TODAY (June 24th 2018)
Blake Shelton has a big new bar and music joint in Nashville
BLAKE SHELTON (The Voice): Of course I love that song. That's Cat Stevens.
ADAM LEVINE (The Voice): Wow. You knew asong.
BLAKE SHELTON (The Voice): Don't you wish since he's dressed like a mime he would actually sound like a mime? Wouldn't that be great?
GWEN STEFANI (The Voice): Wow. Wow.
WILLIE GEIST: Blake Shelton and his buddy Adam Levine ripping on each other lovingly as they have now for fourteen seasons on the hit NBC singing competition, The Voice. Blake is the first to tell you that his seat in the big red chair on The Voice changed his life in more ways than one. The forty-two-year-old Oklahoma native was an established star in country music when he joined as a coach seven years ago, but the show introduced him and his big personality to millions of new fans. It also introduced him at a very difficult time in his life to his current girlfriend Gwen Stefani in what many, including Blake, saw as an unlikely match. Blake invited us to his massive new bar and music venue in Nashville called Ole Redto talk about all of it in a Sunday Sitdown.
(Begin VT)
WILLIE GEIST: Blake Shelton is right at home behind the bar at Ole Red, his new restaurant and music venue on Nashville's bustling lower Broadway.
BLAKE SHELTON: Let's make something.
WILLIE GEIST: All right. What are we doing?
BLAKE SHELTON: This is your idea that I should drink on your morning, Sunday morning show.
WILLIE GEIST: Cheers to Ole Red.
(Blake Shelton performing)
WILLIE GEIST: Shelton owns the stage on opening weekend at his new place in a city where he arrived nearly twenty-five years ago as a teenager without much more than a dream to make country music.
WILLIE GEIST: Congratulations on this place.
BLAKE SHELTON: Thank you.
WILLIE GEIST: Is it crazy to see it all? It was a dream for a couple of years now to walk up and down--
BLAKE SHELTON: Yeah.
WILLIE GEIST: --five stories and look out and see your own place?
BLAKE SHELTON: It's exciting to me. Because there wasn't a place like this in Nashville when I moved here.There was plenty of stages you could get on and play, but nothing that felt anything like this. I know there's that seventeen-year-old walking up and down the street right now in Broadway going like, man, I hope I can play in Ole Red one of these days. You know, it's just crazy how it comes full circle.
WILLIE GEIST: The view from the top of his own five story Nashville bar is a little different from the one he grew up with in Ada, Oklahoma. Population about seventeen thousand. Blake is the youngest of three. His mom was a beauty shop owner. His father, a used car sales man. Blake was drawn to music at a young age, so his mom Dorothy got him on stage the only way she knew how.
WILLIE GEIST: I'm thinking about eight-year-old Blake Shelton in the beauty pageants. What was that like?
BLAKE SHELTON: What kind of a show is this? Why do they bring up beauty pageants?
WILLIE GEIST: It launched your career, Blake, the pageants.
BLAKE SHELTON: Yeah, it sure did.
(Excerpt from a video/1985)
BLAKE SHELTON: Look, in Ada, Oklahoma, if you want to be a singer in 1984, there's not a lot of options. And so, you know, I was in my bedroom singing every night and mom thought it was cute. And she asked me, you know, do you want to sing on stage,like, do you want to be a singer? Yeah. So the--really the only option was whatever pageants for kids was going on that there was a talent portion where you got to perform. And so I had to do these pageants in order to be able to get up and sing my, you know, Bob Seger. And then now all of these years later, I find out that it's still like being in a pageant. This is the swimsuit part of my day.
WILLIE GEIST: Mom's idea worked. Shelton took up guitar and started writing songs at fifteen. And at seventeen, just two weeks after graduating from high school, Blake picked up and moved to Nashville.
WILLIE GEIST: Those early years in Nashville, what were those years like?
BLAKE SHELTON: Back then all you cared about was getting a record deal. That's all it mattered. There wasn't the internet. And you couldn't make it on YouTube or Facebook or MySpace or whatever. You know, you had to be on the radio. If you wanted to get on the radio, you needed a record deal. And there was a time or two that-- that I got close and-- and it went away and it was really discouraging to me. You know, seven years later and I was still singing demos for forty dollars apiece.
