Casey James Exclusive Interview — Part Three

The first time I spoke with Casey James it was as he was relaxing in his home in Ft. Worth on the cusp of his big move to Nashville to work on his debut album.  We spoke again a couple of weeks later after Casey had returned somewhat unexpectedly back to Texas.  As I learned at the time, Casey was back home to spend some time with his ailing “Papaw” and his family.    Here’s a photo his mother posted of his visit with his family:

I expressed my condolences, and those of his fans, for his grandfather’s illness and its impact on his family and Casey demonstrated how his faith helps him through such a difficult time.  “It’s a rough deal.  I try to look at the positive side of things.  And there are positives, if you have the beliefs that I have, there are positives to dying.  But it’s not something that I look forward to for anyone that I love and care about.  So it’s a tough situation. Like I said, I try to stay positive.  But I mean the real truth of it is I don’t want to lose my Papaw and my mom doesn’t want to lose her father and we want to have those times that we’ve always had and we want to continue to have them.  But like I said, you have to try to keep positive and try to understand that everything comes to an end and we have to enjoy what we have while we have it.  That’s why I made the trip down.”

As he explained at the time, “It’s a good thing to be able to spend this time with my Papaw and my mom.  Nothing is guaranteed, not even one day.  Just got to take it while I’ve got it.”  Casey drove from Nashville for the week and then headed back.  “I wanted to fly but I had five, actually six giant boxes full of stuff to give away.  I’ll have my brother and my cousin go through it.”  Now you might think I’m making the rest up in an effort to qualify Casey for Man of the Year, but he really did add, “Then I’ll give the rest to Goodwill, because everybody’s in quite a bind.”

At the time we spoke, Casey was waiting to hear if he had tickets for that night’s Dallas Cowboys game.  Despite the Cowboys’ record at the time, he was looking forward to being able to see them play live.  “My first NFL game,” he said.  “I’m pretty excited about.  But we’ll see.  There was a guy from ESPN I met at Good Morning America and he said if you ever want to go to a game.  I said, I’d sure love to.  So he supposedly got me tickets, but they weren’t at will call.”

When I joked that Casey was now a big media celebrity and should be able to get whatever tickets he wants, he replied, “Even if I could I wouldn’t want to.  I think if you’re the type of person like I am, it feels a little funny.  Kind of like ‘look at me, do you know who I am?’  I don’t really dig that. So I try to stay away from that kind of stuff.”  As we know now, Casey did get the tickets but the Cowboys did not put up much effort in that night’s game.

Someone unfamiliar with Casey James might not expect that a musician in the midst of putting out their first record would take the time out to be with their family, but those familiar with him know how close his familial bond is.  Casey could not imagine that he should be anywhere other than by his family’s side.  In fact, he commented how strange it was for someone to say to him, “it’s good that you are going back to spend the time.”

As he told me, “I thought, if there comes a time where my family isn’t number one, and isn’t the most important thing, then I’m in a bad place.  Then I’ve got troubles. Because to me, life in general is about family and friends and making a difference in a positive way in the people’s lives around you and doing what you can to make the world a better place.  If you do that then I feel like you’ve lived a successful life and regardless of how much money you made or how many people know your name.  It’s not about that it’s about those things and that’s a big piece of why I am who I am.  It doesn’t even cross my mind to think any other way.  When someone said, oh that’s awesome, I thought,” he paused and gave out a little chuckle, “it is what it is, that’s the only way I know how to be.”

So where do these values come from?  “It’s about being raised by family that’s extremely tight.”  You can tell how much Casey values his family and the priorities they instilled in him.  He was clear that he intends to continue to pass on these values to his family.  “I actually thought…no matter how much money I make, if I ever do make a bunch of money, and if I don’t, great, whatever, but even if I do make a bunch of money, I thought I’d like to raise my family as though we were poor.  I mean it in the best possible way.  You do things as a family I feel like sometimes….  I think it’s sometimes harder for people that do have more money…I’m not saying this is across the board but I’ve seen it sometimes.”

Casey is a very contemplative person and you could sense that this was not an idea that just popped into his head, but something he’s given a great deal of thought to.  “Sometimes when people have money it takes them away from their family, it subtracts from that.  As a poor family growing up, we did a lot of things together that a lot of other people didn’t do.  If you only have one car, you all ride in the same car. That’s a family experience.  If you only have a smaller house, then you’re together a lot more.  A lot of things that are obvious, they make a big difference.”

