243: Finding a Way Back Home. Life, Death, Murder, and Music with The White Buffalo

0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:07 - "Wish It Was True", by The White Buffalo. 0:16:23 - Jake Smith, The White Buffalo. 1:41:26 - "No History", by The White Buffalo 1:44:50 - How to stay on THE PATH 2:05:35 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 243 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  It's a different world when you get home.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  I mean, at some point while you're over there,

• 0:27Jocko Willink?

  you accept death.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  You, you give away normal life. You give away the normal world.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  It's probably just a coping mechanism of some kind.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  To just accept your fate.

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  To accept your fate.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  That the world is war.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  That the world is dirt and blood and pain and death and you have to accept that.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  At least I did.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  And I'd be lying to you.

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  If I said that I didn't want that acceptance, that I didn't want that attitude.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  Because

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  the world,

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  the normal world, the everyday world is a complicated place. There's all kinds of things going on.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  Family and friends and mortgage payments and bills to pay and a future to worry about and retirement and savings and the kids.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  And the list goes on.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  But in war, that's all gone.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  There really isn't even a future. Nothing else matters.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  Nothing but the mission and the men.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  That was my concern.

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  Did I think about my family?

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  I had other things to think about.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  I had other things to worry about. Bullets and bombs and blood and shit and life and death.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  And you go through it.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  You get through it.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  Some of you do.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Some of you don't.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  And for those that do make it through,

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  one day, just as quickly as it started, it's over.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  Get on a plane.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  And you fly home.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  Back to the world.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  And on that flight home,

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  I only think about one thing.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  That I didn't bring home all my men.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  And then the door of the plane opens.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  And we're home.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  And in 24 hours of flight time, you go from Ramadi, Iraq to San Diego, California.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  At least physically you do.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  Mentally, it's gonna take a little bit more time to come around.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  But you soon realize that you are alive.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  And you have a house and a wife and kids and mortgage and a future.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  You are alive and you are thankful.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  And you want to live a life that honors your friends that didn't come home. And then it's, let's go, let's get it on.

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  Let's surf and fight and drink and eat and play guitar and run and roll and surf some more. Let's go.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  Let's do this. We're lucky to even be here.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Full on.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  For me, much of that time,

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  the surfing and the rolling and the eating and the drinking and the jamming on the Git box, was spent with Seth Stone.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  The Delta Platoon Commander.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  He bought a house a mile away from mine.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  He was like an uncle to my kids, part of the family.

• 7:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's a much nicer guy than me, much friendlier than me, always made friends.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  And before we left on deployment, he had somehow linked up with a guy by the name of Gene Cooper, legendary surfboard shaper.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  And Seth got Gene to make us some boards. Some epic boards.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  And when we got home, we got those boards.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  And we rode them.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  And through Gene, Seth also linked up with a guy named Mike Black that made a surf movie.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  If it can even be called that, it's kind of a crazy surf movie. Called Invasion from Planet C, the sci-fi surf movie.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  It was...

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  It was unique. It was kind of wild and funny and insane and just kind of completely crazy and maybe that's why we liked it. Cause it had some good surfing in it, made us laugh.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  It also had some good music in it.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  Some real good music. One song in that movie was called "Mad Man".

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  It was by a band called The White Buffalo.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  And we heard the lyrics to the song.

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  And they made...

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  They made sense to us.

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  There's one section of lyrics that says, "Like an animal out of his den. You better hide your money, you better hide your children. You can't keep your fear at bay, cause the madman's roaming these streets today. The madman's coming."

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  We got that.

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  We understood what that was all about.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  And the White Buffalo songs, or in some other surf movies along the way, one called Shelter.

• 9:34Jocko Willink?

  A song called Wrong.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  Knew some other guys in there. Joel Tudor was in that movie.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  So Seth figured out where the rest of this music came from and we started listening to this White Buffalo. Came like a little soundtrack.

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  Cause the music and the lyrics and the sound and the attitude was somehow...

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Somehow was about us.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  About what we had seen, about what we had been through.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  About what we were going through.

• 10:22Jocko Willink?

  And I don't really, I don't really remember exactly when we went and saw the White Buffalo for the first time.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  I know that...

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  We saw him one time at UCSD in some kind of cafe and there was probably about 12 people there.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  Saw him at the Casbah in San Diego, the Belly Up a few times. Eventually we saw him at bigger places. Like the House of Blues and the Observatory.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  And when you had somehow this guy.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  He got us.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  And I remember the first time we saw him at the Casbah.

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  It's the last time we saw him when there was a pretty small crowd.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  But it was a small enough crowd that everyone that was there knew who he was. There was no people wandering in. They knew, they knew who the White Buffalo was and they were there to see him.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  And people were drinking and people were carrying on.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  And they were talking and laughing.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  And then the PA music faded.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  Then the lights went dark.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  And then he walked out on stage.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  Alone.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  And he played.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  He started strumming that guitar.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Mother.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  I tried to do right by you.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  To do what you asked me to. I did wrong and I knew.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Mother.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  I tried to behave for you.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Now I'm digging a grave for you. It was all I could do.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Find a way back home. Make everything new.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I wish it was true.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Father,

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I gave my soul to you.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I came in blindfolded for you, it was all that I knew.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Well, open your arms and I'll fly out a hell of a deal.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Well, I wish it was true.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Boy, come on out from the cold. You're lost outside there, don't you know? It's not what you say, it's what you do. Just keep wishing your wishes are true.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Your dreams are reality. There's no pain, there's no misery. You just polish the blood and the bruise. 'Cause there's just no way you can love. Well, I wish it was true.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Country,

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I was a soldier for you.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I did what you asked me to, it was strong and you knew.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Country.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Now I'm just a stranger to you.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  A number name, it's true, throw me away when you're through.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Home of the brave and the free, the red, white and blue. Well, I wish it was true.

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  And when he got done playing, the place was silent for a second. Seth and I were standing there like everybody else.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Then we looked at each other, we smiled, the place went crazy.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  We did too.

• 16:47Jocko Willink?

  It was a good night.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  It's a good memory.

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  And memories are all I have left of Seth now.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  And those songs.

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  And those are some powerful songs.

• 17:22Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor today to have the man behind those memories and behind those songs.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  The man himself, a man named Jake Smith. Otherwise known as The White Buffalo.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  Jake?

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming down, man.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  No pressure on that set right there?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  That was intense.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man. Tell me about it. Yeah, it's lots of stuff wrapped up in the songs that you write. It's kind of crazy when I think about all the time that I spent sitting there, listening, playing them, listening to them, going to your shows, you know, just being some random dude. We almost got into a fight at the Belly Up one time. Some guy was talking, like, just mad dogging Seth. And Seth was like 6'2", you know, and, you know, I mean, I know I look like a serial killer for sure. Seth, not quite as much because he's too nice, but still, he's a strapping dude with a shaved head and cauliflower ears, right? That's generally

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  not a go situation for scraps.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No, that's a sign.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So at Belly Up, we're standing there and this dude's kind of nudging into Seth and Seth's kind of looking at him and I'm standing behind the guy, which in the jujitsu world means I can kill you. You have no, you have zero chance. But it didn't happen. But lots of memories, man. It's awesome to, it's awesome to have you come down here.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's talk a little bit about you, man. Enough about me. I've been talking about myself here for a long time. Let's hear about you.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  All right.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  So you were born where? Up in Oregon?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  I was born in Eugene, Oregon.

• 19:12Jocko Willink?

  And what was that all about? Were your parents working up there?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Uh, my dad was still going to school. He's a college professor and he was, um, I think he was still working on his masters at that point. And we moved down to, uh, he might have been working on his PhD and then we moved down to Southern California, Huntington Beach, uh, when I was maybe one. And he continued that, uh, at Pepperdine and did some student teaching. And then we were there for maybe since I was one until 20.

• 19:42Jocko Willink?

  Dang. Malibu.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, we didn't live there though.

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  But he, uh, we lived in Huntington Beach, which is all has its.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, Huntington Beach is cool too, but I mean, let's face it, if you lived in Malibu and you surfed Malibu all the time,

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did not.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  You probably wouldn't be here right now.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  I probably wouldn't.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  You'd be a whole different world.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  So, so you, you, you grew up in Huntington Beach then?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  And what was, what was the situation? Your, your dad's a college professor at Pepperdine?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Uh, no, my dad was a college professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see. So.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  He did his student teaching or finished his, his, uh, PhD there and then moved on to Cal State Dominguez Hills.

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  What was he? Carson. What does he teach?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  He taught, uh, public administration. His, uh.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  What even is that?

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Right? Now, it's tough to explain, right? Uh, I think it's like the study of city budgets. I think a lot of policemen take it, uh, city planners. It's like, uh, in the political science world.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  Now, what do you think makes a man say to themselves, they're looking at the courses and they're like, there you go. Public administration, that's calling my name.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. And it, it, you know, I mean, he's interested by some odd things like that, but I, I, it's, it was surprising, uh, not surprising, but yeah, it is. It's a, one of the lesser known, um, you know, uh, pedagogies or, you know, it's not, it's not a normal. When you say what that is, most people say.

• 21:05Jocko Willink?

  What I said?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  What I said.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  You know?

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  What about your mom? What was she up to?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  She was a nurse. She was a labor and delivery nurse.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  Uh, brother and a sister.

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  You have a brother and a sister?

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  Older, younger?

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I'm the youngest.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  You're the baby.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  I'm the baby.

• 21:19Jocko Willink?

  What does that whole thing work out? You know, that whole, that whole thing? You know what I'm talking about?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  Where you're the, so now you get coddled and everything and you're the spoiled kid?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  It's part, it's, it was, it was part of it.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  And how far from the beach did you live in Huntington Beach?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Um, I live, we used to take the bus to go surf when I was young. Um, two miles.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's not, that's not bad. You could beach cruise at that all day long.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  We could, but we bust it or got dropped off for the most part.

• 21:48Jocko Willink?

  The bus was easier than a beach cruiser?

• 21:49Speaker 02

  I don't know why we bust it, you know? It's a weird, uh, yeah. Uh, I think it was all BMX. So it just wasn't an option to have the rack and whatnot, you know?

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  Did they have, did they have them? You had to carry it under your arm back then?

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't even know if they had the racks back then.

• 22:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, now you get all kinds of racks. You're good to go BMX or not.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  That's true. I think they they can uh.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  How much were you surfing on?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Um, I surf quite a bit, but I just, it wasn't something that um. I picked up super easily. It was the age of the small thin board where I'm and I've always been a big dude and and to ride. You know.

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  Kelly Slater's board.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Right, I'm on a six, three and I'm six, two, you know, and it's like some wafer thin thing that I can't. You know, I'm sitting out in the lineup and I'm up to my tits in the water. And uh, it's not gonna float me. It took me a while to just go like, I mean, I should probably get a bigger board. Something that actually can, I can paddle in the waves.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a big mental transition to make, man. My buddy Josh Hall just made me a board that's eleven, six. And it is. The, it's I, it's the thickest board I think a human could make. Cause my son was telling him what I wanted. And and they were doing this like as a secret surprise for me, right?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Was that cool? Like a secret surprise behind my back. So my son was telling him, hey. You know, and Josh had some ideas and my son's like, no, the biggest, thickest board you could possibly make and Josh Hall delivered. Big time. You, you gotta try that board.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  I got some thick boards too. I got a couple. One was, one of mine looks like a paddleboard, but it's not a paddleboard.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  It's a, it's a, it's a surfboard for a big, for a large man.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 23:27Jocko Willink?

  We'll say. So you uh. And I know you play, you were freaking hardcore baseball player, right?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I was. That was kind of my dream as a child. Ended up playing college. Baseball, division one baseball, had a scholarship to play baseball.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  What position did you play?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Uh, until I was a senior in high school, I played shortstop. Um, so I was on the more athletic side of, especially for a big man. They thought I was gonna be like a. And the next like Cal Ripken, like, you know, and he, he was, you know, big.

• 23:58Jocko Willink?

  That's a big statement you just made. They thought I was gonna be the next Cal Ripken.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know. How many people they were. No, but that was they were grooming me for that idea. But then we actually had this young kid who came in as a shortstop. Uh, who was a sophomore or something. It was this little phenom. And then I moved over to third base.

