Home » Country Cutler Talks Parenting, Country Music in LA and Strawberry Pie For Breakfast

Country Music, Interviews, Stay-at-Home Dads

Country Cutler Talks Parenting, Country Music in LA and Strawberry Pie For Breakfast

We are super excited to have our first guest. Joining us is Donnie C. Cutler: better known as Country Cutler on Instagram and Substack. Donnie shares his insights on the LA Country Music scene, having a dad in charge of the household and whether or not strawberry pie is acceptable for breakfast.    

Mentioned in This Episode:

Show Notes:

  • 11:20 Dad Life Sound Check: Donnie talks about being there when your kids need you. Mick shares how grandpa’s farm provides such a strong foundation for the younger generations. Dave wonders which bottle is being taken away, the whiskey or the baby’s?
  • 21:22 Farm Boy Update: The strawberry and cherry season was brief this year… but, there was pie.
  • 23:23 HARDY Report: Dave tells the story of having his gallbladder removed a couple years ago after a HARDY show but blames the spicy ramen his brother-in-law gave him at 1am.
  • 30:20: The Dads and Country Cutler talk about how country music tells a story, the Southern California influence on country music, how Donnie’s dad was featured in a newspaper story on “Mr. Moms” and how to introduce your kids to the music you like. They wrap things up with a lightning round and Donnie gets the first question wrong in Mick’s opinion.

Sources:

You can find the playlist on Spotify and via our ⁠⁠website⁠⁠. You can find all of our back episodes on our webpage ⁠⁠www.countrymusicdads.com⁠⁠. Follow us on ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠ @countrymusicdads. And most importantly, please give us a 5-star review and share the show with all of your friends.

Transcript

So we take a look at how our traditions and our families kind of emerge, shift and change, and how you can explain that to kids and build things that last.

And I think that country music kind of does the same thing.

It reinvents itself.

It looks at itself through a different mirror, a different lens, but it always has kind of that foundational importance about core value of storytelling, the core value of working hard and being part of something bigger than yourself.

And that, to me, is what family creation is about.

That’s what music creation is about.

And I think that’s where the intersection really comes together for me.

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang.

We’re bringing you highly subjective, sometimes questionable, but always 100 percent authentic country music analysis, as only two dads in the trenches of modern parenting can do it.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

My name is Mick, and I am also a country music dad.

And thank you for joining us.

Today, we welcome to the show our very first guest, Donnie C.

Cutler, who runs the Country Cutler Instagram account and Substack newsletter.

He is a writer and ambassador for the LA country music scene, and most importantly, a dad.

But before we do that, let’s just start the show like we always do.

Dave, what has been going on in your world?

In my world, well, last episode, I talked about traveling on airplanes with the family for more.

How did that go?

So I wanted to report back that it went just fine.

Because the iPads were charged and you brought the chewing gum like I suggested.

iPads were charged.

I forgot the chewing gum, but lots of snacks.

The older two iPads just, they did the trick for sure.

It was like a two-hour flight.

I had to basically wrestle the one-year-old for two hours on the way there, on the way back.

But considering his age and everything, he did great.

No meltdowns, just a little whiny and rambunctious.

But what are you going to do?

He’s won.

It is what it is.

Yeah, so it went really well.

And actually, I know you have lots of experience going on trips with other families.

You do your dad’s trip every year with you, bring the kids along.

This is one of the first times that I’ve gone on vacation with a bunch of other families.

There’s, I think, 10 or 12 other families, tons of kids.

They’re all our friends from before we had kids.

So now a lot of us have kids.

We picked a destination and somehow everyone could make it.

And so we went up to Oregon together, shared a few houses and our kids just all played together.

And that in itself was worth the trip.

So that was kind of my surprise that it was just really satisfying to see all the kids playing together and becoming friends on their own and kind of seeing the dynamic work out.

It was kind of like a little mini Lord of the Flies.

They’re all trying to establish dominance and rivalries.

And as long as nobody pulls out a conch shell, I think you’re OK where we were staying.

There’s a bunch of like kind of it’s kind of in the woods a little bit.

So there are areas for the kids to go outside and dig holes and hammer on tree stumps.

So there’s lots of sticks and rocks and tools out there.

I could not tell if any of the tools were as symbolic as the conch shell.

It is fun just watching kid dynamics play out.

I mean, it’s just fascinating because it just happens naturally.

No one tells kids how to establish a pecking order or a hierarchy.

You know, it’s just it’s like a wolf pack.

And there’s life lessons come out of all these little interactions, you know, because you’re right, it’s whether it’s in school or their sports teams or just this vacation.

They run into conflicts.

They find people they really like.

Right.

I mean, yeah, you know, you got 10, 12 families, you know, you’re going to have new best friends and you’re going to have new frenemies and you’re going to have new people that just you don’t get along with.

And then the kids are going to have that whole version, you know, themselves as well.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah, it just doesn’t matter what group or how old you are.

You could be under 10 or under under seven, like all the kids on this trip were.

Or you could be all in your 40s, like most of us were.

And yeah, you’re right.

It’s the same dynamic.

We’re just all human beings.

So even though it’s a lot of work to travel with all the kids and go on a plane flight, pack all the stuff, it really was worth it.

And I’m looking forward to the next chance we get to do this.

And I think that was that was kind of the consensus.

The whole group was like, oh, you know what?

This is a lot of fun.

That’s awesome.

You know, because that really just takes me back to many years ago when I was involved with the old Casey Dad’s group.

You know, we had a lot of guys that come in and out of their group over the years.

And just so many times we heard them say that, you know, they were there, not necessarily for themselves.

Well, some guys came for themselves, but some guys came for their kids and to watch their kids interact with other kids and learn the social skills and learn, you know, how to get along with people and make friends and everything like that.

So it’s just it really brings back fond memories, I guess is what I’m trying to say, of hearing you kind of report that same feeling.

