Dennis
Welcome to the show, everyone. I’m your host Dennis VanDerGinst here with my sidekick, charming and goofy, Dana Watkins. We have a great guest today. I’d like you to all meet Beau Davidson, one of the most talented guys that you may have never heard of. And hopefully that’s going to change. He’s a two time regional Emmy nominated recording artist, and actor, songwriter, on Air TV host. He’s costarred on The Gilmore Girls, Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful.

Dennis
He’s starred opposite Tatum O’Neal in Runaway Romance, and in the Hallmark movie, The Ultimate Legacy with Raquel Welch, one of my personal favorites, Brian Dennehy and Lee Meriwether. He’s performed as one of the singers on The Singing Bee.

Dennis
He was named one of Cosmopolitan Magazine’s Hottest Bachelors of 2009. One of Nashville’s 25 most beautiful people. And he has received the 10 Outstanding Young Americans Award in 2013. But recently cohosted TEGNA and Sony’s nationally syndicated daytime TV talk show Daily Blast Live.

Dennis
He’s a graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago, where he majored in vocal performance, opera, and political science. A very interesting combination that I want to talk about. I first met Beau about 10 or 12 years ago when he won a songwriting contest that I had sponsored on behalf of a fundraising effort.

Dennis
I’ve been fortunate to call him my friend ever since then, and maybe we’ll talk about some of the good old days. But I really want to concentrate on now and the future. So let’s get started. Beau, first of all, thank you for being here. How are you today?

Beau
I’m doing great, Dennis. Thank you so much for having me. And I’m really glad that you’re doing this podcast series. I think there’s a lot to be said and how admirable it is that you’re trying to focus on that which binds us and that which moves us forward. I think you and I have been guys that although coming from, you know, maybe dissimilar backgrounds, different perspectives, hopefully, you know, you and I, through friendship and through professional acquaintances and through the spirit of music, have found a unique bond, you know, over the years.

Beau
And here we are. How ever… what was it? 2010 was the Spirit Pageant, I think.

Dennis
I think so. Something like that.

Beau
Almost 11 years after that and still talking and still kicking. So thank you for having me and including me in this. And, you know, it’s been great to be your friend and even a colleague of some sort.

Dennis
Absolutely. And, you know, I referenced you as being one of the most talented guys that a lot of people have no familiarity with. And that raises an issue. I mean, to paraphrase that commercial from the 80s and 90s, Beau knows music, Beau knows acting, Beau knows performing. Why don’t more people know Beau?

Beau
It’s a great question because obviously I’ve got the marketing, don’t I? I mean, it’s already there. You know, here. I’ll start out by saying this, Dennis. You know this as well as I do. But a lot of people at home might not know this. The entertainment business is not a meritocracy.

Beau
Now, that’s not to say that people at the top are not good. That they’re not talented. Obviously, you know, when I watch certain performances, whether it’s musical or acting or otherwise, there are people at the top of their games that are phenomenal. You know, but there’s a certain amount of luck and opportunity that comes into play that no matter how gifted you are, there’s a lot of gifted people out there, Dennis, that we will never hear of, for whatever reason.

Beau
There’s kind of a stars aligning that kind of has to happen for you to be in a particular place at a particular moment in time. You know, for me musically, I can speak to this because I spent 10 years in Nashville. I came along to Nashville at a time when, you know, when Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban were getting very big and the music changed. It went from, I’d say, a vocally dominant kind of sound, especially for men, to what you might call bro country. Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean. Not to disparage their voices, but just to say that the movement changed.

Beau
And unless you adapt to that or your producers help you adapt to that, you might get looked over. You look at a guy like Vince Gill, who I admire as a vocalist. Vince Gill, I don’t think makes it today. You know, it’s a shame, but it’s true.

Beau
So just, I just tell people at home, you know, for one thing, I want to make it clear I’m not out for fame. That’s that’s not why I do it. If you don’t hear of me because I’m not a famous name to you, that doesn’t bother me. I’d rather you hear my music or see a performance and say, I don’t know who it is, but I love it. That’s what I’m more concerned with.

Beau
So, you know, so many people are so… Look, we live in an era, Dennis, where everyone is an influencer, quote unquote. That means you have to have X amount of followers, and that you don’t mean anything unless you have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. And, you know, I don’t live by that motto. That’s not why I’m here. It’s not what I’m about. If my music reaches millions and millions of people, that’s wonderful, and I really hope that it does, but I just try to, you know, make it said at the outset that I don’t want to be the guy that gets hassled when he goes out to eat just because I’m famous.

Beau
That’s not why I want that. You know, people say they do it for the craft and they should. But, you know, all too often celebrity gets in the way of that.

Dennis
You know, I recall it was several years ago, but we, you and I, had a conversation. I don’t know if you’ll remember this, and I don’t know if this is still true, but I believe you told me that at that point you made a concerted effort not to engage a talent agency or a manager to guide your career. Is that still the case? You don’t, you haven’t hooked up with an agency?

Beau
Oh, no, no. Since that time, I certainly have. And with a number of different types. And as you know, a lot of actors and singers go through multiple different agents and managers. I will say this like, and I say this because I just had this discussion with an entertainment attorney yesterday who’s representing me on something. And I think it may be the highest compliment I’ve been paid, which is he said “Beau applies the motto that too much work is never enough”.

Beau
And I’ve tried to outwork… I’m like a Peyton Manning reference. Peyton always said, I don’t think I’ve got the greatest arm. There’s people out there that are more gifted than me athletically, but I could outwork you. I’ll out-prepare you. And so for me, I used a marketing mindset, and this attorney referenced Garth Brooks as an example, saying he didn’t think Garth Brooks had the greatest voice, but he was the best self marketer in town.

Beau
So I’ve never wanted my marketing or my PR skills to mask or to make excuses for a lack of talent. But I will say that I hate… It’s sad, but there are few people out there who will fight for you as hard as you.

Dennis
True.

Beau
And that’s why I’ve had to use the… apply that level of marketing to my talent, because I hate to say this Dennis, I’ve had agents before who just don’t work hard enough. They don’t pitch you when you need pitching. They’re not sending you out for the right roles. They’re not putting you in front of the right record labels. They’re not even putting in the right songs. And this happened recently. I saw one of my reels, which is a television reel of your compilation of your best hits, basically, sent to a particular television show. And they sent the wrong reel and they said, “hey, what do you think about this guy”?

Beau
And I thought, you can’t send that reel to that broadcaster. They’re going to they’re going to think you’re an idiot. Because it’s not the real to send. You don’t send… you know, if you’re Chris Cuomo, you don’t send the best of Chris Cuomo to Entertainment Tonight. They don’t they’re not compatible. That’s not what Entertainment Tonights does. You see what I’m saying? So I’ve seen this happen often and I end up having to make… clean up someone else’s mistakes.

Dennis
Right. No, I get that. And I certainly understand and appreciate, you know, what you obviously have had to struggle with over the years. Anybody I believe in the entertainment industry has probably had similar complaints of their representatives and I guess the business in general.

Beau
And I’m going to… I want to ask questions. This is kind of how I do depositions and take testimony, doing cross-examination. I like to kind of jump around, keep it as lively as possible. Usually when I’m doing it with a defendant or a witness, it’s because I want to keep them off guard. But that’s not the case with you. Well, that’s not what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing.