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh. Well, I didn't, I didn't play. Well, I played baseball. My dad wanted, my dad liked, really liked sports a lot. That's why my name is Jaco, by the way.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't like sports as much as him at all. I like machine guns, right?

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  So, but my, you know, I would get put into sports randomly. Oh, you know, go play little league and I was on the Braves. Echo gets into this kind of thing. But I just wasn't, you know, wasn't really, wasn't really my thing. So years later, I went and talked to a professional baseball team. And when I was growing up, I remembered the baseball players, it seemed like most of the baseball players that were pros. They were like these little guys, right? Like little Dominican guys, little Puerto Rican guys that were fast and everything. And when I went and met with this team, which was a few years ago, they were freaking monsters. They were all huge. Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Oh, they're massive now. I mean, it's a whole different.

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  Is that a new thing?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, if you look, even if you look at, you know, footage from, you know, the eighties, even early nineties, they were way smaller.

• 25:19Jocko Willink?

  How much practice did you play? I mean, are, are you one of the, cause sports was different. Like nowadays, you, if you're a kid and you're gonna play sports, your parents are like, cool, you're gonna do that sport. You're gonna play it 365 days a year. You're gonna, you're gonna get coaching. You're gonna get some private whatever.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Hitting batting coach that's coming work with you when you're, the kid's like, oh, we need a batting coach. You're like, yeah, sure. No problem. Okay. Here's my son. He's four.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  Was it like that for you?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Uh, not so much. I mean, I did do extra stuff and I did, uh, you know, did extra work with hitting coaches and fielding coaches and, uh, it was definitely a big part. I mean, it was a, I wanted to be a major league baseball player when I was a kid. And my dad, I come from kind of a wrestling family. My dad was a wrestler. My brother was a wrestler, right? And, uh, but there, he's not a ball sport guy at all. And so he was kind of always blown away by the idea like, how did this? Where did this child come from? You know, that, you know, he used to say that he could, he'd throw a ball at me. Like when we were young, my brother's like a year and a half older than me, he could just throw a ball at me when I was like two. And I would just like, reach up and snatch it.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  Conor McGregor reflexes.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Probably hit off my, you know, hit off my brother's chest and land on the floor, but, uh, but they had, you know, they were, they were hard-nosed. Guys, you know, my dad was a badass, you know?

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  What, what, how old were you started playing baseball?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Actually, my dad wouldn't let us play. He thought it was too political when I was, uh, young, just with all the bullshit.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second, I have no idea what you're talking about. How is baseball political in nineteen, what is this nineteen eighty-five or something?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably. I mean, I was born in seventy-four, so, uh, you know, um, it was just a lot of, uh, tension, kids.

• 27:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you mean political like the, the, the dad with the kid?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  The dad and the kid and the emotions of that. He thought, uh, like soccer was a better game, a better family sport, that kind of thing. So we played soccer and then he finally. He budged earlier because my brother was older and we always wanted to play baseball. And then he, I mean, I was like minor B's. I was like, I was still quite young when I started playing.

• 27:28Jocko Willink?

  How good was your brother?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  At baseball?

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  He was fast.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  Damn, bro. Talk about the freaking hammer of destruction. Ouch. I guess the ball was hitting him in the face when the old man threw it to him.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  No, he was a wrestler. I mean, it was a different.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your brother wrestled?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  My brother wrestled too, yeah. Yeah, he did. He wrestled, uh, my dad wrestled in college. He wrestled at Oregon State under Dale Thomas.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And then coached some at Oregon as well as Oregon State. And my brother, uh, he, he just wrestled in high school, but he was good in high school.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, wrestling in California high school is no joke.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was good.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  It's the largest wrestling tournament in the, in the world.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  I think he was C I F A champ. I didn't want to say my brother, so he was, he was good.

• 28:12Jocko Willink?

  Props to your brother. So, at what point, what was your, what was, you know, you're dealing with music?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  It was late. I mean, it hit me super late. I was probably, I say, I tell the story and I don't even know the actual how.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  What were you listening to when you were a little kid?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Uh, we were country music fans. My parents were crazy about country and it was all country all the time in the, in the. Station wagon and we would go see country music concerts. Um, it was kind of the transition time of country when it was getting. Not over the top cheesy, but you know, it was like

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  Moving in that direction.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Alan Jackson was coming in and it was getting a little more sticky than it was kind of these heartfelt songs of my youth. But um, yeah, it was all, it was all country music. It was odd for, you know, a kid to be um, until I really got to high school, was uh, exclusively country music listener and kind of proud of that fact. Um, but then I got really into punk when I was in high school.

• 29:12Jocko Willink?

  And where'd that come from?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  I'm not entirely sure.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  There wasn't some kid name.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  There was a

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  No, there was my

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  You gotta check this out.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  One of my buddies who used to take me to school in the morning, he was more of a metalhead. And uh, I don't know exactly how I got. And so he would listen to, you know, listen to Metallica and Danzig and Anthrax and uh, and then I started listening to punk, but I was, it was more the Southern Californian stuff. You know, I started kind of getting into hardcore stuff and then that's when I got like a guitar kind of, uh, but I was more like Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, Descendants, stuff that was a little more melodic maybe, you know, um. And then uh, I got a guitar. We'd go drink beers at my buddy's house. Um, and his dad would play John Prine songs and some of the quirkier kind of Dylan songs.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  And I was eighteen, nineteen, maybe, and uh, I was like, ah, let's go get a guitar.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  When you talk about music, I don't know if you think this, I think this. When I was younger, like within, when I met someone, shook their hands, hey, nice to meet you, within the first, let's say, seven to nine minutes of talking to someone, I would say, what kind of music do you like? Because it would be like a straight up indicator. It would tell you a lot about them. And nowadays, like sometimes I meet, you know, I got, I got four kids and they're all whatever, twenty, nineteen, seventeen and ten.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  And for a while, I would say, you know, well, what kind of music do you like to these kids? And they're just, it's so, there's so much music.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:52Jocko Willink?

  There's so much music out there that it's, you know, you know, you used to get the weird avoidance answer to that question. It's like, oh, I listen to everything. Yeah, I listen to everything.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  And I used, I used to say, okay, so you, to me, that used to mean, to me, you have no personality. If you don't say, bro, I like, I like Nordic death metal, or whatever, then I know, I know you, I know who you are. Or you know, I like the dead. Okay, I know who you are, or whatever. You know, I like, uh, whatever hair metal, Leif Babin. So, so it used to identify kind of like who you are, right?

• 31:26Speaker 02

  I mean, it was even part of the fashion, like you, you couldn't really like everything. If you were into one thing, that's what you look like. You had the big hair, or if you were in a punk, you, you know, maybe look like a skinhead if you were in, you know, you wore the, the pants, if you were in the country, you had the pants with the stitching, you know, or it's like, yeah, dude, not, it was almost a identifier.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and then people nowadays, there's just so much music and it's so accessible. So when I was a kid, in order to get music that we wanted to hear, we had to go to New York, maybe, we, we had to go to a good record store, which they just weren't all over the place. There's one in Waterbury, good brass city, get some. But, you know, we'd go there and, and the, but the, that was part of the inhibitor. The other part was money. Like it costs $21 for an album. And, you know, we just didn't, so I, you know, I, I love music. And I had probably, I don't know, 30 albums

• 32:33Jocko Willink?

  that I just listened to over and over and over again. And you borrow one from someone, and of course, we got the little, we got tape cassettes too. You'd get the dubbed tape cassette. But even that was kind of hard to get because they would all sound like crap. Not that we really cared that much. I mean, let's face it.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  Nowadays, everybody kind of listens to everything.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  There's a lot out there.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  Not to mention the cro- all the crossover. See what I'm saying? You got country and you got what the Nas kid who's, you know, Old Town Road, you know, they got, we got a lot of crossover is what I'm saying.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  So you could, you're just opening it up even wider.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Even more. Oh, yeah. Now you really are listening to everything. See what I'm saying?

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  Things are getting crazy.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Crazy too.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  So it's kind of upsetting though. Really? Like when I start rapping and, and country?

• 33:18Speaker 03

  They do throw you for a loop sometimes, yes.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  It's just like, this is not.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. You're saying that's upsetting. Echo doesn't seem upset by that.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  He doesn't.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  I'm just observing the landscape of music at the, at the moment.

• 33:27Jocko Willink?

  Bro, let me tell you, look, Echo's a decent guy.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  When he, when we go places, he drives, I ride, which means he gets control of the, uh, music situation.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  Which is a problem.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  For you, I can see how that could be, yes.

• 33:46Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, so did you get, so you said you played D1 college. So you get into college. Do you get into college? Where'd you go to college?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Uh, went two years at a junior college in Huntington Beach, Golden West College. And then I did two years at St. Mary's College, which was, uh, in the East Bay in Maraga. Um, same league as, at the time at least was, uh, like Pepperdine, Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, uh, San Diego, wait, UC San Diego.

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Um, that league.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and did you, so is that when you were talking that you got a guitar? Or was that still in high school you got a guitar?

• 34:20Speaker 02

  It was prior to that. So probably when I was 19, probably about when, I don't know if it was the summer between my senior year in high school.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  And college.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Your dad held you back. You were old, right?

• 34:32Speaker 02

  I was not old. I was not old.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  Dude, hardcore wrestling, like families, their kids are going to school. They're like starting, they're, they're graduating when they're 23 years old.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it works.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  But he was a college professor. So I think education was, it was equally, if not more important to him than, than our, you know, dominance in sports or wrestling. So.

• 34:56Jocko Willink?

  Dude, wrestling is crazy, man. I know, I mean, my kids wrestle and it's like, it's mayhem. It's mayhem. You wanna talk about political? Your dad's talking about soccer. Come to a freaking wrestling tournament. It's insane, man. It's insane. Go to the state championships in Bakersfield, California. It's insane. It's awesome. Okay, so you're, so you're still in high school and you're 27 years old.

• 35:21Jocko Willink?

  So you're still in high school and that's when you go, you hear, you hear a little bit of acoustic music that you go, huh?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, just that my friend, my friend's dad would play. We'd just drink beers and he would hang out and he would play just songs. And I was like, oh, it looks easy.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh wait, oh, so he was playing guitar?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  He was playing guitar and singing himself. He wasn't playing records. He wasn't spinning records. He was actually singing and playing them. Sam Bulo.

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, he wrote down a few chords for me and then I was on my way. I kinda didn't, I didn't even really learn songs. I started writing songs almost immediately. Would not, and not with you, with the agenda to be like, I'm gonna be a musician, a songwriter. I was still a baseball player. That was still the dream, you know? And, uh, I don't know. I just kept writing.

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  Were you feeling any, any of the burn, the baseball burnout at that point?

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. I, I had, I had it. No, and I-

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  Fourth grade.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  No, the reality of it is in high school, I was still super serious about it. Once I hit junior college, I was less serious about it. And didn't even, wasn't even that great, I don't think. And that actually, uh-

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  What, what happened to Cal Ripken over here, bro?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  You know, he started, I don't know, he started smoking weed and surfing during the summer, you know? I mean, at that level, at division one, everyone goes to Alaska or somewhere, some far off place, playing summer ball all the time. And I never did that ever. I would just surf and hang out at 20th Street with my buddies. And then, you know, they go, and I come back from summer and they're like, you in shape, you know? But, uh, yeah, it wasn't, I, I had kinda lost the love for it a little bit. But then when they're gonna pay for my college education and they saw me at some All-Star game that I, and I went off. You know, I hit like a homerun and two doubles or something like that and saw that I was, could move, move well for a big person and, uh- And got a scholarship out of that. And so I was like, well, okay, a couple more years. It's not gonna hurt anybody, you know, it's actually really fun.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  So then you, you, so when you got your guitar, you're still in high school and you're immediately writing songs. Like you had that, you had that thought that I, I kinda, for my, my interpretation of that thought is it's a pain to try and learn what someone else is doing, but if I just make something up, then it's a little easier. Was there any of that there?

• 37:37Speaker 02

  It, it, it may have been. That's like the story of my whole existence. It's kind of just the easiest path to something. I'll be like, oh, well, you didn't even really try that hard to be doing that, you know?

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  And I'm assuming you never took any lessons or anything?

