465: James Woods—Act Two

Acclaimed actor James Woods https://www.jameswoods.com/ joins TWIHI for a candid conversation that goes far beyond his iconic film roles. Woods addresses his cancellation from Hollywood and how it inspired his life's second act, making music. He also recounts a shocking, nearly fatal accident involving a walk through a glass door, and he doesn't pull any punches when it comes to letting us know what he thinks about how Gavin Newsom has handled the aftermath of the Palisades Fire.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hello Chuck.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hello Mike.

• 0:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, you were right.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Why do you say that?

• 0:12Mike Rowe?

  It's not that I thought James Woods wouldn't be a great guest. I've been interested in his career for as long as I've been watching movies.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Terrific actor. He's really, really good.

• 0:23Mike Rowe?

  Really, really good. And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the fact that his political views, which he is not terribly shy about, have burned him in Hollywood.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:35Mike Rowe?

  And in our industry. To a degree, I think that really no reasonable person could argue with.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's the case, is that he was blacklisted. He tells the story of how he was released from his agency unceremoniously and kind of dickishly.

• 0:53Mike Rowe?

  Oh, for God's sake. I mean, it's... Yes. Look, I mean, if you're keeping a list of reasons why agents are sometimes spoken of on this podcast without the absolute utmost level of respect, this will confirm all of that. That's not to say there aren't many wonderful representatives out there in the 10 per centery. It's just that... It's just that when the chips were really down and you have a client as gifted as Jim.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20Mike Rowe?

  And you have a tumultuous time in the country, as we have clearly been experiencing now for over a decade.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28Mike Rowe?

  You know, you ought to have some loyalty. There ought to be some loyalty baked in to the professionalism of that kind of relationship. And there wasn't.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not just that. It's this idea that because you don't think the same way that I do, we can't be friends. We can't work together. We can't separate, you know, someone's talent from their political views. And that's just a shame. I don't remember it like that when we were growing up.

• 1:56Mike Rowe?

  I don't either. But you know what? Sometimes you look through the charm of nostalgia or Verchmalts and, you know, that's why we call it "The Way I Heard It," "The Way We Remember It." I don't know. Look, these will be the good old days 50 years from now. But I'll tell you, they were not good days for James Woods this last decade. Few careers, I think, have ever been marked by more talent and then more goodbye.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22Mike Rowe?

  Sorry. There, no fish for you today. Done. Well, the interesting thing about this guy, and the reason I wasn't hesitant to have him on, I just felt like here of late, you know, with Del Bigtree and Gavin DeBecker, they get so angry with me because I talk to people that, you know, may have said something that they don't agree with. And I'm just, I don't mean to wander outside my lane, but I don't care as much as I used to. And when you first pitched Jim, I was like, you know what? Do I really need the hassle that's gonna come?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:54Mike Rowe?

  From talking to a guy who's so despised by half of the social media denizens.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Can I tell you that when I finally made contact with him, it was because I was trying to gather letters of recommendation for Gary Sinise to be awarded the Medal of Freedom. And he called me and we spoke for like 25 minutes. He couldn't do it fast enough. He wrote me a letter, like we got off the phone and that letter was in my email box, you know, within like 15 minutes.

• 3:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  He was so excited to do it. He's a sweet, sweet guy.

• 3:29Mike Rowe?

  He's very smart.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:31Mike Rowe?

  He is very artistic. He is a patriot. He would never describe himself as a... I don't even think he sees himself as right of center. He's a centrist who, who just feels like he's living in Bizarro World. I just didn't feel like apologizing for it. So he basically walked away. He could have bent the knee.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 3:55Mike Rowe?

  He had plenty of occasions to walk some things back and resume his career. But he didn't. In fact, I was gonna call this James Woods Didn't Bend the Knee, because he didn't. But we're calling it James Woods Act Two instead, because he's embarked on a musical career.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:10Mike Rowe?

  That is shocking. He doesn't play the guitar anymore since an injury that he'll discuss. And, um, and he doesn't really sing, although he can carry a tune. But as it turns out, he can write. And in a strange collaboration with Waylon Jennings' son.

• 4:27Mike Rowe?

  Shooter Jennings.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:28Mike Rowe?

  They've released an album.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32Mike Rowe?

  And now he's just finished another album. And the guy is basically writing his autobiography to music. The music is excellent. And I'm delighted to see this guy at 78 years of age, come out as a recording artist. After all this time, after El Salvador, or Salvador.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Salvador, yeah.

• 4:53Mike Rowe?

  After, you know, Ghosts of Mississippi.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:56Mike Rowe?

  After, I mean, just down the list it goes. After all those great movies, and then a very tragic fallow period. Here he is, a recording artist. And as it turns out, a super interesting guy, who's a refugee at the moment with his lovely wife, Sarah, who you'll sort of meet as well. They're living in a motel.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, one bedroom thing because.

• 5:20Mike Rowe?

  Because of the fires.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  The fires, yeah. Now, their house wasn't destroyed, but it's just hideous up there. And they can't move back in.

• 5:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, they can't move back in there. He's very upset with Gavin Newsom. And I'm very sympathetic, and he doesn't hold back in that regard. But again, I don't think you're going to hear much that's political. You're going to hear a lot that's passionate. And you're going to hear a lot that's artistic. Strap in, because this is not what you call an homage to chronology.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  It's a garden hose on the lawn at full bore, just going in every direction.

• 5:51Mike Rowe?

  But the water is sweet.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:53Mike Rowe?

  And cool. And drink from the hose, my friends. And you shall be refreshed, right after this.

• 6:04Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn, instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training? Like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week. Highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 6:46Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 7:30Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 7:47Mike Rowe?

  Isn't it crazy how you can walk in to a studio with guys who know what they're doing and go from like a blank slate to a song in light speed?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  I am so glad you brought this up because I think that, you know, aside from thanking my unbelievable wife and shooter who's just made this all possible, and I'll tell you about the evolution of that.

• 8:13Mike Rowe?

  By the way, the aforementioned wonderful wife is called Sarah without an H, I believe.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Sarah without an H because... I believe it's no H.

• 8:21Mike Rowe?

  Oh, no H. Sarah with no H.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Sarah no H. Well, the way that came about, by the way, time out on this story, she was at Starbucks or one of the coffee places, and a nice young barista lady said, and what's your name? She said, Sarah, no H. She's like, okay. Gets the cut back and S A R A N O H, Sarah no H, of course.

• 8:43Mike Rowe?

  I mean, see, that's how true monikers are born.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:47Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I mean, who knows? I don't want to intrude into your personal life. But if she doesn't become No H in shorthand at some point down the road, then, you know, then Starbucks doesn't have a real purpose.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  She is just the smartest, brightest, most wonderful person. You know, right now, we've been evacuated because of the Palisades fire.

• 9:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  We had a beautiful home in the Palisades. And of course Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass managed to find a way through their criminal negligence. Yes, I mean that.

• 9:14Mike Rowe?

  He's coming in hot, folks.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Coming in hot.

• 9:16Mike Rowe?

  James Woods, just for the record.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  And I'm not gonna land. I'm gonna keep flak. I'm gonna stay right over the battlefield and I'm gonna have the gunner on this door and the gunner on this door and away we go. Metaphor, metaphor.

• 9:26Mike Rowe?

  Well, if you're not taking flak, you're not over the target.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. They give me a little flak back. That's okay. But, you know, before they, with their egregious negligence, destroyed our neighborhood and the homes of people who grew up there and took 29 lives between that and the Eaton fires, before all that, we had this magnificent, beautiful home overlooking the water and so on. And now we're, you know, we've been evacuated a little bit and.

• 9:51Mike Rowe?

  Is evacuation a partial thing? I mean, it's a, it strikes me as a bit like a Just the Tip reference. You're, you're either in or you're out. You're either evacuated or you aren't.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  We've been living in a one-bedroom hotel room, which is fantastic that people have been great to us, not our home. The fires were January 7th of this year. On February 5th, we were negotiating with the California Fair Plan, whom we have just retained a lawyer to sue. And the lady who was helping us said, well, you know, we can't give you a relocation fee after February 5th because you should have been back in your home then. Said, there was no water in the Palisades anywhere then. Big signs, water, if running, is not potable. There was no electricity, no gas. And she literally said, well, you know, you can drink bottled water.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  I said, the hillside is still smoldering. Literally, we went down there with some firefighters and I said, oh my God, the wood on our hillside, you know, the beams holding up the, the fire-resistant beams holding up the hillside were still smoldering, literally. We pulled them up and, oh, look at that person.

• 11:05Mike Rowe?

  I gotta ask you, man, I can't, I mean, we'll circle back to the music thing in a minute and the speed with which a song can come out of the ether. But in a very similar way. I was here January 7th last year. In fact, I was standing on the roof of this building, probably watching your place burn.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:20Mike Rowe?

  And how in the world has it been a year? How did, I mean, for me, it felt like, it feels like two months ago.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Wrong question. How on earth has it been almost a year since January 7th? And they've done nothing.

• 11:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  And that sanctimonious, two-phase jazz hand, slickster Gavin Newsom. You know, so we've, we've put everything back together. And Sarah literally went, we drove out there and she took pictures of every single, the very few framed houses. He would go out and say, look, we're rebuilding everything. And he'd stand in front of one house. And there were like 10 houses out of the 16,000 that burned between the two, between Palisades and Eaton. And, you know, it turned out that those 10 houses out of, in our neighborhood, almost 8,000, all had permits before the fire. They've done nothing. They've absolutely done nothing.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  And there's a reason why, and I'm just gonna say it, because I hope, in fact, that, you know, people will look into it. Is it possible? And this is conspiracy theory, but the great news about living in America these days is if you've, you know, believed in almost any conspiracy theory in the past 10 years, lo and behold, you've been right.

• 12:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  What a shock. It turns out that they wanna build low-income housing, which sounds great and noble. We've given them billions of dollars to build low-income housing around Los Angeles. Nothing has been done, virtually nothing. I mean, they may point to one structure where each little tiny room costs $560,000. I'm not sure of that exact number. But they don't do anything. It's like the fire aid money that magically disappeared, except the $2.5 million he gave to his first partner, you know, Harvey's old girlfriend. And so, you know, where did that money all go? The bottom line, we're just basically stuck with... You know, a guy who wants to do this noble thing, low-income housing,

• 13:22Speaker 02

  which gets built, never used for low-income people, then the cronies and so on, this is a conspiracy theory, I don't know if this is true, but it's been postulated, then they say, "Well, you know, we built all this, we might as well start leasing it out to other people, instead of the low-income people," and they charge exorbitant prices. And anytime you have the government involved with contractors building stuff, you can just watch that money fly away like it has wings.

• 13:51Mike Rowe?

  It's not, it's not conspiratorial to look at that and then look at the high-speed rail and the way it was presented. It's not conspiratorial to look at that and then look at the billions that were pushed toward the homeless situation.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Billions, billions.

• 14:07Mike Rowe?

  And so, yeah, obviously, there's graft, obviously, it's a failure. But the thing that interests me most of all is the presentation of the possibility. "Here's what we're gonna do." And that's where acting and politics and graft and pretense and guile collide, in my view. And so, do you know Elaine Colati?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 14:30Mike Rowe?

  She's sat where you've sat, she lives in your neighborhood. She's, I don't wanna speak out of turn, but I believe she's been very successful in the real estate world, and she's getting involved in this. Adam Carolla, you must have.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  He's been great, he's been great.

• 14:46Mike Rowe?

  He's been, I don't know that anybody who's written heard on this better or more consistently.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Of all people, the last person you would expect, you know, you always hear these guys tell stories, my father was in two wars, he was in a lot of combat. And the guy that, I even wrote a new song about it, it's not for this album, it's for two albums from now, because we're doing the third album in February. But in the fourth album, there's a song called Rodney and Carl, about these two kinda doofy guys. And you always, the last guy you expect to be the hero and to give his life is the one they all made fun of.

• 15:18Mike Rowe?

  A hero will rise.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  And a hero will rise. And I have to say, Spencer Pratt, Spencer Pratt has been like, one of the lyrics from my first album, "Like a diamond bullet to the brain." This guy has put that message out there.

• 15:34Mike Rowe?

  Was Spencer the reality show guy?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was a reality show guy. Also, our president of the United States, one of the greatest we've ever had currently, our current president, was also a reality show guy who finally stepped into the breach and managed to close a border that everybody said was, oh, our border is fine. Don't worry about the 20 million people who came in unvetted, you know, unvaccinated, criminal records for the fifth time. Don't worry about that. It's fine. They're not going to cause any trouble.

• 16:01Mike Rowe?

  Do you mind if I just freelance and totally free associate and talk? Because clearly that's, by the way, I'm walking over here today and I'm just like, okay, James Woods, I've wanted to talk to you for

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. I've wanted to talk to you too.

• 16:12Mike Rowe?