Dana
He’ll make you cry.

Dennis
Yeah, I make her cry, but I won’t make you cry. I do want, however, you know, it’s something that you and I have discussed off the air. I want to revisit 2020, even though I just said, you know, I want to talk about now and the future. Now and the future has certainly been impacted by the last year in the craziness and chaos that ensued. And I know a lot of people have been through, you know, the ringer. But I know that you in particular have had some horrible events happen in 2020. And I’d like you, to the extent you’re comfortable, to discuss that and discuss how you’ve gotten through, because you’re doing great and you’ve been through so much.

Dennis
I think it would be very helpful to our audience to see what it takes when you’ve been faced with such adversity to be triumphant on the other end of things.

Beau
Oh, boy. Well, there was a string of about 18 months that were very difficult for me, and it actually started in 2019. You know, there are career opportunities that you take because you believe they’re the best things for you. You believe it’s like, you know, sometimes opportunities only come around once and you better be ready to, you know, move forward. And I did, I did that with a television show. I’ve done that with television shows in the past that I thought were in my best interest.

Beau
And it didn’t work out. It didn’t work out like I want it to work out. It was different from what I thought it would be. And as someone who you know, you take what you’re given at the time saying, look how great this is and look at the money you make and look at the opportunity and you run with it. And actors do this actually to. They take the wrong project and it sidelines them for however many years because they picked the wrong movie. Maybe it flopped, you know. So there was there were career things that happened with me that did not work out that I thought would.

Beau
And that started a kind of a downward spiral, really, that I couldn’t have anticipated. I was in a relationship at the time, a serious one that also did not work out for a number of different reasons. And, you know, I look back on it with happiness, of course. There are things any relationship that you take the positives out of, you must become…. I’ll tell you what, I’m a better man. I’m a better boyfriend. I’m a better fiancee. I’m a better all of that because of that relationship.

Beau
The same thing also is true of the career things that didn’t work out. I’m a better debater. I’m a better conversationalist. I’m a better… in your deposition chair. Yeah. And then in 2020, you know, look, but again, a lot of people have experienced these things. Furloughs, loss, you know. In 2020, September of 2020, I came back to Memphis, Tennessee, which is where I am now, where I’m from, to spend some time with my folks.

Beau
I thought it was important. Covid had hit. We weren’t really sure what was going to happen. It was a time of uncertainty for a lot of people. I took a trip over to Arkansas to fish with my dad, which he’s been doing for, gosh, forty, fifty years, maybe longer, and for me at least twenty, if not more. We’ve made that trip many, many times and we thought if there’s any time to do it, it’s now.

Beau
And I didn’t really know, you know, coming back to Memphis, a place I don’t really like, I don’t there’s nothing here for me. But I thought I should really see my folks. I should spend time with them because you never know. If they get Covid and they’re gone, you’re sure not going to see them die because they’re going to be in a hospital. We’ll never see them.

Beau
And coming back in September 13th on a beautiful Sunday, not unlike what I see outside my window today, we were hit in a head on collision and I don’t remember any of it. And I obviously was unconscious. A driver who should not have ever gotten in the car that day came across at about eighty miles an hour, we think, and hit us head on. We were going maybe 60, 70. I’m not sure whatever the speed limit was. We never saw it and I never saw it. I was looking down at the time and it killed the driver and my father, who was driving the truck, instantly.

Beau
And I woke up in the E.R. and I was going in for a CT scan. And I’m the only survivor of that accident. I’ve, Dennis, I’ve listened to the 911 calls. It’s harrowing. It’s like a PTSD kind of a thing. Even though I don’t remember it, you’re kind of putting pieces together of it. And so I lost my father had to bury my father, having nothing to do with Covid, you know. Who would have ever thought that would have happened?

Beau
But, this is the silver lining. Through loss of career opportunities, through loss of a relationship, through loss of a parent. There is grace to be found. There are blessings that are bestowed in spite of it. I’m a man of faith and I believe that there are things that happen.. you know everyone says everything happens for a reason. Well, maybe, but you might get to choose the reason, too. You might be able to steer that path. And for me, having all that time, when I came back to Memphis starting in May, with my father, it was critical.

Beau
There was a restoration, a reconciliation that happened between him and me that I didn’t think was even possible. So the time I got I was meant to be here. I believe that. I would have hated it if he had died and then I hadn’t had that time. So, again, I tell you, I’m a I’m better in my career as a result of past problems and unfortunate circumstances. I’m better in my relationships because I have loved and loved hard. And I’m better in terms of, hopefully, my compassion and my understanding of what people are going through, having lost a parent.

Dennis
Yeah, well, you know, I shared with you my sympathies and prayers when it happened. But I want to reiterate that now, obviously. I’ve lost both my parents, but I at least had some sense of the fact that it was going to be occurring.

Dennis
My dad had a heart attack and my mom, unfortunately died from lung cancer. And that was horrible. But when you have absolutely no sense, and it makes no sense, that somebody in that condition got behind the wheel of a car, it is so devastating. So my heart goes out to you.

Beau
And I’ll add this too. And I didn’t think about this till afterwards, but I was with my father at the moment of his death. He always said he wanted to go quickly. He saw his father die of colon cancer, like the situation with your mom.

Beau
And these are not pleasant deaths. These are not, you know. He didn’t want to go down that way. And I’m glad for him. I’m happy for Heaven’s gain and sad for my loss. But at the same time, he went quickly. It’s exactly how he would have wanted to go. And he was 71 years old. Not too young, not too old, but he lived the life he wanted to live. And he he mended all the fences he wanted to mend, which I think is important.

Beau
Not a lot of people can say, let’s specifically talk about 2020, that got to be at their parents side the moment they died.

Dennis
True. Very true.

Beau
And I think that. I’m like I was with him. You know, not a lot of people get that opportunity. So as sad as I am that it happened, I was there.

Dennis
You know, and you mentioned, that, you know, in a sense, in a way that was a blessing and you mentioned your faith, that’s kind of a good segway into something that I wanted to to discuss, and exhibit some of your your talent in, after fashion.

Dennis
You composed and performed a, what I think is a masterpiece. Blessed.

Beau
Thank you.

Dennis
And I know that the military… and I want you to talk a little bit before we have an opportunity to play that. I want you to talk a little bit about how how this came about. How it was that you are, why it was, I guess, that you even thought to put together a song reflecting on our military and how you were able to put together the video that accompanied the music. And then I want to I want to play that for our audience.

Beau
OK, sure. I’ll be as succinct as I possibly can be, and not long winded. I think it was around 2011, 2012, I had been touring with a group that performs for Amway Global. All their huge, huge conventions that they have. They’re a very energetic group and they are a very patriotic group, too. So our director at the time said, would anyone like to take a stab at writing some original material for the next album? And I did. And I was, you know, I was a songwriter and a singer in Nashville, and I really wanted to and I was working with some incredible people at the time.

