Early on in the coronavirus quarantine, just before Tim McGraw released his current single, “I Called Mama,” he was trying to stay busy, trying to find ways to connect with fans, and trying to find ways to keep the music playing. In the process, he ended up creating the #DeepCutsChallenge on social media among his famous friends. How it started,” says Tim, “I’m not a great guitar player. I used to play more, but one thing I have done is play a lot more during this time and really got my chops up a little better. But I started sitting around playing all the songs that I was learning when I was in college.”
One of those songs was John Schneider’s “Take the Long Way Home.” Tim says, “People don’t remember John Schneider, except for Bo Duke, but he had a lot of great records, really good stuff, so that’s one of the songs that I always loved of his. So, I just sat down and started playing it. I said, ‘I think I’m going to record this and just see what happens.’ Then we recorded it and I said, ‘Why don’t we challenge people to do it, and we did and it worked out.”
Tim challenged Brad Paisley, along with Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean, to play one of their favorite deep cuts, and then other artists got involved – like Thomas Rhett, Darius Rucker, Charles Kelley, Morgan Wallen and more – and started challenging each other. Not only did it turn out to be fun for the artists, but it was also great for the fans who got to hear some of their favorite artists cover a wide variety of deep cuts.
Tim had so much fun with the #DeepCutsChallenge that he created a Spotfiy playlist featuring some of the songs his friends covered, plus their own songs. Just search “Tim McGraw Deep Cuts” on Spotify to find the playlist.
Tim McGraw – Deep Cuts :29
“Deep Cuts was fun. How it started, I’m not a great guitar player. I used to play more, but one thing I have done is play a lot more during this time and really got my chops up a little better. But I started sitting around playing all the songs that I was learning when I was in college, and I was a big John Snyder fan because he had some great songs … people don’t remember John Snyder, except for Bo Duke, but he had a lot of great records, really good stuff, so that’s one of the songs that I always loved of his. So, I just sat down and started playing it. I said, ‘I think I’m going to record this and just see what happens.’ Then we recorded it and I said, ‘Why don’t we challenge people to do it, and we did and it worked out.”