The Art of an Authentic Comeback - Jon Bellion

Jon Bellion is a singer-songwriter, producer, and artist. Fame has a gravity of its own, and once you’re in the spotlight, leaving it isn’t easy. Yet Jon Bellion found more truth in stepping behind the scenes to focus on creating. Now, as a new father and a renewed artist, what gives his life meaning, and what message does he want to share with the world? Expect to learn why Jon Bellion is not touring when he has a new album out, why Jon stepped back from social media and why he has a fake Instagram account, if Jon prefers producing for other people or performing more, how becoming a father has changed Jon and what it means to be a good father figure for young children, what the current direction of pop music is right now, what Jon would tell his younger self back in college about the future of his career and much more… - 0:00 Why Did Jon Stop Touring? 6:17 How to Trust Your Instincts 20:04 Finding Balance In Your Chaotic Life 38:49 How to Find Joy In Small Things 48:11 Why Your Career Doesn’t Define Who You Are 01:03:26 How To Become A World-Class Producer 01:08:39 Why The Most Talented People Don’t Make the Best Music 01:16:55 The Hidden Spark Behind Jon’s New Album 01:23:33 The Most Important Job in Your Life 01:39:34 How Does Generational Trauma Work? 01:49:07 The Truth About Real Inequality 01:55:52 Why Is Everyone Afraid To Take Risks? 02:10:43 How To Boost Your Creativity 02:22:27 Why Jon Walked Away From a Multi-Million Dollar Touring Deal 02:29:19 What are Life’s Unteachable Lessons? - Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  New album?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:01Chris Williamson?

  But you're not touring right now?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 0:03Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Right into it.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  The touring thing is, uh, it's been a bit of a, I toured for a really long time before I walked away from artistry for about six or seven years.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  I've given this, uh, this spiel a couple of times, but it's just like, kind of figured out how the ins and outs worked of it, understood what the toll on my life was opposed to what I was getting paid for, what I was bringing in. And the business just didn't make sense of it. So I've walked away from that a long time ago and then was able to, this time around, just kind of like really do inventory on what's important to me and what I want to do. And we were able to do, uh, Forest Hills Stadium, just two nights, back to back, sold out in a couple of hours and, uh, because the deal was right and I understand the business more, I can just drive home in my minivan and collect my money and be paid more than I've ever done for touring combined in two nights.

• 0:53Chris Williamson?

  Two nights made you more than entire tours previously?

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Just because, because I don't regret any of it, but it just, it definitely put in perspective, oh, oh, this is how they're killing you. This is how they're getting you on the backside. And so, yeah, yeah. So we ended up doing just two nights. Twenty six thousand people showed up. It's crazy, crazy. After every, after six or seven years of being away, it was like moving, super emotional.

• 1:15Chris Williamson?

  After such a long hiatus, were you surprised by the positive response to the album and the Forest Hills shows?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you, you, you build up like, it's like Dre with Detox or like you build up this thing and then the expectation becomes so high that you'll never be able to whatever. So I think I was fortunate enough to just like disappear and go away and write for other people for a super long time. And I think that the pressure was off because I think the fans after a while were just like, I actually just don't think he'll ever put out music again. So then when I was like, I'm putting out music, they didn't have time for there to be this unrealistic expectation of like Step Brothers two, like they didn't have to, it didn't have to be Dumb and Dumber two, like it just was. And on top of that, I just like became a completely different person in seven years. Like you're tapping in with the sound was different. My approach was different. Everything was different. So I think people were like fascinated and interested and it ended up being a blessing.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  It was a bigger debut, top six in the country, top 10 in the world like. And I'm not even like fakely like, oh, it's been, it's been a shock of a blessing. And it's, and this time around, you don't get to do things twice. I almost feel like I'm like Scrooge or something like I woke up on Christmas again and I'm like, I get to do this over.

• 2:23Chris Williamson?

  To run it back.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  So looking out at a stadium sold out two nights in a row and I've never done that six years ago. And somehow it got bigger by the time I came back.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I wasn't even in my own self. I was like watching the movie being like, this is crazy.

• 2:37Chris Williamson?

  How'd that feel? You're so familiar with playing, performing live stuff.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41Chris Williamson?

  And then you do it and it's the same. It's the shit that you've done hundreds of times before. And it's different at the same time. I'm interested in what that.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  I had one of my guys who's played with me since we were in college. My, my buddy George is one of my, my closest, closest friends. And, uh, he was on keys behind me and we both after the show just like held each other. Like, just like, you don't, at this point, it's like, I'm on such borrowed time. I really feel that way. Like, it's like, you don't get to walk away and then end up being like nailing a few number ones to like pay for your life. And then accept the fact that the art she's never coming back. And then the labels like, you know what? He's worth more to us, giving him what he wants than him just never putting it out. Cause I don't think he's bluffing anymore. Like he will not put out.

• 3:22Chris Williamson?

  So you played a game of chicken, basically.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  A six year game with chicken and then had to go to therapy and, and, you know, really settled it in my heart. That's like, this is okay. If this, if this guy's playing on my life, I'm, I'm never going to do this and I will serve other people forever in their vision. Like, that's fine. And I get a lot out of that. And I learned a lot about serving people for a long time, other artists for sure. Like it definitely gave me a tool belt and my vocal ability grew and stuff. But playing that show, looking out, man, run a clip if you want, or you can clip to it. It's just, it was nuts. It was nuts. I've played festivals and stuff, but I've never solo sold out back to back 13,000 people in a night. It's just crazy. It's crazy with, with zero help from the machine or whatever. It's crazy.

• 4:06Chris Williamson?

  I'm interested in the hiatus and the fact that your fans still showed by and after you spent years away, because I think most people in every industry feel like they always need to be producing content to keep their fans engaged.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  You got any idea why people stayed resonant with you despite the fact that you were absent front facing?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's probably a mixture of, uh,

• 4:33Speaker 01

  it's probably a mixture of like, you know, what you don't have. It's like you only sell 10 t-shirts, so then at the time the 10 t-shirts come out again, you don't know if they're gonna only do 10 again, so you're gonna, you're gonna get the t-shirt, you know, you're excited about.

• 4:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  I think there's a scarcity thing and the content stuff. I'm a very, like, I, I still am in real time figuring out as we're talking what content even, it's just not for me. It's not for me. It takes, it takes up too much space in my mind. It causes me to not be present with my family. It's, it's, it's odd and you, it's like funny, I'm like talking to the guy who's like, and you've had probably, you've spoken to so many prolific people about it, so your knowledge of wealth is probably way deeper than mine, but I just don't feel, uh,

• 5:14Speaker 01

  like I say it all the time, I'm not selling a chair, I'm selling me. And I go into town square and I get on a pedestal and I say, these are my beliefs about life, this is my art, this is, this is the deepest reflection I could possibly excavate of myself. And someone in the background goes, fuck you, I don't like it. It's like they're telling they don't like me. I'm not selling, if you don't like a table I made, someone can say, I don't like the table and I can somehow, even though the table is a representation of me, I could somehow separate myself to try to draw people to the table, not draw people to me. And the self obsession stuff, it's tough, it's tough with kids, it's tough in a marriage, it's, it's tough, it's, it's tough to constantly be like, I wake up and how will my next decision make me look and my brand for the next chapter of my life?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  That's a tough, and that's a tough person to be around. It's tough for people to be around that a lot, when every move is this concerted effort to.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  So honestly, me walking away from music wasn't that hard because I never enjoyed. And that doesn't, I'm not like down to earth Cool Joe number one. I just. Hey, guy, it's not.

• 6:17Chris Williamson?

  When were you furthest away from that resonance?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 6:22Chris Williamson?

  You so you mentioned that you're trying to be as transparent, as connected as possible to the work that you do, to the artistic integrity of how you're producing things, your time with your family, presumably time with friends, even like album artwork. You're deep on everything, right?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:41Chris Williamson?

  Is there a time looking back where that felt more or most out of alignment? Where you're like, oh, I really veered off a little bit there and I started playing the game to a level that I could feel.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  I think maybe the day, like the first day you get the first thing on YouTube, the first, I had 5,000 views on the last one. This one has 10. I think the second that became the feedback loop of positivity and whatever, you get yourself on a little bit of a train. That's, you don't even know you're on the train until the shit crashes. You're like, I didn't even, it's like frog in the boiling water type of situation. I think I was always on a trajectory of it's the same thing. It's like you'd mention any artist. It was like, I had the most money and I was ready to kill myself. Look at the crazy story of artist X. And everyone's like, wow, what a deep story. It's the same archetype over and over and oh, I just happened to be blessed enough, just blessed enough to be like,

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I don't know how I'm gonna walk away from this. I don't know how this is gonna work out because I wasn't writing for other people at the time. I'm going back home and I'm gonna make music in my basement and I'm just gonna walk away.

• 7:47Chris Williamson?

  Maybe work at McDonald's.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I told my wife that. It's crazy. I told my wife that. I said, yes. And she's laughing at me. She's like, you're forgetting how talented you are. You've been doing this for a long time. But I just walked away and then by the grace of God, it was like, it was like pew, pew, like hit after hit. But I think that was because I may have shedded.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I may have shedded, uh, what do people want? And what's gonna feed the next?

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  Expectation.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  It was like my heart is vibrating with this song and maybe that's what humans wanted and that will always cut through. So I tried to just stay to that. I tried to. I know that sounds super pseudo like heavy and whatever, but.

• 8:23Chris Williamson?

  I couldn't, I couldn't resonate more like it's.

• 8:28Chris Williamson?

  Instinct is the only thing that's ever led you right.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Ever, ever. Oh, my gosh.

• 8:34Chris Williamson?

  The only thing that's ever led you right, like with the show, you know, the

• 8:40Chris Williamson?

  currency that we traffic in is plays largely, right? Because have you heard me talk about hidden and observable metric?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, okay, so observable metric plays, hidden metric, how much it changes a listener's life.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:53Chris Williamson?

  Right? There's a difference between breadth and depth.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:56Chris Williamson?

  And unfortunately, depth is just hidden metric.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:00Chris Williamson?

  When I feel most connected to the work that I do is when I'm following my instincts as sort of plainly as possible.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:09Chris Williamson?

  And I think the big hurdle for me, and the word that's coming to mind as you're talking about what you did is bravery or courage, that I'm prepared to back myself.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:21Chris Williamson?

  To stick to my principles.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:25Chris Williamson?

  How difficult would it have been to have done that without your wife?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have.

• 9:29Chris Williamson?

  My point being, a lot of people think that they can solopreneur their way through any industry, music, business, whatever.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  You can. I just don't know how, like.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  My wife is unbelievable. I really mean that. It's like.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  It's a grounded perspective. It's an anchor that I would just be. I don't want to know. I don't want to know who I'd be or what it would look like. She's.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  She like just, she like almost knows who I am or knew who I was even when she married me. She knew the the person that like I was going to become, that I don't even know. She almost sees that in a way or something. Yeah, she's. And she, she even like, I've known, I mean, I've known her since middle school. I sat behind her in middle school, so. She's, what's the best way to put it?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  If I did wake up tomorrow and was just like, I'm over it, I'm out. She'd be like, cool, what are we doing today? She's not, it's not.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  She really does just wanna see me happy. So she's she's down for the, alright, you wanna write for six years? I was like, alright, you wanna spend two million, a lot of money on an album and then risk it all yourself? And come back after six years and rent the venues yourself and buy the merch yourself? Alright, let's see if it works. She's ready to go. Cause you know, six years ago, I'm like, I'm never reading art again and I know my future and da, da, da, da. And then six years later, I was like, I have a lot to say. And now they wanna give me my shit back. So I feel like morally, it's a good time for me to actually operate. Cause I'm not a dancing monkey. I'm just making shit and getting paid properly off of it, so.

• 10:58Chris Williamson?

  Dude, that's so cool. That's so sick.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:03Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned that you changed a lot in the space of six years.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I had three kids.

• 11:07Chris Williamson?

  That'll change you.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:12Chris Williamson?

  In fact, actually, before we even get onto that, I need to talk about this fake Instagram account.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Chris Williamson?

  Thing.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:17Chris Williamson?

  Seems like the forum, ticket sales and most of the album rollout was talked about through a blank Instagram account called user 12261990.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  My birthday, yeah.

• 11:30Chris Williamson?

  What the fuck's going on?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Um, social media is too much, is is the brand of my name is too much for me to care about. So it was more freeing to just shitpost and just say things in real time and not curate the post and not whatever. And then for some reason, when I removed it from my name and it was just this like, doing this thing, I knew that the real fans would care. And then the harder it is for people to access the real information that's not on the main page, it would turn fans into more news herald type of people. So I just was like, let's do a Windows 98 like forum, let's do a fake Instagram, let's do all do stuff that creates people to have to kind of dig, to then go tell the rest of the world who are passive fans, this is what it's gonna be. Cause then I hired a label for free, you know, so.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And it just took the pressure off, cause social media is just not for me. I haven't had social media on my phone until I got that fake Instagram. I haven't had it for six years, not a single thing. So it's like, how am I gonna get back into this? Cause the second I post from my main account, it'll be 30,000 likes, and then my.

• 12:32Chris Williamson?

  Play in the game.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And then my whole shit starts to take over again where I'm like, waking up, being like, what is the thing that's gonna remain my relevancy for people to know about my album? Nah, I can't do it.

• 12:41Chris Williamson?

  Did you fear irrelevance?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Fear irrelevance. One of my deepest fears creatively is a hundred percent my

• 12:53Speaker 01

  ideas not being valued to be brought to affect other people. My deepest fear is when you lose your quote unquote relevancy, whether it be in production or artistry or whatever. There's a viable idea that could change the world, but the world doesn't soak it in because the perspective that you've built of yourself is not as strong as it was years ago. So there is this weird dance you have to do.

• 13:13Chris Williamson?

  So you see your relevance as a vehicle.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  My relevance is only a vehicle for utility. My, my, the relevance is a vehicle to present utility to other musicians and to other things to keep the soup turning of culture for this to birth cooler shit than when I'm gone, other things will happen.

• 13:30Chris Williamson?

  You're like a vessel.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  That's it. Nothing else. It's not.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  It's all borrowed books in a library and we're taking and we're reading and we're, there's stardust coming and it's, it's not like, um.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  There's days I'm on my high horse. There's days I think I'm the worst in the world. So it's like, you know, you don't want to be like too over exaggeration, but like it's all borrowed. It's everything is borrowed. It's all just. It's all, um.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Anything that is good in my mind comes from God. So if he shows up to do it through you, it will be good.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Good in a way that will last forever because he lasts forever. So it's like, if he wants to show up, then it'll happen. That's, I'm on that time. Now I'm on that time. He's gonna either, she's gonna show up or he's not. It's like, oh, well then just shit in your room all day and wait for God to show up. It's like, yes, metaphorically it gets very, but I, I can only speak from my gut. And I know right now at thirty four years old with three kids and whatever. He's either gonna, he's either gonna come in a room and play or he's not. It's just, it's just, it is what it is.

• 14:39Chris Williamson?

  There's a great quote, which is, uh, God doesn't want to do all of the work. Some of it is left up to you.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:47Chris Williamson?

  And I think this balance between faith or belief and agency.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It's stupid, age old, yeah.

• 14:55Chris Williamson?

  Correct.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:56Chris Williamson?

  You know, I, I know that I need to make things happen, but I also need to have faith that I'm going to be pulled toward the right direction of this.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, how many times in my life creatively, I thought what I was making was for this, and it ended up being something completely different that was not. You look back on it, you're like, oh, that ended up being unbelievable for me.

• 15:16Chris Williamson?

  Do any examples come to mind?

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Um.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Just like right now, this is the number one record at rhythmic radio. I've never had a rhythmic number one in my life, and it was a record that I was like, you know what? I'm going to return to just like really listening to something that I just listened to as a fan, and I want to put it in the car and like, I just like it. Not like, I need hits, I want big songs and this is going to affect the world. I just want to like, get back to a place where I'm like, my taste is driving all of this, and I'm in the car excited playing it back right now. Cause there's waves and flows, there's different ways to attack product. And like, my gut was saying whatever. So I made this song and I was like, oh, this will probably be for me, no one will ever find it. And like, the most unexpected artist in the world was like, I'll take it, and I'll take it to radio, and it'll, and it ends up going number one. And it was like, I never would have thought this artist would have took it. I never would have thought, you know? So it's like, sometimes you make things,

• 16:11Speaker 01

  and as long as the offering is pure and it's like aligned with your gut, the universe will be like, you think it's going to be here, but I'm going to put it over here one day. And then you look back four years later and you're just like, I would have never predicted what that was, like ever. Like crazy.

• 16:24Chris Williamson?

  I love the word taste.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:26Chris Williamson?

  I think it's so great, and it's very difficult to define, and very difficult to replicate, and very difficult to create a blueprint for.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 16:35Chris Williamson?

  And I think it's one of the reasons that people don't talk about it, because the good definition of taste, being able to distinguish between good and not good.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:45Chris Williamson?

  Right? This is good. Why? Don't know. Is. This is not good. Not sure either. It's just is not.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Literally, literally. That, that's a forever coagulating, uh, not problem, but a very interesting interaction with product and me. It's, it's always like.

• 17:01Chris Williamson?

  When you say product, what are you referring to?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Just like the thing you made.