Yeah, and really, you guys were the inspiration for that.

You’re used to talk about it on your old podcast.

Yep.

I think Shannon might even run about it in his book.

Yeah, that’s a there’s chapters in there too.

Yeah, it’s a big part of it really made us what we are in terms of a group of families and we call ourselves the five families.

For obvious reasons, there’s five of us.

You know, the kids are some of their own best friends.

The parents are very close as well.

Somehow miraculously, we all pretty much get along.

Now there’s times when we rub each other raw.

But I mean, you’ve been friends with somebody for 16 plus years, that’s going to happen.

So what have you been up to?

The graduation party went off without a hitch.

That is a chapter in life I think that we are officially ready to put behind us.

First high school graduate in the family.

Now it’s just into the fullness of summer before Luke goes off to college.

And by the fullness of summer, I think a couple episodes back when we were talking about how instead of just being so busy, you made the comment that your life is full.

And I swear to God, I think my life is fuller in the summer than it is during the school year.

You know, I mean, last week we talked about how guys are looking forward to their summer and everything.

And so they can have all these activities with the kids.

And that is true.

Absolutely.

Do look forward to spending time with them.

During the school year, it’s only me doing my regular stuff.

This time I have to, you know, in the summer, I have to make sure that everybody else is either entertained or engaged.

And what I mean by that is I need to make sure that they’re not hiding someplace on some type of an electronic device.

And they’re actually doing something that is a benefit to the family dynamic.

And that could be reading an old-fashioned book, which is a benefit to the family dynamic because we like to talk about the books we read or helping with some type of a responsibility chores even aspect around the house.

Just things of that nature.

I mean, Kate, for example, she’s 10 and she does a great job playing by herself, but she still wants engagement.

She still wants somebody to talk to.

She still wants someone to play with.

So I don’t have to worry about Kate getting in trouble in the physical sense or doing something that’s unsafe, but I do need to make sure that she doesn’t try to find an iPad and sneak off someplace.

So just very full, a lot going on, but good stuff going on.

I’m a little more worried about my emotional exhaustion this summer.

I have to make sure I get some sleep and some time by myself.

Kim and I were just talking about that for the summer.

I’ll have to be real intentional about putting something on the calendar so I get a break from all the action.

Well, that or, you know, I know the baby still naps.

Is he done to one nap a day or is he still a two?

He’s still a two, actually.

Still a two?

Have you thought about, for the older two, like an hour of quiet time?

That was in my mind that we would do something like that, get designed in, afternoon, chill out session.

Right.

Yeah.

Anything where you can just find yourself a few moments to do what you want to do, whether it be checking out on your phone, reading to yourself, or cleaning the kitchen.

Because, yeah, at that age, they want and or crave and or need a lot of engagement.

And it will burn you out if you don’t take steps.

By the time this episode comes out, I’ll be in my first week of that.

As master of ceremonies?

As master of ceremonies, yep.

Love it.

All right.

Well, so Dave, that’s pretty much like I said, summer’s been full, life’s been full.

Life is really full right now because we have the opportunity to bring on our first guest.

There’s almost like a, like we’ve made it standpoint that we feel comfortable enough now in the podcasting realm that we can, we got a guest.

I’m really feeling really, you know, almost giddy and excited about that.

So I told everybody earlier who our guest is going to be, but you know him way better than I do.

Our guest this week is Donnie C.

Cutler.

Donnie is a fellow Angelino.

We cross paths out here in LA.

Actually, we cross paths first on the Internet.

He was a purely an Internet friend.

We were both writing about country music, just came across each other’s articles.

He is better known as Country Cutler on Instagram and on his new Substack newsletter, where he reports on country music.

He is a consistent presence in the LA country music scene, and he’s also a dad.

He lives in suburban LA with his wife and two boys, and he is the perfect first guest for our podcast.

So I’d like to officially welcome Donnie C.

Cutler to the show.

Well, thanks, Dave and Mick for having me.

I’m real excited to be here to talk a little bit about country music and dad life.

Pretty good to be here, pretty excited.

I too am just a bit giddy, a long-time listener, first-time guest, so it’s great to be here.

So thanks for having me.

I’m real excited.

Well, we’re just so glad that you said yes to the invitation.

I may have asked early on in the process.

So I don’t know if it’s so much of an invitation or you guys just gave in a little bit.

So I appreciate it.

Maybe a little of both.

Maybe.

So Donnie, one of our recurring segments that we wanted to include you for, is something we like to call the Dad Life Sound Check.

Each week we share just a song that is hitting us, and usually it’s an opportunity for us to share a little something about what’s going on in our personal dad lives.

And so as a fellow country music dad, I’d love to hear what you’re listening to.

I actually have the perfect song for it.

A friend of mine just came out with her latest single.

It’s called Monsters by Molly Kruse.

Molly’s a singer and songwriter here in Los Angeles.

And she’s one of those people where I’m just going to be happy to say that I knew her when.

And her music is beautiful.

And this song in particular really hits a chord, many more than three of them, and the truth, to be honest with you.

It’s a really powerful song about being there for someone, letting them come cry on your shoulder and making everything okay.

Okay.

And as a dad and a parent of any kind, I think we can all kind of understand the urge to fix things with complicated and convoluted solutions.

But sometimes it’s just as easy as giving a hug and taking a couple of deep breaths with your kids.

My oldest has been having a go of it lately, and the lights go off in his room.

I tell him a story, and he’s been putting his head on my chest to kind of fall asleep and relax.

It’s nice because it hasn’t been like that for a while, and he’s a nine-year-old.

Oh, he’s a big guy, too.

So, you know, sometimes it just feels like that was past.

We missed some of that, and as complicated life can be, you know, being able to just simply have him put his head down and kind of relax, and I can feel his body kind of calm down, and the end of the night for him is…

It’s important to me.

It’s important to him.

