Former Saints’ Pro Bowl offensive tackle turned country singer/rocker Kyle Turley took some time out of his busy schedule to field a phone call from me, and we talked for a good 25 minutes about a slew of topics ranging from his music, to his fanhood of the Saints, his time as a player, Aaron Brooks and much more.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE SAINTS NATION INTERVIEW WITH KYLE TURLEY
Below is the transcript from the interview if you prefer to read it, and videos of his singles! (click read more):
(on what he is up to these days)
Kyle Turley: “Just been doing my music. I’ve always been involved with music. The Saints fans that knew me the best knew of my music interest and so since retiring after my last year with the Chiefs, pretty much 100% into music here in Nashville. I moved here since about 2007, so I’ve been working on that“.
(on adjustment from life in the NFL to life as a musician)
Not a big huge adjustment, I’ve been involved with music pretty much as long as I’ve been playing football, so I’ve been repping bands and doing other things since about 2006. Since being retired it’s just sort of a natural progression, you know?
(on why he chose “Anger Management” as the title of his album)
I just found it fitting to be the title of my record. All the songs are a lot of stuff I just wanted to get off my chest. Things I write about are inspired by my past, a little bit of where I’m trying to go, what I’ve been through in life and everything, perspective on other things from fatherhood to being a Saint, playing football, having it all, losing it all, starting from the bottom all over again after bad injuries, and just dealing with the outcomes of life in general. It’s a book, if you will, that you can listen to and those that listen hard enough will get a good perspective about my life pretty much until this point.
(on if the music is good for Saints fans and NFL fans)
Oh yeah definitely, that’s what I wanted to do. Write a record that people could recognize and go “oh, yeah, that’s Kyle Turley”. I believe I accomplished that.
(on his health after football, suffering from post concussion issues)
Ah you know, it is what it is. Those things are serious and they’re not really fixable right now. That’s just something that you have to learn to deal with, like all the other injuries I received playing football. But that’s life, everybody’s got their own thing and this is mine. I got paid a lot of money and I had a lot of fun losing brain cells beating my head around and blowing my back out, and doing all those things. Some people do that just walking out in the street and having life happen to them. I was able to do it in front of 80,000 people… it is what it is. I fight dearly for the retired people (of the NFL) because of the way the business is run, As far as the NFL, and the employees, meaning the players, are treated in injury situations. It’s pretty much unlike any occupation of this standard in the world, really. As far as being the extreme professionals that we are as professional athletes is the equivalent of being one of these top executives at one of these banks that just got bailed out with a bonus or whatever. But these guys don’t risk their bodies and their minds, (and dealing with) the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia before you’re 50 years old. They get benefits with the government (but) the NFL basically just cuts ties with you. Ships you on down the line… It’s been a pretty exhausting battle to say the least.
(on if he truly bleeds black and gold, and his thoughts on the SuperBowl win)
(the song) It’s called “My Soul Bleeds Black and Gold” and it definitely does. It’s the only tattoo I have on my body of a team I played for. I have a couple fleur de lis’ on me in permanent ink. I have a great afinity for that city and the people of that city, I always have. It was an unfortunate decision by the management of the Saints to get rid of me as a player. I had to go somewhere else, I guess, in some ways for myself to realize what I had there, to realize the specialness of that city, that team and the history we had there. But you know I spent five years there and it was a great experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything really. It was sad I had to leave but such is the business of football, man. All I ever wanted to do was go out there and play and the business side of things seemed to be the demise of my career, but New Orleans is going to hold a special place in my heart, always. We got a ton of friends, people that we consider family down there, my wife and I got married down there. We’ll always be back to New Orleans any chance we get. Even when we left we were always going back two to five times a year. Now, playing my music, I got down there a lot. Playing shows down there, it’s like I never left in some regards.
(what happened with his ugly ending with the Saints)
I don’t know if it’s water under the bridge, I could care less about it anymore personally. My career is done and it’s over, there’s nothing you can do about it. At the time it was hurtful as a player to have given so much to the team. For me to be sitting there just wanting a deal to get done to keep me in New Orleans, make me a Saint for the rest of my life. At the time it was close to getting done, you know Randy Mueller was the general manager and he was having great discussions with my agent and everything was going to happen and take place. All of a sudden out of nowhere, Randy Mueller gets fired and Mickey Loomis gets the job, moves up from crunching numbers to being the general manager and it just got sideways after that. He got things personal, I guess, I took a lot of things personal that he said to my agent about why I didn’t deserve to get paid what the other guys got paid. More so than the money it was the respect factor for me. It just got to a point where it was like, OK, if Tom Benson is not going to stand up for me and if Mickey Loomis is not going to stand up for me and say “we want Kyle Turley to be a Saint for the rest of his life” and you know I was seeing guys like Willie Roaf and Chris Naoele and all these guys that I had been there with for so long just get shipped out, you know? I was just like – man, this is ridiculous, why are we doing this? I let it get to me. I should have just been happy to have a job at the time and looking back on it as a young man it was a big immature on my part but just the same on their part. As an owner of a company, I’ve been involved with some business, there’s a time and place where you put your foot down and say “no, we don’t think you’re worth more than this” or whatever. But I wasn’t that person for the Saints and I know things were said about me that shouldn’t have been said, being discussed behind closed doors that got back to me through discussions. It was just one of those deals, man, the business side of football, it gets in the way of everything. As a player you just want to go out there to play and you want to go out there and give everything you got. You just want a deal to get done and make sure you don’t have to think about that anymore. It was a combination of all those things that led to me finally giving up on them and saying “you know what, if you guys don’t want me here then fine, trade me”. That’s what happened man.
