You know, just a few minutes ago, we were talking about the fact that you like to put a good mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly on your albums.
I know that you included some songs that you had written much further in the past, and you kind of brought them forward for this album.
And so I'm wondering, you've had a lot of good going on in your life lately, but not a lot of bad or ugly to go on this album.
I mean, so is that where maybe some of these past songs came in?
Or were you able to somehow dig and find the bad and the ugly?
Because your life seems to be going pretty fantastically well right now.
You know, it was a little bit of both.
There were a few songs, like, We're Gonna Ride Again is a song that I wrote a while back.
And it fit more of, if not halfway to heaven, than just his I Am record.
But just still, it didn't feel right.
It's about a fella named Kerry Brock that ran in front of house for us, but he was also a biker brother of mine.
And didn't know it at the beginning, but he ended up knowing from way back.
He knew, like, my pop, and he was family across the board.
We lived together.
You know, he and I and Jess, our guitar player, and my drummer, Ben, and Steve, we all lived together.
And we called it the compound.
Yeah.
So he was family.
And he was so proud of what we had when it was what it was, you know what I mean?
And I felt like this record, this chapter, we're at the point now, and I feel like the guys in the band, we're all turned over new leaves.
And we're all in spots.
It's a different time and a different place for us.
I feel like everybody's got both feet on the ground.
And as an organization, I feel like right now, this is a time where he's really looking down going,
Hey, I helped build that.
And that song's about me.
You know what I mean?
That's awesome.
And you can call that bad and ugly if you want, because it's a song about somebody that's passed away.
Yeah.
But to me, I know Kerry well enough to know that he is up in heaven, and he's probably getting in trouble all the time.
Preparing him for your arrival.
Yeah.
I mean, because this dude, there was a story about him back in the day that my pop told me.
They left one time, they left the clubhouse.
I think it was probably 10 or 15 bikes.
And they got back to where they were going.
And everybody was hanging out laughing and cutting up.
And all of a sudden, somebody said, Where's Kerry?
And they looked outside, couldn't find him.
And they called the clubhouse, they just left.
And they said, Well, we thought he left with y'all.
So everybody loads up and hauls ass back down the road.
And they got to a point in a row where they saw the last part and somebody remembered him being beside them.
And that's one thing, he loved riding motorcycles, but he was not very good at it.
Oh, no.
He just wouldn't pay attention.
And he had run off, they saw something had gone off the road into a big kudzu patch.
And they said that they all cut their motorcycles off and you could hear him laughing.
They said he's all beat up and chewed up and road rashed up.
But I can hear his laugh right now, like it was yesterday.
He had the most obnoxious, funniest, just hilarious laugh.
Just him laughing alone was enough to crack everybody up around him.
And he was that guy.
I mean, he was the guy everybody loved to be around.
And like I said, he was proud of what we were when it was what it was.
And seeing what it is now.
And it's a song that I wrote with Mike Deacle, who was a very, very important person to me,
one of my favorite people.
And also written with Jess, our lead guitar player.
And Kerry actually had a heart attack and Jess and I were with him when he passed.
My gosh.
Like I said, we lived together.
Yeah.
And we were living in Mike Deacle's house, Mike's old house.
He lived across the little pond from us.
So it was like a family member passing away.
And I mean, that was a close, it always has been a close-knit, good to bad and ugly group.
I mean, a lot of friction.
I mean, there's stories, we could sit here for days and I could tell you stories.
But when we lost Kerry, we lost a family member across the board.
So it's not so much the bad and ugly, but it's not a completely all feel good song because
it does hurt.
You know, looking back, knowing that, I wish he was sitting in this room with us right
now telling stories.
Looking back and him not being in that chair, you know what I mean?
Him not being in front of the house when we're playing shows.
That's not great.
But knowing where he's at and knowing that we'll see him again makes that song not bad
and ugly, I think.
Yeah.
This is called We're Gonna Ride Again from Brantley Gilbert on Big Machine Radio.