The song really hits that right on the head.

It’s really great.

It’s powerful.

And I know that it’s probably not a solution that you might have, Mick, with your older kids, but for me, it really is hitting home right now, especially as my oldest is getting possibly too old for that.

So as we’re transitioning to that next life stage, it feels good to be able to still do it.

And the music’s really great.

It’s a beautiful song.

Has anyone ever told Molly that she sounds a bit like Alison Krauss?

Yeah, I’ve definitely heard a little bit of that.

That’s the first thing I thought it was her when I was listening to it.

So that was kind of cool.

That was awesome.

You know, you talked about the way things, even when my kids are being older, this song still had one line in there that I was particularly drawn to, where she says, all the scary things will make you bolder.

And I find myself constantly using that line on my kids, whether it’s my little one or whether it’s my teenagers, because it’s just so true when they’re little, it’s like the really scary monsters in the closet aspect.

But then when they get older, as they’re spreading their wings and just learning new skills, driving, for example, they’re still nervous.

They still get that feeling of dread.

And I just constantly point out, I’m just, I’m like, listen, this is going to, you know, once you push through this, it’s going to make you stronger.

So it was just nice to hear that line that really kind of spoke to me.

The bedtime routine, I’m not usually a part of that in our house.

That’s kind of Kim’s territory, because by the time bedtime comes around, I am pretty checked out.

And I don’t know if I have the patience to kind of sit there and work them through the big feelings and stuff when they’re at the end of the day also.

So Kim takes that.

And so she gets a lot of those like really sweet moments with our oldest, who is six.

It’s cool that you’re able to still kind of hold on to that.

Although I will say she’s the one that kind of talks him through a lot of his issues that come up that he might not tell me about because it all kind of comes out at the end of the day.

But when they wake up scared in the middle of the night, they’re still calling for me.

I guess when there’s the scary, real monsters under the bed, they’re still calling for dad for my strength and power.

I’m not laughing at you at all.

You’re absolutely right.

And I shouldn’t be laughing, but it just hit me and I’m sorry.

It was the delivery, Dave.

It was the delivery that made that so great.

So delivery.

So the song I’m going to talk about, you know, sometimes you just hear an opening line and it just gets you.

Number 7 Road by the Castellos starts off with, everybody’s got their own slice of heaven and mine’s in the Georgia pines.

I mean, it caught me right there.

And then as the song went through, it’s a group of three sisters and they’re talking about growing up on the.

They’re just doing their stuff as a family now.

And the reason that that song spoke to me so much is we still have the farm that Kelly’s dad grew up on in the family.

It’s a very special place for Kelly and her mom and her sisters and everything, for obvious reasons.

When Luke was starting about, he was probably four or five years old, he would go up with, he would get in the car with grandpa every fall and every spring, and they would go up and they would spend a day on the farm during harvest and during planting seasons.

This year was the first time that Luke went by himself.

So he actually made the four and a half hour drive up to the farm, see our business partners, spend the day with them because grandpa passed away about five years ago.

So I’ve been, or Kelly, one of us has been going up.

But the fact that this place still means enough to him that he would want to go up and do it by himself.

I was really able to relate to that the same way that these young ladies were singing about their family farm down in Southern Georgia.

If you haven’t checked out the Castellos yet, I recommend doing so.

They’ve just got, they kind of have a little Meghan Maroney, sweet Southern girl rasp to their voice.

I think they’re going to go some places.

I was just going to say, they’re quite an incredible band.

They made their way through the viral sensation route, actually.

With a real traditional sound, it’s kind of incredible, actually.

So for my dad life sound check, I picked a Cody Jinks song.

Donnie, I was telling Mick before you came on that I just went on vacation with the family.

It was actually a really positive experience despite kind of the stresses of traveling with the little ones, but it did take its toll on me.

I was really craving a night away.

And so really last minute I ended up seeing Cody Jinks at the Greek theater on Sunday night.

I think Mick was a little bit offended that I didn’t give him a heads up that I was going until I just started going live on Instagram, our joint Instagram account.

All of a sudden there’s all these new reels about Cody Jinks in concert.

And I’m like, where are these coming from?

What the hell is going on?

Next time I’ll give you a warning.

When I see live music, especially when it’s like somebody that I listen to regularly, like Jinks, there’s always a moment in the show or a song that sticks out to me when I’m experiencing it live that I didn’t really appreciate when I was listening to it in my headphones or in my car for whatever reason.

On Sunday, the one that just kind of stopped me in my tracks is called Take This Bottle.

And it’s off of this new album that just came out this year.

And I learned at the show actually, because he mentioned it, that it’s actually a cover of a song by Faith No More.

Faith No More was this kind of a one-hit wonder, 80s and 90s alt rock band.

So I kind of went down some rabbit holes, looking to who they were.

You’ve heard at least one of their songs, it’s called Epic.

They played it all over the place.

Jinx’s version of this was just really powerful.

It’s a breakup song as his significant other is walking away.

She can take the bottle out of his hand too, so that he can actually feel the pain of what he’s done to her.

Donnie, you had an article go out about sad country songs, and when I heard this one at The Greek, I felt like this one would qualify.

Whenever I hear these songs in my current stage of life, especially when they mention a bottle, the words sound different because my youngest doesn’t take a bottle anymore.

Take this bottle as you walk away, and that’s exactly what he’s doing right now.

He’s walking away.

He’s moving on from the bottle.

That is also a sad thing that’s happened in my life, that he doesn’t take a bottle anymore.

That was just the silver bullet.

If he was cranky, it would have been really helpful on the airplane.

Give him a bottle.

He zips it.

Everything’s fine.

Sometimes he falls asleep.

But that’s not an option anymore.

That also makes me sad.

Lots of depth to the song that I don’t think anyone else would think of.

That’s what I’m listening to over and over.

That one’s stuck in my head right now.

Fire it up.

