John Rich Explains Story Behind ‘The Devil and the TVA’

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] When an 88‑year‑old Tennessee woman confronted representatives of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) when they came to survey her land for a methane gas plant project, her words—“you think you own something, you don’t own nothing”—left a lasting impression on country artist John Rich.

That moment became the spark for his new song “The Devil and the TVA” and the starting point for this conversation on “American Thought Leaders.”

In this episode, Rich reflects on his journey from Texas family sing‑alongs to writing No. 1 hits with bands Lonestar and Big & Rich. He explains why he walked away from major record labels to protect his creative freedom, and he shares how songs like “Revelation” and “Earth to God” to connect present‑day turmoil with enduring spiritual truths.

Along the way, he opens up about the lessons he has learned about faith, fame, and standing firm in what matters most.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

John Rich, so good to have you on American Thought Leaders.

John Rich:

Great to be here. Thanks for making the trip to Nashville, sitting right in the middle of my house.

Mr. Jekielek:

And an incredible performance venue. First, let’s talk about how you got into music, before we get into everything else you’ve been doing in American politics and shaping culture. How did you get into music in the first place?

Mr. Rich:

I grew up listening to records like Live from Folsom Prison. My dad is a preacher but loved country music, loved the old stuff. So we had Live from Folsom Prison. We had Roger Miller. We had Tennessee Ernie Ford. We had all the greats from that 50s and 60s era of country music. And my dad’s a really good singer, really good guitar player. So, you know, at family events, when you get through eating and everybody’s sitting around, my dad would always pull his guitar out. And my granddaddy, his dad, wanted to hear Boy Named Sue. Play Boy Named Sue. And he’s over there smoking Marlboro Reds one after the other. Play Boy Named Sue. 

My granddaddy would just call out songs, and my dad knew them all and would play them. And I always thought that was just so cool that my dad could just sit there and just play them one after the next after the next. So one of my dad’s extra jobs was giving guitar lessons. And so he let me tag along when I was about five years old in Amarillo, Texas, up in the panhandle to a guitar lesson. 

He had all these adults sitting in a room and he had me kind of sit behind him, and he handed me a little cheap guitar, a little kid guitar. He goes, just follow along. Well, after about the second lesson, I was picking it up faster than the adults that he was teaching. And my dad went, wow, you’re picking that up pretty fast. Let me show you some other stuff. So now at home, he starts showing me stuff. And man, I just thought it was the greatest thing ever to be able to do what my dad was able to do, pick up a guitar. 

And now when my granddaddy would say, play Boy Named Sue, I could pick my guitar up too and bang along right with my dad. So it really started from that. It was something my dad did and something I got to do with my dad, make music with your dad. I mean, what’s better than that? Never dreamed in a million years it would be something you could have a career in, but it’s turned out that way. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Was there a moment when you decided to give it a shot?

Mr. Rich:

It was when I was about 15 years old. So we moved from Texas to Tennessee when I was in ninth grade, so I finished high school in Tennessee. I started realizing after meeting some kids at school that there were connections to these great country singers I’d grown up listening to, like Ricky Skaggs, for instance. One of the boys I became friends with said, my dad drives a bus for Ricky Skaggs. 

I said, Ricky Skaggs rides on a bus? I’m thinking like a school bus. He goes, well, yeah, a tour bus. And I went, how different is that from a school bus? I had no idea. He goes, it’s like he lives on it. My dad drives it. I said, your dad knows Ricky Skaggs? He goes, he’s been driving his bus for 10 years. 

I realized at that moment that I was within 35 or 40 miles from Music Row, from the epicenter of country music. And so the second I got my driver’s license, I started driving into Nashville looking for talent contests, open mic nights, anything I could get into. I was too young to get in, but I would talk my way in. And I would say, I’ll sit in a corner, I’ll drink a glass of water, I just want to get up and sing.

And so I started entering talent contests, and I knew, I thought I might be good enough to actually do this. So I’m just going to start going. And little by little, I got good enough to where I could do it. And at 18 years old, I decided not to go to college. I had a four-year paid scholarship to Belmont University, which is literally outside my window, a really good school. My family doesn’t come from money. So it wasn’t like, you know, my dad could stroke big checks to a college. So having it paid for was a really big deal. 

But instead of going to college, I decided to go on the road with a bunch of guys I’d met who were from Texas who were a lot older than me and go play holiday inn lounges, county rodeos, off-brand casinos from Vancouver to Jacksonville, Florida, and everywhere in between instead of going to college. And the reason I did that was because I wanted to play the Grand Ole Opry. I wanted to write hit country songs and I wanted to be on country radio. 

Those were my goals. And I couldn’t think of how college was going to help me get to that point. And so I took that risk, jumped into it, and was probably too dumb to realize how big of a risk that actually was. But it worked out. That band became Lone Star. That became a multi-platinum country act. I wrote my first number one song when I was 21 years old. 

Mr. Jekielek:

When I saw the video, Robin Williams, Live at the Met, he got up and said, yee-ha, strong opera house. Everyone seemed to understand what he was talking about, but I had no idea it was about the Grand Ole Opry.

Mr. Rich:

The Grand Ole Opry is the longest-running radio show in the history of America. It’s still every Saturday night. And that’s like for a country singer, forget being a member of the Opry. That’d probably be the ultimate ultimate. But just to be good enough and recognized enough that the Opry would invite you to step onto their stage and sing anything is like a giant pinnacle moment for any country singer, including me.

Mr. Jekielek:

So that happened to you.

Mr. Rich:

It happened, yes. Lone Star got a record deal. I called my dad. I said, you’re not going to believe it. We just got a record deal. And he goes, no way. I said, yes. And so then I started writing songs full-time, working on those records. We were touring about 200 days a year, 200 days a year. That’s sweat equity, right? That’s what it takes. 

A lot of people in America that want to be a professional entertainer, they want to do it the easy way or they don’t want to do it at all. They want to either get discovered on YouTube, which is nothing wrong with that, or they want to go win American Idol, nothing wrong with that either. But the vast majority of people that not only make it but have long careers—you don’t want to just make it for five years and then that’s it—you want to make music the rest of your life if you really love it. 