Beau
And I thought I should really give this a go. And the idea that that spawned this wasn’t just, hey, write something for this project. I was experiencing at the time… I’m very high on the millennial end because of my age. I’m not 40 yet, but I’m close. And I was thinking about my generation and I thought about my dad’s generation and my grandfather’s generation, both who served. My dad was in the reserves, but my grandfather fought in the Philippines.

Beau
And I thought about, you know, these stories of courage and duty and honor and these words. Are we are we experiencing them still or they just kind of like a tall tale? Or do we even know what they are anymore? What’s what’s courage anymore? Of course, courage is the man who steps up in front of the child that protects him from the bus hitting him. We know that. We know firefighters do it every day. Policemen do it every day. Our military does it.

Beau
But is there everyday heroism? Is there everyday courage and honor that we can see? And my answer was yes. But I had to start the song from the premise asking the question. What is courage? What is honor? Are these words or just ideals long forgotten? And, you know, freedom is obviously just one generation away from extinction, as has been said. And so I believe the torch must be passed.

Beau
If you’re not, if you’re not implicating other people and passing that down, then we may lose it. We may lose certain basic precepts and basic ideals. So I wrote the song. I sent it to the guy who was the leader of the band at the time. He loved it. He said, let’s produce it. So we did. And then I got the idea to do this music video. I had a buddy in Nashville at the time who’d done some music videos and he said, I really like the song, let’s do something. And on a shoestring budget, I started conceptualizing.

Beau
I thought, you know, how do we do this? And so I contacted the Air National Guard, which was in Nashville, and I said, could we use your your your planes or your hanger? And I thought, they’re going to just say, get out of here, get lost. They said let me see what I can do. And it took, Dennis, about three to four months of approval that went all the way up to the Pentagon, Department of Defense. You can’t have tail numbers on the planes. You can’t have officers names. There’s a bunch of stuff you have to clear.

Beau
But they said sure. I was blown away. They offered all of their their current staff at the time, their personnel. They offered everything. When our director said, can he hop up on the wing of the C-130, they said, sure, why not?

Dennis
Wow!

Beau
One of those happenstance things that’s just incredible when the synergy comes together and they didn’t even really know what it probably was or how, you know, I’m sure the military was probably thinking, well, we need to make sure he’s not making fun of us or doing something tongue in cheek that’s not great. And it had to go through an approval process even in the end, and ended up just working out so beautifully. So that was really the spirit that that the reason for the composition, the reason for the music video, which again, I hope reaches people.

Beau
I hope it touches people. I think that once again, we’re living in a very hedonistic, self-centered time where I hope that our children and our grandchildren will learn to understand what these concepts I speak of mean.

Dennis
Wonderful. Now, with that segway, I want to go ahead and play the song. Then we’re going to come back and discuss a little bit more.

Blessed by Beau Davidson plays.

Dennis
So as I said, the first time I saw that video and heard the music, I was extremely moved. And every time I hear it, I feel the same way. And I recall, it wouldn’t have been the first time I saw it, but I recall seeing it played on some program. I think it would have been around the Fourth of July, or Memorial Day.

Beau
I think its premiere was on CMT.

Dennis
That might have been it. And it to me obviously seems like the perfect song to be played every Independence Day or every Memorial Day, you know, and year round, for that matter. But, you know, one of the things that strikes me about the video, and I think you’ve done a couple versions of that, if I’m correct, but the one that we just played is the one that has the interviews throughout the video. So who are these folks that were interviewed? How’d that all get lined up?

Beau
Again, another just serendipity that just fell into place so nicely. When I asked the Air National Guard whether I could use their facilities, I said, do you have any veterans? I could get on camera? And they said, we’ll try to find some. And I said, just young and old is as as wide of a range as you can give us. We did not preinterview these guys. We had no idea what we’re even going to find when we showed up.

Beau
So we set up the scene. We had everyone from World War 2, 95 year old gentleman all the way down to Enduring Freedom, which was, of course, the I guess the most recent war at the time. So that’s Afghanistan and Iraq. There was a couple of Desert Storm veterans. There were two Vietnam. And as we all know, Vietnam is still a very, it’s a very hot button topic. It’s a very hot, you know, it’s a hot button issue for so many people about how they feel about that war.

Beau
And I understand it. I understand it. But for the veterans, they don’t deserve the brunt of that ire. And so we had all these different, I think it was seven total that we had, and I just kind of wanted to be very conversational about it, as I am with you right now and said, you know, what are, what was your fondest memory of World War 2? And he said the day victory was declared over the axis and maybe the most poignant one, I thought, was when I said, what is, what is freedom mean to you? You know, and that’s a very loaded question.

Beau
And he said, freedom, I think, isn’t just a concept, it’s something we can give. And that’s interesting. The transformative power of freedom, which the U.S., for all of our faults and flaws, and we know there are many, we have liberated and given freedom as a concept and as a, as an idea, as a spark, you know, back to the American Revolution even, to so many people around the world. And that’s why so many people want to come here today, you know, because of that freedom of this basic level, the fact that you and I can have a controversial conversation right now and not have the government jump on us about it is incredible.

Beau
There are people who can’t do that. So, you know, when he said, when he talked about freedom as a transformative vehicle, I thought that’s just profound. So these guys, I had no idea, Dennis, what they were going to say. I thought they may freeze, you know, who knows what’s going to come out of their mouths and ended up being just beautiful.

Dennis
Well, I agree. It definitely came out. You couldn’t have written the script any better.

Beau
And it wasn’t scripted. That’s the best part about it.

Dennis
Yeah, that’s exactly. I think, I think that was great. Yeah. Now, would you say that Blessed is your favorite composition or are there other songs that you have written that you prefer?

Beau
Well, you know, the conventional wisdom in this business is write what you know, you know, and blessed was something I knew. I knew that it was in my heart to write it, you know, you should always pursue what you’re passionate about. I think I’ve written a lot of love songs that I think I know well, not because that means I’m a great lover. It means that maybe love lost. I know that well, too. And I’ve written, you know, and of course, you know, the song that I did for the The Independent Spirit Pageant was one that we modified coming from a love song and did this kind of princess pageantry sort of motif.

Beau
So I felt like, you know, writing music that I knew and about people that I knew was important. More than I can give, for instance, was like kind of the song that put me on the map with a lot of people, because MTV, CMT, all these people ingested it. And it was like unprecedent at the time for some indie artist to get on these platforms back when they were really a thing. And it was written about my cousin and his relationship with his girlfriend at the time. He’s saying, you know, she’s, she’s, she’s wanting more than I can possibly give her. I’m giving her everything. And so I put that down into lyrics.

Beau
By the way, for anyone that listens to Sirius XM, the Billy Joel channel is phenomenal because he will talk about each composition and why he wrote it. And you think it’s about one thing and then it’s about something, you know, totally…

Dennis
Completely different. Yeah.

Beau
Yeah. And which is kind of amazing in a way. And I love listening to songwriters stories. That’s I think that’s why I love the craft so much. So do I think Blessed is the best? I mean, maybe, I don’t know. Is it my favorite? It’s one of my favorites for sure. Lee Greenwood, God bless the USA. He wrote one song. Now, of course, he’s written many, but that was his signature song, you know.

Dennis
Right.