Far from ruing his humble beginnings, Casey is very appreciative of where he came from and what it has meant to him becoming the person he is today.  During our first interview, Casey told me that his music was a combination of who he was, what he’d been through and his musical influences.  I asked for him to focus on the first part of the equation, who he is.  “I think that the way that I am is a result of my situation as much as anything.  I’m not saying that your situation creates the person, because obviously that’s not the case because everybody is different and a lot of people have the same situation.  But what I am saying is that I feel like that’s a huge part of where I come from and why I am, who I am.  Because you spend a lot of time together and you do things differently, and you value things differently.  I understood at a young age that my mother worked, and I understood that her working provided us with the things that we had.  I got that and I understood it and because I understood it, that gave me not only more respect for my mother but a deeper place in my heart for her and for what she was doing.”

Casey explained that he learned what was important, what had real value, and it wasn’t money or tangible things.  “I understood and I got it at a young age.  I think those types of thoughts and feelings stay with you as you move forward in life.  I never really wanted anything as a kid and that’s also moved with me and stuck with me through my life.  I don’t buy things and I don’t have things and I don’t really want them. Thank God because I never had the money to have them,” he added with a rueful laugh.

I asked Casey, didn’t he have a Christmas list like most kids with the things he wanted?  The answer was simple.  “No.  Even now, I haven’t bought one thing since I came off the show.  I’ll be honest with you, I’ve got more money that I ever had before, but it hasn’t changed a single thing.  I’m still wearing beat-up boots and the same jeans and shirts that I wore before.  I haven’t bought any new cars … I’m still doing the exact same things I was doing before.  I know obviously, eventually, I’ll get a nice place if I ever get that much money and move forward.  Right now it’s kinda like, I don’t know, those things just aren’t important to me.  They never have been.”

He went on to give me an example.  “If the car gets you from Point A to Point B, then it works.  Do I need a 100k car?  Do I need a 50K car?”  Then he stopped himself.  “That’s a funny example; it’s a funny one for me because I love cars. I’d love to be like Jay Leno, if I had money. I love cars.  It’s a stupid thing for me.  I love to build them; I love old muscle cars and trucks.”  So Casey differentiated between spending money just to spend it versus spending money now and then for something special.  “If it’s worth it to you as a person, it’s going to be something you will enjoy.  But just for the sake of having something, I’ve never been that way.”

I told Casey that when I interviewed his ex-wife, her daughter Adi told Kellie to tell me about “Casey and his trucks.”  He laughed.  “Oh yeah!  It came down from my Papaw.  He is a car enthusiast, he loves cars.  Fast cars.  One of the things we’d always do.   My Papaw is very handy and anything that isn’t perfect he has to make it perfect and fix it.  When he gets a new truck he will do certain things like take the grill out, black it out or switch it to this.…He always custom does it himself. He’s not going to a store and buying stuff. He actually does the work.  And because of that, I think me and my brother we always do that to our stuff.  We always personalize our stuff.  I’ve done that with all of my vehicles.  I think at the time with Kellie, I went through two different trucks and that was a stupid, stupid mistake, I lost a bunch of money on it.  But I was getting horrible gas mileage on my truck so I had to get rid of it.  I had a Dodge and I went to a Chevy and both of them I always spent a bunch of time tinkering with them and personalizing something to them.  Kind of a hobby.  Some people like to paint or draw, my stuff is, I like cars, trucks, and I like music, and I like games.”

On the subject of games, I recalled during one American Idol Live Tour stop, that there was a rumor floating around about Casey being a big winner at poker.  So does Casey like poker?  “I do love to play poker.  I’m not really that great.  What’s funny is that I know that I’m not that great, but every  time I play I win, and I know it has nothing to do with my skill level. Because I don’t have any skill.  Obviously, there’s a certain amount of luck to anything that’s a game of chance.  A lot of people will tell you luck has nothing to do with it, but in any game where you don’t know what card is coming next, you have to admit there a certain amount of chance involved.   I’m really lucky when it comes to poker.  I definitely have no doubts about my lack of skill when it comes to that.  But I love to play.”

From some of the videos and photos out there, we also know that Casey loves to play pool.  What other games does he like?  “Yes, I love to play pool, love to play darts, love to play any game.  Cards, any kind of card game, I don’t care what it is.  Any kind of board game, any kind of video game, any kind of actual sports, being outdoors, throwing a Frisbee, throwing the football, baseball, playing tennis.  I like the interaction between people. A lot of people go out and drink and they hang out and drink.  Since I don’t drink, it’s a way to have something to do rather than just standing there and staring at each other.”