It’s not a hobby. They’re the ones that go out and play 200 nights a year, year after year after year, getting sharper and better at not only singing and writing songs, but how to communicate to an audience, how to entertain people for real, how to condition your body and mind to work that hard. 

Because once you get a record deal, the work doesn’t stop. It actually goes up from there. Now you’ve got 250 major market radio stations that have to see you and meet you and go to lunch with you. You have to convince them to play your music. You have to play free radio shows for them over and over and over again, all over the United States. So to really do it for real is a lifelong commitment. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You write music, you perform music, and you do a lot more than that. Do you remember the first time you actually wrote a song? 

Mr. Rich:

Oh, of course. I don’t care what any guy ever tells you. If there’s any answer other than this, he’s a liar. The reason a guy picks up a guitar and writes a song is one reason. Girls. That’s it. Girls.

Mr. Jekielek:

Many country songs have that theme.

Mr. Rich:

That’s the whole impetus for figuring out how to play three or four chords is girls. And so there was a girl and she was dating the football player. I ain’t big enough to be on the football team, you know? And I thought, how do I get this girl’s attention? So I wrote a song for her, put it on a cassette, because that’s what we had back then. 

I wrote the lyrics down, folded it up, stuck it in her locker, and it worked. And the football player wanted to whoop me all over the school and was not happy with me for the rest of my time there, but it worked. And I got a date with that girl. So yes, girls are what sets that off. But then I went, well, that worked. Maybe I’ll write another one. So I wrote another one and they weren’t good. 

But then I got into being around more senior musicians like the Lone Star guys. Those guys actually could write songs—like actual, really good songs that could be on the radio. And then we got a record deal. And upon that moment is when now you’ve got a record deal. Now you’re a commodity. Now you’re an income stream for all the songwriters in Nashville. If we can get a song on that Lone Star record, we get paid.That’s a big deal. 

So I was able to sit in the room with the absolute giants, the Albert Einsteins of country songwriting: Mark D. Sanders, Paul Nelson, Larry Boone, Don Cook, Chick Rains, and Sharon Vaughn. It was this list of writers that had written, The Gambler, and, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, for Willie Nelson. That level of songwriters was currently writing at that time. I’m only 20 years old, and I’m able to sit in the room as close as we are right now and walk in and write a song with them. 

That’s where I learned how to really craft a song; every syllable in that song has to hit. Just because it rhymes does not mean it’s good. And I learned all these lessons about how to really be a wordsmith with a song and make it stick, write a hit song. And those people are all my mentors. I mean, that crew of songwriters, in my mind, were the best that ever walked.

Mr. Jekielek:

It seems there are only a few themes. One of them is, I met a girl and it didn’t work out. It’s about loss. 

Mr. Rich:

Yes, loss. What’s another theme? I met a girl, and it did work out. Love. Fun. Sadness. Populism. What’s going on right now? What’s going on in the world? 

Mr. Jekielek:

One song that really struck me was Revelation. So connection with God also plays into this. 

Mr. Rich:

Of course, God plays into everything. He doesn’t play into us; we play into Him. He’s the boss. So Revelation is a song about….I’ll just back up for a second. If I still had a record deal, which I don’t and wouldn’t take one if it was offered to me, but if I did, which I did most of my life, the last five or six songs that I put out would have never been heard by a soul because they would have taken that recording and said, nice song, John, what else you got? And they own my voice, and they own my likeness, and they own all my recordings. They would just shelve it. You would never hear it. 

And so a song like Revelation, writing that song post my involvement with the music industry, the timing of that was right on the money because I could have written that song years before that, and nobody would have heard it. I write it on my own. What are you giving up? You’re giving up the money of the industry. You’re giving up all the radio stations. You’re giving up all that big push that you get from a major company. 

You’re giving that up, but what are you getting in return? You’re able to say what you want to say exactly how you want to say it. And one of the good things about tech—and most things I don’t like about tech—but a good thing about tech is I don’t need a record label now to get the word out about a new piece of music.

I can literally just load it up myself, tell everybody, check this out, and if they like the song, they’ll go get it. Four out of my last five songs that I’ve released independently have been the number one most downloaded songs on Apple Music. Not in country music, all genres. And that’s a feat that is only possible, generally, if you have a major record deal. 

But when you’ve got millions of people out here that hear a song like Revelation, they go, where did that come from? Because I’m never going to hear that on the radio. How do I get that? They click it, they download that song. Now they’ve got it. That’s the magic of it. I would not go back even if the biggest label, like Sony Records, offered me all the money in the world and said, come back. I would say, no, thank you. Because freedom of speech is invaluable, and I get to express it freely these days. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You were all set, but this gave you the ability to say, no thanks folks. Please tell us about that decision.

Mr. Rich:

Warner Brothers Records, which was the last major label I was on, started calling me into meetings because they didn’t like something, a comment that I made about a particular subject going on in America, going on in culture. Or they didn’t like the fact that I did an interview with this conservative guy or that I went on this conservative network or whatever. And they started calling me in and saying, hey, you can’t do interviews like that anymore. You can’t say stuff like that anymore. 

I said, well, yes, I can. They go, no, you can’t because you are causing radio programmers to not play your music because they don’t agree with you. And they’re going to start blackballing you. And they were off these radio stations. And if we can’t get you played, we can’t sell your music. And if we can’t sell your music, we can’t recoup all the money we’ve spent on you. And this is a no-go. So yes, you have to stop.  

And I said, it’s not going to happen. And so after that back-and-forth of maybe a year or two, I was like, this ain’t going to work. And they went, yeah, this ain’t going to work. And we split ways. Now at that point, me and Big Kenny of Big & Rich decided that we’re not done. We’ve got a lot more songs in us. 

We just started our own record label, Big & Rich Records, hired our own promotion team, and put our own money into it. We scored four more top 10 singles on our own without a major record label. So that’s where I saw that it was possible. What I’m doing now doesn’t even involve country radio. They’re not even in the loop, which is interesting because online consumption of music just dwarfs terrestrial radio. It’s not even close. That’s the position I’m in now. 

