#676 - Billy Strings

Billy Strings is a Grammy award-winning musician and songwriter from Muir, Michigan. His latest album “So Much For Goodbyes” is out August 28th. Billy returns to talk to Theo about how being a dad has transformed him, breaking his leg in a freak skateboarding accident during a show, and how he’s honoring his mom’s unique spirit through music. Billy Strings: https://www.instagram.com/billystrings/ Recorded at Mackinaw Harvest Studios: https://www.mackinawharvest.com/ ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Prize Picks: Go to https://link.prizepicks.com/LME0/THEO and use code THEO Moonpay: https://moonpay.onelink.me/O2ia/t34p5kxg Acorns: Go to http://acorns.com/theo to get your $20 bonus investment today! Better Help: This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. See if BetterHelp is right for you at http://BetterHelp.com/Theo Morgan and Morgan: Visit https://forthepeople.com/THEO to see if you might have a case. Morgan and Morgan. America's Largest Injury Law Firm. Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Mail stuff to: ATTN: TPW PO BOX 40137 Nashville TN 37204 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend X: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:25Speaker 01

  Today's guest is a three-time Grammy Award-winning musician and songwriter. His new album, So Much for Goodbyes, is out August 28th. And he's on tour the rest of the year. You gotta go see him if you can. You gotta see him live. We filmed this up in Grand Rapids, Michigan at Mackinaw Harvest Studios. We want to thank Michael and his team over there for the hospitality. It was second to none. And so was this conversation. This is one of my favorite chats ever. So grateful for his time. Today's guest is Mr. Billy Strings.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Dude, good to see you, man.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you too.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  It's awesome, bro.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for coming through with the old stomping grounds, man.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  This is it, Grand Rapids.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, glad to have you in Michigan. I grew up like, I don't know, half hour, 40 minutes away from here over in Ionia and Meow. But yeah, Grand Rapids, we used to come over here a bunch when I was a teenager and party. It's a good city.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Would you guys come like on a Saturday night? Would like your proms be here? Like, was it like that kind of place? Or was it like, was this like going to the city?

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I never went to prom.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  You didn't?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  No. I actually didn't want to. Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Were you like one of those kind of like anti like, like, because there is something about prom that's kind of like establishment, I think, especially when you're in high school, kind of?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it just wasn't my vibe. And I had a girlfriend at the time and really pissed her off that I didn't want to go. I think she ended up going with like Dylan Youngstrom or something.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Nah-uh. Dylan fricking Youngstrom?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  What the heck, dude?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Either way.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Bro, I was in band with him, dude. He couldn't even make first chair.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Fuck. That's crazy, dude.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was pissed, but understandably so. I was like, what kind of, like, what an asshole thing, like, nah, I'm not gonna go. Later on, I'm like, man, I was a real dick.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  But what was the reasoning behind it? You don't seem like a guy that doesn't have like reasoning kind of behind it.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Prom, I just didn't want to go. Dress up and I don't really dance and what? They're not gonna be playing good music anyways and just, I don't know. It just kind of like seemed like not my scene, you know?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's hard to go from kind of like picking to like to the window to the wall, you know, to the sweat comes off the balls.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Definitely would have been what they were playing.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of crazy that that's the music that we like feed to the kids, like from the window to the wall to the sweat comes off the balls or whatever.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  I remember that was always on like Need for Speed back in the day, the video game. And yeah, it's crazy how nostalgic that music is now, like all that like Rick Ross and Young Jeezy and stuff like that. It's like you hear that and it brings you right back to like those parties.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, there was just something about like all those young parties, dude, when you would show up at a party, bro, and like somebody had like a fence on the side of the house. You would open the fence and go back into the party or go into the house party. And somebody's just parents were unfortunately out of town. Like, all they done is like driven to see your mom's sister like two towns over. And they had no idea that their insurance was at risk.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, around here, I mean, I think everywhere kids are partying, but around here, it's, there's nothing better to do, you know? So, yeah, we always just, that's all that life was about is like, where's the party at?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, and then sometimes you would just drive around and look for a party. And for like four hours and people would just make up parties. Dude, I, I would always make up parties of, dude, there's a party, it's like seven miles out that way and people would fucking drive out there. And we would just sit there like yarn and things or whatever, like in the parking lot and just die laughing, just knowing that like everybody was headed out to some invisible fiesta.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I miss those, those days though. Like, I look back on it now and everybody like pulls all their cars into a field and burning pallets and just like, you know, somebody's got a keg and it like, around here, it always ended up in a fight at the end of the night. It would be like, once people got drunk enough and then somebody finally would, it would pop off and then it would like, the whole place would just erupt and everybody would be fighting.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  That happened all the time.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, dude, things have to end either like in a fight or desert, I feel like. Like, that's kind of the American way. Dude, our shit was somebody would always, some fucking, some little like summer school junkie would throw a, like a WD-40 bottle into the fire.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's a good move.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  And then it would just be, it would be like 30 seconds of like Vietnam. It would be like, it would be like watching Hacksaw Ridge like really fast, you know? And that was always, that was always kind of how it went. Did you guys have some people in town? Did you guys have any like characters in town that were like sort of like, like local celebrities in the sense like that was like the guy in town that was like this thing or something?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of those different cats and for different reasons, you know? One of my dear friends, Darren Page, he's no longer with us, but he was like super popular, you know? Good-looking dude, I think he was like on the football team and everything and everybody loved him, you know? And he got into like drugs and shit and it sort of drug him down. It was weird to see because like, you know, it was kind of like the kids that were from a more stable family maybe would go down the wrong path and they wouldn't necessarily know how to handle it. Where I come from, like a family that was like full of drugs and I've always been real careful, you know, because I saw it.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  But I think kids that were more like sheltered or something, sometimes those are the kids that would like end up overdosing or, you know, going to prison or just taking it way too far.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they get loose. It's like suddenly like they had no cookies and suddenly they get, they just wander in the damn, you know? They just wander like in the Keebler's tree or whatever, you know? And then they're gooning, bro.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then there was folks that were, you know, famous for other reasons. There was this guy, one of my best friends ever, he's also dead, from an overdose, Kevin Clayton. One of the craziest motherfuckers I've ever known in my life, dude. Just absolutely nuts and hilarious and would.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  What, like, how was he funny?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Just, he was funny, he was just funny, man. He was always like, you know, just trying to get high and he would go to like jail or something and get out and go back to the same old shit. And he like, you know, he was just a fun person to party with. He was nuts.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  He was always like, come on, bro, let me get 50 bucks, I want to go Budakoot, you know? He was like one of the first people I ever smoked with and stuff and.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Budakoot?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that means like banging oxy.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Oh dang, I thought he meant go down on somebody.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Come on, bro, let me get 50 bucks, I want to Budakoot. And he was fucking nuts, dude. One time, we were at, over at my mom's house and it was when that game Skate had just came out on Xbox, the first skate. And it was just like me and Kevin and my brother and another friend of mine. And I wasn't drinking, I was just, I didn't feel like it that night. I was just hanging out, I just wanted to play my video game. And so I got this brand new Xbox and I'm sitting there playing and fucking Kevin and my brother, they got this, for some reason, they had a Mountain Dew bottle full of Southern Comfort and like a bunch of other shit, but they were drinking this full two-liter of

• 8:42Speaker 02

  fucking Soko. Don't ask me why it was in the two-liter bottle, but it was. And then, so as the night went on, they got more and more hammered and Kevin come up to me and I'm sitting on the couch and he put his arm around my neck and he kind of put me in a headlock. And I was like, dude, stop, like, I'm not in the mood, you know?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hate it when people do that.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Sometimes I don't, like if it's around the holidays or something and we're gonna get something afterwards, but if they're just doing it for no reason, I don't like it. Anyway, go on.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  But yeah, he was all drunk and, you know, he put me in a headlock like this and I'm like, dude, stop, you know, I'm not in the mood. And he fucking squeezed harder. So I'm like, dude, stop. And then I'm like, fuck it, I just start hitting him. And I'm hitting him like this and we kind of break up and then like, I'm sitting there on the couch and he kind of tries to go at me and my brother is like right there, he's like, that's my little brother, you're not gonna fuck with him. And Kevin tries to get up off the couch. Every time Kevin got up, my brother grabbed him by the face and sat him back down. So then Kevin swung at my brother and they started fighting. And they, they were going from one end of the house to the other and I was moving furniture and everything. I was like, you know, because they're gonna tear my mom's house up.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, dude, when a bad fight happens, you gotta get the shift robe out of there. That's the first rule, you better move that dinner table.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  All that, and then they'd go, I'd move that and then they'd go to another room. Anyways, they knocked my Xbox clean over, those little AV cables stuck right in the TV and broke off. You know, I'm like, damn, I can't play my game anymore. So they ended up, Kevin ended up on top of my brother like this and just hitting him. And I watched my brother's eyes close and his head just started, I'm like, dude, he's done. Like, he's done, he's knocked out and he kept hitting him. And so I just picked up this full 22-ounce steel reserve and I hit Kevin in the head and I knocked him and the bottle didn't break, it just went thump. And then he's going.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  And then they're both sitting there, laying there knocked out on top of each other. And uh, my, my brother woke up and he said, what, what'd you do? You killed him. And then uh,

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Did you think you killed him?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  I don't know. I heard him. He was snoring and grunting. And then uh, Yeah. And then so my brother woke up. He's like, you fucking killed him. And uh, and I'm like, dude, this is crazy. And, and then Kevin woke up and he's all disoriented and he's like, he's like, what the fuck? He's like, what the fuck was I doing? And then he sees my brother and he's like, I was kicking your ass. And they just went right back at it. Dude, I got the hell out of there. I was like, fuck, you guys can fucking kill each other. I don't care. So one of my friends picked me up. We went down to, uh, over to my friend Benji's house or whatever. But then Kevin, he fucking left my house uh, that night. From my mom's place in Muir, all the way to his place out, out on like Stage Road or something.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Uh, or Nickel Plate. I can't remember, but it was a long ass walk, seven miles in the blizzard. And he fucking, he walked all the way there and one of his shoes and one of my brother's shoes. And then uh, and he called me, I, you know, I got to where I was and I went to sleep. And then five o'clock in the morning, I got a call from Kevin. And then uh, he just says, I'm like, fuck, answer it. It was his dad's home phone. Hello? And he just says, wait until I find you, you little bitch. I'm gonna beat your head into an oblivion. And he hung up. Like, god damn it. Now Kevin's gonna beat me up. And then the next-

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Dude, he holds a grudge, huh?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. He was nuts, dude. And then uh, the next morning he called me and said, bro, I'm sorry. Let's go skate. And then I met him down at the skate spot and he had a big old fucking goose egg like that sticking off his bald ass head. Cause he just had his head shaved, cause he just went to boot camp.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Oh shit. Like, was it big? Like, like sometimes people get hit in the head and then it looks like they're like growing another head.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  It was like a cartoon shit. It was like a, you know, big ass fucking goose egg right there. You know, like one of them uh, I don't know, on Looney Tunes or something.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, dude, or like that power slap. You ever seen that power slap thing?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Oh my, why do people do that, dude?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't know.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Have you been to one?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I've been there, dude. I've been there. It's, it's, it's like, it's, I mean,

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Uh, to me, that just seems so like,

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Dude, the craziest part of it to me, well, first of all, one time this guy had this big, uh, like he'd almost like sprouted another head, kind of like, like he was looking like he was gonna be on Abby and Brittany, you know, or like some like, you know, like a conjoined twins TLC type of thing, you know? And then somebody, and then he, yeah, looked like he was like sprouting another head and somebody had drawn another face on this big thing that was growing out of him. So that was pretty dope. Dude, one time I saw a guy after the fights, he was in the carpool line. I'm like, dude, you just, you were just like slapping like, like, I don't know if you're safe to just get into a, into an Uber or whatever, you know? It was bananas, dude. But those people really love it. I think the thing about it is like, this is one thing I learned about some sports.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  We may look at it like it seems insane, but it's just if somebody likes it.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  There's that new one where it's like people from Tonga or whatever, or people from Hawaii are just running at each other and hitting and like running right into each other. Have you seen that one? Dude, you know what I'm talking about, Trevin? Yeah, it's just like, it's kind of like speed dating, I guess.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Well, it's like, uh, Well, it kind of reminds me of like jousting, I guess, right?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean,

• 14:03Speaker 02

  New sport unlocked.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is what it is.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Oh my god, he's like Ram Man from Masters of the Universe.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Oh dude.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  This is the sport.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  I mean, that's like them rams, them big goats when they headbutt each other.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  That's what these boys are doing.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And it's like, bro, and they have women doing it too. But this is just, what I started to realize was like, to the competitors, it's a sport. So it's like, that's where I kind of started to meet sports. It's like, some things I'm like, ah. Cause at first for UFC, I was like, some of this, I don't know if I like, but now it's my favorite. Cause I realized those people, they just, it's their thing.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, and I feel like there's at least uh, you can defend yourself. You're not just sitting there being like, okay, hit me as hard as you can. Getting like brain injuries, you know? Or what's that? Like CTE or whatever?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, CTE, everybody's got it, I guess, or some people haven't.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, I like UFC. I, I um, I think it's just, it's a,

• 15:08Speaker 02

  it's like an ancient, I mean, combat is, you know, nature's violent, I, I think. And it's, it's like, hand to hand combat is like one of the oldest things there is. It's the most like,

• 15:19Speaker 02

  you know, kind of like natural thing you can do sometimes, even though, you know, I'm not like all about violence or whatever, but I'm just saying like,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  No, it's human, it's part of it.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  It's a great sport, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, what's, what's more sport than two men like, you know, or women or just two people like going after each other and trying to kick each other's ass, you know?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it says here, wrestling is generally considered the oldest hand to hand combat sport. Grappling is a near universal human practice. And predates written history. The earliest surviving depictions of organized wrestling date to ancient Egypt around 2000.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  I reckon it's sort of like them gladiators or something, you know?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, bro.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Like a modern day version of that.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  And then, you know, it's not always, I mean, these people get hurt and sometimes, you know, there's crazy bloody brawls like, you know, Forrest Griffin, Stefan Bonner kind of fights. But then there's like, I saw you at the, at the Patty fight on TV. They showed you a little bit. I was watching that.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Oh, you were?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, you like choked that guy out in like minutes. Everybody's okay.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  You know?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was quick. That was just like Kevin Clayton trying to do it to you on that couch, man. We've all got our own like, you know what I'm saying? We all have like our own moment of attachment to little things, dude. Um, but no, dude, the craziest thing about the Patty thing was, so usually the fighters come into the ring. They have about a one minute inch or like probably a 30 second walk. And then there's like 30 seconds by the cage where they're checking them to make sure that they don't have any knives or whatever. And then they let them go in.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  But for Patty, they had to go, I believe, anyway, they had to go to a commercial break for Paramount. So he just had like three minutes in the ring with his music.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And they, I'd never seen that before. So he just starts like, just doing the uh, he's got the whole place doing the baddie daddy.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And uh, and the place just, it turned into like kind of a rave. It like,

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  That was the energy it needed. So by the time his fight started, in a way, I think, even if you were a, a fan of Benoit Saint Denis, you were suddenly a Patty fan just because you've been doing his moves, you know?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's vibing. Also, man, that,

• 17:25Speaker 01

  It was so dope.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  That is such a, what a, what a hoss, like to just be in that sort of mindset before, like you know, you're gonna

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Fight. Just to be like dancing and happy and hyped. Like, you know, back when I was in high school or whatever, and I was getting into fights, it was always a lot better if it just popped off all of a sudden and I wasn't expecting it. The couple of times where I was like, okay, meet me down here and we're driving down there and I know I'm gonna get in a fight soon. That was like the worst, like the adrenaline and just, it was like, you know, it's like terrifying.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Cause you know, you're gonna get into it soon and that.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're building up, it's all this extra energy and then you're like, you, yeah, people are giving you strategy or whatever.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Goes away once you get hit in the face.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, some guy in a wheelchair kept giving me strategy at a fight and I'm like, that's fine, dude. But it's like, you know what I'm saying? I'm, I'm happy to listen to you, but now it's just like, it was just too much at that moment. I was just like, God, this seems like not the best omen. Um.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  You know, my brother, dude, I was watching a fight with him. Who's that guy? Uh, oh, I don't, I shouldn't say this. He'll, he'll kick my ass. Yeah, I don't know.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  We can not say it?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  My bro,

• 18:34Speaker 02

  my brother said, like that Co- Cosmat guy or whatever.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Oh, Hamzah Kimayev?

