- Speaker #0
How do you keep going toward your dream through adversity? And what if the hardest chapter of your life became the fuel for your most powerful work? Could you turn your pain, loss, or uncertainty into something that moves people and maybe even heals you in the process? Today's guest has spent decades writing the soundtrack to people's lives. And now he's telling the story behind the songs, the struggle, and the strength it takes to keep going. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm a Webby Award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and creative coach. This show is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your birthright to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Today's guest is Monty Criswell. Monty is a legendary Nashville songwriter known for crafting some of the most heartfelt and iconic songs country music has heard over the past three decades. He's a two-time Grammy nominee, a CMA Award winner, and the creative force behind hits like I Saw God Today by George Strait, Just Fishing by Tracy Adkins, and Hell of a View by Eric Church. His songs have been recorded by some of the biggest names in the business, from Kenny Chesney to Laney Wilson, and his work has been featured everywhere from Yellowstone to ESPN. Go sports. Beyond the hits, Monty has turned his attention to something deeper. sharing the stories behind the music and the lessons he's learned along the way. After surviving stage three colon cancer, he created An Evening with Monty Criswell, which is a live show that blends songwriting, storytelling, and real talk about resilience, purpose, and creativity. I wanted to have Monty on the show because he's more than just a songwriter. He's lived through the highs, weathered the lows, and he's come through it all with a deep well of perspective and heart. His story isn't just about awards or hits. It's about what happens behind the music and how you keep creating when life gets real and how it changes your perspective and increases your gratitude and makes you understand whether you're living the kind of life you want to live or if you want to completely turn your life around and do something different. My friend Alyssa Kelver, who started the organization called We Got This, always says we're all terminal and that going through something difficult like what Monty went through. with his colon cancer, what Alyssa's going through with her breast cancer, is not a prerequisite for living. And Monty's work also reminds us of that. From today's chat, you'll learn how personal adversity can deepen your creative purpose and passions, the beauty and power of having your greatest success later in life, the key to building a strong creative community, his top tricks for never getting creatively blocked, and much more. Okay, now here he is, Monty Criswell. Okay, Monty, I am so honored and excited to have you here. Thank you for being on Unleash Your Inner Creative and sharing your incredible journey.
- Speaker #1
Well, thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here. This will be fun.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I'm excited. And I would love it if you would share a little bit with my listeners about your journey as a songwriter. You've had such a storied career. Can you share from the time you were like 16 and really started this whole thing to now?
- Speaker #1
Sure. I started playing piano at six and I took lessons till about 13, then kind of got into garage bands. And around that 15, 16 year old mark, I met a friend of a friend who was a working songwriter in Nashville. He went on to be a BMI writer of the year. He's having a lot of hits. And he kind of showed me and introduced me to the community here on Music Row. And I found out there were hundreds of people from all over small towns across the country that were chasing down the dream that kind of captured my imagination. So I finished high school, went to University of Alabama. I had a backup plan. My plan B was to be an entertainment lawyer if I couldn't get a writing deal. And that way I could at least had a foot in the game in some form or fashion. Graduated Alabama, did very well in school, and I always say I took a gap year or three. And in that time, I kind of went back and forth to Nashville, met a lot of people. I tell everybody when I speak that Nashville is full of gold. I heard somebody else say this one time. I said, Nashville is full of gold. There's not a lot of people that... that want to help you dig it out but there's a lot of people who will sell you a shovel and i met a lot of those people and uh in that time frame i finally i took the l's out a bunch of times a couple times and i met the love of my life whom i'm still married to it 32 years later and got into law school and got a writing deal and finally signed that writing deal and bear in mind i had come back and forth for 10 years trying to find that writing deal and about five months uh into that publishing deal i got my first cut uh which is as you know slang term we use in music business means you got a song recorded And it was on Mark Wills and Mercury Records. And a few months later, I got a big cut on John Michael Montgomery when he was just on fire. And that was my first gold and platinum record. And then for probably, I had a couple little hits here and there, but about 2007, which now we've gone through a span of time, I was always getting cuts. I was kind of king of the album cuts, but just couldn't get that big hit ready yet.
- Speaker #0
Like for anyone who might not know, that's a song that you have on somebody's full album, but it's not with the lead singles.
- Speaker #1
That's correct. It doesn't necessarily go to radio. Sometimes those songs kind of show up and do find a way. But for the most part, you're just on the album. You might get a gold or platinum record. That's great. It means you get to keep your job as a professional writer and stay on staff. But the radio hits is what you want to help move your career along. And finally, in 07, we had a song called Tough on Craig Morgan. It was my first top 10 record. And then a year later, we had a massive hit on George Strait called I Saw God Today. And that kind of was the one that broke the dam. and we were We were always getting cuts. We were just trying to find that big one. And I tell people, I'm like, it's okay if progress is slow. Growth can be slow as long as it's going forward or you have some type of upward trajectory. If you're stagnant or going backwards, that's not what you want. Looking back, there were times when we were very slow. And sometimes that rock we were pushing uphill was dragging us down the other side. So you just kind of have to ebb and flow with it and be grateful the whole way.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I'm curious because I know in this other interview I listened to, you said that that big, big hit came when you were 39, which...
- Speaker #1
Yes, that's right.
- Speaker #0
I'm sure if you had told your 16-year-old self like, hey, you're going to have your first big hit at 39...
- Speaker #1
Would have gone to law school probably.
- Speaker #0
Thank God he didn't know that. But can we talk to some of the younger creatives right now who are listening and they're like, oh man, I really don't know how much longer I can keep doing this. It's taking so long. I'm not sure if I'm on the right path. What is the beauty in having a longer road creatively?
- Speaker #1
It makes you more grateful when it does happen. And I remember for the George Strait song, and then we had another single on Trace Acton called Just Fishing that was right after that. And we stood on the red carpet at the Grammys for both of those for Grammy nominations. And I just remember how fun it was and how satisfying it was because the journey was longer. It mattered more. I suffered more for it, and it just meant more to me. And I did it with the same girl I fell in love with, too, that we're still married and have three kids. And when you starve to death with somebody, you get real close to somebody. And when you have success with the same person you starve to death with, it's very, very satisfying. It just makes it more worth it. It's a sweeter victory.
- Speaker #0
That really, that brought tears to my eyes. Tell me, you know, because I think that's such an important thing. The person you end up partnering with is such a key to your success in every single way, but especially creatively. What has having her as a partner?