• 37:49Speaker 02

  No, I never did. I never took any lessons. I mean, the first song I wrote, I wrote a song when I knew, and I knew like E minor and, and G and then wrote a song like about suicide or something like something super. But like a narrative about like some guy jumping off a building or something. And I was like, why is it? And I wasn't even that disturbed as a child, you know, it was like pretty, I was pretty happy-go-lucky. But um, yeah, it's immediately started writing.

• 38:14Jocko Willink?

  What was the name of the first song?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  It's called The Jumper.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Has it ever been released?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  No, and I can't, I, I was trying to remember the, the lyrics and it's, I mean, they're not, they weren't as nearly as crafted as they are today, you know?

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, you got me beat because I think the first song that my band, we had a bunch of bands when I was a kid. And uh, the, the name that we've kind of, that's kind of has survived is Bronson's Children, named after Charles Bronson. And even though we never made an album and even though we did record uh, about 15 songs in the studio. But more important than that, we made cool T-shirts. So we've had these cool T-shirts that we have them on, we have them on the Jaco store. They're, they're just a picture of Bron, Charles Bronson's face. And then underneath in little kids, like a toddler writing, it says Bronson's Children, you know, with like a backwards R type thing. But I think the first song that I can remember

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  was there was this weird televangelist dude that was on late night TV. His name was Dr. Gene Scott.

• 39:20Jocko Willink?

  And

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I remember with the big

• 39:22Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes, that's him. That's him.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  The public access.

• 39:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, public access. He was kind of, he was kind of like one of these people. He sort of berated the audience, kind of, right?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Right. I think he was like the gateway between like Donahue or Morrie Popovich or whatever, or whatever that.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know. But anyways, we would watch him. He'd kind of berate his, you know, you need to donate now. It was one of those things. And there's then, there's the whatever. And so the first song in Bronson's Children was a song called Dr. Scott, Get Off The Air.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes. And there was a great little chorus where, where it was get off the air. And then someone was in the back going, get him off the air. Get off the air. There it was. So yeah, so you were beating me, man. You were already going deep early.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I went dark, super early. Yeah.

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  And then, so, so at some point during college, so did you play your whole four years of baseball?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Graduated in four years and played all four years.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  And then what would you, what did you major in or whatever that's called?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  History was my major.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  Were you thinking you were, that was that any, was that just easiest thing to take?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I had an inspiring teacher in junior college that made history interesting. And so decided to go that path. I didn't really retain much of it. But I, some of the time they seep into songs and whatnot. There'd be kind of period piece songs that I'll write.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  But yeah, not with the idea that I was going to be a teacher. I mean, what do you really do with it, right?

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I'm, I'm asking you that.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, no. I, I was still like, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do. You know, now I got this guitar thing. Oh, maybe I'll, maybe I'll do that now, you know?

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to start thinking, oh, man, I can maybe, I can maybe make something work?

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It took me a long time to even consider myself a musician. I probably had, I don't know, 30 songs under my belt and would play it. You know, I would play it at the pub on campus.

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  How, how much practice did you do? Like, what you got the guitar, did you? Okay, that's awesome.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it's still, well, no, it's still, it's still a primitive, I still have a very primitive style of playing. There's nothing, I don't really dazzle anybody with, uh, with my virtuosity, you know, it's just like, it's the vehicle for the songs and for the voice and, and, uh, you know, I know I do have my own style kind of of playing because it's fairly percussive, but it's primitive.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, I probably break strings more than anyone, maybe, ever. On acoustic guitar, for sure.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  You pick up the guitar and you, you start writing songs, you start playing songs, but you didn't, you're not one of these people that, like, I've known, I had friends growing up where they got obsessed and it was, they were just like learning scales and whatever the hell else you learn when you're trying to get good at guitar, which I-

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never did. I, I never, never took lessons or never, yeah, and I, I don't, it's still, it took me a while to go like, oh, this is maybe what I want to do even. And I just kept on writing songs and I started having kind of a catalog of songs.

• 42:26Jocko Willink?

  So, so when you graduate from college, do, are you, what did, what did you do? Did you get a job at somewhere?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  I waited tables. I waited tables. I went back and lived with my parents for a while, uh, to save up some money, waited tables and then moved to San Francisco and waited tables. And then with kind of the intention that I was gonna go and start hitting the clubs and trying to make some kind of a, a presence of my songwriting or my performance or whatever it was gonna be, you know? And, uh-

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  What, did, did San Francisco seem like the move for some reason?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  I, I don't know if because it was close in proximity to where I went to, to college? I'm not sure why we chose that. I think my brother had a job there, um, that was lined up and so we went there, um, and lived together, me and my brother lived together and, uh- But it was shitty. It was not a good environment. It was when DJs started taking over almost all small clubs.

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  What year is this?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  This is ninety-eight to maybe two thousand two. I lived in San Francisco, probably played once a year, twice a year in the corner of some shit die bar or like at a coffee shop, you know, smuggle some tequila in and ruin the show on the second sec, you know, kind of thing, but I, yeah.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  So ninety-eight to two thousand two, you're up there, you're, you're playing occasionally in the back of some freaking whatever.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and, and waiting tables to, to survive and uh.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Were you, were you, but this was your goal? Your goal was being musicians at this point?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was loose and lazy, kind of, and just not, not realized. I mean, I used to not get gigs. I didn't have, I didn't have shit. I didn't have, uh, so I would make cassette tapes on my brother's, through my brother's Pioneer uh dual cassette player, right? Through the PA, through the PA, and I would record and I would lay down ten songs and then I would send them to friends and send them to family for presents for like Christmas or, or for whatever, right? And, and

• 44:27Speaker 02

  and I had no press, I had no.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm picturing people opened up, I'm like, oh, we got another freaking tape cassette from Jake.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, thank you. This thing's going in the shit can. Oh, that's painful. So, so you, so you're thinking, are you thinking it's gonna be a hobby? You're just thinking, hey, it's fun? I, I wanna do it, but I'm not, I don't have the know-how or maybe the drive really to really know what I'm doing. I mean, my brother was my manager. I saw this, he was doing shit, but we had found this old tape and it had, uh, uh, we had this little band in um, in uh, in Huntington Beach, like right when I had been playing guitar for like six months maybe, and these guys heard me singing, they're like, holy shit, like, let's start a band. And they, one guy played bass and the other guy played drums, and we started a band called Living Room, right? This is, right?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  To live, but then it could be started in the living room as well, you know, so there was all this, it was silly. And we're fucking terrible. And uh, but on cassette, it says living room and then boom. No, there's no title to the, whatever the, the little EP thing. It's only cassettes, by the way, and. Matt Smith, my brother's name and his, his, his phone number, big, multiple times. So it was like, it looks pretty, bro.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  Freaking Hollywood people just looking for that number to dial, right?

• 45:49Speaker 02

  They're like, wow.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  This guy must have a bunch of clients, brother.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  So I'm still trying to figure this out, right? You're in San Francisco. It seems like you are very persistent, but not very focused. Or maybe something like that. Or is it just, you just didn't know what to do?

• 46:07Speaker 02

  I, I was, I was passionate about writing songs and I would keep writing songs. So these laughable cassettes that I was creating were making their way down. So I actually had a buddy who's in the surf industry and he was a rep for, for some surf companies. And these cassette tapes started going to other people. He would give one to one and then they would make, it would go cassette to cassette, you know?

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  Old school viral, old school viral, Jake Smith.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  As, as, as much as it could be and that.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  But wait a second, I'm just going to confirm this. We're in, we're in 1998 or 2000?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  This is before that. This is before that, when I was making the cassettes and giving them out. So this was the, this was one, my couple of junior college years, I think, that I was creating these cassettes. And they were kind of going, moving around. But I was unaware that other people were listening to them or other people were making duplicates of this. And then I got a call from one of the guys, Shelter, the guy who made Shelter, Chris Malloy.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  Chris Malloy, yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  When I was living in San Francisco and he said, hey, I want to use one of your songs in one of my surf films. And I was like, what? Like, how do you know?

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  You didn't know him at the time?

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I didn't know him? No.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  This was one of the, and this was one of, just the cassette went to this guy, to this guy, to this guy. And then he ended up with one and one of the songs he said he wanted to use off this, one of these cassettes. And I was like, why? You know, cause I was used to, you know, surf films were airs and, and punk and fast ass music. And they're like, he's like, you know, we were making this kind of more arty thing. And it was just me and an acoustic guitar. It was wrong.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was wrong.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Was the song.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  And then that.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause that was, that was like a, that was like a soul.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was story and there was story.

• 47:52Jocko Willink?

  Shelter flick and the Malloy brothers are all cool guys.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Then, so that happens. And then, all of a sudden, does that give you a little inspirado? Like, you can make it happen?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  That didn't even, that didn't give me the, um, that gave me a little validation and said like, oh yeah, maybe I'm doing the right, or doing something, this is maybe something to pursue harder. They asked me to come and play the, um...

• 48:20Jocko Willink?

  All these are just you and your guitar?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 48:22Jocko Willink?

  There's no band?

• 48:23Speaker 02

  No band, just me solo. And that's partially of how, why I play guitar the way I do. Cause I used to just fill the space with everything, not with noodling, but just with strumming and there's a lot of up, down and percussive stuff. Um, and then they asked me to play the, uh, the premiere of the movie down in San Diego. So I come down and I play whatever 30 minutes before the movie and I see people singing along to other songs of mine from these silly cassettes, right? And I'm like, what is going on? What is this? And I don't have shit going on in San Francisco. My brother had gone off and was like, uh, working at the Olympics or something. So he had left San Francisco and I had this like drunk ass roommate.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  And I packed my shit up and quit my job and then moved down to Southern California and then started kind of fresh, a little more focused, but not very focused still. You know? And then that's, it was a long road, you know? A lot of couches, then it was just couches, then I didn't have another job.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so then you, you said, I missed it, you moved to San Diego or you moved to LA?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  I moved to Orange County.

• 49:29Jocko Willink?

  To Orange County?

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  There's surf industry in there?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:32Jocko Willink?

  Was that kind of what drew you to it?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  It was a weird, I mean, for the, uh, the variety of songs I write, which many of them are quite dark, or at least emotional or visceral in a way, that the surf industry I thought was odd kind of place to, to, to pick it up and pick up, you know? Go like, oh yeah, this is, you know, this might make you cry, let's put that in a surf film, you know? It was, it was an odd place to start, I thought, or at least to get kind of a...

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  What year was it that you moved down here?

• 50:04Speaker 02

  2002.

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. What year did Shelter come out?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Um, probably around then.

• 50:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  I bet. It's that same time. It was, it was pretty immediate after, after that happened. I was like, oh shit, I didn't, just nothing was happening. And I'd been in San Francisco for four years. Nothing was going to happen in San Francisco. You know, I wasn't, I was idle. I was too idle and I needed something to push myself.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  And so I needed to make a change.

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  So you get down here, then, then what's the next step? Now you're not, now you're not waiting tables anymore? Are you somehow getting by?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Um, hardly though. I mean, like, uh, playing every other Wednesday at this sushi bar in Seal Beach and playing in the corner of this barbecue restaurant in, in Santa Ana and just like.

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  Tip jar out?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Tip jar, making, you know, between fifty and three hundred bucks a, a pop and sleeping on people's couches. Stayed at my buddy's house for like maybe a year and a half in their guest room.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  Now that's a buddy.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Super. I mean, he's a beautiful man. Scott Marsh. Uh, yeah, no, I'm grateful for that time because it really allowed me to, I don't know. I, I, I, it, it allowed me to at least craft what I was doing. And at least get some, um, stage time, performance time, um, before anything was really happening.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  And so how, how long were you in that situation before? When's the first time you went into a studio and recorded? Um, not on a Pioneer tape deck.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was after, so it was after Shelter came out, um,

• 51:42Speaker 02

  those same cassettes had gotten to the guy, Bob Hurley, who owns Hurley. And he paid for me to make my first album. And I actually made it with this, a surfer up in, or in San Diego, Peter King? Do you know Peter King?

• 51:56Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Um, he had a home studio at his house. And I made my first album, which was Hawk, had like a rodeo, which I discontinued. And redid at some point in my career.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Cause I wasn't totally loving how it turned out. Cause I was super green and I'd been in the studio. I only knew the pioneer, you know? I didn't know that.

• 52:16Jocko Willink?

  There was more than a record button.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:18Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, take note.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Right. Puss, right?