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  I was watching a fight with him and my brother's like, that motherfucker looks like the Nutcracker. I was like, holy shit, dude.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Bring it up.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  That's pretty badass.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Oh wait, you know, I think it's Islam maybe looks a little, let me see. Oh, he, I think he has a Nutcracker type of beard.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Shawn Strickland will protect us, dude, if things get bad. But he does, that is kind of a Nutcracker type of beard. Dude, you were talking about uh, you were talking about, uh, oh, what happened to Kevin Clayton?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Uh, he OD'd. He, he was a, you know, he struggled a lot with, with substance abuse. He, he was into heroin and all sorts of shit. Man, around that time, it was like, you know, meth was really kind of tearing everything up. There was a big epidemic, really. And then that OxyContin too. Everybody was robbing each other's grandmas and shit and, you know, their own family members and stuff just to get them pills and, and uh, yeah, Kevin, he got into that stuff real bad. And I remember he was texting me too and, and sending me messages online rather, and saying, man, I, he knew it was coming. He was like, I'm losing control. And I was like, bro, you gotta,

• 19:53Speaker 02

  you're the only one that can put your hands on the wheel and steer yourself out of this, you know? And he's like, I can't, you know, and not much longer after that, I heard that he OD'd. He just, his uh, stepmom found him in the bathroom, like foaming at the mouth and shit and it was terrible, man. But he was also, man, he was a great skateboarder. He was just fearless. Um, he would fling himself down these huge stair sets and not give a fuck if he got hurt. He was, he was just one of the nuttiest people I ever, I ever met and um, like I remember he got out of prison for like a couple of years and he grabbed my heart, my, my skateboard and did like a switch hard flip first try. It's like, you haven't skated in like years and you just did a switch hard flip first try? Like, what, you know, he's just, he's crazy, man.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Everybody around Ionia that grew up in those years, like, he's sort of a legend, you know? Oh yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Dude, there's something amazing about being like a local legend, dude. Like we had a white guy that could dance in our area. And people, and you knew his name for like 40 miles, dude. And it was legendary, dude. This guy Wes, I'm not gonna say his last name just to protect his anonymity, cause uh, but yeah, dude, he was just like, he was a legend. When you were growing up, that's all you want to be. And like, you maybe go to one high school football game and he would come out with the band and he was like the white guy and they gave him like this magic stick. You know, like this like,

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Baton?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Baton, dude. But it was like the king baton. It wasn't like the one that like, there was always that one girl in band who threw it up in the air and she had on like this really thick glasses. You were like, that bitch is gonna fuck it. You know what I'm saying? That thing's gonna take somebody's fucking wig off, you know? But uh, but he, but he had like the biggest baton. He would come out and he would just take it to another level, bro. And it was like, I don't know, you need heroes like that. You need like local legends. You need like, like, yeah, you need legends like that just to build hype, to be like, I want to be like that or just create stories in town. That was always the best, dude.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  We had uh, oh, did we have all those smoothies? Let's bring them in. And we could do a cheers actually to Kevin, man.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Thank you.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  That's Grand Rapids green, man.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Thanks, dude.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  To a toast, man. Yeah. To Kevin, bro. Kevin Clayton, bro.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, we had, I'm trying to think, oh, I remember they had a guy in our town who's probably, when we were kids, he was probably like thirty, and he would ride on, he had a bicycle, but it had a baby seat on the back.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Right? And it was empty. And he was always riding around and, and later on, I found out he was, um, he had like, um, he had like some mental irregularities or whatever. But he, um, when we were kids, somebody said that he was, uh, he had married a man and that his husband, he had married a very small man and his husband had passed away. And so he'd ride around like just on this bike with this baby seat on the back and that's where his husband used to sit. And so when we were kids, it was just this lore. And it was like, oh, man, that's a gay, like a gay gentleman that lost his husband or whatever. And it was like this kind of like, kind of romantic, sad sort of thing. And he would kind of pull up and he'd always be in the distance of like all the ballgames and everything.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  He'd just be in the distance. He'd be like forty yards away from everything. In fact, if he had a memoir, I'd call it Forty Yards Away From Everything.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  And he would kind of sit over there and people would be like, dude, his husband passed away. Years later, we found it was like a, kind of like a mentally, like a guy who had like some mental issues or whatever. And his mom had gotten him a bike and she'd just gotten him a bike that still had a baby seat on it.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  But when you're a kid, you know what I'm saying? There's just, like, everything can have a little bit of magic in it, you know?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And like, it's like, it's so exciting.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  You ever hear about this guy called Mole Man?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Mole Man?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  He's in like Pennsylvania or something.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  No, I've never seen him. What's he, you know him?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  No, I don't know him, but dude, it's like this cat. He's like, lived with his parents and he just has been collecting like, I don't know, stuff forever and, and, and he's been building these like structures out in his mom's like backyard, like in the, there's like a documentary about him and he's like built these tunnels and like all these like little house structures and stuff and he just lives out there. And so, I don't remember how long, I don't know how long ago the documentary was made, but in the, in the film, they were kind of worried about like what was going to happen to this cat when his mom passes away and is the people, somebody going to take his property or how's he gonna keep doing this?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Cause he's the inheritor.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, man, he's a, he's a wild cat. You ought to watch this film.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Mole Man?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Mole Man, dude. He's, you know, that's a local legend right there around his area for sure. Everybody's got to know about the Mole Man.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Dude, Mole Man. Let me see another gander at him. Oh, hell, yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  He kind of has, he looks like he took a hit off a cigarette forever. You know what I'm saying?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah, Mole Man. That would probably be an interesting, interesting person maybe to go talk to, too.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, you should try to link up with Mole Man and see what, see what he's all about. But he's, he's, he's built like several houses and

• 25:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Just in the backyard, like, and he'll just go, say somebody's like tearing down their house. He'll go and grab like some of the window sills and some of the old drywall and shit. And he'll take it over to his place and he just stacks everything up. I don't even think it's like nailed together. See, it's just, it's just fucking all stacked up. Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Damn, that's just figuring it out.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a, I guess ever since he was a little kid, he just like building stuff like that.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  It looks like one sneeze that fucking remodeled that thing, though. You know what I'm saying? Dude, one afternoon of allergies, he's gonna, he's gonna be living in a studio. That's wild looking, though. But just like, it almost is like, dude, I was just gonna say, it's almost like a bee, it's almost like a beaver. Like just collecting things, like a bird that makes a nest, dude. When you see some of these bird nests, they go in there and there's like all these little things that the bird has found from around the community that they just put in there.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Dude, like at my house, out the back window, there's a lot of, uh, like wildlife. We have this little pond and so there's ducks and geese and they're always getting into it. And, uh, groundhogs and we got this little muskrat that swims across the, he's always got a big piece of grass in his mouth and he swims across the pond. He's cool as hell. But yesterday I was hanging out with my dad playing guitars and we saw two of them fucking, uh, affiliated woodpeckers flying across the, you know, right there. And they went up on this tree and they were both doing that shit. I was like, who are they affiliated with?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Oh, they were, and what does that mean affiliated?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think they're probably in like the

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Like a duet?

• 26:37Speaker 02

  They're like the, in the cartel or something, I reckon.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Oh, that could be the damn new Brooks and Dunn, dude.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  That could be Dan and Shay. Who even knows what's going on anymore?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they're just

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Wait, do they do that? They come in pairs?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  I think it was a male and female.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Oh, a couple.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Oh, she probably wanted to go on vacation or something and he probably didn't want to take her.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were up there getting all them larvae out of them, out of that bark.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it says right here, yes, peleidiot, peleidiod. Woodpeckers mate for life. They form permanent, monogamous pair bonds and stay together year round in fixed home territories that they def, that they defend from other woodpeckers. If one partner dies, the surviving bird will find a new mate. You can learn more about their habits via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Holy shit. So, man, that's crazy when animals do that shit. I saw something the other day where a fox, it's like something about like if a female fox dies, the, her old man will just like not ever like get another lady.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  He's like, he's just gonna mourn his babe forever.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  That's honorable, huh?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if like the male dies, the chick's just like, ah, fuck him.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Welcome to Atlanta. You know, it's just, things change so fast, dude.

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• 31:42Speaker 01

  You, it seems like you've had a lot of people kind of pass away from your kind of life, just probably because of a lot of the drugs that came to y'all's area.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, drugs, depression, uh, I mean, it was always like overdose. You know, a couple of friends that I was close to committed suicide and then a lot of people were kind of hauled off to prison. So that's where, you know, a lot of the folks that I were friends with and, and loved and stuff, they, that's like the three ways that they would mostly leave. Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Was, was there a funeral that you remember going to? Like, you remember the first funeral you ever went to?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, my grandpa's funeral, I think, was the first one, at least that I remember.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Were you like surprised that people die? Like, I remember I went to a funeral for the first time, and even though I had known, like, like, we, we knew that my friend's brother had passed away, but when I went to the funeral, I didn't, I don't think I really registered it, like, and then we went to the funeral and like, um, it was like, oh, and it was just like so, it was, I don't know.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember thinking it was-

• 32:48Speaker 01

  It was so much. It was so much, it was bawling, dude. And I just wanted like, my tear, like, I was just, like, it wasn't even my family, but it was just like so crazy to think that like this part of, that, that that's part of it.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And I, I remember wanting to be my tears, my tears were like going into the cracks in the fucking floor. And I was like, God, that's, I just want to-

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Crawl down in there?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  It, well, it just feels like, it's so like, I don't know, I was just like, it's, it hurts already, the fact that you're gonna not have to be here one day, something about it already hurts.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  I think that's how I felt, like, when I was young, for sure.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's tough to think about. I mean, nobody, nobody wants that.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  But it's kind of the only thing you can count on, really. Yeah, I remember thinking it was really like, for, I, it was the first time I saw a dead body, I think, was my grandpa's. And I remember like, I think my aunt, maybe my grandma and stuff was like, you know, kissing him and stuff. And I remember just kind of being like weirded out by that, like, whoa, you know, they're like kissing that dead, my dead grandpa's body.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Grandpa was a freak. Yeah, I mean, I would, I'd be like, damn, I didn't know that was possible, damn, he must have really had it.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, he was, he was badass, man.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Oh, if somebody's, yeah, I think, yeah, if I'm laying there, I want somebody, my friends to come up and tickle me or do some little things like that, you know?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Maybe sneak a pill under my tongue or something, or give me one hit of LSD at that point.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Cause if I die sober, man, then that's what I want. And I don't know if that's crazy to announce or whatever, but yeah, if you come, if you come to my funeral, you're welcome to slide a little hit of L'sud under me, you know?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, help you with, you know, good journey.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, good luck out there, brother.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Let's make it, hey, make it rip, bro. Um, dude, you had your, how's your leg? How's the leg going on? I know everybody asks you, so I-

• 34:48Speaker 02

  It's great. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's healing up pretty good. I've been doing lots of physical therapy and shit. Last time I saw you, I was on crutches. Now I'm just kind of rocking this, this guy.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, that cane, baby.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Billy Wonka, dude, that bitch is hype. Your wife got you that?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause this is the cane that, uh, Lawrence Talbot had on the original nineteen forty-one, uh, Universal Motion Pictures, The Wolfman. And Lawrence, uh, Larry Talbot, in the beginning of the film, he's working on his dad's telescope. He just comes back to, to England or wherever they're at. And he's working on the telescope and then he, you know, comes over and he sees this girl in her window and she's putting on her earrings and stuff. He's peeping Tom and that shit.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, uh, so he sees her and then he realizes she works at the antiques shop. So he goes over there and he's like trying to talk to her. And then he, he really doesn't know what he's looking for. She's like, well, what are you looking for? And, uh, he said, well, what I'm really looking for is a walking stick. And he picks this one up. He's like, this one's pretty cool. It's got a, a dog on it. And she's like, that's a wolf. And, um, so he goes out on a double date with this chick, with her friend Jenny, and she sees this, uh, fortune teller in the woods that's actually played by Bela Lugosi, who was like the original Dracula.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, bro.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  And, uh-

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Lugosi was like that.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  The Wolfman, this is called?

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And he was a peeping Tom?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Lon Chaney. Yeah, hell yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, dude.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  That's how he found his girl. And then, uh, but anyways, that, that fortune teller sees Jenny in the woods and he's looking at her palm, he's reading her palm, and he sees this symbol, that star with the circle in it. And then he's like, you guys gotta dip, like, you know, cause he, he, that's what happens is the Wolfman sees that symbol in the palm of his next victim. And, um, so then, you know, they're, they skedaddle. And then all of a sudden, you start hearing these big howls and shit. And this wolf is attacking Jenny and Larry beats the shit out of that wolf with this cane, cause it's got a silver head on it.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Silver bullets, you know, silver can kill a wolf, a werewolf. And then he goes home, he gets bit in the process and he goes home. The, the old lady drops him off and then, you know, they, the cops show up and he's like, man, you know, the fortune teller was found dead in the woods. And he's like, I'm telling you, I killed a plain old ordinary wolf. And, uh, so yeah, anyways, this is the Larry Talbot cane. I'm a big fan of all those old monster movies, like my dad used to watch them with me when I was a kid.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  And I just, I was really fascinated with the Wolfman when I was little. Like, I wouldn't go outside if there was a full moon.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Really?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause I knew he was out there, dude, just lurking on his tippy toes with them things. Yeah, and, and-

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Dude, being scared as a kid, bro, remember how scary it was? When you think of how scary it was, when you were scared of something as a kid, dude.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  The dark, bro?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Bro, under a bed, get out of here, bro.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, monsters in the closet or something, or you think something's, some shadows, you see the, um, like, when it was nighttime and we were driving in the car with my parents and stuff, and I was looking out the window, we'd be driving past a forest. And I used to call them wolfusus trees, cause I, like, I knew the wolf was out there and like, in the movie, he's like lurking behind these trees and shit and they're all like oily, black. And like, I just always, whenever I saw like the woods at night, I was just like, I knew the Wolfman was out there. I believed in him, yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, I remember thinking that, like, I would ha, oh, that's him?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's Lon Chaney. Lon Chaney Jr.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Damn, he's like that. He looks like he used to play for the Minnesota Vikings a little bit. Like my buddy Steve Sessler. He's got that look. Bro, I remember we would watch those Jase, we would watch Friday the thirteenth movies with our older brothers, and then our older brothers would just go dip and do some shit and just leave the younger brothers alike. The craziest thing you can do is watch a scary movie with your younger brother and then just dip. Because that kid is fucking scared out of his ankles, bro. I remember me and my friend William just sitting there. We sat back to back, dude, we were so scared. And we stayed up for as long as we could.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  We put every light in the house on, except the one in my mom's bedroom, and then we put a towel in front of her door so the light wouldn't go in there. And we had, we were like, we are not losing this plate. Like, just everything was fucking traumatic, dude. And you'd hear a car go by and you'd be like, that's Freddy Krueger.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  It would always be something that was so intense, bro.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  My dad, when I was, uh, when I was little, there was one night, cause I, he, you know, he's the one that showed me the Wolfman and shit when I was, I don't even know, fucking five, six. And, uh, yeah. And so I remember there was one night where I was, I was up in my room and I was playing with toy cars. And I was probably supposed to be asleep and I probably had, you know, school the next morning or something. But I was in there playing with my toy cars and shit. And my dad had this wolf mask and he went outside and I had a window that went off to the back porch. And he, you know, I'm sitting there playing with my toy cars and I, I heard a noise and I like looked around and I was like, what the fuck was that? And I'm like, huh. You know, and I went back to playing and then I heard clearly a scratch on the screen of the window.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  And I looked up, dude, and I saw he was wearing that wolf mask and it fucking, dude, I freaked.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Your dad did that?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, he scared the living shit out of me. And I, uh, I ran out of my room, like down the hallway, we lived in this little trailer.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Did you know it was him?

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Hell no. I mean, I thought it was a wolf, you know? And, uh, I ran and I ran, like, I jumped from like the hallway all the way over to my mom who was laying on the couch. And I just landed right on top of her and I was screaming, crying. My dad came in the back door, just laughing. He's like, it's a mask, it's a mask, you know?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, oh, dude, I-

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Man, it must have been funny, but why would you do that?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  So scary dude.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  He still talks about it.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Bro, yeah, I guess, but I guess, yeah, maybe, look dude, maybe you're like, I'm gonna scare the shit out of this fucking kid. You know what I'm saying? Who knows what parents think? Cause all you have to do is have two beers and be like, hey, I think I'm gonna scare my kid. The next thing you know, you're doing it.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, or maybe it's like, he's supposed to be in bed, but he's in there playing with his toy cars. I'm gonna go, you know.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Oh dude.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but dude, he just scratched on that metal screen and I'm like, I heard it the first time and I was like, what the fuck was that? And then second time and he like moved into the light with that mask, dude, I was so terrified.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  God dude.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah dude, they, we had, uh, we called, they called it like haunt, people would go haunting in our area and it was like, that was like peeping times. They had a lot of peeping times in our area. So you'd see people out there, almost on the circuit or whatever, like people would like hit, like, it was just like a lot of peeping times, you know, they busted a lot of dudes in our area. They had a lot of pedophiles in our area because they used to have this, this law where if he was a pedophile, um, and you might, I don't know if you believe in him or not, I believe in him.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Believe in what? Pedophiles?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Like, do I believe they're real? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're real.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. Same.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Unfortunately.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Same, yeah. But the problem was dude, uh, they would have to come to your door. They had a law, if they moved into the neighborhood, they had to come to your door. But all of our moms worked in our neighborhood, like, you know what I'm saying? Like a lot of, there's a lot of single parent families in the moms work. She'd have a pedophile would come to the door and like have to let you guys know I'm a pedophile.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And it would just be us kids answering the door. Like it was the worst.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  It was the worst idea that they'd ever come up with dude. Because we, I, I remember three different pedophiles or P files, people call them because if they're in a hurry or whatever. But I remember three different P files would come and be like, hey, I'm a, I've just had to let you know that I'm registered and that I'm in the, in the neighborhood. And we're like, and we'd just be standing there dude, just kids.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Well, I reckon that was like, you know, probably the early days of the internet and stuff and long before that like database.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. This was just when, yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  So that's what they had to do is they had to go kind of out themselves. Yeah, well.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  They'd organize them. Cause before that they were just working freelance or whatever, I guess, you know, before they, you know, had them all registered up. But, um, anyway, let's change the subject. Uh, yeah, dude, so what happened? Take me through the, uh, take me through a little bit of the, of the injury. So are you, is it better now, would you say?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, it's definitely getting there. I mean, it's, it's stiff and it hurts a little bit, but yeah, I was just, man, I, I grew up skateboarding and it's always been one of my major loves, you know, outside of music and, um,