- Speaker #1
meant to your creativity and your career and like how has it helped you get through and what does what does a good partnership look like you know it's it's a lot of give and take it's a lot of honesty it's a lot of trust you know trust is big i know that's something you talk about that happens for us in the writing rooms with the people we write with but for me and denisha you know it's like she always believed in me she we've gone through a lot of ups and downs some health wise that i will talk about in a minute but uh those other ups and downs of being in this crazy business, you know, but she never said, Hey, I think you should quit. She never said, I don't think you're good enough. It was always, you can do this. Just keep pushing. I got your back. And again, when you succeed with that same person who pushed you and encouraged you, it's great. And my wife is really good at creating balance. Like she will kind of call me out and be an accountability partner when I'm going too hard or too far. She's like, Hey, you're just, you're burning yourself out, you know, cause I have a tendency to keep pushing. And she reminds me that life is about balance, whether it's the food you eat or the work you do, and that it's okay to step back sometimes and just be still and be quiet. I have a lot of ideas that come to me that way once I kind of get my foot on the brake and get it off the gas for a little bit. So she keeps me kind of even keel. And she's brutally honest. She'll tell me, she goes, I don't like that song. And I'll say, that's why I don't play them all for you. But I've had hits of radio that she didn't like, and I've had stuff that she goes, I don't know why nobody's cut this song. And so, but she's very honest with me about it in a direct way that I really appreciate. She's my sounding board, you know. And I get a lot of ideas from her, too. We've had hit songs that I wrote based on our relationship.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I think I heard you say, too, like, she'll always, like, live because she lives through your music, which is such a beautiful thing.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's the, I forget who said it, but somebody had a great quote one time. It says, if you fall in love with a writer, you live forever. And songwriters are kind of like that because you fall in love with a writer, you live forever on the FM dial or now streaming or whatever. But, you know, that's kind of the legacy, I think, as a writer that you leave is that if you write songs that are classic or timeless, that, you know, they outlive you and they go on to. be somebody else's favorite. So yeah, that's, that's always our thing is that, uh, technically she lives forever.
- Speaker #0
And I want to circle back to something else you said that I found so interesting. I've never heard anyone say this, the thing about the shovel, like what, tell me who are the shovel people in Nashville?
- Speaker #1
Well, I wish I could remember who said, somebody said that. And I was like, man, that is just like spot on. Uh, you know, I, I think like publishers and record labels get a bad rap. Sometimes a lot of artists like to really go, Hey, we don't like them or or I have to fight with him or our butt heads. I've been very blessed. It's like, I know people at record labels who are phenomenal people. I've known some that weren't. I've had great publishers. I've had publishers that both critiqued and praised me because people usually do one or the other. And we usually only do one or the other with ourselves when we look in the mirror. But I've had great publishers who really challenged me and told me, hey, you can be better at this, but you're doing great over here. And I think sometimes people... They like to take digs at labels or people they've worked with that they didn't have a good relationship with and CPAs and attorneys and all that. But I've kind of acquired attorneys throughout the years, like somebody gets luggage and you need attorneys for different things. I've learned enough to be dangerous, but sometimes you need a big suitcase and sometimes you only need one for two days. So there's a lot of great attorneys here that are really good at this stuff. But I think people tend to lump the business aspect of things of people who will. sell you a shovel, but they won't necessarily help you. But if you're fortunate and I have been, you meet a lot of people along the way who will help you dig. And those are my favorite people. I've got relationships with people that I met when I was in my early 20s coming back and forth. We're still friends. We still get cuts together. And those are the best relationships. The greatest compliment anybody ever paid me was, you're the same person that I met when you were in your 20s. You haven't changed. Because the business has the tendency to change you. It can make you better. It certainly can humble you. But when you find those friends that say, hey, you persevered through that and you didn't change with it and you didn't get bitter about the people who just wanted to sell you a shovel. So I like those relationships that have some longevity to them.
- Speaker #0
How have you kept your love for the business and or not the business, but how have you kept your love for the art? when things were hard, when somebody did just hand you a shovel or didn't even hand you a shovel when someone hit you with a shovel? How have you maintained your love for the craft, even when the business broke your heart?
- Speaker #1
That's a great question. I had a very good friend of mine, Tom Shapira, who's now retired, one of the greatest writers ever set foot in Davidson County and be in Nashville. And he told me as he was retiring, because I used to work for Tom for five years, he told me, he goes, don't ever get bored. Don't ever get bored was what you do. He said, never get bored with seeing your name in the parentheses listed as a writer. Don't go chase the perfect song. Don't go to Broadway and write songs. There's nothing wrong with that. But as a Nashville songwriter, he said, don't go do that. He said, just rekindle yourself every morning, just like pep talk yourself sometimes. He said, the older you get, the more you'll have to. I think there's a tendency in whether it's Nashville, LA, New York, Miami, wherever to Once you do it professionally for a long time, it becomes a little bit of a blood sport. And I use that phrase in other interviews where it's like it just the only thing that matters is winning. And I think that's that's a slippery slope. And it's hard. It was it was more magical for me when I started, when I wasn't doing it for a living, when we didn't have contracts with drop options and all that kind of cool stuff. It was a matter of, hey, something didn't exist this morning and eight hours later it exists. And we took it to the studio and now it feels magical. I think you just have to make sure you don't ever get tired of feeling that magical process to realize that what happened during the day is still as cool as it was back then. And you just have to kind of constantly make an effort. And it's a great question to remind myself every day that this is still a magical process and that I'm fortunate to still be, you know, kind of in this game.
- Speaker #0
Do you have tools for cultivating that beginner's mindset? How do you get there?
- Speaker #1
You know, for me, it's a matter of trying to stay inspired. And inspired is a weird word because people go, well, it must be cool just to kind of sit around and wait for the muse to hit you. And that's not really the way it works because I write anywhere from 65 to 150 songs a year. It just depends, you know, which friends of mine are artists that are in album cycles and are we prepping for them and working for them. But for me, it's really a process of getting my hands on everything I can get them on to read. I'm a big reader. that's a big part of my secret. Your brain is a sponge. If it's dry and you squeeze it, nothing comes out. So magazines, books, the internet, short stories, Instagram, I do wordplay all the time. I treat it like my career is the biggest singular research paper I've ever done or the greatest singular song, the longest song. And every day is a chance to rewrite a word or tweak a melody or whatever. I make sure that creativity is always very accessible. I have a stack of books in my office, which is where I'm sitting now, south of Nashville. And I also have another stack of books by my backpacks when I travel. And I call those airplane books. I only read those on the airplane. If I'm home, I have something where I can reach or see it to go, hey, you know, I'll pick up this and just kind of turn my head this way a minute. And constantly look for those kind of ideas. and And I have a I think it's also important for me to suspend reality and to compartmentalize distractions. It's like the front part of my brain kind of looks like your desktop on your computer. It's got all these files and stuff.
- Speaker #0
And if there's something looking at my computer.
