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we start, I'll actually read the introduction for my

1:00

cover story and then we'll get right into it.

1:05

Not for the first time today. Zach

1:08

Bryan is making his new friend laugh.

1:10

Bryan is trying to arrange himself on

1:12

a plush white studio couch for a

1:14

film conversation and is making him

1:16

self-conscious. Do I look pompous with

1:19

my legs crossed? he asks. The

1:21

guy next to him, Bruce Springsteen, who owns

1:23

the couch, the studio, and the entire Colts

1:25

Neck, New Jersey farm surrounding it, cracks up

1:27

as he chimes in. What's

1:30

the level of my pomposity on this?

1:32

Bryan spent his childhood on a Navy

1:34

base in Okinawa, Japan, and then in

1:36

Oklahoma, worlds away from New

1:38

Jersey's Mammoth County. He was

1:40

all of six years old when the rising came

1:42

out. Still, Springsteen

1:45

is one of his biggest heroes. He

1:47

has a lyric from the Nebraska track, State

1:49

Trooper, deliver me from nowhere, tattooed

1:52

on his left bicep. Springsteen, in

1:54

turn, has become a huge fan

1:56

of Bryan, who's finely crafted roots-inflected

1:59

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not limited to Amex Platinum Card. And

18:00

I woke up one morning and had all these shares, and I'm like, oh

18:02

no, what'd I do? And my

18:04

buddy Alba, we were on a plane one day, and he

18:06

goes, hey, you have to record these songs. And I'm like,

18:09

says who, why? Me and like six

18:11

guys were like, what are we even doing? And we

18:14

get into this Airbnb, we obviously were like seven beers

18:16

in, all of us. We think we're

18:18

geniuses, we're like, we're gonna be the next Springsteen,

18:20

let's do this. At the time it was a

18:22

joke. And that's not

18:24

how we feel now, but like it was like, we

18:26

were listening to your stuff and we're like, so

18:29

we get into this Airbnb and there's all these beds

18:31

and couches, and we're taking an Airbnb's

18:33

cushions and nailing them to

18:35

the walls. And we're

18:37

like taping these, we're taping all these mattresses

18:40

to the walls. And I had nothing

18:42

to do with it. These are all my friends. They know that I went

18:44

viral on Twitter, and they're like, no, we have to do this. And

18:47

I'm like, you guys are fucking crazy. And

18:50

I end up sitting on this stool in between

18:52

like a cushion here, a mattress here, a mattress

18:54

here, and we record 12 songs. Straight

18:58

across for 48 hours, we were

19:00

just drinking beer, smoking cigarettes

19:02

and like recording music. And

19:04

the next day we had all these

19:06

recordings and I

19:08

had them on my phone. I'm like, okay, so what do I

19:11

do with these? And so I put all

19:13

this music on the internet, not knowing

19:15

what was about to happen. And

19:17

the next week of my life was like

19:19

just absolute chaos. That's mind boggling. And it

19:21

was like above, it was above all these,

19:24

these number one hits on like, on

19:26

the Apple music charts and things. I had all

19:28

these people following me on like social media. I

19:30

had all these people calling me. I had Columbia

19:32

Records calling me a week after. This

19:35

all happened within a month, two months. Yeah,

19:37

this is like something I've never

19:39

heard of. And I went, so we

19:42

had all these cushions and mattresses nailed

19:44

up on this wall as their being

19:46

being. We'd caused permanent damage this place.

19:49

And I'm recording like Godspeed

19:52

or something. I'm living at

19:54

Godspeed. Only

19:56

God and my mom know what I know.