#2085 - Charles Wesley Godwin
2024-01-10 02:27:48
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
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What's up, man? Pleasure to meet you. What's happening?
Pleasure to be here, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Listen, my honor, I love your music. I got introduced to you by Duncan. We were in the green room of the mothership, and Duncan goes, you gotta hear this, and he puts on Family Ties. I went, damn, that's a good fucking song. And then we played Q Country Roads, and then we just got on a roll, and then the whole night we played your music.
Hell, yeah, dude.
It was fucking awesome.
He was telling me that, you know, he showed my music to you. He said normally you don't like his recommendations.
Well, he'll go a little emo on you.
He said that you dug that, and I was like, holy shit, man, isn't that something? Duncan was really cool.
I was at Apple Studios in Nashville doing this live session thing with him. when he messaged me on Twitter and asked me to be on his podcast. And that made my freaking week. I was like, holy shit, Duncan Trussell likes my music? Fuck yeah.
And then we were doing his podcast, and then afterwards he's like, yeah, man, I showed your music to Joe, and he really liked it too. I was like, fuck, yeah. So, yeah, shout out to Duncan. I appreciate him doing that, man.
No, Duncan's the man. He is one of the most unusual people that I've ever met in my life. There's not another one like him.
Yeah, he's cracking me up.
Yeah, he's a one of one. That's a one of one. When he moved here, I was so happy, because he went to Asheville, because he grew up in Asheville. And he moved there, and it was just during the pandemic, it got bleak there. The jobs were all dried up.
Everything was fucked. Everything closed down. And he said crime was crazy. It's like Asheville is per capita in the top ten of crime in the country.
Oh, holy shit.
I might have made that up.
No, shit. Let's see if that's a fact.
I'm pretty sure. Duncan told me that. But he's like, dude, there's so much fucking crime.
It's everywhere.
Everyone's on meth.
Your Duncan impersonation is way better than mine. But we recorded the album there.
Oh, no shit.
We were there for two weeks last January. And it's like sleepy this time of year, I guess. Their tourism is at its lowest in January. And, dude, I loved it. It's gorgeous.
I love the town. I don't know. It had some homeless and stuff like that. But, damn, I didn't know that.
I went there back in, I think I did a gig there in 2015 or 16, somewhere around. then. I was like, god damn, what a great town. Just the perfect size. Not too big.
Cool, artsy. Beautiful scenery. It's like the mountains.
Yeah, I dig it. We played the Orange Peel, I don't know, like four or five weeks ago. And it felt like a hometown show. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the stronghold there in the mountains.
Duncan grew up there, and he said when he was growing up there, there were so many cows that had magic mushrooms in their shit that the farmers started putting some sort of anti-fungal thing in the cow's food so that it would repel the fungus from the cow shit. I was like, how satanic.
People were going out in their meadows trying to harvest those bad boys.
He said it was everywhere. What is this? It was up around April, so about a year ago. What does this have to do with Epstein? That's just the picture.
that's on the... Oh, I was like, what are you saying? Tourist town Asheville, rocked by violence in the wake of defund, police movement, rolls out. plan to combat crime spike. Yeah, so there was a big ass crime spike.
Damn.
Yeah, he said it was crazy. Yeah. He said, but that's the saddest fucking shit about small rural communities is when everything dries up, there's nothing. There's nothing there. There's no other jobs.
There's no other place to go. If you have a small population of humans and they all live together, if the industry dries up, if businesses shut down, if things go under, everyone's fucked. People are so reliant.
Yeah, that's happening in my hometown right now. What's your hometown? Morgantown, West Virginia, and it has its ups and downs, and right now it's definitely in a bit of a down. We had a big pharmaceutical company that was based out of West Virginia, called Mylan, and the founder passed away a little over a decade ago. So then, when that happens, it goes into folks that didn't build it themselves, and they ended up selling to an Israeli company.
And once that happened, they shut down those headquarters in Morgantown, where it had always been. I think that was 1,200 jobs in a town of 26,000 people in the city limits. So you imagine how many people that affects in the big circle. Then COVID, which that happened during COVID, so then you also had COVID. So, you know, our main street, it's called High Street, and it's like one third closed down.
It used to be all open. Fuck.
Did you ever see Roger and Me, the documentary?
Mm-mm.
It's a Michael Moore documentary. It's the first one that he did. It's his best one, I think, and it's about Flint, Michigan, and it's about what happened when the car manufacturers all moved out of the country. And it's the saddest fucking documentary, Matt. It's just they just up and pulled the factories just so they could make more money, having people work for cheaper, and the whole town just collapsed.
Collapsed. It's just so sad. One of the saddest things is there's a lady that has a sign that says bunnies for pets or food.
Damn.
Yeah. You want to think that, like, you're committed to selling bunnies as a pet. You know, imagine that little puppy. We were showing Jamie's getting a puppy, a French bulldog, and Jamie tried to con me into taking one of them.
It might have worked.
It might have worked. I did a dirty trick. I sent a video of this puppy to all my daughters and my wife, so we might have a puppy.
And it was definitely like Jamie knew that was going to happen, too. He didn't know that.
I waited. He waited a little bit. He didn't know that, but the moment I emailed it to the daughters, I was like, they're going to fucking go crazy. But imagine. What's that?
Onto what you were saying. There. it is right there.
Holy shit, man.
Rabbits, bunnies for pets or meat for sale.
That's something you don't see in the U.S. every day.
It's a dark documentary.
Look at her. She's skinning it right there. Yeah. Like she's on a loan. Yeah.
