In this session I sat down with Mikele Buck for “Nashville, TN,” a light-hearted-but-dead-serious original that he wrote after getting pissed off with a Nashville record executive. Mikele’s a West Virginia native, an Iraq War veteran, and a guy who’s busted his tail as a welder and a touring musician for over 20 years—so when he sings about the way things get manufactured, you can hear it’s coming from real life, not a boardroom. This one takes aim at the “skinny jeans,” the auto-tune and drum machines, and that whole cookie-cutter chase to be the next big thing. The song hits on what a lot of artists feel: Music Row used to mean something, and now it can feel like a place where “souls are sold” if you don’t fit the mold or dance to the devil’s beat. Mikele flips the script, too—standing his ground, sticking to his roots, hat and boots, not giving a damn what they think. And that’s why I wanted this to be an introduction to him: he’s been overlooked way too long, and I’m proud he was the first ever radiowv recording artist. We even laugh a bit at the end about picking and singing—because these sessions are real, and that’s the whole point.