• 17:03Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  The, the product, not like a sellable thing, just like the finger painting, put it on the table, on table, it's a product right there. It's a product of my effort.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's it's wild. There's always a forever interchanging. What's good for the person?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  What's good for me? Some people would even say. Like the Rick Rubin approach is always just like it's about if I like it and nothing else matters. But like sometimes there's thoughts that creep into my mind where it's like this is like almost a cooler melody. Or this is like a really way like a cooler way of approaching it, in my opinion. But I know. Bubbling boiling it down here to allow the person to understand the point of the pre to then be affected by the hook. It will affect more people. Constructing it this way. Scorsese Scorsese makes this and the Avengers is here. And like it.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Some people wake up in the morning and want Avengers and some people wake up in the morning and want Scorsese. To say that both of those things are. One is better than the other in my older age. I think that's a young man's game. Young men want to argue about that. I realize as a as a utility guy. I'm starting to to disconnect from. There's a time and a place and there's my artistry and I will take my taste to the umph and I will tell to the world. This is what I think is the coolest shit ever. Put my balls on the table and be like, ain't nobody fucking with this. There's time for that. And then there's other times where I'm like, it's not my.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  The world doesn't want this from X. And I'm working for X right now. So I need to kind of separate myself from like even telling them. I might not even listen to this in my free time. That's not my job. It's not my job. You want to be cool and do your taste all the way and that's fine, but like. I also enjoy just like.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Sending my kids to college. And there's times which you want to say, if you want. If you want to send your kids to college, sometimes you just.

• 19:00Chris Williamson?

  We gotta pay the bills.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  You help.

• 19:02Chris Williamson?

  Dude, I I love. We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance, but most people have no idea where there's are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but

• 19:46Chris Williamson?

  with Function, it's just $499. And right now, you can get $100 off, bringing it down to 399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that $100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. I love this point, the idea of like artistic validity or artistic purity or something. Oh, my gosh. I mean, how many people, music is very ripe with this, but maybe even art, modern art, for instance, would be even more so, that the more obscure or inaccessible or clunky or difficult it is to get or to understand, the more sophisticated you see. Look at how refined he is.

• 20:28Chris Williamson?

  He's able to consider the complexity and the depth. Oh, my gosh. And you're like, if it doesn't, if it's not popular, it can't have impact. Like, as in, if nobody wants it, you can think it's the coolest shit on the planet. And maybe it is, but if the world isn't ready for this. Yes. It doesn't matter. You can, I say it all the time, I make the joke in the studio all the time, if you want to be...

• 20:59Chris Williamson?

  You have to be seen, so there has to be something that makes it attractive. To say that, nothing I do is attractive, and I don't care if anybody listens to my shit. It's like, all right, then live in your parents' basement, eat a bowl of cereal every day and be broke as a joke until you're 50. And like, okay, I guess, but I'm not saying that that validates bullshit. I've seen the bull, I've worked on the bullshit. I've worked on the most poignant. Just the gray sludge pumped out. Which we understand that the mom who's taking her kids to soccer on a Tuesday is going to turn on the radio and just listen to that. There's a directive there, there's a lot of money there.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  But for me to like waste time to just be like, I am the most pure, it puts too much. It's a young man's game. It's, it's a young man's game. To be, to me, thank the Lord for my album. Father Figure is my space to go and say, go listen to what I'm saying and put it up against. But that's a whole different thing. But far be it from me to not like take a couple of days off to go work with XX. To go make something huge that the world who doesn't really care about, some people care about boxed wine. Some people care about stomping on the grapes. And sometimes boxed wine sells because a 21 year old who's going to a party just needs to grab something at 7-Eleven. And that's viable. That's real and that's a necessity and there's utility in that.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  So for me to say that there's not utility in that is, is so like, like pew pew, like I understand art. And it's like, what's your utility? If the utility is to serve, then you can't get your way a hundred percent of the time. Cause that's not serving. It's like, and in order to be fulfilled in what you do, there has to be a slice of servitude. Humanity and vanity are very important. You can't just always be vanity because then people will hate you. And you can't just always be humanity because you'll just get used up. There has to be this clunky, disgusting, muddy, in-between grayness as a human or as a creator to help me live with myself. I have to be okay with both sides. I have to. Cause the second I say, I'm never going to be an artist anymore.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I look pretty stupid going and being an artist. So it's like, I wake up every day being like, if my gut tells me to go in that direction, hopefully it works out. It's a young man's game to be so sure of myself. I was so sure of myself in my early twenties. I knew everything.

• 23:13Chris Williamson?

  Nick, crazy. As you get more experience, your certainty decreases.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  My certainty is out the window.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  The only

• 23:20Chris Williamson?

  I don't even know my own name anymore.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  The only things I'm certain of are the things that I can't pin down.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Like I can't pin down like the direction I need to go to day by day, but my gut is is leading me in this uncertain thing, but I'm certain that the uncertain is like the adventure. It's the thing that brings the the spoils of of of war, you know?

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so uh maybe the dynamic that's happening there.

• 23:48Chris Williamson?

  Early on in your career, you have less experience, your taste is less refined, your ability to follow your gut and your instincts aren't there in the same way. What that means is you need to have more of a prefabricated plan. You can't go up and just improv freestyle rap your way through this thing because what experience you relying?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:08Chris Williamson?

  So you go in and you're a little bit more contrived, a little bit more curated, more purposeful.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:15Chris Williamson?

  And then as you get further into your career, into your mid 30s, after having a six year hiatus at the peak of what would have been most people's careers, you come back and you go, well, I can now tap into, I have faith that my programming will carry me through. I told you.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 24:29Chris Williamson?

  I told you this story about last night, I played the town hall in Manhattan last night and the sound cuts out for five minutes in the middle of the set. I can't keep going with what I was supposed to be talking about, so I just need to find, Zach, my warm up, they came and said, hey, I know you've practiced your set 30 times. We need you to extend by 15 minutes because they're doing bag checks at the front. And he's like, can you just create another five songs out of nowhere for us, please, this evening? And he fucking crushed it.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 24:55Chris Williamson?

  That is that faith that my programming will carry me forward. One other example on that, I was doing a big podcast a few years ago and I decided I wasn't going to eat on the morning and I was going to train hard. And I was like, the dopamine and the fucking adrenaline are going to be going, I'm going to be super dialed and I felt amazing. And then I went hypoglycemic partway through the episode and my brain just went.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Of really intense rehearsal. I mean, they were like in the 10 hour range, but, but you're right, though. It's like you understand this will probably hit. This will work. I can pack that in. I'll remember to bring that part out. And I wasn't remembering a single lyric the first two days, but if that would have been six years ago, I would have been like, book another month. And we're gonna get in another 12 hours a day. And I can never forget while I'm rehearsing lyric. I was like, you know, it's gonna kick in when the adrenaline's there. And did. Didn't need the lyrics on the sheet and shit. I was just like, alright, it worked. And then another thing hit me too is that.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  I don't really, I don't really need to keep touring. So if this fails and crashes miserably, like this is the one show I was gonna do anyway. So I'll freestyle the whole middle of the show. We'll pick five songs. I'll like build the shit in front of everybody because that's kind of what I do in the studio. And if it fails miserably. It's not like it's like, I'm not gonna pay the bills to like finish my tour. It's just like, that didn't work, but it felt like it worked. So when I walked up there, I was just. Fucked up there. So when I, so when we ended up freestyling it, it was programming. It was for sure like.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I also have a bit of just like, I don't really have much to lose. This shit all, I walked away from it. I walked away from it for so long. And accepted it and like put it in a coffin and sent it down the river and like watched it go away. Only for like, God to like lift it up and present it at my front door when I woke up one morning. But like, it was so gone that now I'm kind of like, I could do that. So it is actually, which brings me to like, I'm very, very vulnerable speaking. This is like, this stuff is very, uh.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  This is a point that I just kept thinking about days before speaking to you is that I can't express what it's like to,

• 29:02Speaker 01

  to be like.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  It's, it's hard for me to put a, a thought process on like, if you really love your life, then just like love your life. You don't need to inform people and let people know how great your life is. So going on a podcast, talking about how much I don't care, seems counterintuitive, which then makes me not want to even just like leave my house and come and talk to you about it. Cause I don't know how to express the like. I'm on a podcast with one of the greatest podcasters in the world and this is like one of the biggest platforms and I'm talking about how much.

• 29:34Chris Williamson?

  I don't give a fuck.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I don't give a fuck, but there is a piece of me that I do in my deepest morals find important and I should shoot those out into the world, but it's also a larger risk that I don't really care to take. Like, like if I really, if we talked about how me and how you speak with your best friend after a couple of drinks like back home or whatever, which is, which is like everybody else, the people you trust the most, you get down to what you really believe. So there's a piece of me that doesn't want to just give fluff, but I also don't want to, like, I ain't, like, I, I don't, I'm not, I don't want to be like this, like, if you want to like fight the music industry, but I have a bunch of knowledge that I think can help a lot of people. So I'm constantly struggling, like, I should say something

• 30:15Speaker 01

  and go on a podcast and have a conversation about balance while playing the game that's like in the machine that's plastic.

• 30:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I don't even know how that popped out of my cerebral while we were talking. I don't even know if that made sense.

• 30:27Chris Williamson?

  Why did you, why did you decide to come on?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  I forgot. I said yes a really long time ago.

• 30:35Chris Williamson?

  Let's go, baby!

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And then Louis, my, my day to day was like, they flew out, dude, you're doing that tomorrow. And all jokes aside, I find you, your cause to be very, I, I find it at base root to be noble. It's not salacious. It's not something that is like entertainment. It's a, it's a meal and I can get down with that. Like on a moral, deeper level, I can have a conversation with somebody that I've learned a lot from and the guests that you've had on, like it's helped my individual life, my silent life at home with my family. So it's like, I'll, I'm down.

• 31:13Chris Williamson?

  Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. I also appreciate your booking agent or whoever just sliding it into the calendar and being like, Friday, what am I doing today?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And, and honestly, truthfully, I'm a really, I'm a really big fan of you as what you've decided to put out into the world. I respect that.

• 31:32Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Deeply, on a really deep level. So.

• 31:34Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:36Chris Williamson?

  That means a lot. I, um, taste is, uh.

• 31:42Chris Williamson?

  Absent even more in my industry than in yours. And I'm, I'm trying my best to like, hold on to that wherever I can and to refine that.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  What do you, what, what's the temptation for like, a guy at your level, top level of, of conversation, having podcasts and content, like, what is the daily temptation of the like, I know I could blow the door open on da, da, da, da, like, what is your like, content?

• 32:05Chris Williamson?

  Well, first one would be, um, most, almost all platforms, big, big, big platforms with like, hardcore tribal audiences are built together over the mutual hatred of an out group, not the mutual love of an in group.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:18Chris Williamson?

  This is how all cults, how all movements are built, right? By identifying the other, if you look at the way that American elections have been won, the last election where the party that was voted in was voted for love of party, not hatred of the other was 2012. Since then, most people have protest voted against, I am not that, not I am this.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:41Chris Williamson?

  And that's how, so a great, a great, um, way to judge whether or not the content creator that you listen to is, uh, playing the game correctly or playing the game in an honest way. Is the audience bound together over the mutual belief of something as opposed to the mutual disbelief of something else?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:01Chris Williamson?

  And I've never played that game. I don't start beef with people online, even if I get like poked at a little bit here and there. Um, I genuinely try and platform people who I can go from fucking John Belli and Matthew McConaughey to like some 22 year old YouTuber from London, who I found a one video essay of, and I fucking love. I'm like, you're coming to Austin and I'm going to speak to you on the podcast and I'm just going to give you a shot.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:29Chris Williamson?

  Like, who the fuck am I to say, I'm going to give you a shot? But the entire industry is you holding on to the coattails of people bigger than you. And then, you know, three and a bit years ago, Rogan puts me on when, just a DM, I've got 250,000 subs, it's nothing. And he brings me on and gives me a shot and it went really well and that was great.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 33:49Chris Williamson?

  And being the, like, the opportunity to go from.

• 33:53Chris Williamson?

  You like lying in the hammock everybody else has created for you to turning the hammock into a trampoline that other people can bounce off.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:01Chris Williamson?

  Is really fucking cool. Two of the things I don't want to forget that came to mind while you were talking. The first one was you said that you stepped away for six years. Have you ever heard McConaughey talk about when he stopped doing rom coms?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 34:12Chris Williamson?

  Bro, so he's like the rom com king. And what I didn't realize was rom coms were super easy to make, super cheap, would generate at the box office, get replayed at Valentine's Day, replayed at Christmas. Like it's just, it was a cash cow.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:27Chris Williamson?

  He was the rom com king. But you realized that it was a little gray sludgy. He was becoming formulaic. He was churning these things out and he didn't want to do it.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Relatable.

• 34:36Chris Williamson?

  So he stepped away.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Chris Williamson?

  And he stepped away, I think for 18 months or two years at like the peak of his career. Real similar to, to your, your story. And they came and they offered him five million for the next role and he said, no. Then they said seven, he said, no. Then they said 10 and he said, no. Then they said 14 and he said, no. And they were like, well, what's he got going on? In order to say no to $14 million for this role, which is, you know, easy in, easy out.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:01Chris Williamson?

  Whatever, however many weeks of work. This is, he's got something really serious that's happening. And that was the moment that his whole career.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Catalyst that got him.

• 35:09Chris Williamson?

  Exactly.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  See, he's funny. He's at my age, I don't view him as the rom com guy.

• 35:13Chris Williamson?

  Well, not now, but the only reason he was able to get there was because he dispensed with that outfit. Right?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 35:20Chris Williamson?

  Second thing.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 35:21Chris Williamson?

  You know those, um, balance board things? It's like a skateboard deck on a little sort of cylinder.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:28Chris Williamson?

  Um, I always think about this. So you were talking about the fact that you have to play the game, but know that it's not about the game. And sometimes you are playing it more and other times you are playing it less.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  When you think about standing on one of those balance boards, at no point are you actually in balance. You're always making these little micro adjustments.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Forever coagulating. Yes.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  And then every so often you go, whoa, holy fuck. Like we really like nearly kissed the ground there on that one. And then, wow, I've got the other way.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:57Chris Williamson?

  And I love that idea and I think that that. What people want is to think, if I can get myself to the perfect level of equilibrium, I'll never have to readjust again.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  It just doesn't exist.

• 36:09Chris Williamson?

  Readjusting is the game.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  That is it. Then you start to realize that leaning left or right is not even the thing. It's like you could just do your best to do ab workouts to stay on. It's like, it's like you, I know this thing is going to go left and right and I have to be prepared for it to go left and right. So I gotta make sure my core is like very, very solid. And then, and then your whole entire holistic perspective changes to make sure your core is right to do the balance. Cause the balance is all that's happening. Like you said, you're never going to hit the perfect thing where you go, I'm perfectly balanced.

• 36:37Chris Williamson?

  I've done no, no problems for the rest of life.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Then your, your mind starts to think, you're like, oh, it's not perfect artistry. It's not total commercialism.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  It's the reflection of this balance thing that is not black. It's not white. It's, it's just a lot of nuance. It's some things, there's no nuance at all, but I'm blown away in my older age. How deeply nuanced it all is, every bit of it. It's tough to even have, it's just tough to even like confidently move forward. The only thing I'm confident in is, is the music because I like it, my own music. Everything else is very, very tough for me. Even people say like, what do you, what advice do you have for writers? I'm like, I don't even know what I did. I really don't like, I had a, I had a weird unwavering belief in myself. That's super important, but like, I know there's people out there that are wickedly talented that just, it just, the chips just don't fall. I don't know how to like combat that.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  I don't, it's, it's, it's very interesting.

• 37:36Chris Williamson?

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• 38:21Chris Williamson?

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• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:55Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 38:56Chris Williamson?

  What gets in the way? You would assume.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  So funny the way my mind works. I'm like, I'm already editing that. Like, I'm like, eh, well.

• 39:02Chris Williamson?

  Well, what would you say?

• 39:02Speaker 01

  In my, yeah, it's like.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  I think I've been blessed with an understanding that when I'm listening to something, I think in my head, humans will feel good because of this. People will enjoy this thing that hits this thing, and this will work. And this will be pleasing to people. It's a, is a thing when I'm creating. I want this to feel pleasing to you. I want you to be affected by this. I want you to be, have goosebumps and to be affected, not just look at how talented I am. I know motherfuckers who can sing the phone book. Doesn't mean when they play me the MP3 in the car that I'm like, I'm gonna listen to that song again. It's like, you're singing really great, but I just, there's nothing about it that makes me. And I don't know what that, that about it is, which is my obsession. I love that. I live in the about it. I'm not the greatest singer. I'm not the greatest rapper. I'm not the greatest producer.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  I'm not the greatest piano player, chord guy, harmony guy. But I just, I'm like, ooh, I think people will like that. And I can now find a way to get, I know who to call to get it to the thing that I think people will like. And that's worked for me. It's worked for me. I don't know. People might say I'm, I'm talented, but like, I also just really, really, really, really deeply, to the point of tears, love what I do every day. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Everything else is like a day at work. For me to go in there. Seven hour, come in at eleven, leave at seven, I get dinner at my house, I play with my boys, I put them to bed and wake up and do the same thing every day. And life just gets better and better and better and better and better. Cause I'm doing the same thing I did when I was fifteen. I'm so happy for you, man.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you. And it's hard not to, um, to just say that. And I know that that might make people reflect on their own thing and not be happy about the statement, but

• 40:49Speaker 01

  why am I not touring or why am I this? I'm not even, I, I swore I wasn't gonna get emotional, but it's like, I just love, I love my life to, to live.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I love my life. I love it. I love it. It's, it's mind blowing. I get in a minivan and drive home from a stadium and wake up and clean diapers the next day. I got it all. I got it all. Cause my life,

• 41:19Speaker 01

  I might not have got the diapers, might not have got the sleepless nights, I might not have got the...

