It took a whole lot more than just me to bring this to life. As far as wanting to be in the whiskey business, I have always been a fan of Buffalo Trace and Harlen Wheatley, the master distiller with a bottle of something he has made in every studio I’ve ever made a record in.
When you get to the position that we’re in, in a notoriety kind of way, a lot of people come at you with proposals and endorsements. Because I sing about whiskey, we had more than a few interested parties wanting us to do projects with them, but I wasn’t particularly interested because the juice wasn’t right, or they just wanted me to slap my name on something.
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And then the opportunity with Buffalo Trace came up. They were developing a blended whiskey and wanted to know if I would participate, something they had never done before. Most of the things that Buffalo Trace produces are allocated and hard to find. So, this project was to create something that would be an unallocated blended whiskey, that can go all over the world and – hopefully – always be stocked, as well as not having to pay an outrageous secondary market premium for it.
That was all very appealing to me – as long as it was good, and that was something I was sure of because of Harlen’s involvement. We went through some of the tasting processes on and landed on the one, and when we got to blend number 40, I said, “This is the one, right?”, Harlen responded, “Yeah, this is the one”.
Making whiskey is an art form. There is a lot more to it in terms of chemical engineering, but it comes down to the people involved and that is what makes it an art.
Whiskey is part of the fabric of Kentucky, how did that influence you?
Well, you don’t think about it when you grow up in Kentucky. It’s just something that is present as part of the landscape. Oddly enough, I grew up in a household where my parents didn’t drink or do anything like that, so I wasn’t necessarily around whiskey, but it is certainly part of that state’s DNA, and a big part of the story.I’m sure those things exist in Australia, I’m starting to feel like coffee might be one! There are things you grow up with and as you get older, you develop an appreciation for. They form part of an identity for where you are from. With whiskey, if you have a whiskey from where you are from, there is a certain sense of pride in that.
Why the name Traveller?
Traveller was the first record that we ever made, and it was a song that I wrote not long after my dad passed away about life and how we’re all kind of passing through it.
When it got to the time of building this whiskey together, they had a working name I wasn’t particularly keen on. I suggested Traveller and then there was a whole process of seeing if the name was available. It turned out Buffalo Trace had the rights to it, so it felt like it was meant to be. I hope when people buy it, it feels that way to them too.
What about the flavours in the whiskey?
There are two kinds of whiskey – what I like and what I don’t and three guys on tour with me whose palettes I really trust. One is the bass player in the band. The others are Vance Powell, who engineers all our records, and Mike Harris, one of the most incredible musicians around Nashville. We all tasted the blends it at the same time and all agreed that this was something worth doing.
It is genuine to who we are, the story of our music, and to the guys involved in making our music.
What would you say to someone who hasn’t tried Traveller yet?
That it’s good! If the fact it’s endorsed by a celebrity is off putting to you, put that on the back burner, because the truth is what is in the bottle, and that is amazing.
I’m not a person who endorses things or says positive things about products I don’t believe in. But I certainly think Traveller can become somebody’s go-to whiskey very easily because it is very easy to drink, even if you are not a whiskey drinker.
If you approach it with an open mind of simply trying a new elevated blended whiskey, or trying something new altogether, then I think you are going to be surprised to discover that even if you thought you didn’t like whiskey, you like this one. And if you are a whiskey person, you are going to find it very easy drinking and something that should be on the shelf at all times. I think that is what you need to go into it thinking.
