Leslie Fram, senior vice president of music strategy at CMT, led the conversation at Jeff Ruby\u2019s Steakhouse in Nashville last week. Their topics ranged from Janson\u2019s first co-writes with Guns N\u2019 Roses to his Cracker Barrel harmonica to his Grand Ole Opry induction ceremony. But the two also managed to get into the specifics of a few of the songs from\u00a0Good Vibes<\/em>, due out Friday (Feb. 8). What follows is a condensed version of the Q&A.<\/p>\n Q.\u00a0One thing that\u2019s true about you is that you\u2019re a grateful person. You never talk about yourself. That\u2019s what I love about\u00a0Good Vibes<\/em>\u00a0because it\u2019s so positive in such a negative world right now.<\/strong> Q.\u00a0Have you always had that peace? The stories are infamous of you sleeping in your car and playing at Tootsies. What was it like back then and what was your overall feeling?\u00a0<\/strong> Q.\u00a0What\u2019s the story behind the song \u201cCheck\u201d?<\/strong> Q.\u00a0It\u2019s very everyday man. Some of these songs were autobiographical. Was that easy for you to write about?<\/strong> Q.\u00a0What\u2019s the story behind \u201cSay About Me\u201d?<\/strong> Q.\u00a0What\u2019s the story behind \u201cHawaii On Me\u201d?<\/strong> Q.\u00a0What\u2019s the story behind \u201cWaitin\u2019 on Five\u201d?<\/strong> WHen I was in Nashville back in September I had the privilege of seeing Chris Janson live at the Grand Ole Opry. Never had I seen a guy with so much passion, charisma and a love for the fans as well as the music. He had humble beginnings, yet with his rise to stardom, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[70,155,242],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/mgid_ao_image_cmt-4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2179,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions\/2179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"GettyImages-130359816-1549564110\"](\"http:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/GettyImages-130359816-1549564110-680x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nA. Some people have trouble talking about themselves. I have songs. Songs and music. It\u2019s how I communicate. When I\u2019m off the mic or off the stage, I don\u2019t even want to talk about me. I am grateful. I do love my life and I do love the Lord and I do appreciate it when people do nice things for me and work hard with my name on it. I am truly grateful for that. \u201cGood Vibes\u201d was written from that place. I wake up just like everybody else sometimes. We\u2019re cranky and we just don\u2019t want to do it and we\u2019re over it and we let people know it. We went to Zach Crowell\u2019s house who is a co-writer on this song and we were not supposed to be writing with Ashley Gorley, we weren\u2019t supposed to be writing together that day, but we all just kind of piled at Zach\u2019s house and just did it impromptu. Everyone was complaining about this, that. I said, \u201cOK, good vibes only.\u201d And Zach goes, \u201cWe should probably write\u00a0that<\/em>.\u201d It was really just that simple. I always tell people you have to put actions into words and you have to walk it like you talk it. Sometimes when I sing it, it\u2019s sort of subliminally reminding myself. They say when you\u2019re giving someone an uplifting talk that you\u2019re really talking to yourself, and I really think \u201cGood Vibes\u201d is talking to me, too. Every single day, you have the choice to say something really nice to somebody. We just knew we had something, it just felt really right, it felt really good and it felt like no matter the times we\u2019re living in, we\u2019re always going to have ups and downs in life. That is a timeless message. It\u2019s so simple: be nice.<\/p>\n
\nA. I always felt like I was winning. I felt like I was winning then. I feel like I\u2019m winning now. When you wake up, you\u2019re winning. No big deal. Never in my life have I ever needed anything more than what I had at the moment. I always felt blessed and right where I was supposed to be. I moved here like every small-town kid thinking you came here and got famous really quick, and that was just not the case. I realized you had to go work, but I didn\u2019t know what that work meant. All I knew it was I didn\u2019t have enough money to get an apartment. No big deal, I thought, sleeping in my car. It was second nature to me. When I got the gig at Tootsies, I felt on top of the world. I had never written a song at that point. I was just playing Waylon Jennings and Jerry Lee Lewis and whatever people would request, because if you want to make money on Lower Broadway in Nashville, you have to learn to play for tips. That\u2019s where I learned harmonica. I bought a Cracker Barrel harmonica, I learned \u201cPiano Man\u201d by Billy Joel and my tips started quadrupling. Those humble beginnings? Every day when I wake up, I say I don\u2019t want for anything, but I always do want to succeed better than I am today. I say that with a great peace in my heart, because we\u2019re not really promised walking out of the building and making it to the next destination.<\/p>\n