• 41:26Speaker 01

  It's the shit that the world tells you is not, what you chase after is the shit that I almost missed. It's like, there's a renaissance coming of people and it's, uh,

• 41:37Speaker 01

  the, the renaissance is really realizing that the roof over your head, the plumbing job and the cutting the grass is the good shit. We've taken it to the extreme. Our society's taken it all. We got it all. We figured it out. We're the most connected we've ever been, got the most money we've ever had. I think everyone's start, myself included. Took me six years to be like, I almost lost. I almost chased this thing. And then for six years I was around a bunch of guys who had all the stuff I thought I needed.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  No. It's the dirt, it's the muck, it's the mistakes, it's the thing that's, it's the good shit. But we spend so much time making sure no one ever, no one ever sees us in a light that might seem average. Being average is the greatest thing in my life. It's the greatest thing in my life. Sometimes I, I go to the shoe store and people know who I am. And then other times I'll go five days without anybody even knowing who the fuck I am. I take my kids to sports class and nobody bothers me. It's like celebrities.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Miss me with that. I've never had a conversation with a, with a, a famous motherfucker. I never had a con, a, a long two, three, four hour conversation in the studio with a famous motherfucker that's been like, I love it. It was the best decision I ever made in my life being famous.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  God came out the sky and was like, you had the money like you're famous, but you don't have to be famous. I'm taking that all day long. Fame makes no sense to me. And I think the the general consciousness of the population is waking up to that, like the idea of celebrities like.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Everybody's like side eyeing these guys like, you're not perfect because I'm not perfect. It's like, what are we doing here? Like, what are we talking about? I don't know how I just went on that tangent. I apologize. I don't, I didn't mean to. Yeah. You guys have to make me look like I'm making sense.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That was the main thing, guys, like, even if I can get on this podcast today and just be like, like,

• 43:33Speaker 01

  my coffee in the morning and the grass on my feet, in a roof over my head, making music. It's like, you will never, you'll never stop me. You'll never stop me. I love what I'm doing so much. You will never, I'll never stop. I'll be 90 years old, just doing the same thing every single day because it gets better and better and better. And the relationship changes with it and and to be able to get paid like that, where I don't have to, I could play one show at Forest Hills and then people show up.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  I think because I walked away and let go of it, when it came back, I was like, I didn't even know I had this when I had it six years ago. And now coming back to it, it doesn't even define me, but it's just like this funny, like I'm like the Monopoly guy with a mustache. Like, it's all fake money. I'm rolling dice. I'm like, if I lose money on fucking boardwalk, it this is this. Like, it's just, life is good, man. Life is, life is good.

• 44:30Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever seen Peaky Blinders?

• 44:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:32Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so it's a show about a gang from Birmingham in the 1920s ish. And in it, it's a group of brothers. They were in First World War, two of the brothers were in the First World War and they went to the Battle of the Somme and they were tunnel diggers. Uh, real dangerous, high, uh, like mortality rate. And Tommy and Arthur, the two older brothers, they have this line where they say, um, they basically thought that they were going to die at the Battle of the Somme, but they didn't. And they refer to it as, everything after that was extra.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:10Chris Williamson?

  And it feels to me like you died.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 45:14Chris Williamson?

  That time.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:15Chris Williamson?

  And you're like. Everything after that was extra.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I look at, in, in therapy, I did an exercise where I looked at me on a boat and thanked him. Thank you for getting me this far, but I have to go on without you. You helped me survive. You, you, all your tendencies and all of your things, they helped you get to this place because it was survival. But I can't keep you with me anymore and I gotta say goodbye to you and I gotta move on. And I did it. It's just the boat went away. And once the boat went away, you start, you look at things in a, in a much different.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  It's just much different. It's just much different. It almost comes to you when you let it.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I hate being the like guru guy. You don't, I don't, I just, I'm just not chasing much now. I just know that if I fish and make father figure, some artists out there, it's going to be a commercial for myself and some artists is going to hear it and then ask me to go work with them. I just, I just know that. I know that in my two-year plan of spending all this money or whatever, it's like, when you fish, you just, you fish, you can't get into water with goggles and like start swimming after the fish. Most motherfuckers wanted just like, I really, my early twenties, I was like in a speedo with the goggles in the school, but trying to, trying to get a bass. I'm like, and then someone's on the dock like, young man, young man, just grab the pole and just hang out. Well, I can't see the fish and what if they don't show up? It's, it might not.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  But you're not going to catch shit from forcing the universe. I don't know. I don't know. It's so countercultural because most people will tell you, wake up and force the universe.

• 46:46Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, no, you're, dude, you should not be doubting anything that you're saying. I, I.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Thank you. Coming from, you get a lot of, uh, you get so many rounded, polished perspectives of like good information. So I appreciate that. I believe it.

• 46:57Chris Williamson?

  You're, you're tapped in. There's two types of people in the world. There's people that are tapped in and people that aren't. And, um, when you think about that, you know, when you're talking about it and you're saying like, you can't stop me. You're not going to stop me. I'm just doing what I want to do. You know that feeling that you get that's like a birdcage opening in your chest?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:13Chris Williamson?

  That.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:15Chris Williamson?

  Like that's what people should be chasing.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  That that is honest to the Lord. I think a lot of successful peoples, myself included, I swear to you that that is the superpower of whether it's production or podcasting or whatever, is accessing the thing. Cause once the thing is seen by people, they say, that's the thing that I have hid for like, there's a freedom in the birdcage opening up. And if you can access the birdcage opening up, I just feel like by the grace of God, I've been able to open my birdcage on record so many times that I've learned to be okay with the fact that I'm emotional, that I'm okay with the fact that like, things can wreck my day and seeing one thing on social media will fuck me up so bad

• 48:00Speaker 01

  that I have to get off of it for for six years. I I'm okay with those things because I just think my birdcage is is I'm sensitive. There you go. All that, all that talking to say.

• 48:10Chris Williamson?

  No, no, dude, I uh, I, I really, really appreciate you saying that. I think sensitivity is your strength with regards to this.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 48:19Chris Williamson?

  I did. I've been wearing this. I guess the the audience might not have noticed, but I've been wearing this little piece of red for about six weeks now. And it's got the letters I L M on the back and it's got an infinity symbol on there. I went and did a retreat in Sonoma County about six weeks ago, two months ago. It was 12 hours a day from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 48:42Chris Williamson?

  Uh, a very deep emotional walk.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Intensive.

• 48:45Chris Williamson?

  Incredibly sober, non psychedelic stuff. And the I L M on this stands for I love myself. And it was the thing that you wanted to take away. But in it, what you were talking about that I need to send that version of me off to see.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:03Chris Williamson?

  So many of the fears.

• 49:08Chris Williamson?

  And doubts and patterns, the the patterns that people have, especially the ones that you don't like, they're there to protect you, they're there to try and keep you safe, they're there to get you validation from the world and.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Even my work, my work when I was fourteen years old was every night I was lost in that screen, creating and living in a world that was not reality. It's it's what it's what helped me get grow as a man, it's what helped me stay alive. Like, music is literally something that I held on to, like a life raft, and it was so embedded in my it. But then at what point when you're a grown man, you say, is this escapism? Is it easier for me to be listened to in the studio all day long than go home and actually have an interactive marriage where my opinion doesn't actually end all be all of everything? There's a it's a very, very, very, very interesting thing. Like you said, saying goodbye to that person is saying like, I know I was put on this planet and I've been given gifts to make

• 50:01Speaker 01

  music. I'm I'm pretty sure of it at this point. But I always have to take inventory on whether it's escapism or not. Sometimes it's healthy to escape as men. I think there is a something very valid on a man who goes fishing on a Saturday. There's something very valid about your own time, your solace, your whatever. But you always have to take inventory on. It's like, dude, are you fishing on a Saturday? Or are you not able to stomach the idea of the normalcy of your life? Which is always, that's another thing I have to take inventory on with my job.

• 50:33Chris Williamson?

  Balance beam. You're on you're on that balance board, dude.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. I have to always take inventory of saying, let me let me see what this feels like to me. Is this, ooh, a post just went viral about me doing something that makes me look talented. How am I? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

• 50:50Chris Williamson?

  Calm down, bud.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  You get, hey, and it's a lot of that. But I've noticed that that's been the biggest blessing in my life. Some people will be like, just rip the door open, man. Like, you just did twenty six thousand people at Forest Hills. We're going on the road.

• 51:03Chris Williamson?

  Back wall toe.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Woo! And when I drove home.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  My wife was being Michelle Obama all day. She was tired as shit. She was taking care of the kids all day long. There was a playground in the back, so about the time that the show was over, my kid, my, my son was like, Dad, I didn't. My son was like, the other day, he sits me down. Can I talk to you? I'm like, yeah. He's like, I just, I didn't like your show. I was like. The whole thing sold out, the whole thing top to bottom. He's, he's like, yeah, and he's deadpan. I'm like, oh, I thought he was gonna be joking. So like my ego is four. My ego is like, like, everyone told me I killed it. That thing was sold out. I said, buddy, why didn't you? Like the show? He goes, you know, you sang the first song. Then you just kept singing and singing and singing. And I was just like, when's he gonna be done singing?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  He's like, I wanted to go play with you in the playground at the, at the back of this thing. So it like puts the whole.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Even that my son trusts me enough to tell me that. I'm like, oh my gosh, thank God. Bro. Thank God the, the trip back in the minivan that, cause we have too many kids now. We used to have a navigator and a ranger over and now I'm, I'm ripping the Kia Carnival. Wonderful product, by the way. I'm driving home in the Kia. She forgot to get gas. I'm in the middle of Bumblefuck, Brooklyn, trying to get gas after. I'm like, yo, I'm rich. I don't need this shit. But then it like, it just was like, no, this is the.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  This is the good, this is the shit. It's this, I'm annoyed, I'm tired. My wife's over it, da, da, da, da. But you would look at me at the end of that show that day. At the after party of everybody coming up to me, my daughter needs this and my cousin and listen to my demo and you're the man. That was the best show I ever seen. They don't recognize that there's this other. Thing. I'm just like, thank God I didn't spend my whole life pretending that that other thing just never, never existed. Cause I'm way more in that other thing than I am in stuff like this. Or not, not saying the value in it. Oh my God. Oh my gosh. It's so scary, dude. And then you build a kingdom that's. Predicated on the idea that you never have sludge or you never have mundane shit. Then you're fucking toast. You're, you're trapped. It's not a kingdom, it's a prison.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Bruh, the amount of records I've written for people that by the end I've walked away and been like. I'm all the way good on everything this dude has ever.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  By the way, my heart breaks for them. That doesn't mean that, hey, I'm, like I said, I ain't Johnny Noble. I'm not like so much better than them. I, I get on my knees, I get on my knees in my closet and I say, "Thank you, you didn't give me everything I ever wanted." Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. If I got everything I ever wanted at twenty, I might not be alive.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  And then you, and then you bring it back tenfold for me to look at it like I'm not even, this isn't even, I'm not even in this. Tomorrow I will wake up and I will be with my children and I will be in the studio, making something maybe for me or something, for somebody else, doing the same shit I did every single day. It's not this, the Fourth of July every day ain't the move, man. The Fourth of July is great because it happens once a year. If Monday through Monday, it's fireworks, alcohol and craziness.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  But our job, I don't know, society is just very much like, "If it ain't Fourth of July every day, then you are not accomplishing what you want." And then the motherfucker who's gotta sit in traffic on Tuesdays, like, "My life sucks." It's like, dude, no, it doesn't. No, it doesn't, because we're all living the same, same fears, the same validation, the same way you wanna be looked at when you walk in a room and you wonder what other people think about you. We just spend a lot of time making sure that that's not

• 54:38Speaker 01

  obvious. But the more time you get away from the machine, you're like,

• 54:44Speaker 01

  "I'm getting, I'm in my chubby phase, I'm a little bit of a dad, I'm making music as a dad, like, thank God."

• 54:48Chris Williamson?

  Dad music.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Exactly, like, because that's what the fuck I am. If I spent half my life trying to pretend like I'm not, you get a lot of these artists I work with, I'm like, "Man, you ain't, why you wanna say that? That's not your reality."

• 55:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you've got kids at home, but you're still playing the ball or up front.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Man, what do the kids think? You know a lot about a man about what his kids think about him. I don't need to know what your fans think about you. I don't even, I don't need to know my fans-

• 55:11Chris Williamson?

  How present is dad and mom at home?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  How you got?

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Never speak to, to someone who adores somebody from a distance on, on a character judgment that you can make about them. You will know the fruit if you know the person. That's the only thing you can count on. So for like, you wanna work your whole life for a bunch of people that don't know you, to think that you're a good guy? And then when you go home, everyone's like, "This guy." That's what, that's what most of the album's about.

• 55:39Chris Williamson?

  You've traded the validation of the people who would love you for who you are, for the validation of people who love you for what you do.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  It's like, and then your identity becomes what you do. So if you can't do what you do, your whole life is just shattered.

• 55:55Chris Williamson?

  It's taken away from you. So now you're locked into the prison. And that's how you get locked into the prison.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Bro, I've noticed that in, in recently 10 years of some, some kind, it was almost like, like even when I looked at my dad, my dad's job didn't, he wasn't trying to get like, his whole community from his job and his whole purpose from his job. It was almost like you made money to then like, go to church and like have another life of, I don't really know what I'm saying. It's probably not going anywhere, but like what I'm trying to say is like,

• 56:26Speaker 01

  the job is just the job. It's, it's not the definition of what you are. And slowly but surely, given our like, whole lives being commercials, which is what social media is, you have to turn your job into your, and I've like, I'm just like, man, it's like, this is just something I get to do. It's not me. It's, it's a, it's a facet within the other things that feed me in my community. Spending time with my wife, going on vacations with my friends, spending time with my family, eating a good meal with somebody. This is the little things.

• 56:57Chris Williamson?

  Well, imagine if you had a, an investment portfolio and 95% of your investments were in a single stock.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 57:05Chris Williamson?

  You would be very, very careful and very, very anxious about the progress of that stock.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:10Chris Williamson?

  What you have is a distributed portfolio of investments.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. Amen. And it's like, I even think sometimes too, it's just like this probably, and again, I'm just speaking from, I'm here. And it's like, someone wants to hear me talk, I guess. So it's like, I might as well throw whatever out there. It's like, I've also noticed just like living under my means and not living to the thing that I am has made me also wildly happy beyond most. Once me and my wife stopped with the house additions and the hot tub and the pool and the yada, yada, yada.

• 57:39Chris Williamson?

  Pivot into the Kia.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  What'd you say?

• 57:41Chris Williamson?

  A hard pivot to the Kia.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm in the Kia and they got these little nature sounds that you can put on in the car and shit. I'm like, I like this just as much as my $175,000 Tesla that I got neck pain from ripping on the highway on. I'm like, oh, thank God I got the Kia. So then it really started opening up in my life to be like, what if I just live completely under my means? I'm rich forever. If I live like a motherfucker who makes the type of money that I make, I'm gonna have to be on the wheel forever to keep that moving. But if I just make the house smaller. And accomplish huge things and just don't make a big deal out of the accomplishments and just keep it kind of low key. And then just tuck it away somewhere that if anybody ever needs it, it's there, but I'm here. On the grass with my ass on the grass with the kids, just hanging out and doing the thing. That is like bring you to tears levels of like, thank God I did not keep chasing.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Whatever, because the money ended up coming and it ended up working out and. I got enough of it to go around, so I might. It's so weird. It's like, like frog in hot water. I, I would have been the frog in hot water if I didn't find out how shitty my touring contract was and, and artist contract was. For sure.

• 58:42Chris Williamson?

  What an odd gift.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Bro, I'd be looking at people sometimes and I'm just like, man.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Says the guy with a bunch of money, that money's not important. I know, I know, I know. We, we've been down that road, I understand, but it's like, I'm telling you, man.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  The money.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Me and you are still here, no matter what's in your bank account and what's in my bank account, because the only thing you can be is present. So if you're never present with yourself and you're never living your life, what the, who cares? Motherfuckers out there in Thailand just on a boat, happy as a motherfucker and they're not. The hot tub broke and it's like.

• 59:31Chris Williamson?

  Dude, we, we went for breakfast yesterday at Red Diner, uh, downtown Manhattan, like 43rd Street or some bullshit. We sat in there and our server came over, Mexican lady and, uh. I can't remember what happened. She asked some sort of question. She said, uh, I just finished a night shift. It was 11 a.m. and she started at midnight in her other job. And she's at the diner at 11 a.m.

• 59:56Chris Williamson?

  And I'm sat next to Zach who's warming up for me on tour and immediately we start going like. Ironically going, wow, the ambient water in the dressing room was supposed to be chilled. Wow, I'm not happy about the particular fruit and veg platter that we were supposed to get backstage. Wow, the Cat Five cables that we were supposed to have triggered and it meant that I had to do an acoustic performance for five minutes on stage. Like.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really puts you in.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  Are you fucking high?

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:00:25Chris Williamson?

  Dude, wealth is what you have minus what you want. And by that definition, some billionaires are broke.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Wow. Wow. Yeah, I'm taking that one. I'm tucking that one in the back pocket.

• 1:00:39Chris Williamson?