• 43:56Speaker 02

  I think, you know, the last little bit, I'd been playing a lot more music than skating. Uh, but I was on tour and I was skating a fair amount. I remember we went through Tampa and I went through the skate park of Tampa there.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Dude, I've been there.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That indoor building?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Bro, that place, bring that place up. What's it called?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Skate park of Tampa.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Dude, this was one of the neatest things, bro. Thank you so much for reminding me about that today. They let us just come and watch one day and watch all the guys skating.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. They have a big contest every year, Tampa Pro. And when I went this last time, all the pros were there warming up and shit. Yeah, it was gnarly. It was cool to go see him skate. But I was skating and you know, I don't know. And like, in these arenas that we play, I mean, you know, it's like, you get to the back door. Sometimes like just the walk to the green room is like a far ass walk, right?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Oh yeah dude, sometimes you have to stop and even get a snack.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I had been using my skate, like I would get off the bus and I would just bring my skateboard and I would like slap down. Also the concrete's always so smooth in there.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is pretty slick and a lot of the concrete in those places is kind of slick.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's really nice on a skateboard, it's super smooth. So I could just like push twice and like be all the way around the whole arena and like, you know, into my green room or whatever. But I, you know, I'd been skating a bunch. Uh, and we finished this show in Charlottesville, I think. It's the John Paul Jones Arena and.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Dude, that's a great spot.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Been there.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we finished there.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  That town is great.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  That's where UVA is.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And yeah, I was lucky that I broke my leg there. They had a great, um, medical team there, you know, like that, the hospitals are great there. And, uh,

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, you break that bitch up in Syracuse or something, they'll just wish that bitch was better, you know? I mean, they can get kind of risked in certain areas.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  It was crazy. So like, I mean, it was really weird. I was all excited after my gig. We just finished the last song. It was this big hide and seek jam and we just spanked the crowd and, uh, and I was all excited. I had all this adrenaline from the show and I, my board was sitting there. We walked off stage. We're getting ready to do an encore. And so I just grabbed my board. I did like a couple bonuses and then, um, I went out just right backstage and I just kind of flung this back one eighty and that's like, it's a go-to trick for me. I've done it millions of times and I've never broke my leg, you know? And, but the thing is, is like, I wasn't like focused and I wasn't really skating. I was just like flinging tricks and I wasn't like thinking about it.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  And so, and it was dark and I had brand new like sticky shoes on. And so it was weird. Like I did this back one eighty and I kind of slipped out. And then when I put my foot down, my body kept spinning and I sort of like sat on my foot and, and my, my shoes were brand new. So like there's, the bottoms were sticky and it just, when I put my foot down, my toe stayed right where it was and the rest of my body kept moving. So I just heard it snap.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Uh-uh.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Oh dude, yeah. I could hear it over the crowd like screaming and it was just, I mean, it sounded like a two by four snapping in half. And I'm laying on the ground and my guitar tech comes up, Toby, he says, dude, get up. And I'm like, I just broke my leg. And he's like, nah. I'm like, look at it. It's fucking, it's pointed ninety degrees to the left.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  And he's like, oh shit. And so I laid there for a minute and, uh, nobody was like moving me or anything. So I'm like, fuck it. I just got up. I lieutenant Dan my ass out of there, you know? I just scooted on my ass back behind the curtain. They came, they cut my pant leg up.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Could you tell it was broken?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I knew it was broken immediately. I mean, I heard it. It's like, and the fact that it was like pointed the wrong way. It's like, yeah, my leg is fucking broken.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Did you try to fix it yourself at all?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  No, no, I didn't fuck with it. Um, but I, I scooted out of there and then the, the medic came and he kind of cut my pant leg up and they took me and they put me on this stretcher. And then I called my wife and I'm like, yeah, I just broke my leg. She's like, what? You know, I'm like, I was dicking around on my skateboard, you know, and fucking slipped out and somehow I broke my leg. And all the like pros I've talked to and stuff, they're like, even Tony Hawk, Jamie Thomas, all these cats. They're just like, man, that's how it happens. It's like some stupid little trick. Like it's always like some dumb thing. But, so I'm sitting on the stretcher and the guy comes up and he's like, we're gonna give you some fentanyl. I was like, nah. Like I'm, I was like, no, like.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Don't you know how far I've come?

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, I was like, fentanyl, like, you know, and he's like, and you know, one of the guys was like, dude, the roads are pretty bumpy around here. You're gonna want that. It's like, all right, fuck it. So they gave me fentanyl and IV. It like took the edge off, you know?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  And at that point I was starting to like go into shock and I started sweating, but I was freezing and, uh, it started to hurt. Cause it, it didn't even hurt when it happened. It just, I heard it and I knew it was broken, but I had so much adrenaline, it didn't even fucking hurt.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  That's wild dude. Was that a pretty, just, that whole experience has got to be pretty wild because like adrenaline is just like a crazy drug that God gives you, but you can't just get it whenever you want.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was wild. I mean, I knew my leg was broken. I just, I couldn't even feel it at first. I just, my leg was pointed sideways and I'm like, oh man, it's busted. But it didn't like hurt until that adrenaline started to wear off. And then it was like, oh, and then it's kind of started coming. I'm like, oh shit, here it comes. And then they gave me that fentanyl.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  They hit you with an IV?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they were doing that and morphine back to back. Um, fentanyl would work better, but it only lasts like 10 minutes, you know?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  And then the morphine would like last longer, but it didn't help as much. But then, so they got me there and they, they gave me a red carpet, man. It was like, you know, we got a, uh,

• 49:55Speaker 01

  You had a police escort?

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, police escort, you know, they're like, we got a high profile patient, you know? And so they've, man, I, they brought me in this back door. They closed off the hallways. There was nobody in there. They wheeled me right into the x-rays immediately. It was fucking cool. And then, uh,

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Did it feel like a movie kind of?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it was just nice that I didn't have to sit there with a broken leg in the emergency room forever, you know?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  And shit.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Getting a little bit of treatment out just to not to sit out there and some other guy's coughing on your fucking leg or whatever. Somebody's fucking, yeah. Some guy's using you to fucking sleep on your back and shit. Bro, our healthcare system is fucking crazy dude.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Just people like, like trying to heal each other, like religiously and shit in the lobbies of a lot of these hospitals. It's just gotten crazy.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  People rubbing pepper jack on each other's fucking necks and shit like, and just people just like thinking up shit they can do because they gotta wait five or six hours to get in there to even get a fucking hug, you know?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Totally. So I was lucky to get in there and they x-rayed it and stuff. And I mean, I can show you the x-rays. They're pretty, pretty gnarly.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Remember when I saw you in Austin, you showed me a picture that was crazy. It looked like they'd fucking turned it into a damn violin.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  That, that one you showed me.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Well, that's yeah, after they, you know, the surgery and stuff. There's one in there like right after it happened.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Before it was even set and splintered where it looks really fucked. Um, but.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dude, turn it into a viola. Dude, what if you had a viola leg dude? And you made it wooden and you put some strings on the side of that bitch?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  That metal bar in there could work as a whammy bar if I ever get it taken out.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  That's what it looks like.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. But dude, the craziest part about the whole thing was, so I get in there and we get it x-rayed. Yeah, that's the one that looks really screwed. That was before it was set and splinted. So it's what they call a distal tib fib spiral fracture. And it's, it means like it's broken like pretty close to my ankle, which made it worse. If it was broken in the middle of my leg, they could just put a rod down there, screw it and like it'd be a lot better. But because it was so close to my ankle, it was, it's a bitch of a surgery, like, you know? And so, but dude, they, uh, they x-rayed it and they're like, okay, we're gonna have to set it and splint it before. Cause I don't, I'm not gonna get surgery till the next morning.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  So they had to get it straight and then, um, and then put a splint on it. And so they needed me to like not be in the room, but they couldn't put me under anesthesia. So what they did is gave me this huge dose of ketamine. And it was insane. It was like one of the most like crazy psychedelic experiences I've ever had. I mean, they dropped me straight into a K-hole.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Really? And take me through some of that. Take me through the K-hole. Was it like, was there a layover or was it just straight there? Was it direct flight? Like, were you getting emails?

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, direct flight. I mean, it was a, it was immediately, everything just folded in on itself. And like language and everything kind of made up all these molecules. And I could still hear the doctors talking a little bit, but they were using now this alien language that I couldn't understand. And I was frozen in this like white space in time and I went down into this other dimension. It was like when Matthew McConaughey is trying to move the, you know, book on the shelf. It was like, I was trapped behind layers of language and, um.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Fuck, that's a good description, Billy.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was, uh, I was there and I knew I was there, but I just, there was nothing I could do. And it felt like I turned into like computer code or like, I felt like I was the, the microchip inside of an iPod sending signals. But, you know, um.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  And it, it was, it was wild. I felt very much like an inanimate object.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yes, dude.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  That's what it felt like.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Dude, yeah, I felt like I was playing hide and go seek, but I just, I never told, with myself. But I'd never told myself that we started the game. Like I felt like I had fucking, I felt like I would never find my shoes again. That's what I felt like. And I also remember feeling like I, like I was like something very small that had fallen behind a piece of furniture.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Anyway, sorry, I just had like, you were making me, dude, that's, some of those thoughts you just had were fricking bananas.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like I was stuck in this frozen dimension and I was just kind of was like, well, I guess this is life now. You know, I guess this is, this is where I'm at and it, this sucks cause I, I think I'm dead, you know? And I just was like, well, shit. And, uh, I was kind of like, well, whatever. I guess I'm just, there was nothing I could do. Cause I was paralyzed in this state.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. I felt like, you ever see that ball in the back of your throat kind of that's there?

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  But you just see like every once in a while, you kind of get a glimmer out of it through your whole life.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And yeah, I felt kind of like that. I felt like that, but on like an animal somewhere at a zoo that had been closed for almost 2000 years.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  That's what I felt like.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that long forgotten.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  I felt like a, you know, like these sunglasses that are just sitting here, but nobody knows that they have a soul and a brain. But they're just, they can't say or do anything because they're just frozen in these glasses. But you know what I mean? So then when I started to come back to, that was hilarious too. Cause I, I guess I started coming to, there's this lady's face right here. And her face is all distorted and she's talking to me in this alien language. And I looked at her, I'm like, who are you? You know, and, and, and then I look over here and there's this big tall man in a white shirt. And I was like, Uncle John? And then, uh, I, my, my wife said I was talking all sorts of gibberish about like the inside of an apple core.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  And that like this has all been predetermined. Like this was all, you know, thought out and this was like part of the plan, you know, everything.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  You had the wizard's tongue, they call it.

• 55:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. For a second there, I thought I was. And then I was also speaking complete gibberish, not saying real words.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that you got, yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  But then, uh, I.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  That's fucking, dude, welcome to New Jersey.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. The doctors were running around doing a bunch of stuff to me and I just like, I was like, I didn't know what was going on. And I was like, I thought there were aliens like fucking with me, you know? Like trying to probe me or something. And I was like, fuck you.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Like I just told him that. I was like.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Get away from my ass, whitey.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  I was like, I'm sorry. You know, I didn't mean that, you know? And then, uh.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. There's nothing crazier than being on drugs and being an asshole and apologizing at the same time, dude. Yes.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Right away. I was like, fuck you. I'm sorry. You know, and then they put this thing on, uh, I mean, it's.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  You're the best, dude.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  The, uh, what do you call it? For, for your blood pressure?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that cuff.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that cuff, it fills up. So I'm laying there, I'm all fucked up and that thing fills up. And you know, probably because of my guns, that thing popped right off, right? The Velcro came undone and it went, it goes pop off my arm. And I go, my butt popped. You know, I just, it felt like my butt cheeks like blew up with air and then they popped like a bubble.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, my butt popped, you know? My wife was like trying not to laugh, but I was saying some crazy shit. And then they, uh, they brought me upstairs and I was in a lot of pain all night long. Cause they started giving me like Dilaudid's and, and hydrocodone, just orally. And it wasn't doing anything to the pain. I just laid there and moaned and groaned all night.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Dude, that, but that seems crazy that they, and did they have to go over with your wife if they were gonna give you all that medication? Like who approves that once you're kind of like?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, my manager was there, my wife, my security dude, you know?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Okay. So there were people there at least like, like keeping tabs on you.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Okay, bet.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think my, uh, my dude Jim, he rode with me over there and then my manager and stuff. Yeah, you know Jim.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Dude, he's awesome, bro.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a killer.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  He's a great guy.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Then the next morning they fucking took me down for surgery and they, before they gave me a nerve block, which was the best thing ever. Cause it just, it's like an epidural for your leg. It just drenches all the nerves in lidocaine. So I didn't feel nothing then for the first time since it happened. And I was like, oh, it just felt so good to not feel it.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Damn, you were like lemon m in the 2000s, dude. You were like, okay, Marshall, nothing matters.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude. For sure.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  That's crazy, bro.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  And they gave me this one shit. I can't remember what it was called, but it had me so chilled out. And then like.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  God, dude, it sounds like it's, this is kind of the worst thing to say, being in recovery, but to fucking say like, yeah, using, using drugs like at a hospital, like under like proper care.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a freebie.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a freebie, dude.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  It was.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  It really was. I mean, and I.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  You, you earned it.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Except for the, except for the, I mean, I sort of enjoyed the ketamine, but it was also terrifying. Cause I thought I was frozen in a.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that shit's horrible.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Different dimension, you know?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're like, nobody's ever gonna come. Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I thought my brain had fried and I, you know, it was like you took a glass of water and poured it on a television or something. It was like all the, you know, my brain just fried. But man, the, the thing that they gave me right before surgery, uh, I don't know what it was, but it had me so chilling. And, uh, I was finally just getting some rest and some relief. And this, and then my oxygen kept going down. So my thing started beeping. So I'd start chilling like this and then it'd go beep, beep, beep. And then this lady would come in and say, I need you to take a big, deep breath for me. I'm like, you know, I take a deep breath and then I chill a little bit and it goes beep, beep. And she's like, I need you to breathe. And I'm like, I am breathing. You know, like just leave me alone. Like I'm fucking chilling finally, you know? And God, now that I'm chilling, you're coming in here and making me breathe and shit.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Cause I guess I was so chilled out, I wasn't even breathing. I was just.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's one of those breath diggers, dude.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  It was good, whatever it was.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Shicks like that, that just wanna fucking, all they care about is you filling your lungs up, dude. The, all those fucking, just those lung diggers or whatever they call them.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Probably the smartest thing that I did coming out of the hospital was I gave all my pain meds to my wife. And I said, you divvy these up, you know?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  You're in charge of this. Like give me my pills when I need them and stuff. Cause I know myself too well. I'd be like, oh man, one of these is good. What, wonder what two is like. So then, uh.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, start hiding them or whatever.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  I'd fucking start booing them. I don't care.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Crush one up and snort it or something?

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  But, uh.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Snort it with my ass, brother. I get it. You know what I'm saying? If I had to like.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Little parachute?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  If, yeah. What's it called?

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Little parachute?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, little parachute, bro. If, yeah, dude, I'd send somebody behind enemy lines, you know? I'd send one of them behind enemy lines for sure. But yeah, I can't trust myself. Can't trust myself.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  I, I, and I'm, you know, I've just been around a lot and I know myself. I'm an addict. So I was like scared to, you know, be on that stuff anyways, but I had to take out, they gave me Dilaudid's. And then I was on this, uh, what is it called? Gabapentin was like the nerve pain thing. And then there was another.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  I just saw a lawsuit about gabapentin. You may be able to be, be, be part of this.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  That shit gave me vertigo like a motherfucker. It was crazy, dude. But yeah, I weaned off it in like, I weaned off like everything in like two weeks. Um, and then I was just on like ibuprofen and stuff. And so it was pretty good.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Weeks. Two weeks is a long haul. Let's read it really quick. Is that new?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Related to dementia?

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Shut up!

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  But, but dude, I'm just gonna tell you just-

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Cause I'm telling you, this shit gave me vertigo, like weird brain shit, to where when I'm laying in bed, and I roll over like this, next thing you know, I'm spinning. You know how when you get way too drunk? And you're spinning and you can't fucking hold, you know, that's what it was doing to me, dude. And I, like, the, one of the first times it happened, I laid back in bed and I moved my head like this, and I was like that, cause I thought the bed was falling down into the floor. I thought I was gonna slide off the end of it, you know?

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Dude, fuck yeah, I know what you're talking about. Dude, when I was like thirteen or something, I fucking, um, the dude left the Gravitron door open at our fair one time, and my fucking legs were hanging out of that bitch, and dude, no joke, bro, I walked sideways for probably almost eleven days after that, dude. I just, like, my body just could not adjust to what was going on. That thing would, that thing fucking remixed my little ass.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  There is currently no nationwide class action lawsuit or multi-district litigation, uh, for these cognitive claims. The allegation lawsuits are being investigated or filed individually alleging that manufacturers failed to warn patients and doctors about potential long-term neurocognitive risks such as mild cognitive impairment or dementia tied to repeated use for off-label conditions like back or neck pain. Anyway, I just, that just passed through my, um, brainosphere the other day.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

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  Maybe dark roast?

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  Vanilla?

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  Caramel?

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  Blueberries?