Why not fire up Faith No More’s version and give them some well-deserved streams?

I remember Faith, whatever that one hit wonder song was, I think that was the song that closed down the bars when I was in college there for this six-month stretch.

I can’t remember what closed the bars in college.

That part got you a little hazy.

I was heading to Woodstocks for pizza at that point, man.

Who knows what was happening.

What closed the bars for me was some guy yelling, it’s closed, get out.

Another recurring segment that we’ll go through.

Mick was already talking about the farm, but you got two LA natives here on the call that would love to know what it’s like in the different world you live in.

The different world that I live in right now is strawberry season and cherry season.

Have fortunately and unfortunately come to an end.

Fortunately, they’ve come to an end because pitting cherries sucks.

Unfortunately, it’s come to an end because fresh cherry pie is awesome.

But pitting the cherries takes a long time.

Do you have one of those pitters?

I do not because these are sour cherries, Donnie, so they’re not very big.

I’ve always been afraid they just wouldn’t work because they’re too small.

Maybe I’ll look into it more sometime.

But I love my fresh cherries.

I love my fresh strawberries.

I love strawberry pie.

Strawberry pie for breakfast is one of my guilty pleasures in life.

So I’ll make it the night before and I’ll just actually healthier than a donut if you don’t put any Cool Whip or anything on top of it probably, if you want to get right down to it.

Because in the entire pie, there’s only half a cup of sugar, my recipe.

I’m going to push on that just a little bit, if donut is your barrier for health.

I think that there’s many, many, many options of a healthier breakfast.

I’m not saying donuts are a barrier for health.

I’m just saying that people oftentimes eat donuts for breakfast.

So when you say you’re going to eat pie for breakfast, you’ll probably get like some weird glances.

I’m just making the comment that this pie is probably healthier than donuts.

It’s a slippery slope.

It is a slippery slope.

The problem is the strawberry season in my garden did not last very long this year.

So this falls into the unfortunate category.

We had really, we always have wacky weather in the Midwest.

Usually strawberry season goes for about two and a half weeks in my little patch.

This year it only went for about one and a half.

So there just weren’t as many strawberry pies.

And if you ever watch Dude Perfect, that’s unfortunate.

There’s a lot of Dude Perfect in my house.

So you know what I meant.

There you go.

As they also say, let’s go.

Let’s go.

I think Hardy usually says, let’s go every once in a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He throws in an F word in the middle of that.

Let’s go though.

I want to keep.

Let’s go with the Hardy Report.

There.

Well, it was a well placed F word, Mick.

Well done.

Yes.

Let’s move on to the Hardy Report and I realize that I haven’t really talked about why I’m talking about Hardy in a while.

So for those of you new to the show, I identify as a Hardy super fan and fanboy, the preeminent West Coast Hardy apologist and yes, fanboy perhaps in other words.

So it’s my mission each week to give you way more information about Hardy than you ever needed.

This week, I’m actually going to share kind of a personal story.

It’s about how Hardy has actually positively impacted my physical health.

So a few years back, I went to see Hardy up outside Sacramento with my sister-in-law and her husband and my wife.

And it was one of the first times that I’d ever seen him live.

So I was beyond stoked.

And he was open for Morgan Wallen.

We went to the show.

And you know, actually, in the week leading up to the show, I had gone to my doctor because for years, probably like four or five years, I’d been experiencing this pain in my upper right stomach area.

And so every time I’d go for my annual checkup, I’d ask my doctor like, hey, what’s going on?

I like feel like this when I eat spicy food or when I drink and should I be worried about this?

And his response was usually like, nah, I was in my 30s.

Like you’re young.

Don’t worry about it.

You’re just getting a little older.

Cool it on the junk food and take some tums.

You’ll be fine.

So that was the story each year when I’d go back.

But that week leading up to the Hardy show, it just seemed worse.

So again, I asked him about it.

I got some imaging, but he hadn’t gotten back to me on the results of the imaging yet.

So I went to the show, had a great time.

We got back from the show probably midnight, 1 a.m., been drinking a little bit.

And my brother-in-law offered me a bowl of spicy ramen noodles for our 1 a.m.

snack.

And if you’ve been to a hearty show drinking, you can’t turn down something that delicious.

So even though my stomach was kind of bothering me, I took down the bowl of noodles and went to sleep.

And then in the middle of the night, I got the worst pain I think I’ve ever experienced in that upper right stomach area.

And so I had to get rushed to the hospital and I actually had to have emergency gallbladder removal surgery.

My gallbladder was failing on me.

It was infected.

It was a big bummer after that fun night out.

The even bigger bummer is that as I was getting wheeled into the operating room, the hearty song that was stuck in my head that I had just heard live was Give Heaven Some Hell.

It’s about his friend who had passed on.

It’s not the kind of song that you want in your head as you’re getting wheeled into surgery, about to be put under.

I’m sorry to be laughing, but you’re absolutely right.

And because it’s so true, it’s making me laugh.

And I’m sorry for laughing, but I…

I know, it’s like your brain in stressful situations like that.

It’s like that’s the worst thing that I wanted in my head.

Like a hearty song to like fire me up for the surgery would have been fine.

But not that one.

Like right after I FaceTimed my kids and said goodbye to them, that’s not what I wanted to think about.

But I made it.

My gallbladder did not, neither did my doctor.

I fired him after that.

I found a new doctor because I was pretty upset that I had to lose an organ that I’d been complaining about for a while.

So now I have a new doctor and he’s very proactive and I hit 40 last year.

So he’s getting me all kinds of checks and I’m managing hereditary heart condition that I don’t know if I would have known about.

If not for a doctor who is really proactive.

So I’m really thankful for that bowl of ramen noodles at 1 a.m.

because it led me to advocate for myself and for my own health care.

That’s how Hardy saved my life.

Any questions?

Kind of hard to follow up that one.