And she kills it right there, too. You know, she's holding it and cuddling it, and then she snaps its fucking neck and cooks it. It's just, you would imagine, like, those puppies, they're like, Jamie, if they said you could keep this as a pet or you could eat it.
Dude, you see it in Flint. We play there once a year, and our shows are great, and the people are great. But, man, compared, I see all the towns across America, and that one's different.
It's dark. They haven't done jack shit to fix that water, either. I don't think they fixed that water at all, have they? I don't think so. Remember when Obama went there?
That was a long time ago, man. That's two presidents ago.
I remember seeing videos of people lighting it on fire.
Well, that's fracking. That's from that movie Gasland. And that's different.
Did I get fooled?
Yeah. Well, they might have did it in Flint, too, but there are places in the country where you can light your fucking tap water on fire.
Unreal.
Yeah. And they say there's been some of that that existed even before fracking. It's kind of confusing, because you don't know how much the fracking industry is like, oh, that's always been here. Do not concern yourself with this. This is no longer an issue.
There's a little bit of contamination, but look on the bright side.
Yeah, you never know.
You can just take tap water and fuel your car and use it as a candle.
Yeah. You can never take, you know, when somebody's business is at stake, you've got to get some different points of view on those types of things.
Yeah, it's very difficult to know what the fuck is actually going on. But overall, it seems like fracking does a lot of fucked up shit. It says they've got their lead levels below the federal threshold for like the sixth or seventh year in a row. Oh, OK. But what does that mean?
What's the federal? I don't like that. Right. I don't like that term. Federal threshold.
It's still on there. I mean, wouldn't it? How much would it cost? Think about how much money they spent on Ukraine. How much would it cost to provide every family in Flint with a filtration system, like a real hardcore filtration system that provides them with absolutely clean water?
I guarantee you it wouldn't be a hundred and fucking seventy billion dollars or whatever we've sent over to Ukraine.
Yeah, it'd be a lot less than that.
It'd be a lot less than that, but not a goddamn thought of it, not a conversation about massive filtration systems. Like, there's a way to do this. We've got to provide every family. Flint's, not that big.
Yeah, I mean.
Just over 40,000 households? Yeah, that's not that big, man. Wow. That is not that big. A thousand dollars a piece?
Yeah. How much is that? I'm just guessing. Probably. If it was a thousand a piece, that'd be pretty easy.
I feel like it probably used to be way bigger than that, too. I bet. You know, that's not much bigger than Morgantown, you know, with all the car industry stuff that used to be there. It wouldn't surprise me if they had hundreds of thousands. I guarantee you.
Have you ever seen videos of Detroit from the 1950s and 60s?
Yeah. Yeah, it's like boomtown.
Detroit was one of the biggest, fucking, most wealthy cities in the world. In the world.
Yeah.
And now you've got trees growing through houses, because the houses have been abandoned. Top Gear, that show, they went there. I think it wasn't Top Gear at the time. I think it was when they did the other show, did it for Amazon. What was that called when they went over to Amazon?
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
I forget what it was called. But what they did was they bought a house for like $500..
And, you know, they were like hanging out in this house while they were staying there. It's like, you get a house for 500 bucks? I looked into that one time. It's a little bit of a loophole. What's a loophole?
You're buying it for 500 bucks, at least the way it was when I read it. You're making a commitment to get it up to code within like seven days or something like that. You have a very limited amount of time. Up to what? You don't know if you have to.
But yeah, you're spending $60,000 on top of that to get it up to code. Oh, really? Like. you're buying it for 500, but you're making a commitment to fix it. You get a house for 60 grand?
But I also just, I think, Mike Epps just fixed up a whole block of houses, not there, but in Gary, Indiana, outside of Indy. No shit. Shout out to Mike Epps. That's awesome. He bought the whole block.
Fuck yeah. That's awesome.
I heard Detroit has a bunch of manufacturing space. It's kind of a good opportunity for somebody. If somebody's got something that they want to make, it's kind of a good place to go and get after it. I think the last time we were there, we opened for Zach at one of those theaters there. But we were kind of chilling around downtown, and it seems to be a little bit on the up and up in some parts of the downtown.
They're by the baseball stadium.
And compared to years past, like a while back, when I'd been there before, it seemed like maybe it's taking a turn for the better.
Yeah, there's a little bit of a resurgence. There's a resurgence of small businesses being established there. I know Shinola's out of there. You ever heard of that company, Shinola?
Yeah, American Watches.
They make watches. They make a bunch of different stuff, leather goods, cool stuff. They make really good messenger bags and that kind of shit, like real cool American-made stuff. So, you know, that's nice. It's nice that things like that are happening where people do recognize.
And if you drive down, there's so much area that is available. There's so many buildings that are just completely abandoned. The windows are all shattered and covered in spray paint and graffiti, but the bones are still there. Yeah. You know, if somebody wanted to rebuild it.
Yeah, if you got a good idea and some manufacturing space, that'd be a good spot to go. Back in the day, during the car boom, like Canton, Ohio, Detroit, Toledo, Flint, there was a lot of folks from the mountains that were moving up there and getting those jobs. And I think that was the Hillbilly Highway is where that term comes from. And my grandparents were one of those. They moved up to Canton, Ohio.
My granddad was working for Ford. And the place where we're from, West Virginia, is super country, like very rural. I think. there's 4,000 people in the county now, in Pendleton County. And there's this local guy.
I can't remember his name, but my great-grandparents had an old store where you could kind of go and get your boots and your milk and your eggs and everything in this one little general store. And it was a hangout, too. And this guy was coming in the store. He's like, I'm going to Detroit. I'm telling you all what.
I'm going to get a job. Headed up there. And he's talking about it for months and months. And then finally, he's like, I'm going. And he gets in the car and goes.