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• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Just a second ago, you mentioned, um, addiction. When you, like, and you talk about, you know, when you say like, I know myself, I know I'm an addict. Like, what is that kind of, like, addiction is, it's like, it feels like it's almost this shadow that has its own game plan or something, you know what I'm saying? Like, addiction's kind of a weird thing. I think a lot of people don't understand it, and I'm not saying that I understand it totally, right? I know that I have addiction, I know that I struggle with addiction, but I think it's just interesting to think about what it is, you know?

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an illness. I mean, I think some people are lucky enough not to have it. I think,

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  you know, people who can go out and have a couple beers with their dinner, or a glass of wine with their steak or whatever, it's like, man.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  That's, that's amazing. I wish I could do that. You know, cause it, I'm like, we need to like, get a bottle of whiskey and finish it, and, you know, we need to go on a mission to get more after that's gone.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Oh dude, I'll fucking, if I come over to your house and you give me a glass of wine, I'm gonna fucking get an eight ball, I'm gonna sell, I'll sell your front porch on Etsy.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? I'll sell all your fucking windows out of your house, you little-

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  You wanna know-

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna take that out.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  But, uh-

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  You wanna know what's crazy is that-

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  It just, yeah, it's just not gonna end well, dude.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  So, after my mom died,

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  and I was in Australia when I found out that she died from an overdose. I was in Australia on tour, I still had no idea what happened. I was like, was it an aneurysm, a heart attack? Like, what the hell happened? And then I got her autopsy and her, um, her papers back and it's, you know, her, her death certificate, and it said methamphetamine intoxication was the cause of death. Like, holy shit, you know, and-

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Cause that was a surprise.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, big time. I mean, and I had no idea that she was using again and stuff. So it broke my heart, and you know, I, I've been dealing with it, but as soon as I got back home from Australia, I went straight over to her house, and I went up in her bedroom and I started digging through shit and I found her stash. You know, and I found all these, you know, pipes and, you know, little bags and vials and stuff and all that shit. But dude, um, the, the difference is, like, this speed was different than the stuff I was used to. Like, back when I was around that scene, living in Ionia, and that, it was that epidemic at that time. It was being cooked in this area, and it was like Sudafed, like shake and bake,

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  kinda country bumpkin sort of crank, crank.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  I knew you were talking about like, just like that homemade shit, kinda?

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like white powdery stuff, and you, you know, put it in a pipe or a light bulb or a foil and you-

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Like Jenkham or whatever.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Not exactly.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Not exactly, but yeah, I know what you're saying. But I'm just saying, like, it's like a localized mixture, it's like a local recipe.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  But it got the job done.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Anyways, this shit that I found after she had died, when I found her stash, this was straight crystal, glass, and I had never even seen shit like that before, right? I had heard about it, and everybody's seen Breaking Bad and shit, but I'm looking at it, I got this vial, and it's like half-full, and I'm like, damn, and it just looks like broken glass in there, like shards.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, you know, I'd never-

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Does it look anything like that? I mean, we just, we just brought up a picture here.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I could also, I could send you the pictures of it, but, um, dude, you wanna know what the first thought that went through my head was? It was like, man, I should just take a little bit of this and put it aside for like a rainy day.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  You know, cause I don't, where the hell else would I get some, you know, I don't, I don't know anybody anymore or whatever. That's like that addict, you know, coming through. It's like, this, literally the stuff that I'm holding in my hand killed my mom, and my first thought is, I should take some and just hide it, like, that way, if I need it someday.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  You know, I'll have it. And, um, yeah, it was just, that was a crazy thought, you know? And I, I just ended up, you know, getting rid of it. I, I got ahold of my buddy, my friend Alec, who's a, a police officer, um, I went to high school with growing up, and, um, I called him and I was like, man, can you have one of your boys come just grab this stuff, like, I don't, I don't wanna put it in the trash can, cause I'll go digging back through there later, or my dad will, or something, or somebody will, or I just needed to get, like, actually dispose of it, you know? And so, my mom would have hated that. She always told me, don't even speak to the police, but, yeah. Yeah. And another crazy thing too is like-

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  It's a good definition of it.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's how bad it is. It's like, like I said, this, this literally killed my mom, and, and I'm thinking, man, I should just take a little bit.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Put it aside. Nobody would know.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  We, and also thoughts like for a rainy day, or I would be like, let me keep some so I can scrapbook it. That's, I'm not even joking, that's what my brain would do. So I can like, have like a, if I, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'll think like, let me keep some for like a memory, like a, you know what I'm saying, like? But yeah, but there's a part of my brain that's like, uh, man, I don't know, that's just a good. I'm sorry to hear that. I, we texted kind of around that time, but, um-

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, man, and I appreciate you, uh, reaching out. You know, this guy, he's got a big heart. I mean, you stayed in touch with me through all that, when I was in the hospital with my dad, you kept, you know, kept in touch, and you offered to come walk my dog when I broke my leg, like, man, you're, you're a good dude, and I appreciate all that, you know?

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Well, thanks, man. You're the probably, you're one of the realest guys we've ever, we've, you're one of the realest people I've been around. I don't know how God gave you that gift to be so real.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  And I'm sorry to hear about your mom, dude.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. She loved you, bro.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Did she?

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Oh, dude.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, she loved you, man.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Where did I meet her? Somewhere.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I met her somewhere. I'm trying to think if it was at

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  a show of yours?

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  She, was at a lot of your shows, right?

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, she came to so many shows, like, I would be in fucking New Orleans, or Seattle, or Texas, or somewhere, dude, and she would just show up in my green room, and I'd be like, what are you doing here? She's like, oh, I hitchhiked down with so-and-so, and, you know, can you get me a hotel room?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  I'm like, holy shit, mom, I'll sleep on the bus, you can have my room.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Oh. What, um, yeah, what was her spirit like? Tell us, let's, if it's okay with you, let's just think about her for a second.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Man, she was a-

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Hard to explain. She was a beautiful, beautiful soul and um.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  I've never met anybody else like her, that's for sure. I mean, she she was born in nineteen sixty on Halloween.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's a Scorpio. She was like, she was always kind of like psychic and always had this intuition. Always, even though she was an outlaw, she like never, you know, she skirted around the law. And a lot of different times, like, just, but yeah, she loved music and she loved art. She was an artist. She made a lot of art.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  She loved music, huh?

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember being a little kid, like. A little kid and she would like show me all these, you know, do you know who this is? Oh, this is. You know Led Zeppelin or this is, you know, Pearl Jam or this is a, she used to play. She did like backwards masking where she'd play the record backwards and find like secret messages in it. And she was playing me when I remember being just a little kid. She was playing Revolution Number Nine backwards, the Beatles White Album. Showing me, showing me how it says, turn me on, dead man, you know, and I'm just like a little like seven years old or something. It's like, mom, what are you doing, you know? But, but yeah, she was amazing, man. She um, she dealt with a lot of uh.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  A lot of trauma in her life. I mean, I think she had a wild upbringing anyways. I mean, when she was.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Is that a picture of her when she was young?

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, when she was like sixteen years old.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Bro, go back to that one picture. Look at what a curious, but also kind of mysterious young lady she is.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but witchy too.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Like she's just something, there's something different about her, man. Just like she came from like another realm just to audit humanity.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, she, I mean, she definitely did. She was, she was tapped into some shit that we will never really know about. And it was always crazy too, cause like, man, she's got so many crazy stories and. I would hear these stories and I wouldn't even believe them, you know, she's like, oh, I was hanging out with those dudes from blow like. But down in like Miami and shit, they had, you know, they were breaking out lines this long and they were. Um, you know, they had boats full of money. They didn't have anywhere else to put their money, so they just would buy a boat and just put it on this boat and park it in the marina. Like just with full of cash, you know, and then uh, you know, things, just crazy things. And I would, I would not believe her, right? Because these stories would be so insanely just like, whatever, you know?

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  And then uh, you know, like she used to hang out with like um. All the bands she would get backstage. She's got, you know, picture, I got pictures with her like Lynyrd Skynyrd and. You know, all these uh, old bands. She said one of those bands, what was that band? Thirty-eight Special or some shit like that. One of these bands had a damn chimpanzee that would ride on roller skates and bring drinks around.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Really? Who was it?

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  That's what she said anyways, and I'm like, okay, you know, and then later on.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  She seems like such a gypsy woman.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was, man. Later on in life, there would be somebody, you know, that show up, her, one of her old girlfriends or something. Debbie, remember that time we were partying with the band and they had the chimpanzee? And I'm like, are you shitting me? You know, and, and it would always be like some story that I did not believe and. But just crazy, crazy shit like that, man. She's, she's had, she had a wild life and it makes sense that she would go out like that because. She's not gonna go out in some boring way. She's not gonna get sick and drag it out. She's just gonna, and that's the other thing about her is. She would be there and like you're partying and you're hanging out and then it's like, where's Deb? Like, she just, she would just leave without saying a word. And like, that's how she left, you know, is how she always did. And it was a.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  You know, now that I've had more time to process it and just been in a lot of therapy and stuff and like, I mean, obviously it still tears me up. I'm. I'm like grieving a lot in my dreams. Um, I wake up like suffocating in my sleep and I just like, I just, my mom comes to me and I, but it's never like a. Sweet, like beautiful thing. It's always like really painful. And I wake up and I'm just like, I'm not breathing and I'm like. I'm crying so hard in my sleep that it just wakes me up and my throat hurts and my head is throbbing and I'm. And so I feel like I'm, I'm grieving a lot in my sleep or something, but um.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Well, she seems so whimsical. It's almost like the only place you could even. Yeah. Touch her is in your dreams in a way, you know what I'm saying? Like she's just seems like such an ethereal type of creature, you know? We, even hearing you talk about it, man, um. It's so wild that she loved music so much. And that the thing that she created was a musician. It's just kind of like.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know, it's kind of um.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  You know, cause sometimes our mothers go through a lot, I think, and we don't realize it, you know? We, cause they don't, a lot of moms don't, they, they don't really share all that with you, I think.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think that was a big part of her um. You know, addiction and stuff was. Let's see, I mean, she had a crazy upbringing anyways. My grandpa was always drinking, coming in, smashing up the house and just. It was just a wild place to grow up. And then, you know. She was with my, my dad, William Apostle, uh. And he died when he was thirty-five. I was two years old and um.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  And that was only a couple of years after her sister was murdered. So, her sister was her best friend and Mel, who's now. Free, you know? On a fucking bass boat somewhere. He killed my Aunt Carla with a forty-five, point blank, closed case, fucking. You know, um. And. My mom, you know, there was that. And then a couple of years later, my dad died of an overdose or.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  I mean, that's what it was, but also there's a lot of like, kind of word on the street is somebody actually gave him a hot shot. Like on purpose. So like, um, that's the crazy thing too, is I just came across all these, uh, my cousin Patrice. She just found all these old tapes that was, was my grandma apostles from her home phone back in the day and uh.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  It's the first time I ever heard my dad's voice.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  On these tapes, you know? And it's just really crazy, the shit that they were all doing back in the day. Everybody was in and out of jail, all this crazy shit going down.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Was it voicemails and stuff like that, leaving on a message machine?

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  No, it was like my grandma had her own phone tapped and every single phone call would just be recorded.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Sorry dude, that's just so bizarre.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  And perfect for your life. And what a gift now that she had it in a weird way.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  Cause I could hear my, you know, I can hear my grand, or, or my, my dad calling his mom kind of from jail or something.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Bitching about, you know, whatever, this and that, or I need some, you know, uh. Need some money in my commissary. I gave my shirt away to this one guy or whatever. Cause he was like that too. He was like kind of this Robin Hood type, like he would go in. My dad, uh, he would go in and uh.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Some store, Walmart or something. Back in the day, there was them hypercolor shirts.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you'd blow on it and it would change colors.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he would go in and like steal a whole rack of those. Like just come out with the rack and put it in the car and then he would like drive around Lansing and like give them away to the homeless people and shit.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Dude, the fact that the homeless are out there.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Rep in hypercolors, yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Hypercolor.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, those were the shit.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Bro, that's so wild.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  But yeah, I've always heard a lot of crazy stories about my dad too. He was, he was, I mean, they were all nuts, dude. Just fucking wild bunch, you know, hillbillies. And uh, my, my dad, like there's this one story where he worked at a cable company for a while and um. Ever, even.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Was it Eldridge or whatever?

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  It, I don't know, it was some kind of, but.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  But they made cable, like long cable?

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  No, I'm talking about like T for TV.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Okay, bet.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Like, so even when I was a little kid, my grandma always had. Free cable. It was just hooked up. It was like wired in. And my dad had did that when he was, back when he was alive. And um, it's like he would, he climbed up the, the telephone pole or whatever and he's got the case open. And then everybody on Fairfield Street came out of their house and was looking cause their TV got shut off or something. And he's all up there on that pole. He's like, do you have HBO? And they're like, no. And then he's like, he's like, well, you will in a minute. Just go back inside, you know? So he hooked up everybody on Fairfield Street's cable for free, like after he worked for the company, you know?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Shit like that. He was like Robin Hood, bro.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Bro, he'd have, we could use him now to take care of these flock cameras. That's what we could use him now for.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Man, one of the craziest things too is like, that I'm coming to terms with and like learning and, and stuff like that is just hearing him. Hearing him talk about me and my brother and stuff like when I was growing up and he was, you know, he died when I was two, I always thought, oh, well, he loved heroin more than me.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  And I'm kind of, you know, I was kind of like, well, screw him. I got my, you know, Terry, that's my dad. He raised me up. He taught me everything I know, how to play and everything. And I always kind of had this chip on my shoulder about my real dad, but it's just not the case. I mean, he did love me and my brother and he did try his best and he was trying to, you know, get his life straight and stuff. And it turns out there's a pretty good chance that he was kind of murdered, you know? Like somebody shot him up with like, you know, a hot shot is what they used to call it.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Would people do that to people like they didn't like that would, who they knew were struggling with addiction sometimes? Is that a common thing?

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  It's a way to murder somebody with that, you know, it just looks like an overdose. Yeah.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  And I think that was happening a lot back then. I mean, the guy who supposedly did it, Steve Rogers, um, he died the same exact way, months or a year later. And I think his old lady Martha might have shot him up like that because she loved my dad, you know, or whatever. And, but I think there was a lot of that tit for tat stuff going on back then. And, um, yeah, it's, it's crazy to, to learn about and hearing these tapes and stuff. Cause there's also tapes of, uh, my mom calling my grandma apostle, talking about what happened. My grandma Connie on my mom's side, calling my grandma Betty on the apostle side, calling and telling her what happened to her son and stuff like, you know?

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  Apparently he like collapsed in the driveway and like they, you know, Steve Rogers was like, let's get out of here. And, you know, Martha's like, hell no. And, and, and took him inside and was trying to do CPR and everything. And, you know, so hearing all this stuff is really, I went down a bad rabbit hole of it. When I found all these tapes and I started listening to everything and I just, you know, it's like, I'm trying to put these puzzle pieces back together from 1995, you know?

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Oh, it's like a serial podcast.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just, but it's like my dad, you know?

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  And then-

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  You have to go down it. Was it a lot of hours of tapes?

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  There's a lot of them on there. Yeah. I haven't even listened to all of them yet. But there's also just like, I always thought the Lee side was crazy because my grandpa, for instance, he was an outlaw, race car driving, you know, bringing moonshine up to Michigan, crazy, just crazy bunch. And he hung out with like riffraff from, from Lansing and stuff, like all, his whole crew was just like, like cra- dude, crazy. Like there, there's this guy named Art Schaefer and he's still around. And Art Schaefer was like a klepto and he would hang out with my grandpa, you know, he was, my grandpa hung out with like the, the outcasts, you know, he would befriend these guys. There was this guy Billy Struble who was, who was

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  mentally challenged and, and, and there was Art Schaefer and there was Hillbilly Pete, who had a big beard and he always had a big 40 wrapped up in a paper bag. He never really said much, but Billy Struble was always like, you know, helping my grandma mow the yard and stuff. And he was always real proud. Guess who mowed the yard boomer? I did it. I did it, you know? And I was like, hell yeah, Billy. He always smelled like coffee.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  And, um, like bad, like bad kind of stinky coffee. But then Art Schaefer, he's total klepto. And so there's this great story of him. Uh, my uncle worked at this place called Crystal Ray and they had events there and stuff. And so they had all these, um, what was it? Like, uh, turkeys or some ribs or something in the freezer?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Was it like a little, like a convention center type or like a place, like a, like a hall people would go and have like-

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like a VFW, kind of like a, like a hall. They would have like bingo there.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Weddings, maybe bingo, maybe, uh, yeah.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  But my uncle Billy, he, he worked at this place. And so, um, oh, they were steaks is what they were, big old steaks. And so they were going to have this event when they were going to cook all these steaks. And Art, Art Schaefer was good friends with my, my, my uncle Billy. And he found out there was all these steaks there and he went and stole all them steaks. And, uh, and so he had them and my, my uncle Billy, he said, uh, the next day or something, he said, man, he was sitting there with Art and he knew how to draw it out of him. He said, man, Art, man, it's a nice day. I mean, I sure wish we had some of them steaks that come up missing. Man, I'm sure they'd be good. And he goes, they are good.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  You know, he snitched on himself.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  He said, they are good.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Bro, my buddy Antonio, the other day, he fricking, he had some bad zins that he bought off of the internet, like, like a bunch of cans of them. So he went and sold them to like some gas station owner, like at some like kind of small gas station.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Knowing they were bad, but then fucking such an idiot. Two days later, he went to that gas station and bought a can of them. Because he was just going to buy zins. He bought his own bad zins back.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, were they like expired or something?

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. They were just, I think they were bootlegged when he bought off the internet or something. I think he got-

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  Oh, like fake?