But it is still a battle. Every time I put out a new song, I need people like you to come over and ask me about it, and let your audience hear about it. I rely on a lot of people to help me get the word out, so I’m grateful you came.

Mr. Jekielek:

Can you play a bit of Revelation?

Mr. Rich:

Sure. Let me ask you something.  What is it that struck you about the song? 

Mr. Jekielek:

The word that comes to mind is reverence. I sensed deep reverence, which I appreciate. 

Mr. Rich:

Yes, there is deep reverence in it. It’s a subject basically about spiritual warfare, that everything you see happening in the world is just a result, a physical manifestation of what’s happening in the spirit. That’s what the song is about. So if people haven’t seen the video, I urge you to go watch it after you watch this interview. But just look up John Rich Revelation on YouTube, Rumble, anywhere, and you’ll see it. 

But it basically shows the devil coming out of the woods in a ball of fire, and then it shows an angel coming down with a sword to battle him. And I’m standing in between the two of them because humanity is what they’re fighting over. And this is laid out throughout the Bible, all the way from the Old Testament to the end of the Bible, the New Testament. It talks about it over and over and over. And I’d never heard a song about that. 

And the way I saw the world going—this would have been a year and a half ago, I guess I wrote that song—was so tumultuous and so much evil walking right out into the spotlights with such arrogance that they no longer were hiding. It’s like, you can see it right there. There it is. And you watch a Super Bowl halftime show, and there’s satanic symbolism all over the stage. And the artist looks like they’re possessed as they were singing it.

And you realize the war that they’re waging on humanity on behalf of their father, the devil. What about us? What about the other side? Is somebody going to acknowledge this is what’s going on? And even though a lot of us do acknowledge it, I hadn’t heard a song about it. Have you, Jan? Have you ever heard another song like Revelation?

Mr. Jekielek:

No, I haven’t. That’s why I remember it the most. 

Mr. Rich: 

I’ll play a piece of it.

“Dancing in the flames, the people cursed His name, bowed at the altar of the father of lies. There’s a number to their days and all their evil ways; the Lord’s gonna turn away from all their cries. Oh, dear cries, oh, Revelation, I can feel it coming like a dark train running. Oh, get ready, because the King is coming. The King is coming back again.”

It’s got a little Cash in it, especially later Johnny Cash. That song, when I go out and play concerts now, of all the songs I’ve had something to do with, by far, that is the one that people come up and mention to me. Just like you just did. Revelation, man, that song. Wow, wow, wow. Because it’s not even really a song. 

Yes, it’s musical, but what I did is I took what it says in the Bible about this situation, just made it rhyme. There’s none of my opinion in the song. There’s none of my perspective in the song. It’s what John, disciple, apostle, prophet John wrote in the book of Revelation. I made it into a song.

Mr. Jekielek:

So in the end, it does have to rhyme.

Mr. Rich:

It has to rhyme to be a song, yes, but none of the statements made in the song are my statements.That’s what makes it different. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve written around 2,000 songs. That’s quite prolific.

Mr. Rich:

If you figure an average song takes about 10 hours to write, 8 to 10 hours, and multiply that by over 2,000, that’s a lot of time spent writing songs. But out of those 2,000-plus, I’ve had 218 of them recorded by major artists. So I’m batting about 10 percent. 

Mr. Jekielek:

How many of them do you actually perform? 

Mr. Rich:

Of the 218, probably 60 or 70 of those. But then a lot of other artists started coming in. I was writing 150-plus songs a year for many, many years. And once Big and Rich music got popular, everybody started calling, going, hey, do you have more songs like that? I said, I got a whole catalog of songs like that that nobody’s cared about for a long time. Here you go, here’s 50 of them. 

For instance, take Jason Aldean, a huge, massive country artist, who plays football stadiums. Before he ever got a record deal, he heard some of my songs. He came to me and said, I really like your songs, man, if I ever get a record deal, I’d love to record a bunch of them. I said, man, go get you a record deal, and he did. 

On Jason’s first record, I was a writer on seven out of 10 songs, almost the whole first record. The same thing with Gretchen Wilson, who wound up selling 10 million-plus records. Those songs were written when my phone was not ringing. Those songs were written when I had no deal, and when I was damaged goods in the industry. 

I’ve told people this many times in speaking engagements and when I’m meeting with people, I say, listen, when things are completely out of your control, things are happening in your life that are out of your control. You cannot stop it. You have to find something that you still can control, as simple as it may be, and control it well. 

I said, that could be what you’re eating every day. It could be how many phone calls am I going to make today to try to get a new job? It could be how many miles am I going to walk? Whatever it is, how many push-ups can I do today? 

For me, it was pencil, paper, and a guitar. I still have that. I can control that. So I dove all the way into that and started writing just massive amounts of songs where nobody cared about them. For all I knew, nobody would ever hear these songs, because nobody gave a damn about them at that point, I can promise you that. But four or five years down the road, Big & Rich takes off. Then all of a sudden, every producer and every artist in town is calling, and they start cutting them.  

You have to cut firewood before winter hits. It’s like the verse in Proverbs about the ant. It says the ant goes out and stores its food up in the summer because when the winter hits, there ain’t no food to store up. So I’ve always kind of had that attitude when things are down. That’s when you make your bones right there. That’s when you stack up, preparing for success in the future.

Mr. Jekielek:

The verses in Revelations are not your words, you just made them rhyme. Is there a particular song with your words that is the quintessential John Rich?

Mr. Rich:

Almost all of them are. Revelation is a different animal altogether.

Mr. Jekielek:

But is there one in particular?

Mr. Rich:

Earth to God is a song that is actually being sung in churches all across the U.S. I get videos all the time from people. They’ll go, look, this lady sang your song in our church last Sunday. I’ll look at the video and go, wow, I can’t even believe it. This whole congregation knows the words to it. Never been on a country radio station. But it has made its way into tens of millions of people. That song was written in 2020 when you had the COVID lockdowns. Then here come the vaccine mandates and then here comes people burning our cities down all across the US. It was horrible. 