  It's Morgan Housel. He's fucking phenomenal. Wealth is what you have minus what you want. And by that definition, some billionaires are broke.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  But it's crazy because the things that you need, that you find out that you need, don't bring immediate gratification. And sometimes they're not pleasurable. And sometimes you're not even happy, which is the.

• 1:00:59Chris Williamson?

  Diaper changing.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  It's the unhappiness.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, man. It's like you have kids and then you learn to die. And when you learn to die, you actually get your life in your death. The giving up of oneself by saying, my dreams, my millions, my potential, my MVP, my Olympics, are dead because I brought a life into the world and I am, everything in my, my body will make sure that this child is okay. And if that means me reducing myself to make this child what, to give this child even maybe what I didn't have.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  When it's not about you, it's so much more enjoyable. If everything is about you constantly, and I don't want to get too deep into just like what I think's wrong in society, like I ain't Jordan Peterson. I'm not like educated, but there seems to, there seems to be this, it's all about you and chase what you want. And if you don't get what you want, your life is a failure. But I've found so much freedom in it not, in me just not, we don't have to go down that road with me. I, I, if you want to go to your friend's house, I will, or if you guys have to go to school today, I will wake up early despite being in the studio late and I will take you to, and I'll feel like shit, but I'm gonna take you to the studio. It's probably gonna fuck my day up in the studio, but I'm gonna make sure you get to school.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Kids shift your perspective on a lot. And I mean, it's so deeply to the point where I say, people who don't have kids. That's another thing. I look at my children and I say, thank God I had you to refine me into someone I didn't even know I was, I had the potential of being, or getting, grabbing a level of patience, or exposing how impatient I actually am. I thought I was this like patient, level-headed guy until I had kids.

• 1:02:42Chris Williamson?

  Oh yeah, very patient when you only have to look after yourself.

• 1:02:47Chris Williamson?

  Oh yeah, your patience is really being tested.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Like even now, like I wake up with the kids, I don't have time to work out. I, I should make time to work out, so all I gotta do is get up at 4:30 because so-and-so on Instagram told me.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Like I'm almost, I almost feel myself becoming softer around the edges because my concern is the life of somebody else. So kind of me is, is to some degree, don't get me wrong, I'm in a studio seven hours a day, I live a great life.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  You know what? No, I'm not going to, um, what's the word? Validate everything that I'm saying, or there's a different word that my therapist tells me like not to use. I constantly try to like.

• 1:03:23Chris Williamson?

  Justify.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  And I'm not saying.

• 1:03:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just on that, you have done it a few times today.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:28Chris Williamson?

  And I think it speaks to the fact that you don't want to come across as preachy. And the fact that you're saying, hey, look, I'm an idiot too. But the disclaimer, the reason that.

• 1:03:40Chris Williamson?

  I have the compulsion to do that as well. Part of it's a protection mechanism because you don't want to be called out by somebody for saying, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and he's still, he's still proselytizing.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:03:49Chris Williamson?

  That being said.

• 1:03:54Chris Williamson?

  Not saying a thing that you believe because you're worried about the criticism of people who are going to hear it and misunderstand it.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:02Chris Williamson?

  You really should not be worried about the criticisms of people who don't understand what you're trying to do.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:09Chris Williamson?

  If people misunderstand you, that's a them problem, not a you problem. And it's like something to try and overcome that is really tough. That being said, in the music studio. We spent the first half of this conversation talking about taste and about how like I just know that it's good, but you're in an alien environment here. And you're thinking, well, I know that this is good.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:29Chris Williamson?

  But I'm not sure whether or not I'm allowed to think it's good.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:33Chris Williamson?

  So this is you at the beginning of the music career, going like, well, if I can prescribe and I'll hedge and caveat and I'll litigate my way through this thing.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:42Chris Williamson?

  So it's just a new, and if you put me in, if you put me in the music studio, you're like, I have a maybe we need to, can we like roll that off on the kick drum a little?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  I'm not saying I'm a guitar player, but maybe you could try.

• 1:04:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 1:04:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Yeah, it's funny. People even, this, a usual comment my whole career has always been people thinking I'm on drugs when I'm in the studio. I'm a different person, a different person. They're like, he's whacked out. He's cracked out. I see footage of me in the studio.

• 1:05:07Chris Williamson?

  What's your demeanor in the studio?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  So I'll sing something and it'll like be freestyled, but then I'll listen back to it like I didn't even make it. Like this is the best part of my day. I'm having so much fun right now. I light up. It's like, it's the thing that like my whole being feels like I'm supposed to be doing that. I just tell them like, I'm a little, this is like a screw loose or something. It's not necessarily that. And I think I've done it long enough now where I'm like,

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Max Martin, Rick Rubin, Pharrell, every time I'm, I'm around. The other day I was in the room, uh, working on BTS with, and Max Martin was in another room and it was, I was in LA. I took a quick trip. They're like finishing up their album, blah, blah, blah. They asked me to come out there, work on, on stuff for them. Um, Max walks in the room. We're working on something and I'm not like creatively like, whatever, I'm not gonna, nope, I can go there. Max Martin walks in the room and he listens to what we do. Max is, uh, is 20 years older than me, you know?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  I'm like, all right, here we go. I've never seen him work before. I'm like on the couch and I'm looking at him and he like, he's like, can I give some notes? And he's in a room full of like eight people. I can't explain it and producers and writers will know what I mean. This motherfucker in 17 seconds was like, he listened to it one time and he was like, oh, your intro is your pre. Just take your intro and make it your pre, cause that's your best part. He's like, and then bring it back in 30 seconds later, did, did, did, did. We were like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. We moved it all and we all looked at it. And I was like, oh man, like. Only time can make someone that fucking cold. It's the same thing with Pharrell. Pharrell be walking in a room after working on something all day. He be walking in and just be like, nah, nah, nah, just ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, move this and do this here. I know that the wall looks like it's 5,000 feet tall, but it's only five feet wide. Just walk around it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  I'm like, God almighty, there's a...

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Motherfuckers be asking me, how do I get good? And I'm like, yo, it's just, you gotta just do it for 20 years. Because the 20-year motherfuckers are so cold. Pharrell's so, Rick Rude's so cold. Max Martin's so cold, they're so good. And then I thought when I got with him, they'd give me the keys. But then I realized they just didn't get off the treadmill for 20 years. I'm like, oh, that's true mastery. Like Picasso doing like a drawing on a napkin when he's 80 and it's just a stick figure. After all that shit, it's like the wall was only five feet wide. I really look up to those five feet wide motherfuckers. There, it's amazing to watch. I don't know how I went on that tangent. I get, I get passionate about music.

• 1:07:33Chris Williamson?

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• 1:08:17Chris Williamson?

  And if you do not love it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com-modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. We spoke before about the most talented people don't necessarily cut the best songs.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Chris Williamson?

  How is it not the case that the person who has the most talent doesn't make the best music? What is it that's getting in the way?

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  There, there might be a talent of making things that people enjoy to hear.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Like Tame Impala, like Kevin Parker, he's like, I think he just like has a talent in making things that people enjoy to listen to. This is soothing to my ears and I want to play it on the way to the beach at the club. I don't think he's like

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  the third chair at the fucking Ragemanovich Orchestra in Australia.

• 1:09:17Chris Williamson?

  Savant or some bullshit.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Or maybe he might be a savant in making the thing that, you know what I mean?

• 1:09:22Chris Williamson?

  In delivering instead of that. I've had this thing, so I was thinking about.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Most, sorry to cut you off. Most of the bigger producers I've been around, I've recognized that they don't really have any, any technical ability, none. Some of them can't even play an instrument.

• 1:09:35Chris Williamson?

  Impresario.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  No, they're just like, I don't care that it's the third harmony and that's not in the chord. The chord just feels good. That's, and that's how I've, I've kind of been blessed enough to kind of be. I don't, can't tell you what I'm playing on a keyboard. I can play the shit out of the piano, but I can't tell you what key I'm playing in, any of it. I just know when it comes back to me, I go, I would listen to this in my free time.

• 1:09:56Chris Williamson?

  Taste.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Yo, I'm like, sometimes riffers be just be riffing too much. I don't want to hear you.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  It's like, and then you want to play me the song and you just, just shitting all over the song riffing. It's like, I don't even know what you're trying to tell me. Let me sit in the, let me sit in the room for a bit and at least look at the wallpaper before you invite me in the den. I gotta, if you're trying to take me on a house tour.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  And then you gotta, when do you take them out when they're bored to take them into the next room? Not just, look at this house and there's purple walls and there's blue walls and this. Some, some towns, the motherfuckers be trying to, you'd be trying to just give them the whole house tour on the whole shit.

• 1:10:38Chris Williamson?

  Can, can talent be an obstacle in that way?

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Of course. Talent, self-belief, ah, what, that's a whole other deeper conversation. What is talent? I mean, we could spin our wheels all day into the, the digression of what the basis of the root of the whatever, but.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Talent is like, I've just noticed it's just like that and a dollar gets you to ride the bus. Like it doesn't, it doesn't.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Some people are talented, it just work in the system. I know a lot of writers that can't write a song. I never mentioned their names, I never whatever. I know a lot of writers that have no business, no business being in a room writing songs. But damn, you know how to go to the bar mitzvah. Damn, you know how to talk to the CEO and get the dinner.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Some of the guys in the back be like, okay, if you're gonna get me to the bigger artist and you're the social bridge that I have to tap dance to get to. All right.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Far be it from me to whatever, but, but that's a talent. To say that because you play the guitar better than everybody else makes you successful in the musical industry? That's more fucked up than you could ever imagine. There's ta- what's a talent, bro? Talent? Like, I play the greatest piano in the world, it's like, yeah, but do you know the, the radio programmer over at So and So? It's this big weird coagulating thing.

• 1:12:02Chris Williamson?

  That's where, uh, the artistic purity versus the game playing sort of comes back in again, right? And I think

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:09Chris Williamson?

  There's always gonna be a sense of elitism in he's so artistically pure.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:16Chris Williamson?

  Only he was prepared to lower himself to the standard of you to have to go to fucking the dinner, the bar mitzvah or whatever. You know, he's above that.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  There's people, it's funny, it's like, you know, for me, in a, in a time in my life, I, for those six years, I was so removed from being an artist that I just wanted hits. So my brain wasn't geared toward like, in six years, I'm gonna go on a podcast and talk about some of the biggest songs I ever wrote. For them, me to go on a podcast and talk about all the giant number one billboard songs I have, for the comments to be like, here's why I hate every single song. I can't prove to you that I'm talented. Some people don't even think I'm talented. Some people think I'm the most talented to ever grace the fucking.

• 1:12:59Chris Williamson?

  Didn't need to use the British accent though.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  It's just thinking it came out of me.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  I said, oh shit. I don't know why the British.

• 1:13:12Chris Williamson?

  Remember the audience.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  I don't know why the British has to fall into that.

• 1:13:15Chris Williamson?

  Well, I have to remind you that we are on stolen land right now, specifically stolen from the British.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Yo, I don't know.

• 1:13:24Chris Williamson?

  Should have started with a fucking land acknowledgement before we began this podcast.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  I'm getting way too comfortable with you right now. We're gonna get a beer after this. What was that? I don't even remember what I was saying.

• 1:13:32Chris Williamson?

  I want to tell you, I want to tell you this thing that's been in the back of my mind. I was thinking about this conversation and I wondered where you were going to go. And I said, what, what? I I've realized that people that are very, very talented don't always make, sell the most records, be the most popular or whatever, even be the most liked, like.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:49Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I've noticed since being around musicians more over the last couple of years is that artists tend to fall into two categories or there's a spectrum that they're moving in. And on one side is create like an artist, that's artistic purity, that's skill, that's like, are you an impresario? What's your ability to play scales? And also to create the music, like on your side, like I just know what's good and I can put it, I can put it into a track. On the other side is operating like an athlete. So create like an artist, operate like an athlete.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:21Chris Williamson?

  And it's, okay, how many repetitions are you doing? Are you in five days a week from 11 till 7?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:26Chris Williamson?

  Are you spending your time drilling and working and looking over game tape and working on your mindset and nutrition and, you know, whatever it is, like all of the individual components?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yes, especially after having kids. You have to be.

• 1:14:37Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Can't be Olympic without a, an Olympic approach.

• 1:14:41Chris Williamson?

  One way to look at it would be.

• 1:14:46Chris Williamson?

  You have to ship at a pace required to work out what works and.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Have to ship? What do you mean?

• 1:14:54Chris Williamson?

  Ship, ship a product.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Oh, got it, got it, got it.

• 1:14:56Chris Williamson?

  Send it, send it. It's like, okay, dude, we could just, we could keep fucking trying to record this riff.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:01Chris Williamson?

  For the next three weeks. Send the fucker off to get mastered.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Chris Williamson?

  Like mix it, master it. Let's get, put it, let's see what happens.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:07Chris Williamson?

  And just a lot of the time what I've seen is that because artists tend to be like away with the fucking fairy, you know, like it's just a cigarette butt in a fucking afternoon. I'm in a hammock, I'm gonna have a walk. It's like, okay, dude, can you sit down and do some work, please? And I'm interested in what you think about the, the value of consistency might be a way to, to look at it.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:28Chris Williamson?

  And of.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  For sure. You're, you're.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  I've noticed in my older age that you can't will it, you'll walk away from it if it don't work. Cause again, if you're just the instrument, if the player doesn't show up that day, you're not gonna be played. A trumpet can't play itself. A trumpet alone, without the player, is like some, some like a metal. But the second, the player, the second God comes in, or inspiration, or the muse, or the whatever comes in and, and plays through you, it becomes this thing. The issue is that when the trumpet starts to believe that it's playing itself.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  And then you wake up every day and think you could will this into existence and I'm gonna, and then you're like, why hasn't it came in a bunch of years? It's because you didn't let the thing bigger than you come in the room. If the thing bigger than you doesn't come in, you will never have energy. We're not getting energy from ourselves. You're getting energy from this like, I don't know how that song was written that day, or when that came, or whatever. So you're a little less, I'm a little less hard on myself sometimes when it doesn't come out the way I want it to.

• 1:16:21Chris Williamson?

  You can't white knuckle creativity.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  You can't white knuckle creativity and you can't control culture. Some things you'll drop and it will not be the right time. And 10 years later, the shit we look back on and be like, what an amazing piece of art and da, da, da, da.

• 1:16:33Chris Williamson?

  So prescient. He was able to predict where the genre was going to go a decade before it did.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a lot of people in the beginning, they just say, I've dealt with that my whole career. Whole career. Every album six years later is like, the new one sucks, but the old one was the one. And then six years later, the new one sucks.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  What are you gonna do, man? It's crazy.

• 1:16:55Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me about the story of the new album.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Man, um.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Get a phone call one day. It's a new regime over at the old label that I had. They're like three presidents removed. One of them's a fan. Why aren't you putting out music on our label? Uh, you guys are fucking me on the contract? What would you do if we gave you your shit back? Uh huh. Let's have that conversation. Talk to my lawyer. He's like, you know, we might be able to get your whole, the reason why you walked away, we might be able to reverse it. I'm like, I ain't an artist. Well, go find out. Go see a fiddle. Calls me back. He's like, you now have X percentage of yourself. What are you gonna do? I was like, ah, I'm not, I already, I already pushed that down the river. And then over time, it was just kind of like working on songs for really, really big artists. And then being like, I don't have to write about the experience. That's not mine today. Like I could.

• 1:17:53Chris Williamson?

  Felt like the door was

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  And then it started to turn into me telling like my buddy Pete Nappy or my buddy Ten Rock or whatever like Prolific prolific musicians and producers like ridiculous like Ridiculous only reason why the album sounds as good as it does um Yo I didn't want to throw that on started turning

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  It's like you played a bunch of records for like this huge artist and there's these millions that could possibly come from them taking it and then you like get to the playlist and there was one I'd be like Hit the next one Hit the spacebar

• 1:18:22Chris Williamson?

  So fucking funny

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah and I I found myself telling my wife like I'm not having a blast right now but you know what would be fun if I went and wrote about And she's just like

• 1:18:33Chris Williamson?

  It's happening again isn't it

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  And then one night she randomly I had it out of nowhere right before we went to bed she

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  My wife's amazing she uh

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  She goes I'm not asking you I'm telling you she's like you gotta go do this Because you won't you're not gonna be uh you're gonna be regretful in in many many years if you don't if you don't come back and do this again She goes and I don't feel like dealing with you joking around she's like I don't feel like dealing with you in 20 years when you say you could She's like go spend the money go risk it all go back into the world go do what you gotta do she's like I'm telling you to I'm not asking you to I was like

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  Okay and then I just I had a battery in my back for some reason when she

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  When my when me and my wife were on the same page life decision making a lot of stuff is easier Especially when she puts the battery in my back she puts the battery in my back I'm like I'm like drool out the mouth gorilla beat on my chest don't get in my fucking way that's how I feel when she's So the second she was like literally like awesome like They need whatever you need to say I believe in my heart that that the world needs to hear it and your fans have grown up and they've matured with you and you have Accomplished so much self-worth and you've put yourself in the background for so many years She's like it's it's it's okay it's okay to like accept what's gonna come from whatever's coming here and I just went nuts and in like six months we had an album Five months we had an album so that's the story behind it

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Crazy crazy and then fast forward uh there's a bunch of stuff I can't talk about that's coming out but like

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  I thought of this album in my mind as like, I told my business manager, I said, I'm burning X million of dollars of my own money and I don't expect to ever get it back. This will be only pure, exactly who I am, artistry. I'm not concerned about hits and I want to shoot the biggest videos and be like super creative on it and I don't expect to get a return on my money, yet. This, this money won't come back culturally for another 10, 20 years because I can't, I'd have to get back on the road and then start to schematicize how to make my money back, which will doubt, which will dilute the process. So like in myself having money, I was able to do a pure process of burn money by working on art. That was just for art's sake. And I think that is a reason why I came across as potent.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  The bigger artists that I'm working with now or shit that's coming out soon or thank God. I treated it like a two, um, a many million dollar commercial. This is not, this is just like a commercial to stir the soup and remind the world that there could be other opportunity for me to go work on music in other areas.