Beau
You can’t call him a one hit wonder necessarily because he has written other things. I’m just not that, most people not familiar with it, you know? When you write when you write that one that just hits you right here, you run with it.

Dennis
Right. Right. You know, speaking of writing songs, for the audience, I dabbled a little bit and I wrote a song and Beau recorded it and it was absolutely beautiful.

Beau
I remember that.

Dennis
Yeah, and it turned out so great and unfortunately, dumb me, I had it housed in one location and my computer crashed and we’ve never been able to retrieve it. And I think I reached out to you after that and you didn’t have a copy of it either, or you couldn’t locate it.

Beau
We’ll will have to do it again.

Dennis
We will have to do it again because I actually loved that version. It was, it was beautiful. But by the way, Dana, you can chime in any, anytime you like. I don’t want to…

Beau
Who cares what Dana thinks?

Dana
I don’t want to interrupt anybody.

Dennis
No, no. I don’t want to, like, keep you out of the conversation here.

Dana
No, you’re fine.

Dennis
I feel like we’re taking…

Beau
Dana, do you have a goofy question? Since Dennis described you as goofy, is there anything?

Dana
I have many goofy questions. As a matter of fact, you know, if I wasn’t worried about interrupting you or, you know, taking all day, as you were talking, this is kind of what my brain does. You mentioned, you know, doing that video on a shoestring budget. And I think that’s such a weird thing to say.

Dana
I mean, obviously, we say it a lot, but now I wonder where that came from.

Beau
The what? Shoestring budget? The word?

Dana
Just in general.

Dennis
I told you.

Beau
That’s a good question.

Dana
Thank you.

Dennis
Yeah. She’ll Google it after this. She’ll have an answer for us. Well, you don’t you don’t need to go there, though.

Dana
No, definitely not. That’s just what I do.

Dennis
I do I, I do. Because, you know, you brought up the issue of production. How is it, kind of walk us through your process of, of composition. Do you think of the music first or the lyrics? You know, how does that come together and then how does it get produced?

Dennis
Do you have a studio in the house that you monkey with things and then take it elsewhere? Or what’s, what’s that process?

Beau
Everything is, is so DIY nowadays because equipment has gotten cheaper, production has gotten cheaper. It’s, you know, you used to have to pay an exorbitant amount to get it done. And you don’t have to do that anymore. But I want to come back to that element of it and just tell you what the process is first, which is so, you know, Billy, for instance, and again, I admire him so much, Billy Joel, that is, he takes motifs.

Beau
He, he pretty much describes himself as kind of a counterfeit artist. He listens to people that he likes and he brings those elements into his pieces. So I kind of do the same. I listen to things that I like and try to bring them in and hope I’m not plagiarizing.

Dennis
Sure. Right.

Beau
But sometimes the music comes first. Sometimes there’s a motif. A melody that comes along to you. And melody is so important. And by the way, I mentioned this to a friend the other day, and I want to bring it up to you. And actually, Dana could even jump in here, too. It’s my opinion that men listen more to beats and music and women listen more to the lyrics of a song. There’s a fundamental difference psychologically between how men and women process music.

Beau
It’s kind of an algorithmic thing that’s happening in your brain. And that’s why women know lyrics are so incredibly well, whereas men can probably tell you, identify more by the beat or the melody of the tune. It’s, interesting. So that’s why when you’re a lyricist, you have to make sure, for instance, if your target audience is women, you better have something very profound to say that sticks.

Beau
Now club music, you know, both people are processing it the same way, it’s about the beat, it’s how you dance. But in terms of some of the greatest compositions of our time, I believe came from the marriage of a great melody with a great lyric.

Dana
Yeah, go ahead.

Beau
Go ahead.

Dana
For you, do you then kind of see everything in the world as whether or not it’s a song. Like do you do something or see something or hear something and think, oh, this is a good song?

Beau
Yeah, absolutely. Art imitating life. As an example. I don’t know who out there is a fan of the show Yellowstone with Kevin Costner. It’s very very big right now.

Dana
Uh huh.

Dennis
Everybody.

Beau
I Listen very specifically, and I wonder if you guys did too, how music interplays in the show. They’re using a lot of music by a guy named Ryan Bingham, and he actually is a character in the show, too. He’s got a black beard. And Taylor Sheridan, the guy who created it, said that he liked his music and wanted to put it in the show. And then he said, let’s just give you a role in this and see how you do. If you suck, we’ll write you out, you know?

Beau
And it’s amazing that the show has a very specific musicality to it. So when you asked me how I hear things, I listen to Yellowstone and I started writing four different pieces of music based on Yellowstone.

Dana
Based on the concept of it or the sound, the melody you hear?

Beau
Both, both. But, for instance, they talk about how the landscape in Yellowstone is like its own character in the show, because it is. It’s gorgeous. So I wrote a song called Montana Sky. This this this monolith, this gorgeous Western sunset that is, it’s bigger than life.

Beau
You know, if you’ve ever been there, which I haven’t. I’m imagining it only through photos. So I wrote a song called, then I did a song, wrote a song called Another Bullet in My Head, and the reason why I wrote the song like that is because Kevin Costner, if you notice, is someone who keeps getting, it’s like Riff too, Rip, sorry. When they keep getting pushed down, it’s like you think you’re killing me.

Beau
But that’s just another bullet in my head. I’m going to keep going. You can’t kill me. We’re the Duttons.

Dennis
We’ll you’re just make me mad.

Beau
Exactly. Exactly. So that was the second song I wrote. I had a previous previously existing song called Raised Her Right, which was kind of my ode to Southern women. It doesn’t always have to be Southern, but but a woman who’s raised properly by her parents. They you know, they say, well, it’s a testament to your parents because you guys raised her, right. You know?

Beau
Yeah, that’s, so that was in there. And there’s another one I wrote that I’m kind of still in the process of called Living for Me. And the whole kind of theme of that is I’m not living for you. I’m not living for your processes, for your world. I’m living to preserve myself, which is exactly what Costner is doing. The Dutton family is trying to preserve their way of life in an area of, you know, of government, trying to, you know, people trying to come in and develop the area.

Beau
He’s having to deal with the Native Americans. So, yes, thematically, as I thought about that show, there was kind of a sonic signal that comes on in my brain. I’m like, I would like to write something like that in that vein.

Dana
Ok, yeah.

Beau
So and that’s just one example of how inspiration strikes me. It may be, it may be something happens to you at the supermarket, you know?

Dennis
And I’m going to circle back eventually because I you know, with the pandemic, so many people have binge watched, you know, different series, including, obviously, Yellowstone. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that. But before I get to that, what then is the process? Let’s say you’ve put it together. You’ve got you’ve got the lyrics, you’ve got the, the melody, and now you’re, you have to produce. How, how do you?

Beau
You’ve got to cut a demo.

Dennis
Yeah. OK.

Beau
Which again, and I don’t mean to use any songwriter lingo because when they say cut it’s like, oh he’s trying to, no it’s just what they say.

Dennis
Yeah.

Beau
You would lay down, basically, a basic version of the song and it would probably be with one instrument and your voice. It’d either be a guitar, it could be a piano, usually. And that’s how songwriters will lay down a demo.

