Bailey Zimmerman has a new song with Luke Combs out today called "Backup Plan." He stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to catch up on his career and share how the collaboration happened.
When Zimmerman heard "Backup Plan," he knew immediately he wanted Combs to be on it with him, but he didn't know him at the time. A few months later, Combs invited Zimmerman to play the benefit concert for the Carolinas. Zimmerman thinks they become fast buddies the day of that show and he wasn't wrong because Combs gave him his phone number. Zimmerman was nervous to send it to Combs, but after listening to it multiple times he decided to finally send a text. He told Combs he would crush this song with him, but Combs didn't respond to the text for a month. Thankfully, Zimmerman had an insider who told him Combs was continuing to listen to it to make a decision. While that month was nerve wracking, Zimmerman gets it. He has done a few collaborations with people he didn't know and it wasn't very fun, so he decided if he was going to do any collaborations it had to be a good connection.
Zimmerman grew up on cars and has always been a General Motors guy because his grandpa was, and any other brand feels betraying to him. Growing up in Florida, he always identified corvettes with people who were rich, so he always said if he made money he would get a corvette and he kept that promise to himself. He plans to keep all of the cars he's bought with the money from this career, he wants to pass them down to his kids one day. He used to do the work himself, but now Zimmerman will just send his cars to shops to get work done on them. His love for cars showed out at the Houston Rodeo, he came out in a jacked up truck. That show was the most nervous Zimmerman has ever been because this past year has had a lot of "fall on my face" moments and he wanted to really prove himself with this particular show and show that he deserved to be there.
Being a new homeowner, Zimmerman is still learning how to be an adult. He doesn't know anything about houses, and it's come with so many problems. Thankfully he has a guy named Shaunzy on his team who has helped Zimmerman adjust to this entire new life. He admitted that at one point in his success, he almost went over to the darker side of stardom. Then, he had an epiphany and realized how he needed to be grateful and positive about this opportunity that he's been given.
Before getting into music, Zimmerman had a few jobs. At 13-year-old, his grandpa hired him to work at the family dealership. When he turned 16-years-old, he was able to start detailing cars, but he didn't stay long. He moved over to a job at the meat market, which eventually turned into a butcher and he was working as the clean up boy. He spent 2.5 years at that job before getting a job to build a pipeline in West Virginia after graduation. Zimmerman was part of the union so sometimes he would work on railroads or road jobs, he was also the guy who would be in the back of a truck dropping cones when people were doing construction stuff. For Zimmerman, he has bad ADHD so the dropping of the cones was a fun job for him. His last job was working on rebuilding a railroad bridge and it was that job that made him realize he hated what he was doing. That's when he began learning to sing and was building trucks on the side and now here he is today.