I looked out the window and I had this picture in my head of an old World War II soldier sitting at one of those CB radios. Remember the old ones where it kind of comes up and the microphone’s up here and it’s got a button on it. I had this picture of an old man sitting behind this microphone, pressing the button, going, earth to God, come in God, like hailing God, because the whole planet’s on fire. There’s a pandemic going on and everything’s upside down. 

I thought that’d be a good song to write. Earth to God, come in God. Because what does Earth want to hear God say back? This is God, come back to Earth. And I had that thought and went, that is a massive thought. It’s so simple, which again is another tenet of country music songwriting—the simpler the better. Nail that line and build everything around that very simple thought, and you’ve got a song that will stick. 

So I wrote Earth to God and put it out. And I think it really helped a lot of people to hear that. In the interviews I did around that, I said, listen, he’s literally right there. You feel like the whole world’s burning down? It is. But he can see that. And he can see you. And all you have to do is go, can I talk to you for a minute? And he’ll go, yep. Thought you’d never ask. That’s what that song was all about.

Mr. Jekielek:

Would you say you’re at the top of your game right now? 

Mr. Rich:

I don’t know. I feel like I’m doing all right. It depends on what game you’re talking about.

Mr. Jekielek:

Like back when Big & Rich really hit it big.

Mr. Rich:

I was at the top of the game then, too.

Mr. Jekielek:

You won Celebrity Apprentice back in the day. It was a big deal, right? A lot of people knew who you were. How did you deal with the fame? 

Mr. Rich:

Not very well. I had a horrible gambling problem. I love blackjack. I’m really good at it. Uh, I was pulling ungodly amounts of money off of tables all across the U.S. and then you’d play more and more and more and more. That’s a real thing, by the way. Gambling addiction, that’s for real. I had a very, very hot temper, and was very arrogant. You can look me up and see where I got thrown off of airplanes. You can look me up and see where I was in multiple fistfights in one night in Los Angeles, California. I mean, just absolute, full out rock and roll out there. 

At some point I realized something about the gambling thing. I went and knocked a table out in Tunica, Mississippi, just clobbered this table. Tens of thousands of dollars that I won and got back here to Nashville. And I’m looking at all that money. I just felt like he was telling me that is the most disrespectful thing you could ever do with what I gave you because I didn’t grow up with money.

We didn’t grow up starving. We had what we needed, but you didn’t have extra money laying around. And I felt like he was going, can you imagine what your dad could have done with that money? That’s what he was putting in my head. And I felt so guilty over living like that and mistreating and disrespecting what God had given me that I’m going to go out here and throw this down on a stupid blackjack table. That was it. 

I have never played another hand of cards since then. And that was in 2010. And I have played a lot of places, thousands, where I could go play cards anytime I wanted.  I refuse. I will never play cards ever again. It was absolute cold turkey, full stop. And that was the beginning of me starting to come back around and hearing him again and what he wanted me to actually do. 

Mr. Jekielek:

You listened and you listened hard, it seems. 

Mr. Rich:

If you’re lucky, God will only knock your teeth out. If you’re unlucky, he’ll knock your brains out. And I was lucky that he only knocked my teeth out. And he did several times, knocking me down hard, in various ways, because I think he cares about me. I know he does. And he wants to see me go do what it is I’m supposed to do. So God, he’s the father. He’s your father. 

Okay, well, I’m a father. I have two sons. And if one of my sons is playing football out in the street, and I say, hey, don’t play football in the street. And I grab the football and go, get back in here, get back in the yard. Don’t play in the street, you’ll get hit by a car. And the very next day he’s out there playing football again. Well, the punishment goes up and up and up. And I’m doing that because I don’t want my son to get hit by a car because I want him to live his life out and become an old man someday and do what he’s supposed to do is not die at nine or ten years old playing football in the street. 

Eventually, if they won’t listen, the punishments get worse and worse and more aggressive and drastic to try to break them, break their will of doing something that’s going to hurt them. And so that’s how I look at my sons as a dad. Well, if we’re created in God’s image, that means he thinks like we think. He’s just perfect at it. We’re very imperfect, but it’s the same thought process that he has towards us. 

So when I look back at the punishments over the years and the come-to-Jesus moments, I go, thanks for not taking me out. Thanks for not just erasing me. Thanks for only knocking a few molars out here and there and then fixing me back up.That’s quite a thing to say, probably in an interview. You’re not going to really hear preachers talk like that, but that’s really how it works.

Mr. Jekielek: 

I had a really rough time in my life, but when I look back, it ended up being the best thing that ever happened. It shifted the trajectory in a really good way. 

Mr. Rich:

It saved you from wasting the rest of your life, whatever that was going to be. Look at Paul in the New Testament. So Paul was Saul, and Saul’s whole job was working for the Romans, tracking down Christians and cutting their heads off. Like the Roman candles that we get on the Fourth of July. That was actually a thing. That came from back then when they took Christians, buried them up to their necks, dumped tar on their heads, and lit them on fire. They called that a Roman candle. So Saul’s whole job was to do that. I mean, he was just vicious. 

Then on the road to Damascus, God knocked all his teeth out, smacked him so hard, blinded him, and that was his last shot. We all know the story about the road to Damascus. When Paul came to and could see again, and hear again, and think again, he went from Saul to Paul. Then he wrote half of the New Testament after that. So that’s how he operates. It’s your job, when he smacks you hard enough, to listen. Because it’s a finite amount of times that he will give you those chances to turn around.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s shift and talk about the fun songs.

Mr. Rich:

Yes, there’s a lot of fun to be had.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’m thinking of the song, Offended.

Mr. Rich:

I’m offended, you’re offended, let’s all get offended tonight. Yes, another much more lighthearted song about just how ridiculous I found it to be that Americans were just literally offended and up in arms and horrified by any little thing that somebody would say or do or that would happen. And I remember, man, when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. When I was growing up, Archie Bunker was on TV. George Jefferson was on TV, right? And George Jefferson and Archie Bunker meeting up with each other and what they would say to each other. 