WILLIE GEIST: Shelton was persistent and eventually got the attention of two record label executives who already had passed on him.
BLAKE SHELTON: And they said, you know, we-- we remember Blake from a few years ago. We almost signed him. What did you cut on him? And they played and they said, man, he's ready. And they signed me.
WILLIE GEIST: Wow.
BLAKE SHELTON: And it was weird how that relationship that was so devastating years before they ended up being the same people who gave me my-- my first break.
WILLIE GEIST: In 2001,Blake finally released his self-titled debut album. It gave him his first number one hit, the love story ballad, Austin.
(Blake Shelton performing)
WILLIE GEIST: Over the next decade of ups and downs in Nashville, Shelton spun off eight number one hits.
(Blake Shelton performing)
WILLIE GEIST: But it was a call from Hollywood that changed his life.
(Excerpt from The Voice)
BLAKE SHELTON: And then The Voice came along. I didn't realize most people in this country had never ever even heard of me at all or heard my music. And it wasn't until I got on The Voice as a-- as a coach that I realized man, I am nobody. And I remember the first time or two that they introduced us on to the stage and then just, you know, a couple of, like, dude, who the hell is Blake Shelton? What-- who is that? I don't know. The Voice changed everything for me. I mean everything.
WILLIE GEIST: The added exposure and the chance to show off his charm--
BLAKE SHELTON (The Voice): I'm sorry for whatever old lady Adam stole that sweater from that's in here.
WILLIE GEIST: --helped push him to the top of the country music world. Blake has strung together seventeen consecutive number one hits, the longest streak ever in country music. Shelton won five straight Country Music Association Awards for Best Male Vocalist. And last year, he became the first country artist ever to be named People's Sexiest Man Alive.
BLAKE SHELTON: It's like water. It's like air.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah.
BLAKE SHELTON: It's a thing that--
WILLIE GEIST: Right.
BLAKE SHELTON: --it's real.
WILLIE GEIST: It's an objective truth.
BLAKE SHELTON: No matter how much people hate it, it just is it.
WILLIE GEIST: A welcome magazine cover after the tabloids made an industry out of his very public marriage and divorce from fellow country super star Miranda Lambert. In the wake of that divorce, Blake found love where he never expected it, with his voice co-star Gwen Stefani.
GWEN STEFANI (The Voice): I feel like you don't like me anymore.
BLAKE SHELTON (The Voice): I don't. I-- I love you.
WILLIE GEIST: You said many times that she saved your life.
BLAKE SHELTON: Yeah. You know, when I was going through, you know, my divorce and just, you know, hit rock bottom, just like anybody does when they go through something that devastating, it's a miracle that I met somebody that was going through the same exact thing that I was at the exact same moment in time. If Gwen and I were being honest right now talking about this, I think in the back of our mind we both kind of thought this is a rebound deal. I mean, because we're both coming out of a, you know, pretty low spot in our-- in our lives and we're kind of clinging to each other to get through this and now here we are, you know, going on three years later and every day that goes by, it just feels like a stronger bond between the two of us and it's constantly feels like it's going to the next level and I'm at a point in my life where time is as valuable as-- as anything and-- and having it with a family and with Gwen and-- and her kids and just what's important to you, you know, at this age, it starts to change, you know?
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah.
BLAKE SHELTON: and I've had my time and I've been so lucky and-- and I'm so grateful for it.
WOMAN #1: Gwen and Blake.
MAN #1: Hi, Gwen, Blake.
WILLIE GEIST: Would you get married again?
BLAKE SHELTON: Of course, I would. I mean, my gosh, you got to keep taking a stab at life, you know? And I don't know if I-- if I will. But of course I would. I'm-- I'm not afraid. Bring it on.
(End VT)
WILLIE GEIST: Bring it on says Blake Shelton. Our thanks to Blake for having us down to Ole Red in Nashville. Blake will be back on The Voice when the show returns this fall for its fifteenth season here on NBC. To see us dig a little bit deeper into Blake's relationship with Gwen Stefani and a lot more, check out webextras at today.com/sunday. And don't forget to subscribe to the Sunday Sitdown Podcast to hear the entire unedited conversation with a special focus, of course, on Blake's Sexiest Man Alive title. You can find it on Tune In or wherever you get your podcast.