  A long time. But you're challenging because every couple of weeks, something new happens that kind of maybe eclipses the thing that I thought I wanted to talk to you about before. And coming up the elevator, I'm like, oh, God, he's got these albums now. He's doing this whole second act. He's got this beautiful bride with no H on her first name. Amazing. He's lost his home in the Palisades. He's living, he's living in the town that made him famous, but also turned his back on him. You have been a prodigal in so many ways. And yet, like, here you sit with all this, all this humor, all this ennui, and a lot of perspective, and not a hint of, obviously, you got no governor,

• 16:54Mike Rowe?

  you got no editor. You're gonna say whatever you say the minute it occurs to you to say it. That's extraordinarily freeing, I think. But my question is, ChatGPT says your IQ is between 180 and 184.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  That's 184.

• 17:10Mike Rowe?

  Get out of here.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  On the Stanford Benet IQ test that I took when I was actually getting my scholarship to MIT, for some reason, I was at the same time, I had been nominated to the Air Force Academy by Senator John Pastore. And for some reason, one of them along the way,

• 17:28Speaker 02

  I had wanted to be, we've got to go back a little bit. I'd wanted to be an eye surgeon. I thought, that's what I'd like to be in life. Now, so why did I ask to be nominated to the Air Force Academy?

• 17:37Mike Rowe?

  No, no, why did you want to be an eye surgeon? How does that happen?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Because I think that the gift of sight is the most extraordinary thing, and I can't imagine what it's like to be infirm or blind in that area. For some reason, that's what I wanted to do. And I happened to have gotten also eight-year scholarships to Brown University, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts, all of which had great medical schools. And they gave me undergraduate, all the way through graduate school. I went, this is great. Then I ran through a glass door.

• 18:03Mike Rowe?

  Jeez.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And severed every tendon, the medial nerve and the radial artery. I have no pulse, if you hold your hand there. And that was the end of my surgery days. Also, the end of my classical guitar days. I have a hard time playing.

• 18:16Mike Rowe?

  Why'd you run through a glass door?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Because I was, you know, 17 years old.

• 18:21Mike Rowe?

  Did you not see it?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  No, here's what the deal, I'll tell you exactly what it was. I was one of 30 people, young kids, we're all juniors in high school, who for the summer, between junior and senior year, got a National Science Foundation grant to study linear algebra, which is a kind of higher form of math, at UCLA. And they put us up and paid for our trip and everything. It was great. We're studying, you know, kind of nerds, you know, nerd summer school. And we were at Dykstra Hall. And, you know, like the sophisticated students that we were, you know, embracing mathematics and science. Arthur D. Davis and I, Arthur D. Davis from Kentucky, were running down the hallway throwing water balloons at each other because that's what you do when you're studying higher math.

• 19:02Mike Rowe?

  And when you're just dealing with 184 IQ points.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:06Mike Rowe?

  There's nothing really left to do but fill up the rubber device.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  And I turned to go through a glass door, to push the glass door. And this is before they had tempered glass. And I pushed through, and a big shard of glass just went and sliced my radial artery. And if you've ever had arterial bleeding, it literally swerves to the wall.

• 19:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  With your heartbeat. And I was wearing a white sweatshirt. We got down, we're on the third floor. We got down to the lobby. Believe it or not, we made the potentially... Death decision to go down in the elevator. But luckily, the doors opened. We got in, went right down. The doors opened again. I walk out and there were two students, probably my age, seventeen, eighteen, whatever. A little older because it was, you know, the college students there for the summer. And they saw me covered in blood in a white sweatshirt, which now soaked in blood. And they literally both fainted to the floor.

• 19:58Mike Rowe?

  Wrong vocation for you.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then luckily, next thing I know, I'm getting a little dizzy and I'm on the floor. And I just hear a guy say, I'm a medical student. This is going to be a little tight. He pulls out my belt, puts on a tourniquet, put me in the back of a police car because they didn't have time to wait for the ambulance. And I swear to you, when we got to UCLA, they were waiting, I never forgot this, waiting in the driveway. There was a nurse and a resident, and he literally had a pair of clamps in his hand. He reaches in, pulls out the artery and clamps it. And at that moment, I knew I was going to make it. But my life changed.

• 20:35Mike Rowe?

  Well, your life was saved.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  My life was saved, yes.

• 20:43Mike Rowe?

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• 21:26Mike Rowe?

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• 22:10Mike Rowe?

  Well, two questions. First, Sarah, no age. What's it like living with a genius on a scale of one to 10?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  No, I'll tell you, because she's the genius. But it's like, it's fabulous. No, no, I gotta answer this one. I gotta answer it. So we're in our evacuated, you know, in our one-bedroom hotel room. It was lovely. It has a little kitchen. She can make anything on a hot plate and an air fryer. I mean, honestly, we're like a little nation or two. I swear to God. People say, oh, she's, I know why you're with her and you're why she's with. We just spent all our time together. She's just remarkable.

• 22:39Mike Rowe?

  I know why you're with her.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:40Mike Rowe?

  I get it.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  But she's so smart. She's so funny. She's so talented. Great photographer.

• 22:43Mike Rowe?

  Like, do you do crosswords together or cross sticks?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  No, because she's smarter than I am. But, you know, don't tell anybody out there. So I'm sitting there and I go, hey, what are you doing? You know, because it's like, she's a room away. I want to make sure, you know, I haven't lost her. She goes, I'm, I said, what? She says, I'm, you know, I said, Sarah, you know, you're doing this. I'm, I'm coming in. I'm going to come in there and I'm going to get an answer. I said, what are you doing? She said, I'm writing.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  You're writing? What are you writing? She says, I'm writing a novel.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  I said, do you have like any pages? She goes, I've got like nine chapters done. I've got the outline. I said, I said, hold on.

• 23:27Mike Rowe?

  You're living in a one-bedroom motel room, where you got the time to write nine pages?

• 23:32Speaker 02

  What kind of stand-up comedian would you be? You're the straight man. You're so, so, what happened next?

• 23:36Mike Rowe?

  What happened next, James Woods?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  There you go. Well done. I said, wait a minute. I'm sitting on the couch in there, playing poker online illegally.

• 23:44Mike Rowe?

  Like a genius.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Go ahead. Write, write like a genius. You know, getting my ass handed to me. That's okay. I can afford it. No. And I go, I'm sorry. And you're writing a novel? She said, I'm writing my fifth novel. I said, hold on a second. When were you writing the other four? She goes, you know, you were busy being you, thinking about you and, you know, not the world around you most of the time. I said, okay, no, but seriously. She goes, yeah. I said, well, can I read this one? She goes, you can read the nine chapters. So I said, okay, but first of all, Sarah.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  You know, like, I'm a producer, the executive producer of Oppenheimer, for crying out loud. I'm big, you know, all I did was I recommend.

• 24:29Mike Rowe?

  American Prometheus.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  American Prometheus, yeah, we had the book, actually, my partner had the book, David Wargo.

• 24:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  But we knew each other from MIT, from MIT, not at MIT, but from MIT. And he said, look, I'm not in the business, long story short, he just said, can you help me get this movie made? And it took us five years, but I finally got it to my friend Chuck Rovin in the middle of COVID. And through a miracle, he got it to Chris, to Chris Nolan, of course, and Emma Thomas. And by the way, for the record, when the fires happened, some of the first people I heard from were Chuck and Emma Thomas and Chris Nolan. Emma texted me right away and said, we have a room in our house, come stay and so on. I mean, you know, a lot of people think they're aloof and he's very focused because he doesn't like anybody telling him. He just wants to focus on making the movies his choice.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  But man, when the chips were down, you know, they turned out to be real friends.

• 25:20Mike Rowe?

  For people who don't.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  But anyway, so let me just.

• 25:22Mike Rowe?

  Follow it closely, I just want to make sure people understand that Chris Nolan is, I mean, I guess he's widely acknowledged now as maybe being the premier auteur, but if he's not, he will be in time.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  If not of all times.

• 25:36Mike Rowe?

  Maybe, right?

• 25:37Speaker 02

  He's an unbelievable genius.

• 25:38Mike Rowe?

  He's like, he's a Shohei Ohtani kind of.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:42Mike Rowe?

  Force.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:43Mike Rowe?

  In that space.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  He's a force, he literally is saving.

• 25:47Mike Rowe?

  Film.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Film, literally film, he shoots only on film, on IMAX. He's, you know, he called me up and he said, look, the film's done. There are famous stories about him, like, well, the studio said, hey, you know, we'd like to read the scripts. He said, why? Yeah, okay, well, you know, can you, can you show us, you know, the dailies or? No, but well, when will we see the film? You know, it's a premiere. So I was kind of surprised when he called me, he said, the film's done. Well, great, Chris, great, he said, I'd like you to come see it, you know, nine o'clock in the morning, nine thirty in the morning.

• 26:18Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  You know, at the Universal CityWalk, you know, in Dolby Sound, you know, just huge, big. And I'm just sitting there alone, watching the movie. I think there were a couple of other people who had been actors in the movie that maybe hadn't seen it yet. And, but basically, I felt like I was in this big, empty room and. My father was on Okinawa. We're just jumping from things like Lily Pad.

• 26:40Mike Rowe?

  No, no, no, look, our listeners understand.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I'll finish these stories next week. Anyway, I want to come back tomorrow. Anyway, my dad was on Okinawa and I had a big, I had a real issue that I wanted to make sure that people understood that when they talk about the atomic bomb and the number of lives that were lost, the number of lives had we had a land invasion, not just American lives, but Japanese lives, would have been way more and more terrible. I mean, in terrible ways. They had 10-year-old children fighting with sticks against, you know, Marines and...

• 27:16Mike Rowe?

  Every model of a Japanese invasion showed a million dead.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  So when he did the movie and actually gleaned from American Prometheus and the trial, the hearings that Oppenheimer went through for his security clearance,

• 27:35Speaker 02

  and he took a completely different tack on the movie. Now, you have to understand that everybody wanted Chris Nolan to make a movie at the time. And Chuck said, "Look, I don't produce with Chris anymore because Emma does it, his wife. I mean, she's great producer. They kind of don't need me. We're friends." And at one point, when everybody was pulling at Chris, Chris said to Chuck, "Hey, you know, Emma and the kids and I would just like to go to your ranch if you're going to be down there in Kentucky." He said, "Yeah, I'm going next week. Yeah, let's come down." So Chuck has this ranch. He and Steph, his wife, they ride horses and, you know, they're very good. She does cutting horses. She's like a champion. So they're there and he said, "I don't want to talk about showbiz." Chuck says, "Great." Chuck calls me up and he goes, "So I'm going to go have, you know, Chris is going to come,

• 28:19Speaker 02

  but he doesn't want to talk about showbiz and so, you know, not going to happen and that's it."

• 28:25Speaker 02

  The third or fourth day, this is how it's told to me by Chuck. So maybe it happened this way, maybe not, but it's a hell of a story.

• 28:30Mike Rowe?

  The way he heard it.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  So Chuck said, like, the third day, the maid got the housekeeper, their cook, but you shouldn't use the word maid. They're a house manager.

• 28:43Mike Rowe?

  I believe it's a chef now.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  They're a house manager, they're executive chef, whatever. Got COVID. So he said, long story short... Chris Nolan and I are doing the dishes together. And I'm watching him, to Chris Nolan, drying the dishes. I hope this is true, I really do. And at that point, Chris said, "So what are you working on?" Dun, da, da, dun. Angels start singing. And he says, "Well, I'm doing this thing called Barbarians." He goes, "No, no." He said, "And this other..." He said, "Do you know James Woods, the actor?" He goes, "Yeah, I like him as an actor," and so on. He's not part of the cabal that decided to blacklist me because I voted differently than they did. So that was nice. And he's not political at all. He just said, "Yeah, I just like his work. What a concept." Right, how about that? Meritocracy! Yeah, yeah. What a thing. You being judged on what you did.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  That's your job, so I like you. And he said, "Well, he has this project called American Prometheus about J. Robert Oppenheimer." He said, "I was talking to Robert Pattinson on our last movie about Oppenheimer." He said, "I've been thinking about it." He said, "Send me the book." He said, "You gotta stay here. He does something that nobody in our business does, Chris. He makes a decision about what he's gonna do. Man, he does it. That's it." Yeah. He doesn't develop 20 projects and so on. No focus groups, no... Nothing. He couldn't care less. Yeah. But, by the way, he's never gone a penny over budget or a day or... Which is why the studios love him. Yeah, yeah. He's fantastic. And he said, and Chuck said, "You know, I was away in Germany. I haven't spent time with Steph. I wanna..." He said, "Yeah, she'll understand."

