Clint Black Reveals the Secret Tim McGraw Shared Just Before They Taped ‘Talking in Circles’
Evan Paul hosts Taste of Country Nights, On Demand, a weekly country music interview podcast that focuses on the music. Follow wherever podcasts are found, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave a rating and review. This show is part of the Townsquare Media On Demand network.
When Season 2 of Clint Black's television show Talking in Circles With Clint Black debuts on Saturday (March 12), look for clues that he knows something that Tim McGraw told him to keep secret.
The two country stars go way back, and not just because both have been hitmakers since the early '90s (or 1989, in Black's case). Their kids went to the same high school, so they'd run into one another at ball games and talk family life like any dads would do. Vince Gill — who appeared on Season 1 of Black's Circle Network TV show — also sent his kids to that same high school, which had to make for a real interesting car pool pickup line.
Talking to Taste of Country Nights' Evan Paul for the Taste of Country Nights On Demand Podcast, Black said he mostly wanted to talk shop with McGraw, a man he figures he first met backstage at a concert in Cincinnati in the mid-'90s. The details are fuzzy.
"There are some things that stand out, like when I met my wife," Black says, starting to smile and laugh. "Meeting Tim doesn't rate that high."
"I wanted to get into how he makes his records and how he keeps the thread of Tim in all the music while still keeping it fresh," Black shares.
To prepare, he visited McGraw's catalog, including his newest album. If you let him talk about technical aspects of music making for an hour, he'll do it, so these interviews can be equal parts storytelling and music insider-y. The country singer/actor/reality television star/entrepreneur says he doesn't get nervous talking to stars, even when he's barely met them (see Joe Bonamassa and Tommy Shaw this season), because Black has done the work ahead of time.
That's easier with some interviews than others — one of Black's guests this season is his wife Lisa Hartman Black.
"Everything was fun for me, because she didn’t know where I was going, but I knew," the "Killin' Time" singer shares with a smile he'd agree was mischievous. His daughter, Lily, was in the audience for this taping, and tears were shed throughout. Black just enjoyed knowing what was coming.
"A week before, she said, ‘Well I guess we should talk about what we're going to talk about on the show," he tells ToC Nights. "And man, that just killed me. I said, ‘No, you don’t understand how this works on my show.'"
Tracy Lawrence, John Hiatt and Dennis Quaid are a few other guests on Season 2 of Talking in Circles With Clint Black (10PM ET). McGraw is up first, which takes us back to that secret that — in the end — the host did a good job keeping under his black hat.
"We're in the greenroom, right? And he says to me, 'Look, I gotta tell you this great news, but you can't ask me about it in the interview,'" Black shares. "It's 1883. He had just inked the deal for 1883 and told me about it and then we walk out and tape the show and I can't ask him about it."