I'm looking for? It's not wishing, but hoping for the good of the other.

Matthew Kelly:

I've seen you sick as a dog, cold, and flu symptoms, and I'm thinking, there's no way this guy's going to perform tonight. You get out there on the stage. It's like a transformation that you're just like a different person. You do the show you're back on the bus, you're sick as a dog again. How does that happen?

Clay Walker:

Matthew I'll tell something crazy. I've never missed a show in 27 years. Actually, since I was 15, since I've been a known artist, I've never missed a show.

Matthew Kelly:

What drives that? There must've been times where you didn't want to do it, where you was sick, where you wanted to cancel for whatever reasons, what goes through your mind that prevents you from doing that?