• 1:21:12Chris Williamson?

  It's the greatest advertising campaign of all time.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. It wasn't the definitive thing that's going to make me the greatest in the world ever. It never is. It's just always these constant, it's a new lure in the ocean, fishing for a new type of fish. Because I want to just keep it moving. But when you want to keep things moving, sometimes you gotta do the thing that doesn't make sense. The machine's not going to help you. Then you fast forward and we're at, we're at Forest Hills. 26,000 deep. And I laugh about it because it's fucking hilarious. Fucking hilarious, like.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  The grateful, the grateful thing changes a lot of, a lot of, uh. I'm sorry if I'm rambling.

• 1:21:47Chris Williamson?

  No, I'm loving it dude.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  It's, it's been a, uh.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Someone will be, like my friends will be coming over and they'll be like, dude, can you believe you to fucking, and I'm like, I know. Like they paid me for it. Like that's, that's where I'm at consistently. In my older age, I can't believe it.

• 1:22:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it feels to me like, uh, mostly artists get split into two camps. Artists that have beef with other artists and artists that have beef with the industry. You fall into the latter camp.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  I'm, and also too, I was also.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  I also signed it at a young age. I also like look at my publishers who signed me early and only gave me a $10,000 advance that I was in for 10 years before I signed my second publishing deal. Like it was all anger and it was blame and it was everything. Then you get older and you realize like they were just trying to do what the it's a reflection of the norm of the industry. It's a reflection of people's greed. It's a reflection of whatever. And it's my response. I don't ask for the trauma, but it's my responsibility to process it. I don't ask for it and that's not fair. That's the injustice of life. That's the thing. Why'd you put me here if you were gonna? That's your fault for making me. I didn't ask to be born. It's like, we don't ask for the traumas, but it's our responsibility to process them because your life's gonna be fucking miserable unless you don't. So you have to take responsibility for even the things that were out of your control, which is tough. But I'll tell you, at the other end of it,

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  we are simultaneously living where everything is the most important decision we've ever made in our life, leading toward this amalgamation of our work forever.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  And COVID could like happen again. It's like this thing where like nothing matters, but everything matters, but none of it matters. So like shit's working right now. It's like.

• 1:23:33Chris Williamson?

  I want to know how you want father figure to make men feel who listen to it.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  It's funny, like we were on a vibe and a feeling that I don't want to speak from that feeling. I almost have to like re-center myself to, to open the birdcage to get to the general pure intention of what that was.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  If I could soothe the guy who has lost sight of the fact that fathers are important and your role in your children's life is more important than the cat in the lineage of your family from a thousand years back to a thousand years in the future. Your job as a father will do more than anything you could ever do in this physical world. It will echo and reverberate further than you ever could because you're downloading and imprinting into something that came from you. My son is me and his son will be him and we will live forever through each other. You're the most important job you could ever do. I hope for 47 minutes or however long my album is that you can be reminded you've

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  never lost a path far enough where you can't return to your kids. You're not damaged. You are not damaged so badly that you can't return to your children because your children need you, whether you like that fact or not. So if I could put a little espresso in your cup in the morning to go and be whatever that figure is, which is different for all men and whatever, but somewhere along the way we threw the baby out with the bathwater, and I don't know what I mean by that. I just mean culturally, somewhere along, we've lost the thread of fathers. There's a thread that is like, I cannot put my finger on it artistically.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  It just...

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah. It's important, man. Keep going. Clock in. Don't have that drink. Don't pick up the pill bottle. The child needs you and your role is important. Just because you're not on the radio or you're not making hits singing... No. Fathers are... Fathers are a bedrock, a pillar in something very, very important. We can't lose that. If I could bring some attention to that with another man who's struggling with that, I don't think a 12-year-old is gonna relate, yet. But if a guy my age, he's like, "Man, I'm thinking about leaving. I'm thinking about just fuck all. I'm gonna just go back to the bar because I'm not good enough to take care of my children and I'm not perfect and..." That's what I want that album to just speak to.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  Now, I don't know how the ending finish line will be, but if you could just pop that on. And even if one day it prevents you from choosing something that's not going to feed you for the rest of your life. That's what I genuinely, at the bottom of my heart, hope that the album speaks to. And I wanted to make the music and the cut so

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  ball main

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  that it made you proud to listen to. Cause there's a difference between an after school special and

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  Goodfellas. Goodfellas, the lesson that you learn, you're not feeling like you're being told something because it's in this messy, murdered Italian heritage thing. It's in this thing, but then you go, be careful what you wish for. Be careful who you trust. Being the top dog sometimes is not even what you might want by bang, bang, bang, bang, but it's wrapped up in this thing. Like I wanted to make Goodfellas. I didn't want to make like, being a dad is important. Like, so I felt there was a responsibility there morally for me to creatively attack it to to the best that I could in that direction. It's a very long winded answer, but.

• 1:28:05Chris Williamson?

  Was that a fear that you had?

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:28:07Chris Williamson?

  Not being able to live up to your own standards for a father?

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  It's a fear I have every day. You don't know, I don't know how I'm a

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  I want my kid to know what working for money is like, but I don't want my kid to be like this, like starving, like, because I know some kids that grew up and be like, my dad was rich. He didn't give me a cent. Fuck my dad. And then there's another kid in rehab who's like, my dad never let me make any decisions on my own and gave me all my opportunity. So every day I pray to God, there's a balance and a patience with my son, all three of my sons to say.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  I know I'm like lightly messing you up somehow. I just like, don't know yet. And hopefully it doesn't like topple your world.

• 1:28:50Chris Williamson?

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• 1:29:32Chris Williamson?

  know that the quality is legit. Right now, when you first subscribe, you can get a free bottle of D3 K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit, plus bonus AG1 Travel Packs. And for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of Omega 3s. Just go to the link in the description below, or head to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. Every single dad that I've had on the show who has achieved a level of wealth that's significantly greater than they grew up with, has this exact same problem. They know that most of the things that they value in themselves were the byproduct of

• 1:30:16Chris Williamson?

  the struggle that they had to go through as a child.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:20Chris Williamson?

  And they think, I don't want to rob my child of the opportunity to learn those lessons for themselves, because I know how important those lessons were for me.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:30:31Chris Williamson?

  And at the same time, what the fuck was the point of working so hard if I'm not going to give them the opportunities that I didn't get?

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  It's like the term nepo baby. People will be like, oh, like you're a nepo baby. It's like, but when a man like comes from nothing and makes something of himself, the second he makes something of himself, you become... It's like they exalt you to the to want you to chase after your dreams. But then when you get your dreams and you have kids, that kid's just the product of a man who reached his dreams. It's like, bitch, you told me to chase them. Now I'm in trouble for the fact that you took, it's like, it's, that's like nepo baby to me. Like, I hear that term being flown around with, like, kids who have parents who are in the industry and this, that and the third. It's like, what'd you want their parents to do? And if you are a nepo baby, what do you do? You fucking wear a dunce cap and sit in your closet every night and just be like, I'm, I'm too privileged to, to like have an opinion or, or make art. Like, what are you supposed to do?

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:31:24Chris Williamson?

  Interesting. You know Fred again?

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Chris Williamson?

  You know, he, I think, comes from at least a little bit of wealth.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:31:29Chris Williamson?

  I didn't know that. I found that out this week. Uh, I think family comes from at least some degree of, of what people will call privilege, I think. I get the sense, looking at the way that Fred presents and looking at the sort of shows he did. Do you see that he did a miniature tour around the islands of Scotland?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  No, I did not.

• 1:31:47Chris Williamson?

  He played two hundred person cap working men's pubs.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Sick.

• 1:31:52Chris Williamson?

  And clubs.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Sick.

• 1:31:53Chris Williamson?

  Right? And it was.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 1:31:55Chris Williamson?

  Storn away, these tiny little fucking islands, or the Hebrides or some shit, off the top corner of, of Scotland. And, uh, the way that he, uh, presents online with his social media, very sort of anti-marketing, marketing type thing. I get the sense that a lot of that will be an additional burden that Fred has to pay in order to like wipe the potential accusation of nepo baby.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Say it again. Were you, were you worked that last part?

• 1:32:24Chris Williamson?

  He needs to, what's called counter-signal.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:26Chris Williamson?

  Um, that, uh, I'm playing these tiny shows. I'm not flying at this ridiculous, like, I, I'm a man of the people.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:33Chris Williamson?

  In an attempt, this is an additional burden that he has to get over just so that people see him as someone that is remotely fucking resonant as a normal human.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Got it, got it, got it, got it.

• 1:32:44Chris Williamson?

  And because the accusation is so, and I mean, that's also by the looks of things, like who he is. Like a pretty nice chill down-to-earth dude.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:32:53Chris Williamson?

  And the way that he wants to live and all the rest of the things as well. But there has to be in the back of your mind, this weird scenario where you go, the privileges that I was afforded are a burden that I have to get over as well.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:33:05Chris Williamson?

  I have to work harder or counter-signal in this weird way or

• 1:33:10Chris Williamson?

  a downplay.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  That's, I would say the last, the last two years have really started.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  I feel like he's on an ascension and his moment is like happening and it's all this stuff. So he's gonna figure that it seems like a very brilliant, bright guy. So I'm sure I'm wishing the best of luck on that journey because you're right. That is something that you have to deal with in the public eye. It's like, it's so fake that it's not fake, that I'm making fun of it for being fake. And by the way, go buy my album. It's like, we're all, we're all on that. But I recognize there's another thing where it's just like, something, or at least I'm trying to work on creatively is just, I am not apologetic for any space I'm in anymore. I will, it's a waste of time. It's a creative waste of time. I can't, I can't. I have to believe I belong in a space in order for something to be believable.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  So for me to posture my whole life about making sure I'm accepted in the space creatively? Again, as I talk within the music stance, or I have a much more direct, whatever. It's just like a waste of, to posture. That's another reason why it's like social media is like, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'd rather just not be on it. I don't, I did.

• 1:34:20Chris Williamson?

  All of the caveating dilutes down the purity of what it is that you're trying to say. Again, dude, it comes back to you're trying to justify yourself to people who don't understand what you're trying to do. Oh, you don't get it? Well, that's a shame. But if you're trying to litigate your way or caveat or

• 1:34:39Chris Williamson?

  create in advance some odd disclaimer that front runs the criticism that you think most people are going to have about.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  What are you saying?

• 1:34:47Chris Williamson?

  Uh, is this?

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Welcome to politics.

• 1:34:50Chris Williamson?

  It's so arduous. Dude, I had Bernie Sanders was on the show on Sunday.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:34:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Uh, that came out two days ago. It's really good. It was really fun. In the space of a couple of comments that I saw. One was, um, uh, this is absolutely unspeakable. I can't believe how judgmental you are. You are always shilling for the right and it's obvious that you, that, that all you're doing is like, uh, pushing these like hard right, right wing views. And then the next comment that I saw was, you only interview liberal, you only interview liberal guests? It's evident who's paying you off. I screenshotted both of them and put them in Instagram stories side by side. I was like, a story of the internet in two slides.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Literally, literally. Sometimes I feel like, why do I even like?

• 1:35:38Chris Williamson?

  I'm being spit roasted by two people pointing in opposite directions.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  You can't be both? How could you be both villains?

• 1:35:43Chris Williamson?

  Well, apparently I am. Unbelievable. And this is the point. If you try and please everybody, you're going to end up pleasing nobody. And if you fucking caveat, you're going to dilute your work down so much.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Double down, double down, double down until you really in your soul realize the error of your ways. If you don't feel like there's an error of your ways, you're going to turn into a super angry person. You'll be angry at yourself for kowtowing to the thing that you like the uh, the rehearsed speech you're supposed to give everybody before you go into a uh, a space. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. Art is, art suffers through that. Art suffers in the um, the validation. Some of the best art comes from the people who were never supposed to get their hands on music equipment. Some of the best art comes from, but to say you haven't paid your dues in the sense of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, man, I ain't, I'm not.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  You're barking up the wrong tree with me. The wrong tree, at least in the studio. Everyone else in my life, I don't know. But I would never be able to go into the places I'm going into on the album without me being like, I am not by no stretch of the imagination, asking for your opinion on that. Your opinion, asking for your opinion on whether I deserve to go into that space or not creatively.

• 1:36:55Chris Williamson?

  Where do you think about self-belief coming from? Because that sounds like an awful lot of self-belief.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  It probably has a lot to do with my father telling me I'm great constantly. Constantly my whole life. Even when I wasn't, he was so proud of me, playing songs for my family in the backyard. My son made, my son made this. And I'm like, Dad, it's not good. I made it. Stop embarrassing me. But looking back on it, it's like, you are spectacular. You're spectacular. Like I was, I was told that for so long that I think your brain just snaps in and wires at a certain point and you go, I'm spectacular. And someone says, no, you're not. You say, no, the man who made me told me I am. So fuck off. And then you look back and you're like, thank God, I believed it even when it wasn't true.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Because that's what got me to the place to be like, I've got really, really good because I thought I couldn't, I thought I was good, but I wasn't in retrospect. But maybe that's the whole, that's the whole equation. It's just like, even when you're not.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, that's a, that gets really convoluted with self-belief, but I do think a lot of it has to do with both of my parents telling me I was great.

• 1:38:07Chris Williamson?

  You know what's strange?

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  And, and some people to this day don't believe things that anything I've ever done is great.

• 1:38:14Chris Williamson?

  Dad does.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I've noticed that a lot of my actions or my things come from

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  a trillion fans are not worth dad saying he did a good job. I put my money, I put all the money I have on that. And it's tough for some people.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  So I'm not a big leggy, a privilege and thanks for letting me in the cool house. I'm not, I'm not that type of guy, but I can't imagine. That's why that album's important.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  I can't imagine. I ain't nobody's daddy, but if I could play an album that just tells you,

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  stay the course and you're not broken, because everybody's broken. Like, that's the, that's the album. It's funny that they just got back to that, but yeah, without, I couldn't imagine. Couldn't imagine.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Silence on the podcast. Crazy.

• 1:39:34Chris Williamson?

  We were saying before about the challenge of

• 1:39:38Chris Williamson?

  growing up with an

• 1:39:43Chris Williamson?

  a big pair of shoes to fill financially in terms of corporate success. Dad was a doctor and mom was a pharmacologist and you're going to become a lawyer or whatever it might be.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yours were.

• 1:39:54Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, like you could just imagine.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  Got it, got it.

• 1:39:56Chris Williamson?

  We talked about the, the kind of nepo baby expectation.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:59Chris Williamson?

  Uh, I think it's one of the reasons that kids from wealth are more likely to use hard drugs, not just because they can afford them. But secondly, because they need to find a way to be able to cope with the expectation. It's another reason why, this is a great insight, dude. I, I learned this on a great Substack post. We look at the kids of high performing parents are more likely to go to college. You say, maybe that's because of advantages, maybe it's because of private tutoring, maybe it's because of whatever, whatever, whatever. What if it's because they have such a fear of insufficiency if they don't meet the minimum standard that their parents set for them? They are driven by the fear of insufficiency. So all of that is to say, classic, if you come from privilege, there is an expectation

• 1:40:44Chris Williamson?

  that you live up to the opportunities and also the standards of your parents, right? Objectively. What you have, which is really interesting, is what sounds to me like a really wonderful father. And you have the obligation to try and live up to the standard of fatherhood that your father set for you.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:41:06Chris Williamson?

  And this isn't, you cannot fill this with the number of records you sell. You cannot fill this with the size of your bank account or the house or the fucking however many keys you have, does not matter.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:15Chris Williamson?

  And that's a

• 1:41:18Chris Williamson?

  unique kind of

• 1:41:22Chris Williamson?

  pressure and expectation that's holistic and beautiful, but is still going to be there. Holy fuck, I had, I had like an Olympian level father.

• 1:41:35Chris Williamson?

  And I now need to try and be that for my sons.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:39Chris Williamson?

  Is that a, a, a pressure to sort of fill the shoes of dad for your sons that you felt?