Everybody's like, there, goes so-and-so. And then, two weeks later, he rolled back into town. He never made it. He couldn't find his way.
He wasn't able to read a map well enough and just gave up and turned around and ended up coming home after two weeks.
That's hilarious.
Just gave up on that dream.
Boy, imagine people today trying to use maps. Isn't that funny that being able to read a map kind of went away? Yeah. When I was a kid, not a kid, when I was 20, well, first of all, when I first started doing stand-up comedy, I would use one of these things, like a legal pad. And I would get a phone call.
And they'd go, hey, we've got a gig for you. And here's your directions. You got a pen? I'm like, OK. And they're like, OK, you're going to take the 405 to this, to that, to the 9, to the fucking, you're going to take a right on this road, go two miles down the highway, you're going to find a building.
Like, wow, all right. Oh, my God. And that's how we did it. So I used to have like a folder where I had the directions to all these different road gigs that were written down. And that's how I got around.
And then, when I came to California, I got a Thomas guide. I was like, wow, I'm in the fucking future. You know, I got a whole book of maps and everybody had a Thomas guide. And I remember the first time Bill Burr visited my house, he had a Thomas guide. He figured out how to get to my house with the Thomas guide.
I gave him the address and he showed up with a fucking map book on his front seat.
Unreal.
You know, when I was a, I was a little kid and on our family vacations, my brother, my older brother, would be like, he would, he would read the map and like give the directions to, usually my dad was driving. But yeah, by the time I started like working, you know, thank God for that GPS. I can't imagine doing that. Like trying to find my way.
Cause hell, I mean, first time I had GPS, it was like 98, something like that. 98 or 99.. I had a, it was a, like a CD ROM that you stuck in, in the, uh, the CD player had a little flip up screen. I thought like, this is the shit. I had an Acura NSX and the little screen would pop up and you put in the CD and it was only for Los Angeles.
Yeah. And it was real slow. It was real slow and shitty. But I was like, dude, I'm in a James Bond movie.
98.. That's some top shit right there.
Mission impossible. Look at this. I'm fucking following the directions on, I had a little thing that sat on the roof. That was like the GPS thing that would like read the sky. And then it would somehow or another communicate with this map that was on my, my screen.
Damn. Yeah. Do you ever miss gigs back in the map days when you're, you know.
I was pretty good at it.
Pretty good at it.
Yeah. I was pretty good at it. And they were, they were pretty good at giving solid directions to retarded comedians.
Yeah. That's the thing. It's like reading that map, and the type of folks that are comedians and musicians, or, you know, are, are not the most capable. Always.
We're real similar. Musicians and comedians always seem to like get along real good. We have, like real, similar sort of just sensibilities.
Yeah. Dealing with a lot of clowny shit.
A lot of clowny shit. A lot of fucking irresponsible, impulsive people. A lot of, a lot of substances. A lot of, a lot of chaos. A lot of fun.
A lot of rebels. Yeah. You know, you don't pursue that dream. if you've got, you know, a law degree and, you know, a future with the firm, and, you know, everything's lined up and you got your 401k. No, it's like you gotta be a wild person.
You gotta have a screw loose.
A hundred percent.
Somewhere. there's gotta be a screw loose, or, you know, there's some, there's some major, some major issue, whether, whether they express it or not.
But that's how the great stuff comes. Like look at Jelly Roll. How do you, you don't get a Jelly Roll. No. With, with a guy who's had like a perfect education and a well-rounded lifestyle.
You don't get that beautiful, amazing, soulful music and that incredible human being. You don't get that.
And I don't know him, but, you know, just listening to him talk, I don't think even 15 years ago Jelly Roll could be who he is now. Right. If it would have happened earlier. Because he kind of jokes about, you know, like best new, he got the best new artist of the year and he's like 39 or whatever. And he was kind of joking about that.
But, you know, for him, the time, that is the right time for him. Yeah. And, you know, it's just. everybody has a different path.
It aligned perfectly where a guy like Jelly Roll, especially in country. Right. We see a guy like Jelly Roll with face tattoos and like gold teeth and shit. Like what?
Yeah. Like that guy? Yeah. 20 years ago, you'd never, never see that. But, you know, times are different in a good way and a lot of good ways in country music.
A lot of great ways. in all music, in art in general. It's like these communities are sort of colliding with each other and you're getting these sort of interesting mixtures of people. Yeah.
You got Post Malone. Yeah. In the same country, music. Covering Sergil Simpson and stuff like that. And it's like, fuck yeah.
Exactly. Exactly.
I watched his, sorry, the NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
Oh, I didn't see that.
It's amazing. Did you see Scarface's? No.
Oh, my God. It's incredible. Incredible. Scarface from the Ghetto Boys.
No, I didn't see this.
Did a Tiny Desk Concert. Fucking, amazing. Amazing. Just like he did it. He altered the music to fit the vibe of this Tiny Desk thing.
Are you a Ghetto Boys fan?
No, I didn't listen to them much.
Dude, when I was a kid, Ghetto Boys was shit. When I delivered newspapers, I used to deliver newspapers, I'd drive around listening to Ghetto Boys.
Oh, yeah.
He was on here before talking about playing to half a million people. Was that one of them? No, no, no. Or was that somebody else?
No, that was B-Real. That was B-Real from Cypress Hill.
I remember hearing that. I'll never forget that when he was telling that story. A half million people at a music festival.
That was Woodstock. Yeah, half a million people. Someone stole his shoes. He was crowd surfing and someone stole his sneakers off him.