And everybody laughs at that because it’s funny because they didn’t hate each other; they were neighbors. But George was like, I don’t know if I like you because you’re black, and he’s going, I don’t know if I like you because you’re white, but they still had dinner together and hung out. It was a microcosm of America at that time, and nobody got offended, and nobody had a protest, and nobody did anything. They just went, yeah, well, that’s how a lot of people are. 

So today, just fast forward, somebody’s waving an American flag, and you’re a Nazi. And on the other side, somebody’s burning flags. They’re now taking it to these extremes. And so I wrote this silly song called I’m Offended. I’m offended that you’re offended. Let’s all get offended tonight. I’ll order us a beer. We can sit down right here and scream and yell and cuss and fuss and fight. And it’s like this goofball song that actually makes a pretty serious point.

Mr. Jekielek:

Can you play that song with the guitar?

Mr. Rich:

“It seems like these days, no matter what you say, someone’s losing their ever-loving mind. It’s like we’re looking for a reason to have our fragile feelings hurt every single time. My country truck, I gas it up. You got your fancy Tesla hooked up to a plug. I know you’re mad. You think I’m bad ’cause I’m breathing free at last, and you’re still stuck behind your mask. And I’m offended. You’re offended. Let’s all get offended tonight. I’ll order us a beer. We can sit down right here and scream and yell and cuss and fuss and fight.” 

Mr. Jekielek:

That’s fantastic. There’s a moment in the music video where we are expecting the guys to fight, but they don’t. They kind of make up.

Mr. Rich:

They clink their beers, yes. The video is hilarious. All these girls get in a fight. You’ve got girls with nose rings and purple hair, and then country girls with cowboy hats and ball caps. They get in a fight, and Mike Lindell walks in with a referee’s uniform, blowing a whistle and throwing a flag. I basically just mocked the whole culture of being offended. I just mocked it, and people really liked it. It gave everybody a good laugh.

Mr. Jekielek:

You have quite a bit of range, all the way from putting Bible verses to song to a song like this.

Mr. Rich:

Country music is a reflection of life, and life is the complete range. That’s what I love about country music. You can literally write about any subject you want to. That’s different from pop. That’s different from a lot of other genres where country music is life put to paper. And so, yeah, sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it’s serious. Sometimes it’s making fun of something, like I’m Offended. And that’s what I love about it. I can write anything I want.

Mr. Jekielek:

Why do you think the devil figures into country music songwriting as much as he does? I’ve heard that in a number of titles.

Mr. Rich:

The Devil Went Down to Georgia, by Charlie Daniels. That’s probably the best example. 

Mr. Jekielek:

There are multiple examples. Why is that?

Mr. Rich:

Country music, of all the American genres of music, is rooted in gospel music to a large degree. Bluegrass music, which was also very, you know, gospel and Christian in its nature. Those forms of American music are what really combined and became country music. There’s a lot of gospel still in country music. 

Carrie Underwood’s first single was Jesus Take the Wheel. First song she ever put out: Jesus Take the Wheel. People that make country music for a living, not all of them, but a lot of us grew up singing in church. We’ve been around that gospel church environment or had members of our family that were devout Christians, people that we knew and were raised around. And that becomes part of your DNA. 

And so when you sit down and write a song in country music like Charlie Daniels, he’s going to write a song called The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and I whipped his ass. That’s the song. The devil went down to Georgia, and I beat him. He challenged me to a fiddle contest, and I whipped the devil, right? 

And people love that. They go, yeah, whip the devil. Good for Charlie Daniels. So I think that’s the reason why it comes in. In pop music and rap and a lot of other genres, when they talk about the devil, they talk about him in a very loving sort of way.

Mr. Jekielek:

Is that really the case?

Mr. Rich:

Music is a very powerful weapon for good and bad. I mean, music is interesting because you can say something to somebody and they’ll hear you. But if you put the same exact message and put a melody around it and a rhythm around it and then present it that way, what happens then? Do you ever catch yourself reciting a speech in your head over and over and over? Do you wake up in the morning hearing something Ronald Reagan said in your head over and over or anybody else? No. 

You wake up in the morning, and a song is stuck in your head, or you’re driving your car, and there’s a song stuck in your head. Music is very powerful. I don’t know the spiritual elements of it, but it’s able to bypass the physical and get right into the soul of someone. 

So when that’s used at the behest of wickedness and wicked people, it goes into their soul like that. When it’s used as a good thing with a good message or God’s message or whatever, it does the exact same thing. It goes right into one the same way. So there’s a war that goes on in music. The devil loves to use music as a weapon. So in here lies the battle.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve been on this mission to stop a methane plant from being put in place in the middle of a residential and farm area, and it seems like you won.

Mr. Rich:

Yes, so it’s the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which a lot of people think is just in Tennessee. It’s actually in seven states. It was founded in 1933 by our most famous socialist president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who put that into gear. The way he built the TVA was that they only answer to the president of the United States. 

They don’t answer to the governors. They don’t answer to zoning boards. They don’t answer to senators. They don’t answer to anybody except the president of the United States. And it’s still that way today since 1933. So because they have this crazy setup, they don’t have to adhere to things like the Fourth Amendment, right? So illegal search and seizure, probable cause, and a warrant.

Mr. Jekielek:

TVA is typically portrayed as a company that the government owns, but mostly just functions like a private company.

Mr. Rich:

It functions like a private company with protection on a federal level, which means it does not have to adhere to all kinds of things. So here’s what happens. There’s a little county 25 miles in that direction called Cheatham County, Tennessee. My dad has a blueberry farm in Cheatham County, a small one, like a micro farm. 

My brother also has a small farm there. I finished high school in that county or went there for three years of high school, 9th and 11th. My granny Rich, my papaw Rich, lived there until they died in that county. I still have some land out there in Cheatham County. I know it very well and know the people there very well. 

And my brother, the farmer, asked me one day, about six months ago, have you seen what the TVA is trying to do to Cheatham County? It’s a 900-megawatt methane gas plant with 10 acres of lithium battery storage. And my brother says the lithium batteries they’re talking about are the size of an 18-wheeler trailer, each. They want 10 acres of those. I said, where are they wanting to put this? He tells me the address where it’s going. 