- Speaker #1
No, but it's like mine just it's just that. But I'm very organized about it. I think that's another piece of the puzzle is being organized and going, hey, if I have a distraction, I'm going to put it in this folder. If I have great ideas, I'm going to put over here. So I trace the metrics. I I check and even see, this is kind of OCD, but I see which parts, which times of the year I'm more productive, which is fall and winter for whatever reason. And anytime times are a little tough or tumultuous in any way, that seems to breed better ideas. So I always try to kind of just challenge myself and stay organized and focus on the task at hand. And, you know, I don't believe in a writer's block. I know some writers will go, they will cringe when I say that. A writer's block means you need more prep time. You need to put more preparation. You need to hold yourself accountable to look for ideas. But also burnout, like we mentioned a minute ago, also means you need to take some time off and just be still. So I try to stay out of ruts and constantly challenge myself and just read things and see things from a different perspective.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So many great things to break down from what you just said. One thing I want to point out in almost 350 episodes, nobody's ever said to me, I surveyed the year and look. to see where I'm most productive. I think that is so brilliant.
- Speaker #1
It really helps.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Like knowing yourself. I always say like, I want to give people tools to trust, love, and know themselves enough to claim their right to creativity and pursue their dreams. And knowing yourself is such a huge component of it because everything you described, feeling blocked or writer's block is really your creative body telling you that something's wrong. Right. So either you're not taking in enough inspiration you're not resting enough or you're just like not in tune with yourself and like letting yourself really flow in the way you're meant to so that's so brilliant well thank you i i really think i think uh it's it's a kind of a built-in human nature flaw for
- Speaker #1
us to compare ourselves to other people we look at people and you can call it jealousy or uh inadequacy or low self-esteem for us or whatever, but it's a very easy human tendency to go, man, I want to be more like that person. I wish I should have that success or I want to emulate them. And sometimes that can be good things if it drives you. But I think it's important to make sure the person you're competing the most with is the person looking back at you in the mirror, because that's the person you got to be. Where you are today, you want to be just a little better the next day. And it's okay sometimes if you go back as long as you keep moving forward. And I just try to compete against me. And that means I have to hold myself accountable and go, hey, what are the things you do well? Praise myself for that. And then what are the things that you're not doing well? And how do you fix those? And just kind of push yourself a little bit. But just try to compete with me and not so much worry about everybody else.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So great. I want to go back to this moment, too, where you talk about you got into law school and then you were also trying to get this, you know, writing deal. Right. There's so many people listening who either have been through that moment where they've had two paths. I call it the creative crossroads. You either are going to go down like this more practical route or maybe take the right the route that's like definitely not guaranteed, maybe feels even dangerous to you, but you know, in your soul, it's what you need to do. How did you make that choice? And like, what's your advice for someone listening who's in the middle of one of those right now?
- Speaker #1
That that's a wonderful question, because that was very much the. crossroads in my life. I had been groomed academically. I did very well in school. It's like, I'm kind of one of those people that if you give them a task, if I'm going to do it, let's just do it as good as I possibly can. So I'd gone back and forth, and I finally had this writing deal offer. It's Hamstein Publishing, and they were based out of Austin, Texas, but they had a Nashville division. They were hugely successful in both. And they had a country group called Little Texas, that some people listening will remember. They had Jerry Lynn Williams, great pop rock writer, had Eric Clapton cuts, all this. And they managed and had publishing on ZZ Top. And so my first writing deal offer was $12,000 a year. I was very, very excited, you know, because somebody was actually going to pay me to do it. So I ended up in the law office of David L. Maddox. And David passed away a few years ago, but he was my first attorney. And so I tell everybody my first meeting with an attorney sounded a lot more like a psychotherapy session. I kind of I should have just laid on the couch and told him everything that I had gone through to get to that point. And he looked at me and he said, let me ask you a question. I said, OK. He goes, are you ever going to go to the Grammys as a lawyer? And I said, well, yeah. I said, I could go if I had a client. They got nominated. Then I would go. He goes, that's not what I'm asking you. He was kind of very firm about it. He said, let me rephrase the question, which when an attorney says that you should always bristle a little bit. And he said, are they ever going to nominate you for a Grammy for being a lawyer? And I said, probably not. And he gets up, comes around, sits on the front of the desk, gets right up in my face, violates my space to make a point. And he said, songwriting is an honorable occupation. And if you don't jump and do this when you're young, you'll hate yourself for the rest of your life. And that was what I needed to hear from somebody else other than me or just my family. And it was somebody that I respected, that the business respected, that had a lot of great clients. And he had kind of seen it. And he was the one that just kind of pushed me right off the edge.
- Speaker #0
Speaking of your family, your mom said time tests all dreams.
- Speaker #1
That's right.
- Speaker #0
Were there any key points where you did want to give up, where you almost gave up? And in those moments, how did you find the strength to keep going?
- Speaker #1
Yes. The answer is there were multiple times. And the odd part is I was having success when I had those thoughts. Wow. And so it was a matter of, am I going to be able to fully get my hands on what I really want to do to be a hit songwriter and maybe someday, hopefully not posthumously, get into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame? There were times we were just kind of getting cuts. And I think in those times where we're getting cuts but not having big hits, and I felt kind of stagnant a little bit. And I think that's where those moments of self-doubt kind of creep in, where you go, now I'm up here and we have a family. We're all going to starve to death, or I should have gone to law school, or it's not too late to go to law school. All that kind of stuff kind of creeps into your head. And I think the way that I fought it is that, for me, writing was an obsession. It was like there's eating, there's sleeping, there's breathing, there's songwriting. For me, I felt compelled to do it. And I just felt like that's what I was really deep, deep down supposed to do. I haven't had those thoughts probably in the last 10 years. They don't creep in anymore. Because I think part of it is I kind of feel like, one, I've kind of accomplished a lot of what I want to do. And two, I'm probably too old to turn back. Three, I have no desire to go to law school anymore. It's just I kind of feel good in my skin, I guess. And I had a very good friend of mine, Randy Montana, who's a hit writer up here. Randy asked me one time, he goes, you ever drive home and you feel like your brain's just kind of coming out your ears? And I said, yeah, I think I feel like that just about every day. And he goes, me too. He said, I think if you don't, you're doing it. And that really resonated with me because if you don't go in every day and chase with every fiber of your being the dream that you wanted to chase, that you went through all of this junk to get through, then why are you doing it? And so that was one of those things that helped me along the process is, hey, if you're going to do this, do it just like you did in school. Go all out every day. And if you don't, tomorrow's a new day. But let's don't have too many of these days where you walk away going, I just kind of walk through it. Sleepwalk.
- Speaker #0
So you talked a lot about your community, and it seems like Nashville has such a great community.
- Speaker #1
It does.
- Speaker #0
I can find L.A. is kind of difficult to pin people down. I feel like everyone's. spread out. There are pockets of communities, but I found it very difficult, especially in music, to find my community here. What's your advice for me or people like me who are still trying to find their creative community? How do you go about it?