• 52:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Play and record at the same time.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Play and record at the same time. Okay, there was some complications, you know?

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what happened to that album? Like, what, what happened to that album that you felt like you lost control of it a little bit? Did they go and overproduce it or something? Were they like, hey, we're gonna bring in Jim, you know, Jimmy on the freaking lead guitar and get his fender in here and start cranking out notes?

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I was raw and I, I liked kind of some of the rawness and it seemed to get a little too produced. Um, in a way, I would just like leave, uh, leave town. I would go somewhere and visit some people and then they would have musicians would come in and play on it. And then they'd be like, hey, check this out. And I'd be like, oh, I don't know. You know, it wa- it wasn't, I wasn't at the command at all.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  That's weird.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  It was out of my hands, which is normally, which is that was the only time I really made that mistake, you know? Um, but you live and you learn and in happenstance to look back and go like, you know, you discontinue and then you rerecorded it later, which seems like it was a moment in time. And even if I was green, I think the songs were still good. Um, why I rerecorded it and discontinued that other one, I don't know why. But you can find, you try to find that one, like there's some like Japanese sites and stuff that'll have that CD, which there weren't that many of them, because they were just like, uh, they're like 500 bucks or something. Just stupid, you know, for this, well, and you could probably get it on the internet.

• 53:40Jocko Willink?

  Just on the internet webs. So that's, so that's the first album that comes out. Does it come out? Is that the right word? Did it even come out? Or was it just like, hey, we're making it, we're?

• 53:49Speaker 02

  It doesn't come out. I sell it at shows. That's it. You know, we have this kind of fictitious label that Bob and this guy Paul Gomez make. And it is a.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing really happens. I'm still playing at the sushi bar, um, doing that for, and I was in that state for quite some time, you know, like two years.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  Two years of sushi bar tip jar.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Sushi bar tip jar.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  Then what, what, what happened from there that got you away from the sushi bar, the tip jar?

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Uh, it was, um, I met, I think I moved up because I met my, my wife, uh, and I moved up to, um, Los Angeles and met some people, got kind of a manager, um, and we went in the studio and recorded my first EP.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  Is this?

• 54:44Speaker 02

  This is just the White Buffalo and it's, yeah, it's, I think it's five, six songs on that, um, which was super stripped down.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, was this, um, who, who's, who's paying for this? You know, who is running? Who bought you studio time?

• 54:59Speaker 02

  This was a, my manager at the time was managing, uh, Donovan Frankenreiter.

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  And I, so I would open up for him. I started opening up for him and I would get some exposure doing that. And met the keyboard player, this guy who actually played for the Eels as well.

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Um, Rusty, I forgot his last name. He went by Cool G Murder and he was kinda, he had this.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  But he had this like, he's redheaded, that's big like ginger beard, kinda like wispy, you know, not a whole lot of hair and, uh, call himself cool. He was cool as, he was cool as shit.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  What was his nickname? Cool G Murder?

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Cool G Murder. It says, if you look, if you had that EP and you looked on produced by, it says produced by Cool G Murder.

• 55:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, I will check that out.

• 55:49Jocko Willink?

  So, so that, so you record this thing? Are we still pre like internet, whatever, MP3 situations?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're still, sales are still, yeah, I don't even know for digital. Yeah, I don't know, are we, I don't know if it was iTunes and that stuff had been.

• 56:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't know either.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  I don't think so, because I think they date that EP on iTunes as something way later than it actually was.

• 56:15Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  You know?

• 56:17Jocko Willink?

  So, so when that album comes out, is it, what happens? Is it freaking?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  Just no factor?

• 56:22Speaker 02

  I independently release it myself and it's just me selling it basically at shows and I think when the digital format comes up, I get it up on there and I'm, that's it. Nothing is happening. I ended up doing that for a couple.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  So you're in that state?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Still, and it's still a couple albums and then I'd put a couple more albums out doing that in that state almost.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  Man, what, at what point did you start to feel some forward moment? Like, like I was saying earlier, man, I went and saw you at UCSD in like a little cafe and there's 15 people in there.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:57Jocko Willink?

  And I, it was actually like me, my wife, her friends, our friends, we're all sitting there.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and everybody, I remember that and everyone's like sitting Indian style on the ground.

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:07Jocko Willink?

  And I'm super stoked. I'm like, this is so rad, you know, like, yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 02

  I mean, it's been just this super long haul of not too many spikes. I mean, later I'm starting, later, I mean, it's not until I get,

• 57:24Speaker 02

  you know, probably start, start getting the actual TV licenses where stuff starts getting more serious.

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  And that doesn't come until what year?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  I was still independent, didn't have, I had Hogtide revisited now under my belt, which was a full-length album and two EPs. And I didn't have a manager, I didn't have a booking agent, anything, and my lawyer.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Asked the music supervisor for Sons of Anarchy to to lunch and said, hey, I got this guy. It'll work. He writes murder songs and conflicted emotional songs, you know, that that. And um.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  When you're in that state, so you're in this state, like, there's got to be a point, there's got to be a thought that goes through your mind of, all right, you know, like, this ain't gonna work. I gotta, I gotta figure out how I gotta feed my family. I gotta figure out how I'm gonna get a mortgage. I gotta figure out how I'm gonna buy a house. Was that thought in your mind? Or was it a good, were you getting by enough? Were you having, I mean, you, you, you obviously love playing live, at least as far as I can tell, you freaking love playing live. Is that a good enough time? We're like, hey, this is a cool job right now and I'm good with it.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was very small means and and and I, we didn't need that money, much money to survive really at that point.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I remember I got off another surf movie I did. Uh, this one from Jason Baffa called Single Thin Yellow and I did a

• 59:03Speaker 02

  a little piece off that and that was the first time I ever like wrote to picture, one of the only times actually. And I came up with that song and that idea and then I, I, I redid it and recorded it on my first EP and create made it into a more of a song. When before it was just this thing, they used that person, that that piece, like Walmart called me for a commercial out of nowhere too. I didn't have a publisher. They thought I was a publisher. And quoted me some money there to give me. I was like, holy shit. And I was like Walmart. I was like, no, fuck yeah.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  And then I.

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  I want that Walmart money, son.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  But then I remember I was like, oh, wait, let me, you know, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. Let me pass it on to my manager at the time, right? Who was pretty green. He ends up getting less money somehow than I had negotiated initially.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  That's because that's.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  But still, but it was more, it was.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  It was, but it was more money than I'd ever seen. And it was like, oh, okay, here's, you know, I could have lived off that. That was more money than I'd made probably in the previous four years. You know, of doing, of doing the music.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  So you are getting, it's like, it's like you're a, you know, when you were a kid and you had some girlfriend and, and like, she would break up with you, but she would string you along, right? You know that? And people say, don't string, don't string people along. It's like you were getting strung along by.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, the little carrot.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Little carrot that's like, oh, I, you know, another good, I've made some good tips tonight. Then you get the big call from Walmart and it's on like Donkey Kong.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  So, so then, so that was from Single Thing Yellow, which is a kick ass movie. They take this board and they send it around the world, a bunch of different people surf it, a bunch of different wild spots.

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  But this is still,

• 1:00:52Jocko Willink?

  still you're not, you know, able to just, or are you able to just survive on, on being a musician at this point?

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I was, I had been for, for a bit. I did, uh, use my college degree for a little substitute teaching, which was hilarious. Kind of hilarious, but kind of heartbreaking at the same time.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Why do you say that?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Uh, just, you know, uh, middle school kids are pretty dangerous, you know, are pretty confused and pissed. And so I ended up breaking up more fights than I was teaching anybody anything or, you know, I mean, I wasn't, there's not much of a, a lesson plan often left for the substitute teacher. So you're showing a movie or you're just trying to keep the kids safe.

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, don't get, don't get thrown out the window is the lesson plan.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Right? So, uh, but I didn't do that, that, that long or very, very, um, very often.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you're in these, when you're in this period of your life, I mean, the, the songs that you write, the music that you write, the lyrics that you write.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm projecting my thoughts onto this, but you know, when you're sitting and working in a dive bar somewhere, playing a gig and you look over in the corner and you see this character. Is, does that develop into, hey, you know, I know what that guy's thinking or I'm thinking about what that person's life is like. Does that add, is it good that you went through this time period of, of where you were kinda

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  struggling through and making things happen? Did you, does that incorporate into your, the things you think about?

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I honestly think the way that I did it

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  was beneficial to me as a songwriter, as an artist for this long of a time. That if I would have had somebody come in and go like, hey, wow, this guy's, he can sing and he writes these pretty good songs. But like, we can, why don't we develop this guy into something else, into a country star or something else? And instead, I was able to be 100% true to the songs I write, the artist that I wanted to be. And never had to do anything that I didn't want to do. It always my vision and always 100% from me, which is super rare these days, especially, I mean, there's like, you know, the song on the radio, you got 15 people wrote it, you know? It's like, it's, it's kind of unheard of and, but I think that this super long haul that it's taken me, and even now I'm still a

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  little secret, you know, it's not like I'm a superstar or people know who I am. I walk down the street. It's like rare for me to get noticed, you know? I'm always kind of like put off by somebody going like, hey, are you, are you, are you the? Oh yeah, I am. And then I'll be like, oh shit, you know, I love you. People that really like me, really like me. But most people don't know about me, you know, which I'm kind of, I, it's a sweet spot. Kind of for me, I mean, I'm not making millions of dollars, but I'm doing okay. I can survive and provide.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  But I'm not, uh, you know, I don't, I can still be, be me, do what I want to do and, and not, not be, uh, you know, afraid to go out in public at all.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  That, that's good.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  So you were just getting to the point where I cut you off and redirected the story in a totally different direction. Cause that was really cool.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, you were talking about the, your, so you got this manager guy and he knows.

• 1:04:21Jocko Willink?

  Um, the musician director from Sons of Anarchy?

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  That was actually post. So I had my first guy and I, uh, first manager, one, he's actually my second manager, but, uh, who was managing Donovan Frank Ritter. And I ended up touring with him for probably a year and a half when I was with him. Um, it went to Japan, went all over the world. And this was when he was, he peaked, when Donovan was kind of peaking and.

• 1:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Dude, were you just living the dream?

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  It was, I mean, they let me travel on the bus. I was like, you know, we weren't in the sushi bar anymore, you know, it felt good.

• 1:04:54Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  And just to see the world. I mean, you're seeing the world and you're getting perspectives and different, it really opens your mind traveling.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  When I was in the SEAL Teams, I was on deploy, when I would be on deployment, I would know in my mind, like every day I would know that this was like the best, you know? I was kind of just loving life, you know, living, you know, people always say living the dream. I was living the dream. I was actually doing exactly what I always dreamed of doing for my whole life.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Seems like that's what would be, you know, you being on tour.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  It, it was, I just had low, I didn't have, and maybe that's my, been my outlook. A lot of the time to kind of have low expectations and then not be really that disappointed. And even when I'm not getting accolades or I'm not getting, you know, playing huge rooms or, or, but making enough money to be okay and feel pretty okay about what I'm doing and still being true to myself. Um, was enough and it's always kind of been enough for me.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you get a pretty good launch. You get a taste of the road.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Get a taste of the road, bro. You're there. And, and then did that, when you get done touring with that tour? What's the next step?

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we started, I don't know where we were at. Where was I at that moment? I'm probably, the, the next big step is getting the Sons of Anarchy stuff for sure. That, that, that put me in a place, um, where now I could go, well, after the show, really. I, it was like the third season, I think they started using my stuff.