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think he got them on Etsy or whatever.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Golly.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  But like bitch, that's what you fucking get for getting zins off of Etsy.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, man, I was on those things for a while. I just kind of last couple of months or whatever. I got off them damn things.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  Dude, it's like we spent so much of our lives trying to get off of some of this stuff.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Now I'm just on coffee.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  And I quit smoking weed back in December. Um,

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  What, what made you want to quit?

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Dude, it was like kind of on my mind for a while, like wanting to quit. And then there was two like real big moments. Um, first what happened is I was, I was leaving to go to the grocery store to go get some groceries and just, you know, get some shit to eat.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dinner, lunch.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just some stuff to put in the cupboards, you know? And, um, I walk out to my truck and I, I'm just like this, I'm like, like, oh shit. Like, you know, I don't have my vape pen on me, you know, my weed pen.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're just frisking yourself.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  I'm just like, yeah, exactly. And I'm like, oh shit. I gotta go back inside and get my pen. And I'm just like, in my mind, I'm like, really? Like, do you really? You can't go 20 minutes to the damn grocery store without weed? And so it just made me feel kind of weak or something, right? It's like, man, you can't do anything without this? You really need to smoke weed every five minutes? You know, and that, and then, uh,

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  It's a perspective kind of.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just like maybe, you know, I was just going to the grocery store. I'll be right back. I can get it in 20 minutes.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  You can't go 20 minutes without it.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Well, that's what's interesting. That feeling of that moment, like whenever I, it's like, if I can just let this moment pass for 30 seconds, I'm going to be fine.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  But this moment feels like I'm never going to have that again.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, I need it, you know? So, so that was kind of weird. And then, uh, the straw that really broke the camel's back was my son was sick. He, he had the flu or something and he was just a little guy. Um,

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Rip River?

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  River. Yeah. He was just a little guy and he, he, it was the first time he really ever got sick. Like, you know, he was throwing up and, um, it was like two days of this. And he was just like nursing, uh, and he was sleeping and I was just like, okay, he's kind of seemed like he was in like a pretty good spot. And like, I was like, are you guys good? Like, I'm going to go upstairs and work on some music in the studio. And, um, he, she, my wife, yeah, he's sleeping, you know, he's good. He's just nursing and sleeping. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to go upstairs and I'm upstairs and I'm working on some music. Of course I'm hitting my pen, you know, and I'm working on music and playing on Pro Tools

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  and shit. And then, uh, getting high, you know? And when I came back downstairs, my son had gotten worse. Like he was like lethargic. Like we couldn't even get his attention. We had to bring him to the hospital and that was the last time I smoked right there. It was like, I felt like such a, you know, my son is sick and I'm upstairs getting high. Like that's the-

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, like a commercial almost.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  It was just, yeah, it was just like, man, I'm done with this shit. And I just like threw all my paraphernalia away and just, I just quit right there.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Fuck dude.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Does it feel different now? Do you feel, have you, what are some things that you noticed since you, since you quit smoking? Cause you probably smoked for a decent amount of your life.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  Dude, I smoked every day since I was like 11. I mean,

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Oh damn dude, sorry.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  I mean, I, by the time I was 12, I was like scraping my bowl to get high, you know? I was like,

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Fuck bro.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  Looking for roaches and shit. I've always, yeah, it's just, I've always smoked weed. The only time I ever quit was when I was like 19 and I got DUI. They put me on, uh, probation and I couldn't smoke for that whole year. So I was just doing acid that whole year.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  But, um,

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Oh dude, cocaine helped me quit vaping at one point.

• 1:30:46Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a, that's a different one.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  So it's, you know what I'm saying? It's just the, the way that some things kind of work out.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, like I said, now I feel like I'm just drinking so much coffee. It's like I gotta have something.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  But I just, I've always wondered about it too, because

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  I grew up, I mean, dude, when I was fucking 10 years old or something, like dude, we were like sitting in a field like huffing rubber cement until we heard mystery music in our head. Like I was like, just a little baby, you know, like trying to get high and uh, you know, but like I said, by the time I was 12, I was full on stoner kid, you know, and um,

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Fuck.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  And, and, and whatever. So it's like my whole life I had, I had always uh,

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  you know, had something like that. And so I've oft, I've often wondered like, what is life like without like drugs and getting high and drunk and stuff? Like what, what would it be like to just raw dog life?

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  You know, like, and it's actually hard, you know, but, but it's, it's

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  It's not as hard as like, you know, I feel like drugs and shit cause a lot more problems than they, than they medicate, you know?

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  I think a scenario like that with the kid would probably, yeah, it would make you have to about face, maybe just even that moment. It's like, I just can't, I can't risk this. I can't risk being high in case something happens to my son.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  And, and also like, I grew up, you know, in a environment that was very pro-party.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember we talked about it last time we were podcasting.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, beers, music, people smoking weed, even the whole culture around the music I grew up with, not necessarily the bluegrass side, but you know, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead and the uh, you know, Hendrix and all this, you know, LSD and trippy psychedelic stuff is all, it's all cool, you know? It is until it ain't, you know, until it, you know, it's fun at first and then when it starts to take over your life or gets too much and you, or you can't stop or you, you know, you overdo it. Uh, that's, yeah, it's, it all starts fun and games until somebody gets hurt. Um.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  What's something about being a dad that you think has been kind of surprising, dude? Has that been like a totally crazy adventure?

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Man, it's the best. I just

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  I met your son in Austin. Remember dude, I met your son and the governor of Maine. That lady Janet Mills, dude, she was rocking, bro.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a good hang. I'm glad you swung by.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  She was rocking and they had that pimento cheese spread over there. Dude, who is that? The some, some

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  I mean, oh, yeah, she's my business manager.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  She's the, no joke, I sense, she's, might be the nicest woman that I've ever met.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  She is.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Just like being helpful, like she's just like wants to be helpful.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what she does. I mean, she helps me with everything on the daily. Everything. She's like my business manager, but I also, you know, she helps me like with like my doctor's appointments and like my, you know, every single thing she helps me with and, and my manager, Bill.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was so nice, man. And then we went to your show and Stephen Wilson Jr. Was there dude? And I got to meet his son, which was awesome.

• 1:34:03Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. His son was there?

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, his son was there and his wife was there. Um, so that was just great. That was so cool, dude. And I got to see you guys meet, you guys, I don't think it, I think you guys had kind of passed, but had never gotten to meet each other.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's where I met him. That was what of uh, was it Farm Aid or no, it was, it was Willie's 4th of July picnic.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  And Willie's kids were there. Micah, I got to meet and his wife I got to meet too. She was uh,

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, Micah's the shit, man.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. I think we're gonna try to go to Farm Aid.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  You should, man.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, dude, that was so great. Just seeing you and Stephen Wilson Jr. Get to meet each other was cool, dude.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a interesting cat and I, he's got such a cool style. Um, you know, I think he's found his like, like his own sound and it's cool because he doesn't sound like anything else that I've ever really heard. Like his guitar playing is really interesting and really cool.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see, he feels like a little bit of like a time traveler or something, but I don't know where he's coming from or where he's going kind of, but it's kind of nice to see him pass by, you know?

• 1:35:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  He's uh, and he has, he has some sunglasses too, that he just mailed me some, a pair of like, kind of, I think he kind of came out or like, maybe did like a collab on some sunglasses, but pretty cool stuff. Um,

• 1:35:11Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's something about, about being a dad that kind of surprised you or does it feel like a surprise at all? Maybe like to somebody like you who like has had so many types of feelings and like kind of traversed so many different moments of highs and lows of life that um, that that's not as big of a surprise. It just sort of feels like uh,

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  I think uh,

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  Like life moving on.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  So the big one for me, um, I mean, besides just,

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  I would fucking rip your esophagus out for him if I had to. Like just feeling that about somebody, like I would kill someone for him if I had to. Or like, you know, like I love him that much that I would fillet you right here, you know? And uh,

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  That's crazy to just feel that love and um,

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  And so it's like a new kind of love, like, like is it, does it feel like a um, cause that's interesting. I, I,

• 1:36:08Speaker 02

  Truly, like I would take bullets, like, you know what I mean?

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  I believe you.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it, I've just never felt that before. It's like, I would, I would die for him. Like I would do anything to protect him.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  It's just a crazy feeling.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Does it feel like a part of you or does it feel like a new, like, does that question make any sense kind of to you?

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, he does feel like a part of me. Actually, what's so funny is the other day, he had this like little booger and I like picked his nose and I like grabbed this little booger and I was like, wait a minute, like, I have boogers. He came from my balls. Now he has boogers. Like this is still sort of my booger.

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  Like this booger was once in my balls.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  You're like, wow, that's so wild to me.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  And then I like rolled it and I like flicked it.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah, dude.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that, bro. Fuck a kidney stone, bro. We on some new shit.

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  But one of the, one of the beautiful things about

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, my fucking boogers aren't even just mine.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And now, yeah, he's got everything. Shit, pissed, puking, boogers and, you know, tears and everything. But man, one of the big like things that I felt like a shift in is that, you know, music has always been like the most important thing to me. It's like been my, the way I've survived. It's been my social currency. It's been my survival tactic. It's been my coping mechanism. It's been everything and it's always been the most important thing to me. My guitar is my best friend. There's nothing that comes before that. You know, and I used to be so worried about the music, like even just on stage,

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  where I'm so concerned about playing well, singing well, performing good.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  Probably because I don't want to go back to where I was, like being poor and not having food and um, just living in squalor and kind of having a shitty life and you know,

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  You have the uncertainty of it all?

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And just like, you know, when you don't have food, it sucks, you know? And um, so I think ever since I started like making money playing music or just making a living off of it, you know, like, I'm like, oh man, I have to, every time I step on stage, I have to just kill it. Otherwise like I could go back to that.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Right. Like the pendulum is there every single time.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Dude, I feel that same way.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  And it's, it's like, I'm always like running away from, you know, I'm never like running towards success. It's like away from poverty and um, and I'm scared that this is all gonna go away and I'm gonna end up in some trailer smoking foils again or whatever. And uh, so I have strangled the life out of the music before because I'd been so concerned about playing well that I'm playing hard and I'm thinking and I'm like trying to lead the band and I'm just like all this, you know, crazy stuff. And it's like, man, that's not really the way to go about it, you know? And at the end of the day, we're just playing music here. It's not the end of the fucking world. If you play a wrong note or you forget a couple lyrics or whatever, dude, nobody cares. It's, nobody's gonna get hurt.

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  It's not a big deal, but to me it is. Like if I have a bad gig, dude, I'll be depressed for days, you know?

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38Speaker 02

  Or something. That just happened recently, really.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Dude, who's your therapist, man? I to, I want your therapist.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  Uh, well, her name is Dr.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  She's in Nashville.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Is she?

• 1:39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Dude, Bush, cause some of the stuff you're saying, it's like exactly like, I've just felt sometimes like in my life, dude, it's like, I feel like, like one little thing goes wrong. It's like, it's gonna, like everything depends on me. It's not true. But it's like, and it's not everything does, like, like, like I'm some kind of god or something, but it's just like,

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  Dude, you're famous, man.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  But it's like, but it's like every, it's like nothing, everything has to go this way or I, I, I can't even explain it exactly. But everything feels like a lot of pressure, you know?

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you got all these eyes on you and everything.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Well, I have my own eyes on me. It's like my, I, I won't like my, I fucking, I'm under my own microscope, you know?

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  But it's like, yeah, it's just like, um, I don't know. I just, I don't get myself enough room to breathe in there where it's like, hey, man, we're having a good time. It's kind, we're having a comedy, you know? It's like we're doing, it's like we're making laughter. And at a certain point, sometimes it's like, you almost start to lose some of the laughter because you're, it's, it's like,

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  You're squeezing it too tight.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything feels so life or death kind of, but it's always felt like that.

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  Sometimes you have to allow yourself to bomb, you know, to have those, like, to have those better shows. They can't always, they can't all be zingers.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  You know, and you have to just realize that. And so that's kind of the beautiful thing about it is like when you're truly improvising, you're not always gonna do it. Like the ball team doesn't always win, you know? Like the Red Sox don't always win, even though they just did like 14 in a row or something.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  And I just went to like, yeah, one of my first ball games out there. That was pretty cool.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Who was pitching? Do you remember?

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  No, I don't know. I'm, I don't know enough about that stuff, but I brought my son to that. It was, it was cool. But man, what I was getting at is like, when I had my son,

• 1:41:34Speaker 02

  When he was like brand new and then I started going to play gigs again, like all of a sudden it's like, I don't give a shit if I play bad. I don't give a shit if I miss a few words. And instead of like strangling the music, all of a sudden I'm singing and playing, I'm, as long as they're okay, I'm free to go play and sing. As long as Bear and River and Ally are good, man, then I can go play and sing, right? And I'm not only strangling the music less, which in turn I'm playing much better and singing better. I'm singing from a place of joy in my belly.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  I'm singing, you know, and I'm playing guitar free from the restrictions of fear. And I'm truly just letting it go and.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not playing out of desperation.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm actually playing because it's fun and I, you know, I get to go play. And I've just realized that, I mean, I play and sing much better now and I always also, every time I'm playing, I have this little cosmic listener that I can just look out in the crowd, but I can picture River's face wherever he is in the world and I can sing to him. He's my little guy.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And also when I walk out the front door of my house to go get on the bus and go on tour, now I have a reason to provide for my family. I'm on an actual mission, not just to go stoke my ego and to go, you know, like, oh, to go play and try to whatever, keep doing this music thing that has always been the most important thing. It's like, no, it's not the most important thing. I am a musician. That's what I do. That's my job. But it's not the biggest thing in life. My family is. And that actually makes me play better because I'm not squeezing it so hard. And now I'm actually loosey goosey. It's like when you look at a cheater run,

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  if you watch it on slow mo or something, it's like they start and the faster they run, the looser they get, right? I mean, they start looking like a spaghetti noodle. And that's kind of how I feel my life is going right now. It's like I'm looser now and I'm just kind of more flowing with it. And I attribute so much of that to my son because he's the only thing that is really truly life or death like important to me. I mean, all this stuff is important. My music is important.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  Uh, my fans are important. Um, my career is important.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  So what a gift he is.

• 1:44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's, it's not as important as, as River.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:13Speaker 02

  So it's nice to have something that's, that trumps, you know, the music that's more important than that, you know?

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Do you think you needed something like that when you, when you're looking at your life now, like you're even able to see that? Cause dude, as you're saying that Billy, it's like, it's kind of funny because it's like, yeah, man, like sometimes you get tired. Yeah. And some of the stuff you made me, it just kind of brought up some emotions. I think there's nice, there's something nice. I always feel something when a dad talks about his son, you know? I think there's something about that that like, you know, all like, I don't know. It makes me feel something when I hear that.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  I absolutely love it. Uh, you know, before I came over here today, I was working in the garage. I'm building him a little table. Like yesterday I went to Home Depot and I got like a bunch of lumber and stuff and I'm, I'm building him this little table for him to play with his monster trucks on. And there's like this big ramp that comes down and they do a loop and they, and I, I saw this, me and him watched these YouTube videos. It's called Our Time for Adventures or something. It's like this guy that just, um, basically plays with these toy monster trucks. He's like, let's go racing. And like River loves it. And dude, I love it. It's like, I sit there and watch him and you know, he just races these monster trucks.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  And so I'm building him like one of those tables like that. And I, that's what I was doing before I came over here this morning. Is like working on this like table for my son and, and you know, just, just stuff like that. It's like, like, yeah, like that, you know, like that table.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Oh, sweet.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  And it has these like little things. He lets go of them and then they ramp. So I'm like building one of these for my little dude and, um, so he can have like a cool table to play with his monster trucks on. He loves monster trucks.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so fun, dude.

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Do you almost get to have some childhood moments that you didn't get to have through your son? But you almost have them like in reverse psychology? Does that make any sense to you?

• 1:46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get to, um, view the world again through these kind of more innocent eyes and more curiosity, um, which is an amazing thing, you know, because I grew up really quick. I mean, I, like I said, by the time I was 13, I was, I moved out of my mom's house and I was, you know, I look at a 13 year old kid right now and I'm like, oh my God, I was like homeless at that time.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  Sleeping on couches, you know, like holy shit. I didn't really have, I mean, I had a good childhood for a little bit, but then it got, things got kind of rough. And I feel like a lot of my child, I had to grow up too quick.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, that's a great way to put it.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  So yeah, I just, man, I love playing with, with my son and like, just, you know, his little toys and watching like cars or whatever, like he loves Lightning McQueen.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  And dude, I've watched that movie so many damn times. It's so good.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  That's kind of nice that you get to do that and go back and have those moments. Yeah, dude, even when I think back, when I was like 14, I moved out and lived with some other people. But before that, for like about a year, I would go to school each day and I'd stay with like a different friend's family or something.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  So it'd be like, I'd be at school and all day, it's funny, I didn't even think about this till just now. All day, part of my day was, how am I going to convince somebody at school today to let me stay over there?

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  So sometimes it would get to like fourth period and shit. He'd be like, fuck, I've already exhausted a couple of options, dude. I'm going to fucking have to stay with somebody I don't even know, dude. And sometimes it would get a little weird, bro. Like there was like two days, two nights I stayed with one of our janitor's families. We had a vice principal used to sleep in his trunk, the trunk of his car during fucking recess.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  I'd go over there, I'd go over there and I seen him get in there a couple of times. So one time I mentioned that to him, like a little bit of like, not like bartering, like trying to like threatening to snitch, but a little bit of me was like, dude, I fucking know what's going. Like I don't, I didn't know if he was smoking dope. I didn't know what he was doing. But just the fact that he's over there sleeping in his trunk, I think he didn't want that information out there. And his wife worked at the other school and said, they let me go stay over there for a couple of nights. But I'd always remember I'd have this big backpack and it had all, because it had all my stuff in it. Like it had my change of clothes. It had my toothbrush. It just had my stuff. So it was like, you know, I forget about sometimes like, I think you're right, just growing up quick. It's like the other stuff that you're thinking about that other kids aren't thinking about probably, you know?