- Speaker #1
I think finding your tribe in your community is very important. Sean Mullins years ago had a great song called Lullaby. Love that song. It's a great song. He's talking about LA and he says it's kind like Nashville with a 10. And he was, I think that's an accurate assessment. For me, it's kind of like, this is a very elementary way to explain it, but Nashville's kind of like high school. We all kind of know each other, even if we're not close with each other. And we cross-pollinate. It's like one day we're competing against each other in two different rooms, and the next day we're in the same room. Those people that you find when you're young and you're like a freshman, those people that you make those relationships with, that you suffer with, that you sit in the foxhole with, so to speak. If you can maintain those relationships and come up together, that's kind of your support system. And I think you have to fight the human nature that I have a friend of mine, Tony Martin, used to say. He goes, human nature is always it's not enough that I must succeed. My friends must also fail. He said you have to fight that kind of mentality so that you bond together and you pull for each other. Because if you're in that group and you're working together all the time and you can support each other, sometimes somebody else might get the cut in a single. And sometimes it might be you. And that happens a lot in our groups. But because we're together and they see us as a unit and they see us as those camps and communities, a lot of times their success spills over onto me and mine spills over onto them. And I think you just have to truly be a friend. You know, we have a tendency to say, well, that person's our friend. And what that really is, is a business acquaintance or network where you're kind of friends with them based on what they can do for you. And I think you have to be able to be great friends with them, even when nobody's looking and there's no benefit. and to just be. a good human, for lack of a better phrase.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So looking for someone who's in a similar stage of building that you are, and then the rising tide lifts all ships, bring each other up together.
- Speaker #1
That's right. And like a lot of people I write with, it's like I'm a piano playing lyricist. I'm a hat guitar player. I've written hit songs on guitars on buses, but in very elementary forms, piano was always my first thing. But I write with people who are phenomenal guitar players. And I'm kind of an idea person. I write for some people who are not idea people. And I'm very lyric oriented. And sometimes somebody's not. Sometimes we're all of those things together. But we kind of read the room and trust each other in the room and try to complement what each other does. So, you know, I'm going to try to complement somebody else's weakness while they try to complement mine. And I think when you do that for a while and you work together and you build that trust, that helps keep that group together as well.
- Speaker #0
Do you recall a favorite? songwriting session, like one, and it doesn't even have to be attached to a song that became huge, but like a session that you were just like on fire in your creative process.
- Speaker #1
You know, it's funny. I have said this before in interviews, people go, well, how long do you think it should take to write a song, like a hit song? And I'm like, I don't know. You know, they're like kids and they come out when they do. And I said this a few weeks ago, it doesn't matter if your child's born in two hours or 13 hours. It doesn't mean that one's going to be smarter than the other. they kind of come out when they're supposed to and the song wants to write too like five more minutes on scotty was that was an eight hour day but it was a very consistent we were constantly moving we went back and tweaked the first verse actually changed it before he recorded it but i remember that process being easy just fishing on trace was a very easy process that song came out quick uh handle on you was very fast on parker mccullen we were just that was popping uh but some of them take longer i saw god that took a long time A hell of a view on Eric Church was something Casey and I had started, Casey Beathard and I had started. They took to Eric and then Eric just knocked out the second verse and cut it that night. So it's all kind of different, but I tend to gravitate toward those because those are the ones that people want to know about, you know, because they've heard them on the radio. But every day is different. And I still have a drawer full of songs that nobody's cut that we just keep pitching. And, you know, I've got the next Tim McGraw single. It goes for ads. next week and that song was fast but i've continued to pitch songs because tim's cutting the new record and i keep pass pass pass and you just kind of keep plugging along you know because a lot of times people go well i pitched a great song and i don't know why they didn't cut it and the the reality is is that a an album is like a patchwork quilt it's like a crazy quilt my grandmother used to make them and she lived to be 92 and the older she got the the squares weren't exactly flush and they weren't kind of because she couldn't see very well even with the glasses but it would keep you warm.
- Speaker #0
And those albums have to kind of seem like there's a flow and those songs complement each other and work together, sometimes for an overall theme. So that's why a lot of time I'm chasing rabbits. But that's kind of why a lot of sometimes great songs don't make records, but you just keep pushing through. But, you know, every session is different. They're all different. I like them best when it just falls out, you know, when something's great. And you walk away and you're like, I know that's great. And sometimes you walk away and go out. that's a good day's work. You know, we did our job, everything's flush and, you know, and it all kind of works. And then five years later, somebody cuts it and it's a hit. And inevitably writers go back and listen to those songs and they go, well, yeah, they cut it. That's really good. You know, but fact is we've moved on, you know, because we kind of just thought it was okay.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So I had a songwriter on, on the episode I aired this week and I asked her something and I want to ask you, what do you think happens to unrecorded or unreleased songs. I think of them like the toys in Toy Story. Are they just waiting there?
- Speaker #0
That's an accurate description. They really are. They're just floating around. I've had old songs cut. I just got a cut last week on an artist, Drew Baldridge, who's a very good friend of mine. I've known Drew for a long time. All of a sudden, in the last year and a half, he's had a number one, and it looks like he's probably about to have another one. Me, him, and Tim Nichols wrote a song on Zoom. in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and it out of the blue he just goes he texts me because i just cut the song and it sounds great and then i've had some i had one that was 15 years old i've had a couple of nine-year-old songs and i think the answer to your question is to never give up on the song if you truly believe in it that sometimes in my first publishing deal my publisher used to tell me maybe the person who's supposed to cut this song is not even here yet and and i just always remembered that and i'm like you know what it's right because If it's great and you just believe in it. Sometimes I have a great song that I'm very kind of a kid glove with it. And I think I know who the right person is to do it, but we'll just kind of see, I'm kind of careful with it. I don't just sling, sling mud all the time. A lot of times when you pitch songs, it's not just the pitching that matters. It's the casting that matters. It's like, does it fit that artist? Because it can be a great song. They, they won't cut it. So I think the secret is just to, to, um, to not give up on it. But the, uh, The attic full of the misfit toys is probably the most well-articulated analysis of what that feels like.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I know. I don't know. I think about them having a consciousness and feeling sad that they're not getting used.
- Speaker #0
It's like Toy Story, you know?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. That's how I think of them.
- Speaker #0
You're not getting played with because your leg's broken. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, but maybe there'll be a time in 15 years where they like broken-legged toys. You never know.
- Speaker #0
You never know.