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  And how, and so it's, you, I cut, once again, I just cut you off randomly and said, hey, let's take this. So how did that come about that, that you ended up on Sons of Anarchy?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Uh, no, so it was my lawyer, Steve Sessa, who I still have today, uh, invited the music supervisor to lunch. And said, listen, I have this guy, he's an unsaid artist, doesn't have any management, doesn't have anything. Um, puts out his own albums. I think he was a big fan of the show of Sons of Anarchy. And he's like, you know, the conflict in these, you know, it's like the show is basically these, uh, emotional men doing kind of terrible shit, you know? And I have a lot of that kind of conflict in some of my songs too, that it's something that's, God, this guy feels like kind of a badass. But God, he's maybe kind of a sweetheart or you feel for this guy who's really, it's a murder song, you know? But you're, he's kind of the hero though at the same time.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  So it's this conflict to him was perfect for that show. And then he, he gave, gave him my whole catalog, basically. And then in not that long at all, they, they were like, okay, yeah, we're going to use this in the next, and you know, in three episodes or something. And, uh, but that was a slow thing as well. You know, that was, they'd use this one song and then they use another song. But then they ended up using, I think, seven or eight of my own songs that I, they were my own compositions that were already out there. Um, and then they had me come and sing on stuff. So stuff that they would create that was part of the soundtrack. And just how they used music in that show, I don't know if you watched it, but it was very, we do these montages at the end.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  That would be, the song would be part of the, of the story. And it would just be these montages, visuals, and they would play the song at full length, at full volume. And it would be like another character. And then I think people started recognizing my voice and saying, man, what is this? Maybe we should go deeper, you know, into this. And at that point, we hadn't, I hadn't been to Europe on my own as an artist. I'd only opened up for people and you don't really know what kind of. Legs you have in places you don't know when you don't have any history in places. And if you just opened up for somebody, you don't really have history. It's really you're just playing for their people. Uh, so then shit's going better and getting better and we go, man, we gotta go, we gotta check out Europe.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  I don't know what's happening, you know, starting to play bigger rooms all over the country. And nobody will, no, no clubs will want us. They never heard of us, you know? And we're like, well, at least we'll, you know, we got a festival somewhere. So we're like, okay, we're gonna play this festival in Spain or something. So, but we gotta try to play in London. And just see what tickets are like, see what happens. So we play this like little tiny room. We're gonna play like a 200 cap room. It sells out like an hour. And they're like, oh shit. Well, they're like, what's going on? And then they're like, well, let's bump up the room. And then they bump it up to like 700 capacity, which was bigger than I'm playing most of the places in the States. And then that sells out another hour.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  And then they're like, wow, what's going on? And then that, so we just went and we played a couple of shows in Europe. And then realized like, okay, this is a viable market, like we can make some money over here and we have a fan base. And I think almost due to the popularity of that show.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  You know, at that point I signed with a label, you know, small kind of boutique label, which basically was these two guys that, that were producers and engineers who produced and engineered, uh, four albums. Um, I just, just have left now and I'm on with a different label now.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  What made you decide to go? Why did you need, you've been doing it yourself? What, what made you make the transition?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  It was not, um,

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  I didn't, I'd never had any, even though there wasn't a much of a machine behind those other albums and still now, not really. Um, I, I just wanted to get in the game, you know what I mean? I'd not, I'd never been in the game, you know? And I was just like, I'm just an island. I'm still kind of an island. But then I was like, I wasn't even in the game, you know? And they're like, I think somebody was just like, do you get in the game? Like, what are you even doing? Like, you don't have a label, you know, you know, it wasn't like I had, uh, the know-how or any of the, anything when I'm independently releasing things. No, it wasn't like it was fucking six months setup to be like, all right, the album's gonna come out May, you know, 20th. Then we're gonna be promoting this thing for, no, it was when it was done.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  What's our marketing plan look like for the next album?

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  There was nothing. I would just go up. It would, I'd just put it up. It would be, I'd finish something and then I would just put it up, you know, digitally. And and make CDs.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  So so then you sign you sign with these guys? Is that the right terminology?

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And we did like a three album, four album deal with them.

• 1:11:20Jocko Willink?

  Are you the um, is this all your decision making? You're the guy?

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I end up getting my manager.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Right when I was signing, I was looking for somebody else. I was like in between. I think I'd had like three different managers who were all. I don't want to say hacks, but like they weren't um, they just did, but but they they weren't. They weren't as professional or as right for me. I'll just say that. They weren't. They weren't maybe right for me to try to get me to the another plateau. Um, and now I got Jeff Farner, who's great and and smart and political and.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Also, though, very uh in my corner as far as still allowing me to. Have my vision and and do what I want to do musically.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  So right, right before that, uh, we do the deal. I sign with him as well, or I bring him on as my manager. Been with him ever since.

• 1:12:20Jocko Willink?

  And then you that so now you're officially in the game. Now you're selling out places in Europe.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  And what does it look like when you get back to the States? Because it's weird, you know, it's weird how that can happen. And I got some other friends and that are musicians and like overseas, they're freaking massive and back here, there's just not not action.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's it's crazy and I don't even know. Some markets, I mean, I've never been to South America. Like if you look on my comments, you look on any YouTube thing I have, every other comment has come to Brazil. Or something Brazil, but that we've never been to Brazil. It's far. Uh, so a little sketchy, right? I don't know uh when we'll get there. I want to get there.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  You know, but uh, we're doing better. It's a slow build. We we never go down. You know, which I appreciate, but still in places like the South, we haven't had that much touring history. I've probably done like two or three tours there. And we're still building that.

• 1:13:14Jocko Willink?

  Is it weird because how do you categorize your music?

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  That's part of it.

• 1:13:20Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta be an issue.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  That's part of the issue and that's an issue with labels some of the time too because they don't understand it. It doesn't fit in any really category, you know, even you have this Americana idea now, it doesn't, it's not.

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  Air quotes.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  It just, it doesn't seem, I don't know. It feels like, I don't belong in that genre either. I mean, part of it does. Part of it's kind of this country, there's country elements, there's rock elements, there's some more aggressive, more punk stuff, there's folk stuff, there's ballads, there's, you know, it's, it belongs in anything, it's organic.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  And it comes from, mostly it comes from three guys playing or, you know, if we put some other stuff on albums, but it's, it's, we're the most stripped down band that, that you'll ever see really. I mean, other than if it's one guy playing guitar. I mean, it's three guys with no effects.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  There's no vocal effects, there's no effects on my guitar, there's no, there's no nothing. It's three guys.

• 1:14:23Jocko Willink?

  So that, so that's an issue because you can't say, oh, there's this, you know, this other band that kind of fits in the white buffalo category and there, we can play with these four other bands, we can do a festival or whatever, because where do you really fit?

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  At the same time though, but you can fit in all other little categories too. There's benefits to that too. Cause I can play a rock festival.

• 1:14:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  Or I can play a country festival, you know?

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you're kind of like your own, you know, your own little, your own little genre.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never, hopefully that I have my own sound kind of, you know, which is ultimately.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  And not to mention, I think you're the only person that writes murder songs.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Right? Or at least ones you could dance to.

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Ballads and love songs and murder songs. Yeah, I guess that's right. I'm guessing leaving out all my death metal brothers out there who are, write 100% murder songs. You're the only one out there doing acoustic folk. Murder songs, even though have you ever heard, what is it called Viking folk metal? Have you ever heard that?

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Viking folk metal?

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  They play like traditional Viking instruments, but they're playing metal.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  I mean, that's part of my.

• 1:15:30Jocko Willink?

  There's another group you could fit in with.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Viking blood, so that might be, uh, maybe that's my genre.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, at least you can slide in there. You can maybe do some, some Viking folk metal. What are they called? Festivals.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  I mean, if they exist, absolutely. Probably somewhere in Scandinavia, right? I'm sure there's that going on.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  So when you, when you, um, when you're,

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  do, do the, where do the songs come from?

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Like the, the majority of them, if not all of them, come from just silence from nowhere. You know, a lot of them will be gibberish or something. They just come in out of, out of being quiet. And they often,

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  I will say something, sing something and I will recognize what the important part is, or the piece of it that, that has some validity or worth and expand on that one little idea. Most of the time, some of the time I'll sing something that just, I didn't even know where it came from, you know? It, it's, I can sing a whole verse and a chorus, not, not, not with an idea that I'm going to write a song about this. I didn't even know what they're about initially. And then I craft them into things that hopefully have some kind of emotional response.

• 1:16:46Jocko Willink?

  So there's some level of you being on the lookout for a little nugget of goodness that you can grab onto and plant in water.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Lucky, like, I feel like they're lucky little diamonds that come out of fucking the ether. You know what I mean? And I, I think my gift is recognizing what those little lucky moments are to go like, oh, let me grab that. That's a good idea. You know, and I do, I, I, I know that I can craft something off of one very small idea to realize how I can turn that into a whole concept or a whole song pretty quick.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, I don't know. I wish I had better stories about it. I was talking to Robert O'Keane, did a podcast with him and he was like, tell me what, where were you at? What was this? You know, what's the inspiration behind this? I'm like, this is no, there's no inspiration. It's just imagined, you know? It's like imagination is the inspiration.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  But it's not in my head. I'm not like, it's not, there's no um pre-thought about it, rarely.

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  It's born in your head. Yeah, it just comes from your head.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Jocko Willink?

  That's like the, so I was an English major in college. I'll have you know. So what you're saying right now, what you're saying right now, I'm gonna put you on the spot. So what you're saying right now is there was these people and there was all, there's all this controversy and I'm not even gonna remember it that well, cause I really don't remember that much of college. But there would be people that would say, you know, I wrote this poem. Just it ju- I just wrote it. And I'm talking like classical, like lit- real famous literature people. Oh, the word is that this person just wrote this. It just came out. And it's like they didn't have to work for it. That's kind of what you're doing. You're just like, hey, I'm over-

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  I'm rarely doing that.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm over here just freaking, just developing nuggets of gold.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  I'm rarely doing that. They're rarely that easy. But the inception of them, the beginnings of them are that easy. But some of the time, it's a very small little piece of something and it's not, very rarely. Sometimes I was, I have sat down in my, in my lifetime and, and just something spilled out and then you're like, holy shit, there it is. Like love song number one is one kind of like that, that was it off my first EP that just kind of spilled out and then I was like, well, this, like what was that? What is that about? You know, there's even a moment in the song where I'm still like, what is that even about? You know? And um, and just left it in kinda, you know, now I, I edit more stuff now, you know?

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  And make every word perfect, or as perfect as I feel like I can make it, you know? But um.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  And then what's the deal on, you know, what do you owe? In other words, are you like, hey, I better get about another album out and another, you know? Cause you just, you just put out your latest album, what, a few, a few months ago?

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, April, April 17th.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  April 17th, so now do you start feeling the pressure in your head of I need to do more, cause I needed to cut another album? Do you start feeling pressure in your head that you got ideas in there that need to get out? Do you not even think about it?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  I don't even think about it. I, I don't like, I, I um, I'll write here and there and there'll be little snippets in my phone, but I don't really think about it. Even this last record, who I did with Shooter Jennings, produced it. Um.

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  That I didn't have, I didn't think I had hardly any songs going into talking with him and meeting with him. And the night before, we went out drinking like the first time and didn't even talk about working together, really, we're just talking about life and and just get drunk. We got drunk for like

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you meet him at?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Uh, where, where, where did we get drunk at or where did

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you meet, then where'd you get drunk?

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Uh, frolic room on like Hollywood.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean randomly?

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it was set up. It was like a blind date between our managers set us up thinking that this might be a match made in heaven. But uh, no, I went in, so I went in the first time to meet him to kind of show him what I'd been working on or something, you know, to develop some songs. And I was like, I don't have shit. I feel like I don't have shit. I woke up the night before, uh, and uh, had an idea, sang it into my phone and was like, okay, well, at least I can show him that tomorrow and we'll work on that all day. And see what happens. Well, I take that to him. I sing it to him. I sing him the kind of the idea. It was actually quite realized, but it's like, my son was like sleeping. I had this little tiny studio fucking place for sleep, sleeping in and my son's sleeping on the, so he like

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  like, I don't even make out what I'm saying, but I'm trying to be quiet to not wake him. And I show him this thing the next day and then I sing it and we work it out in like 20 minutes. And then I already have it kind of realized and he's like, well, what else do you have? And I was like, oh, I have oh, this. And he's like, wow, that's amazing. Explore that. I go, what else you have? And I was like, oh, how about this? And he's like, that's, yeah. Do that, like explore that. And I would just, and then we just went down. And I was like, okay. And then after that little meeting, I went on just a, like a, I go on little writing pairs, little benders. And then I just basically wrote the whole album in about a week, week and a half. And before I was like, you know, I have little snippets that are coming in, you know?

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  But then to realize and then finish them really fast. Sometimes, and sometimes, you know, it's like added. Sometimes it's out of just inspiration and desperation.

• 1:22:13Jocko Willink?

  So the little pressure can maybe squeeze something out of you? Have you ever been at a point where you were feeling pressure, but just nothing was coming out?