Mick just threw up the middle finger, which is a sign of affection in Hardy’s universe.

I love you too, Mick.

It’s a beautiful gesture.

Yeah, Donnie, I know that I was able to introduce you to Hardy at some point as you were following me.

It was my undue respect for you as a writer and human being that I listened to Hardy.

Had nothing to do with the music.

However, you did put his hooks into me.

I must say a couple of weeks ago, you reached out and said, hey, do you want to come to a Hardy concert in the middle of the afternoon?

And I said, would I, and I cleared my schedule, secured the bat signal to my lovely wife and said, you got the kids, I’m going out to Hollywood to see Hardy.

To say it was an experience that I had not had before would be an understatement.

To quote Jimmy Kimmel, who was hosting said concert, he didn’t know there were this many rednecks in California.

And what I will say is there are a lot of rednecks in California and all sorts of hillbillies and whatnot.

Just not so many of them in Hollywood.

There were a lot that day.

It was a very interesting experience across all aspects of that.

And I will admit, I enjoyed myself and enjoyed the show reluctantly, though it was fun.

I have to admit it.

You make fun of me for liking Hardy as much as I do, but you do give it a try.

I was pleasantly surprised that you were so into the idea of actually going to see him live.

And you came ready on his Substack that I mentioned before.

He wrote an article about it, and I thought he treated Hardy pretty fairly.

The paragraph I took out of it did not.

The edits streamlined my feelings on those who were in attendance.

You should go check it out just to see Donnie’s outfit for the Hardy Show.

Don’t call what I’m wearing an outfit, okay?

What would you like to call it?

Oh, it’s more of a lifestyle.

Anyhow.

Enough Hardy, as much as I hate to move on from my favorite subject and my favorite artist, I want to move on to our main segment.

We have Donnie C.

Cutler of Country Cutler on the show.

I’m excited to dive in into what you’re doing in the LA country music scene and in your writing.

First question I want to ask you, so on our show, we talk about parenting through the lens of country music.

From our interactions, you seem to be someone who gets that.

So why do you think parenting and country music go together?

I’ve been thinking about this question since I asked to be on slash was invited to be on the show.

And I think really at its core, it’s about presenting stories as tradition, creating tradition and manufacturing tradition and developing long lasting, seemingly forever ideas that you create on the fly.

Every parent who has started being a parent wasn’t when they started.

No one knows what they’re doing.

Country music, I love country music.

I think it’s one of the greatest American mediums of storytelling and collective memory.

That being said, it’s manufactured.

It was created by someone to sell some stuff to people who weren’t getting a certain type of music.

And all of the tradition and all of the things that were put into it were created at some point, that became sacrosanct.

And I think that the storytelling and the tradition creation are very similar when you talk about it from country music.

There’s a great quote from one of my favorite books.

It’s called Creating Country Music, The Fabrication of Authenticity by Richard Peterson.

The line goes, we will explore the emerging idea of tradition as a renewable resource.

So we take a look at how our traditions and our families kind of emerge, shift and change, and how you can explain that to kids and build things that last.

And I think that country music kind of does the same thing.

It reinvents itself.

It looks at itself through a different mirror, a different lens, but it always has kind of that foundational importance about core value of storytelling, the core value of working hard and being part of something bigger than yourself.

And that, to me, is what family creation is about.

That’s what music creation is about.

And I think that’s where the intersection really comes together for me.

Yeah, that’s a really interesting tie into the storytelling in both, because I felt like when I first became a parent, what was most helpful to me wasn’t the parenting advice.

Most of us, when we first become parents, we go straight to Google when anything’s going wrong and you’re searching through, doom scrolling through a bunch of Reddit threads or who knows what.

It wasn’t until I started hearing other stories, either reading stories from bloggers or from articles in the news from parents that had been there that I could relate to that made me feel like, oh, I’m not the only one going through this and feeling some connection.

And so I think that Country Music kind of does the same thing through its storytelling, the songs that mean the most to me when there’s a story connected to it that either has some meaning to it or that I’ve been through or that triggers some memory or one of my own stories about whatever I’m going through.

Yeah, Dave, I think your comment there about being able to relate to something is for me kind of the key.

When you and I started spitballing this show last year, one of us made the line talking about, are we parenting because of the song we hear or is the song that we hear the reason that we’re parenting?

Chicken or the egg, philosophical question.

Yeah, depending on where you are in your life, you can find something that you can relate to in country music because of the different storytelling that the artists share with us.

The story is what got me, to be honest with you.

I started listening to country music reluctantly as many who would not have grown up with it may have because of kind of the false idea that country music is just what’s on the radio.

And perhaps you liked everything about country for that many times.

I think that when I started listening to it, I really got into kind of the Texas singer-songwriter space.

You know, all of those guys, Robert Alkeen, Towns Band Zant, Pat Green in a more modern sense.

You know, those guys really had a lot of impact on me.

But it wasn’t for any reason of their biggest hits.

It was kind of that back catalog of stories about lives of people who were Corpus Christi Bay, or, you know, doing something ridiculous like riding a pretend horse and telling that there are no girls allowed in the fort.

You know, these are things that are easy to understand.

They’re easy to grasp because people experience them.

And I think when we take a look at the greatest ways to kind of connect with other parents is when you tell your horror stories, right?

Absolutely, because you’re in it together.

And I will readily admit my failure as a father in this particular story.

I threw out the car seat when the kid puked in it.

It was just like, well, we’re going to get another one.

It was out the door.

I have never seen so much vomit in my life as there was in that car that day.

I was flabbergasted.

It was kind of warm.

The windows were open.

My kid’s like, my belly hurts.

I was like, okay, we’re almost home.

We’ll be right out.

In the driveway, man, in the driveway, it looked like the exorcist on the inside of my car, the back of the front seat.

There was stuff on the windshield.

And most of it went down his shirt and into the car seat.