- Speaker #1
So, okay, I want to talk. Monty about this other big thing that you have had happen in your life that really changed your life and that is that you're a colon cancer survivor and take me through this a little bit this was back was it now three
- Speaker #0
2023 as it about two about two years and and so uh it kind of because you kind of mark time from diagnosis to surgery and all that kind of stuff and so when we get to October of this year, we will begin year three. I've been clean. So that's great. So 2022, late 2022, I had one little symptom that showed up. I felt great. I was three to five miles a day, exercise all the time. That's also part of my creative process is exercising and creating some balance and trying to take care of myself. And I have a friend of mine who's a GI doctor. So I had not had a scope. I was 54 at that time. I talked to him, called him. I said, man, I got this little symptom that's been off and on for a couple of months. And he said, well, it could be eight or nine different things. So let's Let's scope you and find out. And they found a two-inch mass in my colon. It ended up being a polyp that if I had addressed it 10 years ago, they would have sniffed it and we'd have been done. And so it had kind of gone awry. They tested me for a genetic component, which it did not have, thankfully. So people go, well, what did the tumor look like? And I was like, I got pictures. It was real pretty and pink. It didn't look like colon cancer. It kind of looked like your finger, your index finger sticking up out of your colon. So at first it kind of... it biopsied high-grade dysplasia, which is not cancerous. It's like abnormal cells, but it had to come out either way. So they did an MRI, and when they did, they found cancer really on the bottom of the tumor, but I had nine nodes flared around it. And you really don't know until you get through chemo and surgery, and they take out in pathology, they really get a good look at it. Chemo, when you run it through a node and it's got cancer in it, tends to make the node fibrotic and that's kind of a telltale sign and But if it's not, like your nose will flare in your neck if you have the flu. And so we didn't really know what that was going to look like till we got to the end of the process. But once they found it, where mine was located in the protocol for it was. Eight rounds of chemo every two weeks. Had a port put in. Went up into my carotid artery. You can't put chemo in a vein because it'll blow it. Didn't know that. Learned that. And my wife is a retired geneticist, so I was cheating. She knew all of this stuff because that's what she did for a living, this diagnosis. So we were going to go through chemo. We were going to get a break. Then we were going to do radiation. We were going to have two surgeries. One to take the tissue with the temporary colostomy bag. And the second surgery to pull the bag and reconnect. And what ended up happening is we did the eight rounds of chemo, did an MRI that could see where it had been. We had over a 90% tumor reduction. If you get over a 20% reduction, then you get into discussion of not having to do radiation. And we just blew all the way past that. On the CT scan, they could not find it at all. So we got to skip radiation. And then they were able to do everything in one surgery without the bag. But the whole process was a 10-month process. And it was very edifying. Like some people have that happen to them and they'll turn and go 180 degrees the other direction. I need to, my life's a mess and I need to go do all this stuff. I was, it was edifying because my family was great and still is. My friends were great, still are. I had written the songs that I wanted to do. That doesn't mean that I didn't have some metaphorical rooms that I would put a new coat of paint on or fix a couple of things. But what it really did at the core was prioritize me to be grateful. to be more grateful i was grateful during the process because they said if you do everything we tell you to and it's a nasty process the chances of you growing old and ugly with everybody are very high and that most of the reoccurrence 80 percent of it happens within those first two years so we're about to get out of that and then that third year it's a 0.05 chance it comes back if you can make three years and at five you kind of go back to being normal but they scan me every year they scope me every year they check my blood every three months So I'm constantly back and forth to Vanderbilt. I'm super, super friends with all my doctors. We text each other now, and we do some shows. We made some donations to Colorectal Research at Vanderbilt, so we help continue to support them. But it was a chaotic, edifying, ugly package with a beautiful gift in it. And it just kind of changed my perspective. You know, those little things that we worry about, they are truly little things. Because at that point, I say this all the time. It doesn't matter how many hits you've had. It doesn't matter how much money you make or how big of a house you live in or what kind of car you drive in. It becomes about survival and prioritizing. And it really kind of set in a motion from this point forward. I've always tried to be a really good friend. I want to be a better friend. I have written some songs I'm really proud of. I want to continue to write songs. I'm proud. It made me pickier in the writing room about what ideas that I choose. But it's kind of up the game a little bit on how I want to treat people and how I want to be treated in return.
- Speaker #1
You said it's given you a gift and you just listed a bunch. Yes. What would you say is the greatest gift that it's given you?
- Speaker #0
I think the grateful thing is probably the greatest. It's like when I was doing chemo. Well, it's two things. The grateful thing is one because they would get me on a Thursday, you know, and they would. put two kinds of chemo in me. The combination, and somewhere there'll be a doctor that's going to watch this and go, he's getting half of this wrong, so forgive me. But I'm really working on trying to get it right. The combination is called Folfox, and it's oxaliplatin and fluracil-5-FU, which FU is a great name for a chemo. They should keep that.
- Speaker #1
It really is.
- Speaker #0
And so I would go in, they would access my port, they would make sure the access was clean, they would take blood, they would check my blood work. I would meet with the oncologist for an hour, and then I would go to the infusion floor. And the infusion... It took about three hours, four hours tops with everything because they gave me steroids. They gave me Zofran. They gave me a drug called Synvanti, which helps with nausea from the chemo. But it also tastes like chewed up rubber bands, which is the oddest thing. They would put it right in my port. It's just crazy. You could taste it? You could taste it. You know, like if you have an IV and they put saline in, you're like, I can taste it. And it's really what it is. They explained to me it's molecules, that it's really an olfactory. sensory sense. You're really smelling it, but your body interprets it as a taste.
- Speaker #1
Wow, that's fascinating.
- Speaker #0
So we would go through all that. When I was finished, they would send me home with a pump. It looked kind of like the old Walkman cassette thing hung around me, hooked to my port, and it would, for 46 hours, administer smaller dosages of the floor cell. So you would literally be laying there at night. You'd just go, you'd hear it going. And so I would write on Fridays the next stay on zoom try to not not get sick or any of that kind of stuff and then saturday afternoon the alarm would go off my wife would pull it out and she would uh run the saline through it and the heparin to make sure there was no clotting and then sunday i would be sick and monday i would be sick and tuesday i would kind of be a little better Wednesday, better Thursday, now I'm rolling. That's when I would go exercise. I would go walk. And sometimes I could get five miles and sometimes I'd only get two, but there was one little hill in our neighborhood and I called it Amen Corner, even though it was not a corner, it's just a hill. I should call it Amen Hill. But that's when I would be grateful. I would thank God that I was still alive, that I had a good prognosis. I would thank him if it was a sunny day for blue skies and if it was cloudy, I'd thank him for the rain. And it was amazing how many birds were out there were so many birds, you know, and I'm thinking we should be listening to the birds and flipping less birds in traffic, you know. Yeah. And so I was just grateful, you know, because your senses are heightened. There's an old quote says nothing sharpens a man's mind like the sight of the guillotine. And that's kind of where my head was. The second answer to your question is kind of tied to the first. The biggest gift was I learned to live my life two weeks at a time. And that's something we focus on in our corporate presentations is that. Everything was structured into two weeks and it forced me not to look too far behind, not to look too far ahead. But in those two weeks, if I was going to get something done, it had to be within these two weeks because I was going to be sick for a few days. And once I came out of that looking for song ideas, we pushed hard. My publisher goes, hey, I'll take your writing quota off for the year. We're going to pay you. You take a year off. We still kept writing. We got 17 songs recorded the year that I had chemo and surgery and still had two number one. Wow. And. And so that was because of my family and my friends, that tribe that we had come up together from the very beginning, like we talked about earlier, they would not take their hands off me. We were right on Zoom, just like you and I are talking right now. And they'd come on and I'd have the port and the pump on. And Brent Anderson, one of my dear friends, he just would look at me and he, Brent lost his mother in her forties to ovarian cancer. And he would just look at me and I was like, Brent, are you okay? And he's like, I'm never complaining about anything ever again, because I'm watching you do this. But I was able to do it because of the people around me.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, it's really striking me that the themes of your life have been creativity, community, perseverance, and gratitude.