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  I had another album, uh, Love and the Death of Damnation. That I remember I used to with the old producers, I would go and I would sing, I would give, have all these ideas. And I would come in and then we'd be like, okay, yeah, let's explore that one. Let's, let's do that, work on that one. And a lot of time it would be like every one, but I'd have like 20 ideas, 25 ideas or something like that, right? And for that album I had like, you know, it was about time to record and I had maybe six ideas that I played in. And they're all kind of like, on all of them, you know? And then I was like, fuck it, let's just start Wednesday. I'm like, what are we gonna do Wednesday? I was like, I'll be ready Wednesday. I'll be ready Wednesday. And then we just did that one like that, but that was completely out of desperation.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  And then hit a lucky, uh, prolific time, little, little lucky streak.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, freaking great album. How did you link up with, uh, with Matt and, um, Christopher?

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  Uh, so Matt has been drumming.

• 1:23:20Jocko Willink?

  Who's a freaking animal, by the way. He's a freaking animal.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  I mean, as far as, I don't think I would be the performer I am today without Matt.

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  No, you guys, you guys get, you guys look at each other and you guys just get, go off. It's freaking savage. It's awesome.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  I mean, especially for like an acoustic trio, who'd you think wouldn't be terribly aggressive, you know? And he's just, sticks are flying and breaking and shards of wood are, you know, getting pulled out of women and children.

• 1:23:49Jocko Willink?

  At some point I realized that you called him the machine, right? And then I would, every show I'd go to and I'd be like, machine. I would get all crazy. But, and then like the last couple of times I've gone, other people were yelling and I was kind of disappointed. I kind of felt like all that.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Well, maybe you started it.

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, man. Yeah, cause he just goes nuts. So, so I'm sorry. How did you link up with him?

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Um, that was actually the first album I did for the Hurly Guy, Hogtide. Uh, like a rodeo. I've had Matt since then.

• 1:24:19Jocko Willink?

  No way.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  He wasn't on that album, but there was a guy Tommy Andrews, who's from San Diego as well, who was my bass player for the first 10 years of my career. Played guitar on that album and knew Matt and this guy Russell Hayden, um, who played banjo and dobro, like the most evil fucking banjo you ever you heard. And, uh, but it was perfect. It was creepy.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Evil banjo, bring it.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  And he'd like wear, he wouldn't, he would like dress like Liza Minnelli and like the Nani eyebrows and he'd be like, like fucking awesome banjo player. Um, but anyways, uh, but I met Matt through this guy Tommy Andrews and we all did it. It was the first time I ever felt, before that I'd only played by myself.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Really, I never played, never performed, even when I'm in the corner of any place, was always by myself. And that was the first time I was like, whoa, this is what it feels like to really feel and feed off of, of other people's energy and playing. And Matt's played with me ever since. And Christopher's been with us for maybe, Matt and Christopher are like best buddies. And Hoffy's not even a, wasn't even a bass player. He's a producer and engineer, so he was like-

• 1:25:28Jocko Willink?

  He can play everything, right?

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  He's one of those guys.

• 1:25:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  But now he's a really good bass player now.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, what, what's when, look, I, I try and explain this to people. You gotta get the albums for sure. And then you gotta go see, you gotta go see the live shows. It's freaking insane.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  I, I think, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know. I mean, we're just go fucking go ape shit. I mean, we don't know. And I, I just think it's very visceral in the way that we approach, like, it's like the last show of our lives, you know? And we do that every night and I don't know any other way to do it, you know? And Matt doesn't and Christopher, we're just like, you know, a few wild animals up there. You know?

• 1:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Is it, do you feel it? Do you feel frustration that you, I mean, are you, you don't have a live album?

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  No, we don't.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Are you gonna do that? Do you think it would get it done? Do you think you'd be able to capture it?

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  I think so. I think we could. Uh, I mean, the hardest part is really acoustic guitar live. It's a difficult thing to kind of capture that, make that sound like an acoustic guitar. But, uh, yeah, I think we could capture it live. We should, we, people ask that all the time. Cause it is such a different animal. I mean, I think- I mean, it's a high compliment when people are like, oh, it's better than the albums, you know? It it's it's a, I think it's more of an experience. I mean, to get people during parts of the show that, you know, the people who want to fight during this time, people are crying, you know, and you'll see, right? You'll see like a military guy and a and a fucking hippie in there and, you know,

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  and then some guy from some other completely different background, but somehow they found this secret band, you know, that's like, this is our band, this is my band, but oh, it's Suckers Band too, but that's okay. Well, fuck it, we're in this together.

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  We're bros.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, right? Bikers, hippies, surfers. I mean, it's like, let's all, let's all go get some, right?

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking, yeah, no, it's, it's awesome. If people get a chance to see that, it's like, um, yeah, you, you, you gotta go check it out. Uh,

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  dude, what's the matador about?

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  The matador?

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  Matador was, that was actually the first song they used on Sons of Anarchy.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  Um, that, but it was off of my first EP. It was already recorded. Uh, Matador, I wanted to do a song that you couldn't tell if it was a man

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  um, killing people or a man killing or Matador.

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  And uh, I just like that kind of loose, um,

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  a thing where you can't tell, really. And I, I, I want to leave it up to the listener, whether they decide, is this a man killing people in the light of day? In public, in front of people? Or is this, or is he talking about a bullfighter?

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of a wild concept.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  Kind of, and I don't know where they, right?

• 1:28:29Jocko Willink?

  How about Carnage?

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Carnage is another dark one. Um, that one, my idea was,

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  um, some kind of warfare comes to where you live, some kind of either, either it's nuclear, viral or something, and you have to take your family and go hide down in the basement. And it's a kind of a narrative, so it starts and we all just go hide down in the basement. And I feel like the main character is kind of the, the father figure and then, um, you don't know what's happening outside. You're, everyone's just hiding. And it just gets darker and darker and, and people start kind of losing their minds.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  The Mad Man.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Uh, Mad Man's just, you're going all murder songs.

• 1:29:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, I just thought to myself, I'm like, well, that's all murder songs. And you know, and like you said earlier, you've got the sweetest songs, you've got the most romantic songs and you've definitely provided some very nice evenings for me and my wife to hang out and have a very pleasant time. You've also provided me with like nice soundtracks for the darkness.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, I, I love, I mean, the thing is, I don't know why people don't dive into the fucking dark side of the pool, you know? It's like, there's so much.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  Welcome to Jocko Podcast.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  But there's so much, you know, in, um, in those shadowy parts, like movies like that and stuff like that. Like, that's a powerful primal thing that I think is cool, that, that should be explored. I think I'm lucky that I can sing in the way I can, that I can be tender at some moments when I, when I have a love song or I have something that needs to be, and then on the other side of the hand, that to be more aggressive and loud and howling.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  But yeah, The Mad Man's another just serial killer kind of murder song that it's just like, you, you can't, he's undeniable. He's just all powerful and he's coming after you. It's just scary.

• 1:30:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'd never, I never have thought about the fact that you write murder songs before. Until you said it today, I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's the whole thing. There's a bunch of those murder songs.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  Every album at least has at least one.

• 1:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm looking at my list, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's, oh yeah, oh darling, what have I done? Oh yeah, that's, that's absolute freaking.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  That one's fucking twisted though.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh totally.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  That one's, that one's about a man who thinks, I don't even know how I come up with this bullshit, but like how, how, who thinks in order to get the affection of his woman and that he starts killing people and collecting, basically collecting these lives and he's killing these people as like a sign of like the ultimate gift to give to this woman kind of, in his mind, thinking that she's going, he's going to win his, her affection due to. Whatever this illusion.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  How about the pilot?

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  Uh, the pilot feels like, I love this song, uh, uh, The Highwayman by Jimmy Webb.

• 1:31:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  And it wasn't, it wasn't off that thing, but it's, it's, that one's just kind of just about kicking ass. Like.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Kicking ass and taking names, right?

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Is that part of, yeah, that's part of the pilot. I, I mean, that one's, I, I like how it starts, you know, you start with the pilot and basically it's kind of just sets a, sets a table for just a pilot. And then it goes fighter pilot, and then it goes outlaw, and then it's just like, what is it, the one, yeah, kicking ass, taking names, go town to town, killing dreams.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  Man. You know, you did the, the album with the Joey White theme throughout it and that's, so that's, that's like a, what is it, a rock opera? What is it? Is it a concept album, I guess is what we call it?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:12Jocko Willink?

  Where you got this whole story, this whole thread of,

• 1:32:17Jocko Willink?

  of a couple.

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Right? And, you know, it sounds like they meet when they're young, you've got some freaking great lines, man, just great, great stuff. What, what made you decide to go, hey, I'm going concept album?

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  I've always wanted to, I mean, I always look at my songs as little movies, little mini movies and the idea of, of building a whole narrative.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Around those, linking those also, it's, it's a linear thing, which I don't even know, most concept albums are, seem really loose. Like even if you listen to Dark Side of the Moon or something, it's not like you jump from one thing to another, you know? And that's this guy's whole road.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  I, I did, I don't know, I'm, I've always been fascinated by war and soldiers and people going off to war and then coming back and all this thing. And so I had some songs already and I was like, I want to do a concept album. And then I said, oh, and I do it now. And I thought, oh, I could put this song here. Or this, kind of start changing names, put this song over here and then build this whole arc of this guy's lifetime. You know, it's basically a love story. I think it's a love story, but it's.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  In a white buffalo kind of way.

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Right, in a murderous sort of way, a dark, a dark thing. So they start off, they meet each other. They fall in love, but it's kind of this forbidden love. And so they have to go leave the small town they're from and he finds out pretty quickly that he cannot provide for his family. So he joins the military. Goes off to war, kills, feels like kind of a killing machine and then comes back. Still kind of blood thirsty and, and, and not assimilating. Kills again, uh, at home and, and then it's skews back into a love story, kind of, or at least this, his road to redemption, kind of. And the idea that, and, and the one thing is the power of love, but the power of his woman is what makes him feel

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  human or halfway human again. And, um, it basically goes the whole arc to his life. At the end, he's, he's gonna die and he's kind of questioning God and, and wondering. After all this bad shit I've done in my life, like, am I, am I in there? Are you up there? You know, just still kind of confused and conflicted, but.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Trying to figure out.

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Man, freaking, all, all this great stuff, man. I, I, wherever you're getting it from, I hope those little magic nuggets that go into your brain, I hope, or enter your brain or are produced in your brain. I hope they just freaking keep on coming, man.

• 1:34:55Jocko Willink?

  Hey, did your son play lead guitar for you one time at House of Blues?

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  He did many times.

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  My oldest son, Tanner, um, who is, we've tried to add a fourth guy sometimes, you know? We've always liked this power trio kind of thing with an acoustic guitar is ridiculous, really, but, uh, um, we would try to add a fourth guy, but it always felt like it kind of took away from, I mean, all we were kind of dynamics, you know, so we get really big and we get really quiet and we get really big and with three, that seems to work really well and you add another thing, but Tanner is when he's at his, on his game and at his best has been maybe my favorite fourth kind of member during it. Yeah, he's an animal.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Well, so what's, what's up next?

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  What's the future hold? It's a weird time. I mean, you know, it's like I had an album come come out during this, you know, during the covid and the pandemic and and touring stopped. We had, I mean, a shitload of shows, you know, shows going all of two thousand twenty um and beyond, you know, we were gonna go all the way around the world, all over the world, you know, at these places that we'd have some history and it's just that just all stopped, that all dried up. And so there's nothing, that's all being postponed to hopefully when we do it. I mean, our first tour that we were gonna do in April, that's gonna be a whole year. We're gonna go back to Europe in April and then hopefully stuff will start opening up.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  And I don't know, really, the future is is is uh unknown for sure, to say the least. But uh, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna continue. I was really proud of this, this, you know, recent piece of work that I did, um, which almost was gonna start out as a concept as well. What was the concept gonna be? This one was, one time we were touring, traveling, we're on like the eastern seaboard and I keep seeing these uh, these uh, rooftop decks up on top of these kind of Victorian houses. And I'm like, what are those, you know, and and the drummer was like, oh, those are called widows' walks. And those are the wives, significant others of captains and uh,

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  whatever fishermen, whalers or stuff would, you know, they would, their husbands would leave and and go do their jobs, but not return for many months or many weeks. And the wives would go up kind of scouting, looking, longing for their husbands to come home. And I just thought like, oh, that's, you got it, it's all right there, right? I mean, you have the romance, you have the drama, you have the sea, the power, you know? And um, just the story was already there. I was like, oh, it's gonna be easy. And so I started writing some of those, which is a song called Widows' Walk. There's another one, Sycamore, that made the album. There's a couple that are still on there. But then I had these other songs that I was like, because it's confining.