And there are deep crevices in car seats.

And I was flying solo with him that night.

And so the car seat sat in a hot garage for about four hours before I could get to it.

There are very few things I just can’t do.

And vomit is one of them.

I just can’t do it.

I can deal with it with my kids.

I can deal with it and really get my teeth together and keep going.

But this night was like, hey, Mom, you got that extra car seat still?

I was like, oh, yeah, no problem.

I was like, I’m going to come over and get it now.

And I threw out the car seat and that was it.

But we all we all can understand that.

We understand that disgustingness together.

Absolutely.

Just like we can some great back road dirt song or something.

The stories about failures are the ones that resonate the most with me because it’s like it’s OK.

It happens to everybody.

Although I don’t think yours is a story of failure.

That’s just a wise use of your time.

I have disassembled my car seats so many times.

Digging vomit out of all those crevices with toothpicks and the smell never goes away.

So I think it says in the instructions, like if your car seat is in an accident that you need to discard it, it should say like if your car seat has been barfed on, you should probably discard it too.

We could talk about something besides vomit now if that’s OK with you guys.

These are the stories that I like talking about though.

I got a question for you, Donnie.

You know, you talked about someone on the country music reluctantly.

So, full disclosure, I’m a foreign boy from Iowa, all right?

My version of country music in LA is the every which way but loose or Bronco Billy movies from Clint Eastwood, you know, way back when.

And what I mean by that is just something you just don’t think of LA in country music.

So, expand on the LA country music scene a little bit for our listeners if you can.

Sure.

I mean, it’s actually something I love talking about because I think that in the same way that people all hate country music, you know, everything but country music, there’s a misconception among country music fans that there’s no country music culture here in Los Angeles.

And that’s actually untrue as well.

It’s as untrue as the other side of that.

If you take a look at, I think, the top five highest grossing country albums in like pop country, they were all recorded in Los Angeles.

They were recorded at Capitol Records in Hollywood.

For generations, that’s what happened.

You had record companies in New York, you had record companies in LA, and you had some representation in Nashville and Texas.

For the most part, the big ones were recorded in LA and in New York.

And country music really took off here on the West Coast with kind of the birth of the Bakersfield Sound as a revolt to the Nashville Sound, just kind of smoothing out that hillbilly experience in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s.

And you have some of the greatest country musicians in the world were born and raised and played within 100 miles of Los Angeles.

Bakersfield is just about two hours away from LA.

And those guys would come down, Buck Owens, Don Rick, all those guys, Earl and the like, would come down to LA to record.

And there was a scene that was here and established in that time period as well.

It was western swing.

It was kind of rockabilly-esque.

And those things came together in Bakersfield.

Even moving forward and going on, as country popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, there’s been a pretty solid country music scene in LA across all that time.

You had the Flying Burrito Brothers, you had the Laurel Canyon scene, which was a little bit more rock, but still very much country music.

And that history is still there.

You also got to remember California is pretty much as west as you can go.

And so The Wild Wild West was invented in Burbank, California, in movie studios and in the imagination of Hollywood writers and executives.

Gene Autry’s museum is in LA.

There’s a lot of culture in LA that is western in its identity.

It has evolved.

It looks different than a cowboy hat and a pearl snap shirt, but it is from that.

And I think when you take a look at what’s going on in the current LA country scene, you have a lot of the Hollywood glamour, but you also have a little bit of that western grit.

You have the cowboys.

You have the kind of horse culture and farm culture of the little bit further east of LA.

And you also have that Hollywood shine and sheen and how they comes together really does create a really interesting country music experience.

There’s a whole group of people in east LA that meet every summer on Sundays at something called the Grand Old Echo in Echo Park.

They bring in great musicians from across the country as well as local acts.

There’s music that takes place in the valley out where I live, which is much more suburban.

There’s a country night at three different bars.

Every single night of the week, there’s country music being played.

In Hollywood, you have kind of a high brow, highfalutin fun experience where Dave and I have gone.

The Desert Five Spot, which is this really hip Hollywood club, which is country as country can get in a hip Hollywood club, along with the largest disco ball cowboy boots you’ve ever seen.

It’s a scene and it’s a lot of fun.

There’s great music coming through in venues across LA, east to west, north to south.

I mean, there are places all over the place just playing really great LA-based country music.

Part of the reason that I love being a country fan in LA is that when artists that are bigger in other parts of the country come through LA, they’re kind of relegated to smaller venues either because of lack of demand or I think Donnie, you and I have kind of talked about it that LA is just a really popular place to come for everyone, for every genre of music.

So it’s just kind of hard to book some of the bigger venues.

And so I’ve been to these little dive bars seeing acts like Jason Bolan and the Stragglers in a room with 30 people in it, which is just amazing.

So the access and the opportunity is really cool.

And that’s why I like about it.

You go to a ton of shows.

You take your kids to a lot of the shows.

I think you take your kids or at least one of them to the Grand Oleco.

How did you get your kids into that?

Or is it a forced family fun?

That’s what we call it in our house.

It’s forced family fun.

Well, it’s significantly less fun when it’s forced, as I think we all probably know.

But I don’t think that it works out so well when, especially at a dark concert venue where everyone’s drinking and nobody is nine years old, except for you, unless they really want to go and do it.

And I will say that my oldest does love the music and he likes the storytelling too.

I mean, it really gets to him.

He wants to know what the stories are about.

He wants to know what the songs are about.

We got into it by just listening to it together.

Really, the pandemic changed a lot of this for us because he was in the end of his preschool and his kindergarten years when we were stuck at home.

And let me tell you, kindergarten should not be done over Zoom.

It is a waste of energy.

Having been there and done that, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

It just doesn’t work.

And it was rough.

And so he would have, you know, two to three hours of synced up learning across most of the day.

And then also, you know, stuff he had to do throughout the rest of the day, including music and whatever.