- Speaker #0
Yes, yes. That's it in a nutshell. And, you know, when we go do, whether it's ride-arounds or we present at corporate life coach stuff or whatever, there was a lady that came up. to one of the organizers for a show we did in Orlando, and he called me. He goes, I just got to tell you this. This is high praise. And I said, okay. He said, I had somebody in the audience come up to me after you were here and said, I felt like in 90 minutes that I went to a rock and roll show, a country songwriter round, stand-up comedy and church all at the same time. And I'm like, that's the best compliment. That's what we do. And what we do from a presentation standpoint is very authentic. It's like I don't want to go into a place and speak. and have, you know, I don't use a laser pointer. We have two cats at home. We use a laser for them. And I don't, I don't want to do a PowerPoint presentation. And those are fine. That should have been a memo in an email, as I heard somebody say one time. And I don't want to do corporate word salad where people will have a lot of things that sound really cool and nobody's, they walk away going, I don't know what that means. It sounds good. Well, what we do is authentic and real and it's real life. It is, we've lived it and we're still living it. You know, I will always be in a recovery mode. you know, after going through all this.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So what we're talking about right now is Monty does something called An Evening with Monty Criswell. And will you just explain what that is? We've been kind of hinting at it and talking about it, but let's tell the listeners like what exactly this is, this show that you put on.
- Speaker #0
We kind of have a show and then we're working on a spinoff. So I'll kind of hit both. And the show is kind of like a life coach, motivational presentation that's wrapped in a song right around. And we've kind of broken it down into three phases. It's 90 minutes long. We can shorten it. We can lengthen it. But I always try to read the room. Anytime I do a show, you can tell if people are engaged or not. As you know, you do plenty of these. The first part is how I became a songwriter. The second part are the stories behind the hits. And I play some of those. It's me, a couple mics, and a piano. A lot of walking, a lot of talking, and a fair amount of playing, too. And then that last section is how we overcame cancer at an elite level and resiliency and all that. And we do it in such a way that everywhere we've done it, people have just, they've booked us on the spot to come back. They love it. They're like, this is just like watching a movie kind of in real time. But if you strip all the stories out and all that stuff that makes it fun, there's a template and an outline that makes you better at what you do in life, whether it's your personal relationships with your significant other, whether it's your job, the people that you work with and all those kinds of things. and The spinoff that we're working on right now is we're trying to figure out a way because we do some theater stuff, performing arts center stuff, and we're like, We will do that 90-minute presentation, life coach kind of thing if that's what they want. But sometimes what they want is we want 90 minutes of just you by yourself at a piano. And we want the stories and kind of take a deeper dive on the stories, but still tell your story using those songs in chronological order the way it kind of unfolded. And we're marketing that just now beginning to universities and colleges and some performing arts centers in the hope that there's somebody in the audience that looks good. It looks just like me, hopefully better than me. And when I was at the University of Alabama, the sitting in the audience going, that's what I want to do. I needed to hear that from somebody who's done it, who's kind of giving me a guide and a template to how to do it, or at the very least just inspire me. But the biggest thing that we want to do out of both of those shows is that maybe, just maybe, I went through everything I went through so that I could save somebody else's life. I could save them the trouble. And they go, you know what? I probably should go get a scope. And if I can save some lives first and foremost, that would be awesome. But also, this is a it's a transition time for me. It's like I'm still blessed to be very successful in Nashville and getting songs cut, having songs come out on the radio. But this is something that's passionate for me. It's a it's a mission. It's a way to pass on something like we talked about that probably hopefully will outlive me. I think if you inspire people and love them. That's one of the greatest legacies that you can leave.
- Speaker #1
For sure. I did want to ask you on the topic of saving people's lives. What was the initial symptom that made you go in?
- Speaker #0
It's funny, but people, when they talk to me, they want to ask, but they kind of don't. They're like, I don't know that I'm prying.
- Speaker #1
I have gut issues. So I'm like, please tell me.
- Speaker #0
Well, everybody goes, because I always hesitate because I don't want to be too gruesome or whatever, but I was bleeding. And that was my first. kick or something. Now, when that happens, we have three kids, two of them have Crohn's disease. So that also is a symptom that goes with Crohn's. My wife's joke is we're not the Criswells, we're the Cullen Unwells. And so we've seen a lot of stuff. We know a lot of things about GI stuff now. And it was something that would come and go. And, you know, I think like my doctor told me, there's like guys are the worst about that. They'll see that and they'll go, ah, probably hemorrhoid. I'm getting older. It's fine. You know. They said women are more proactive is that they tend to be, oh, I'm going to the doctor. And, you know, true to their point, I watched for a few months and it would kind of come and go. But that was the symptom. And that was the only symptom. I wasn't having any pain. I felt fine. I'm just, you know, we're pushing along. We're trucking along. Everything's great. And the problem with colon cancer, like like some cancers, is that you don't realize what's going on until it's stage four. And when you get in stage four. It can still be beatable, but there's a couple of friends that I met along the way that were stage four that are not here. And I met some that were stage four that are, and some that were 20 years ago and they're still here. I met a lot of twos and threes that are still here. And mine was, when it comes back diagnosed, it was T3CN+. And the T3 means stage three, the lowercase C means late stage three, local advance. And I got that kind of hacked on because of the nodal flaring around it. And then the N plus is more than four nodes. So I had nine. So when they did my surgery, they took five and I'm sorry, it was five and a half hour surgery. They took about a foot of colon and 34 lymph nodes. And all of those came back clean and clear. So the chemo had done the job. So the margin they took was, was a great margin. And so far we haven't had any issues. That was the symptom. It's funny. You should ask because everybody's like, you know, they kind of dodge because they don't know how to ask or what to ask. And I just tell them, I'm like, hey, if. If you notice blood, that's not normal.
- Speaker #1
Thank you for being so open about that because, honestly, I'm going to go to a GI doctor now.