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  In a lot of ways I, I'm grateful for it.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you think, do you think like, so say you're a dad that doesn't get to be there as much as he wants for his son, right? Like maybe you like heard from listening to some of your dad's like tapes and stuff from the voicemails and the, the conversations he had with your grandmother, right? Just, this is all kind of a hypothetical thing. Or say you're the kid that didn't get this, some of the experience he needed, right? Or some of the nurturing and like, or just like the connection that he needed, right? Do you think that, like as a dad now, like, do you think it matters which side of that equation you're on? Or either side, you can get the healing from one side? You know what I'm saying? Like, is there a little bit of healing, you think for like the kids? Like a young person out there who maybe didn't get some stuff?

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  If they are able to apply themselves as a dad, do you think that there's some healing like in some of that? In the dad side of it? Does that make any sense? Sorry, I'm kind of yelling. I feel like some of that stuff gets me kind of animated.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  No, man, I, I think like.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Does it make sense to you when I'm asking you?

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think I am trying to like maybe heal some of my childhood through being his father.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  And I think as he gets older and older, I will be able to do that, you know? Just, I want to like be present. That's part of the, you know, another part of the reason I quit smoking dope and stuff, you know?

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  I just want to be there. I want to be there. He looks at me with these big clear eyes. I want to be clear, you know?

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  But yeah, just like it's, it's a way for me to kind of, you know, redo my childhood and stuff. Now, there's this other thing that I have.

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  It's like this experiential density, like because of the hardships that I've been through and even as a young man, uh, teen, you know, teenager, young kid, um, I am able to have this perspective that I feel like a lot of people don't have. And I have this, um,

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  kind of like terminal uniqueness in a way that's like, I never feel like anybody would know what it's like to be in my shoes. Like what I've been through, what I've seen, the life I've had, you know, the, the trauma that I've dealt with, you know? Cause it's much more than just, you know, having parents that were on drugs. I mean, I was molested when I was a child. I was, you know, fucking sodomized before I was, you know, seven years old or something.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  You know, and so that, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of shit. And I, I live on this island that I feel like nobody would ever understand what it's like to be me, right? And so I think.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  That's like more the negative side of it. But the experiential density, I think is kind of like, I can use it as a positive thing. Where it's like, I have this perspective, like, most people, like, you know, not most people, but a lot of people, you know, they grow up and their parents feed them and they buy them a car when they're 16 and everything's fine and like, man, I didn't have any of that shit. You know what I mean? I had to figure it out for myself and I have this perspective.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  That a lot of, you know, by the time I was 15 or whatever, I was more of an adult than my teachers.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:38Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? And, um, so, one thing that I've kind of considered at one point was, uh, my wife and I, we were looking at houses in Nashville. And, we ended up just staying where we are and we're gonna like, do a renovation and stuff. But we were kind of house shopping a little bit. And, you know, I was looking around at these different houses and they're all, they're all like, I didn't want any of them because they're all like on an acre and a half and they're like tall and skinny and it's like, man.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:06Speaker 02

  I want to live in the country, you know, I don't, I don't like this shit.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to live in a bunch of stairs. That's what some of those houses feel like, a bunch of stairs.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  It's like, where are you? I'm on the stairs.

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like you look out the window and you can see your neighbor, you know, washing their dog or whatever.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  And it's like, uh, um, but, as we were looking at these houses, and I was looking at, you know, there was a couple that we were kind of thinking about. And I was like, man, is my son gonna be a kid that grows up in a house like this?

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Cause I grew up in a moldy meth house, you know, that didn't even have a furnace, you know, we just had like a wood stove that always went out.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. Oh, our living room was fucking sinking, dude. We'd have to have, my, um, my mom's boyfriend would come and spray like this kind of foam under the fucking carpets to kind of even it out.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  They're just fucking retarded, dude. I think our whole side of our apartment complex was sinking.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  But, no judgment.

• 1:53:07Speaker 02

  Oh, you told me about your balcony.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, people fucking kept stealing it.

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. The balcony would just fall off or whatever.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  What the heck, dude? People would kept stealing it. Bring that picture up one more time, dude. Right there.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  That's the balcony?

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. They put Christmas lights where it used to be, like, bitch, we know there was a balcony, there's still a door there. What the heck? Dude, we would come home and somebody would have stolen our fence, because there was a front, there was a front gate in front of the, like, of the apartment. And then there was a, there was a balcony and people would steal it and they would-

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  How do you steal a balcony and for what reason?

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  For the wood.

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  Just for the wood?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the textiles.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they would use it down at their joint or whatever.

• 1:53:51Speaker 02

  That's such a strange thing to steal.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  A balcony?

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  But I think it was easily like, um, I think we didn't hammer it in good or whatever.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  They could just remove it really easy.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, dude.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  Throw it on a flatbed and get the hell out of there?

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  I think, not a flatbed, people would fucking just run down the street with it on their backs. Because three blocks away, somebody would have a new baby crib or something made out of half of it.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  Dude, we fucking, that neighborhood was bananas, dude. Our, bruh, oh.

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  It was fucking bananas.

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  I'd like to go check that place out sometime, dude, your hometown?

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  It was cool, dude.

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  It'd be sick.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  And I'll have to go up to, uh, Ionia sometime, too. We're close, we wanted to be able to go up today and see, see some of it, but, next summer, we're gonna have a better plan and I'm just gonna come and do a trip in Michigan. I want to go to Charlevoix so bad.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  What, what about Charlevoix is drawing you there?

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  I just heard about it. It sounds kind of magical, I want to go to Traverse City.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Traverse City, I understand, but like, I mean, Charlevoix, too, it's a nice place, don't get me wrong, but I just feel like Traverse City would be like the more destination. Charlevoix is like, a smaller place like outside of Traverse City. There's like water there and marinas and stuff like that, but-

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  I guess I just can't imagine it. Dude, we went into Lake Michigan yesterday. Dude, we took a ride on a boat in the Chicago River. And dude, it was the cool, one of the coolest things I've ever seen through the city.

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  It just, if you ever get a chance, honestly, it really is like, because I, I just couldn't even believe it, like, and I was like, oh, I've never gotten to go like on a boat through like a middle of a city kind of, I know you can do that here in Grand Rapids, but it's just like, you know, Chicago's just a, it's a bigger entity there.

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  Kind of like reminds me of like Amsterdam or something, there's all those little canals.

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Venice and Amsterdam? Oh, yeah, Amsterdam has a ton of them. Dude, um, what about, uh, what's that island place with the dunes? You ever seen that place?

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  Sleeping Bear Dunes.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Is that cool?

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  It's very cool.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, I heard about that.

• 1:55:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a beautiful place. Michigan has some like, damn near tropical like paradise, like, look at that blue water, dude. There's not water like that anywhere and it's fresh water.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Bro, that's what I'm saying, like, even when I got into Lake Michigan, yeah, in Chicago, like, we went all, like, off the coast a little bit, I, I'd never knew it existed like that, like, I knew the lakes were there, but-

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we gotta keep it a secret, bro, we shouldn't even talk about this.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:56:10Speaker 02

  I don't want any more people.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  No, some, some stuff, dude, you want to keep it a secret. But we went to that Field of Dreams baseball game.

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  Where was that at?

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Um, Dyersville, Iowa, you ever seen that movie? It's an old movie.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we went to Dyersville.

• 1:56:22Speaker 02

  Oh, I saw a video, you ate a bunch of peanuts.

• 1:56:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, dude. I ate like six bags of peanuts, I ate almost four hundred, probably four hundred peanuts.

• 1:56:29Speaker 02

  Well, each peanut has like two, sometimes three, so you might ate eight hundred and something.

• 1:56:34Speaker 01

  I wouldn't even think about that.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't even-

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  Cause each peanut, a peanut has two nuts in it. So if you ate four hundred and twenty, you might eight hundred and eighty peanuts.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah. I didn't even think of that.

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  It's fucking close to a thousand, bud.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Oh, damn. Fuck, yeah. You know what I'm saying, bro?

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  Dude, next time, break a thousand.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you right, you right. Yeah, I'm gonna run for mayor of Chicago now, dude. If I can eat that many peanuts at a ballgame, dude, the guy came over and had to sweep up the nutshells like four times, dude. There were fucking birds overhead, like, fucking, they were pissed that we created so much like, probably usable material for nests and shit. But, um, but it was that, yeah, dude, that was just a great experience. I just loved them, I don't know, I love the Midwest, I love the people, I've always heard about, um, yeah, there's some of the-

• 1:57:22Speaker 02

  They come out of the corn?

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Came out of the corn.

• 1:57:23Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. One came out of the closet, I think.

• 1:57:27Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Dude, one day, yeah-

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  That's epic.

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  And you even, they had a corn like built up to walk up to it and stuff like that. And, um, who, who, I, I got to meet Patrick Renna, the guy from Sandlot, he was the great Hambino in Sandlot. And then, uh, just got to see some of the players. They had, let me think, Joe Mauer, um, Scott Rowland, Lee Smith, The Hawk, Andre Dawson, Joe Ryan was there, um-

• 1:57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  And the Twins, uh, they gave me a new hat, too.

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  Nice. Yeah, I see you've been rocking that Detroit hat pretty heavy.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  Dude, yeah, well, because, one of the nicest, or like, one of the dopest squads that ever came out to see me, like, the guys that ever came to see me play, where some of the, uh, Tigers guys came one time to see a game. Rogers, Scoobal, um, Carpenter, some, some, just some of their different pitchers came out and it was just awesome, dude. And they like, were just, it was like, probably two or three years ago and there was like a little, they were younger and just like, their energy was like, they were just fucking like ecstatic, but they were all like really nice guys. So that was just a good experience, dude.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Oh, it's sick to see that old English D out there, you know?

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  And then here I am in Michigan, which is kind of crazy, like, the things you kind of, like, maybe, I didn't know that I would, I would be here today, you know?

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  And getting to spend time with you, dude, um, dude, thanks so much for just kind of thinking about some stuff. I, uh, I want to ask you, I want you to see if you can tell me this story, I know you got to meet Bob Dylan, right? Can you tell me that story or do you not want to tell it?

• 1:58:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  You can?

• 1:58:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, yeah, so, we were on tour with Willie and Bob and-

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  This is one of my favorite stories, dude.

• 1:59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, I don't take this for granted, you know? I remember when the, when the thing first came to me, the, the offer.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  It was kind of put to me in a way that was like, okay, well, we, we could go do our own tour and like, probably make a lot more money, or we could go on this tour as an opener, but we're gonna be able to, you know, go tour with Bob Dylan and Willie. And it's like, dude, we're going with Bob and Willie, are you kidding me? Of course. And so-

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Every night we played with them. Me and the band would like finish our set. We would hurry up and go back to the green room, like, you know, have a snack or whatever, and then like get right back out there. Get our good seats, sometimes just on the side of the stage and watch Bob Dylan play and then watch Willie play. You know, and so it was just, every night was just like. We watched them intently every night because like I said, we do not take this for granted. So. Actually, I need to rewind a bit to to tell you the story about Bob Dylan. Somebody had told me, T-Bone Burnett actually told me. He lives in Nashville. Yeah. He's friends with Jeff Bridges. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Jeff.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  Dude, Ain't Crazy Heart. Yeah. Such a good movie. Yeah.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  But so T-Bone's like, hey, man, Bob Dylan's like a big fan of yours. He keeps bringing you up and stuff. And I'm like, what? You know, that's crazy. And then my manager says. That one of Bob's. People, his, one of his managers or something, kinda just told my manager, Bill, the best way to get a hold of Bob is to write him a letter. He likes letters. So I was gonna write him a letter and. And. I remember I was staying at Saint Cecilia in Austin. And I walked in the room and they had this really great paper there, like this stock paper. And I thought, well, this will be cool because it's from like a hip hotel and it's nice paper. I'm gonna take this paper. This is what I'm gonna write my letter to Bob Dylan on.

• 2:01:17Speaker 02

  And then I never did. A whole year passed. I procrastinated. And then the next year passed, we're doing Austin City Limits or something. I was in Austin again and I stayed at the Saint Cecilia again and I walked in that same room I stayed in last time. And I saw that paper again a year later and I go, man, screw this. And I just set my backpack down in my luggage. I grabbed that paper and I went straight up to the cafe and I had a coffee and some eggs. And I sat there and wrote Bob Dylan a letter, just basically, you know, saying thank you and. Just thank you, you know? And telling him about how I, you know, loved the way Doc Watson used to play his songs and stuff. And.

• 2:02:01Speaker 02

  So after that, you know, I had heard that. Bob was excited about this letter that he got from me and stuff. And I was like, okay, well, that's, you know, I don't know what to believe, right? And we get on that tour, we play like a couple gigs. And we're opening for Bob. And then. One night after our set. Before Bob goes on stage.

• 2:02:29Speaker 02

  Well, that was when I sat in. Actually, the first time I met him was at the Hollywood Bowl and I was standing backstage after his set. And my security guy, Jim, was like, here, stand over here. And I just thought, like, I was in the way, like they were gonna move some road cases or something. But no, Bob was coming off stage in this huge North Face parka. And. Right as he was walking by, somebody was like, hey, that was a great set, Billy. And he stopped in his tracks and he was like, Billy. And he walked right up to me and he was like, man, thank you for the letter. And I was like, man, thank you, Bob, for the music, you know? And he shook my hand. Oh, yeah. And. With his hand? Yeah, with, with Bob Dylan's hand. He shook my hand and. Yeah.

• 2:03:12Speaker 02

  My hand is like tingling right now, just talking about it. Every time I talk about this story, my hand starts tingling. That whole night.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  It's like vibrating. I shook his hand. And I looked him in the eyes and he said, you know, thanks for the letter. And I told him, thank you for the music and. And then he walked away. And did he have a good hand? He was, yeah, it was a nice little hand. And. And. That whole night, my hand was just tingly. Like it was, it was like I touched a magic crystal or something, you know? And. So now every time I tell this story, it does the same thing. But later that night, I was like, it's either like. Some crazy, beautiful energy, like he's just got this magic. Or it's like, you know, some leftover Bengay or something is what I was thinking.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then, so like the next night on tour. Or yeah, a night or two later, we played our set and I'm sitting in the green room. And then. I was like smoking a bowl or something and this lady walked in and she's like, Bob wants you to play with him tonight. No. And I was like, what? And she's like, are you too stoned? And I was like, no. I'm not stoned enough, you know? So I'm like, okay. Fuck you guys, it's happening. Bob asked me to sit in. So I'm, I'm like walking out to my bus because I know his band, they all wear black and stuff. So I was like, I got a black shirt. I can put my hair in a ponytail, get a little bit more classy. Blacken up a little, let me darken out.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, for, to get a little bit more classy than whatever T-shirt I had on. Right. You know, I'm fixing to play with Bob Dylan. I wanna go put a nice shirt on. Yeah, yeah. And pull my hair back. And as I was walking out to the bus, I saw him, he was walking right toward me. And he just came up to me and, and he said.

• 2:05:07Speaker 02

  He said, you know. Let's do All Along the Watchtower. He's like, just, you know, I was singing the first verse and second verse and he'd play after the second verse. You know, and then he walked away. Like he didn't say hi. He didn't say, thanks for playing or nothing. He said. Let's do the watchtower, play after the second verse. This information. And then on his way to the stage, and I was like, oh my man, this guy means business. Yeah. So I went to my bus, I got my nice digs on. Tight shit. And then I was, you know, texting my mom and dad. And, you know, I called my mom, I was like, you're not gonna believe this. What did she say? She just. She was always over the moon about stuff like that. She's, she called me her.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  Dream Weaver is what she called. She's like, who are you gonna play with next, you know? Because I, all, so many of her heroes I had met and played with, you know, or, you know, I, mom, I just met Eddie Vedder or. You know, mom, you're not, you know, not gonna believe this, David Grisman or, you know, Dell McCurry and, and. You know, all this stuff. And then. And Fleetwood Mac? More recently. Stevie Nicks? I've never met her, but. That would be a crazy collab with you guys. Yeah. Anyway, go on, sorry. Yeah, I was like, I was like, I'm getting ready to go play with Bob Dylan. She's like, what the fuck, you know? Like, who, who are you? Like, who do you think you are? It's like, I don't know. He just asked me to play, so. So, yeah, man. I'm your son. So, yeah, I go out there and.

• 2:06:38Speaker 02

  It was amazing. I mean, we, we played. The cool thing about that too is that whole tour, that was my favorite song that they were doing. I mean, I love All Along the Watchtower and of course Jimi Hendrix's version, but. They had this cool arrangement of it. And it was like such a hip version of it. And I just, that was my favorite tune that they were doing. And that's the one he asked me to play on. It's just like, wow, you know, and. So, yeah, he sang, sang the second verse and then he kinda looked over at me and I played. Passed it back to him. We had a little musical conversation. And then I, that was it, man. I played with Bob Dylan. It was like, holy shit. You know, and, and I walked off stage. And I go in the green room and like. My whole band is like so excited. They're like making toasts and shit.