Beau
At that point, you would use that demo as a template to create a fuller version of the song. My opinion is that you can make some great sounding music without having to go into a studio. Although, here’s the problem. This is what I want to circle back to. Precision of production, I think unfortunately, has overtaken quality of song. You know, especially Nashville. They want to make records so precise.

Beau
And they’re not even using analog equipment. They’re using digitized equipment to do it. And most people’s ears can’t discern that. But they want to make it so perfect. They’re using Melodyne, used to be called auto tune, it’s a different program, to tune your voice, to be perfect.

Dennis
Sure.

Beau
And as you probably know, Taylor Swift is rerecording her entire catalog to try to get the Masters back from a Scooter Braun and from Scott Borchetta, who retain the rights to her masters, to her songs.

Beau
She’s doing it because she wants to own the songs, which I can understand why it’s very lucrative to do that. But, you know, you’ve got to go back in and rerecord all this material. So it starts with an idea. It’s like your baby and then the baby grows and then it turns into an infant and then it becomes a full adult by going into the production process. And there’s there’s mixing, which is its own art. There’s mastering, which is its own art. To the, by the time it gets to you and our, the way we process music the way is so much more technologically great than it was 10, 15 years ago.

Beau
But but but. Go back and listen to some of the old stuff by the Stones.

Dennis
Oh, for sure.

Beau
As imperfect as it was, it’s perfect.

Dennis
Some things are overprocessed, you know? Food and music can be overprocessed.

Beau
Dennis, that’s where you lose the soul of of a piece.

Dennis
Absolutely.

Beau
I’m a Memphian, so when I think of Otis Redding and Al Green and people who are like, let’s use these arms of mine by Otis Redding, when you can hear him inhale before he starts his phrase, that’s beautiful.

Dennis
That’s part of the whole presentation.

Beau
Now they would cut that out. They would silence that.

Dennis
Yeah, no, I hear you. I agree 100 percent. Yeah, 100 percent agree. Sometimes, you know, the raspiness, the the breathing, the whatever it is, the grunts, the, it gives you the grit that, that the the song needs and deserves. So I’m with you on that.

Beau
Another great one someone pointed me to, by the way, Send in the Clowns by Frank Sinatra. If you want to hear a beautiful performance.

Dennis
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Beau
And phrasing. Phrasing, by the way, so critical. Here’s my fear. We have, we have, we have jettisoned great performances for precision, accuracy and, and fixing things. And I just want to hear the performance. Most of the time, by the way, what you hear is what’s a composite of 18, 15 different vocal takes.

Dennis
Sure.

Beau
Sinatra can do it in one.

Dennis
Yeah, exactly. Perfect. No, so OK, now you you’ve gone through the production. What about distribution? I think, you know, this is obviously one of the the key elements make sure you’re getting, getting it heard and getting hopefully monetizing in some fashion, so…

Beau
And now we come to the question of why you don’t know me that well.

Dennis
That’s what I’m getting to. Exactly.

Beau
So when it comes to marketing distribution, you better have some, usually it’s in the hands of the very few. It’s the, it’s the, the, the diplomats at the top, so to speak, that are able to, they are gatekeepers. They want to determine what you listen to, how you listen to it, how often you listen to it. And there’s obviously a lot of marketing plans and research that goes into this.

Beau
But you usually have to have a record label distribute your product, because in years past at least, radio has been very important. In country music it still is very important actually. In pop music, maybe less so. Once the era of the music video kind of went out, which it kind of is, I think, you know, we process everything on, you know, on this now. This is how we process things. And imagine spending five, six million dollars on a music video that you watch on this.

Dennis
By the way, for those people who are listening and not seeing the video.

Beau
I’m holding up a cellphone.

Dennis
Yeah, he’s holding up the cellphone. I have to do that in deposition’s, too, because we’re taking your transcript and somebody will say this or that and point and then we have to go back and say, no, let’s describe that.

Beau
Thank you for reminding me for that. But, you know, for distribution, you have to have a plan in place. And usually it’s done by a label who is invested in you and they’re going to recoup all that money somewhere down the road. You won’t see a penny of it until they recoup however much they’ve invested. So you would need to be able to get your music out to people so that they can hear it.

Beau
Now, you could say, well, Beau, you know, there’s a million different distribution channels. It’s easier than ever to produce a song and put it on the Internet. You’re right. And you can hope for viral success, which did happen with someone like Rebecca Black with that song, Friday, Friday, everyone getting down on Friday, if you remember that.

Dana
Yup.

Dennis
Yeah.

Beau
Or you come from a vehicle that’s preexisting that’s already in place. And I can’t remember the name of the girl right now that’s become so popular. But she came from Disney. You know, so many artists came from the Mickey Mouse Club, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera. You have a vehicle in place. And Disney is actually very good at that. So if you’re going to come out of the blue, out of left field, you have to hope for viral success, and no one can explain to you how those things happen.

Beau
Well, I put it out there and a label believed in me, and they put it out there and then it worked. It’s not quite as formulaic as it used to be because there’s different methods of distribution now. But I’m telling you, you can’t explain why some things take off and some things don’t.

Dennis
Well, whose job is that for you? Is that your management team? Is that your agent? Who is supposed to be getting you those labels, or getting the distribution through whatever source?

Beau
It should be all three, but because I’ve never been signed by a major label, I’ve never had the shots. So when we asked this perennial question, why don’t we know who you are, I guarantee you my music would be so many more places if a label had just bought in. Now, that doesn’t mean that they listen to it and they didn’t like it, or it may not have been right for them at the time.

Beau
I listen to so many stories, and I’m sure you’ve seen them too, of people who passed on every major artist that there ever was.

Dennis
Right.

Beau
They turned them down. Richard Marx. It happened to him. I think John Mayer, it happened to him. There were so many. You know, you give it you would think that it’d be, it’d be so obvious that these guys are talented and they don’t sign them. So I don’t, I don’t take it that personally because I know look how many other people that are better than me, you know, got overlooked. So it’s the job of the label to do that to to get you that distribution. But you have to have a label really to do it. Now, the Taylor Swift method was interesting because she, she had a father who invested partly in the label.

Beau
And by doing that, there’s something called payola, which is apparently not supposed to be done anymore. It’s supposed to be illegal. Where you would pay, you would pay the…

Dennis
Pay to play!

Beau
Pay to play. So you would play, because there’s such a little window, Dennis, of opportunity for new artists because they want to hear Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood and they, they don’t want to hear someone new. So the opportunity you have to slip in that window is very small. So they say, well, how about this? If you play X artist X amount of times this week, we will give you front row seats and front row access to Reba McEntire’s Show in Las Vegas.

Dennis
Sure. Yeah.

Beau
There’s your quid pro quo. Right? So that’s kind of how it’s done. If you don’t have that access, you don’t get on. That’s what I come back to. It’s not a meritocracy. It doesn’t matter how great your music is. And by the way, I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve sent were radio broadcasters will say, I love your music, Beau, I think it’s outstanding, but I can’t do anything with it.