- Speaker #0
Well, if you're ever in Nashville, I've got a whole great medical team that I hope you only need the GI guy to do the scope and come back and tell you that you're good. Yeah. And we're in the very, very, very embryonic outline stages of doing a book. And I won't divulge too much, but my wife, she had a brilliant idea of how to do it. that will make it unique, but we will focus on the medical journey and hopefully create something that will be a resource for people. And there'll be a little bit of the songwriting journey stuff. You know, we're going to be careful not to write the show that we do, but we want to create a medical resource that not only individuals, but their caregivers who are often neglected, you know, people go, you know, they don't think about them too much. And a lot of times they're going through an equal but different type of stress. constantly caring for the persons like my wife did for me, like my kids did. And so we want to create something that people can use almost as a handbook or at least a reference guide, because everybody's different. Everybody reacts differently. Everybody has different outcomes. But there's some commonality of the will to survive and how to take care of yourself and how to grapple with this thing that hopefully we can pass on to some other people.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Speaking of your creative process specifically around like your post-cancer life. Right. I know that your nurse was kind of a creative coach for you. You tell this story where she was kind of one of the first ones that was like, you need to tell this. Can you share that? Because I think it's important for people to know. You can get creative inspiration and encouragement from unlikely sources and to look out for it.
- Speaker #0
You can. She was the one that kind of was the biggest God wink. And maybe everybody else was a wink and she was the God smack. Throughout the years when we do corporate shows, we do ride around. Sometimes it's two or three or four riders and people would come up. I mean, you have really good stories attached to these songs. And we are fortunate. We do have really unique stories. And sometimes multiple stories around the songs. And they're like, have you ever thought about like just doing kind of like a presentation kind of show thing? And I was like, no, not really, you know. And and this went on for a couple of years. So then everything happened with the cancer diagnosis and my insurance. When you get cancer, it's like we had a great insurance company. We had a great elite care Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center. And they were all kind of watching each other. And it's like, Vandy's like, we're going to make sure your insurance is on this. The insurance is like, we're going to make sure Vandy's on this. So it was really good. Everybody's kind of working together by proxy. And so Kelly was my case nurse. And I wouldn't know Kelly if she was in a police lineup. I couldn't pick her out. I've never seen her. We just talked every two weeks. And she called me. She goes, I'm Kelly. I'm going to be your case nurse. And I said, OK, great. Very, very personable. Great to talk to. Very encouraging. Very calming when she spoke. And I guess maybe about the second chemo, she goes, what do you do for a living? And I told her, you know, and she goes, oh, my gosh, I know those songs. She goes, this is a little surreal. And I said, well, it's a crazy business, you know. And she goes, you just have a great attitude. And I said, well, part of my great attitude is that they told me my chances were really good. It's just the process is unbearably nasty. I still have like the oxaloplatin creates a lot of neuropathy. And I had it in my hands. I lost my voice. I had it in my feet. I got it back in my hands, got my voice back. I still have it in my feet. You can't tell watching me walk around or exercise, but it's there. My feet are a little numb right now from the midway point up. So those are baggage that you carry around. But she goes, your attitude is really good. She goes, have you ever thought about doing like a life coach thing where you, you know, kind of figure out a way to just show people this story and inspire them? And I'm like, man. I was kind of like, okay, I hear you. I'm listening. I'm paying attention. And that's kind of when the seed was planted. And when we got to the recovery part after surgery, which took several months to get to, I won't even say some sense of normalcy. It takes about a year and a half to get to normalcy. We started working on script. We talked to several people here in Nashville at some of the artist management places. And I was kind of like a... I was born of two fathers. It was the public speak thing, but it was also songwriting around. And Jay Pieper is a friend of mine in Orlando, and he hooked me up with Stevie. He goes, you need to meet Stevie Johns at Inkwell. And he said, I think together we could probably do this. And that's kind of where we ended up. But writing the script was daunting. We write this whole thing out, you look at it, and the first time I did it, it was two hours long. And I was like, nope, it'll be shorter. So then you start cutting out what doesn't mean as much as some of the other stuff. And we tried it out several times. and you know you can really read an audience a lot because a lot of it is hysterically funny i'm very self-deprecating uh some of it will break your heart and some of it will inspire you uh to the hilt i had a lady come up to me she goes my husband never laughs never cries he's fairly unemotional she goes i have never seen him laugh that hard and i said great and she got us never seen him cry that hard either and i said okay then mission accomplished because In 90 minutes, it should be the best song that I've written. And in 90 minutes, it should be a life well lived. And you should walk away going, okay, some of that I'm already doing, but some of the other stuff, I'm going to try that.
- Speaker #1
So, Monty, I want to ask you this because you've spoken about God, and I believe spirituality and creativity are completely intertwined. Absolutely. They're kind of one in the same. I'm curious how your spirituality is connected to your creativity. And let's start there.
- Speaker #0
Okay. well um I'm a believer. I'm unabashedly unashamed of it. I've included a lot of my songs, whether it's like Jesus Does or I Saw God Today or whatever. That's just a fabric of who I am. It was how I was raised. My mom was a Sunday school teacher. My dad was a deacon in the church. So I was always around that. The church pianist taught me piano. I have a very heavy left gospel hand. It just kind of rolls around in the bass clef, so to speak. But it's just the same as I start my day out with exercise to create some physical balance. I also start my day out with my devotional. It's like I read it. And some things in there I've known all my life. And some things it's presented in a slightly different way that I learned something from that. So that's a very important thing for me. And I find if I do that, that my mindset for the day is good, just like exercising kind of sets my mindset physically in a good spot. And I find that the closer I am to God, that when he speaks, I can hear him cleaner and clearer, that he can whisper, doesn't always have to yell to kind of get my attention. And there's a ton of people in Nashville that are the same way as me. And the birds of a feather, we kind of flock together kind of thing. But there are other people that will come to me and go, there's something different about you. I don't quite know what it is, but I would like to know. And so I always tell them. And so I'm kind of like, I'm not the guy that's going to hit somebody upside the head with a 10-pound Bible, but I will hopefully live my life in such a way that they'll notice. And it finds its way into my songs. And sometimes I can plant a seed in some of these songs that people go, that maybe they come up to me afterwards and go, man, that really, that spoke. to me. I want to maybe go down that road for a little while and kind of see. But it's a big part of my creative process and it's something that I try to honor in the songs that I write.
- Speaker #1
I love it. So it's just like it's a foundation for you and because it's a foundation for you, it flows through everything.