But he had to study and it was annoying and the stuff that he was doing was not great.

And at the time, I was functioning as the primary caregiver, as I was laid off in a huge COVID downsizing, which was easily the best thing that could have happened.

And was able to, you know, really focus on supporting my kids at that time and doing what needed to get done for the family.

But at some point, we were stuck.

We were in San Francisco at the time in a three-bedroom apartment, and nobody was going outside at this point because the weather was bad or, you know, COVID rates were through the roof and no one knew what to do.

And so we would listen to music all the time.

And it was at that point, my kids didn’t even know what to ask for.

So we would listen to whatever I wanted and Parry Grip.

And if you don’t know Parry Grip, don’t teach your kids that.

And if you do know Parry Grip, my favorite song is Space Nachos.

I digress, but my point to this is really that I go out and do it, and it gives me great joy to share something I really love with my kids in a way that I can.

For the most part, these shows are at bars, or they’re 21 and over, and I can’t bring my kids to these places.

But for the ones that I can, it’s a really great bonding experience.

I got two tickets to go see Turnpike Troubadours at The Greek, and I love those guys.

That’s my favorite band without a question.

It has been since the first time I heard them.

When they came back and they came back with such a vengeance, I was really excited to see them.

And my son’s, one of his favorite songs is The Bird Hunter.

Possibly the best story song I’ve ever heard.

It’s told from about three and a half different perspectives.

And you really need to pay attention to understand what’s going on in that song and how it’s sung and how it’s presented.

And I’ve had to go back and read the lyrics to really get it.

And it’s brilliantly constructed.

And both of my kids know every word to that song.

And so I took my oldest to the show at The Greek, and he was easily the youngest kid there.

And we stayed until almost 11 o’clock, and he heard all five of the songs he really wanted to hear.

And he loved it.

And he talks about it to this day.

And as I said, it’s not been easy for the last few months.

He still wears his Turnpike Turbidore shirt to school.

And it makes me really happy that he’s into it.

As a parent, if you share something that you love with your kids in a way that is inclusive, they’re going to love it no matter what, because there’s some level of connection that you can’t get past, even when things are really rough.

Sharing a passion and showing passion as a parent for things that aren’t the most important things in life is a good lesson for kids, is that they get to see that you value other things.

You value art, you value reading, you value music, you value cooking, whatever it may be.

There’s deep lessons and empowerment to like what you like and stand by it, especially when it’s something like country music in a place like Los Angeles, where that may not be what everybody does.

Speaking of things that not everybody does, I recently found out through your conversations at The Hardy Show that your dad was the primary caregiver way back in the day like Dave and I are to this day.

I can only imagine what that must have been like.

It brings back that old Barbara Mandrell song, I was country before country wasn’t cool because being a primary caregiver who was a guy, it’s niche now, but I can only imagine that it was unheard of back then.

So just share a little bit if you can, what it was like growing up with your dad being the primary caregiver.

It was normal for me.

I mean, it was normal for me and it is normal for my kids too.

So I completely understand that part of it.

Looking back at it and what Dave was saying earlier about Kim putting the kids to bed, my mom put me to bed till I was in middle school really.

She would come home from work and my dad would be the guy at home.

He made lunches, he got us off to school, he took us to Hebrew school, he took us to sports, he took us to play dates, whatever it was, he was there.

And that’s what he did.

He had a small catering business that he fostered and it grew as we grew older here in LA.

But 95 to 100% of the time when we were really young, he was always the guy who was at home.

He was always the person at home.

That was just what it was.

That was just normal routine for me.

Thinking way back to before I really had solid memories of it, I remember probably right after my sister was born in 86 or 87, there was a story in the local paper about my dad being Mr.

Mom.

The nomenclature, I think, is the biggest shift and the idea of a primary care provider between parents would have been just language that never would have been uttered.

The idea that that was what would happen to me, what it taught me is that you got to balance the work at home.

My dad took care of most of the stuff, but my mom also was very much involved in every aspect of our lives.

She had a high-powered executive position for her entire career.

She was a lawyer, she worked at Disney, she worked at ABC.

It wasn’t just some easy gig.

She was working very long hours, very often far away from home for weeks on end.

My dad was holding down the fort and that was his job too.

It was a partnership.

I think as I’m looking at what I learned from it as a dad and as a husband, we’re in a two-income home because that’s what we need to do and we share responsibilities.

It’s not a question of a mom job or a dad job.

It is just a job that needs to get done.

I have said that so many times over the years.

It doesn’t matter who drives the car.

The car needs a driver.

What makes the most sense?

Amen, man.

What you’re saying too about how it’s made you value and think about the balance of the work.

Even if I were to go back to full-time work at some point, I think my perspective would just be so different.

It makes me want more guys to have that opportunity actually.

I think a lot of guys like yourself had that opportunity during the pandemic, got laid off or were forced into taking on more of the responsibility at home.

Having that experience is so valuable for the household.

That’s something I’m always going to be thankful of for this phase of life.

I think that it’s, I would hope, I don’t know if this is true, but actually I do know that it isn’t true.

It still is a very significant problem that women do take on a vast majority of the housework, even when it is to income homes or in other situations that would be considered non-traditional gender distribution of labor.

But it really would be better if everybody did more.

If those of us who are fathers in homes with mothers do more, there’s always something else that needs to get done.

You can’t always do it all.

You can’t do it all, period.

But you should do more.

If that is just doing more somewhere else, then that’s what it is.

And at some point, you have to take that on.

And that’s what equality is about.

It’s not always being 50-50.

Some days it’s 60-30, and somewhere that 10% falls off.

You just got to live with it.

That’s what it is.

Some days I’m at 80%, and my wife Abby’s at 20.

Other days I’m at 10, she’s at 90.

And that’s just what it is.

And so that, I think, is probably the biggest influence on my approach to marriage and parenting, was that my parents were open about what needed to get done.