When you're playing to half a million people and you lose your shoes, whatever. Whatever. That's the price you pay for just getting to experience something. God, that's kind of crazy. How many people have ever experienced that?
I know, right? That's got to be nuts, man. That's got to be nuts. This is something nuts about just enormous crowds, but enormous crowds vibing to your music. It has to be crazy.
That has to be really, that has to be so surreal.
There was a video that my bandmates were showing me from, I think it was like that 90s Woodstock. It might have been the same one, maybe a different day, but it was like Metallica or Korn. I think it was Korn.
That sea of people, it looks like a sea with all of them jumping up and down.
Oh, wow.
The video is profound. It was incredible. I can't believe nobody died in that with all those people moving.
Dave Chappelle and I did the Tacoma Dome once. Look at that. That's so crazy.
Look at that.
Oh, my God, it does look like water. Wow.
Look at that. Wow.
By the way, that's a really good way to get brain damage.
I never used to think of that until I talked to my friend Mark Gordon. He's an expert in traumatic brain injuries. He's like, yeah, you're not supposed to be bouncing your head around like that.
I got to stop doing that. I do that in my shows. I need to stop doing that.
I think it legitimately gives you brain damage.
I'll start getting punchy and I never fought.
Soccer players get it, man. Soccer players get CTE. from hitting the ball. A soft-ass ball, bouncing it off your head over and over again will give you brain damage. Jet skiers, you get it from jet skis.
Bouncing on waves all the time. Bang, bang, bang. You get brain damage that way, which is nuts. Hard to believe.
I need to start rethinking my live show a little bit. I do that a little too much. It's not like I just feel it, but maybe I ought to stop doing that.
What I was going to say about Dave Chappelle and I, we did the Tacoma Dome, which is 25,000 people in Tacoma, Washington. We sold out the Tacoma Dome. It was the highest attendance. We broke the attendance record. And we're backstage and the crowd is just nuts.
And Dave's sitting there with a cigarette. He looks at me and he goes, not a whole lot of motherfuckers get to do this.
Yeah. The percentages of people that ever get to experience that.
No, it's so small.
And you guys do it with just a microphone. That's great. Damn, I'm one of the least funny people you ever meet. So seeing folks that can play an arena just because of your jokes and shit and your ability to tell a story and the timing and the punchline, that's something I can never do. Never, ever do.
I have none of that. No talent for that at all.
It's a thing that you either want to do and have to learn how to do it, or you don't. But it's not outside of, there's a lot of funny people. They just don't do it. It's not a thing that, but it's a long journey. To get good at stand-up, it takes 10 years.
It takes 10 solid years of constantly performing. And every comic will look at a comic. Someone will tell you, how long has he been doing it? Two years. It's like, eh, see you, in eight years.
There's a thing. Everybody looks at comics that haven't been doing it any more than 10 years. How good is he? What's he got? He got a good, solid 15 minutes?
Does he fold up? What's his bits like? Do they have any depth to them? What's the timing like? Is there any misdirection?
What's the level that they're at? It takes so long. It takes so long. But it's not like singing. You can either sing or you can't sing.
You have a God-given voice. There's people that just can fucking sing, man. They can sing. They just have this quality to their voice. And they're just born with it.
It's pretty amazing. I don't have that. Yeah. Whatever that is.
That's the whole reason I can do what I'm doing. Because I didn't pick up a guitar until I was 20.. Really? Yeah. So I got a late start.
And I'm not a great guitar player. I'm still very much like an intermediate guitar player. But I was fortunate enough to, and I didn't grow up singing. So I just found out that I could sing in my early 20s. How did you find out?
What were you doing before you started doing music?
So I was at West Virginia University and I wanted to play football. But I wasn't good enough. I had no God-given talent to be good enough. And when you want something really bad, that was like my first dream that died. And once I let that go, I had all this free time.
And I was like, I need to, because I've always hunted and fished. But when you're going to the class every day, you can't always. I need more things to fill my time up. So I was watching the Grammys in 2011.. And the Avert Brothers played.
And then they played with Bob Dylan and Mumford & Sons. And I just remember watching them being like, man, that's incredible. Maybe I should pick a guitar up. That'd be something I can do productive in the evening. So that's how I got started.
And then it was about a year later, in 2012, when I actually could string some chords together. And then I started singing. And then I started figuring it out.
So you initially just started doing it, just for fun?
Yeah. Yeah, it was just going to be just another, like, just something to get into. And, you know, a productive hobby. You know, I was just kind of looking for some more things. Because since I gave up trying to play football, it just wasn't going to happen.
And all that time I used to spend working out and trying to make that happen became free time. Because, you know, so I just had to try to fill that time up with something. Because I just didn't want to sit around and bullshit with my friends all the time. So that's how I got into it.
Was there a thing that made you realize that you could do this professionally? Was there a moment where you figured it out?
Mm-hmm. I had a very unique first gig.
So I was on the Promise Scholarship at West Virginia. And that was this thing for in-state kids. If you had good grades, you'd go to school for free at an in-state university. So I was at WVU going to school for free because of my grades. And they had a study abroad program.
And my junior year, I was like, I'd never been overseas. And I was like, that would be, I'd like to experience that. So I went in to the counselor's office. And they kind of laid out some different options. And I got a finance degree at WVU.
And there were four places I could go. There was Hartfordshire, England, Bamberg, Germany, Tartu, Estonia, and Hong Kong. So they kind of like, were telling me all about the different schools. And I ended up landing on Tartu, Estonia as the place to go to. So I went over there and had brought my guitar.