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Chuck, just, I'm gonna read the book. This is Thursday. I'll give you an answer on Tuesday." You know, or it was Friday, whatever it was. I knew it was three days. I said, "Chuck, the book's 700 pages long. It's like, you know, single..." And it's all science. He said, "He read it in three days." He calls him on Monday morning. He goes, "This is my next movie." Jeez. And he wrote the screenplay in less than four months. That's not even... That's really... And when I saw him... What's his IQ? I don't know, but a billion. A billion plus 84. But, and when I, when he screened it for me, I went up to him afterwards, I don't know why, because he's very...

• 30:55Speaker 02

  I said, Chris, I worked with my friend, you know, you know how it is, all the dead ends in the business. I never, the movie's so great, but what's so great is the screenplay, the idea, just that one little slight, because you don't know, you know, Strauss doesn't know what Oppenheimer is talking to Einstein about, and because of that, a whole life is ruined of a man who could have brought peace to the world, even though he invented the atomic bomb, he wanted to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, you know, the whole story. And all of a sudden, I never, I started, tears started coming down my eyes, it was so brilliantly done. And Chris Nolan, who's not the kind of guy you'd expect this from, put his arms around

• 31:37Speaker 02

  me and said, I can't thank you enough for bringing the book to Chuck and making this possible. He might have found it anyway, and, you know, it's possible that he knew about it all, but for him to say that to me was just one of the sort of great rewards in life.

• 31:53Mike Rowe?

  Did it feel redeeming?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Yes, it was redemption.

• 31:56Mike Rowe?

  Okay. I'm super interested in that, because at this point, I mean, you're older than you've ever been, I reckon, what, seventy-seven?

• 32:03Speaker 02

  I'm seventy-eight years old.

• 32:04Mike Rowe?

  Seventy-eight years old. It's just that your career is so interesting, and in spite of...

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 32:12Mike Rowe?

  Like, what you just alluded to was really a sliding door, right? A moment of doing dishes leads to a comment, leads to a book, and suddenly, you're an EP on arguably one of the greatest movies made this century, right? Speaking of sliding doors, you're seventeen, that one's made of glass, you run through it and damn near kill yourself.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  And, and look what happened in my life.

• 32:36Mike Rowe?

  And here you are. Like, we're not sitting here if you don't run through that door. We're not sitting here if some guy, whose name you may or may not remember, doesn't put a clamp on your radial.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:46Mike Rowe?

  I mean, we can make ourselves nuts, looking at the little moments in our life that actually weren't so little, but when you take that same model and apply it to something that's consequential, as splitting the atom, now, now you've got an opera.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting because I know you were an opera singer. Now, this is the second album we did, Tombstone Opera. There it is, thank you.

• 33:07Mike Rowe?

  Love it. Love the cover design. Who did that?

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 33:11Mike Rowe?

  Who did that?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Oh, how you over there? Sarah Noach.

• 33:15Mike Rowe?

  Sarah Noach did that one. Very nice.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, she did it. She did that. By the way, the graphic design, the graphic designer who does the placement of all the writing and so on, is also an incredibly talented woman named Alice Malle. And so Sarah did all the art directions. You did all the photography as well. The cover photograph, there's a line where the silence... My own dialogue. "A silent star, on a silent star high in the sky, a spirit sits, shaking his head, knows the carnage is nigh, and the killing begins." It's a whole opera about revenge and...

• 33:54Mike Rowe?

  Comedy?

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of laughs in this one.

• 33:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, I direct you to cut number two, "Onside a coyote hanging on a barbed-wire fence."

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Betcha.

• 34:04Mike Rowe?

  That old chestnut.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I tell you, it's a great song, man. They love that song. And I'm gonna say something. I truly do not ever, I don't like to brag about anything I do, but I am so proud of these two albums. I'll never be able to tell you what joy it gives me. So you'll notice that we have a star, if I may find this out. Right there in Tombstone Opera, that's the star. And this beautiful, very simple, kind of alluring, mysterious, ethereal cover, that was actually a daylight photograph that Sarah took that she massaged with Express and turned it into that. And that was a picture of Bob Wayne, who come... I do this interesting thing. I write all the lyrics. And on the first album, Shooter Jennings, three-time Grammy winner.

• 34:49Mike Rowe?

  Waylon Son.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Remarkable guy. I love him so much. Waylon Son as well. But who's now really made, he's really one of the top country music producers. He's just, he's done so many. Melissa Etheridge's album he did. I think he got two Grammys with producing Brandy Carlisle. He's fantastic. So when you talk about going through the sliding door... I've got to tell the story. This is how it all came about.

• 35:14Speaker 03

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• 35:45Speaker 02

  And I actually talk about this on the first album. I do a little spoken intro. When I was young, there were two things that stuck out because I loved to read. One was Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again." And I always, that concept just bewildered and left a bitter taste in my mouth. I thought, "You can find your way back if you need to, I believe." In fact, the first song on that first album is called "The Road Back." And the other thing that always stuck with me is, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, "There are no second acts in American lives." But I'm here to prove that indeed there are. I mean, I found, one of my lyrics is, "I found a good woman." I don't know how.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  You know, I did find a good woman in my life when I least expected it, on April Fool's Day 10 years ago. So I'm still not sure if it's the real deal. It could be a really long play.

• 36:40Mike Rowe?

  Very elaborate prank.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  A really elaborate prank.

• 36:43Mike Rowe?

  No, he's just playing the long game.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  No, he's just doing the long game. And I gotta check again.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Anyway, so, we're sitting in Dan Tana's, my beloved friend Dan Tana, who passed away this year, God rest his soul. But we go there all the time. I'm the only actor, musician, whoever, whose picture is on the wall at Dan Tana's after 60 years.

• 37:07Mike Rowe?

  By the way, one of the great places in the country to get a steak.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  The best. The best steak you'll ever have anywhere in the world.

• 37:13Mike Rowe?

  You know, Musso and Frank at Dan Tana's.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, those two.

• 37:17Mike Rowe?

  If you're gonna sit at the bar and sip a decent cold gin and have a rare to medium rare.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  The best.

• 37:24Mike Rowe?

  Serlin, that's.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  At that very bar, Glenn Frey and Don Henley were sitting, "Look at this girl in the barn." And Glenn Frey said to Don Henley, "Look at this girl. Look at those lion eyes."

• 37:35Mike Rowe?

  Can't hide 'em.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  And Don Henley went, "Song."

• 37:42Speaker 02

  By the way, squirrel, but have you seen the Eagles in the sphere yet? We haven't seen them in the sphere, but we saw them in Vegas. And it was with Vince Gill. Yeah. You know, we had the greatest time. So much fun. They're so, they're so great. So anyway, we're sitting in tennis at five o'clock and, you know, who eats dinner at five o'clock? Well, we do, because people always come, "Hey, Mr. Williams, good to talk to you. How you doing? Shake hands." I always shake hands with everybody, chat with everybody. But when they're standing over your food, one thing we learned during COVID is, don't chat with people while they're standing over your food. Right. I won't get more graphic than that. So we're sitting there, there's nobody in the place, except this guy's all tattered up and he's got shades on.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  And his blonde Anna Nicole Smith kind of looking gorgeous wife and she's, and you know, we're always like everybody, those people watching, "Look at these two." And all of a sudden she goes,

• 38:37Speaker 02

  "Oh," they get up and they go, "Hey, man, sorry to bother you." You know, "I'm just such a fan." I go, "Well, thank you so much." We're, "Sorry to stare, but you know, you're a really cool looking couple." So the question is, music, movies? But he goes, "Uh, music." He said, "I'm Shooter Jennings and this is my wife, Misty." And I said, "Oh, how did, I said Jennings." I said, "Well, you know, that's, you know, there was a country," he said, "He was my dad." I said, "Of course you were." How about that? So we start, we sit talking, talking, talking, talking. We're hanging out, hanging out. And now it's during COVID, so it's really difficult. Sarah and Misty keep trying to make, Sarah and O H and Misty, M I S T Y,

• 39:20Speaker 02

  I don't know why I bother to spell her name, are trying to find out a way to get us together to have dinner. And we finally have dinner and for some reason, we're chatting, Shooter and I are talking about music, the music he loved and his music and stuff. And I said, "Oh, damn." I said, "I have this sweater, cashmere, a little nice little cashmere sweater that Sarah got for me." And I snagged it, but you know, he said, "How'd you do that?" I said, "Oh, you know, the callous from my guitar." You play guitar? I said, "No, shh, no, I don't believe, no, I do not play guitar. I stink, can't do it, I had an injury. I can strum campfire chords, I gave it all up. Um, no, I don't play guitar." Because you never tell a musician that you play an instrument.

• 40:02Mike Rowe?

  Because you know what's coming next. He has one, probably under the table.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  It's not even that. It's like, you think you can play an instrument until a guy who's practiced seventeen hours a day, you know, gets on.

• 40:14Mike Rowe?

  You think you can direct a movie and then Chris Nolan walks in the room.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  And you go, "Oh, oh my God." Anyway, he said, oh, he said, "Did you ever, and talk about the sliding door you walked through." He said, "Well, you know, you always make me laugh, man, you're so bright. Did you ever think of writing lyrics?" "No." He said, "You should think about that." So I go home, because it's in my mind. I write a song. And I sit down and I write it as fast as I can. Actually, I wrote it on my, on my notes app on my phone.

• 40:48Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  "When the sun in early morning dies in sorrow and quietly fades." When the, fuck, my own letter.

• 40:57Mike Rowe?

  Hundred eighty-four, Jack.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  What is it? What?

• 40:59Mike Rowe?

  Before.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  What?

• 41:00Mike Rowe?

  Before.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  "Before they once more on us, before the world invades." Before, what the? What? I knew this would happen.

• 41:08Mike Rowe?

  What's the song called?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  It's called "Misty Morning."

• 41:10Mike Rowe?

  M-I-S.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  T-Y.

• 41:12Mike Rowe?

  Y. No H. Oh.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  There we go, I gotta get to my phone back. I'll do it to you.

• 41:24Mike Rowe?

  There it is, from the horse's mouth.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  "When the sun in early morning dies in sorrow and quietly fades."

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Before they watch more on us, before the world invades, before we are born again and the sun burns away our sins. Misty morning, misty morning, gonna let the cold world come back in.

• 42:05Mike Rowe?

  Nice.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  So Shooter's a fantastic composer and a great singer. So.

• 42:13Mike Rowe?

  How long did it take him to write that compared to how long it took you to?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Well, it took me about forty minutes.

• 42:21Mike Rowe?

  Or seventy-eight years, depending on how you like it. About as long as it took us to. To find it.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  But you've got to understand what it's like. So you send these lyrics to this guy who's got three Grammys.

• 42:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  And you don't hear anything for weeks. I said to Sarah, I am such a douchebag. What am I sending lyrics to Shooter Jennings? I'm some fucking actor, you know, it's like, you know. And then out of nowhere, no, nothing, out of nowhere, I get a text. And it's like, oh, MP4. I touch it and I hear it just, he had, then he smoked cigarettes. Doesn't smoke cigarettes anymore. He's all right, I've been smoking all day and my voice is shit, you know, but I got to tell you, I'm just doing a little kind of, you know, I love the stream of consciousness. I love these lyrics, James. I really hope, you know, anyway, I hope you like this.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  It's just something I, I think, I hope you like it. Here it is. Boom. And he plays this song. And if you hear the whole song, it's just, it's exquisite, it's just beautiful.

• 43:28Mike Rowe?

  On a personal level, though, what's it do? What's it do to your dopamine? What's it do to your mindset?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  It's impossible.

• 43:34Mike Rowe?

  You talked about redemption before with the Nolan moment. How does, how does that moment compare?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Well, you gotta know that while I was waiting those three weeks, I wrote thirty-five more songs. I just thought, I'm just gonna keep writing. I love this. Thirty-five? Yeah, thirty-five. You are such a weirdo, man. And I just wrote these songs. And when I heard it, I said, Sarah, is it me? She goes, it's fantastic. So I called David Foster, who's a friend of mine. I said, David, can I send something to you? He said, yeah. He said, you know, I'm retired. I said, I don't want you to do anything. I just wanna know if I'm kidding myself.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  He listens to it, he goes, who's on the piano and singing? I said, it's Shooter Jennings, who also did the music. I wrote the lyrics, he did the music. He said, I would buy this song in one second for Joshua Roman, right? I said, well, I'm never doing anything except with Shooter. He said, yeah. And he said, I'm at work now. He said, but this is, anything you need my help on, just do. You know, now I'm with ASCAP and all that stuff. But the good news is, something interesting happened that kinda works for everything that you do here about the work ethic. And I really wanna talk about this seriously, because it's important. So here I am. I had a day job, and I did pretty well.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  And I had... Goes to Mississippi? Kidding me? Yeah. Pretty well. Yeah, I had that, and I had Salvar. I had a couple of Oscar nominations. I had, you know, I got five Emmys. I got all that stuff. And I made some money. But I did one really smart thing when I was young. And right after like 1984, 1985, whatever, I had some money in the bank. And I had a stockbroker. And I said, you know, I'd like to buy Apple Computer. And he goes, are you joking? Apple Computer? It sounds like a trash can on the screen.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I said, "Yeah, you know why there's a trash can on the screen?" He said, "So you're gonna throw away your stuff?" I said, "Yeah." "And you know why that's interesting to a shitload of people in America and in the world?" "They don't know what Ctrl, Alt, Delete does. They don't know all that geek stuff." "But they can look at a desktop and go, 'Oh, I can put this thing in the trash can.'" I said, "It appeals to the other 99% of the world who would love to use a computer." I said, "Just tell me one thing." He said, "Look, if you buy Apple Computer, I really don't kinda wanna represent you." "I get fired all the time, everybody, 'cause, you know, I have other ideas." And I said, "Okay, but before you go, would you put in the sale for me?" He goes, "Yeah."