Beau
And you say why? And they don’t tell you why. And then you have to research why. They’re not honest enough to tell you why they can’t put it on, because Clear Channel and a lot of the iHeart Radio and a lot of big behemoths are controlling the playlist. So in order to be able to get just a window of opportunity in there you have to be supported by a label because they want to know, oh, well, this guy is not just a one hit wonder. He’s going to have two albums behind it. He’s doing a tour. He can come into the to the studio and do a one on one with us. If they don’t see that, it’s like, well, if they’re not buying in, I shouldn’t buy it.

Dennis
Well, hopefully you’ll be one of those guys that people can tell that story about. Yeah, you know, it took him forever to get the label and get the distribution and to get the following and can you believe that? Just like you mentioned, John Mayer and…

Beau
Television and film have been my radio. And when I say that, when I did Blessed in the Ultimate Legacy for Hallmark, I couldn’t believe how many people approached me and found me as a result of that performance. It’s a two and a half minute, like it’s not even the full song of me performing the song in a two hour long movie on Hallmark. Now, I’m sure a lot of the people listening to your show probably watch Hallmark. It’s a binge thing for a lot of people, especially in tough times.

Dennis
Especially during Christmas.

Beau
And you’re thinking out of that many movies, how could that many people have found that one, two and a half minute slice of that one movie? It’s not even, it’s a pivotal part in the movie, but it’s not the focal point of the movie, you know, and people found me and they asked me to license the song, to perform the song in their own hometowns.

Beau
I was in D.C. and someone came up to me, said, Hey, are you Beau? I said, Yeah. He said you gave me the sheet music to your song, which we performed in Seattle. And I’d forgotten I’d done it. You know, I just said, yeah, if you want to go ahead and perform it, I was honored that they did it. So it goes to show you that in terms of visibility, never discount what television and film can do. And when you look at Netflix and Hulu and all the major distribution outlets now, music is a prized asset.

Beau
And I go back to Yellowstone. It’s made Ryan Bingham probably a household name as a result of that show.

Dennis
Sure. That brings up another point. And by the way, Dana, chime in any time. I don’t I don’t want to monopolize this, but obviously, since Beau and I know each other, I have some sense of, you know, the areas to discuss and focus the conversation on. But speaking of television, and film, you obviously have also successful acting career. What’s your, what do you prefer doing? Do you like, do you prefer performing, singing, or do you prefer acting or what? What’s the buzz you get from both?

Beau
It’s a great question. I’ve been asked it before and it’s a tough one because I love both equally. You know that’s going to sound like my lawyer avoiding tough questions.

Dennis
Your two kids, right?

Beau
I know you want to push probably harder.

Dennis
Well, it’s like, it’s like a parent saying, I love my kids equally. I kind of understand that.

Beau
Right, exactly. You know, they’re different processes. And here’s how I can explain it. With music, when it, when you write a piece of music and you perform it, it is unlike anything else, to see an audience respond to it, that’s why we do it, you know? The same is true of a performance on film and television, although you don’t get to see the audience’s reaction to it unless you’re doing live theater, which is why so many actors love doing live theater, because they want to see the response in real time.

You know, in film you do it 15, 20 different ways and then you don’t see it till a year later, you know. But when you’re in it and this is like I think it’s true. How can I explain this, Dennis? It’s like, it’d be like if you knew that when you were, you know, when you were an attorney in a trial and you knew you were in a zone and you had the guy right where you wanted him, you have this this moment of clarity where nothing can stop you. I think that’s true as athletes, probably Tiger Woods back in his prime when he was taking every swing.

You know, there’s just a certain zone that you get into athletes describe it of course. And it gives you a rush like no other. You know, I’m not someone who participates in recreational drugs, but I imagine the feeling I get when I’m doing some of these things is the closest thing to euphoria that there is. There’s nothing like it. And you want to just, you want to go back to that dopamine hit every single time that your in it. So musically speaking, it’s more, it may be in a three and a half minute long song or it could be an aria or can be a whole opera or a whole performance in film and television and in acting it’s like when you’re in it, you don’t want to leave it because you have encapsulated that character, you are that character, and you don’t want to leave it because it feels so good to just channel energy is the best way I can describe. I hope I’m articulating this properly, but when you say which one do you like more? They’re both similar in the energy you feel when you’re doing them.

Dennis
You know, I get that. And, you know, you mentioned opera, which when I first learned that you studied opera, it was after I’d known you for some time. And I was like, what? Because I at that point had never heard you perform opera. I have now heard you perform. In fact, I if I remember correctly, you, you performed opera, at least a brief performance with the Daily Blast, didn’t you, or…

Beau
Yeah, I did. I went and did, so Opera Colorado, which was in Denver, they had a production of La Traviata. And sent me to like test out my skills with their tenor. And I had to dust off the cobwebs to sing with him. And you were singing The Brindisi, which is the one of the famous songs, the drinking song from the opera. And I had to really study to do it because I thought, you know, the vast majority of people watching it aren’t going to know what goes into it.

Beau
But because opera singers make it look easy, you know, it’s not easy at all to hit those notes. The technique that goes into it, you know, and they make it look easy, just like an athlete makes a pass, like a touchdown pass look easy. And I just think, you know, yeah, it’s very, very hard to do.

And I did have to do a segment for that. But I have been in a couple of opera productions. One is an Opera Memphis here. I was cast for one in Nashville, but ended up getting a television, I ended up doing the Singing Bee on CMT, so I couldn’t actually do the opera. But it’s something that, you know, I love doing. I think if you can do that, it says something about the level of commitment and training.

Dennis
Well, yeah, if you can do that, you could probably handle just about anything vocally, it would seem. Speaking of vocally, you’ve mentioned now Frank Sinatra, you mentioned Billy Joel. Who, who are your musical influences? I mean, are those two people?

Beau
Yeah, they’re big. And it’s because I saw Billy Joel as a kid. My mom, its so funny story. She had to drag me to go. I didn’t want to go now. Why? I didn’t want to go away because I didn’t know his music and I went and changed my life. The first several concerts I saw were Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, and Garth Brooks. Those are three incredible performers.

Beau
You know, changed my life in so many ways. I’d be lying and probably a blasphemous person if I didn’t mention Elvis Presley.

Dennis
Elvis Memphis. Exactly.

Beau
I was born after he died. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have appreciation for his music. And if you go back and you watch…

Dennis
Wait a second. Wait a second. Before you go further, did you just say Elvis died? You’re from Memphis. Elvis lives!

Beau
I though the conspiracy theories were for a different podcast, Dennis. I’d have to put my tinfoil hat on for that one.

Dennis
Okay, move on.

Beau
Yeah. By the way, my aunt still thinks he’s alive, so whoever thinks that is not alone. But if you go back and watch like the 68 Comeback Special.

Dennis
Oh yeah.

Beau
His, his energy, his charisma, his, his gift of singing and knowing vocally what to do at the right, and may have been instinctive. You know, he borrowed, of course, a lot of some of his emotions from the African-American gospel church, which are slip off to go watch here in Memphis. And he you know why? Because it made him feel something. You know, I think that’s what we all want to do, is we want to feel something when we perform and when we experience music. You want to feel something hit you. It’s either going to make you tap your feet, dance, you know. And I think about his, his unassuming way.

