CURRENT SINGLE: “Old School’s In”
Heath Sanders has tattooed, in big block letters, on his inner left forearm, the words “EARNED NOT GIVEN.” It turns out, that tattoo is meant to serve as a constant reminder to Heath to work hard and never slack off. He explains, “Since I was 14 years old, I’ve been waking up – even before that because dad would get me up to go milk cows in the morning when I was a kid. But out of school, I went straight to the oil field from there, and then construction and different things, but I’ve been gettin’ up at five and six in the morning my entire life. That’s all I’ve ever really known.”
But then, Heath quit the oil field and moved to Nashville and got a record deal, and he found himself sleeping in later and later. He says, “I started gettin’ upset at myself. Like, ‘Dude, this is still a job, buddy. You don’t just get up and write a song when you want to. You get up and grind it out every day or you’re gonna fail at this.’”
But rather than settling for a self-talking to, Heath says, “That’s literally why I went and got this tattoo. It was so I can roll over every morning, look down at my arm, and say, ‘Dude, you gotta get up. You’ve gotta go get this thing.”
Heath Sanders – earned not given tattoo :47
“Since I was 14 years old, I’ve been waking up – even before that because dad would get me up to go milk cows in the morning when I was a kid. But out of school, I went straight to the oil field from there, and then construction and different things, but I’ve been gettin’ up at five and six in the morning my entire life. That’s all I’ve ever really known. And so, when it’s this music thing kicked off, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I can sleep in!’ So, I found myself, the first couple of months after I’d quit the oil field and put my two weeks in there, I started noticing that now I’m sleeping later and later, and I started gettin’ upset at myself. Like, ‘Dude, this is still a job, buddy. You don’t just get up and write a song when you want to. You get up and grind it out every day or you’re gonna fail at this.’ And so, that’s literally why I went and got this tattoo. It was so I can roll over every morning, look down at my arm, and say, ‘Dude, you gotta get up. You’ve gotta go get this thing.”