I asked Casey whether it was the competitive aspect or the social aspect of games and sports that he liked.  “I like both.  I love to compete, but I don’t… believe it or not.  I love to win, I would love to win, and I always play to win.  But if I lose, okay.  I played the best that I could.  It’s all good.  Great job, you beat me.  Whereas some of my family, my cousin,” and here there was a hearty Casey laugh, “he hates to lose.  He takes it really personal if you beat him.  To me it’s so much fun to play against him because he does get really into it.   I’m not going to lie, I don’t like to lose but once it’s done, it’s done.  It’s funny and we have a great time.”

Have games always been a big part of Casey’s life?  “Always.  My Papaw and my family we’ve always played 42.  It’s a Texas dominoes game. Another version called moon where you take out the count and play with three people.  It’s not like a straight dominoes games where you’re linking up numbers.  42 is a great game.  You have trumps and you can go nello (sp?) and there’s count involved.  Anything that adds up to 5 or 10 is count. I can give you a quick summary.”  And he did.  Well, he gave a summary, anyway.  “Quick” may be the subject of a definitional dispute.

“The way you play the game,” Casey began, “is anything that adds up to five or ten is a count.  In a set of dominoes, you have 42 points in a set of dominoes.  If you have four people, all four people get 7 dominoes, that’s all the dominoes.  There are 7 tricks and 35 points.  Because you have the five blank, that five points, the four-ones, that’s another five points, so you have ten points, then you have the five-five, that’s another ten, now you have twenty, the six-four that’s another ten, that’s 30, then you have the three-two that’s five points, that 35.   Plus the seven tricks, that’s 42, that’s where you get the name of the game.   And if that made any sense at all you’re ahead of the rest of the world.”

I said it seemed like an interesting game that I might like since I like numbers, and this led to more discussions on some of the finer points of 42 strategy involving trumps and bids which I’ve excluded from this interview in the interest of brevity, preserving my sanity, and holding the reader’s interest.  Suffice it to say, there was a lot to take in.  But to put my mind at ease, Casey admitted “long story short, it took me ten years to learn it.  It’s a family game.”

Casey seemed to enjoy reflecting back on playing with his family.  “We’ve always played all kinds of games, but that game in particular. It’s a Texas thing.  We played 42, we played horseshoes, we played hearts and spades.  Me and my nana used to play Yahtzee back when I was four.  I knew what a full house was.  I always wanted to play games and she would play Yahtzee solitaire and I asked what’s that you‘re playing and she showed me.”  When I told him I was surprised that he could follow the rules at such a young age, Casey said, “I was a pretty smart little kid.”  Then he added something that was good advice for every family to follow, “my family put the time and effort into showing me stuff that I wanted to know.”

I had heard from Casey’s mother that he was a smart kid as well, so I asked if he like school.  “Yeah,” he answered quickly, and then added, “well, I liked learning, I didn’t necessarily like school.  I wasn’t popular or anything like that.  I got picked on quite a bit.”  I asked him about his experience being on the receiving side of bullying.  Did it continue all the time he was in school?  “Not all the way through.  There comes a time where you have to say, okay, enough’s enough.  I think that … Every single person is going to approach it differently.  Some people, it shapes them to be better people and some people it makes them bitter.  Looking back, I don’t think It was a big problem.  It’s just what kids do, it wasn’t an everyday situation.”

With the passage of time, Casey has gained some interesting perspective.  “It was one of those situations that there was the popular group, or actually, when you’re there you think there’s a popular group.  When you go back to school, people say, oh my gosh, he was so cool.  And you’re like, they just said that about me?  A couple years later I went back, maybe to get my transcript, and I remember somebody said something about how cool I was in school and I said, what school did you go to?” Casey laughed.  “Because I thought I was the biggest loser ever.  It’s funny, looking back, from people who weren’t there in that moment,  usually people who think they were the coolest really weren’t at all and the other ones who didn’t think were cool just happened to be the ones who other people looked up to.”

Casey has no regrets about high school or how he felt back then and has put that time in perspective.  “Everybody’s got their own thing.  My thing was music, and that’s what I focused on and that’s what I cared about.  I didn’t care about who was cool in school.  I didn’t date a single girl in my high school or junior high ever.  And I went to a small school, so it was kinda a big deal.”

Music is still Casey’s thing, what he is focused on and what he cares about.  The main difference is now many, many people care about the music Casey will be making.   Luckily for them, they won’t have too long to wait.

–Shari Geller