Beau
He found himself in Sun Studio and Sam Phillips discovering him, you know, in 55 or whatever it was. And then I look, you know, look at the time he went off and he served and then he came back. And that 68 comeback special to me is so just telling of his career and just indicative. And so he’s a big influence. Billy Joel, Elton John. Trying to think of some of the others. Luciano Pavarotti. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that just because of his sheer, sheer technical prowess and what he’s able to do.

Beau
More modern guys? I’d say Bublé is certainly excellent. Josh Groban is certainly excellent at what he does. You know, to a, to a, an unassuming mastery, Ariana Grande has a voice that’s obscene how great, like, it’s it’s technically unbelievable what she can do. Her voice, you know what I mean? Carrie Underwood got pipes. No question about it. I love listening to her sing. She’s very, very gifted.

Beau
So, you know, I try to take bits and pieces of people from all different walks to apply to my own craft and try to learn from them. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Learn from the best.

Dennis
Yeah, for sure. So what about actors? Do you have people that you look to that influence you as far as that?

Beau
I do for sure. I think I remember the film for, I guess it was last year or before, Joaquin performances of The Joker.

Dennis
Oh, yeah.

Beau
Something to behold. And it’s dark. It’s upsetting. It’s unsettling. But his mastery of what he did especially was incredible. I found that really, really, really compelling. And I’m just trying to think like Darren Aronofsky, of course, as a director is is so interesting. I love watching his films.

Beau
I like Quentin Tarantino’s films a lot too.

Dennis
Absolutely.

Beau
You know, what was the, The King’s Speech is a great movie that I really, really enjoyed. And I’m trying to think of the other one. What’s the one where the guy plays Darkest Hour playing Winston Churchill? Gary Oldman.

Dennis
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing.

Beau
Exceptional. Exceptional. Daniel Day Lewis as, anything he touches. It’s just like can he, can he do any wrong. I mean the guy, so so those are the guys I watch very, very closely.

Dennis
Yeah. Love those. Dana, you had sent me a list of questions that, that I thought were pretty interesting. And even though I have those questions, I think it’s appropriate for you to ask them. Do you still have that list.

Dennis
I want to share some of his thoughts on these things.

Dana
My weirdness?

Dennis
Yes, exactly. I have to I have to endure this, by the way, all day, so I figure you can you can deal with it for a little bit Beau.

Dana
You get to. I had a lot of questions as you talked, but I didn’t want to interrupt you and I know that we can’t sit here all day, otherwise I would have asked more. So what’s something people don’t know about you?

Beau
Hmm. Something people don’t know about? Well, a lot of people don’t know I’m an only child, which some people say, well, that that figures, you know, they say that. But you know what? Being an only child, I tell you what, it’s shaped me just like it shapes people with brothers and sisters. It shapes you in the same way. It’s made me very, very independent. And I think honestly, Dana, that the way I apply myself in this business and my sort of go getter, no as an answer is going to just be off your back like water off a duck’s back.

Beau
I think that’s part of my only child both blessing and curse is that I’m able to apply myself and not worry about the rest because I’m in kind of self-preservation mode. Which means that I will go after whatever I want to and won’t take no for an answer. Or if it is a no, maybe it’s a no right now, not no, you know, a year down the road. So that that has shaped me for sure.

Beau
Something people don’t know about me. I’m trying to think of anything else that would be applicable here. I am a man of faith. I do believe that I’ve been given gifts from above. I’d be, you know, silly if I didn’t say that. And a lot of people do know that about me. I mean, when you write a song like Blessed, people kind of figure it out. But, you know, spirituality has become such a big part of why people do what they do that I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that.

Dana
Yeah, nice. Nice. So…

Beau
Oh, and, and I’ve escaped death a couple of times. It wasn’t just this accident. They thought as a kid. You may remember in the early 80s, especially when I was born, that SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was a big deal. They thought I had it because I would just stop breathing and turn blue. So if I escaped death a couple of different times.

Dana
Wow, wow. I bet that was terrifying for your parents.

Dennis
And you are truly blessed!

Beau
And sometimes I still turn blue, Dennis.

Dennis
Just out of sheer, who knows what, I don’t know.

Beau
Only when you, only when you say something off color which is…

Dennis
Yeah, right.

Dana
OK, so what do you miss most about being five years old.

Beau
Oh gosh. What do I miss about being five years old. I miss the innocence. I miss the the lack of troubles that we as adults have to face every day. We are in an unprecedented time now, unprecedented for us, not for people who live during the bubonic plague, of course.

Dennis
That’s right.

Beau
But unprecedented for us in our, in our, our comfortable houses with our heat. And people are freaking out in Texas, you know because they don’t have electricity for a couple of days. And, yeah, that’s bad. I’m not minimizing that. But people lived without electricity and heat for God knows how long. So I miss the innocence. I miss the wonderment.

You know, I wrote this song, taking it back to music a little bit, called A Kid Again, and I wrote specifically kind of with a Hallmark kind of theme in mind. And the whole, it was about Christmas and wanting to experience Christmas the way a kid experiences it, with this wonderment and joy in your eyes that nothing else matters other than that feeling you had Christmas Eve. Like what’s Santa going to bring me, you know? You see the joy in children’s eyes. And when you look at a child now and see that wonderment, you realize you have no idea the weight of the world that’s going to fall on your shoulders.

Dana
Yeah.

Beau
You have no idea. And that’s what I miss, is that innocence and that sort of just explore, you know? Don’t, again, the whole dance like no one’s watching. Sing like no one’s listening. That’s what I miss.

Dana
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I could talk about this for hours that we can’t.

Beau
We probably could.

Dana
Yeah, yeah. So what’s your favorite motivational quote?

Beau
Favorite motivational quote? I don’t know who said it, but the one that’s sticking out to me right now is try, try again, fail, fail again, fail better. I love the fact that you’re going to fail and you just got to keep failing better. You know, I really like that one.

Beau
I also like, there’s a book by, it’s called The Slight Edge. Jeff Olson, I believe, is the author of it, who said success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. As we talk about, Dennis, you talk about being a household name and why aren’t you bigger than you are? Which is a question I get often. It depends in part on how you measure success. And if success to you means money and fame and riches and women and all that stuff, which are great things, certainly, but they’re not going to make you happy. If you track success based on the progressive realization of something worthy, something you’re aiming towards.

Beau
I listen to a lot of work by Jordan Peterson, the professor from Toronto, who’s talking about aim at something in life, always be aiming, because if you’re not aiming, you’re going to be aimlessly wandering. And so I believe that whatever I do, whether it’s perfecting my craft and getting better as an actor, getting better as a musician, aim up, you know? There’s always something to aspire to and that’s, and so quote really stuck out to me that success is not about a monetary or physical gain. It’s about getting somewhere.

Dana
Sure. Yeah. Love that. Love tha. I have one final question. It’s actually probably the most important question you’re going to be asked during this podcast.

Beau
Okay.

Dana
Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?

Beau
Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella? Is this a trick question?

Dana
No.

Beau
It’s a, it’s a, it’s a joke.

Dana
It’s a joke.

Beau
Well, I’m too dumb to figure it out right now.

Dana
Fo drizzle.

Beau
What is it?

Dana
He carries an umbrella fo drizzle.

Beau
For drizzle, of course.

Dana
Fo drizzle.