I went, are you kidding me? There’s like 500 houses. That’s right on top of neighborhoods. I said, aren’t there like three schools right there? He goes, there’s five schools within five miles of where this is going in. And he said, the main water supply to Ashland City and Pleasant View, which are the two towns in that county, they’re literally going to go right through that and run their gas pipelines under the water source and tear up about 6,000 acres of farmland.

I said, what? I just could not believe it. He said, yes, and even worse than that, they’re showing up with bulletproof vests and loaded weapons on farmers’ properties and demanding access to their property. I said, the TVA has a task force? He said, yes, they look like the ATF when they come walking up on your property. I said, okay, can you connect me to somebody who has encountered this? Because I want to hear this firsthand. He goes, I’ll hook you up with some guys. 

So I started going out and doing interviews with people on their front porches. And this one piece of video that I saw, which you will see in my music video, which led to the writing of the song we’re talking about, The Devil and the TVA, was an 88-year-old woman named Mrs. Nicholson who suffers from dementia. And the TVA pulled up on her farm. She’s been living there; that land has been in her family for over a century. It’s called a century farm. 

They pull up on her property, 12 vehicles deep. People get out of the cars, bulletproof vests, loaded weapons. It looks like a drug raid. And this lady’s going, who are all these people? And it’s on video because the neighbor ran out the door with a video camera to try to capture this. Thank God. Who are all these people? What is going on? What is happening? 

The neighbors come up and go, Mrs. Nicholson, that’s the TVA. And they pull out an iPhone. They go, they’re wanting to build this on your farm. And they show her a picture of a plant and transmission lines. And for about 10 seconds, that old woman snapped out of her dementia and looked right into the camera that the neighbor had there and said, you think you own something; you don’t own nothing. Just like that.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s powerful.

Mr. Rich:

I went, oh my. That encapsulated the entire situation. Upon seeing that video and realizing, yes, this is real. There’s the evidence right there on top of the firsthand accounts I’m getting from all these people. I decided, The TVA is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but I’ve got an iPhone and a selfie stick. Let’s see how they deal with what I can do to them with my iPhone and my selfie stick. 

So I started interviewing people, almost investigative journalist style, and started posting them on my X account at John Rich. You look up, and they’re racking up millions of views on each one of these neighbors and me talking to them, which then gets on the radar of TVA in a major way because I’m tagging them every single time, those scoundrels. And that leads to a congressman calling me and saying, hey, the senior vice president of government relations for the TVA reached out to me and said he would like to come to your house and have a chat with you. 

I said, oh, would he now? Well, you tell him to come on over. So he came to this exact room, sat with me in the back of this room for less than 30 minutes. And I told him, get the hell out of our county. You got two weeks. If you don’t get out of our county, I’m going to write a song about the TVA that compares you to the devil himself. And I’m going to have millions of Americans singing a song comparing you guys to the devil. And you’ll never be the same. You got two weeks. 

That’s the basic point of the meeting. And he didn’t. They didn’t back out. So I wrote the song. Now, eventually, I know you’ve got the questions, but eventually this gets on the radar of Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture. She blind calls me. I didn’t know her. She got my phone number from Pam Bondi. Said, I got your number from Pam. Hope you don’t mind. 

I said, No, ma’am. What’s going on? How much farmland is this going to tear up? It’s about 6,000 acres. You got a map? I showed her the map. She says, yes, that comes under my jurisdiction. So then she weighed in. And then ultimately, Trump weighed in and said, you’re not building this. And so it’s the first time on record that I can find where a populist movement was able to shove the TVA out of a county. Maybe it’s happened before. This is the only one I’m aware of.

Mr. Jekielek:

It is curious because there are other options for the location of the methane plant. The methane plant is not in itself a problem.

Mr. Rich:

No, the county was giving them another option. They have an industrial section where it could have gone. There are places in West Tennessee that Obama tore down all the big giant coal plants that are just sitting there that already have pipelines running to Nashville. And those counties are completely devastated because Obama destroyed what was driving those two counties. TVA owns all that land. Why don’t you just build it over there? You’ve already got a pipeline running. You’ve already got transmission lines running. Another question they won’t answer, right? 

So you’re dealing with an entity that is federal and private, and they only answer to the president of the United States, which means we don’t answer to anybody. We don’t answer to the citizens, especially they don’t answer to the citizens. Nobody. I had senators, one in particular, who’s been in office a very long time, very powerful, and said, I had been begging them to abandon this project for months. I said, what do they say? It’s like basically just flipping me the bird and saying, get out of here. You don’t have any jurisdiction with us. So here’s the question. Should there be any entity in America that can operate like this? Should there be?

Mr. Jekielek:

Most people would probably say no.

Mr. Rich:

Anybody other than the TVA would say no. I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been through this process of taking them on. There are other big energy companies. For instance, Duke Energy is a massive energy company. Duke Energy, if they want to build a plant somewhere, they have to sit in front of the zoning board of the county. And the zoning board is made up of who? People that were elected by the people that live in that county to serve on the zoning board. 

And the zoning board knows that if they let TVA come in and destroy 6,000 acres of farmland, they’re not going to get reelected. Matter of fact, they’re going to be the most unpopular people in the county. So what’s the zoning board probably going to say to Duke Energy if they try to do that? You can’t build it there. You can build it here. We’re good with that. You cannot build it here. And Duke Energy would say, okay, we’ll go build it over there. We won’t build it at all. 

But TVA doesn’t have to do that. They don’t even sit in front of the zoning board. Trump was not happy at all about any of this situation. And that was borne out by the fact that he’s now fired the TVA board and is bringing in a new board. And I’m hoping with the new board, with this song coming out, that it raises the awareness enough that maybe we can get their charter changed where they have to treat people differently in this country.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you won, and the song’s still coming out.

Mr. Rich:

I made the man a deal. I made him a promise. I said, get out of our county in two weeks or I’m going to write a song that compares you to the devil. I think he thought I was kidding. You want to hear a piece of the devil in the TVA? The first line in the chorus is Mrs. Nicholson’s phrase. You think you own something, but you don’t own anything.