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's go. Especially my bass player, Royal, has like just been in a, on a huge Bob Dylan kick the last couple of years. We just couldn't believe this happened, really. Shout out Royal. Yeah, so then.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. We're sitting in the green room and we're all just like, oh my God, that was amazing. And then Jim, my security guy, he, he comes in and he says.

• 2:07:48Speaker 02

  Hey, somebody wants to say hi. And in my green room walks Bob Dylan. And he sucked the oxygen out of the room. Like, everybody just like fell silent and like couldn't breathe. And then he was like, man, you know, thanks for playing, like that was awesome. And, and I go. Man, thank you for having me, man. I was, it's such an honor to play with you, you know, and. And I was like, I wanna introduce you to my band, you know, this is Royal and Billy and stuff like that. And, and then I, you know. He just like turned around and walked away. Like I was like, what? No way. Dude, and then. A couple of days. He's busy Bob, dude. Dude, he dipped. He was, he was like, and then just left.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  And then, and we loved it. I thought it was amazing. Oh, it's fucking almost, bro, it almost, it's even better. Yeah. That's the most lower shit you could do. Dude, he just literally, I was like, I want you to introduce you to my band. And he just turned around and left. It was like, wow. What a badass. And then so. Yes, dude. A couple of nights later. He sent me a message.

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  Through one of his managers and it just said, you know, thanks for playing. Like, I think you're great. And. He said, like, my friend Jerry Lee told me a long time ago. He said, you're gonna be around for a long, long time. And I just, man, I like, was in the back of my bus, like reading this and just. Cried. You know, I mean, this Bob Dylan kinda. Pat me on the back. And so. First of all, it's unbelievable, dude. It's such a great story. It's like, I can feel it, dude. It's almost like I'm like. Yeah, dude. Well, I know one of the craziest things. Is that the few interactions I had with them, which was like three or four over the course of a couple of days.

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  And I talked to him and I looked at his face and I spoke directly to him and I looked in his eyes.

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  I can't picture his face. I can't picture, I didn't see. The skin.

• 2:09:59Speaker 02

  When I think about him, what he looked like. All I see is these deep. Oceans of blue. In these deep. Concern, concerning eyes. And this like white light behind them. That's what I picture when I think about, what did Bob Dylan look like to me? All I can see is these, the deepest, bluest eyes with the most concerning. Emotion in them. And then this like aura of like white light. That's what Bob looks like to me in my memory.

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't remember his face, you know, like.

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's almost something that's like, uh, almost like maybe from another realm or something like, I think God, yeah, like God's concern like shows up in our eyes, I think. So maybe he just has a lot of like concern from the other side, you know?

• 2:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it's not a paranoid concern, it's more of like a compassion and, and a

• 2:11:02Speaker 02

  like, like a love, like from an elder, you know?

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe like in a kind of semi-aggressive intrigue, kind of.

• 2:11:10Speaker 02

  Like a, some kind of musical grandpa, you know?

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, Bob Dylan, bro, wow.

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's a trip. And then like a little while after that, I got to play and make music in the studio with Edgar Winter. And he was like one of my mom's favorites, you know, him and.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Edgar, Edgar Winter and who else?

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Johnny Winter, his brother.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  Johnny Winter, bring up a petrol to these guys, let me get a gander at him.

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, they look like, um.

• 2:11:40Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:11:42Speaker 02

  They kind of look like Targaryens, man, they're albino.

• 2:11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he looks like Sia a little bit, you know who Sia is?

• 2:11:49Speaker 02

  No. But Johnny Winter is one of the best guitar players to ever live, man.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  He's one of the best, little skinny scrawny albino dude, and he, you know, he played with Muddy Waters and all sorts of shit. He was one of the best blues players ever, man. Played with the slide, played, you know, acoustic, everything, but he was, he's the man. And then Edgar Winter, you know, you've heard like, free ride, take, you know, that's his jam. And then you remember, so Edgar Winter had a huge hit that was an instrumental song called Frankenstein. You ever remember that?

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  That's Edgar Winter, man. And the cool thing about that is that.

• 2:12:33Speaker 01

  Did you get to talk to him?

• 2:12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, he's actually become a good friend of mine. He came and played with us at Bridgestone Arena when we played. And we were in the studio for, for like a day or two, working on some stuff for his record that's gonna come out at some point. But yeah, Edgar Winter is one of the sweetest, sweetest people.

• 2:12:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:12:55Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  And Johnny's, Johnny's alive too?

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  He passed away. Hmm, when did he pass away, like 2012 or maybe a little bit after that?

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  2014?

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2014.

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  Oh, they're Swiss, huh?

• 2:13:11Speaker 02

  Well, no, he, that's where he died is in Switzerland, they're from Texas.

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was on the road.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:13:20Speaker 02

  Think he died in his hotel room.

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that was my, that was my mom's dog right there.

• 2:13:28Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:13:28Speaker 02

  She loved him.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to listen to some of their music today in honor of her dude on our ride later.

• 2:13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen to like just the self-titled Johnny Winter album from 1969. And then for Edgar Winter, listen to White Trash. Like, it's just some of the fonkiest stuff you're ever gonna hear, man. They got this one tune, it's the first track on the record called Give It Everything You Got. And I remember I was, I was tripping hard on acid one day. And I was down by the river and I slipped and I fell down this mud bank and I landed like waist deep in the water and I was just splashing. It was also October in Michigan, it was kind of cold.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  But I, I got out and I climbed back up the bank and I was soaking wet, but I didn't feel wet.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  Cause I just, I think my brain was wet.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, cause you were having a good time.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was already tripping and so I walk home and I'm sopping and, you know, I walk in my mom's back door. And, uh, she's like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I took some acid and I went and fell in the river. She's like, oh, you're on acid? And she drops the needle on Give It Everything You Got, she put that record on for me to hear. And I just sat there in front of the speakers and I listened to that. And when the song ended, I moved the needle back over and I listened to it again. And I listened to it again, I just, I was in this loop of Give It Everything You Got. There's these crazy saxophone solos and everything's pan stereo and it goes right to left and it's just, dude, it's, it's so good. That whole album is good. And, um, there's a couple tunes on there called, one called Fly Away that I can hardly listen to without crying.

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  Cause it was one of my mom's songs and it really reminds me of her.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  That's called, and that's the Johnny Winter's album?

• 2:15:09Speaker 02

  Uh, that's the Edgar Winter album called White Trash.

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  White Trash.

• 2:15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then the Johnny Winter record is just, it's just called Johnny Winter. Yeah.

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  Dude, what a crazy pair of brothers they must have been, couldn't you even imagine?

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  Oh, man, they were, they were really musical, you know, and Edgar's, he's amazing. I wish I would have been able to meet Johnny, but, you know, I've, I've listened to a lot of his music and, um, I just love him dearly, I mean, gosh. So I feel so lucky to have been exposed to good music like that from my parents, you know, they, as far as I'm concerned, man, they listen to good music and they taught me about it, you know, and so that's the thing is like, when I was in middle school and stuff, I mean, I don't know what kids were listening to back then. I wasn't listening to that, I was listening to, you know, John Lennon or whatever. My teachers always thought I was kind of like, who is this kid, man? He's like wearing a Jim Morrison t-shirt, you know?

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Like, what's he doing, yeah, like, how does this end?

• 2:16:07Speaker 02

  And I'm like going to the library, like trying to find books about like Janis Joplin and stuff. And I'm just like in sixth grade or whatever.

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:14Speaker 02

  Some of my teachers thought that was really cool, the ones that were like around in the sixties and stuff, the older cats.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Speaker 02

  I used to get like, I almost want to say like special treatment or something because of that. Cause like some of my teachers that were old hippies, they were like, man, this cat's sick.

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, yeah, if your teacher, if they, if you're, if you're into something that they're into kind of, or they think there's something a little bit different about you, I think it makes sense that a teacher would be like, oh, this kid's cool, there's something going on with this kid, I'm curious to see. Like we had this teacher named Miss Plush and she was cool, man, she was like our poetry teacher and we'd go in there and it was like all the misfit kind of kids were in there. And you'd have like, you know, people that just wore extra lipstick on different parts of their face and shit and like,

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  and, uh, and we'd go in there and we got to write poetry and it was kind of this weird group, like, well, not weird, but it was just like this, like, um, I don't know, it was this group of, it was just different than the norm. And it was like a place where it felt like, okay, I could share how I feel. And there wasn't any other place in school really to do that, like in regular school, you know, like, unless you were talking like one on one with a buddy. But just like to go in there and write poems and like think of things together. And you go in there and like they'd have a lot of like, some, some kids that were in kind of like, I don't want to say school shooty garb or whatever, but just like, you know, we'd have like kids wearing like, uh, I'm trying to think of, um, it'd be like sometimes like trench Cody or that's like.

• 2:17:41Speaker 02

  Big combat boots and stuff?

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  Combat boots, dude, or we'd have like, um, Doc Martens, right? And the higher the Doc Martin, like kind of the, like, it got to a level where it was like normal, kind of wild. And then it's like, and then like someone was like kind of perverse or whatever, I think a little bit.

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Like way up to the thigh.

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like way up to the cooter even, you know, it was like, damn, dude.

• 2:18:03Speaker 02

  You definitely ain't no hood hopper.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:05Speaker 02

  You ain't no ranker.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  But it would just be like, I don't know, and you'd see like, they'd have like a hippie girl in there who never wore a bra and that would make you fucking go to class every single day, bro. Cause you could just, if you closed your eyes, you could just hear her tits.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  You know, like it was just that age, remember when you had that much hormones when you were in high school? And if you closed your eyes, you could just hear somebody's tits, dude.

• 2:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  Fuck.

• 2:18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, they sound so soft.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  Oh, welcome to Ohio, brother, yeah. I just feel like that's the most Ohio thing ever.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Dude, thanks so much, man, I'm excited about your new album, can you just tell me like one or two things about it? I, I, I've read somewhere that it's a, um, that it's in honor of your mother?

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, um,

• 2:18:53Speaker 02

  you know, I think a lot of it, you know, I was writing when, shortly after she passed and stuff. So, yeah, it's kind of dedicated to her and, um, it's kind of an interesting thing, I mean, I, I, I kept wanting to call it So Much For Goodbyes and I just, I was thinking about that for a while and, because I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to my mother. So that's kind of how I thought about it, I was like, well, so much for goodbyes, you know? I guess I'm not gonna get a chance to say bye. And when I, I brought it up to my manager, I said, I think I'm gonna call the record So Much For Goodbyes. And he was like, man, that's cool, it's like, you know, cause it's not really goodbye, it's just like farewell for now, right?

• 2:19:35Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, that's not really how I was thinking of it, but yeah, that's kind of more positive thing.

• 2:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, like so much for goodbyes, like it doesn't even, that doesn't matter?

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause it's, you know, she's still kind of with me no matter what.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sure she's hitchhiking, dude, she might have just got tired of kind of rocking around this galaxy. She might have just be hitchhiking out there.

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  She's probably in Sedona somewhere in some, you know?

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  Oh, she's probably fricking nested up in a wind chime somewhere, fucking living it up.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  But I do believe that when we think about other people, when we speak their name out loud, when we make music for them, when we pray for them, I believe that people can feel all of that.

• 2:20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:14Speaker 01

  I don't really even doubt it because it just feels so, um, bigger than us.

• 2:20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, right after she died, I kept, there were so many little things that I would feel, you know, like.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  Just these like certain animals would come around or whatever and like a dragonfly or I'd see a doe with like two fawns and I'm like, man, that it would just break my heart, you know what I mean? It's like that's my mom and that's me and my brother or whatever, you know? And it for a minute there was like pissing me off. It's like, I don't want a fucking dragonfly. Like I want my mom, you know? Like fuck that dragonfly, you know? But now I like, I look for those things, you know, a cloud or whatever it is, just the way the breeze feels. But my mom, she was an amazing artist. She would constantly be calling me saying, hey, I took this hubcap and glued this to that. And I made this little alien, you know, battle and I, I did this and you know,

• 2:21:14Speaker 02

  and so she always made this stuff. And this was actually the piece that she was working on the night that she died. Because she was always gonna make the next record cover. That was kind of our deal.

• 2:21:27Speaker 02

  So this, this thing that's in the frame with the hand and the, the little crystal ball and stuff like that. It was unfinished. So we, we kind of like filled the back end with some portraits and stuff like that. But, but this was the last piece that she was working on. And it kind of encaps, it really, and you know, it, it gives her essence of just kind of how she was. I mean, she was, she was like a million little things all glued together. And very erudcent and, so that's the art that we chose for the cover and,

• 2:22:06Speaker 02

  you know, she got to make the, the record cover like she wanted to, so. Stoked on that. And yeah, the songs, I think a lot of them are about,

• 2:22:17Speaker 02

  just kind of what I was feeling at the time and,

• 2:22:21Speaker 02

  you know, there's a tune on there called Wrestling an Angel. There's one called Still I Crash, which is like pretty much me exactly. I think I wrote that like days after she passed. Just like me speaking to her, you know, talking about,

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  how I just feel like I'm, I gotta learn how to walk all over again, you know? I feel like a baby deer and my legs are all wobbly and, I'm just trying to learn how to stand up on my own this time, you know, without her and, it's a, you know, so it's a pretty, a deep record, but there's some good stuff on there, you know? There's some bluegrass on there and, that Milltown Flood, that's like a real, there's like some real characters that really were from Muir back in the day and stuff.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:23:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I, you know, I grew up in Muir, Michigan, which is like,

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember you talking about that.

• 2:23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, there's like 600 people that lived there or something. And nowadays it's kind of like a little, just a tiny little town doesn't have that much popping, but back in the 1800s, it was like kind of popping, you know? Like there was like this whole little strip and they had these, gristle mills and sawmills and, they would float the logs down the Grand River down to the sawmill and then they'd chop it all up. And then when the, um, the, the railroad came through there, then they could put all that lumber on the railroad and ship it out to, you know, Milwaukee or whatever. And, um, and so it, it was a hustling, hustling little place. There's this guy named Darwin Lyon.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  He was the station agent at the, the Grand Trunk Railroad's, Montrose Station, which was later named Muir.

• 2:24:06Speaker 02

  But yeah, so he was the station agent there in Muir. And this family, the Blanchard family was like some of the first people that like, settled there and started, you know, making shit happen. And so I like used some of those characters and then, kind of made this like sort of fictional story about some actual non-fictional characters, you know? So I, I liked that tune. I think that was a cool thing. I just, I've been infatuated with like the history of the area of like, you know, just the Grand River Valley.

• 2:24:41Speaker 01

  Well, I know you have, you have a concert, you have your freak fair, is it freak fest?

• 2:24:45Speaker 02

  The I Own Your Freak Fair, yeah.

• 2:24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I Own Your Freak Fair. And that's something you, you started, right?

• 2:24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. That, but I just think it's awesome to create something that people from your area can be a part of, you know, like, um,

• 2:24:56Speaker 02

  Oh man, I've been trying to do this for years. I've been wanting to bring a festival to my hometown for a while now. But yeah, we got a bunch of good bands coming, uh, you know? Green Sky, Leftover Salmon, Sierra Hole.

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  Michael Cleveland and the Flame Keeper.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  Yep, Lindsey, Lindsey Lou. And then we're gonna have like a, um, this tent where we're gonna have some metal bands. Bane, Cryptopsy, Flesh and Blood Robots, See You Next Tuesday, For the Fallen Dreams. Some of these bands I used to run around with, uh, back in the day when I played in metal bands and stuff.

• 2:25:29Speaker 01

  Oh, full chord?

• 2:25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  Dude, that's so cool, bro. What a great thing to just bring to your area, just a great weekend of music.

• 2:25:37Speaker 02

  It's gonna be sick.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  That's like in fricking two weeks.

• 2:25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:25:44Speaker 02

  It's gonna be awesome.

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Hell yeah. Yeah, dude, thanks so much, man, just for catching up today and stuff, for inviting us here, like just to be in Grand Rapids, like,

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  it's cool, man. I remember when I came here, uh, we did a show here and it was great. I actually have a friend named Paul that lives here that I just realized on the way in town. I don't even know if I'm gonna be able to get to see him, but,

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  love you, Paul. I remember when I used to work, he and I was dishwasher. He and I was on Bus Boys at this restaurant and I found a Abbey Road cassette tape. It was the first time I'd ever heard The Beatles. And I put it in my, in my, I had an 84 Ford Escort, I put it in there. Dude, now listen to that for probably three years, dude.

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just saw your film Bus Boys.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  Oh, you saw it?

• 2:26:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I loved it.

• 2:26:30Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 2:26:32Speaker 02

  I laughed my ass off, dude. So I didn't know you were an actual busboy at one point.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, bro, I was in the trenches, dude, I was one of the first busboys to use creatine regularly.

• 2:26:43Speaker 01

  I was, man. We fucking did a good job on it. Bro, there wasn't a fucking dish. Dude, I'll say this, west of the Mississippi, there wasn't a dish that I couldn't, that I couldn't fuck with. I was fucking good, bro. I was good, I loved it so much. And then I think I got caught up in drugs, that brought me down a little bit.

• 2:27:03Speaker 02

  Was it really like that though? Like the, the servers were like all hot shit?

• 2:27:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:09Speaker 02

  Like they were good looking and shit?

• 2:27:10Speaker 01

  And they would all fuck or whatever and you couldn't, you like, they looked at you like you couldn't even hold their condoms or whatever.

• 2:27:15Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:27:17Speaker 01

  So trash, dude.