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Yes, in the beginning. And then it slowly turned into.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Understanding that my father

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  is me and it's like okay, we're gonna have to chop this up because I don't know how I'm gonna even get to the what I'm trying to say if

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  we don't ask for the trauma we don't ask for the trauma but it's our responsibility to process it right

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  if you take the time to process it

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  the mountain of a father starts to look different it's not a mountain anymore it's another human being that worked three jobs to get his ice cream shit off the the ice cream truck off the thing in Brooklyn for him to move his family out to Long Island to give his son Pro Tools and to be able to afford it by the time he's a guy that like my dad be telling me stories about his father and his grandfather that I'm like my father is a miracle a miracle I think it has to do a lot with Jesus in his life but my father is a miracle

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  all the good things I want from him in droves and more good things than bad things with my father because my dad was amazing he was he was around every corner I have good I have my father did the right things around it and especially having children now I know what he sacrificed to get to be present with me I want all that stuff and then the other stuff that I didn't ask for that's deep rooted all the way into the grandfather's grandfather grandfather grandfather I didn't ask for it but it's my job to process this so I don't look at him as

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  an unattainable thing the reason I am successful or not successful a figure that I can't mold myself into I look at him as somebody trying to figure out just like I am and with with the tools he was given he did a pretty damn good job because when I go to retreats and I and I'm around people that have made mistakes in their life or accomplished incredible things and won the PGA Tour and yada yada yada

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  It all lines to daddy. There's a weird, there's a really strong, sick through line of men with their fathers and what it ends up being, what it doesn't end up being and whatever, but like.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  I don't even know what I'm trying to say. I just say, I guess what I'm trying to say is I look at my father now, right now, like today, and there's no like.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Thank you for everything and I don't blame you for anything.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Thank you for what you did give me. And it's 90%, it's, it's, it's all, it's all good. It's all good. It's like.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  The biggest lie of it all.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Is that you go, you can't connect back with your father. Your father might be too successful, you can't connect with them. Your father might be too much of a drunk, you can't connect with them. Your father might be, it might not even be healthy for some people to actually connect with their parents. Because they're in such fucked up positions and whatever.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  You will never be able to figure much out without going headfirst into uncovering what the story and lineage is with your parents and facing that, whether you ask for it or not. That might not involve you even seeing your parents, but I can tell you that your life will open up if you can process that.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  I don't even know how I got to there from the question that you asked me and we're gonna have to edit all that space out and whatever, but.

• 1:46:33Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, the space is going nowhere, sorry.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Like the, the.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  I just think fathers are very important. I think, I think that, I, I just, I might think that there's not much more importance than a mother and a father. Whatever we have to do culturally. I ain't no fucking politician, none of that shit, but whatever we have to do culturally to, to re-establish the importance of that is important to me. That doesn't lean me on any side of the political special. But I would go to war for the idea that fathers are important. I mean, cosmically, DNA from Saturn to here and back, levels of, since the primordial soup of cavemen, fathers. It's, and depending on how this, depending on how this goes.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Is where this whole thing will fall or stand. I'm speaking very symbolically, but I know. How we treat the, the unit. How we treat the leader.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  In micro leader of every home culturally across the thing. What we do with this will determine what it all looks like, top to bottom. Cause it begins and ends with that.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  That's why it's tough for me to go on podcasts. I don't really even know what I mean. I just know what I mean by that. Whatever that means is, is what it means.

• 1:47:59Chris Williamson?

  Everybody knows what you mean.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna get tough, man. It's gonna get tough. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. In the process of trying to get justice.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Don't, don't burn, you can't burn the whole fucking thing down. Parents are important. You can't, you can't burn the whole thing down in the pursuit that you believe to be righteous. It's, it's, and I don't know what I even, it's not left, that's not right. I'm just saying in the pursuit, you can't fucking burn the house down in the winter. You still gotta have a roof over your head. Since there's a hole in the wall. In a room and cold air is coming in and people are trying to go fix the hole. You can't just sit in the house all day and say, well, the hole wouldn't be there if you didn't fucking da, da, da, da, da. I know, but there's still a fucking hole. So can you come with me to come and fix the hole?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  If we don't fix the hole.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  It's gonna get cold, it's gonna get cold in this motherfucker.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Cold. And there ain't no, uh, not a lot of amount of millionaires are gonna change that.

• 1:49:07Chris Williamson?

  I brought this up with Bernie on Sunday. It's my second time in New York in a week. And he's big into inequality. As am I. I grew up working class. I grew up as working class as possible. And I wanted to get his thoughts on a few statistics that I'll say to you now as well. I basically put forward the idea that fatherlessness is the real inequality.

• 1:49:30Chris Williamson?

  Boys who grew up apart from their biological father are about two times more likely to land in prison or jail by age thirty. Fatherlessness is a better predictor of incarceration than race or growing up poor. Young men are more likely to end up in prison or jail in the US than they are to graduate from college if they are raised in any non-intact family setup. More likely to end up in prison or jail than they are to graduate college if they grow up in any non-intact family setup. And that's like across the world. Just the US.

• 1:50:07Chris Williamson?

  Just the US. Wow. Regardless of family income, children in intact families are half as likely to be diagnosed with depression.

• 1:50:17Chris Williamson?

  And girls who grow up without fathers are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with depression.

• 1:50:26Chris Williamson?

  What do you gather from that?

• 1:50:29Chris Williamson?

  It's politically very unpalatable to talk about fatherlessness because it feels like you are putting blame on something very intimate and very closely associated to people's sense of self-worth.

• 1:50:44Chris Williamson?

  I think that there are probably some breakouts by demographic here too, which are politically unpalatable for people to talk about too, that there are going to be subcultures and areas of the country in which this is worse and better. And that's also something that people don't really want to point the finger at because it sounds a lot like blaming. It sounds a lot like, it's like, it's a slippery slope to get toward a type of conversation that's not too nice. Absolutely.

• 1:51:10Chris Williamson?

  And yet, exactly as you said there, we cannot deny the raw reality that growing up without a father in the home is not good for daughters and sons and mothers and the local community. And the fact that people are so unprepared.

• 1:51:34Chris Williamson?

  To be able to hold two facts in their mind at one time, which is fathers are important.

• 1:51:43Chris Williamson?

  And mothers can be independent. Absolutely. Uh, you know how um, there's an uncertainty principle in quantum physics, you have a suit, what's called a superposition. The, the, the particle can be um, in two places at once, essentially. Hmm. Uh, uh, thinking in superpositions, allowing yourself to hold two thoughts in your mind at one time. Yeah. And unfortunately, we have a world that refuses to think in superpositions and it collapses down the space. If you're in this, that means this. Yes, yeah. Uh, if you want to give uh, empathy to men, that means you're taking it away from another more deserving group. If you're saying that fathers are important, you're implicitly saying that mothers are incapable.

• 1:52:24Chris Williamson?

  If you're saying that, you know, uh, uh, you pick your one dimensional argument of choice. Hmm. And um, I think that you are right. I think that there are many things that need to be looked at. Inequality is a big one of them, poverty is a huge one, class, the focus on, the diversion away from the focus on class. And into other, in some ways more arbitrary, uh, uh, uh, um, ways to delineate people from other people. Uh, is a big problem, but.

• 1:52:59Chris Williamson?

  Removing focus from the family and from fathers and their role in the home.

• 1:53:08Chris Williamson?

  In the hopes that what? By, by reminding people of, but by trying to convince people that fathers aren't important, that somehow pedestalizes women? That somehow makes them more independent? Yeah, like, uh, there's no, uh, one, like you said, like the super, yeah. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can, we can have a superposition in terms of our thoughts. And um, I think it's very pressing, dude. I think this weird position that you're in where you're talking, your, your album is a tribute to your father. And an offering to your sons. Yes. At the same time. Absolutely. It's going in both directions. Absolutely.

• 1:53:47Chris Williamson?

  I don't think we need to be ashamed. I don't think we need to do this fucking land acknowledgement each time before we do this. I, I, I, I talk about men and the, the problems of men an awful lot. And I, it will never not fatigue me to have to do, well, we must remember that women have fell behind for all of this time. And oh, it's also important to remember that it's only been, not been long since da, da, da, da. Like, guys, I get it. I get it. I wish I could just say it once. Or like have a disclaimer on my website. And be like, I understand completely the challenges that we're talking about. I am not saying any of this huge list of things. Remember what we were talking about before? If you have to try and justify why you're in the room in order to be able to do the thing and you water it down and you have the caveat, which is exactly what I'm doing right now.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:54:32Chris Williamson?

  You'd never get yourself.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Yes. No, no, this is, this is, this is, I don't see this as caveat. This is like-

• 1:54:37Chris Williamson?

  You understand what I mean.

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  The excavation of the thing.

• 1:54:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  I think, I think people are deathly afraid of the excavation. Cause you just don't know what the fuck you're gonna find. So it's a lot safer to just not excavate it. You say this, you mean this. If you say this, you mean this. And now I get to go home and live my life and whatever. Cause if we were both to excavate, shit, I might actually like you. I might actually agree with you. We might actually be on the same page. Then I'm gonna have to revert everything that is, makes my life easier. It's easier to not excavate. It's easier to not excavate. If you have to excavate everything, that means you might have to really face yourself to find out what you truly believe at a gut level. Most people, I don't think, I just don't think people, it's just a lot, it's a lot easier to just not, to excavate the problem. If we excavate, if you excavate the problem, you might have to rub off some feathers. It's like, oh, I'm dealing with

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  abuse in my family. Abuse runs in my family. Uh, da, da, da, da. We just don't talk about that. It's like-

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  Might be a little bit easier for now to not excavate it, because if I excavate it, I might die facing that type of.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  But the only way you get anything is the, you gotta have the, the discourse, I guess. And I just, I guess discourse is not a. It's just risky, dude. It's risky.

• 1:55:59Chris Williamson?

  It's becoming increasingly less risky, which I like.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:56:02Chris Williamson?

  And I think that this doesn't mean we need to have masks off, you can shitpost whatever you want.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Totally, totally.

• 1:56:08Chris Williamson?

  Obviously.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  Um. It's just, yeah.

• 1:56:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, fuck, god damn it. Yeah, we should call each other out every time we do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:56:17Chris Williamson?

  Um, but I, uh.

• 1:56:22Chris Williamson?

  It seems to me like the trend is moving in the right direction now. I think people are prepared to say what is accurate and, and caring and holistic and, um, makes the world a better place.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  It's, it's, yeah.

• 1:56:40Chris Williamson?

  We're just with less of a concern about how it's going to land.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  I, I, that will help art greatly.

• 1:56:46Chris Williamson?

  My.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if there's no.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  It's just, it's like when the Italians and the blacks and the Jews get together, it's magic. It is. Like, it's just like, we're all, you can learn, there's, there's a, art is like.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  You take the Africa with the Europe with the thing to then make the thing that says, this is the most newest European African thing I've ever. Like, you gotta be able to, like, you know, but I think it's all, it's like tribalism, it's the, and to be honest with you. I have taken the stance of kind of like.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  I gotta make sure, like, my house is clean. Like, I, I don't know what I mean by this, but like, I have to make sure that my, like, shoes are lined up at the door and my underwear's in the hamper for my wife before I'm like.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  Because there are all these voices that's like, how dare you make an album about your father when you about being a father figure and trying to be better when you lost your patience with your kid. Yes. And it's just like, but you- That is humility, though. There's grace. There has to be some sort of grace to be able to make, to be able to stumble into art. There's grace and stumbling. It's grace, it's stumbling, it's a, it's, it's, uh, learning what you did wrong or refining the product or whatever. But if there's people who you're not welcome in a space to create, we've already cut the art at the legs. So like you said, if there, if as a cultural whole, people are more excited about, I'm just gonna do what I feel and let the chips fall where they fall. The potency of art will a hundred percent change. It won't be watered down or homogenized or whatever. But I'll tell you what.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  I don't know how much time we got, I'm having a blast.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  Not to just like expound on expounding, but like,

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  you know what the last conversation with my wife for the last six days and my therapist this morning was just like,

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  I, like, I also just like, don't, I, I, like, like, I don't want the smoke. I don't need the smoke. I don't care. You can, you can, you just, like, I don't, it's not even my, uh,

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  when I go on social media, I'm like whipped up into this frenzy to believe that like, it's my role to speak out, to join the ranks of the thing. I'm just gonna shut social media off today and make sure I threw my underwear in the hamper for my wife. Like, let's just like start there. Let's just like take a fucking second to, I have strong beliefs about a lot of things and a lot of things that I'll expound upon with people in the studio for four hours. People who lean super left and people who lean super right and people who don't believe the government's real. All of those things combined, I will have the nuanced conversation with. I, I, I struggle with just like,

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  I have a moral obligation in my art to like say what I believe in, but I also, I don't need, I don't need it to-

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Like I like, I like going to the store and just like fucking like hanging out, buying my shit, going home, eating dinner, working on music, coming back.

• 1:59:46Chris Williamson?

  Well, you have to remember, I

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  I struggle, I struggle in that. That's, that's the best way to put it. I have no answer. I, I, I struggle deeply with who I'm called to be.

• 1:59:57Chris Williamson?

  It's the balance again, dude. It's the balance board. It is.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:00:01Chris Williamson?

  It keeps on coming up. And the reason that it keeps on coming up is that you have no obligation as a recording artist to do anything that you don't want to do.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:00:11Chris Williamson?

  You have worked this hard to afford yourself the opportunity to not have to do anything that you don't want to do and say anything that you don't want to say.

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I even sick sometimes I say, you may have been conditioned by too much content to grow to be angry at me for expecting what you think my output should be.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  That's not my fault.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Like, it's like somebody being like, well, you don't get good ticket sale, uh, ticket sale splits on your money because that's just the way the industry works. Like, that's not my issue. Don't shit on me because that's just the, like, the artist is just, this isn't a, this isn't a weird. It's, it's weird.

• 2:00:50Chris Williamson?

  I wouldn't.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Like, I owe you my music. Maybe. If that.

• 2:00:54Chris Williamson?

  Kind of. Yeah. If you're lucky.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  The gratefulness that pours out of me for people that like look back at me at a stadium is like a whole other level of appreciation. You took time out of your day and you spent money to come and do this. And I am so deeply thankful for that. But

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  it's not my, like, I, I don't, uh,

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  whatever you've come to expect from artists,

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna be unhealthy to fit myself into that if it just doesn't work for me. If my pace is four albums, uh, one album every four years, and you get the best of me and I'm like a healthy father because of it and whatever, like, I, you might have to like,

• 2:01:37Chris Williamson?

  Sorry.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  Sorry. I'm not gonna be doing two albums a year, double sided deluxe with the thing, with the performance at the thing, with the. And I also don't need to be, um, right. I don't, I don't, I don't need to prove to the, I do the thing I love every day. And in that service, it's between me and the creator. I create with collaborators and it's between me and him. And as long as I'm here and I'm doing the thing and I'm doing the crayon and giving it to my daddy for him to put on the refrigerator. Oh, look at this little creator thinking he made a masterpiece and it's like, I made the whole universe. As long as I'm here saying, hey daddy, I made this for you.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  There's not much else I could give to you. Cause anything else beyond that to me, it, it's, it's not in my alignment. It's not in my like, it's not in my, um.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  The deeper I am in my purpose, I will provide more utility for the long term of the world.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  And I can only determine what I believe my deepest utility to be. So I have to operate within where I think I'm humming at my highest frequency of utility. For someone to say, you're not, you're not utilizing the way I want you to utilize. It's like, well, like what are we? It's a rough, it's a rough go of it for artists right now. It's a rough, it's a rough go of it. It is, it is. It's insane. Analysis paralysis. I don't know how, I do not know how they do it. Kids, I have no idea. This motherfucker's out here 11 years old talking about so blessed to win the athlete of the year award. Comments, he ain't someone sold from Houston. It's like, you're 11 dude. Some, they're gonna look at this like cigarettes.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  And artists are the main cigarette smokers because we gotta use that to get. Streaming services are shitting on us. So we have to double down by using the platforms that only need us to use it because it makes users. Use the platform. They don't actually care about the artists. So then we have to change our behavior as artists. To succeed on a platform that only cares about the platform getting eyes. So then we turn into like stupid monkeys performing for Instagram.

• 2:03:47Speaker 01

  You, motherfuckers doing the call 10 out on Tik Tok to be like, listen to my song. Do you think motherfuckers 20 years ago were like, this is where it's gonna go? But it's like, once you invent the thing, Tik Tok just needs you to act like Tik Tok needs you to act to get the most eyes to keep the most people on the app. Tik Tok's not helping you get to your fans to you. They're helping you keep fans on the app.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  I don't know how to navigate it. I don't, I wouldn't know how to navigate if I didn't have money. I'm just making an album, putting it out. And again, caveat, I ain't pure. I ain't the most. I only make music because I'm the most moralistic. No, it's like, I did, I don't. I mean, we're joined, we're supposed to talk. It is what it is. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't know how to. You're just gonna have to create really thick skinned motherfuckers in the future because it's only gonna get worse. So maybe this will breed a bunch of people who like naturally in the response of over criticalism by every comment. Maybe the generation next to where they'd be totally fucked from social media with self-image and all that stuff, or. It would breed like really resilient, like I don't give a shit that you said I was.

• 2:04:55Chris Williamson?

  They follow the count, they follow the culture or that the counterculture.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  You drop a song and a motherfucker is filming themselves as someone is watching them film themselves. To react to them filming themselves. Why are we making music? Like, it's almost as if.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  The people trying is just raw content for these people who just want to be seen on the internet.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  To use as a tool for their channel to blow up.

• 2:05:30Chris Williamson?

  It's a human centipede where everyone's attached to the person before them. It's like a.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  You drop a song and a motherfucker's like, watch me listen. Why the fuck would I watch you listen? I don't even, I don't know, dude. I don't know. Some, I, you know what? I could be wrong. Sometimes I like watching people. Listen to an album that I love because I'm like, wow, you're gonna, you're gonna experience it the way that I did. And I like, this is a great album. I can't wait to see what you think about it. Dad listens to Nirvana for the first time. Like, those are cool. I don't like mind them. But in general, though, the whole over scrutiny of like a hundred comments and 20 of them are bad and then it.

• 2:06:05Chris Williamson?

  Did you not always used to have this though with music critics, but it would have been in magazines and stuff like that?

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  For my shit or just like in general?

• 2:06:12Chris Williamson?