Okay. All right. First verse and chorus of, The Devil and the TVA. I will congratulate the people at Cheatham County that stood up and pushed with me on this thing and Secretary Rollins and the President of the United States. What a story. And Mrs. Nicholson especially. I appreciate her having the boldness to make a statement like that. It goes like this. 

“For a hundred some odd years, her family’s worked the same old fields, raised their kids and grandkids right there on that land. Saw the storms flood their ground. Watched their crops die in the drought. Stared the Great Depression down and never ran. Now they’re looking at one hell of a fight. Trying to save the family name from a rich man’s bottom line.” 

“You think you own something. You don’t know anything when the government man comes around, puts his dirty old boots on your ground, laughs at your protest with a gun and a bulletproof vest. He doesn’t care what you have to say, he’s just gonna do it anyway. He’ll smile and grin and then take your farm away. He’ll tear it all to hell right in your face. Now the devil ain’t got nothing on the TVA, got nothing on the TVA.”

And the song goes on from there. If people want it, they can download it. Go get it. Listen, this is still going on. The TVA is doing this across seven states. There are counties right now in the shape this county was just in, and it needs to change. So thanks for letting me sing a piece of it. 

Mr. Jekielek:

President James Madison once said that conscience is the most supreme form of property. And private property is actually very central to freedom.

Mr. Rich:

100 percent, it’s about landowners. A lot of people moved to this country because they were told, you can own land here. You can own it. The king won’t own it. You own it. You come out here and develop this land, homestead this land. You can actually own land in America. They went, let’s go. And you exercise agency over that. 

Mr. Jekielek:

We don’t think about these things, because we’ve had them for so many years. 

Mr. Rich:

And this is not something she bought last year. It’s been in her family for over a century. And here are men with guns and bulletproof vests telling her that they’re coming on her property to tear it all to smithereens, then condemn it, then offer her 10 cents on the dollar. Get out. There’s nothing American about that at all. I’m really grateful to President Trump, Secretary Rollins, who felt the exact same way. 

And I hope this new board that comes in, I’m actually petitioning the president right now to give me a presidentially appointed position as a citizen advocate, where when I find egregious things going on, like what happened in Cheatham County, I can go to him first and explain to him the situation, have a remedy for the situation, and if he agrees, have him sign off on it, and then go to that place, whether it’s the TVA or whoever, and say, the president would like to see this happen, and drop it on their desk, and see if we can throw a shield up around the American citizens. I understand things have to be built, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with citizens. You don’t step on their constitutional rights and take American property from an American landowner. 

Mr. Jekielek:

There is a precedent for this. For example, in the FDA, there’s all citizen advocates on many of those panels and boards.

Mr. Rich:

Right. There is a precedent for it. I’ve heard the word ombudsman used. I said, yes, it’s kind of like that, except I would be more proactive. You know what I mean? I like the position I’m in these days. I’ve been asked to run for governor of this state. I’ve been asked to run for District 7 in Congress. I’ve been asked to run for Senate seats, mayor, all kinds of things, all the time I get asked. And I say, it does not interest me. 

Number one, I don’t want to spend my life hanging around politicians. That’s number one. But number two, where can I be the most effective? Because the people I really care about are getting beat up out here, they don’t live in just one district or one state or one place. It’s happening to people all over the place. I come from blue collar Texas. I’m a high school graduate, just a regular guy that has done irregular things in my life, but my brain still works like that.

Those are my people. And I identify with those people. I know how they think. I know where they came from. I know what their daily life is like. I know what they care about. I know what they don’t like. Those are my relatives. My American relatives are how I look at them. So I’m asking the president, and I hope he gives it to me, to make me a presidentially-appointed citizen advocate. Wouldn’t that be a cool thing?

Mr. Jekielek:

They’re blessed to have you here.

Mr. Rich:

I would be happy to serve in that position.

Mr. Jekielek:

We both know Kash Patel, who is a country music guy. An Indian guy from Long Island is not someone you would imagine being a country music fan. He was thrilled to discover that he had a fan in you. How did you guys get connected?

Mr. Rich:

I had followed Kash for a little while, probably started around the 2020 era with the election and COVID and all that stuff. I was watching Devin Nunes and I heard him mention Kash Patel. I went, who’s Kash Patel? And then I started seeing Kash pop up mainly on Rumble at that point. And I went, this guy’s scrappy. I like this guy. I identify with that attitude all day long. 

So then I started following him and Truth Social came around. So I followed Kash Patel on Truth Social and then he followed me. I went, okay, maybe he’s a country music fan. I don’t know. I talked to Devin Nunes and I said, I’d love to meet Kash someday. That’d be great. He goes, you know what? We’ll come to Nashville and let’s do something at your house. 

I said, that’d be great. What do you want to do? He goes, how about like a Truth Social/Rumble party at your house? Just bring all the influencers from True Social and Rumble to your house. Maybe you could jump up and play a song. I said, yes, that’d be great. 

So as we’re planning that out, Kash is then writing his book, The Plot Against the King. At this point, now we’re connected and Kash says, I need a theme song for this book. Can you write a theme song about The Plot Against the King? 

So I got online, because we’re on lockdowns at this point. I got online with a couple other big songwriters, Vicki McGehee and Jeffrey Steele, and we wrote a song called The Plot Against the King. And then when they all came here, and Kash was standing right behind me on that stage singing. He’s not a very good singer, and he’ll tell you that. But that wasn’t the point. And we’re all up there singing The Plot Against the King here at the house. 

Since then he has become an actual friend of mine. So we don’t talk all the time. He’s a pretty busy guy, but every week or two, we’ll text each other, how’s it going, what’s happening, and hang in there. I can’t even imagine what he and Bongino have learned since they’ve had those jobs. Dan’s another guy I’ve known for a very long time. 

