E-mail a friendTim McGraw
airdate October 28, 2009
Tim McGraw is one of the biggest names in all of music. Since his '93 debut, he's sold more than 40 million albums and won three Grammys. He has a parallel career as a successful actor, with film credits that include Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side. The Louisiana native studied sports medicine before deciding to pursue a music career. McGraw gives back to the community in numerous ways, including through his Neighbor's Keeper Foundation. His newest release is "Southern Voice"—his 10th studio CD and first in over two years.
Three-time Grammy winner shares his feelings on discovering who his father was and how it impacted his vision of himself. (3:08)
Full Interview (12:02)
Tim McGraw
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Tim McGraw to this program. The country superstar has been making hit records now for nearly 20 years with a near-constant stream of number one albums. He's also made the transition into acting with a role in the upcoming Sandra Bullock film "The Blind Side." More on that in a moment.
First, though, from his latest CD here is some of the video for the title track, "Southern Voice."
[Clip]
Tavis: A Southern voice is?
Tim McGraw: A Southern voice is proud. Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good word to describe it.
Tavis: You were born in the South?
McGraw: I was born in the South, yes. Born in Louisiana - born and raised.
Tavis: For some, over the years there's been a struggle - for some - to be proud of being a Southern voice. Did you have that struggle or you've always been -
McGraw: No, I think the community that I grew up in - I was always proud to be from there. It's good people. I think one thing about this song, it's a fun, up-tempo song, and I think a lot of the part of their album sort of reflect a different sort of a somber note.
But I think that the great thing about the South now is because of the history that we've gone through and some of the terrible things that have gone on in the South. Because of what as a people we've gone through together I think that it allows us to have a certain empathy now that we didn't really have before or we learned through a lot of turmoil.
Tavis: I want to switch gears somewhat, and I'll come back to this. We were talking before we came on the air here about your wife and how she was doing and all that, and I was saying to you that I'd snuck in in a concert you guys were giving in Houston some years ago.
I'd never seen the two of you in concert and I was just in love with the show. You said to me that singing alongside Faith was very difficult. Explain what you were trying to tell me.
McGraw: Well, it's intimidating because she's truly a soul singer. She's just one of the great singers of all time. I realize that I'm a bit prejudiced, but she's one of the best singers of all time. (Laughter)
Tavis: Just a wee bit.
McGraw: Yeah, just a wee bit. But she can let it fly, man, and for me, my range is about this wide and I do what I do. But she can sing anything and sing it well.
Tavis: What is it - set your modesty aside for just a second. What is it, though, given, by your own estimation, your limitations that makes your stuff work? Whatever those limitations are, obviously it's working for your fans.
McGraw: I think honesty. I think that you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all the time? The old saying. But I think that when I sing a song I try to be honest about it. I try to tell you - there's a lot of people who can tell you how they feel when they sing a song, and I think that the difference is when somebody who's very successful or somebody who really gets to people with their music is somebody who could tell you how you feel, and you didn't know you felt that way till you heard them tell you.
I think that that's something that you can't put your finger on. When we're cutting a record we like to say sometimes God walks through the room and it's truly - that's the way it feels for me.
Tavis: My sense is - and I want to hear yours; what I think doesn't really matter - but my sense is, to your point about honesty, that one of the things that makes country music work is the honesty. That honesty is connected for me at least to lyrical content. Tell me for you, how important that lyrical content is.
McGraw: Well, it's everything. Look, singers are a dime a dozen. There's different levels of singers. Some singers can be great singers and still not touch you, and some singers can be average singers and still get the message across and really touch you.
But it's got to start with a great song, and I'm a big fan of songwriters. I'm a songwriter, but I'm not a prolific songwriter. Every now and then I'll get lucky and write a good song, but somebody who can tell you a story in three and a half minutes and do it so beautifully and really create a movie that you see in your head when you hear the song, that a talent that it's very rare and it's very special.
Tavis: There's a lot of good stuff on this new CD; I popped it in last night. I wanted to specifically ask you about a couple of things, specifically track number nine, which is "You Had to Be There." Speaking of a story, there's a story behind this track and I'll let you tell the story behind "You Had to Be There."
McGraw: Yeah, well, it's a story about an absentee father, a kid that grew up without his dad. When he finally meets his dad for the first time he's in prison and his dad comes to see him. He tells him that basically, maybe I wouldn't be here if you had been there for me. I guess that's something hard for somebody to take, that know that they may have had a hand in where that kid's at now by not being there.
It's a classic story. It's a classic story that a lot of kids grow up with, without a father. Fathers are very important in children's lives and I myself, I grew up without my dad but I had a couple of stepfathers a long the way that weren't necessarily the best role models that I could have.
Yeah, it's a song that hit close to home for me in a lot of ways, although luckily I didn't wind up in prison and wasn't talking to my dad through a glass panel. I think it certainly is a metaphor for a lot of kids' lives.
Tavis: We'll go as far as you're comfortable going on this, since you raised it. You discovered your biological father later in life.
McGraw: Yes.
Tavis: Tell me what you want to tell me about that experience, but I'm really trying to get at how that experience has impacted you now as a father of three kids.