• 2:27:18Speaker 02

  Dang it.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  I know. But yeah, dude, and we had a dude, bro, we had this dude named, um, Todd, he was, they, he was like part of some work release program there in Arizona, that's where I did it at. And he would fucking be, they had a chain, he would be chained like this fucking pizza oven that he was over there working. But they had like a six foot chain that he, so he couldn't leave like the area or whatever. Dude, our fricking chef got busted for buying illegal shrimp. One day like the, like, I guess the food and beverage, like if you go high enough in that department, some of them get guns or whatever. Cause they came running in, bro, kicked open the back door, they had everybody on the ground and they like busted the place for like buying illegal shrimp. Camarones. And I was like, what the fuck is going on?

• 2:28:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  But yeah, bro, thanks for checking it out, dude. It was a, it was, um, it was crazy to make it, dude. We went through so much.

• 2:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:10Speaker 01

  But I think I would do something fun again like that.

• 2:28:12Speaker 02

  Dude, you should, it's awesome, man. I love that.

• 2:28:15Speaker 01

  We did it all ourselves.

• 2:28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And to make a film with David Spade is probably a,

• 2:28:20Speaker 01

  Oh dude.

• 2:28:21Speaker 02

  Dream come true, right?

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  I can't even,

• 2:28:23Speaker 02

  I mean, we all grew up on fucking Joe Dirt.

• 2:28:26Speaker 01

  Dude, he shot, he did Joe Dirt. I think they did Joe Dirt 2 and they shot it in Covington, Louisiana, which is oddly enough, the town that I grew up in.

• 2:28:35Speaker 02

  No shit?

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then years later now, he became friends and he's shooting, uh, Grown Ups 3 right now out of New Jersey, but,

• 2:28:43Speaker 02

  Dude, I used to love just,

• 2:28:46Speaker 02

  how just mean everybody is to Joe Dirt. It's such bullshit. Like the very first scene, he like pulls up and you know, the guy's like, why don't you just drive this piece of shit off the cliff and do us all a favor? You know, and then Kid, Kid Rock's like such a dick to him.

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  Def Leppard, fuck, it sucks.

• 2:29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  And the crazy part is, is, uh, that, that, them knowing each other is one of the reasons that I even got to meet, uh, Kid Rock, so it's just, it just, I don't know. Life's the weirdest thing, isn't it?

• 2:29:20Speaker 02

  It is weird.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Isn't it the weirdest thing?

• 2:29:23Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, it's, I feel like my life definitely is, but I feel like probably everybody feels that way.

• 2:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it's true. I think if you get out and try and just push yourself into life, that there's like,

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  Things happen.

• 2:29:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:29:41Speaker 02

  These pathways, they connect and there's, there's all these circles that eventually, you run back into the other side of that other circle or something, you know?

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, dreams get weaved, man.

• 2:29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:29:55Speaker 01

  Dreams get weaved, dude. If you feel comfortable, you want to play a song for us on the way out?

• 2:29:59Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:30:00Speaker 01

  Is there something? I want to ask you too, I have a couple of questions really quick. We have a quick segment that we do with Mountain Dew, since you brought it up so many times. Can I ask you one or two questions?

• 2:30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:30:12Speaker 02

  What, should I give this a try, bro?

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's sugar free.

• 2:30:18Speaker 02

  I haven't had Mountain Dew in fucking years.

• 2:30:20Speaker 01

  Bro, let's have some.

• 2:30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 2:30:30Speaker 02

  Wow, it's been, that's a blast from the past. Not even Baja. Just regular.

• 2:30:37Speaker 01

  Remember when they came out with the Code Red dude and people were like, this is for Valentine's only or whatever? Like rich people or whatever?

• 2:30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, Code Red is like fucking, that's like chewing five gum.

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:52Speaker 02

  No sugar, don't even have to worry about it.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  That zero sugar is kind of a vibe too. Same feeling, no sugar.

• 2:30:58Speaker 02

  It actually just tastes like Mountain Dew.

• 2:31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you ever go to summer camp?

• 2:31:03Speaker 02

  No, I never went to summer camp.

• 2:31:07Speaker 02

  I don't even know.

• 2:31:10Speaker 02

  I didn't even know that was an option. But I did one time, our school.

• 2:31:17Speaker 02

  When I was in like sixth grade, I think, took us to like this like winter camp. And that was like, you know, we were all like sledding and shit. And I remember me and Mike Borton and Travis Rogers, we're always trying to go like sneak over and see these girls in their cabin and shit. I remember like, who was it back in the day, Marissa Smith?

• 2:31:37Speaker 01

  Oh god.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  Anna Conrad and like Risha Ranucci and stuff.

• 2:31:41Speaker 01

  Oh. The Ranucci girls were dimes, bro. I don't know them, but I just know I could only imagine and I like to imagine, you know?

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  I had a big crush on Marissa Smith, but I was too shy and

• 2:31:57Speaker 02

  just way too shy, bro.

• 2:31:58Speaker 01

  Dude, I had a freaking crush on this one girl.

• 2:32:02Speaker 01

  This one girl Amanda, dude, I had the fucking biggest crush on her. This girl, I had a crush on her dude, and I only, only thing I could do, I drew pictures of her on my wall at home all the time.

• 2:32:16Speaker 01

  And my mom got so pissed, you know, my mom ended up spanking me pretty bad for it one time. And it was so sad because I was like, I like loved her so much and then I would just end up getting like spanked for it or whatever, or beaten or whatever. I don't say beaten because you can't say it anymore, but we used to call it beaten.

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  So, but dang, yeah, winter camp.

• 2:32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, never, yeah, winter camp, that's kind of what it was, but a couple of my friends.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  My friend Matt and my friend Brendan just dropped their kids off for summer camp just recently.

• 2:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:48Speaker 02

  And so they're, they're out there having fun.

• 2:32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah dude, I wish I'd have gone to summer camp. We, we went to like YMCA summer camp, but everybody got really bad allergies. I think the field they put us in was like the worst.

• 2:33:01Speaker 02

  Pollen fields.

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  Yes. It was like, it was just like a right on the edge of a pine forest and like, the whole thing was just so much pollen and people, you try to play kickball, but like two minutes into the game, people couldn't even see or play, like it was people just standing around in the sun. Dude, I remember this one kid, his allergies would get so bad, he would just put his hands straight up in the air.

• 2:33:22Speaker 01

  Almost like the cops were, like the cops were getting him or whatever. But dude, it would be so bad. And then we had to eat these hot lunches because there was nowhere to keep our lunches cold, so we'd eat like these, like just like bologna and cheese like. And it was just like, you would just sweat all day and then your mom would finally come get you. Like in the beginning, you would be excited. And at the end, you'd be like, please mom, come get me. And they had one kid who was kind of like mentally challenged or whatever, but he would do, he would moonwalk all day. And in the morning, everybody's like, you're a loser. But by the end of the, end of the day, everybody's just like watching him dance.

• 2:33:55Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  If you were doing a road trip, this is the last question I have, if you were doing a road trip, what small town would you go to or would you suggest someone go to?

• 2:34:13Speaker 02

  I have to think about this for a moment.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, is there a nice one in Michigan?

• 2:34:19Speaker 01

  I know there are, but is there a nice one that you suggest, I mean?

• 2:34:24Speaker 02

  Oh, like.

• 2:34:27Speaker 02

  I mean, there's so many small towns around here, like if you drive in any direction, you're gonna find like these tiny little towns that have been there for ages, but they're just tiny. Like there's one called Sparta.

• 2:34:42Speaker 02

  You know, Greenville, Belding and stuff, but honestly.

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  Ionia is a nice one?

• 2:34:46Speaker 02

  I was gonna say Muir, you know, but that's, I'm, I'm obviously biased, but

• 2:34:51Speaker 01

  That's okay.

• 2:34:52Speaker 02

  It's a beautiful place. I mean, it's, the Maple River runs through there and it's, it's a tiny little town. There's, there's some history there. There's not much there. You might get all the copper wires stolen out of your vehicle or something.

• 2:35:05Speaker 01

  They need it.

• 2:35:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  Village of Muir right there, show it to me. Well dude, my town Covington, Louisiana is a small town. But dude, I went back not long ago and I was just walking around downtown. It's great.

• 2:35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:19Speaker 01

  There's a lot of like nice, like, first of all, there's a lot of great people and it's, it's changing and I didn't, I didn't know if I expected that when I was growing up there. Like it's always been a place with like great storytelling and just like, like kind of mystery and stuff like that and intrigue. But it's turned into like the most beautiful little town. Village of Muir right there. Is that you right there Billy?

• 2:35:40Speaker 02

  That is, yeah. It's, they put this sign up that says, hometown of Grammy winner Billy Strings. It says 2021, but they need to put three time on there now.

• 2:35:53Speaker 01

  Let's update that sign, Muir. I'm gonna donate to the coffers over there in Muir so they have enough money to update that sign dude. No joke, we're gonna reach out to the, uh, we're gonna reach out to the city council over there and see if we can't get that updated dude, that's awesome.

• 2:36:09Speaker 02

  We could buy the, you know, village market and turn it into a titty bar or something. I think that'd be probably a good venture.

• 2:36:17Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, as long as we keep some of like the produce section or something. I mean, I want people to still be able to get fresh stuff.

• 2:36:24Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:26Speaker 01

  Cause I'm not saying the cities won't be fresh, but you know, it's TBD, man.

• 2:36:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it'll be something. There might be some kind of pirate-esque kind of things going on.

• 2:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah dude. Yeah, you wanna, you wanna play one on the way out for us, Billy? You don't feel, feel like you have to though. We can also just call it a day.

• 2:36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd love to, man.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  Would you really dude?

• 2:36:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:48Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  Heck yeah dude.

• 2:37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:37:34Speaker 02

  Let's see. I was thinking about this tune because we were talking about the village market and

• 2:37:42Speaker 02

  it kind of made me hungry.

• 2:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 2:37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So maybe we'll go get something to eat after this, but this will get us in the mood.

• 2:37:49Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 2:39:40Speaker 02

  There's a little piece of cornbread laying on the shelf. Little piece of cornbread laying on the shelf. You want any more, you can take it yourself, old groundhog.

• 2:40:09Speaker 04

  Gonna eat up the meat and save the hide. Eat up the meat and save the hide. The best damn shoestring that ever was tied. Oh, groundhog.

• 2:40:36Speaker 04

  Ah, look at the fellers they're about to fall. Look at the fellers they're about to fall. They ain't tell the britches one button at all. Oh, groundhog.

• 2:41:03Speaker 04

  Shoulder up the gun and whistle up the dog. Shoulder up the gun and whistle up the dog. Off to the woods for to catch a groundhog. Oh, groundhog.

• 2:41:18Speaker 04

  Oh, groundhog.

• 2:41:27Speaker 04

  Oh, groundhog.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:41:34Speaker 04

  Groundhog, baby.

• 2:41:35Speaker 01

  God. You think they're good?

• 2:41:39Speaker 04

  Would you try one?

• 2:41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:41Speaker 04

  I would, too.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  Got hog in it.

• 2:41:45Speaker 01

  You know, it's not probably why, you know. I'd go in it with a bacon mindset, probably, to be honest with you. I'd hate that.

• 2:41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I bet they're nice and greasy.

• 2:41:54Speaker 01

  They kind of get off easy, though, having hog in their name. And not being like accosted for it, you know? Not being put in that place.

• 2:42:04Speaker 04

  Heck, yeah.

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  Thank you, dude.

• 2:42:06Speaker 04

  Thank you, man.

• 2:42:09Speaker 04

  Appreciate you, brother. Thank you.

• 2:42:11Speaker 01

  Appreciate you, too, man. Thank you so much.

• 2:42:13Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 2:42:16Speaker 01

  Anything else that you want to talk about or anything else you want to play?

• 2:42:31Speaker 04

  I could try one off the new record.

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you feel okay, but don't feel like you have to.

• 2:42:37Speaker 04

  Let's see. So, you know, I was talking about Muir and how I just get kind of obsessed with that place. And just that whole Grand River Valley there. And you ever go driving through your old hometown and just like look at your old haunts? And just kind of get flooded with these memories? I'm, I'm one of those like real nostalgic types.

• 2:43:05Speaker 01

  Oh, I love nostalgia, man.

• 2:43:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I have this tune that's called that.

• 2:43:11Speaker 04

  It's called "I'm One of Those."

• 2:43:39Speaker 04

  I'm looking for the place I used to live. I've been driving up and down this road. Trying to bring back old memories. For one reason or another, I let go.

• 2:43:56Speaker 04

  I'm one of those. I'm looking for the town where the river used to make a bend. But it's been too long and I'm a fool to try to find that place again.

• 2:44:14Speaker 04

  I'm one of those. Guess I have too much time on my hands. I'm one of those. I could not find a place that I could land. I hope you don't. But if you do, you'll probably understand that's how it goes.

• 2:44:32Speaker 04

  I'm one of those.

• 2:44:49Speaker 04

  I've got a thing for shuffling the day. Leaving town in the cover of the night. And tie the ties that bind me. If I don't, I know I'll end up in a fight.

• 2:45:07Speaker 04

  Now could I go back to the place I loved to dwell? Where we sang our song and passed the jug around? Well, I went to all the ghosts that wandered back across this road I'm strolling down.

• 2:45:25Speaker 04

  I'm one of those. I guess I have too much time on my hands. I'm one of those. I could not find a place that I could land. I hope you don't. But if you do, you'll probably understand that's how it goes.

• 2:45:42Speaker 04

  I'm one of those.

• 2:46:09Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:46:33Speaker 04

  It's hard for folks to see through my disguise. I'm not home, but I can still pretend. And if I went left here crying, I might have to circle back this way again.

• 2:46:49Speaker 04

  I'm one of those. Guess I have too much time on my hands. I'm one of those. I could not find a place that I could land. I hope you don't. But if you do, you'll probably understand that's how it goes.

• 2:47:07Speaker 04

  I'm one of those.

• 2:47:16Speaker 04

  I'm one of those.

• 2:47:29Speaker 01

  I'm one of those, man. Dude, that's magnificent, bro.

• 2:47:32Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks, man.

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, man.

• 2:47:34Speaker 04

  So much for goodbyes.

• 2:47:35Speaker 01

  So much for goodbyes. Comes out August 28th.

• 2:47:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:47:39Speaker 01

  Dude, that's so exciting, man. Dude, I'm one of those, man.

• 2:47:44Speaker 01

  I'm one of those. Sometimes I spend so much time in the past, I'm not just don't, you know?

• 2:47:49Speaker 01

  But at a certain point, you start missing out too much.

• 2:47:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. You got to look through the windshield, you know? Instead of in the rearview all the time.

• 2:47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, they say that's why it's bigger. Somebody said that. I don't know who said that.

• 2:47:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, bear, you nicking daddy's hand?

• 2:48:04Speaker 04

  And giving everybody kisses?

• 2:48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, this thing just is the best date I've been on in a while.

• 2:48:12Speaker 01

  So much for goodbyes. That's out August 28th, man. With your mom's beautiful artwork right there.

• 2:48:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:48:19Speaker 01

  What a creative lady. What a creative family, man. You know?

• 2:48:22Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  What a creative family you're a part of. And, uh...

• 2:48:51Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think on the first one. I did Cocaine Blues. Cocaine.

• 2:48:55Speaker 01

  Cocaine.

• 2:48:57Speaker 04

  There is this little one, though. I could add it on there even just for, just for fun, since we're sitting here.

• 2:49:02Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:49:31Speaker 04

  I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I've got the blues, the Nashville blues. I ain't got no hat, ain't got no shoes. These people here, they treat me fine. These people here, they treat me fine. They feed me beer and they feed me wine. Cause I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I ain't got no hat, ain't got no shoes.

• 2:50:30Speaker 04

  I'm going back down to Arkansas. I'm going back to Arkansas. I'm gonna stay right there with the Maroon Pals. I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I ain't got no hat, ain't got no shoes.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 2:51:17Speaker 04

  I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. I've got the blues, those Nashville blues. Ain't got no hat, ain't got no shoes.

• 2:51:34Speaker 01

  So much for goodbyes, man.

• 2:51:38Speaker 04

  I ain't got no hat or shoes there. He don't got no shoes or no hat. He don't even have a collar on right now.

• 2:51:48Speaker 01

  Aw, what a pleasure, man. Dude, Billy, thank you so much, bro. Thanks for coming. This is, man, just what a gift today to be able to just sit and spend time with you to kind of go through whatever's been happening in your life. And you just share stories so well, man. You're just like, I don't know. You're like a pour, you're kind of like this connector piece to the other side, man. It's nice, so.

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  Thank you, man. Well, I appreciate it and I'm glad, I'm glad you're doing this road trip, man. Was able to swing on up through my stomping grounds a little bit. It's kind of nice to, to have you here in Grand Rapids, man.

• 2:52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we appreciate it, man. And, uh, yeah, and good luck with Freak Fest.

• 2:52:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:28Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, and good luck with Freak Fest and, um, Billy Strings, man. Can't thank you enough, dude.

• 2:52:35Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:52:35Speaker 01

  I can't thank you enough.

• 2:52:36Speaker 02

  Keep your stick on the ice.

• 2:52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:38Speaker 02

  Don't let your meat loaf. Watch your top knot. Keep it greasy side down.

• 2:52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, greasy side, oh, I think both sides are greasy, but we'll, we'll do our best, man.

• 2:52:52Speaker 02

  If you ain't in bed by midnight, come home.

• 2:52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:56Speaker 02

  Stay out of the tall weeds.

• 2:52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're a gift to this world, man, and you're a gift to us today. Thank you so much, brother.

• 2:53:02Speaker 02

  Thank you. All righty.