I uh I I first of all want to say thank you to Lanie Wilson who I just think is one of the coolest people in the world.

I uh I I first of all want to say thank you to Lanie Wilson who I just think is one of the coolest people in the world. The same yes in doing that and I've had her new single on repeat. It just puts me in the best mood. It's called kind of love it. Check it out. Um Brad Paisley, thank you so much for that uh that induction. I'm I'm really surprised to see you here actually because we've been estranged since 2007. I think you know why. He took a tour prank too far. Filled my entire tour bus with live crickets. Thousands of them. For months I couldn't sleep. Just chirp chirp chirp. Chirp chirp. All night. I I considered buying a pet lizard to eradicate the problem. It was a dark time. But you know what? You did such a like amazing job with that introduction. I think we can let bygones be bygones. Yeah, I think we're good now. Um So, you know, I I am so honored to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame. I got the news and I was just kind of staring at the words. I was staring at Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame. And I was just like, wow, this is crazy. And then I I kind of zeroed in on a few words that have had a particularly intense impact on my life. Um the first one being Nashville. The second songwriters. And the last one fame. Um I'd like to start with songwriters and expanding upon the impact that word has had on my life. I started writing songs when I was a little kid and I knew from the time I wrote my first song that even if it couldn't be my career, it would be my passion. It would be what I centered my entire life around. Um Nashville is the place that I went to in my middle school daydreams. It was the place where all the wisdom that I wished to acquire existed in one place. All the lessons that I wished to learn existed in this magical place for me and it ended up being all of that and more. It ended up being everything. Fame. Uh you know, that's sort of a byproduct of my love for music. It's kind of like songwriter plus Nashville equals fame. It's why a lot of people know the words to my music, which is awesome. It's also why there's sort of like these daily random doses of chaos that just sort of like pop up in my life every once in a while, every couple of hours. And that can be kind of weird. But I have tools in place in my mind that help me kind of navigate that and get back to true north when life feels a little bizarre. Um those tools are my my memories and the memories that I visit most frequently when I need to return back to some semblance of remembering what normalcy is. Um and why I do this. I I think back to when I first got to Nashville and I started writing on Music Row. Um I was lucky enough to get a publishing deal with Sony Publishing when I was 14 and I just hit the ground running. I I started writing every single day. Um I learned so much. I was I was like a sponge. Um and and I I had really curly hair and it was yellow so I kind of looked like a sponge too. Um but I learned by repetition. I think you truly learn a craft when you do it over and over and over and that is what the magnificent songwriters that work in this amazing town do. Like there is no music community like this music community. I know I've checked all the communities. There's no one doing it like this. There just isn't. I learned so much. I learned, you know, how to push through a creative block when you're in the middle of a session. Like are we going to tunnel under this? Are we going to hurdle over it? I learned which ideas are worth fighting for, which ideas are letting, you know, worth letting go of and move on to the next one. I learned how to accommodate when your co-writer has a hangover or when they're going to need to talk about their divorce for a really long time before we write anything. Because, you know, one thing that I did learn is that songwriters, although they possess a superhuman ability to understand and interpret the human condition and like insane levels of empathy, they are just people too. And they are people who in a lot of ways raised me and guided me through my formative years. Um one of the memories I revisit a lot on good days and bad because it just makes me feel cozy is that um I used to write a lot in two favorite buildings. I had two favorite places that I love to write the most. Um the first one being the Sony Fire Hall, um because you could yeah, Sony Fire Hall. Because you could uh you know, you could hear the other writers through the walls and I just kind of like to pretend that I was in the Brill Building. Um and then my most favorite was a place called Jody Williams Music. An independent publishing company that was located in a little craftsman house and you know, let's say the year is like 2005, um in this memory. My mom would pick me up from Hendersonville High School, drive me downtown and drop me off and I'd scamper in the front of Jody Williams Music and I'd say hi to Catherine who worked at the front and uh sometimes her boyfriend Eric would be there visiting. Um things have gone great for them. They they've got a couple kids, married like 20 years now. His full name is Eric Church just for clarity. Uh but then I, you know, I'd run up the stairs and I would um plop down on the couch in front of Liz Rose in this room that was painted red and I'd be like, Liz, this happened at school today. I've got a hook that I want to like, I want to like, you know, we got to write this thing. And she'd get her notebook and we'd just write so fast. Um and when we'd be finished with the song, you know, I'd kind of jog out the back of this house to the backyard where there was a garden shed. And in that garden shed was a was a one-person studio where Jody Williams Music's favorite demo producer Nathan Chapman was was making demos. And I would run in and Nathan would would play every single instrument on these demos and he interpreted my music so intuitively that uh later on I would fight for him to produce uh my entire first album and it was our first album both of us and I am shocked and stunned to say that um as of a couple days ago that album is 20 years old. You know, I've I've been very fortunate I've gotten to genre hop and travel the world and write with so many different people and in so many different ways. And the only reason that I've been able to have that kind of dexterity in my creative process is because of the fundamentals and the foundation that I learned here in Nashville. And I never forget that for a single second and I tell every single person I know about what we have here. And I'm so incredibly honored to be inducted um into this sacred club. Especially at this point in my life. It's not lost on me how crazy this is and I I will cherish it forever because Nashville is the place that honed and polished the thing about myself and the thing about my life that I am the most proud of and the most passionate about. So to be here with you, um and to be getting to have this moment, I am truly grateful and it just feels like one of those amazing Nashville moments I'm going to revisit on a rainy day. Thank you so much for this amazing honor.