• 46:19Speaker 02

  I said, "With the money?" I was like at 12 or something, you know? I said, "I've worked hard, I just didn't..." "If I took every penny I have and put it into Apple Computer..."

• 46:33Speaker 02

  He said, "Oh, man, you're so stupid." I said, "Okay, but we know that, and you're gonna leave me, and you'll be able to say, 'I told you so,' someday." "How many shares could I buy?" He said, "13,000." I said, "Good, buy 13,000 shares of Apple in 1985."

• 46:52Speaker 02

  And you did? And never sold one. Are you kidding me? No, dude, I'm here as a favor, 'cause I'm a rich man. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Man, I was on the verge of feeling sorry for you a while ago. I actually, I gotta take that back. I actually did sell at one point when they split seven ways or something, because you don't wanna ever be top-heavy, no matter how great your thing is. But I just loved the product, and I loved what it was. The point about this, it's important to get back to this other thing. I can afford to make these albums, and it costs quite a bit. You wanna pay the musicians, and I have a whole thing that we have to talk about, how musicians are just, have been destroyed by the way the music business is run now.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  It's cruel and awful, and I'm trying to do something a little different here. So I worked with this wonderful woman named Missi Query at Selecto Hits, which is Johnny Phillips, Sam Phillips' great nephew.

• 47:49Mike Rowe?

  Selecto Hits.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Oh, don't laugh, man. They do 50 to 100 albums a month. And you know what they do? All the guys want to have their own little labels, okay? And they want to get their stuff distributed and they help you do it. And he guides you through it all. And honestly, it's fantastic. Because nobody cares. Oh, you know, I'm gonna buy that because it's on, you know, electro side, whatever. You know, nobody does that.

• 48:11Mike Rowe?

  It's like, oh, I'm gonna go see a Universal film tonight. I feel like some Warner Brothers entertainment. It doesn't.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Thank you, exactly.

• 48:17Mike Rowe?

  I get it.

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• 49:18Speaker 02

  So I said to Shooter, I said, you know, then he started writing songs for me. And I was like, he said, man, you know, you've got a really beautiful album here. I said, thank you. I said, what do you think we should call the album? He said, well, you know, it's like, it's your autobiography. This is the first album here that's under crack. I said, what? He goes, dude, you're not aware that you like wrote your autobiography? I said, oh, I guess I kind of did. Because there's a song I think we're gonna play at the end called Hello Friend, I Forgot to Say Goodbye. And I said, yeah. He said, well, then, you know, I said, but we don't have a song that kind of celebrates that. I said, I should write one tonight. He said, okay, what would you call it? I said, well, The Road Back, because I love road stories. And I wrote the song about.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Driving back home, can't go home again when I call home, to see my widowed mother after my beloved brother died unexpectedly. And I getting caught in a tornado with my little carrier who looked just like Toto. It's too hard to believe, but it's a true story. And we got caught in this tornado. Anyway, it's just about, it's called The Road Back.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  And he said, you know, I said, you know, should we do this with like, you know, like Sony? Or what? He said, look, the big labels are great. For us, it would be James Woods. Nobody associates you with music, you know? I have a small but devoted following, but you come out from what it, gone. He said, you should go with Johnny Phillips.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  You should make your own label, Break Heart Films, based after a brook that my dad and I used to fish in. And he said, you know, in the beginning, you'll have to fund it yourself. I'll do it with you. I said, no, I'll do it. Pay the musicians, pay the engineers and all that. And then hopefully make enough money back that you can do another one. And so I'm gonna do it as if I am a broke ass guy with a guitar. But, you know, a guitar and a dream, and a pencil or a notes app.

• 51:25Mike Rowe?

  And thirteen thousand shares of MacIntosh.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm not bringing that in.

• 51:29Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  You see? So, we ended up doing the album that way, and Missy guided us through it. And Sarah, you know, with her, we didn't have her photography. It ended up being Shooter and me and Sarah with the photography that was a way that we could promote it. At least we have some pictures and some videos and all this stuff. And we did it, and people loved it. And we ended up number seven for a brief moment, but we were in, on the Apple Country Music Chart. I mean, they hit number seven.

• 51:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  You know? And...

• 52:01Mike Rowe?

  But to do it on your own terms, James, right?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  On our own terms.

• 52:03Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's like this little band of, you know, I don't know, jagged little pills who are gonna do something outside of the behemoth of the industry.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 52:14Mike Rowe?

  How satisfying or important, how important...

• 52:18Mike Rowe?

  Is it to fight City Hall even as you try and create something?

• 52:21Speaker 02

  But I don't want to look at it negatively. I understand that the big albums, you know, provide a great service. I mean, you get to, whether it's 50 Cent or, you know, Taylor Swift, whatever. I mean, those fans want to hear these artists and they're great artists in their own way. This is different, this is authentic music. There's no AI, there's no, you know.

• 52:42Mike Rowe?

  No auto-tune.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  No auto-tune, none of that stuff. These are musicians, and great musicians. John Schreffler, Jamie Douglas, Aubrey Richmond, Ted Russell Kemp, you know, Shooter, of course. So this album did well. I called Shooter and I, you know, now that COVID was over, Shooter was, you know, back into producing and so on. I said, Shooter, it takes you too long to get songs back to me. Sometimes it can take as much as, because you just don't have the time. He said, yeah, I know. I said, is there a young artist who could do what you do, that we would produce together? That, you know, that I could take the profit from this first album and make a second album? He said, it's not young, but there's a guy named Bob Wayne,

• 53:27Speaker 02

  who's got like 12 albums out, he does them in his living room. It's really good musicians in the South. And it's all, you know, trucker, hey, trucker, you know, mother, trucker, and you know, all this stuff. But, but really, but he also does other music and he's a genius. He's amazing. And he said, we were talking about doing a neo-noir western. I said, whatever that means. I said, and what would I do? He said, well, you know, why don't you write the lyrics and have him do the music? I said, because yeah, that's me, a country-western guy. He goes, Jimmy, just see what you think. So I talked to him on the phone a little bit and I really like him.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  And I send him the lyrics to a song called Casa de Mor that I had written. And he sends back.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  We laugh about it now. Literally the worst song I think I've ever heard. And I said, and I learned something from Shooter. Shooter, with your musicians, say, let's try that again. Clint Eastwood's like that.

• 54:35Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Shooter said, and Bob said, I hate this thing I sent you. I'm sorry, I was literally in tears. I told Candace, my girlfriend, I said, I just screwed it up. But James, I said, this thing is crap. I hate it. I said, Bob, just try it again. He said, OK. You know, I sent back, I said, you're getting there. And then finally, I said, think about this. Think that it's like this 1870s kind of hacienda cantina with these ladies of questionable virtue and, you know.

• 55:07Mike Rowe?

  Ill repute.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Ill repute. But he falls in love with one. So now he comes back. And the first half of this song, I think you're gonna play it at some point. We're talking to your guy about it, Chuck, about it. And it's real, you know, almost mariachi band kind of self-conscious. But it's setting you up. I said, now, when he wakes up to the empty room and she's gone, go to a minor key and let's get into that fever dream loss that Shooter's famous for. They kind of, and then we have, you know, John Schreffler on that lap steel guitar. It's like, oh, my God. These musicians, and I'm glad I mentioned them all because they make the song. And Shooter's ability to arrange it all.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  And the next thing you know, Casa de Mor is like beautiful. And man, we're off and running.

• 55:59Mike Rowe?

  Is that the one where there's a, there's a heat wave?

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:02Mike Rowe?

  There's a heat wave in Casa de Mor.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Casa de Mor.

• 56:04Mike Rowe?

  So it actually, I mean, you got around to it. You just answered, well, not quite yet. You haven't quite answered my very first question, which was an attempt to explain.

• 56:15Mike Rowe?

  The alchemy between musicians who have never heard a song before. So they're not privy to your process of coming up with the lyrics. They're not privy to Shooter's process or to Bob Wayne's pain of getting it wrong and then wrong again and then less wrong and then not really wrong and then right and then great.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 56:36Mike Rowe?

  They're not a part of any of that. They show up one day, Saturday afternoon, they're in some studio and they look at some charts.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Snake Mountain at Sunset Sound.

• 56:45Mike Rowe?

  It was bound to be that or something like.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  They don't even look at the charts.

• 56:49Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  It is the most miraculous thing.

• 56:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  I've ever experienced in my life and I've seen a shuttle launch.

• 56:54Mike Rowe?

  That's what I want, I want you to talk about that.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Here's what we do.

• 56:57Mike Rowe?

  That's the stuff of.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Here's what we do. I'm gonna do something that, man, I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm gonna do it.

• 57:04Mike Rowe?

  Are you accessing your photo roll?

• 57:06Speaker 02

  No, I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna do a portfolio. Okay. Huh?

• 57:10Mike Rowe?

  It's a stock portfolio.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Your stock portfolio, you're gonna check your stocks right now. No, no.

• 57:14Mike Rowe?

  How's Apple doing?

• 57:15Speaker 02

  I said to Shooter, I wrote this song called "I Am The Blazing Sun" and I said, what happened is Dwayne from the Oak Ridge Boys said, "I love your album and I love your writing, would you write a song for us?" We started writing and then it turned out that it worked beautifully for Tombstone Opera, but then I didn't wanna use it in Tombstone Opera, but I have a new, a new album we're gonna go in, cut in February, and I'm just gonna say it now, it's called "The Lonesome," it's about lonesome people and.

• 57:46Mike Rowe?

  Is this breaking news? Has this been really sad?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  It actually is and I shouldn't have said it, but yes.

• 57:50Mike Rowe?

  Lonesome people, make a note, it's gonna be the title of this episode.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  It's called, no, it's called.

• 57:54Mike Rowe?

  Lonesome people, folks.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  No, it's called "The Lonesome."

• 57:57Mike Rowe?

  Oh, it's just the lonesome?

• 57:58Speaker 02

  The lonesome.

• 58:00Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know what you did there? You forgot the noun, man.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  So, so here's.

• 58:04Mike Rowe?

  The lonesome what? You left me hanging. Just the lonesome.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  That's right, I kept you hanging, didn't I? What comes next? What do you mean the lonesome?

• 58:11Mike Rowe?

  Well, if nothing comes after lonesome, I think you've turned a, what, an adjective into the noun, the lonesome.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 58:18Mike Rowe?

  Huh?

• 58:19Speaker 02

  You're good at this.

• 58:19Mike Rowe?

  Very clever.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  So here's a little vibe that Shooter sent, he said, "Maybe you could use this." That's what I was thinking. It's just like, here's like, here's how that works. It goes from this, you know what I should do? No, I'm gonna do that.

• 58:31Mike Rowe?

  You should play it if you're gonna, you'll be hanging again.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do it from a song you already have. So, here's a little bit of.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Is there a "Beyond the Door Rough" in here? Let's see if there's a "Rough."

• 58:47Mike Rowe?

  I got a "Rough Road to Heaven" here.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  No, but that's... Okay, let me just see.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Okay, so am I here? Okay, here it is. Okay, so this is just... Nothing. Okay, let me go back. I'm gonna show you this.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  It sounds like nothing.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  All this silly stuff. That's not in the final. He was just doing it for me. This is just a "Rough" you get.

• 59:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, scratch, scratch.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Okay, now, I'll give you the... I'll give you the master of this. Okay.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  And now, if you ever heard the difference when the final one, with the band, it's fantastic. He comes in, he plays this, it's like, "Okay, I think he's singing." That's it. They play it once. These guys are sitting there going, you know, 1, 4, you know, in music, instead of saying C, you know, like G, classic G, C, D. It's like the first chord, the fourth chord, the fifth chord, whatever. They do that once, and they take a pass at it. They sit there and go, "What? What? What? How did you guys do this?" Now, I did something. I did two things. Sarah and I, Sarah, of course, did it for me. She made sure that we had all the lyrics printed up, and I gave them to each of the band members.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  First of all, I said, "Nobody ever does this." And then I give a little speech about what the song means to me. And this is very important, because I know you're gonna play this song. When I was seven years old, I was an army brat. I'd lived on Guam. I lived in three different states in the first year of school. It was really hard on me. I was traveling, jumping. And then in the second grade, I was living in Warwick, Rhode Island. And I used to go to the library at night in Connecticut, Rhode Island. The librarian's daughter was a girl named Gerald Davies. And Gerald and I became best friends. She was a little skinny minnie. And she aggravated the living shit out of me forever. I went to school, all through school, through junior high. But I was like eight. I said to my mom, I said, you know, Jerry's always like picking on me.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  I said, why is she so mean to me? He said, you don't understand girls yet. This is, and by the way, it gets more complicated than it ever gets easier.