McGraw: Yeah, well, I grew up very poor in Louisiana. We struggled. It was as bad as it can get, probably, for - at a lot of times in my life as a kid. I remember I was 11 years old and I was either looking for something for a school project or snooping around looking for where Mom was hiding maybe some Christmas gifts or something like that as a kid. (Laughter)
I ran across an envelope that had my birth certificate in it, and on my birth certificate it had the name McGraw and had my father's name, but not who I thought was my father. Had his name scratched out and it said professional baseball player. It was odd because I was baseball fan and I had some baseball cards on my wall and one of the baseball cards I had on my wall was Tug McGraw's baseball card.
So it was a pretty - it was a revelation, to say the least for me and something that I struggled with throughout my life and throughout being a teenager and growing up in the situation. I had a great mom and I had some great grandparents and a great community to grow up in, but I didn't really see him again till I was 18.
I saw him once at 11. We drove to see him at the Astrodome and it was just cordial, and then I didn't see him again until I was 18 and he sort of had a relationship later on in life.
But it impacted me in a way that I knew very early that I wanted to have kids. I wanted to have a family and I wanted to be there as a father, and I think those kind of situations can send you in two different directions. Either you try your best to be the best father you can be, and we all fall short in that area, or you don't care anything about it.
For me, I wanted to be the best father I could be and I fail at that daily, but I try to be and I want to be there for my kids. For me, finding out that he was my father in a lot of ways changed my life in a lot of different directions and a lot of different areas. Yeah, there was some negative to it - a lot of negative to it - but there was a lot of positive to it, too.
Growing up in the situation that I grew up in, I had an abusive, alcoholic stepfather. He was abusive to my mom and to myself. We were poor; we didn't have the best life, very dysfunctional life. We had a mother that loved us; we had a very dysfunctional life.
But finding out from the situation that I was in that my father was A, successful, and was a baseball player and was this millionaire famous athlete, it changed who I thought I could be. It flipped a switch inside me that made me see possibilities that I hadn't seen before.
Tavis: How then, to your point, did you discover those possibilities and that it would be through music?
McGraw: I didn't know it would be through music. I always sang. I grew up in church, I started out in a little Pentecostal church down in Louisiana City and it was the first time I've ever sang. So I grew up going to church all the time and singing in Easter cantatas and things like that, and singing at friends' weddings.
But I was an athlete. That's really where I thought my path would lie. I played football, baseball, basketball all the time. All I was concerned about was sports as a kid and singing was just something I did with the radio.
Then I got into college and I joined a fraternity and I found out pretty quickly that floating kegs at the fraternity house and being an athlete didn't really go together very well. (Laughter) So I picked up a guitar. In my freshman year of college I learned how to play guitar and by the end of the summer I had about 50 songs under my belt and I was playing for tips.
Mostly my fraternity brothers were showing up and that's - so it wasn't a lot of tips involved. (Laughter) But that's how I started. I started playing music and I never looked back from then on.
Tavis: And the rest, as they say, is history.
McGraw: The rest is history, I guess.
Tavis: The acting thing - when did this occur to you, that you could do this?
McGraw: Well, I think everybody at some point in their life grows up thinking, "I can do that if I ever got a shot at it." And then being -
Tavis: But not everybody can, though.
McGraw: Well, I'm not sure I can yet. (Laughter) But you get to a certain point in this career, when I first had some success in this business then of course you get opportunities to be in movies and to act and things like that, because people are always looking for an angle to sell a movie.
I just never - I wanted to do it but at the time I wanted to focus more - I wanted to make sure that my path was pretty secure in the music business, so I didn't want to stray away from that or go try to do something that I might suck at (laughter) and damage my music career.
So I passed on a lot of things for probably up to around 10 years before I actually did anything. Then I actually did a small independent film called "Black Cloud" with Rick Schroeder. It was the first thing I'd ever done and Rick came to a show in Phoenix, and he's such a nice guy, and he wanted me to do this part. I toyed around with - I wasn't going to do it because I hadn't done anything yet, but then I got to thinking that it was a good chance to see - sort of dip my toe in there without really dipping my toe in front of the world.
Tavis: How have your hardcore fans taken to you doing both the music and the acting?
McGraw: I think it's been - went well. I think that the movies have done well; the fans seem to like them. I'm not going to give up my day job. (Laughter) I haven't done enough movies or had big enough parts where it will pay all the bills that I have. (Laughter)
Tavis: You got a lot of bills, then.
McGraw: I've got to supplement my income with music. (Laughter)
Tavis: I like that - supplement with music, and his name, of course, is Tim McGraw. For those watching that clip, if you couldn't figure out who that was, you recognized the face, that's actually Sandra Bullock. I know we're not used to seeing her with blonde hair, but that's who that is in case you tuned in a little bit late. Tim McGraw stars alongside her in the new film.
His new project, though, on CD is called "Southern Voice." Tim McGraw, the biggest star in country music right about now. It's an honor to have you on the program, sir.
McGraw: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: Good to see you, Tim.
McGraw: You, too.
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