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  You know, if you're like, especially when I think of a concept album as a narrative, to be like, oh, well, there's this song about the fires in California in two thousand eighteen, or there's this song about that, wouldn't really fit in the construct of that.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  So I kind of abandoned the idea without. Not entirely, kind of. Some of the songs made it and then inadvertently other songs would have other

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Angles.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Angles and concepts and water and

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  longing and lost loves and all kinds of stuff that ended up kind of getting into there and being part of the writing, but way looser, you know?

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's a freaking, it's another, another great album. And you know, I always talk about there's, there's not too many bands, in my opinion, that can do five awesome albums in a row. Like Black Sabbath, they did it. Zeppelin, they did it. Metallica, close, but they did it, right? There's not too many bands that can do five awesome albums in a row. And part of it is, I think what you said earlier, you know, you were at this level where, you know, if, if you would have done that first demo and gotten picked up by whatever big record company and had a big bus and then all this nice stuff and you probably didn't, you probably wouldn't even be able to squeeze out even two more good albums.

• 1:39:09Jocko Willink?

  But man, you were there and, and you're knocking out every album that you've, I don't know what number you're on right now, but it's, it's more than five and you're still freaking putting out awesome work. And I don't know what the future holds, but I do know this, when you're back on the road, we will be there.

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  Well, thank you kindly.

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  You got any, any last thoughts, man?

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  No, I just appreciate you. I appreciate you, you know, I, I appreciate that I'm a part of so many people's lives and often the then terrible parts of their lives that, that I get people coming up to me.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Saying how I helped them through this moment, a divorce, or, or, or being in the military, or death of somebody super close to them.

• 1:39:51Speaker 02

  And I'm proud to be that, you know, for a while, it's odd because I'm actually not that serious of a dude, you know? I'm pretty, like, if you went drinking with me, you're like, that guy? Really? You know? But

• 1:40:06Jocko Willink?

  There's like a, I guess there's like a Jekyll and Hyde thing, right?

• 1:40:08Speaker 02

  Kind of is. I mean, I do these silly episodes, these things called In The Garage. Have you ever seen that shit?

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  So I do, it's just me in my garage and I'd make some stupid entrance where I'm spinning and twirling or something. And then I kind of bullshit for two, three, five minutes about nothing. I'm just kind of rambling and then

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  But it's kind of comedic and then then I just go into something probably dark and heavy, some song that I have that's in my catalog and I'll play a song and then that's it. But it is kind of the duality of my persona or my, not my persona, just who I am, that there's, but it's just like everything, I suppose. There's, you know, laughter and there's love and there's, you know, different sides of the coin. There's the light and the dark and so I have that and I explore that and I explore that in music as well.

• 1:40:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, thanks for taking us on the road with you down that, down that path. Like I said, look, I know I'm coming out dark because that's sort of, that's sort of where I tend to go, but man, there's, you know, a bunch of beautiful songs on there. The best music for, you can apply it to just about every part of your life. So thanks for coming on, man. Freaking awesome.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  You think maybe take it out with one Moe Jam?

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Sure. You got it.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Something off the new album.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is off the new album. This one's called No History. Yeah.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Um, get some.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  I threw my dreams in wishing well. It seems they all get lost in time. Time don't fight fair. It's simply unaware. Write myself a different story. One that's filled with twists and turns and life is on fire. Where I might get burned. Write it off to a lesson learned. Now I feel when the future comes that there won't be love for everyone.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  You can't hold the hands of time. It's only here and now and not anymore. Oh, oh, oh. It's only one way to be afraid. No history. No history.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Memories they come crashing in Living in the past is a waste of your life You can't rewind Leave it all behind What if morning never comes? Build your tomorrow's out of today They're all gonna go When nobody knows I feel when the future comes That there won't be love for everyone

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  You can't hold the hands of time

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  It's only here and now, nothing more

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  There's only one way to be free No history

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  No history

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Well you can't hold the hands of time

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  It's only here and now, nothing more

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  There's only one way to be free

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  No history

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  No history No history No history No history No history

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Awesome, man. Thanks for coming down, brother.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Jake, The White Buffalo Smith, has left the building. By the way, I forgot to mention this. You can find him on the interwebs at thewhitebuffalo.com, on Facebook at The White Buffalo,

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  Instagram, BuffaloCo. BuffaloCo. Maybe Crazy Buffalo? Is it? I think. B U F F A L O C O. BuffaloCo. Yeah. Yes. Twitter, Blanco Buffalo. Yeah, that's the one. Right, so. And then YouTube, and there's also YouTube channel, The White Buffalo. He puts out those little videos he was talking about.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  That's that, man. Awesome to have him down.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Jake, thanks for coming down. And Echo.

• 1:45:47Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:45:47Jocko Willink?

  There is some darkness.

• 1:45:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  And some light in the world.

• 1:45:52Speaker 03

  It is true. I think it was interesting to come and bring, you know, for for those of us that didn't go deep, because you mentioned White Buffalo a lot.

• 1:46:04Speaker 03

  The Buffalo Blanco. You mentioned them.

• 1:46:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:07Speaker 03

  From time to time. So those of us that didn't go deep into, you know, recently exploring like who this was that you'd mentioned from time to time, it was good to kind of bring them to light. I understand now.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Kind of recognize.

• 1:46:20Speaker 03

  I recognize.

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Kind of recognize, don't you?

• 1:46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Jocko Willink?

  At what point, at what point did you go, damn?

• 1:46:26Speaker 03

  Before we started recording and he was sorted.

• 1:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Sorting out his little test.

• 1:46:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was like, okay. Actually, when he rolled in, and you know when someone starts talking, especially a big guy like him, I think, they start talking, you're like, oh, you have a singing voice right now.

• 1:46:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you could tell that, huh?

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  You know why, though, I think? Because, you know, like, I used to, when I used to make, like, more, um, like, how should I say, like, narrative-type videos, and I would hire a lot of voiceover people.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  I did some voiceovers. For Echo Charles.

• 1:46:57Speaker 03

  Sure. Yes. So a lot of these professional voiceover people, like you listen to their demo or some, some of the guys like I'd call up on the phone. And when they answer the phone, I'm like, I, I see what you're working with there already, just them talking. One guy, one guy was like, he put on, you could tell he put it on to answer the phone.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  He's like hello? And you're like, yeah, I'm looking for, um, Mike Jacobs, the, uh, voice actor. And he's like, one second, please. Hello?

• 1:47:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually that's essentially what happened, except he just opened, uh, out the gate. He was, he was performing.

• 1:47:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:47:37Speaker 03

  He was, uh, auditioning straight out on his own. But the thing is I emailed him, so he knew I was gonna call. So of course. But nonetheless, when I heard Jake talk, I was like, oh, I did hit me like, okay, I see you. Um, and then.

• 1:47:49Jocko Willink?

  Got some pipes.

• 1:47:50Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. And then that's why I was gonna ask him like, so you didn't take any voice lessons or anything, but you just got the, got the talent. Out of the gate, just good.

• 1:48:01Jocko Willink?

  Legit.

• 1:48:02Speaker 03

  So, uh, yes. So is at that point, I think is when it started to hit me. And then, yeah, the first song was really, really good. And then the second song was really, really good.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's just the absolute tip of the iceberg, man. They're gold all throughout those albums, man.

• 1:48:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Legit.

• 1:48:19Speaker 03

  I'm looking into it.

• 1:48:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's darkness in the world, as we heard.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  Yes, it's true.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Also some light.

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  We talk about the darkness, but we wanna move towards the light. What you got? How can we move towards the light?

• 1:48:31Speaker 03

  Yes, always be moving towards the light. You gotta embrace the darkness every once in a while, but at the end of the day, you don't wanna just hang out in darkness the whole time.

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  That's why we're writing songs called Carnage.

• 1:48:45Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:48:45Speaker 03

  And so what are we doing? Keeping ourselves capable.

• 1:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:48:49Speaker 03

  As opposed to incapable. We are keeping ourselves healthy, which allows us to be capable. Which allows us to get out of the darkness if need be. So this is what we're doing. We're working out, we're reading.

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  You read a lot. I read way more than I did before. Who was I just talking to? Somebody, I think it was Daryl Cooper, about like, bro, I didn't grow up just, oh, there's a book, let me start reading books.

• 1:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Speaker 03

  But now I'm sorta like that, like, oh, that looks like.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, he said, where'd you grow up? And you said Kauai. He said, I wouldn't have read either if I grew up in Kauai.

• 1:49:23Speaker 03

  More stuff to do, which that was a good point, for sure. Not that San Diego sucks, though. I think I'm just more mature and understand the value more. You know how like when you read, a lot of times it's like, I'm reading, you know, I guess, as far as, as far as reading goes. Anyway, we're doing a lot of stuff to keep ourselves capable. Look, through, okay, let's go back to working out. Through workouts, our bodies take a beating. It's the nature of working out, really.

• 1:49:46Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:49:46Speaker 03

  You work out, take a beating.

• 1:49:48Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:49:48Speaker 03

  Then you recover from that beating. Those are called gains. And we want to perpetuate gains, but you gotta perpetuate beatings as well, so.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  The beatings are the darkness, the gains are the light.

• 1:49:58Speaker 03

  Are the light, exactly, exactly, exactly right. Anyway, so your joints will take a beating, so no worries. We got some good supplementation for those joints and for other stuff. So Jaco Field is a line, high quality, tip top, top tier, quality, supplementation. Joint warfare, joints. Keep your, keep your joints in the game, hundred percent. Super krill oil, same deal, some antioxidants in there too. Super healthy for, it's just a healthy situation, the krill oil. Vitamin D, and I'm going down the line, not in particular order, I'm going down the line in the order that I take them straight up. Every single morning, by the way, back on the discipline, um, disciplined routine.

• 1:50:44Speaker 03

  Thanks for the suggestion, too, by the way. Unless, okay, vitamin D, uh, immunity, keep the immunity up. Also Cold War for immunity.

• 1:50:54Speaker 03

  These are critical in staying in the game. And if you don't believe me, try not take them. I don't try not to take them, but I'm just saying theoretically.

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  If you want to test Echo's theories, go ahead and try it. We don't recommend it.

• 1:51:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, especially if you took them for a long time, then stopped taking them. That's when you get, you see, you know? It's kind of like, it's kind of like if you stopped drinking, if you've been drinking for a long time, you stopped drinking, how like, how much energy you have the next day. It's kind of like that. I mean, you know, in a manner of speaking. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about? Also, discipline the supplement. Okay?

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  It's like a whole thing.

• 1:51:30Speaker 03

  It is a whole.

• 1:51:31Jocko Willink?

  Multiple choices.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  Multiple choice.

• 1:51:34Speaker 03

  Wait, what is?

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Discipline.

• 1:51:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause you can have discipline pills, capsules, you can have discipline powder, and you can have discipline in the cans.

• 1:51:43Speaker 03

  Yes, the whole line of discipline is true. And I, it, it sorted itself out and it makes sense to be like, okay, so discipline powder, I take pretty much every day. Pretty much.

• 1:51:54Speaker 03

  Take it before workout, that's mainly the thing, but if I don't work out that day, just take it in the morning, boom, kind of get off to a good sort of start, you know? Um, the can, I use it as essentially an energy drink.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Except for you don't feel like junk.

• 1:52:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's like more refreshing than an energy drink. So it's kind of like a, like a, I don't know, a refreshing energy drink.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:52:18Speaker 03

  Multiple flavors, by the way. Um, and then the pills, that's sort of like on the go. I only took the pills one time.

• 1:52:24Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it doesn't.

• 1:52:26Jocko Willink?

  Taken the pills many times.

• 1:52:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it hasn't rolled into my routine as seamlessly as maybe in your situation.

• 1:52:32Jocko Willink?

  Nice to get that little hitter.

• 1:52:34Speaker 03

  Yep, it's true.

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  Nice to get that little hitter, boy.