  Generally, you'd go back a couple of decades, that would have been.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's like if, if the, the newspaper of the New York Times just says like. The Beatles, Sergeant Pepper's, overindulgent and slop of a mess and whatever. The New York Times said it, people read it. It wasn't.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Uh, like.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Taylor Swift, "Life of a Showgirl." Okay, now, it's not just the New York Times and then people talk about it for two days. It's, here's the dissertation as to why that this album felt redundant and malignant and not in the I found it to be the exact opposite, given its sweet nature and da, da, da, da, da. By the way, buy my protein shake. It's like, it's everybody is like a, people are weighing into such a degree that artists have to become a sensei at just being like, the chips are going to fall where they fall. I cannot be affected by that.

• 2:07:03Chris Williamson?

  Everybody needs a mindfulness practice. What did you make of the reaction to Taylor Swift's album? I don't think that I've seen a public reaction to that. Political commentators giving their thoughts.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Were they?

• 2:07:15Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there was no one that was beyond, like, it was, honestly, the fact that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump didn't do reaction videos to it. In fact, Trump might, did Trump say something about the Taylor Swift? I feel like he did. I feel like he did say something about it.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  What was the general gist of the, the discourse? Was it a split discourse?

• 2:07:36Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it was certainly split. I think a couple of things that were interesting that people picked up on. One was, you used to never be able to criticize a Taylor Swift song or album without Swifties calling for your head.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:07:50Chris Williamson?

  And the fact that this time criticisms were put out and the Swifties didn't do that was seen as indicative that even her most ardent fans realized that this might not have been the thing, whatever.

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  It's like, the, the inside of the box is the inside of the box, which brings the inside of the box.

• 2:08:09Chris Williamson?

  It's like, Jesus, Christmas.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. The fans' non-response to the criticism was indicative of what we might believe to be the micromanagement.

• 2:08:16Chris Williamson?

  That was like a big, that was a big talking point. We're three levels of derivative away from what the actual initial piece of content is now.

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  Um, fully vulnerable and transparent. The only clip I saw was over my wife's shoulder. She was strolling through and somewhere on some sort of Entertainment Tonight or something, it was her saying, "I'm not the art police and I like it." And like, kind of just like, leave it at that. And I thought that was pretty cool. That was the, that was the whole, my level of receiving discourse of like, what that was. I listened to it. I listened to it and I have my opinions musically on. I can get, I can get into the minutia of like what I really thought about the wine as it was being stomped on the grapes like for sure. But I don't know how like a 14 year old feels about it or like how it relates to the zeitgeist of her applying to her relevancy. I don't know. I, I, I uh. Genuinely did not take enough inventory to know. I just know what I thought about the album when I listened to it in my car.

• 2:09:10Chris Williamson?

  What did you make of the album?

• 2:09:11Speaker 01

  I liked it. I enjoyed it. I think she's a great songwriter.

• 2:09:14Chris Williamson?

  What a great opinion.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  I liked it. I don't, I don't know. I just.

• 2:09:18Chris Williamson?

  Or you could have said.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:19Chris Williamson?

  It wasn't for me.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  So, some songs were, some songs weren't, like a hundred percent of the albums I listened to.

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  Very rarely across the board in my like stopping an album and I'm like, dog shit. The whole thing was. Taylor Swift must be kidding. Like, I'm like, no, like the second pre on that third song was pretty sick. I could probably take something from that and that's it. Oh, Max is a gen- Max Martin's a genius. Man, Taylor Swift knows how to write the shit out of a song. Eh, I wonder what she means by this. I don't agree with that. Hmm. I'm not like, I don't agree with that. Max Martin's a genius. Make sure everyone knows how I feel about it. I know how I feel about it because I fucking listened to it myself. I don't need you to know that I thought that I listened to it. It's like. But that's what my, I think Ta- Taylor Swift's been. Olympic for a long time. And the crazy part is she writing them too. She, he's writing them. She's good. She's good. And that type of run, I don't.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  What am I gonna be like? Her fall from grace should be studied. If people don't like the album, I don't fucking know. I don't look at her that way. I look at her as just like a very high level force Olympic creative. That's just like. Like, wow, she does that at a really, really high level. And a lot of the songs I end up liking. Like, these are catchy. I like this. Catch it on the way to driving my son somewhere. I'm like.

• 2:10:31Chris Williamson?

  In a Kia.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  Kind of going.

• 2:10:33Chris Williamson?

  What's the sound system like in a Kia?

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Pretty great.

• 2:10:36Chris Williamson?

  Is it?

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  I paid the extra 15 grand for the uh.

• 2:10:38Chris Williamson?

  This is.

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  Deluxe bo- sound system.

• 2:10:41Chris Williamson?

  This is turning into an ad read for fucking Kia. I want to talk about the direction of pop music right now. I've seen. Those videos of Ed Sheeran playing 50 songs over four chords. You know, it's the same chord progression of whatever.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Hmm. Ed is, Ed is like, my numbingly talented, is crazy.

• 2:11:00Chris Williamson?

  Um, does that suggest that pop music is formulaic now? Where are we at in the arc of?

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  What do, what do you consider pop music?

• 2:11:11Chris Williamson?

  I guess anything that hits the charts.

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, formulaic in a sense that.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Bro, sometimes I literally just be like, like literally in my head, I just like, nothing means anything. Like, it's like, what do you? It's like defeat the whole version of podcasts, but you're just like, what do you, what do you mean? Like, if pop music formulaic, it's like,

• 2:11:40Speaker 01

  the bass that's going to pop music is looking to be fed in a way that is not, that might not even necessitate breaking the mold.

• 2:11:50Chris Williamson?

  Right. It doesn't need to be experimental. It can be predictable. Another way instead of formulaic might be predictive.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Yes, and some of the best people in the world are the best at taking something that's completely experimental and

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  still creating, like if it's, we're all trying to make bikes, you're still trying to make a bike that will last long for you to do the, the, the marathon in the country.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  Pop music, I guess, is just like, the most people can ride the bike and enjoy it and whatever. And then there's some people will be like, I drive a motorcycle. Like, you don't even know what biking is like. And it's like, I just like my Huffy dog. Like, I'm just like, I don't give a shit that you're so angry at the fact that I don't, I don't have like answers. Like, the older I get, the more I'm like, oh, this is like a whole fuck ton of everything matters and nothing matters. Like, everything matters and nothing matters. Like,

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  those six years while I was gone, I was like, I want hits. I will tap dance for whatever guy that's best friends with the artist that da, da, da, da, da, da, and tell them they're great to just like sneak in and do what I gotta do. Cause I don't know how, where this money's gonna come from. Like, I need hits because songwriters do not get paid. Songwriters do not get paid. They are at the, all the way, the, whatever the bottom of the barrel is, ask who's in the basement and who's got barrels in the basement. The bottom of the barrel. So I was like, I need hits in order to really make a living to still do what I love to do. So my focus is hits. I wasn't, I had to kind of shut off the reverberation of like, maybe in six years I'll do a podcast and talk about it to the top comment to be like,

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  he made a bunch of shitty songs that were number one because pop music sucks. It's like. Dude, I don't know. I was, I was trying to make some big songs and I tried to get in the best rooms to make a living for my family and the repercussions of that. What I did with pop music is now because I have money, I'm able to drive my taste more. And a lot of the shit I'm making is just like cooler and harder and more like fuck you if you don't like it type of shit because like you said, I'm not as rehearsed, I'm not as whatever, I'm a little bit more on autopilot and I could take a bit more risk.

• 2:13:52Chris Williamson?

  Dude, what, what is the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you?

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  There's no point, there's no point at all. So you say like, would you say, you're asking a musician, like you're asking a musician on why pop music? Can it be formulaic? Is it? It's like, yeah, it formulaic in the idea that.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  One day when we get to heaven, we're gonna find out that the wall was only five feet around.

• 2:14:19Chris Williamson?

  What's that mean?

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  Like when we get to heaven, like all of our lives, like in this realm of trying to make music, like all of us like in our flesh, these magical things happen and God enters the room and you make like John Lennon makes Imagine and like these things happen and they change the generation and Bob Marley happens and it's, it's this, this thing that seems bigger than what our flesh is capable of. And as music creators, like we're gonna find out that the wall, we're in the wrong like dimension of it and we keep trying to pretend like it's not five feet around. And I think a lot of the greats are somewhat have an understanding that's like you don't have to climb so high to try to like, hey man, people just wanna feel good. You know, like, like when we get to heaven and we have the perspective that's outside of like the, the body trap,

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  get to heaven, next plane, whatever the fuck you believe, great. We'll, we'll, um,

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  I don't know if pop music's formulaic. I think the world is searching for a lot of the same thing. You know, and then there's the young kid who says, I'm gonna change that thing up there. And then they get too much money and they become depressed and they have to find out who they really are without the success. It's the same uprising and falling of the same shit over and over and over again.

• 2:15:36Chris Williamson?

  Oh man, I, look, the reason that I keep laughing, we've, we've.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  All that from you said is pop music formulaic.

• 2:15:41Chris Williamson?

  Formulaic, yeah, yeah. You're the best sort of guest dude. I flick you once and you're a fucking infinite content, infinite fucking perpetual motion machine that just ticks away, ticks away, ticks away.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Like guys like Max Martin, they're concerned about it feeling really good. I don't think they're in the room with the weekend.

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  Max can correct me if I'm wrong. I just don't think Max in the room of the week.

• 2:16:00Chris Williamson?

  This is too formulaic.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's like, this will keep them listening because it feels good to listen to it. And sometimes that might come off as formulaic. Sometimes it might be groundbreaking. Sometimes things work because it resonates within, like Olivia Rodrigo Driver's License. That's not, um, formulaic. But people would consider that somehow pop garbage. I don't understand how you would. That's one of the best, to me, that's one of the best written songs in a very long time. It's so antithesis of what pop is, whatever, but you're still gonna get people being like, because she's in this sphere of artists, it's pop and formulaic and whatever.

• 2:16:35Chris Williamson?

  Let me give you a-

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  What is pop? What is cool? What is not? I'm not, I don't know.

• 2:16:39Chris Williamson?

  Let me give you a, an insight that I've played with for a long time. There's a guy called Jack Butcher who made visualized value. He was a graphic artist for a very long time, and then he started creating graphic representations of quotes and concepts. Now you think as a graphic artist, what you traffic in are fonts and colors and design. Uh, there's a million different degrees of freedom, but he put constraints in. He said, it's only ever gonna be white on black. It's gonna be geometric shapes and it's gonna be one font. What that meant was his constraint bred creativity.

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:17:11Chris Williamson?

  And I think about this-

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Which is why to me, like Ocarina of Time or Toy Story or like the staples of creative genius were because of the constraints of what it was. Like now they drop games and it's like, it's too good. Like I don't even want it to look this real and I don't wanna like pay my taxes inside of a video game. It doesn't need to be like life. It's, it was so removed from life that it, yes, yes. The constraints that the Nintendo 64 had is what burst Ocarina of Time because they had to trudge through the limitations that they had, which forced them to do really smart things to make the mountains look bigger in the background without doing bandwidth and shit.

• 2:17:52Chris Williamson?

  What is it that people care about the most? Right? And for instance, like the analogy that we're talking about here, let's say that you could only use four chords for the rest of time. Let's say there was some weird other universe. Only four chords are allowed to be used in every song.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:10Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Well, what do we start to play with then? Well, we start to play with the arrangement. We start to play with the complexity. We start to play with the lyrics. We start to play with the musicality.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Never ending, unfolding, coagulating, resurfacing thing that just keeps eating itself into just.

• 2:18:24Chris Williamson?

  What you can end up with, the reason that I thought it was real interesting, constraint breeds creativity. So if you do have inside of pop music, some constraints, some regular formulas or levels of predictability or expectation or whatever it might be. It means, well, perhaps people begin competing in the area, which is the highest contribution. And maybe that's the resonance, how much of the artist's soul is put into it? What's the message of the song? And I thought that was really cool. I was thinking about this on walk through Manhattan. I'm like, fuck, like, wow, that constraint that Jack put on himself, where he said he wasn't going to allow himself to use different colors, different shapes, all the rest of the stuff. It meant that the only two things he thought about was what was the quote I'm choosing? And how am I representing it?

• 2:19:09Chris Williamson?

  That's it. He had two things to play with. I'm like, well, those are the two highest points of contribution.

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Chris Williamson?

  So perhaps unlimited degrees of freedom.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  What do you think are the two highest points of?

• 2:19:20Chris Williamson?

  For him, for him, it was what is the quote that he was choosing from a gazillion?

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  God, it got to.

• 2:19:26Chris Williamson?

  Choose what's that? And then the second one was how is it going to be represented graphically?

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  And he believed that to be his.

• 2:19:31Chris Williamson?

  Those were the highest points of contribution. Like I can have all the colors in the world and the different fonts and all the rest of the stuff. And I think the same thing can be true of something like music. Where you have an infinite number of ways that we can represent this. But perhaps if you bring the constraints in, you focus on what do people care about the most? And why do I get lost in the source?

• 2:19:52Speaker 01

  Utility. Utility. What's the utility of this? Are we making a song? Sometimes, sometimes you'll be an hour in, you're like, are we just making a song because we're making one? What are we doing here? What's the purpose here? Where does this get played? Who's going to listen to this? Who's going to like that? It does come into your mind. Lately, lately, I've just been, I can only stomach making something that I'm just like, I will listen to this in my free time.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  There's been other times where I haven't. There's just other times where I just haven't. I've just gone along with who's in the room. Whatever gets the cut and their fans will like it and it's big and it's just like whatever. And I can use my talents to kind of treat it like a day at work and making X amount of dollars off of just me spending eight hours by helping this person do this thing. It's like, cool. But lately, it's tough for me to feel, for some reason. Six years ago, when I was making hits, I just wanted hits and it excited me. Didn't, I just wanted to figure out the code to get to the top of radio with the biggest artists with the thing. And then that becomes just like everything else. It all becomes disenchanting. It's like the artist thing, I'm walking away and then I just want hits. And when I just want hits, I made enough money to where I'm like, I'm not interested in making hits right now. I want to make an album.

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  And I make an album and go play Forest Hills and that's really interesting.

• 2:21:06Chris Williamson?

  What's interesting to you now?

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  Shutting off as many things on the outside world as possible and making something that I am 15 year old John going bat shit crazy about in my car.

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  And then maybe, maybe again, bringing that to the world one more time. That's what's really interesting to me right now. It's not, it's just like shutting down. It's like open eyes, wake up, coffee, music, music, music, music, music, music. Kids, go to sleep, wake up, music, kids, music, music, music, music, music. Kids, go to sleep, wake up. And

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  it's been an interesting, it's been interesting to see what artists have just like came into my universe from me just doing that. Cause now I'm sending out songs that I'm like, I didn't even consider this, this, this, and this. But somehow that somehow makes more interesting for artists of different artistic calibers and how the world views them and blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 2:22:04Speaker 01

  I don't know shit about shit. I really love what I do. I really love what I do. So right now, taking the necessary steps, whether that be living healthily, living olympically,

• 2:22:16Speaker 01

  processing drama in order for my balance to not take too much out of me. That's what I'm, what I'm enjoying right now is enjoying myself.

• 2:22:28Chris Williamson?

  I'm so happy for you, man.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:22:29Chris Williamson?

  I'm so fucking happy for you.

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. I really, I appreciate that deeply.

• 2:22:34Chris Williamson?

  And you did it all from fucking Long Island.

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And are there days?

• 2:22:41Speaker 01

  Where you want a strong on the perspective and you don't feel like you're getting the just do Comes and goes. It comes and goes, but it but.

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  A normal life is a great life.

• 2:22:58Speaker 01

  I'm positive of it because in the details is where you find infinity. Infinity is in the details. It's not in the.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  It's not. It's just like not in the headline. It's this. It's just not. So you see like motherfuckers seem like. I live a very odd. Me and my wife talk about it a lot. We are smack dab in the middle of regular life and we're also smack dab in the middle of not.

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  Like there's no uh.

• 2:23:29Speaker 01

  And I'm not even sure that what I'm doing is the right way to live. I just know that I'm I'm happy. Uh, in an overarching sense, not every day is perfect at all, but.

• 2:23:47Speaker 01

  When you almost get wrapped into something and almost lose it all, like going to get smoothies with your kids is like. It's hilarious. The jokes, the development, the way that they see life, the things that they trust you to say that this is just like, man, if I would have just like lived for me. What a bummer. What a bummer. I know a lot of motherfuckers that got it.

• 2:24:12Speaker 01

  Didn't turn uh.

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  Didn't fill the hole.

• 2:24:19Speaker 01

  But the industry.

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  I know it's the age old archetype, but you'll be different because your message is the most important. So of course you're going to sacrifice a little bit of family time and a little bit of social time and a little bit of health right now. And of course you're going to do that because what you have to say, when when you get your message out into the world, it'll be and that's what they tell you and that's what they that's the temptation. That's the thing. And then when you get there, you've made so many fucking sacrifices to get there that you're not even the person who began to be in the first place. It's like I have to become the, I don't know, like metaphorical president. But in order to become the president, of course, I'm gonna have to slide some money here and do this. And because my

• 2:25:01Chris Williamson?

  Burn my life down.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  My goal is the noble one. So me doing the wrong thing, what's immediately wrong in my present to get to there is the sum of all games. It's like.

• 2:25:13Chris Williamson?

  That was something that I considered. You had this

• 2:25:19Chris Williamson?

  eye opening moment when you realize how much you're getting screwed on your deal. And from that, I don't want to tour no more. But would you actually even want to tour as a new father? If a touring deal was the most perfect?