\nA. People ask me when I write, \u201cHow do you know it\u2019s for you or for somebody else?\u201d I always sit down to write for someone else, because that\u2019s the songwriter mentality in Nashville. But (record label executive) Cris Lacy talked me out of that really quick. When I had \u201cI Love This Life\u201d and \u201cHow I\u201dll Always Be\u201d racing against each other, it turned into, \u201cJust hold the songs for you.\u201d Now I write in a totally reverse way: for me first. So \u201cCheck\u201d is a song that\u2019s going to be on this album, it was between \u201cCheck\u201d and \u201cGood Vibes\u201d for the first single, and I think we made the right one. \u201cCheck\u201d is giving songwriters who\u2019ve never had a cut before their first cut. That\u2019s a very humbling thing to know that the project is being put forth in my name, and it is giving a lot of people their first shot. I\u2019m just proud that it\u2019s able to open doors. This song\u2019s one of my favorites. The idea for the chorus came from one of my co-writers Mitch Oglesby \u2014 this guy was putting together car doors at Nissan a year ago \u2014 and he has a good meter on what I do. I can sing about all subject matters, but I try to do them in a way where it\u2019s also sometimes in third person. Because I don\u2019t drink. So I don\u2019t want to sing, \u201cI drink.\u201d But I can sing, \u201cI can fix a drink.\u201d So \u201cCheck\u201d was Mitch\u2019s idea first, and I said, \u201cI just think it would be so cool to put this boom in the box, boon in the docks, hillbilly music.\u201d Everything in that is just true to life. I made it this far on a three-chord song. I don\u2019t do it for the money, I don\u2019t do it for the fame, but I do love the job. And I never got into it for nothing but just loving it.<\/p>\n
\nA. People sometimes have a hard time talking about personal things to others. I don\u2019t. I\u2019m actually the opposite. I would rather tell you about my personal life in a song and the things I enjoy because they get me excited. I have a hard time writing anything that\u2019s not real. If you know me on a personal level, you know that these things are the real deal. It\u2019s easy to stack songs like that. I write songs like a full-time 9-5:00 staff songwriter every chance I get. I write a lot by myself and I write a lot with my friends. It all starts with a song.<\/p>\n![\"IMG_2400-1549564983\"](\"http:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_2400-1549564983-1024x573.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nA. That was one take. Most people write songs and then record them. We actually did the reverse on that, we never wrote a lyric to that. That\u2019s one take of me rapping the whole song. I started it from the top, said what I wanted to say, and Shy Carter goes, \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening right now.\u201d We never wrote that song. It just happened. Loud and proud anthem. If you dream big, you win big, and I feel like that song is my dream-big, win-big song. It\u2019s because I see people\u2019s faces reactions to it on the road. And the greatest part about it is I feel like when I\u2019m winning, they\u2019re winning and vice versa. When my people are winning, I\u2019m definitely winning. That\u2019s what the heart of it really means. When you\u2019re on the bottom, you know you\u2019re on the bottom, when you\u2019re on the top, you scream and shout. Every day I\u2019m on top and I just want to tell people, \u201cIsn\u2019t life good? Aren\u2019t we blessed?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nA. I wrote this song with my wife (Kelly), and Tim McGraw recorded it. I\u2019m glad he didn\u2019t release it, because I\u2019m going to. \u201cHawaii On Me\u201d is exactly what it sounds like. It\u2019s about someone getting ready to die. And they know they\u2019re going to die, and instead of mourning, they\u2019re throwing a party.<\/p>\n
\nA. Craig Wiseman is a fixture in the Nashville songwriting community, and he had \u201cWaiting on five to get started on six.\u201d He included myself, Tommy Cecil and Shy Carter on the song, and we got together and it wasn\u2019t the traditional co-write. I worked on some, Tommy worked on some, Shy worked on some, and we worked on some together. Then we went back and forth on emails and phone calls. How many times in your real, normal, everyday 9-5:00 life are you waiting on five to get started on six? It\u2019s just a true testament to guys like my dad who work a 9-5:00 job every single day and they\u2019re just waiting on six o\u2019clock to roll around so they can do something. I never played it live until just recently, and people immediately started singing with it. That\u2019s how I gauge these things. I gauge songs that are going to go on an album on if they work live or not. Because that\u2019s my main bread and butter. If people aren\u2019t immediately singing along then I think, \u201cOK. Forget it, I\u2019m not doing it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"IMG_2401-1549565375\"](\"http:\/\/cmni.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/IMG_2401-1549565375-1024x573.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"