(on Aaron Brooks and the criticism from many that he was a bad leader that didn’t care enough)
Nah man, Aaron was just a guy out there trying to win games. I guess he didn’t do the best job of, you know, showing his dislike for things when he screwed up. When he’d smile and throw interceptions and things like that, he didn’t do himself any justice there. But as a competitor I know he went out there to win every time. There’s nothing better than winning and everybody wants to do it. Just like my career I think the business aspect got in the way once some injuries started to pile up on him, and he started seeing the writing on the wall with those injuries. He had a pretty bad injury to his shoulder, and that hampered his throwing ability. When you’re not winning football games, everything has to be fixed. They have to go back to the drawing board instead of allowing things not to get worse, you know? Now that we have a flaw, let’s move forward, you know? We had a situation where his before last year there I guess and my last year there, I believe it was 2002, we were winning and things just got sideways towards the middle of the season and we started losing and it was a combination of a lot of things. With him personally, though, it was his injury to his shoulder that hampered his throwing ability and it snowballed on him, because the balls weren’t getting there, he wasn’t completing passes and we weren’t winning football games. That’s why they say so often the NFL stands for “not for long”, because if you’re not winning that’s exactly how your career is going to go and it doesn’t matter who you are. It was just an unfortunate set of cirumstances, they probably could have done a better job telling him his shoulder was hurt. If he had gotten sidelined, maybe rehabbed his injury, he wouldn’t have had to have surgery at that point. They allowed him to keep throwing on that arm and he did it anyways. I know his contract was heavily incentive laden, so he felt he needed to go out there and be on the field. You get certain things and a lot of money is at stake when you have an incentive laden contract, being on the field means a lot of dollars, so if you’re a quarterback and you’ve got a shoulder injury you don’t know how bad it is because they’re not taking it that seriously either. I don’t fault the guy for being out there and doing just as much as he can to get as much money as he could, you know? They kick you to the curb right after that.
(so you think he made a mistake playing on that injury in hindsight?)
Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. But I don’t blame him because that’s the nature of the NFL, if you’re not out there playing you’re going to lose your job. He probably could have gotten some better advice. He had a lot of talent and they had just invested a lot of money in him. He probably could’ve gotten away with sitting on the sideline for a while rehabbing an injury. Look at Drew Brees in San Diego with his injury and how he was able to resurface his career. I think it just went sideways on him and he got locked into a situation where he felt like he needed to be on the field contractually to make money. Whatever that is, that’s his business. But I know he wanted to win, because noboby wants to lose. It’s just unfortunate that they didn’t recognize that as a team and put Jake Delhomme in there. I think they did recognize, though, that if they did put Jake Delhomme in there that Jake would end up doing a really good job and they would end up having to pay him too, which would have been the best thing they could have done for the team. We probably could have won a Super Bowl a lot sooner than they did last year.
(did the players in the locker room want Jake to replace Brooks after the injury?)
Well yeah, especially when Aaron got hurt. It was one thing when Aaron wasn’t hurt, but when he got hurt it was visibly noticeable to the rest of us on the team. Joe Horn was saying in the media that the ball wasn’t coming the same as it was, you know? When you’ve got your best receiver saying that you should listen to him. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. They were up there crunching numbers and it didn’t work with their little system.
(on how the Saints dropped the ball on not hiring him to play at halftime opening night against the Vikings)
(laughs) Well you know, we’ve just been talking about it there for a little while, there’s still some bad blood I feel. Like I said I could care less, man, it is what it is. I know the history of that team and I know where it came from. There things are with that organization, they’re going to run things the way they want to run it, they’re going to do that. I don’t have anything to say about it, you know?
(on if he’s still open to playing in New Orleans someday)
Well I tell you the best way to do that is to tell all the Saints fans out there to tell their people and everybody to tell their people and keep it going down the line to keep downloading that song. Because that’s why Dave Matthews is playing there and whoever else you just listed, I mean, those people are selling millions of records and they have millions of fans. They want the ratings and they want people to buy those premium tickets. If my song does well and if I become as popular as any of those other people with my music, then I don’t think it can be denied. The Saints will end up deciding it’s a good business decision for them to put me there and allow me to play a halftime show and rock out “My Soul Bleed Black and Gold” in front of all those Saints fans. That day will come man, hopefully! As long as the Saints fans understand you’re only going to be getting any gigs if you’re selling records and selling songs and you’re climbing those charts. I appreciate you paying attention to what I’m doing now and spreading that word. Please tell all your fans and listeners and bloggers from myspace to facebook to get on youtube and look at all our videos with clicks to get those numbers going. The higher those things get, man, the more the music is downloaded, it just helps me so much more to have those opportunities. I want them and we’re ready and when the time is right it’ll happen.
(on that he’s still the same Kyle Turley)
No man like I said I appreciate you. I thank you for affording me this opportunity. I’ll never change brother, you can bet on that. We’re playing down there at Gretna fest on October 2nd. Spread that word for us, hopefully we’ll get some people out there for that. We’re throwing up something on our site soon for a concept that we have for Monday Night Football house parties or sports bars with stages. We’re going to be doing our Monday Night Football thing for the public or let the club call us up and book it man. Hopefully we’ll get some down in Louisiana this Saints season and keep it real. Maybe over in Chalmette or something at somebody’s crib. We’ll have a big old party that the cops will shut down, that would be a lot of fun!
(to book him)
Yeah go to GRIDIRONRECORDS.COM for everything. For all your Kyle Turley needs!
For info on Kyle Turley, CLICK HERE. You can buy his cd, book him for an event and learn more about his album and band. Enjoy some of Kyle’s videos on youtbe below!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUqiwpep5VU&fs=1&hl=en_US] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYhz1n2Ge-I&fs=1&hl=en_US]
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