• 1:01:21Mike Rowe?

  Like you understand them now?

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got this all figured out. And so we got through school and, you know, like, she goes away to like a Christian summer camp or something. Comes back when she's 16. It's like olive oil leaves and Jessica Rabbit comes back. And I literally go, hi, what's this? She says, don't even say it, don't think. Look, you know, so we were friends. But now you go through that awkward period where you're like teenagers and you're going, oh gee. You know, you're just like dumbfounded at how miraculous.

• 1:01:57Mike Rowe?

  It's another magic trick.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  But, but everything about good women, and all women are good women unless they've been deluded by, you know, bad men and bad other women. But she was just, you know, a lovely person. But we were meant to be friends, not to ever get involved. And we didn't ever get involved. And, you know, like my mom would say, I always, you know, like we'd be talking to her and her mom, you know, at the library. I always thought you and Jimmy would get married. And she, you know, yeah, people think that. But she had met Michael, her husband, and they had a wonderful marriage and children and so on. And I was really glad. And we stayed friends forever. They'd always call up. I'd say, what are you doing? She'd go, I'm pregnant again. I'd say, yeah, that's a good thing. She goes, no, it's a great thing.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  And she called me once and I didn't get a chance to answer. And she called me again. I go, I gotta call Jerry back. Calls the third time. Hey, I'm so sorry I didn't give out Mr. Woods.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  This is Jerry's daughter. I said, "Oh, hi." I said, "You know, your mom called me." She said, "My mom passed away this morning. She was trying to call you to say goodbye. She had cystic fibrosis."

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  So I wrote this song, "Hello Friend." "Hello friend, I forgot to say goodbye. Slipped my mind, I don't know why. I thought you'd always be there. I never feared death. But I called one day and you were gone in a breath." And Shooter put that to music. And Aubrey plays the violin on it. And I'm telling you, the good news is, I don't care whether anybody likes it or not. It's one of the most beautiful songs, to me, you could ever hear. I just love that song so much because it's personal. And I write every word of every album. Nobody gets to write any of the words. The only word that was ever added at the end, Shooter added "old buddy"

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  instead of "my friend" or "my girl" or whatever. "Old buddy." And I said, "Gee, Shooter, it's kind of odd." He goes, "She was your buddy." I said, "You get that." And he goes, "Yeah, I get it." Those little things are so magical. But if you had ever heard, I explained that story to the musicians, and the musicians got it. And, you know, a couple of them came up to me and said, "You know, it makes such a difference because now we know what the heart of the song is." I mean, they can do anything. But, you know, "Which way do you want it to go? Oh, let's make it sound like Joy Division, or let's do something with Johnny Cash." You'll make an allusion, allusion, to how you'd like it done. You didn't have to do that. When I explained it... This is what touched my heart in this song when I wrote it.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  In this case, Shooter wrote the music in Tombstone Opera. Bob wrote the music. Shooter and I produced both albums. You give them the key to it. Now, we actually give them a name now because I won't work with anybody else. But, you know, I mean, we'll add other people. But these are my core people. If I can't have them, I'm not going to record an album. I'll plan months in advance to make sure that they're available. But these guys, they'll be doing something, including Aubrey. Well, you know, "Oh, I gotta get on a plane because I'm doing a single show." And, you know, Bob was literally just in Argentina, in Europe. Literally had a little Volkswagen bus driving across Spain. Yeah, we're going there and then we're going to Portugal and we got to fly to Finland and playing in 300-seat houses.

• 1:05:21Mike Rowe?

  It's Bob Wayne.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Bob Wayne, but I swear this album, Tombstone Opera, is gonna make a difference because Rafa Gómez, who wrote the review of it in Europe for Popular One, which is like the Rolling Stone of America, thinks it's a masterpiece. So I'm not saying it is, but Bob wrote the music and does the singing on this. And he is absolutely a blessed human being. He's just this sweet guy. And I said, Bob, where did you come up with this music? He tries to give me the credit. He goes, well, the words really spoke to me. And I said, Bob, this is... I said, shooter, I'm not wrong. He's, no, Bob's a genius. He's like an unheralded genius. But these guys have to be on the road and in between sets, they sit in the lobby and they sign vinyl.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  While, you know, Apple and Spotify make, you know, billions of dollars and, you know, and I'm not putting them down, but, you know.

• 1:06:14Mike Rowe?

  No, no, but this is the stuff of poetry. Is it a masterpiece? Will it be a masterpiece?

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. I don't like to say that. Somebody else said that.

• 1:06:22Mike Rowe?

  Right, but, I mean.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Look, it doesn't make...

• 1:06:26Mike Rowe?

  You have to, you can't... Time. Okay. Bob Ross's painting just sold for a million dollars. Bob Ross was the brunt of every joke that every artiste ever made for 20 years. But the joy of painting on PBS was a magic trick. And every episode starts with a blank canvas. And then, in his weird, whispery little way, he does some things here, kinda like a bunch of musicians come together. And then, poof, in watercolor. You have something that means, that makes so much sense to your brain, where there was...

• 1:07:07Mike Rowe?

  Not only not that thing there earlier, but there was nothing. It was a blank canvas.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Mike Rowe?

  And that's the magic of an empty studio, and now five cats are in it, and now they're talking in code, and now you have a song. And the song in question is informed by a word that you didn't write, the word buddy, which frankly, to me, destroys me when I hear Willie Nelson singing. Now, this is really gonna blow your mind.

• 1:07:32Speaker 06

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• 1:08:00Mike Rowe?

  My buddy, my pal, my friend, right? That old song.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:05Mike Rowe?

  Some genius at Subaru buys it and puts it in a commercial.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:08:12Mike Rowe?

  Featuring a guy and his old dog.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:08:16Mike Rowe?

  He's not gonna be around for much longer. And now, my buddy, my pal, and I'm sitting home. I'm a grown ass man, and I'm not that sentimental. And I'm crying like a 10-pound baby girl, cuz that's probably the last walk on the beach for that dog.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Ah, it's killing you.

• 1:08:31Mike Rowe?

  And there's the guy.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:08:33Mike Rowe?

  And if you distill all of it, Jim, can I call you Jim?

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 1:08:36Mike Rowe?

  If you did, Jim, I was like, yeah, like, if you called me Michael, it would freak me out.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, my brother's name was Mike, so.

• 1:08:42Mike Rowe?

  Oh, Jesus, I'm gonna circle back to him in a minute, too.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:45Mike Rowe?

  So, prepare to cry. You're gonna cry like a baby in a minute. But I'm weeping because of the word buddy.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Mike Rowe?

  And so, we don't really, I don't think, get to choose what the watercolor does on the canvas, or what that musician might do on that day with that instrument, or what a genius like Shooter might decide to do with your words. And all of it, sometimes you're the potter, sometimes you're the clay. And if what comes out the other end is a tombstone opera.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 1:09:13Mike Rowe?

  Then you're living a pretty interesting life today.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Amen. I don't give credit to everybody just to be, oh, what a great guy, Jim, but he always gives credit. It couldn't be done without him. On this last album. We always kind of joke that we're the Three Musketeers, Shooter and Bob and I. And D'Artagnan is Sarah with no H.

• 1:09:34Mike Rowe?

  No Porthos, no Athos?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  But now, speaking of which, it's so funny.

• 1:09:37Mike Rowe?

  No Aramis?

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Darius Rucker, who used to be with Hootie and the Blowfish, wrote a beautiful song called "Sarah." And we've done this joke enough, but with no H.

• 1:09:45Mike Rowe?

  With an H.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Sarah. But, no, it's with no H.

• 1:09:48Mike Rowe?

  Oh, no H too?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Correct? Correct. Yeah.

• 1:09:50Mike Rowe?

  So Hootie and the Blowfish actually?

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  No, no, Hootie and the Blowfish, he wants single, he wants solo.

• 1:09:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, he wants, okay.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  And, and Darius Rucker, he's a wonderful, and his whole song is about, "I want you back again as my friend. I want to talk to you again. I don't want to be your lover, I don't want you to be my wife, I just want to talk to you again like we did, like we were 13 again." You know, and it's just so great because it's really hard for people to understand that, yes, a man and a woman can be a friend. And one of the million great things I love about my wife is that if there is a woman that I've known who is not up to something and is just a really good friend, and a perfect example is my first wife is a costume designer, a great human being, a lovely person,

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  never intrudes or anything, but once in a while, I'll chat and I'll always make sure if she calls, I'll call back when Sarah's there. I just have kind of a rule about that, I just think. And, you know, she's just a genuinely good person, and Sarah knows that, and they're very friendly with each other.

• 1:10:54Mike Rowe?

  Can we not gloss over that quite so, like, you prefer to call your friend back when your wife is in the, in the house?

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  Just a matter of respect to both of them, but certainly to my wife.

• 1:11:07Mike Rowe?

  Certainly, but, you know, look, again, it's a parenthetical. Certainly, i.e. obvious, ergo, clearly.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  Kate Capshaw, I'm gonna clear it, I'm gonna give you the perfect, I'm gonna give you a little moment in time that explains it better than anybody. Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw have been married for years. I worked with Kate, she's fabulous. And Steven loves her. And she loves Steven. And I thought, oh, she's easy to love, Steven. It's not what it's about. They really love each other. They're a great little... They're a great couple. Mm-hmm. And I said, so... She said, you know, I have male friends and so on. And I said, how does Steven feel about that? She said, oh, I was going to meet my friend John one day and said, hey, I'm going to meet John for lunch. And Steven said, great. And as she was coming down the driveway, he was walking over to the car. I said, she said, what's going on? He said, I'm going with you.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  Now, many times, he hadn't. Mm-hmm. You know, in telling of this story. But there was never a moment in his mind where he thought, I better go and check on... That's not what it was about. It never dawned on him it would be an issue either way. And I said, for you? She said, no. It's never an issue either way. And like, I never ask, hey, I'm gonna bring Sarah. I don't have to ask her permission. She's my wife. She's the most important person in the world to me. And I am going to make sure, if we're gonna go somewhere, hey, we'd like to have you come, but you know, I'll have to be solo. I said, then you'll have to get, you know, somebody else. Because she either comes or... I don't. That's it. Now, it may be a situation where, you know, the one time I asked Sarah about it was when Chris screened...

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  When he screened Oppenheimer, he said, look, everybody wants to see it, the studio has and so on. He said, you are instrumental in this. And I really want you to participate. We're making sure that nobody comes because I don't want it to leak out. And I said, I know that everybody would wanna... So I said to Sarah, either I won't go for any reason. She said, don't be... You go. Because she was crucial in making the decision. Here's a little thing I don't talk about much. As you know, if you produce a movie, you win the Academy Award. If you're the executive producer, you don't. Now, there was a period when there were 20 executive producers on movies and stuff. Chris Nolan doesn't do that. He gives it to his production manager.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  And he gets the executive producer credit. And he just doesn't give executive producer credit. But he gave it to us because we had the book. I said to Chuck, Chuck, if we do this... I've worked all my life, I'm blacklisted in this business.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  And for my politic purely, I said, "I really want to get the Oscar." And he said, "Well, I'm gonna ask Chris." And he said, "You know," and he said, "He's not gonna let you produce." He said, "But I'm gonna produce." So now you brought me the movie, and I'm gonna produce, because I used to produce with them. And he said, "Are you gonna be able to take us up there getting the Oscar, if that happens, and you not?" And I said, "Uh." He said, "Because I'm your friend. I've been your friend forever." He always gives me credit. He never doesn't. He said, "I want you to think it over, and if you decide no,

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  we won't do it with Chris. I give you my word." And he said, "But if you decide it's okay, and you can handle it, we'll do it with Chris. And if we get the Oscar, you will be the first person, I think, I promise you." And he did.

• 1:14:45Mike Rowe?

  No kidding.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  And the reason I made that decision, I was gonna go the other way. I said, "Sir, what do you think?" She said, "Caviar on the balcony, or tacos in the parking lot?" "Caviar on the balcony."

• 1:15:01Mike Rowe?

  So, not to put too fine a point on it, but that's a moment where you're thinking, if the best thing for the project is for you to step away from it.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 1:15:10Mike Rowe?