They talked honestly about it.

And I think that’s something that was probably not very common then.

I think it’s more common now.

I’m 41.

My parents brought me up in the 80s.

There were no other dads at elementary school pickup, period.

There were no other dads on the field trips.

My dad was always there, and it was really cool.

And I liked it a great deal.

But it didn’t mean my mom wasn’t involved or absent.

She was an active mother.

She wasn’t my father and my dad wasn’t my mother.

They played their roles for me.

And that type of a conversation that’s open and not expected, I think is important.

We have to have these open conversations for it to work.

And that to me is really what I took the most from their relationship.

It’s actually their 47th wedding anniversary tonight.

And so they’re out celebrating.

And it’s a really impressive example that they have given to me.

I hope to live up to it and learn from it.

Do you have any other questions for Donnie, Mick?

I do have some questions for him that we’re going to hit last.

We’ve talked a little bit about the LA country music scene and everything.

And we kind of talked about up and coming and more independent artists.

Share your mission and we’ll wrap this show up with a lightning round for you that we’ll have a little fun with.

Excellent.

Well, thank you guys.

I really appreciate the platform and the opportunity to kind of talk about the mission part of this.

I think it’s important that country music thrives.

And for that to be able to happen, there needs to be a really wide diversity of sound and experience in country music so that it can grow and evolve.

While still remaining very true to its roots.

To me, that’s the core of what I’m trying to do.

I like sharing music with people.

That is really what I love.

I like finding things that no one’s ever heard of.

I love hearing about things I’ve never heard of.

And I want to create a space where people feel comfortable asking ridiculous questions like, why is that person playing a string piano with weird metal things coming out the bottom?

And then kind of going into how pedal steel came about and its origins in Hawaii, and all those kind of fun things that us country music nerds can dive deep into.

And that to me is the real mission, is to find the new music that people would never find and tell them about it, and explain why this is important.

Give my two cents.

I think that journalism, for all of its faults, is the first draft of history.

And right now we’re facing what people say is a renaissance in country music, from everybody from Lainey Wilson to Zack Topp to Braxton Keith, all of those kind of up and coming big names who will be here for a while, hopefully doing cool, different music than what was on the radio for 20 years.

And I think that that’s great, and I think it’s wonderful.

But we need more people who are willing to be critical about it, dig deeper, tell that story.

And that’s what I would love to be able to do.

I mean, I’m just some guy in quite literally in his, you know, guest room slash office slash studio, who gets to talk about stuff that he really enjoys.

And that to me is what my mission is, is to have other people get excited about the things that I think are important.

And, you know, this type of music is a great vehicle for storytelling.

It’s a uniquely American vehicle because of its influences, because of the different things that came into it.

And I love learning about it.

I love telling people about it.

And I hope to be able to bring more people into that conversation on my Substack, which is countrycutler.substack.com or through the Instagram, which is just Country Cutler on Instagram.

I also write for a couple of other publications, including Saddle Mountain Post, which is a really cool publication that kind of touches on all of these missions.

And I’ve worked in the past with a few others, including Honky Tonk Times.

And I just hope that there’s more of this conversation and that you get to dig deep and figure out what that first draft of history looks like.

And then we can all fight about it because that’s really what this is all about, is continuing the conversation and arguing about who is and who is a country.

And I love that.

It’s just so much fun.

And that’s my goal.

That’s my mission.

Dave, I think, I think this has been a great show.

And I think Donnie’s been the best guest we’ve ever had.

Kind of like that health bar on the doughnut.

I got to set that bar.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But no, thank you for joining us.

I know this has been a little bit longer of an episode that a lot of our listeners are used to, but for good reason, because we had covered some really great stuff here today.

We’re going to wrap things up with a little bit of a lightning round for you.

OK, let’s do it.

So I got three questions.

The first is best George Jones or straight?

Jones, no question.

My man.

Thank you, Donnie.

Without Jones, there is no straight.

I’m sorry.

OK, Mick needs a minute.

Look, you might as well just for the question number two is like, what is your secret country music listening pleasure?

I’m going to shout out to my boy, Dave here.

Truck bed by Hardy.

Truck bed.

I’m so happy.

It’s a good song, man.

I can’t deny it.

It’s fun.

It’s a fun song.

My mission is complete.

I get Country Cutler to say he likes truck bed.

I said it was a guilt and pleasure.

No need to be guilty.

I’m just glad you didn’t say anything by Dan and Che.

Oh, no.

Look, everybody can.

I’m not going to yuck anyone’s yum, but that is not my yum, I will say.

But speaking of yum, last question in the lightning round.

If you could have a beer or two or three or spend the evening in a honky tonk with anyone, who would it be?

That one’s tough.

I probably would do Merle Haggard, honestly, because he’s a California boy.

And I think he probably saw enough of what came before him and enough of what came after him to tell some really great stories.

He seemed like he’d be a fun guy.

Yeah, and I think we’d all get in a lot of trouble.

That is an excellent, excellent answer.

It’s a hell of a lot better than the answer to your answer to the first question, that’s for sure.

But anyway, again, thank you so much for joining us.

It has been a great episode, and we really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show as we appreciate our listeners taking time out of their days to join us here as well as we look at parenting through the lens of country music.

Housekeeping time.

countrymusicdads.com is where you can find any of our back episodes.

We are just as active on the Instagram as, okay, no, no, we’re not.

We are not as active as our guest is on Instagram.

But if you want to see us on Instagram, it is CountryMusicDads.

We love emails at CountryMusicDads at gmail.com.

So as always, if you think you’ve got anybody in your circle of friends that would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them.

And we would love a five-star review.

And that’s all we got other than another big thank you to our guest.

Thanks for having me, guys.

It was a lot of fun.

Go follow Country Cutler, check out the Substack.

And yeah, thanks again, Donnie.

As always, always good talking with you.

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