And I just continued practicing a little bit in the evenings just for fun. But I had six flatmates. So there was no way that I could go anywhere and not be heard by them in our place. So I was a little uncomfortable with that because I wasn't used to people listening to me at all or singing in front of anybody. But I didn't want to like not play the guitar for half a year.
So I kept doing it. And then, when I was over there, we went to a show one night there in Tartu. And there was this club. It was like a little 150 cap room, maybe 200..
And we go to this show. And one of my roommates, after I left, had taken my guitar. And after the show was done, he ran up on stage. And for some reason, the mic was still on. His name was Balam.
And he ran up there and said, Charlie, come play a song. I was like, fuck, no, no way. And then he got the room to start chanting, Charlie, Charlie. And then I'm like kind of calculating in my head the pros and cons of like bitching out or just falling through. And I was like, at this point, it would be way worse if I bitched out and didn't go up and play one.
So I went up and played like a song.
Was it an original song?
No, no, I hadn't started writing then. Didn't have any aspirations yet to do this professionally.
What song did you play?
Probably Country Roads. I probably only knew like six songs.
And I was like shaking in my jeans, just so nervous. But I got through it. And then I got a Facebook message. That was a Friday. So on Monday, I got a Facebook message from a fashion designer there in town.
And she asked if I could play for her fashion show that Friday. And I said, yeah, sure. Hell, yeah. She goes, can you fill 20 minutes? I'm like, I can fill 20 minutes.
Yeah. So I showed up. And it was at this cafe with one of those courtyards in the middle of the building. You know what I mean? You ever been in a place like that?
And it had these two French doors. And they had the sound all hooked up. And a couple of my American buddies that were over there with me came with me. And they got me set up. And then it ended up being a lingerie fashion show.
So I got paid. Is this it right here? That's it.
Oh, Jamie found it.
Oh, shit, Jamie. Don't embarrass me. You're playing? Play it, play it. No, no.
Come here.
No.
By the way, this is a song you could fucking never write today. Yeah. Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go and leave you all alone?
Different times.
I got a bad desire. Ooh, I'm on fire. What the fuck?
That's my first gig.
I made 150 euro.
Wow.
And as they'd go in and out, they'd come out with less clothes on each time.
What a strange gig. A lingerie fashion show. There's little kids there. People are hanging out. Fashion shows are so strange.
Yeah.
They're so strange.
So I made 150 euro for doing those 20 minutes. And I was like, this is the easiest work I've ever done in my life. I'm going to keep doing this. Wow. So when I came back to West Virginia, I started singing bluegrass music at WVU and bars and stuff around town in the state.
Did you get any more gigs while you were in Estonia?
I think I did. I think, if I remember right, I might have played at that cafe a couple more times, maybe, max. But it was really when I came back to West Virginia where I started, like, you know, really gigging.
So that gig that we saw right there, that gig, was the thing that started the spark.
It started it, yeah.
Wow. What year was that?
That was 2013..
Wow. There it is.
Yeah.
June 17, 2013..
Yeah.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah. And that's how it began. And, you know, I sucked. You know, because I just picked up the guitar and I was just a beginner in the whole business. And it took until 2017..
Oh, Jesus. More stunt videos? Oh, Jamie, you're embarrassing me now, bud. This is going to make me blush. No.
Fuck.
Come on, man. This is great. Don't be embarrassed.
It's like if you were watching yourself in an open mic. Oh, yeah.
Ooh, I've seen those videos.
So it took me until 2017, 2018 to find my voice.
When did you start writing your own original songs?
2014..
Okay, so after your first gigs.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, I was playing covers and singing like bluegrass and stuff.
Had you had any ideas about writing songs? Had you ever written any lyrics or had any lyrics in your head or anything like that?
I started trying to do it when I really made the decision that I wanted to do this. And I was like, well, you can't do it without writing your own music. So then I started doing that and that was really bad for a long time.
Well, do you remember what your first song was that you wrote?
I can't remember what the first one would have been. I remember the third one because the third one wasn't terrible. And it was actually one that I put it on the new album for, you know, just kind of, I thought it'd be cool to put it on there.
That is cool.
So like mine. But yeah, most of them were really bad. And I just started working on it and figuring it out.
What is your writing process? Do you sit with a notebook? Do you just start playing the guitar and start singing? How do you do it?
Yeah, I sit with a notebook and that voice memo. And then, when I'm out and about, though, that notes and voice memo app, I have them separate on my phone. And I'll jot down ideas, hum, melodies into it. And I try to stay pretty consistent with it and show up every day and put some thought into it in front of the notebook to get my stuff.
And so do you wait for an inspiration to come to you, or do you just sit down?
No, I sit down even if I got nothing, just because if I do that, then I'll find myself maybe going a whole month without, you know.
Years ago, I listened to Jason Isbell was giving kind of some advice on it. And he said, you know, treat it, treat it like a job, like consistent. Show up to the notebook, consistently, show up every day, even when you're not inspired. And that'll kind of like making your own luck, so to speak.
Have you ever read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art?
I did. Yeah. Yeah, I read that, I think, last year or the year before.
He sent us a box of those. if you want one. Hell yeah. A signed copy. Fuck yeah.
Yeah, he sent us a box of signed copies. I think I probably sold more of those books for him than anybody alive. It's a great book.
It is.
I don't remember who recommended it to me originally. I probably mentioned it on the podcast and I forgot who it was. But it's one of the best books in terms of like, a practical guide to creativity. Because you really genuinely have to treat it like you, like he considers it the muse. Like there is a muse and you contact this muse.
And if you do it deliberately and you do it with respect and you do it every day, those ideas will come. And they do. They really do come like it's a muse. Like. I think there's a reason why.
