Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity (#852)

Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw) is a Grammy Award-winning entertainer, author, and actor who has sold more than 106 million records worldwide, with 49 number-one singles and 19 number-one albums.

He is one of the most-played country artists since his debut in 1992. He’s been named Nielsen BDS Radio’s Most Played Artist of the Decade for all music genres and also had the Most Played Song of the Decade for all music genres.

Tim has four New York Times bestselling books and has acted for both film and television, including the movies Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side and Paramount Network’s Yellowstone. He recently starred alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliott in Yellowstone’s prequel—the three-time-Emmy-nominated 1883.

You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour at TimMcGraw.com.

Please enjoy!

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Circle complete community platform for your community, events, and courses—all under your own brand: Circle.so/Tim
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Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity

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Transcripts

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Tim McGraw

Albums

Graceland by Paul Simon
Not a Moment Too Soon by Tim McGraw
Pawn Shop Guitar by Tim McGraw (Upcoming)

Record Labels & Studios

Places

Organizations, Institutions, & Companies

People

Related Resources

Kurt Vonnegut on Writing | Goodreads
Tim McGraw Sends Emotional Message as He Returns to the Stage Following Health Issues | Parade
How Falconry Changed Language | BBC
8 Reasons Why Zercher Squats/Deadlifts are the GOAT | Electrum Performance
Tim McGraw Explains Why He Couldn’t Be ‘Angry’ with His Dad | Today
Country Superstar Announces Massive 2026 Tour With Very Special Guests | Parade
Tim McGraw Shares His Family’s Military History | KFDI
Tim McGraw’s Faith Hill Tribute Has Fans Calling Them ‘Beautiful Soulmates’ | Parade
Hanmen Kyoushi): “Teacher” of Bad Cases | Takashi’s Japanese Dictionary
Tim McGraw Performs “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” | Academy Awards 2015
Country Music Memories: Tim McGraw Releases His Debut Album | The Boot
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on Powerful Books, Mystics, Richard Dawkins, and the Dangers of Safe Spaces | The Tim Ferriss Show #455

TIMESTAMPS

[00:01:51] Two Tims walk into a podcast.
[00:02:56] “The song always has to win.”
[00:05:02] Recording “Live Like You Were Dying” at 2 a.m. with Uncle Hank in a puddle in the corner.
[00:09:22] Sensing when the moment is right.
[00:10:29] The song Nashville hated that Tim heard his first night off the Greyhound.
[00:13:18] The one-two punch that saved Tim from novelty-act purgatory.
[00:15:22] Turning down the CMAs because the song wouldn’t fit the time slot.
[00:20:11] Why you can’t let the audience steer the ship when testing material live.
[00:25:51] Coping with the physical toll of performing for three decades.
[00:34:04] The Four Christmases wake-up call that changed everything.
[00:37:42] What training smarter looks like for Tim.
[00:41:22] When Tim found out his dad was a baseball legend whose picture was already on his wall.
[00:54:53] Important advice for aspiring parents.
[00:55:41] When Tim pawned his high school ring for a $20 guitar.
[00:58:27] Learning guitar from CMT videos and fret diagrams.
[00:59:37] The morning Tim tore up his Marines paperwork and bought a Greyhound ticket to Nashville.
[01:07:20] Nashville as creative accelerant: Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney, and $50 singing competitions.
[01:12:45] Po’boy Don’s crawfish shack: The demo that launched Tim’s career.
[01:15:39] How Faith Hill saved Tim’s life.
[01:18:33] The 7 a.m. bottle of whiskey cry for help.
[01:20:27] Parenthood as selfishness-removal surgery.
[01:24:28] Tim’s “Glory Days” disaster with Bruce Springsteen.
[01:28:30] When Tim’s first album “went wood” — the failure that taught him everything.
[01:33:29] A rodeo monkey no longer: When Tim kicked his record company to the curb.
[01:37:35] Tim’s most important advice for artists.
[01:43:41] Announcing the summer 2026 Pawn Shop Guitar tour with The Chicks.
[01:46:28] If it’s so grueling, why does Tim still tour?
[01:49:50] Tim’s “Humble and Kind” billboard.
[01:50:50] Parting thoughts and a parting gift: “Different” — the new song only on social media.

TIM MCGRAW QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for 20 bucks. I thought, ‘I love music, I love singing, chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learned to play a few songs.’”

— Tim McGraw

“The song always has to win.”

— Tim McGraw

“We always like to say, ‘You could have the greatest song in the world, the greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world—which I am not—but you could have all those factors and it still not work.’ And we always say, ‘Sometimes God just walks through the room.’”

— Tim McGraw

“If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you’re in trouble. You’ve got to chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. … If it doesn’t speak to me first, there’s no way I’m going to make it speak to somebody else.”

— Tim McGraw

“We’re so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that’s therapy. You have your own built-in therapeutic machine.”

— Tim McGraw

“If everything else is gone, if you’ve got hope, you’ve still got a chance.”

— Tim McGraw

“Maybe the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn’t want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don’t want to do and what doesn’t work for you is better than knowing what does.”

— Tim McGraw

This episode is brought to you by Circle! Circle is the complete community platform for you to build a home for your community, events, and courses. I run two private, invite-only communities on Circle, and the feedback and connections members have made have been invaluable. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online, run by folks like Kevin Rose, Dr. Becky from Good Inside, and many more. If you run an online community, membership, or course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience—events, courses, payments, custom-branded apps—all in one place. Go to Circle.so/Tim to get $1,000 off Circle Plus, exclusively for my listeners, for a limited time.

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Want to hear another episode with someone who took charge of their career by learning to say no? Listen to my conversation with Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, in which we discussed lessons from his father, 30+ years of diary notes, the art of catching greenlights, getting “unbranded” from Hollywood typecasting, and much more.