  Then you would do that.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  And also, Chuck is a great friend. You know, way back when we were in our twenties, he was in the music business. And he said, "You know, I'd like to get into show business. Can you help me?" And I introduced him to a writer, and they didn't do the project. But the writer helped him write another idea he had called "Heart Like a Wheel", and he never looked back. And he's a great producer. The best producer alive today. He's fantastic. We stayed friends forever. And, you know, he really, I don't think if it had been anybody else would have wanted to do a movie about the making of the atomic bomb. There'd already been two TV movies about it. It didn't, you know, he didn't think he could get Chris to do it.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  But he, I think, felt that, given our history and our friendship, and knowing how cruel it has been, that I had an agent who called me on 4th of July, I don't know if he was 10 bears deep or not, I don't even know if he was... Said, "You know, I'm feeling patriotic today, so I'm gonna drop you as a client." I said, "That's odd. I just thought patriotism was about a country where people could disagree and still like each other and work together. But you know what? It's probably more of a gift than you'd think." And indeed it was, because I'd rather have written Tombstone Opera than just about anything else, or make any of the movies they make now, which I can always tell you who the villain is, because he's the old white guy.

• 1:16:33Mike Rowe?

  Sliding doors. Did this prick, pardon me, this agent of yours, I mean...

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  They fired him. It's okay.

• 1:16:40Mike Rowe?

  Was he just another sliding door you ran through that ultimately brought you to where you got?

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  You know, I never thought of it that way, and I...

• 1:16:49Mike Rowe?

  Which agency was it?

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  The Gersh Agency.

• 1:16:52Mike Rowe?

  And you'll name names?

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  I don't usually name names, but that's what they did, and they stood by it, and that's that. That's their choice.

• 1:16:58Mike Rowe?

  What year was this?

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  It's about 12 or 14 years ago, whatever.

• 1:17:04Mike Rowe?

  People need to understand, the vagaries of this business are such that if you're a guy like James Woods, and you have a certain standing, and you have a certain resume, then you're going to be represented by one of the big agencies, as you were.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:18Mike Rowe?

  And your path forward in this town is... It's not a single lane, but it's a lane. And you will, you will play ball, you will comport. There are certain things you will do, and there are certain things you won't. And if you fall outside of that mechanism, you're gonna get the kind of call that you got. You got the call, so...

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  It was an email, actually.

• 1:17:42Mike Rowe?

  Oh, so classy. Well, look, we don't, we don't need to make a meal out of this. I'm sure you're sick of talking about it, but I do want people to understand how burned...

• 1:17:54Mike Rowe?

  How burned are you today in this business? And the reason I'm asking is, I wouldn't ask if I felt like you had a shred of self pity.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  I don't have any self pity.

• 1:18:06Mike Rowe?

  But you don't.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:18:08Mike Rowe?

  And you're real smart and you're older than you've ever been and you're actually living the second act.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  I really am.

• 1:18:15Mike Rowe?

  Like, you're probably gonna write a song on the way home with Sarah Without an Age and you're probably gonna run it by her and she's probably gonna say, "Let me think about it." She's gonna go off to her little room in your one-bedroom motel where you're squatting and probably write and draw up a beautiful album cover in between chapters of yet another novel, whatever. It's such an... I don't feel sorry for you at all, at all.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  I don't either.

• 1:18:39Mike Rowe?

  But I don't know of anybody who took it in the neck harder for speaking candidly than you. So what a weird mix to not feel bad in spite of what I think was an awful lot of injustice.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Also, an interesting thing happened to our business during this time period. You know, Chadwick Boseman had, I thought, an incredibly dignified death. He knew he was sick, he was a young man, never told anybody. He was really incredibly talented.

• 1:19:14Mike Rowe?

  I'm not sure I know who he is.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  He was the star of Black Panther.

• 1:19:17Mike Rowe?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  And I hadn't seen all his work after he passed away and I said to Sarah, "You don't wanna see some of Chadwick Boseman's films." And there was one he did called Twenty One Bridges. I said, "Oh, great, it's on, you know, one of the streaming services." And I look and I go, "There it is." And, you know, Sarah looks and she says, "Yeah, I know who the villain is." I said, "We haven't watched the movie yet." She goes, "I know who the villain is from the casting."

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  It was Chadwick Boseman, I think his love interest was Rosaria Dawson, I think. And then the chief of police, he was a policeman, was J.K. Simmons. She says J.K. Simmons. I'm starting to watch it and there's this murder, two cops get murdered and J.K. Simmons comes in. He's the chief of police and I went, oh, yeah, the old white guy, of course. And of course, he's corrupt, it turns out. And here's the problem. In order to qualify for an Oscar now, one of the two leads has to be a minority of some kind. A person of color, gay, whatever. And, you know, and if it's not that, then at least a certain percentage, I think it's 50% of the crew,

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  has to be a minority, so on. Well, when you start doing that, no studio or other producer is ever going to make a movie. They can't qualify for an Oscar, so those are the rules now. And all of a sudden, where does the old white guy fit in? He's the head of the evil corporation, and you know, always, okay? You know, when you can predict a movie from the cast list, they've kind of shot themselves in the foot.

• 1:21:01Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  And it's the same with music. You know, one thing I love about our music, like, I'm really sorry, I said the guy said it was a masterpiece. He did say it, but, you know, it's not a matter of being a masterpiece. It's a matter of, I love this music because she would have said, look, we're not going to have a publicist. We're not going to do advertising. I'm not going to go on the road on the first album. You know, same with, he said, I said, so how are we going to promote this? And I sat down with Missy and we started working. We had service photography and we have my following on X, which I have 5 million followers, so that's nice. But I just thought, I'd like to say-

• 1:21:37Mike Rowe?

  And a finely curated page it is.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, thank you.

• 1:21:41Mike Rowe?

  You really, I mean, it's almost as though you weren't looking for redemption there for a while. Like, maybe 14 years.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  No, man, no, not at all. It's like, you know-

• 1:21:50Mike Rowe?

  You never bent the knee, man.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Never bent the knee because I have a-

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  What is that? Shit, man, my own lyrics. I write too many songs. But there's a great song about man without courage lives on his knees. You know, and I've taken the hits for speaking as I please. And that's in Tombstone Opera, and there's a song called "Time for the Gun." And, you know, if you yield, you end up in prison for 500 days because you won't use the right pronoun like this teacher Burke in London right now. He literally, because of his religion, has refused to call a boy she or they or whatever that stupid thing they want to do.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  And so the magistrate says, "You're gonna be in prison until you take, bend the knee." And he said, "I'm never gonna bend the knee." He said, "Then you're gonna be in there for life, for life, if you don't bend the knee."

• 1:22:50Mike Rowe?

  This is happening now.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  This is happening now, right now, today. Okay? And, you know, there are certain things that I, people, somebody, this guy wrote a nice review of the first album. Said he'd heard one song, and he said, "If the rest of the album is like this, it'll be the album of the year." And, you know, we're just waiting for people to get to it. This will be tremendous help being on the show with you, Mike, and I really appreciate it.

• 1:23:16Mike Rowe?

  I hope I don't make trouble over the whole.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  I hope you do. I hope you do nothing but cause trouble.

• 1:23:21Mike Rowe?

  My real worry for you, honestly, is what are you gonna do with the Grammy? Who's gonna get it? How you gonna?

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna get, we're not gonna get a Grammy.

• 1:23:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you're not gonna get an Oscar either, except, oh, yeah.

• 1:23:32Speaker 02

  I would love to have, I'm not gonna, listen, you know, everybody go, "I don't care about the Oscar." And I go, "Then why do you do your acceptance speech every day in the mirror when you're shaving?" It's like, everybody wants an Oscar, and I would love to have a Grammy. I'd love to have an Oscar. I'm not gonna get them because of politics. It's fine, I don't care. But I'll tell you.

• 1:23:50Mike Rowe?

  Jim, you might, you might, look, I'm sorry, but I don't feel like I made the point right about the masterpiece thing.

• 1:23:57Mike Rowe?

  I can't think of a single thing that's widely regarded as a masterpiece that wasn't first either dismissed, or ridiculed, or ignored. That's what I mean to say. Whether it's Bob Ross, or fill in the blank with, I mean, you can probably think of actors who weren't appreciated at their peak, but only through time, people look back and go, "Oh, oh, he was doing that."

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  John Cazale, you know. Well, I was on the-

• 1:24:25Mike Rowe?

  Great example.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  I was on the executive committee of the Actors Branch. You're not supposed to talk about this stuff, but it was years ago.

• 1:24:32Mike Rowe?

  What is it again?

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  The executive committee of the Actors Branch of the Academy.

• 1:24:36Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  I was on for nine years, you have to take a year off, and then on for three or four more years, then I moved back to New York, so I said to them, "Look, I don't want to be here because I can't make the two meetings." There are three ways to be a member of the Academy. If you're nominated for an Academy Award as an actor, it has been a tradition that they will always welcome you in. That's how I, no, I got in the third way. Another way is, if two actors come up to a member and say, "Hey, could you recommend me?" And of course you always say, "Well, of course I will," and then you have to recommend them. And everybody applies that way, and almost nobody gets in that way. The third way is the people who are on the Academy staff will point out to you certain

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  actors who are not, at the time, members of the Academy. And the year I was invited, they mentioned, "You know, James Woods isn't a member of the Academy." I said, "You should be a member of the Academy," and they invited me in, which I was incredibly grateful for. And then I got nominated for Best Actor that year anyway for Salvador, a movie called Salvador.

• 1:25:36Mike Rowe?

  It's a good one.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Oliver Stone's movie. And I thought, "I'm going to help people get in the way I did." And one of the actors that I just thought was great, was a guy I knew from New York, who was just, he gave Academy-level performances onstage and on screen. You might not even know him now. His name was Jose Perez. And back then, the academy was really... There weren't a lot of guys named Perez in the academy then. But I didn't think of... I wasn't trying to be diversity or all that. I just naturally am that way. See, that's the irony. People are like, "Oh, you're a right-wing learner." So anyway, so there's this guy, Jose Perez. And I said, "I'd like to invite Jose Perez to be a member of the academy."

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  And we did. Because I said, "Even though he's not a big star..." But then there was the Rodney Dangerfield moment. I'm just gonna tell this story now, and I don't care. So...

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• 1:27:20Speaker 05

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• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  Somebody came up with the idea of Rodney Dangerfield being a member of the academy. And at the time, Roddy McDowell was the head of the Actors Branch. And he said, "Rodney Dangerfield, Rodney Dangerfield. Rodney Dangerfield, he's like a comedian." I said, "You're aware that that's like an act, right? I mean, he's, yes, a comedian, but he had just done Natural Born Killers, and he was fantastic in it, in a dramatic role." And I said, "You know, he doesn't go around fixing his tie and talking about his wife, you know, whatever, all that stuff." I said, "That's a character, the same as..." I mean, would you invite...

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  You know, the little tramp into being a member of the Academy. Hello.

• 1:28:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:28:22Mike Rowe?

  Charlie.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Charlie Chaplin, you know, of course. Of course you would. I said, well, it's the same thing. No. And so, we vote on it, and Rodney loses by one vote.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  So it comes up that the people who ran the Academy, you know, the staff, said, you know, there was a discussion about this that you really should reconsider. And I gave a really passionate, I gave that speech about like, here's who he really is. And Roddy, to his credit, and I knew Roddy socially very well, said, you know what, you've convinced me, I was wrong and you were right. And that was very gracious of him. And we invite him to be a member of the Academy. And he said, do you remember the Academy, and in particular, Mr. McDowell? He said, I now realize that you have invited me to be a member of the Academy. And it takes a lot of courage to admit maybe that you were wrong,

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  and there's another way to look at this. And I've thought it over, and I just want to say, go fuck yourselves. I don't want to be in your Academy. And thank you very much. Yours, Rodney Dangerfield. And that's a true story. Yeah.

• 1:29:31Mike Rowe?

  So, did he say that, or write it?

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  He wrote it in a letter.

• 1:29:34Mike Rowe?

  Did somebody read the letter aloud?

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Yes, they did.

• 1:29:36Mike Rowe?

  I hope there was a gathering somewhere where this was read.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Roddy McDowell read it aloud.

• 1:29:39Mike Rowe?

  Roddy read Rodney's letter.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. To his credit, to his credit.

• 1:29:43Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  And you know, it was like, and I've always thought of that, about the difference between how people really behave, and what the real difference is between peasants and kings.

• 1:29:57Mike Rowe?

  Jim, this is...

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna do something. May I do something? I'm gonna actually...

• 1:30:01Mike Rowe?

  Have I ever said no to you?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  I'm gonna actually read you the entire lyrics of a song I'm doing, not for the next album, but for the album after that called Odd People. I'm gonna just announce everything here.

• 1:30:11Mike Rowe?

  Well, go ahead, as you search for that.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it's right here.

• 1:30:13Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 1:30:14Mike Rowe?