Yeah, if you don't, for me, if I don't show up to the notebook and put my time in and come up with a bunch of junk, I don't think I would have as many of the days where a beautiful line or a melody would just pop into my head.
Yes.
It's like. you're just kind of laying, you're like paving the way for more of those sparks.
That's the same with comedy. I think it's the same with literature. I think it's the same with everything. Do you know? the term museum comes from the term muse?
Mm-mm. Yeah, that's what it's from.
I had no idea.
What a museum is, is a place where the muse's creations can be exhibited.
I had no idea.
Isn't that wild? I just found that out recently. But it makes sense. And there's quite a few words, apparently, that come from the origin of the idea of the muse.
Yeah.
But that's what a museum is. Make sure that's true. I'm pretty sure it's true. I'm pretty sure it's true.
Makes sense.
Totally makes sense. Museum. What does it say? The Greek form museum meant the seat of the muses.
There you go.
A designated philosophical institution or place of contemplation. Hmm. But it makes sense. You know, the muse, you address the muse. The muse gives you these ideas.
You create these things and you exhibit them.
Yeah. We were driving down from Dallas this morning listening to Willie Nelson's autobiography. And he was talking about almost being like a mouthpiece for the gods. Like he was saying that all the songs, there's something, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like something along the lines of all the music that he's ever written was in him before he was born. And it was just, you know, his task was to just connect with that.
Like what was already inside of him. He was saying that his grandmother told him that all that music inside of him was given by God. It was an interesting idea on it.
It's a good way to look at it. If you just think that there's an endless well of inspiration and creativity that's inside you. That God gave you this thing, and you just gotta just keep working and get it out of you. And then give it out to people.
Yeah. And that train of thought helps you when you go, when you're in a rut too. If you tell yourself, this is what I'm put here to do. This is what I'm meant to do. So I'm going to do it.
Yeah. And, you know, I found myself in 2022, that was me. I was in a rut because just a lot of circumstances in my life and in my work life had new things in it. New pressure that I was having a hard time writing. Because before I'd just been so free and didn't have people depending on me and all kinds of expectations.
And just being reminded by my father-in-law about, you know, this is what you're put on this earth to do. This is what you do best. This is what got you to the show in the first place. Just do that. Don't worry about all the other stuff you can't control.
There's a lot of that with creative peoples. There's this sort of wrestling match in your mind about, you know, anxieties, what you desire, what you hope to happen. You know, where is it going? What's the future? How's it all going to unfold?
Do I run dry? Do I have any more songs left inside of me? Yeah.
Am I going to lose it all?
Yeah. Am I going to just start sucking? Am I going to fall off? Is nobody going to like me anymore? Mm-hmm.
That's a big one.
And that was happening to me. Yeah, and it was February of 22.. We got off tour and labels started coming into the picture for the first time. Before that, I never had to worry about that. And then I had a band that was dependent upon me.
And they'd given up their jobs. Like, they'd gone all in. So they have, you know, their livelihoods were dependent upon it. It took me a lot of work to shake all that off and get back to, like, that clean slate of mind of just writing, because I love doing it. And that's what I'm put here to do.
Yeah, if you can have, like, a mindset that you could call upon, like an understanding, a calling that's in your mind, that you know, like, no matter how much confusion there is, no matter how much doubt, things go sideways, you're not real sure, just stay on the path.
Mm-hmm.
Just stay on that path. And then you'll have those dark moments, but then you come out of it and you're like, oh, I'm all right again. Yeah. I'm all right again.
Yeah, and once you've gone through something like that, it makes you a lot better on the other end, because when you see it again, you're like, oh, I know what this is. Yes. I'm just going to keep working right through it. Yes. And we'll be fine.
We're going to be just fine.
Well, that's why, like, heartache for teenagers is the hardest thing ever.
You've experienced it before. Yeah.
You know, you get dumped when you're 15.. You're like, the world is over.
I know.
It's devastating.
Yeah.
It's fucking devastating.
If I could go back and talk to myself as a teenage kid.
Oh, my God, I have so much advice.
Yeah.
I would have so much advice, but I wouldn't listen anyway. My young me was an idiot. He wouldn't have listened.
Yeah.
She's the one for me. I'm lost. without her. You fucking idiot. You just listen to too many stupid songs.
You're fine. Yeah.
Yeah. Life is, you know, life is short, but it's also pretty long. Yeah. And sometimes young folks, they lose sight of, you know, just how much time there is ahead of them, for who knows what's going to come their way.
There's a song lyric in that. Life is short, but it's also pretty long. Mm-hmm. Because that is 100% true.
Definitely a good theme for a song there.
Yeah. Life is short. It really is very short. But it is fucking long.
The learning process is long. Hell, yeah. It's long to figure out life. It's a sludge. every day.
Every day. It's just like a little more information creeps in and gets sort of like, accepted. Yeah. Written in. I get it.
Okay, now, I really get it. Now I get it, get it.
Yeah. And then there's some other little aspect of life that comes around the next year and you learn the hard way. on that one. You're like, oh shit, I didn't see that one coming. Yep.
Yeah. Boy, that's one of the things that is positive and negative about things like COVID. You know, like some major upheaval of everything, where the whole world just gets thrown sideways. You're like, whoa. Yeah.
I mean, there's so many negatives, right? Loss of life, loss of businesses, everybody fucking at each other's throats. But on the other side of it and the other end of it, you're like, oh, now I kind of understand people a little bit better. Now I understand why character and discipline is so important in friends and people that you love, people that can hang in there and deal with things, versus people that cannot adapt and just fall apart and then look for someone to rescue them. And these things, you only learn them.