Beau
I was going to make a reference to a recreational substance and why the rain might affect it, but we don’t have to talk about that.

Dennis
You know, as I said, we have to endure this every day.

Dana
You get to!

Dennis
We get to. We get to.

Beau
You know, fire. Lighting fires, and how the rain might effect it, so of course he would bring and umbrella.

Dana
Of course.

Dennis
You know, I know we’re going to have to wrap this up in a bit, but there are a couple of things that I, I wanted to, to to investigate a little bit more. Explore a little bit further.

Dennis
What would you say are maybe your top, the most meaningful words in your vocabulary, what means the most to you?

Beau
Oh, wow, that’s a good question. The words I admire the most, or the words I use in my lexicon, most often?

Dennis
However, you want to interpret that, that question is fine.

Beau
Excellence, character, precision, aim, blessed, faith. Being a beacon to other people, being a light. Being, having again, I know I’m not going to words now, I’m just going to kind of jump around, but having a life worthy of being emulated. Legacy, you know, I was in a movie called The Ultimate Legacy. What is your legacy that defines you? And I hate to say this, but in looking at my father’s headstone, which we are still trying to get because supplies are so low, is you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the, the phrase that the dash that is between your birth year and the year you die is what matters. It’s not the year you were born. And not the year your die. It’s that dash. What happens in that dash? You know, the dash on a headstone is like this big and that’s your life. So to me, the dash.

Beau
And the why. The why. What’s your why? You know, why do you do what you do?

Dennis
What about integrity?

Beau
Absolutely.

Dennis
That’s always struck me with you, is, is someone who has integrity true to, true to your feelings, true to, to your core, whether people like it or don’t like it, you, you put it out there, and no, I’ve always admired that.

Beau
Here’s another one. Authenticity. Authenticity is another word that really sticks out to me because I think that we’re living in a time where people don’t know what’s true and what’s false and they want to make decisions for them and for their family. You know, this vaccine, where we’re headed from here, what that means, you know, whether you should get it, whether you shouldn’t get it, who to protect. You know, we’re kind of in a very reflective time, I think.

Beau
And so authenticity is important because in our relationships and our friendships, we want, at least I do, I want authentic people. I don’t want to be BS’d. Nobody wants to be BS’d, you know. And we live in an age of artifice, I think, where people will, look with social media, it can be good. And I think it might have started out as a good thing. But let’s be honest, what we see and what we broadcast to other people is really our highlight reel.

Beau
It’s not, you don’t want to show people what’s wrong with you or what’s bad about you. And that’s why I took a time off, by the way, guys, and came back to it after the accident because I thought if I’m going to use this as a vehicle, I want to use it for good. And if I can show what I came through and how I was able to surmount this mountain and what, what I was able to do and picking up the pieces, maybe that’ll, that’ll be important to someone else. So I think we have to treat what we do and put out there very gingerly because we’re living in an era where you flip on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikToc, whatever, you’re seeing, that person’s reel. Their R-E-E-L, they’re their highlight reel, not their real life.

Dennis
Yeah, right.

Beau
And that makes us jealous. It has a psychological effect upon us. I think about I mean, you guys probably experienced just the quarantine, the lockdown itself, what that did mentally to so many of us. And you want to find authenticity. So that’s a big one for me, Dennis.

Dennis
Well, and I appreciate that. And I guess to, to, first of all, I, we could do this all day, I know. So we’ll have to have you back so we can explore some other things.

Beau
I’d love to.

Dennis
But the last thing I would like to explore with you is what’s in store. What are you looking forward to this year? What you know, professionally and personally, I guess.

Beau
I think back to, and I’m trying to remember the year it might have been 2008 or so. There was a show that I had conceptualized and I think I called it The Beau Show or something like that. Just a nice little rhyme to it. Nice little cadence. And I had pitched it to at the time, Oprah Winfrey had created what is now the Oprah Winfrey Network, OWN. And they were looking for people that wanted to, like, create their own shows.

Beau
And you could make it like a traditional talk show. It can be a hybrid show. It can be like Dr. Phil, self-help, cooking, whatever. And I was trying to create this kind of multipronged little bit of this, a little bit of that, little bit of music. Let music guide it, you know. And I went out to L.A., they flew me. I made it to like the top twenty.

Beau
And I remember getting there, Dennis, and I just I have to tell the story because it was in front of Mark Burnett and his team at the time. And I noticed that everybody around me was quite different. But I didn’t know what their concepts were for their shows because they, they, they isolated us. You know, they have to do that. And so you’re in a hotel room and you have no idea what anybody else’s show is. And I remember I went in there and in front of three producers and I pitched my show and they took my notes away from me.

Beau
They said, you don’t need these. I said, well, of course I need them. I’m planning a show. I kind of want to tell you what my pilot episode is. And I think I had, like Kings of Leon in it and I was like all these things going on at my first show planned out. And they said, yeah, you know, what would what would Jesus think about you being in Cosmopolitan magazine. I was like, OK, that’s the question you ask me? I guess the best you can do. I said, I think he’d be okay because I wasn’t nude.

Dennis
Yeah.

Beau
And they said, oh, OK. So and what would make you, what would make you interesting, since you’re from the south to anybody outside of the south? I said, well, I think it’s worked pretty well for Matthew McConaughey, Brad Pitt. Kristin Chenoweth, like I went through a whole list of people. Renee Zellweger. You know, I said they’re all they’re all doing pretty well. They were trying to stump me and they couldn’t do it.

Beau
And then they sent me home the next day and I said, what happened? What was the problem? And they said, oh, I don’t know, just BS casting, you know? So I fly home and I’m wondering why did this not, like what was the problem? And I think they were trying to create a reality show around the creation of this show that they wanted to try to get people to fall for their gaffs. And I wouldn’t do it.

Beau
So roundabout way. Here we are in 2021. I still want to do that show. And I’m actually negotiating, hopefully cross my fingers the opportunity to create my own show where I can do it like I want it. To have musical elements, to talk about artistry, to talk about philanthropy and human interest.

Beau
You know, we’ve got to have that heartbeat in our, in our world. In our country right now. We’re living in divided times. You know, how do you have that conversation with someone you disagree with? You know, we’ve experienced this big time in 2020 where the divide has gotten bigger and bigger. And I, I really wish that we’d return to the sense of being Americans rather than Republicans and Democrats or libertarians or whatever we are. And, you know, Matthew McConaughey is actually doing a pretty good job of this right now. He’s got a podcast where he’s discussing some of these things. And we’ve really let the divisions split between us. So I’d like to cover a lot of different topics, very similar to what we’re talking about today. And so cross my fingers within the next couple of months that’ll happen.

Dennis
Well, that’s funny, because I was going to say, even if you don’t do a show like that, at least not one on television, you should certainly be doing a podcast, whether it’s the Beau Show or whatever. But, but no. So I want to, I want to thank you so much for, for being on with us. Hopefully more people will know Beau at the end of 2021.

Dennis
And for the audience, I want to thank you all for joining us. If you’d like to catch the video of this podcast, you can do so by going to vlaw.com. And certainly we hope that you will be back next week when we have another exciting guest.

Dennis
Thank you all. Love you all. Stay safe.