• 1:52:37Speaker 03

  I would imagine so, yes, but.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  Jaco White Tea, we got that as well. We also got Molk, so look, you need supplementation. We talked about, we talked about the gains being the light. Well, you need something to build the light with.

• 1:52:51Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 1:52:52Jocko Willink?

  From a physics point of view, when you want to make gains, you need protein. You might as well have protein that tastes like a dessert.

• 1:53:02Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself some Molk.

• 1:53:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's true. So my son, he's four, he'll be four this month.

• 1:53:10Speaker 03

  Goes into the closet. This was not yesterday, the day before, day before yesterday. Goes into the closet, gets the peanut butter milk. Not the kid, though, where your kid one. And he says, can we make some milk shakes? Straight up.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it awesome that your son wants something as much as you want him to have it? Yes. Here, go, like, how often you get to say to your kid, yes, they're begging you to do something that's gonna make them healthier, stronger, and a better person?

• 1:53:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 1:53:37Jocko Willink?

  Go, have some milk. I'll make, I'll make all the milk you want. How's that sound?

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, perfect. It's like them asking you, hey, can I go outside and do some pushups? Like, do you mind if I do that?

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  Do you mind if I go outside and do a bunch of eight count bodybuilders just to get some? And you're like, absolutely. Oh, can I have some milk? Yes, you can. Let me mix it up for you. Let me throw it in the blender, throw it in the shaker, and just make one up for you.

• 1:54:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly right. It's like, okay, you know how we play, you know, where we wanna be playing, we, we want to be playing the long game. Right? Strategic, strategic over tactical.

• 1:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  So every once in a while, and I've said this before, it's true, every once in a while, you get one of those golden diamond nuggets. That is

• 1:54:22Speaker 03

  beneficial short term and long term. They're rare, they're not every day, they're not every day at every corner, they're not, they're rare, but they're there.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  And milk is one of them.

• 1:54:32Speaker 03

  Straight up one of them. Salmon sashimi is another one. That's my opinion.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Jock White Tea, did we say Jock White?

• 1:54:39Speaker 03

  Oh, you mentioned it, sure. Certified organic, uh, refreshing Jock White Tea in the tea bags and in cans, too. By the way, my wife is on those, on that kick, still, for the last like

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  You can get this stuff at originmaine.com, or you can get it at the vitamin shop around the corner. The vitamin shop around the corner. You don't have to wait.

• 1:54:59Jocko Willink?

  Go get some.

• 1:55:00Speaker 03

  It's true. Speaking of originmaine.com, other stuff on there. Notably, jeans, American made denim. Straight up from the fabric that is fabricated.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Jeans are available, t-shirts are available, g's are available.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards are available. Anything that you basically you need to cover your body, boots. You need to cover your body, otherwise it's gonna get scraped, it's gonna get cold and you're gonna be naked.

• 1:55:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is not good, in many cases.

• 1:55:34Speaker 03

  In most cases.

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  So, get some clothes. Get some American-made clothes, get some American-made clothes that are functional.

• 1:55:41Speaker 03

  Functional.

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  And that's where my judgment stops. You have to judge the other part.

• 1:55:46Speaker 03

  You. Speaking of clothes and representing and wearing things, Jaco has a store, straight up, represent on the path. T-shirts, discipline equals freedom.

• 1:56:01Speaker 03

  Discipline equals freedom. And it does, by the way, in case you didn't know.

• 1:56:09Speaker 03

  Shirts, hoodies, hats, beanies. You know what else?

• 1:56:15Jocko Willink?

  Hardcore Ricondo t-shirts.

• 1:56:17Speaker 03

  Hardcore Ricondo t-shirts.

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  One of a kind.

• 1:56:20Speaker 03

  That I happen to be wearing right now.

• 1:56:22Jocko Willink?

  Wearing right now, totally legit.

• 1:56:24Speaker 03

  Oh, big time. I haven't, I just got this, what, a week ago?

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:56:29Speaker 03

  And, so, I've worn it maybe two, three times, two of which we were recording, not going, I don't really go out in public that much. But no one's recognized.

• 1:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Get mobbed, do you?

• 1:56:39Speaker 03

  Well, you know.

• 1:56:42Speaker 03

  The moment someone recognizes this shirt, that's gonna be a level of respect that's a little bit above the normal level of respect.

• 1:56:49Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be, you gotta be in the game and on the path.

• 1:56:51Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  To get on board with that.

• 1:56:54Speaker 03

  Also, what else on there? Uh, anyway, a lot of good stuff. Um, I was going to mention, yes, shorts. Board shorts, functional. I'm gonna do a whole thing, I might even make a video about the shorts. Cause they're good, they're functional and look good. And they're like double functional board shorts.

• 1:57:16Speaker 03

  They are.

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  You should, that sounds like a marketing campaign.

• 1:57:19Speaker 03

  Double functional.

• 1:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Double functional.

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  They are. Nonetheless, jacostore.com is where you can get this stuff.

• 1:57:24Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kids soap there, right?

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. There you can.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kids soap, go get some of that. Also, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't yet, which if you haven't yet, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you should just move on with your life. I don't know.

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  Leave a review, whatever. We also have some other podcasts. We have the Jaco Unraveling Podcast, which used to be called The Thread. It's back. It's in its full glory. We have, we re-released, or are we releasing the threads that were removed. Now we have the Unraveling. We have some new Unravelings coming. Right now, they're out.

• 1:58:00Speaker 03

  They are.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  Grounded Podcast. Haven't done one of those in a little while. We owe you. Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 1:58:08Jocko Willink?

  Haven't done one of those in a little while. We owe you. But, you know, there's a lot of lessons you need to hear multiple times, kids. So jump on them. We also have a YouTube channel where Echo takes, and he enhances some videos. Especially if it's a video that's very short, and you could easily pay attention to. Then he puts a bunch of enhancement in there to make sure you can watch it for two minutes and 30 seconds. But when he does a three hour video, he doesn't put any enhancements in there. It's just a plain black and white video of two heads, or three heads, people talking. And for some reason, that's the way Echo's organized it, which is his call, you know? But if you want to see what Jake Smith, the White Buffalo, looks like, if you want to figure out why they call him the White Buffalo?

• 1:58:53Jocko Willink?

  Because he kind of represents that. In a, in a visual kind of way.

• 1:58:58Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:58:59Jocko Willink?

  Come and check it out. Subscribe to the YouTube, to the YouTube channel. Hit like.

• 1:59:06Speaker 03

  Smash the like button. I don't think people...

• 1:59:09Jocko Willink?

  I wore out that joke a few months ago.

• 1:59:11Speaker 03

  What, the smash the like button?

• 1:59:12Jocko Willink?

  No, smash the subscribe.

• 1:59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Like, comment, and subscribe. Hey, that's so weird.

• 1:59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, there's a new one out there.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  Is there a new way of saying it?

• 1:59:21Speaker 03

  A new trend. They say hit the like button and leave a comment to help out the algorithm. Something along those lines. Because there's like an algorithm that if it has likes and inner engagement, or whatever, interactions or whatever, it's sort of like, oh, this is a significant video. So let's sort of, sort of push it or whatever.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, we're not doing this big campaign to get you to fix the algorithm. You know what? If you like the videos, watch them. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, check it out. That way Echo can get in your head with his little videos.

• 1:59:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it won't be me getting in your head though, obviously. I know, I think we know who's in whose head. Nonetheless, yes, YouTube, video version, all good. People are agreeing with me, I think. You don't put effects on a podcast, or on this particular podcast, but.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm not talking a massive, I'm talking an occasional little Easter egg rolling in, maybe a something blows up over there. Maybe there's smoke, maybe there's smoke, some smoke coming out of Jake's guitar.

• 2:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Actually, that's, if there's one thing that doesn't need it, effects, it's Jake. He didn't need it in fact today.

• 2:00:33Speaker 03

  It could be cool though. I don't know, jury's still out. Nonetheless, yes, YouTube. Also, Psychological Warfare, it's an album. Not like White Buffalo album, different, more like, well, we'll just call it Psychological Warfare for now. So what it is is.

• 2:00:48Jocko Willink?

  It's a spoken word album.

• 2:00:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Spoken word.

• 2:00:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and those words are speaking to you on your moments of weakness. So if you're about to skip the workout, but I came close to skipping workout too, by the way, yesterday.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  That's why you're looking skinny.

• 2:01:07Speaker 03

  You having fun now? Is that, anyway, almost skipped the workout.

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  If I'm annoyed while we're doing this right now, do you think everyone's annoyed, or you think it's just me?

• 2:01:16Speaker 03

  It's very possible, yeah. It's very possible everyone's annoyed. But nonetheless, I think this is a moment of value, in my opinion. I was about to skip the workout. I've listened to this, I didn't listen to Psychological Warfare, this was yesterday. You know why? Didn't have to. I listened to it so many times before when I really needed it, that it was like, it was sort of in the Rolodex back there, sort of playing. So I listened to it virtually in my mind.

• 2:01:43Jocko Willink?

  And you did the workout?

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  Did the workout straight up, 100%.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome, man. Good job.

• 2:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Still looking skinny.

• 2:01:50Speaker 03

  I do play that game, that one that you play, or we're talking about that. It's like, hey, if you have those moments of like, oh yeah, like, man, I really should hurry up and get to what I was gonna do. You know, any excuse you come up with your head that you're gonna skip the last part of the workout, of the workout, you punish yourself with extra work, you know, for even thinking that. I play that game 100%.

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want to have a visual representation to kind of keep you squared away, go to flipsidecanvas.com by my brother Dakota Meyer making cool graphical art to hang on your wall. Graphical.

• 2:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Also, you know, pick up some of Jake's music. You know, go download the music or order it or whatever. However, you're gonna get that music, go get it, man, go get it. Jake's out there making it happen. Also got some books. The Code.

• 2:02:46Jocko Willink?

  The Evaluation, The Protocols, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual, Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3, Mikey and the Dragons, Discipline = Freedom Field Manual, Extreme Ownership, and The Dichotomy of Leadership. Pick up some of those books if you like what we talk about on here.

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  Also have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. If you need help with leadership inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. If you want to get engaged in the online brigade that we have where I talk about leadership, I interact. You want to ask me a question? You're thinking, oh, I wish I could ask Jaco a question.

• 2:03:24Jocko Willink?

  You can. You can literally come on there and ask me a question. Doing two to three times a week, I'm on there, live interaction. Go to efonline.com. Leadership is not something that you just get and now you're good. And you know what? Maybe you don't want to, maybe you want to ask me about jujitsu. Maybe you want to ask me about some relationship that you're in. Whatever you want to ask me, come and ask me.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Efonline.com. We have the muster. The next muster is in Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th.

• 2:03:58Jocko Willink?

  Then we're going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to extremeownership.com for details. We've sold out all these things that we've done. These ones are less seating because of social distancing. So they're going to sell out even quicker. We have EF Overwatch. If you need leadership inside your organization, you want experienced leadership, go to EFOverwatch.com where we have candidates that are proven leaders from the military that understand the principles we talk about. Go there and hire someone. EFOverwatch.com. We also have AmericasMightyWarriors.org. That is Mark Lee's mom, who is on a mission to do good,

• 2:04:44Jocko Willink?

  to help service members, to help their families, to help Gold Star families, to help people that are deployed around the world. If you want to get involved or donate, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  And if you enjoy overdoing things, and you want to hear more of my conspicuous questions, or you feel like you just can't live without a little bit more of Echo's illogical inquiries,

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on the Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And Jake the White Buffalo can be found on the interwebs at thewhitebuffalo.com, Facebook, The White Buffalo, Instagram, BuffaloCo, Twitter, Blanco Buffalo, and his YouTube channel is The White Buffalo. And thanks again to Jake for coming on the show, for sharing your vision, your voice with us. Thanks for taking care of our veterans.

• 2:05:53Jocko Willink?

  And thanks for adding a soundtrack to my life and to all the veterans out there. Thanks for stepping up into the madness, into the darkness.

• 2:06:05Jocko Willink?

  And thanks for not backing down. And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the first responders out there. Thanks for keeping the darkness at bay on the home front.

• 2:06:23Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there. The words from a white buffalo song called "When I'm Gone", he says, "I feel it closing in on me. I got to be all I can be in this life. There ain't no guarantee you don't get no shit for free." What does that mean? It means you gotta get out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.