There's only one way to learn them. You have to go through some shit. Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. If you were to ask me in 2019, how was I going to get through and react to what ended up happening there in 2020, I would have been bullshitting you if I pretended like I knew. Yeah, me too. My wife and I, we had no idea until we went through it.
Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I've always had in my head this thought that things could go sideways. And I literally had an apocalypse truck built.
I had a Toyota Land Cruiser built with a giant gas tank and all steel bumpers. And so I'm like, if something gets fucked up, I want something that holds a lot of gas, that can go real far and I can drive over hills.
Did you get that UN bulletproof plating? I didn't.
Because I figure, if it gets to that, you're kind of fucked. If you're in a goddamn gunfight and you've got rubber tires, you're kind of fucked, no matter what.
Dude, this is a side note. Not to go too much to the side, but I saw a wild video the other day of these two armor truck guards in South Africa.
Oh, I've seen that.
Did you see that?
Yeah. That's wild. They're trying to take over this guy's armor truck. How good were those dudes at keeping their shit together?
They kept it together. And what was so rare about that video is it's just this stable camera on them where you're watching somebody trying to keep it together and keeping it together. This is it right here.
They've already got the bullet in the glass.
The driver, he's already fighting in his way. And then you got his passenger there. Now he's like, all right, you can see it on his face. He's like getting ready to go. Yeah.
Wow. That is a crazy video.
That truck ends up coming on the passenger side and shooting some more on that one and trying to ram the truck. Yeah.
Yeah, these guys are trying to take over this armored truck.
South Africa is wild. I was looking at this house that's for sale. I just enjoy looking at architecture videos. for whatever reason. It's not looking to buy a fucking house in South Africa.
But they had this house that's for sale in South Africa, in Cape Town. And it's called the Iron Man House. And this house is insane. It's one of the coolest fucking houses I've ever seen in my life. It's insane.
It's like Tony Stark's house.
Oh, yeah. On a cliff.
They built this house. I think it's like $20 million, which is insane in Cape Town, South Africa. And it's just overlooking this thing. But Cape Town is so riddled with crime. To have a house like that in Cape Town, you're like, hey, here's where the money is.
Look at that fucking house.
Oh, my God. Bro.
Is that the sickest fucking house you've ever seen in your life?
That's insane.
It's so sick. And it's like overlooking this water.
That does look like the Tony Stark house, too.
It looks better than the Tony Stark house. Because the Tony Stark house is all just CGI. This is real. Does it come with that hot lady? This hot lady in her underwear just keeps appearing in all these pictures.
Like, you can have her.
It's a good way to sell it. She's in every picture.
And then she would be here drinking, waiting for you. And then she'd be in her underwear, waiting for you to fuck.
Look at this video.
Look at these photos, man. It's a fucking incredible house. But that part of the world is a wild part of the world. I was just in the British Virgin Islands. And one of the people that I was with was this lady.
She was from South Africa. She was explaining to us what it's like there. She was like, you know, my generation, it wasn't that bad. But now it's pretty bad.
It's worse now.
Yeah. She's like, the violence is just crazy.
Damn.
Yeah.
Wow.
Some country music people tour there. Really?
They tour South Africa?
Dude, Kip Moore was there over the summer. I mean, it looked incredible for him. But I don't know if I ever find my way there or not.
It's like the elevated levels of... I guess, if you live there, you just get accustomed to it. People get accustomed to everything. But there's elevated levels of risk there that just don't exist if you're in Austin.
Yeah.
But not necessarily, because 6th Street, where my club is, there's some fucking shootings there on a regular.
Yeah, we played a... I was opening for a show at that blues club downtown. It was like during COVID. Antones, yeah, that's right. And there was a shooting that night.
It ended up being a shooting that night.
Yeah, it happens. Like in America, well, shit, in the world, you're going to have violence. Especially, it seems like post-COVID, everything just got kind of like norms, sort of dissolved. Reality, sort of shifted into this new, strange place where things get... There are more heightened tensions and things are more bizarre, I think, than ever before.
And I think you just get accustomed to that. And if you live in South Africa, I guess, you just get accustomed to life in that vibe.
Just dealing with that shit.
Yeah. The people there, they'll have like barbed wire all over their fences and shit.
I can't even imagine.
High security systems. I mean, I would imagine everybody has to be armed. Also, when you kill somebody, you get out of jail pretty fucking quick. That Pistorius guy?
Dude, I saw that. He's already out. Damn, that wasn't long.
He murdered his fucking girlfriend in like 2013, man.
Yeah, if I were her dad, I'd be doing something about that.
What year did he kill his girlfriend? 2012?.
Dude, it was like 10 years ago.
Yeah, I think he did 11 years. Nine years? Nine years. He did nine years for murder?
Dude, I got... For fucking murder? There's people I grew up with that are doing three times that for an armed robbery when they're 16 or 17,, you know?
How about dudes who are selling weed and are still in jail for the rest of their lives? I mean, that's one of the cruelest things about Colorado. When Colorado changed over and became legal, and marijuana was legal in Colorado, it was the first state. There's dudes in penitentiaries that could look out their fucking window and see a weed store. They're in jail for selling weed!
That's a damn shame, isn't it?
A parole board granted Pistorius his petition in November on the grounds that he had served half of his 13-year sentence for murder in Steenkamp, making him eligible according to South African law. Jesus Christ. If all you have to do is 13 years for killing people, boy, there's a lot of people that are out there like, I think I'll kill that dude now. I'll do 13 years to get him off the fucking planet. There's a lot of people, like, and him, out there, wandering around.
How many people out there are like, that's your daughter? That guy killed your daughter, and he only did nine years?