  You've gotta be kidding me.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  Because I remember it.

• 1:30:16Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  Because I was inspired by Rodney.

• 1:30:18Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 1:30:19Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  This song, it goes on, I always, it's a little long sometimes, and Bob or Shooter will rearrange it, all my words, but they'll arrange it. It's just a little kind of Johnny Cash, sort of like, you know, the chicken in black, just a little story. But I always love to have a little twist. May I?

• 1:30:35Mike Rowe?

  May, please.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  Rodney and Carl. When I was a kid, I had these two friends. We all had some thoughts we felt about each. And I realized then, some things you can learn, and then there are some things you just can't teach. How we joked about them, well, you'd never know we were friends. And in the words of Janice, I must make amends. Rodney was young, Carl is big brother. Daddy said one was dumb, but smarter than the other. And then Mom said she thought that was mean, so I'll just say one was a fatty and the other a string bean. Carl once shot himself in the foot, never even said ouch. Rodney got a girl pregnant on a pull-out couch. Guess old Rodney's irony wasn't his forte,

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  and Carl was a fellow with not much to say. So here's a few things about these two dingalings, and a lesson I learned about peasants and kings. Carl went to the war, fought to the death, died saving some others with his very last breath. Old Rodney stood up, did the right thing, went down to the mall, bought that sweet girl a ring. I see him sometimes, coaching down at the rink with his son, little Carl. And here's what I think. It's not about money, about being so smart. It's courage that counts. It's about a man's heart. And now with a smile, I think of these two dingalings.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  And I know you can't ever be sure what the future may bring. But the one thing they taught me, and this I know to be true, there's a difference, my friend, between a peasant and a king.

• 1:32:17Mike Rowe?

  And that album's gonna be called what?

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Odd People.

• 1:32:20Mike Rowe?

  I love it.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's kind of like, Paul McCartney once talked about how they wrote Eleanor Rigby. And he said, you know, we wrote the song, but we didn't have a name for the woman. And he said, you know, it's a sad song, but I wanted it to have, I wanted us to care about her. And he said, I took a walk, I guess through Liverpool, that night, just walked through the neighborhood, and just kind of looked for some inspiration. And I went by a place where they sell sausage meats. It was like a butcher shop, called The Rigby's, Rigby Brothers. And he said, Rigby is a perfect name. And then I turned, walked in some more, and there was a lane, it was Eleanor Lane. And he said, Eleanor Rigby. And somehow, I was just talking about Rodney,

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  and you were talking about... How I don't have a pity party for myself over the fact that I was blacklisted. Look, I would love to be acting again. I'd love to be an actor. I loved being an actor. And I loved the contribution I gave to people who love film. And I have a lot of fans who say, "Man, we would love to see you back." But that's not gonna happen. But I'm now making music, and I'm gonna keep making music. And whether it's a masterpiece or junk, whatever it is, whatever you think of it, your opinion, I'm gonna keep making it, cuz I can afford to do it. Put these musicians to work, give them opportunity. And the thing that I'm most proud of, I am building a business model. Where a guy with a guitar, a woman with a fiddle, maybe, you know, they get to know, "Oh, my buddy's got a drum."

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  They can go on, you know, Youtube, whatever. They can present what they've got. They can have their own label, sign up to BMI or ASCAP. And they can, you know, tour around, play in some bars. And they can make just enough money to make an album.

• 1:34:07Mike Rowe?

  The most extraordinary thing that's happened so far to me today is the fact that you would bring up Eleanor Rigby. I had a long conversation two days ago with a buddy of mine about the greatest Beatles song ever written. He gave me his, I gave him mine. We were really just kinda working on the Rushmore of the question. Mine's Eleanor Rigby. And I think it's because of what we were just talking about. The magic, like, the magic of that song is actually George Martin going, "What if we just use strings?" Right? Like, "What if it's a quartet?"

• 1:34:45Mike Rowe?

  The lyrics, it's among the greatest pieces of poetry that I've ever encountered.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  I can't get through it. If I had to read it, I couldn't get through it.

• 1:34:56Mike Rowe?

  I couldn't either. But I would quote it, but copyright, I hate getting sued. But the other thing is, people would kill to write a melody like that. But the song has two, two melodies, two perfect melodies, right? (singing) And then, "Look at all the lonely people." And then just for grins. Let's sing them together at the same time.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:35:27Mike Rowe?

  And they fit like magic. And then let's put in the string quartet. And then tell me about Rigby's Meats and Eleanor Lane.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:35:35Mike Rowe?

  That's impossible, except.

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  But you know what's so interesting? Good musicians are... Want some water? I know some people. I have people who... You want my water? I'm not sick.

• 1:35:47Mike Rowe?

  Neither am I.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  Well, the good news is, you know, like, Shooter Jennings is an extraordinary musician. And Bob is an extraordinary musician. Now, you notice when I say we produce together, you go, "Oh, yeah, you're producing together." Well, of course Shooter does most of the music stuff. And I do a lot of promotion, all of it, put that together. But in the studio, I'll have ideas. And I'll say to Shooter, "Do you mind if I..." He said, "You always say, 'Do I mind?'" He said, "Every single idea you've ever had, I've ended up using." I very rarely say something, but there's a moment here where, twice in two songs, I make a reference to diamonds falling from the sky.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  And I always like to have a little tribute, and of course, it's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, but it's not really that. It's that there are two moments in this opera, and this name came up. Somebody said, "What are you gonna call this album?" Out of nowhere, I said, "Tombstone Opera." Not about Tombstone, Arizona, and it's not an opera. But it's an opera in the sense that it has a big, large reach, a true three-act structure. And yet, while there is a small and simple story, there is an overlay, an ethereal overlay. Is our lead character alive or dead? Does she die in the fire or not? And there was a song I wrote beyond the door, which was, again, like The Road Back, where, you know, I said to Bob and Shooter, "We need a big song.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  We need a big crescendo where they're burning the place to the ground and so on." Now, of course, there's fire imagery all through this. And I realized, "Oh, my God. Yeah, they burned our neighborhood down. And I wonder why I'm writing an opera about a guy who finds a good woman." And I started to write a whole backstory. I mean, honestly, this thing could be a Broadway musical. I mean, in a sense. But you have these...

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  When you talk about Eleanor Rigby, I said to Shooter, "I want to peg the diamonds in two songs. It's in Time for the Gun and it's in Beyond the Door."

• 1:37:53Mike Rowe?

  Time for the Gun is the one where it hits your brain like a diamond bullet?

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  No, no, that's in Rodback.

• 1:37:57Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Okay. But both times I mentioned Diamonds Falling from the Sky. And I said to Shooter, I said, "Could you get on the piano?" And I mean, here I am telling Shooter, and I'm at the board. He said, "Yeah, yeah, go ahead." And I said, "I want to hear..."

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  "I want to hear the tingling of the diamonds falling from the sky." And he gets on the piano, which is the piano that Prince wrote and performed and recorded Purple Rain on.

• 1:38:21Mike Rowe?

  Good grief.

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  Okay, in Studio 3 at Sunset Sound. And he did it all. And what it really is, of course, and I never mentioned in the song, but I'm now telling you, it's the Pleiades meteor shower. Because that pegs a moment when they see this, you know, there's one line where, you know, music changes into this big, powerful orchestral moment, you know? "In the distance a vision," you know? "The sky's on fire, diamonds are falling from the sky, hoofbeats, thunder across the plain, all this stuff." And then he reaches for her beyond the door, beyond the veil. "So is she alive or dead?" And then there's a song after called Nowhere Hill, where he's literally in Nowhere Town,

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  Nowhere Hill, standing in her grave and sings a song to her, to her memory. And feels a breeze, and is it her breath on his, or is it a breeze from the sea? It's just, I mean, I love this album. I just love it. It's the proudest thing I've ever done artistically in my life.

• 1:39:23Mike Rowe?

  How important is it to have pain, I suppose? I mean, you told the story of Hello Friend, and I am going to play that from start to finish.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:39:35Mike Rowe?

  When we're done. What happened to your brother?

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  So, my brother went to a hospital. And I have to be careful because there was a huge lawsuit that, of course, we won. And I'm proud to say that part of the settlement from the hospital and from Care New England was to rebuild the emergency room at this hospital. So it was, things were done right. And the new president of the hospital continued it beyond what we asked for at the hospital. At any rate, he went in with symptoms of a heart attack that are not familiar to people. He had, he felt like he had a pain in his jaw.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  But at one point, there was an electrocardiogram that was not read because the person was texting with her boyfriend. And it ended up costing him his life.

• 1:40:36Mike Rowe?

  Wouldn't you lose him?

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  July 26, 7:41 PM Eastern Time, 2006.

• 1:40:48Mike Rowe?

  And to this day, Jim?

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 1:40:51Mike Rowe?

  I mean, to this day, that obviously...

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Let me tell you something. When somebody dies, I remember when my brother died and someone said, "Oh, I lost my brother a few years ago." I said, "Well, you know, it's like, oh, it must be easier for you now." And they said, "I have bad news for you. And here's the bad news: You'd never get over it." It's the same. Today is the second I heard it.

• 1:41:16Mike Rowe?

  Is he in here?

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  I have a song of his that I haven't... Shooter loves it. It's not perfect yet for me, so I'm waiting. There's, in this album, there's... He's not in this album. He's gonna be in an album, for sure. My father's in an album, and a song called "Wallam Lake."

• 1:41:39Mike Rowe?

  That's a beautiful song.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  And my mother's, my mother, oh, isn't "Wallam Lake"?

• 1:41:42Mike Rowe?

  I've listened to "Wallam Lake." I don't mean literally. I know "Wallam Lake" is about your dad.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:50Mike Rowe?

  Maybe the question is, is he in all your albums? Is he in all your songs?

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  He's sitting, he's with me every moment of my day. Every moment of my day. I loved him so much, you have to understand. My brother was born nine and a half years after I was. My mom lost a child in a free birth and a miscarriage when we were on Guam. And our dad died when I was 12 from a transfusion reaction. Went through two wars, had two purple hearts, and they gave him the wrong blood. Anyway, my brother, you know, was two and a half years old and just didn't understand where his father went.

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  And there's actually the song. I wrote a song called Widow's Wrath for the next album. And one of the lines is, "Where has daddy gone?" The children say, "Where has daddy gone?" The widow looks at the ceiling as she faces, stares at the ceiling. She faces the dawn. Anyway, I used to carry him. I used to deliver newspapers. And I would carry him in my back with the newspaper, little face looking out. So he was, you know, of course, my brother. But he was almost like a, I was like a surrogate dad because his dad was gone and I was older.

• 1:43:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  And so on. And he loved music. What, you know, there's gifts you like to give to someone. My brother loved the Rolling Stones. There's an inscription on his gravestone. I thought I heard an angel cry. I thought I saw a teardrop falling from his eye, which is from a Rolling Stones song. He loved the Rolling Stones. And when I was a, you know, movie star, yeah. One of the great perks is you get tickets to the concerts. So we get a ticket, you know, to one of the concerts in New York. And I happen to know.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  That the Stones were staying at, I think it was the Ritz Carlton, whichever that was on Central Park South. And so, there's a mob of people there because word had gotten out afterwards. But, you know, the guys let us in because I'm me, and you know, I'm fabulous. He used to call me, "You know my brother, the fabulous Mr. Showbiz?" He would make fun of me. He was so great. So funny. And so, we get in, and everybody's there, and it's all jammed. And this blonde woman goes by, she goes, "Oh, my God, James Woods, you're my husband's favorite actor. You gotta come say hello." I said, "I'd like to," but my brother goes, "Jimmy!" And I, of course, it was Patty Hansen, Keith's wife, Keith Richards' wife. And I said, "I'm just kidding," I said, "I'd love to."

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  So, we go back, and Keith is there with Ronnie Wood, Keith's dad, Patty, and my brother. You know, my brother has a video store, you know, it's like so sweet. You know, and he had a music store that he did, mom and dad's, mom and pop stuff. But he loved, loved music. He always had just great taste. And so, so, we sit with them all night long. And Mike and Keith just hit it off. So Keith invites Mike to come to their place in Connecticut at the time and have dinner. You know, barbecue, and they become friends.

• 1:45:08Mike Rowe?

  Your brother and Keith Richards are having barbecues in Connecticut.

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  And Carrie, his wife, you know, and when Keith, and Keith is drawing a thing on the tablecloth, Ronnie Wood by Keith Richards, and he decides, "They need to screw it around." We pick up the tablecloth, stuff it, and Carrie's purse still have it framed in the house. And they put it in there, you know, they had a weekly newsletter, Beggar's Banquet. It was on the cover of, you know, Jimmy Woods and Mike Woods, the coolest guy. So now, a couple, couple of years later, the Stones are playing Atlantic City. So, you go there, and it's a smaller venue, it's like 10,000 people, not a big stadium, it's indoors. And they're doing, you know, Honky Tonk Woman, all this stuff, it's fantastic.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  They don't allow anybody backstage, like, before a show. They prepare, they're really focused musicians, I mean, they're incredible. We're sitting, you know, waiting. This big security comes up, he goes, "Mr. Woods?" I go, "Yes." He says, "Michael Woods?"