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  Well, they put it on the table right after four silos. They were like.

• 2:25:35Speaker 01

  They, the proverbial they were like, holy shit. We didn't know he was gonna sell it out in three hours. We didn't know that it would stream this way. It would chart on Spotify, blah, blah. We had no idea.

• 2:25:46Speaker 01

  They put in front of me, they put in front of me like multi, multi, multi million dollar forty day. Just in case you want to see it. I just looked at it as like, I looked at it like a joke. I just looked at it like, no way.

• 2:25:58Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 2:26:02Speaker 01

  It's like a guy like Ed or like

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  certain artists you have conversations with, they live to be on stage and it brings them a lot of joy, bringing people joy. In that way, you know, like, like Ed is just like, he lives and breathes by playing his guitar and singing and being like playing stadiums and that that brings his life so much joy that it's worth putting in the effort with his children to do that because it's so important to him. It's just not that important to me.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  People like the shows and they like when I'm on stage and I have fun and it's my adrenaline pumps, but I don't like to come down. I don't like the two days of staring at the ceiling of being like, what drug did I just take? I don't like the drug. The drug's not, it's not, it doesn't feel normal for me and I don't know how to regulate that. You do enough shows and you learn how to like, not give it everything. I'm on stage, losing my fucking mind. And then by the time I get off stage, I'm reeling for two days. I don't enjoy it. I barely enjoy the, the album release process. I don't like going into this thing where it's like, you're about to release this thing. And this podcast is coming out and will you get clipped and will it become this thing? That's, I don't enjoy any of that. That's not, none of that is like, it's not exciting to me.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  But I'm lit up when someone plays a just a mean honking chord over just some ill fucking drums. And I'm just like, I could just do this for the rest of my life. This is great. There's other stuff that comes with it because you have to make a living and your relevancy and Play the game. Play the game to some degree because you can't abandon the game completely. That's just like, again, that's me at a young age. Burning the whole thing down. It doesn't work that way for me at least. Nice pipe dream. Nice pipe dream. Not possible. But yeah, it's a.

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  I love what I do. I really do love what I do. The touring to answer your question.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  I don't enjoy it. I don't even enjoy. I don't even really enjoy.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  It's like the fanfare or the praise. I don't, I don't like it. How's it feel?

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  You know, it's like a selfish thing. You want it how you want it. It's like, dude, listen to my music and be affected by it and like, think I'm the greatest. But like, don't like, put too much pressure on me because like, I'm not that, like, it's not that serious. But it is very serious, but it's not very serious, but it is very serious. And I was like, what, how to even?

• 2:28:33Speaker 01

  How to even operate in it? I still have no idea. No idea. Well, I have an idea because I know that if you put a $7 million tour in front of me, it ain't 40 million or if you put 70, I'm like, I'm good. Because I just know myself at this point. I've walked away long enough to be like, finally I'm back and they're accepting me. And I can go on this sold out tour if they want me. It's like, dude, I made an album about being a dad to three boys. Like, I wasn't trying to apply to everybody.

• 2:29:03Chris Williamson?

  Can you imagine playing that live, being like, I'm working really hard as a dad, but not for the next 39 days? Thank you for coming to the opening night.

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  Honest to the, honest to the Lord, that is the conundrum of my existence. That is the conundrum.

• 2:29:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to give you a little bit of insight there, um, you know, Aaron Gillespie from Underoath? He's the drummer and singer from Underoath Metal Band.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  I know Underoath.

• 2:29:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, so he's the drummer, singer from that.

• 2:29:34Chris Williamson?

  He struggled a lot, struggled a lot with performance anxiety, anxiety generally. I think he said on the pod that he's been to like, fuck, the emergency room hundreds of times while he's been on tour. He's adamant, he's having a heart attack, health anxiety stuff. And as I was sort of listening to him talk about it and I'm hearing sort of you say the same thing,

• 2:29:57Chris Williamson?

  he has a particular type of obsession, which has caused him to get some outcomes that he's not happy with. Having to go off tour to go to an emergency room and telling the nurses what scans to get, because it's the same scans that he know that he got last time because he's been so many times. Like, like going to a pub and ordering the usual, despite the fact that he's never been to this hospital before, but he already knows what he needs to prove to himself that he hasn't got the thing. And I'm like, you do understand that the level of obsession that is tormenting you with regards to your health is the reason that you're in one of the most famous and successful metal bands of all time?

• 2:30:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30:36Chris Williamson?

  And the same thing for you with this?

• 2:30:38Speaker 01

  Yes. I, I, I run into all of these reminders every day that don't, that feel counterintuitive to ambition, success, whatever. It's almost like this John guy's crazy, he's coming here preaching mediocrity. There's times in my life where I say, I could finish this song today and I know that so and so needs it. And I know I could, this could really be a big win and da, da, da, and it's just, it's just a graduation. It's, it's just Christmas Eve. It's just a random day in July going in the pool and my kids are going there. I'll be three hours late.

• 2:31:10Speaker 01

  I run into that a lot where I'm just like, this feels unimportant. But the thing I tell myself in my head, I just go follow that. And a lot of times I'm doing things that don't feel. As a father, a lot of times I'm I'm doing things that don't feel, uh, they don't feel fun. They don't feel important. And I don't realize their importance until like six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months later. So a lot of it's just like, kind of feeling out in the dark to like, I'm actually walking toward the exact opposite of a self-help podcast. I walk toward mediocrity very aggressively. Because I find that the nuance inside of the mediocrity gives you a stronger baseline for a longer level of happiness. When your ambition is so like.

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna throw any names under the bus of like giant athletes or whatever, but the ambition is so obsessive and so whatever. Just look at the fruits of the. Look at the fruits of the thing.

• 2:32:07Chris Williamson?

  Did ultimately your career as a marathon, not a sprint?

• 2:32:10Speaker 01

  Has to be. Why do you think every fucking artist goes on a podcast over and over? And it's the same story. It's the same story. I was at the height of my career and the loneliest I've ever been. It's like at a certain point, someone, I might be mildly not too dumb to look at that and just be like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna believe ev- all of them. And never look over the fence and never chase after the thing that, no, if I got it. Because enough people have told me that it's not the end all be all.

• 2:32:42Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna have to do this. I was, I, I, I didn't want to have to fucking pull this one out. But I'm go- I'm, I'm gonna have to read you, I'm gonna have to read you an essay. I'm sorry.

• 2:32:53Speaker 01

  I, I'm in.

• 2:32:54Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  I'm so in.

• 2:32:56Chris Williamson?

  Okay, here we go.

• 2:32:57Speaker 01

  Such a good, um, conversation.

• 2:32:59Chris Williamson?

  I came up with this insight about a year ago and it's exactly what you've been talking about and I called it unteachable lessons. Basically, what I realized was that there is a certain category of lesson that no matter how often people learn it, we refuse to be able to hold on to. Yes. I've been thinking about a special category of lesson, one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand. There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason, we all refuse to learn through instruction, unteachable lessons. No matter how arduous or costly or effortful it's going to be for us to find out for ourselves, we prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical

• 2:33:43Chris Williamson?

  catastrophes, public scandals, and instead think some version of, yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me. Absolutely. We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way, over and over again. Unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things too. It's never insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generation already warned us about. Things like, money won't make you happy, fame won't fix your self-worth, you don't love that pretty girl, she's just hot and difficult to get. Yep. Nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it, you will regret working too much, worrying is not improving your performance, all your fears

• 2:34:26Chris Williamson?

  are a waste of time, you should see your parents more, you will be fine after the breakup and be grateful that you did it, it's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life. And even reading this list back, I'm rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is. These are all basic bitch, obvious insights that everyone has heard before. But if they're so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives? And if they're so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup, start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grandiose ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious revelation? It's also a list of very contentious topics to say on the internet. If you interview a billionaire who says that all his money didn't make him happy,

• 2:35:09Chris Williamson?

  or a movie star who said that her fame felt like a prison, the internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch. So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them. Even more than that, for every one of these, if I think a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I'm the exception to the rule. That my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable. No, no, no, my inner landscape would be fixed by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages.

• 2:35:52Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, I can thread this needle properly. Watch me dance through the minefield and avoid all the tripwires that everyone else kicks. And then you kick one and you share a knowing luck between another person, the kind that can only occur between two people who have been hurt in exactly the same way. And a voice in the back of your mind will say, I told you so.

• 2:36:16Speaker 01

  To the T. Dude, we could have saved ourselves a whole fucking conversation.

• 2:36:22Chris Williamson?

  I love it.

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  That's exactly, bro, I could never have related with something more in my entire life. It's like, the, is it, the day, man, the grass ain't greener, like, hey, man, being present is really good. Like, you don't know until you gotta like, I give up artistry and I'm walking away from it. It's like, wow, that I didn't even need it in the first place. Thank God I stripped out of myself.

• 2:36:45Chris Williamson?

  Dude, I love the fact that you are a, this weird role model for both ends of the fucking extreme. For the complete dedication, purist art form going forward, and also winning in the weeds of taking your kids to the ice cream to get a fucking, like, uh, what's that fucking ice shit that everyone on Long Island eats?

• 2:37:08Speaker 01

  Italian ice?

• 2:37:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Italian ice. Yeah, yeah, that's it.

• 2:37:10Speaker 01

  Why'd you gotta throw Italians in there like that?

• 2:37:11Chris Williamson?

  Well, you fucking did it, dude. Talking to me.

• 2:37:14Speaker 01

  You did the British thing.

• 2:37:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, I better tell you about this. I think it's like a French ice or something like that.

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:37:23Chris Williamson?

  But I think it's really cool, man. I think that you are. Without knowing it, like very on the nose of the zeitgeist of where people are moving. You said before, I think that fathers are important. I think the fathers are going to be increasingly important as we move through the future. And also might be one of the most culturally out of touch people that's been on the podcast.

• 2:37:47Chris Williamson?

  And you know, you know, when, well, you know, when two of your different friends tell you, hey, man, you go to watch this new series and they don't know each other and they didn't coordinate to do it. And you go, whoa, or two people say, have you checked out the new fucking sleep token record or the whatever the fuck? You're like, I should probably pay attention to that.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  Cause people are, a lot of people are telling you.

• 2:38:04Chris Williamson?

  Two independent people came up with the same realization. You, you came up with in unteachable lessons. You had some other name for it in your mind. I wrote that essay a year ago.

• 2:38:16Chris Williamson?

  There's probably something there. I feel like there's something there.

• 2:38:19Chris Williamson?

  The fact that, the fact that you missed a fucking Faraday cage, sterile laboratory of music production and child rearing,

• 2:38:31Chris Williamson?

  arrived at the realization.

• 2:38:35Chris Williamson?

  I think fatherhood's important. I think you win in the weeds of life.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:38Chris Williamson?

  I think that normality and boring victories and mundane successes day to day are where the juice is to be squeezed from.

• 2:38:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:38:48Chris Williamson?

  I think the fact that you have done that, and if you look at the zeitgeist, that they're pointing in the same direction too. That people are like, dude, the glitz and the glamour and chasing all of that stuff is becoming gauche. It's becoming cringe. It's becoming an ick. It's becoming shallow.

• 2:39:04Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:39:05Chris Williamson?

  In a way that maybe it didn't previously.

• 2:39:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39:08Chris Williamson?

  I think that suggests that you're onto something, man.

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  Which also takes me like, and again, last thing, just.

• 2:39:17Speaker 01

  I totally agree. The zeitgeist is.

• 2:39:21Speaker 01

  There's just a level of consciousness that seems like if I, if I'm conscious like that, then we're all connected. And then like if I feel that way, chances are a lot of other people might feel that way. In the depths of myself, it was songwriting. I recognize that. When I identify something deep inside myself, I say, oh, hold on to that one and try to always hold on to the way that that felt, because you might be able to put that in something to then deliver it to the world, because you're human, just like everybody else.

• 2:39:43Chris Williamson?

  That's why when you start to doubt yourself, it's so dangerous. If you start to caveat for other people, that little whisper, Rick Rubin calls them whispers, right? Or my therapist said, pay attention to fleeting thoughts. You're like, oh, hold on. Come back. Let's have a little listen to that. And that's where, oh, he sees me. He sees me. Holy fuck.

• 2:40:06Speaker 01

  Dude, the consciousness of it all.

• 2:40:14Speaker 01

  It almost feels like the times are coming to a tie, tied up. And I don't know what that means. It's just, and maybe, you know, nuclear war was always a threat and all this different stuff. But in my, deep in my gut somewhere, it feels like the bedrock of reality is starting to like, crack open. Like, is school good? What's college? Who's the president? What's going on? Do we trust the government? I don't know. But it's like coming to this thing because everything's being recorded and truth is quickly getting, you know, thrown to the top of the pile because of our access to it. That you're right, there is some sort of consciousness that's moving in a direction that I don't know. Hopefully it's toward a.

• 2:40:54Chris Williamson?

  Honestly, dude, as long as.

• 2:40:56Speaker 01

  You know what I want to return to?

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  I appreciate you giving me the freedom to even feel this comfortable to have this conversation by the end of our conversation. But I almost like want to go back to being stupid, because the dumber I stay, the larger and more aware I am of like, in my happiness to some degree. And I don't mean willful ignorance. I don't mean ignoring problems and not addressing things and pretending like things don't exist. Just.

• 2:41:26Speaker 01

  I don't know, it felt good to make it, to make that song. Or I don't know, like one song, one show. It's like, I don't know, it just felt right with me. It felt right. Well, you're stupid. You didn't get the $7 million deal from your 30. You're back, dude. People are listening to you. The whole world wants you. You're dumb. It's like, I just like, I'm think I'm like, I'm starting, I'm dumb. I'm all just be over here, just like in my dumbness, doing nothing. Having a popsicle on a Tuesday with my boys. I just could stick to dumb. Cause I think dumb's been work, mundane and dumb. It has really saved my life. It's really helped me out.

• 2:42:03Speaker 01

  Sitting with the uncomfortability of the things that you don't want to touch.

• 2:42:08Speaker 01

  Slowing you down and in the dumbness, you end up, you end up coming into grips with that monster. You end up, you end up. Oh, things kind of just worked out. I've smarted myself into being so stupid. I'm like the, I'm like the, I'm like the smartest dumb person ever. I'd rather be like the dumbest smart person. Willfully letting go of like the wisdom. I feel like the more like insane wisdom I get, the more I'm like.

• 2:42:34Chris Williamson?

  Okay, I, I, I need to, I need to do a bit on you that most people on the internet will know. But given you're not on the internet, you wouldn't have seen it. Do you know what the midwit meme is?

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  Midwit?

• 2:42:44Chris Williamson?

  Midwit meme. Okay. So imagine a bell curve that you've got here. And on the left hand side, you have a meme of a guy who looks.

• 2:42:50Speaker 01

  Will people not believe that I don't know what that is? Like, is it that popular?

• 2:42:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, probably not. No, I think it's a justifiable level of ignorance.

• 2:42:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  The rest like.

• 2:43:00Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, you're hopeless outside of that. Left hand side, guy that looks a little bit like a caveman. Big brow and he's so stupid like that. And then at the top of the bell curve, which is where most people are. You have this sort of screaming, raging, overcomplicated optimizer person. And then on the right hand side, you have this guy that looks like a Jedi with his hood up. And the meme, the joke is that the guy on the left and the guy on the right always agree. They always come to the same conclusion. And it's the person in the middle who overcomplicates everything.

• 2:43:28Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 2:43:29Chris Williamson?

  So for example.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 2:43:32Chris Williamson?

  How do I build muscle?

• 2:43:34Chris Williamson?

  Eat protein lift weights. Eat protein lift weights. I must ensure that my predigested weight is consumed within a 30 minute window from a grass fed, grass sourced, non GMO, like, right? Okay?

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:43:45Chris Williamson?

  And for this, the, everybody that is, every guy in the middle is a guy on the left trying to be the guy on the right. You cannot be the guy on the right. Okay? There's no way to become the Jedi. You can only be the guy on the left. So a question to ask yourself is what would the guy on the left do? The guy on the left. Tuesday afternoon. We should get lollipops.

• 2:44:09Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to

• 2:44:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:44:11Chris Williamson?

  What is the most optimal way for me to ensure? Because that is you trying to be the guy on the right and ending up being the guy in the middle.

• 2:44:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:44:18Chris Williamson?

  Chase, have you still got that? Can you lift it up? Okay, so this is what we're talking about. So guy on the left.

• 2:44:30Chris Williamson?

  Guy in the middle, guy in the right. You can't be the guy on the right. It's only possible to be the guy on the left.

• 2:44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's almost like the more you're okay with being the guy on the left, you're kind of like, it all just, it all just ends up being all right. Hey, I don't know, man.

• 2:44:44Chris Williamson?

  I love it. John Bellion, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, fuck, I've enjoyed today so much.

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  That, that means it tends to me. Over the years, like, I try to give people their flowers if I ever meet them and say, if I ever come across that guy, I'll let him know, first day, whatever. I just think it's very, very noble. I think it's very, uh.

• 2:45:05Speaker 01

  I wish a lot more people thought the way that you did in what they decide to help people with and how they decide to help people. And I've seen you refine it over the years because I've been a fan for a super long time. So I'm in, man.

• 2:45:16Chris Williamson?

  I appreciate you.

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  I appreciate you having me. And thanks for, dude, thanks for doing this all the way where I live.

• 2:45:20Chris Williamson?

  I got you, man. I got you. Until next time.

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.