- Speaker #0
It does. And there's a part of me too that's also, I don't mind playing a character in a song, you know, like, you know, Handle On You was about a guy who was heavy drinker trying to get out of relationship and stephen king for everything he is he's a phenomenal writer and people go well he's kind of like the the fast food writer of of uh of of novels or books i'm like yeah but he also wrote shawshank redemption he wrote green mile and all that kind of stuff and he talked about growing up he said like my mother would wash my mouth out with soap if i had said a cuss word he said but sometimes the characters in my books will and he said and i'm big on character development because that tends to develop if you develop the character, the plot will write itself. And so sometimes you have to kind of play those characters, but you know, there's, there's some stuff that I just, I won't do in a writing room that I won't grapple certain subject matters. It just doesn't, it's not what I want to pursue just because of my belief system. But, uh, it is a, as you said, it's a foundation for what I do. And I find out that there are things that I don't know that are gifts from above until they happen. And I go down several years and I turn around and look back and I was like, look, that just fits together like a perfect puzzle piece. Because I think if you're listening and you're in the right place, you can hear those things.
- Speaker #1
I love that. So you seem like you're pretty deep into your journey of knowing who you are, trusting who you are, and loving the person that you are and being grateful for your life. Do you have tips on how to continue to cultivate that so that you can go after the creative path?
- Speaker #0
That's a good question. I think it comes back, like we talked about earlier, to... to being honest with yourself. I think if you're honest with yourself, then you're able to, to trust yourself. And I think that comes back to looking in the mirror and it's like, are you doing as, as good of a job as you possibly can do? And what are the things you can work on? Because I think if you've been doing it for a while and you kind of get comfortable a little bit, it's easier not to work on those things you need to work on. So I always try to, to not lose sight of trying to always learn. I find myself in a writing room with a lot of 20-something-year-olds, which I used to be, but I'm not anymore. I write with older writers, and I write with younger writers. I always try to go in and learn something in the room. Just because I'm the more experienced person in the room doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the smartest person in the room. I've had a lot of 20-something-year-old kids teach me really cool stuff. as the business changed and you ebb and flow with that. So, you know, I think you have to trust yourself and love yourself, but you have to trust the others that you're there with. So for me, it's just a question of challenging myself and never getting tired of learning. And that seems to be key for me.
- Speaker #1
I love that. You have such an amazing career. I want to end with this because you are singing in your show and you're sharing and you're playing. And there's something so interesting to me and that is that with very few exceptions I almost always prefer to hear the songwriter play the song than the artist. And it doesn't matter how amazing the artist's voice is. There's something special about hearing the song come from the person who wrote it. What is that? And why do you think it is special to hear songwriters sing the songs that they wrote?
- Speaker #0
Well, that's a great question. And it is. That comment happens all the time everywhere we play. because I sing like a songwriter. I know a lot of songwriters, and there are plenty here in Nashville that used to have record deals that are phenomenal singers. And I'm not horrible, but I'm not a phenomenal singer either, but I can interpret a song in such a way that there's some authenticity. And I think people want to know not only what sparked the idea and how it got to the point to where you're writing it in the room, they want to hear how it sounded in the room. And that's really the... the key. So if I do Hell of a View that Eric Church had a hit with, then it's going to be different than Eric doing it with a guitar live or the great record that he and Jay Joyce made together with that song. I do it on a piano. And so I will slow it down. And it's more, it's like that song, like me, Casey Beathard and Eric Church are blessed to have great wives. I mean, Catherine Church is great. Susan Beathard is great. Denisha Criswell, great. Each of us are writing our third of that song for our significant other. But that's kind of mine and my wife's story. You know, that's what we did. We, you know, I have great in-laws from mom and dad have always loved me. But, you know, when you go in and you give your daughter away in marriage to somebody who is a songwriter that we always say we didn't have a pot to piss in or the proverbial window to throw it out of, then that's a kind of a leap of faith, you know. And it's like when if you notice in that song, when Eric goes, you know, this ain't for everybody. you know, toes out on the ledge. Uh, like we, like we got nothing to lose in the last, last chorus. He changes one word. He goes, we ain't for everybody. And what, what Denise and I have done, it ain't for everybody. And it was hard. It was brutally difficult. But if you don't get out of your comfort zone and you don't get your toes on the edge, you can't see what's out there. And most people get satisfied with being in the middle because it's comfortable. And I always loved playing the edge and she believed in me enough to do that. And when I sing that song on piano at a writer room versus Eric doing it. Eric's going to sing it for one reason. Casey's going to sing it for his reason. And I'm going to sing it for me and Denisha. And I think people get to see and feel a different kind of emotion. And if you want to hear it sang great, go listen to Eric do it. But if you want to hear what it means to me, then I will do it at a writer room for you. And that's part of our show. And we talk about getting out of your comfort zone. And it's just funny. It's like, Lauren, I look back. on everything that happened to me a year and a half ago. And it's like I wrote the soundtrack for that and didn't even know I was writing it.
- Speaker #1
I love that. The idea that your younger self was writing for your future self.
- Speaker #0
That's right.
- Speaker #1
And I think that's true a lot of the time.
- Speaker #0
It's a good point. It was a good point to like, when you're young, give it everything you got so that whomever you are down the road will appreciate the effort that you put into the process.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. And if nothing else, at the very least, You have a soundtrack to take you through life or whatever your creative exploit is. Like you have things that reflect who you are. Like your creativity isn't just like what exists out in the world. It's also a time capsule of your life at those very particular moments. That's right. It's so special.
- Speaker #0
It is. And I heard a guy say the other day, he goes, there are no days and there are no years. There are no months, no weeks, no nothing. It's one day. It just happens to be sunshine and part of the day and dark at night. So if you look at your life, you have one big day that lasts for thousands of days. So don't waste the day. Treat it like time is of the essence.
- Speaker #1
Monty, thank you for being here, for sharing your beautiful story, for your gratitude, for your love, for your generosity. You're really an awesome person. And I can't wait to see your show. I'm so excited.
- Speaker #0
Well, thank you. Look, if we get close, the odds of you and I being in the same place at the same time in the near future. pretty high. So I look forward to meeting you face to face. It'd be awesome. And thank you for having me. I'm very, very, very blessed for y'all to have me.
- Speaker #1
Thank you, Monty. You're awesome.
- Speaker #0
Thank you.
- Speaker #1
Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to my guest, Monty Criswell. For info on Monty, follow him at Monty.Criswell and visit his website, MontyCriswell.com. And you can find his music on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your music. Unleash Your Inner Creative is hosted and executive produced by me, Lauren LaGrasso. This show was edited by Blondel Garcon. Produced by Rachel Fulton with theme music by Liz Full. Again. Thank you, my creative cutie, for listening. If you like what you heard today, you can go ahead and rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share the show with a friend. Podcasts are best spread person to person. The greatest influencers in our lives are our friends and family. So share a show with a friend or a family member and post about it on social media. If you post about it, tag me at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative, and I will repost to share my gratitude. Also tag Monty at Monty. Chriswell so he can share as well. My wish for you this week is that you realize it's never too late to create something that truly makes a difference, whether it's a song, a story, or even a shift in your own perspective or life. You are creative even if you've forgotten, even if it's been buried, even if you haven't been living that way. You are always creative and you can always go back to it. Even in the hard seasons, your voice is worth using. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