• 1:46:09Speaker 02

  I said, "My brother." He said, "Mr. Richards would like to invite you backstage."

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  And he said...

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Fabulous Mr. Shovet.

• 1:46:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, wait for me.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Fabulous Mr. Musicbit. He goes, yeah. He said, yes, he said, could you ask Mr. Richards if I could bring my brother?

• 1:46:32Mike Rowe?

  My kid brother.

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  My kid brother. They bring us backstage, I'm not making this up. We get in this trailer, Ronnie's there, Keith, Mick is, I can't remember if Mick, it was Mick, yeah Mick was there. But, but he was kind of just, he gets ready, he's just kind of sitting there. And they said, we're warming up, you know, and they got, they're both sitting there with acoustic guitars, because guitars have to really warm up, you know. Charlie doesn't have to warm up, you know, Bill Wyman's, you know, he's very, so it's just the guys. Said, what would you like to, I'm like, what would you like to hear? And now we like are giving like, it's like karaoke night, where how about Wild Horse?

• 1:47:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, Wild Horse is good.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  And, and they just, and they did like a little five-song concert for us acoustic in that trailer. And so when I think of my brother, as much as my heart is broken, I think of those moments. I looked at some pictures of him, you know, thing that his children have that I kind of now I'm very close to them, of course. And, you know, there's all the grandchildren that he never got to meet. And I think of all the happy times, and that night, you know.

• 1:47:48Mike Rowe?

  What a night.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Keith was so great, and Ron, Ronnie, they were just so great. They're just such great people, and I've always just loved them, man, because they gave that little gift. And I myself have never refused an autograph, I'm very proud to say. I try to, you know, I try to be as nice as I can to every fan I meet, because I know for that person, it's a very important moment in his or her life.

• 1:48:13Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:48:14Mike Rowe?

  With that in mind, if it's not too much of a bother, could you just give me, just write me a quick song? We got to start to land the plane, but I got to tell you, man, that's like. There's a very weird synchronicity. I'm not one to look to the universe for, you know.

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  Start looking, buddy.

• 1:48:31Mike Rowe?

  Maybe I will, because last night, over at the Huntley, I'm falling asleep, it's about midnight, and I'm flicking around, and Spin magazine is counting down the 100 greatest rock stars. Okay, now, I can't turn it off, because I come in around number eight, and I'm like, all right, who's number one? I'm watching, it's going through. So, number two, you mentioned 20 minutes ago, is Prince. And they do a deep dive on Prince, and why?

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  Genius.

• 1:48:56Mike Rowe?

  An absolute genius. And they show him at the piano, and they show that incredible concert, where he just plays.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  That was, it was Super Bowl, in the rain.

• 1:49:06Mike Rowe?

  No, guitar gently weeps.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  Oh, that was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

• 1:49:12Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  And you know why? Do you know the story behind that?

• 1:49:15Mike Rowe?

  I do.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, because Rolling Stone didn't have him in the top 100 guitarists.

• 1:49:19Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  So he does the single greatest riff, I mean, there's Jimmy Page, and of course, you know, I mean, there are the great ones, but that, that five minutes of music is some of, I've, I've watched it a thousand times.

• 1:49:35Mike Rowe?

  Me too. By the way, number three.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  And he throws the guitar into the audience.

• 1:49:39Mike Rowe?

  And he throws, and he walks off. Didn't even rehearse with him.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  No!

• 1:49:42Mike Rowe?

  Didn't even rehearse. Just goes up, and just hijacks the whole thing, and puts on a clinic at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  One of the great losses.

• 1:49:50Mike Rowe?

  So number three was Jimmy Page. Number one, Keith Richards.

• 1:49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, people don't realize.

• 1:49:57Mike Rowe?

  The greatest rock star of all time, and.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

  Without a doubt.

• 1:50:02Mike Rowe?

  And I, I mean, it seems so obvious, but it's like, all of a su, it's like, it's not Mick, it's Keith.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, again.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  Well, Ronnie said something interesting to me. He said, "You notice tonight that I missed a note at that, I said, this is another time, I said, "At that concert?" And I said, "What?" He goes, "I missed a note," and Keith looks over at me, you know, everybody thinks Keith, "Ah, Keith," he's this.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  Perfectionist. Professional. And he said, he went, like this? Uh huh. I said, what did that mean? He said, he fined me $10,000 for missing the note.

• 1:50:41Mike Rowe?

  I love that.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  It was like, wow, okay, that, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:47Mike Rowe?

  Okay, I gotta land the plane. So here's what's gonna happen. We're gonna play this song. Um, I'm gonna say goodbye to you now and the song is just gonna play.

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:50:55Mike Rowe?

  But I gotta tell you one other thing. And I don't think you're gonna believe this. Chuck, I haven't told you this. I don't know if you're gonna believe it either.

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  Try me?

• 1:51:04Mike Rowe?

  But I swear to God, this is true. In a weird day of synchronicity. Taylor, do you remember the hotel in North Carolina?

• 1:51:13Speaker 06

  The New Ray.

• 1:51:14Mike Rowe?

  The New Ray. That's it. I'm in the New Ray Hotel. Not three months ago. And Chuck calls me to say, hey, I think James Woods would be great on the podcast. I'm like, of course he would be great.

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Well, thank you.

• 1:51:26Mike Rowe?

  He doesn't do a lot of press. But, you know, he's got this album. He's done this thing with Shooter. So I'm sitting there with Mary in the New Ray having dinner. And I Google or search, get to Spotify, and I get to the first song on the list. Now, as you know, it's Hello Friend.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Mike Rowe?

  The song we're about to play.

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:51:47Mike Rowe?

  Here's what you don't know. And here's, I swear to God, I'm not making this up. I get up to go to the can, right? And I got the phone with me and I'm listening to Hello Friend. And I stop by an old telephone booth. This is a very old hotel.

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  Hotel.

• 1:52:02Mike Rowe?

  And there are very old photos all around. And on the phone booth is a photo of Thomas Wolfe.

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. You can't go home again. Oh, my God.

• 1:52:14Mike Rowe?

  It's the whole story of how You Can Never Go Home Again happened. And that's the phone that he set it on.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:52:24Mike Rowe?

  I'm in the New Ray Hotel three months ago, listening to the song we're about to play. As I'm contemplating what kind of fallout is gonna happen if I get Jim Woods on this podcast, he's a lunatic, right? What's gonna happen?

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  That's me.

• 1:52:39Mike Rowe?

  And that's the song I'm... So now, I'm peeing, listening to this song.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  And my music does that to people, they have to go, you know.

• 1:52:46Mike Rowe?

  And it just kept going and going and going. Not five feet from where James Wolfe said the very thing that inspired the second act. Don't ever correct me on my own show. But you get the idea.

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  Thomas Wolfe, douchebag?

• 1:52:59Mike Rowe?

  Thomas Wolfe. And the fact that your brother, God rest his soul, is named Mike.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:04Mike Rowe?

  I don't know how much weirder it gets, but I'll just leave people with this. The most recent album is called Tombstone Opera. The first one is called Crack of Thunder.

• 1:53:14Speaker 02

  Hear the thunder crack.

• 1:53:15Mike Rowe?

  Didn't we discuss not correcting me on my own show?

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  Well, you were asking for correction, so I'm helping you out. Thank you for this, it's me helping you out. I'm not gonna follow you to the men's room and hold anything.

• 1:53:25Mike Rowe?

  We'll see.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  I'm not going that far.

• 1:53:27Mike Rowe?

  You've been fascinating. Your music is terrific.

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:53:31Mike Rowe?

  Your resume speaks for itself.

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:53:33Mike Rowe?

  What should people do to get their hands on these things?

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Oh, good news. If you want vinyl, which I really recommend, it's so much fun. You go to a website called, it's really easy, jameswoods.com.

• 1:53:46Mike Rowe?

  Clever, clever.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  No spaces, because there's a guy, poor fellow, who has the same name with a space in between and one of the southern states sells cars. But if it's just jameswoods.com, you go there and you can just order it, we ship it right out, and there it is. Or you go on your favorite streaming service and buy it. And if you do, that puts us up on the charts and I can afford, aside from my little day job that I used to have, and the Apple thing that I have, of course, I can afford to do another album.

• 1:54:17Mike Rowe?

  James Woods is gonna be okay. It's true. He took it in the neck for speaking his mind 13, 14 years ago. But in the end, I certainly wouldn't bet against the idea that a lot of what you've done is gonna be looked back at as a masterpiece.

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:54:34Mike Rowe?

  I mean it.

• 1:54:34Speaker 02

  I really...

• 1:54:35Mike Rowe?

  I mean it. You're an American original, you're a jagged little pill, you broke a few eggs, but hey, who doesn't love an album?

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  Thank you, Mike, that really means a lot, a lot.

• 1:54:42Mike Rowe?

  Please come back sometime.

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  And I want to say one thing that's really important. I know you gotta go. This thing that you do about making sure that those people, you know, when I was in school, we used to have, you know, there were the collegias who were gonna go on and study, you know, lesbian interpretive dance in some liberal arts college. And then there were the guys in shop who are actually gonna make a living and be able to put food on the table for their wife and their kids, fixing cars and building buildings and doing all that stuff. And I'm telling you, in the long run, they're gonna be the ones who win. Because we're seeing it now, it's all crumbling forever. It's like, hey, yeah, I can, you know, I'm a basket weaving genius and, you know, I've got $400,000 in debt. No, thanks.

• 1:55:22Mike Rowe?

  It's a hell of a thing when the headlines catch up to your own smack. So, thank you very much. And you're welcome back here truly anytime.

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  I'll see you next Tuesday. We'll be back Tuesday, Chuck.

• 1:55:31Mike Rowe?

  Perfect. Got it. Sarah, uh...

• 1:55:34Speaker 02

  You should have her on.

• 1:55:35Mike Rowe?

  You know, maybe I will.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Mike Rowe?

  All right. Well, there's no age in Sarah, Chuck. Make a note.

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  Mike, I can't thank you enough.

• 1:55:41Mike Rowe?

  Sure you can. You already have.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  Really, thank you so much.

• 1:55:43Mike Rowe?

  James Woods, everybody.

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

• 1:56:02Speaker 04

  Hello friend, I forgot to say goodbye.

• 1:56:10Speaker 04

  Slipped my mind and I don't know why.

• 1:56:18Speaker 04

  I thought you'd always be there.

• 1:56:22Speaker 04

  And I never feared death.

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  And one day I called, you were gone in a breath.

• 1:56:34Speaker 04

  There's never a fanfare.

• 1:56:38Speaker 04

  Violins or bright lights.

• 1:56:42Speaker 04

  No trips with the mentor, no angels of lights.

• 1:56:49Speaker 04

  Hello friend, I forgot to say goodbye.

• 1:56:57Speaker 04

  Slipped my mind and I don't know why.

• 1:57:06Speaker 04

  Poet asked,

• 1:57:10Speaker 04

  "Does it end with a bang?"

• 1:57:14Speaker 04

  With a whisper is the answer, with the sting of a fang.

• 1:57:22Speaker 04

  The serpent's kiss,

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  so quiet and shrewd,

• 1:57:30Speaker 04

  with a hiss and a faint that you just can't elude.

• 1:57:37Speaker 04

  Hello, friend, I forgot to say goodbye.

• 1:57:45Speaker 04

  Slipped my mind and I don't know why.

• 1:57:53Speaker 04

  It isn't ordained,

• 1:57:57Speaker 04

  it ain't no twist or fate.

• 1:58:01Speaker 04

  You can run, you can dodge, but you'll never escape.

• 1:58:09Speaker 04

  Dart to the left,

• 1:58:13Speaker 04

  swain to the right,

• 1:58:17Speaker 04

  hide in the shadows of evening's twilight.

• 1:58:25Speaker 04

  The page is now turning, the ink is now burning.

• 1:58:33Speaker 04

  Your name's in the ledger, we all know so well.

• 1:58:41Speaker 04

  The choices are many,

• 1:58:45Speaker 04

  they were all that we do.

• 1:58:49Speaker 04

  Only two now are left, it's heaven or hell, and then you.

• 1:58:57Speaker 04

  For as much as we danced on this big ball of dust,

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  we play and we fight, the exit we must.

• 1:59:12Speaker 04

  The red glow of sunset Fill the child with light But for you, my friend For you it's good night

• 1:59:27Speaker 04

  For you, oh buddy

• 1:59:30Speaker 04

  For you, oh buddy

• 1:59:35Speaker 04

  For you, my friend For you, oh buddy For you it's good night