So I’ve always had a lot of respect for Kash and his unwillingness to back off. He just wouldn’t back up off of anybody and took a beating over that. Even the J6 prisoners and the situation around that, he wouldn’t back up off of that. Never left people hanging. And just seems like what a real American ought to act like that wants to save his country.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve been very generous with your time today. I was listening to your song, The Man. Can you build on that a little more, about the man you want to be? What’s in the future for John Rich, beyond being an ombudsman? 

Mr. Rich:

At this point, I’ve spent many years of my life serving myself, decades living that way. Hopefully I get to live another 50 years. That would be great. But whatever that amount of time is, I want it to be used having as much impact as I can possibly have on behalf of people who cannot get that impact for themselves. And saying things that are true. Say things that are true. 

And don’t run away from evil people that come for our kids, like people who put obscene material in front of little kids or people who target kids online. People that, in my mind, represent the worst in our country, is what happens to kids in this country. Probably the most aggressive thing Jesus Christ ever said, at least ever said that was written down, was when he was sitting with his disciples and there was a bunch of kids playing around and stuff. He pointed at one of the kids and acknowledged the child. 

He said, you’d be better off to have a millstone tied around your neck than to ever cause one of these little ones to stumble, is the word he used—to stumble, not to abduct them, not to kill them, not to abuse them, but to cause them to stumble, meaning to mess with them at all in their state of innocence. You would be better off to die than to let that happen. Then you’d be that person that messes with one of these. That’s what the Son of God said. 

Okay. You might want to pay attention to that one because in this country, we know right now there are hundreds of thousands of kids we don’t know where they are. We know that, especially during the pandemic, child abuse went absolutely through the roof because teachers, a lot of times, are the ones that see the bruise on the kid’s arm or that the kid is walking with a limp. The teacher will say, hey, what happened to you, Bobby? What happened to you, Sally? Oh, my dad threw me down the stairs. And they could call in a report and get that kid out of that bad situation. 

When COVID hit and they shut down all the schools, you don’t see that anymore. So abuse went through the roof. There are all kinds of adults walking around this country who were abused as kids and it was never dealt with. And they then become abusers themselves, and on and on and on. I look at child abuse in this country as the number one issue. Number one, because God is never going to bless America as long as we allow this stuff to exist. 

So as far as how I want to spend the rest of my time, it is charging straight at them on whatever subject that may be of people who are evil-minded and are working against God’s will. And especially if they’re coming after kids, I want to be the guy, one of them. There are others out there, but I want to be known as one of them. And I’ve got one of these. That’s kind of what gives me a little bit of a different edge—music is my weapon of choice. Music, not being a politician, music. That’s how I want to be known.

Mr. Jekielek:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The implication is that you have to choose. 

Mr. Rich:

Right. That’s very true. That’s been borne out through many stories of many, many people throughout history, even in the Bible. That’s borne. I mean, King David, who God referred to as a man after my own heart, at one point in his life, put Uriah on the front lines to make sure he died in battle so David could steal his wife Bathsheba. That’s pretty bad. So that was an evil side of David’s heart. That was straight-up evil. 

Then on the other side, David ran straight at Goliath when nobody else would, knocked him down, and cut his head off with his own sword. You know, so that statement is absolutely spot on. And human beings, let’s cap it with this: human beings are not capable of not being evil unless they have God in them. The only way you’re not an evil individual is because it’s all in you; you are sin. 

You’re born into sin. You have to ask Jesus Christ to become the Lord of your life and turn your life over to him. Then he comes in, and then he overrides those evil intuitions. Then you do what he wants you to do. You carry out his will, not the will of the wicked. That’s it. That’s the only reason I’m not a bad guy, because I’d be a nasty bad guy. 

Instead, I’m a nasty good guy. I want to be a good guy and have an impact. When you know where you’re going when you die, that gives you a lot of confidence to run straight at them. Because what are you going to do to me? What’s the worst thing you can do? Kill me, right? Kill somebody. And what happens then? I mean, don’t threaten me with a good time. I mean, that’s going to be the best day of your life. So I view it like that. I think anything less than that attitude is probably not going to win the fight. 

Mr. Jekielek:

John Rich, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Rich:

I appreciate you coming to the house. I’ve followed your organization for a long time and I’m still learning more today as we were talking off camera. You guys keep up the great work. You’re very important to American culture.

Mr. Jekielek:

Thank you very much.

Mr. Rich:

Yes, sir. Thank you. This room back here, this is where I write a lot of the songs.

Mr. Jekielek:

The Man, what is that about?

Mr. Rich:

The song, The Man, is a song I wrote about a month after my granddaddy died. A World War II vet, he suffered multiple Purple Hearts. So when he died, I thought, man, I gotta write a song about him. So a month later, I wrote The Man. It is the history of his service in World War II in a song. But it’s actually become kind of a calling card song for all kinds of vets and even active duty.

So this wall is made up of all retired guitars of mine. So at the very end, that was my very first one. I told you my dad gave me a little kid guitar to learn on in 1979 when I was five years old. This is really where I sit down and write. So this whole thing up here is a collection of lyrics. So we talked about, for instance, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. 

So I would ask friends of mine like Charlie Daniels, hey, can you write down the words to The Devil Went Down to Georgia? Look how many words are in that song. It probably took him two hours to write that. But he wrote it, signed it, dated it. I’ve got Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA up there, and just all kinds of country songs that I personally like. When I write, I like to sit in here with those lyrics on the wall because it makes me understand I might be a pretty good songwriter, but I haven’t written that one yet. 

I haven’t written God Bless the USA yet. There’s still higher ranks to go on the creative side of writing songs, and I try not to compare myself to who I’m competing with today. I go, no, I’m competing with Johnny Cash. And as long as you’re competing with Johnny Cash, you’ll never stop pushing because you’re never going to beat him. 

Stuff like my Granny Rich’s sewing machine over there, from 1910. She ran her own business. She was 88 years old, all by herself as an alterations expert. She’d have her ashtray sitting there and she’d smoke Marlboro Reds and fix people’s clothes. When she was in her late 80s, I said, Granny, why are you still working 30 to 40 hours a week? And she would get offended by that question. She would reply, why am I still working? Because I can. And that’s what you’re supposed to do when you live in this country. That’s just as American as it gets. 

 

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.