Oh, it'd be a no-brainer.
Look at her, she's so beautiful.
Yeah, bud.
I mean, what the fuck, dude? He still says he's innocent. Yeah, he shot her! Look, he shot through a fucking door and killed her. You know, at the very least, he's guilty of reckless manslaughter.
Like, you don't know what your target is? You're just shooting through a fucking bathroom door, or whatever he's doing?
Okay, yeah, I didn't know if my, I wasn't, like, relying on my memory too much, but it was a bathroom, too.
I believe so.
Like, an armed robber, is in the bathroom?
Was he in the bathroom, or was she in the bathroom? Was he shooting out of the bathroom? I don't remember. I feel like I thought he was in the bathroom. Yeah, that's what I'm kind of remembering, too.
He was worried about something else. Yeah, well, one thing you have to take into consideration. if there's a lot of break-ins, if there's a lot of home invasions in an area. Look, we're, my friends in L.A. are telling me, like, I have friends in L.A.
who used to be anti-gun. And they say, like, why do you want guns? And now, they all have guns. And they're all terrified. And there's, not all of them, but there's quite a few of them that have experienced break-ins.
And one of my friends just moved to Portugal. He's just like, there's so much shit going down in L.A. I don't know what to do. And I was telling him, hey, move to Austin. And then, I hadn't talked to him for, like, six months.
And I sent him a text message the other day, because he loves Korean food. I go, bro, I found a dope Korean food spot in Austin. He goes, hey, man, I moved to Portugal. I was like, what? He's an artist.
Crazy dude.
Hell of a move.
I was like, what did you do? Moved to Portugal. It's amazing here. The food's incredible. People are so nice.
Crime's low.
I have heard that. And Portugal's doing the thing where everything's legal. Yep. Is that right?
Yep. They decriminalize everything. All drugs. And they experience a giant drop in murders, a giant drop in addictions, in crime.
Yeah.
You're not supposed to have things that people want to do illegal. It's unfortunate. if people want to do things that are terrible for you. It is unfortunate. But the flip side is people are going to do it anyway.
And if you make it illegal, then you're propping up illegal enterprises.
Yeah. And, I mean, if I'm just, you know, at the end of the day, I'm a musician. I don't know shit. But if everything was legal, somebody goes in and buys whatever drug legally, they're probably not going to be laced with fentanyl.
Exactly.
You know?
100%. Look, you would have more overdoses. You would have more deaths. Like, if they just decided today to make everything legal, you're going to have a spike in deaths. There's no way around that, in my eyes.
But would you have a corresponding drop in fentanyl deaths? I think you would. So you would have a drop in accidental deaths, where people just take a little molly. They just want to go to a rave and just fucking dance, and all of a sudden they're dead. You would have way less of those.
So that would drop. But you're going to have people that are just addicted to drugs, and they're going to overdose because of availability. And you're going to have also people that try drugs that wouldn't have tried them because they're illegal, and they don't want to—they wouldn't know where to buy them. They don't know anybody who's selling drugs. If you could just go to a store and buy coke, like, oh, what's the fuss about?
Let me try this cocaine out. Yeah. And the next thing you know, you're a coke addict, and you've ruined your life. That's possible, too.
100%.
But, you know, there's personal responsibility. There's also education. There's counseling. There's a bunch of different things that could be set up to mitigate that. And I think that's the better direction for society, better than propping up cartels.
We've got this fucking thing that's happening right across our border, where there's immense organizations that have insane amounts of money because they've been selling drugs that are illegal in America.
Yeah, they're like warlords. Yeah, legit warlords. Yeah, some of those property owners down there, I don't know how they're dealing with that.
Bro, I was just watching this video today of this guy who lives on the border. They're dealing with all these people that come across the border that are smuggling drugs. It's fucking dangerous. He's like, you can't approach them. You can't go anywhere near them.
You have no idea what they're carrying. You have no idea who they are or what they're doing, or who they work for. And he's like, it's terrifying. They're just traveling across your property with a backpack, you know, and you've just got to just let it happen.
Yeah, and two years ago, I played a show down in San Antonio, and there was a rancher there at the show, and we were talking afterwards. And he said, and this would have been like right around that time. This had just happened. So this is April 21.. He said one of his best friends, who's also a rancher, got a bunch of feds rolled up to their house one day and put him and his family on house arrest for two days without any explanation as to why.
And then two days go by, and they say, okay, it's all good. And, you know, we're so sorry for the inconvenience. And the guy's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't, just, you have, there has to be an explanation here. And I guess, I don't know if I'm not getting somebody in trouble here, but the guy's like, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but there are nine insurgents that had crossed the border, and we, you know, just so happened to get them here on your property.
Holy shit. I bet the feds were probably watching them. And then, when they decided to actually take him, it must have been on this guy's ranch. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, you got your kid, your kids are out, maybe doing a chore on your ranch, on your own farm.
So, yeah, you got thousands of acres or something, and who knows what you could be running into.
Have you seen some of the recent videos of the lines, the migration lines, moving, not just in Mexico, they're moving from South America through Mexico into the United States?
I saw the ones from like a few years back, but I, dude, I've almost like tuned out. The numbers are insane. They're doing it again and stuff.
The numbers are insane. Somebody just released a graph that shows the numbers of illegal aliens over the last year in comparison to previous years. So, it's like you see the graph and it's like 2014,, 2015,, 2016, and it gets to 2021.. It's just like, yikes. There's more illegals have made it into this country over the last year, I believe, than are people that live in five different states legally.
Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, West Virginia's got 1.8 million on a real good year, maybe. It's probably a little less than that.
There's a lot more illegal aliens every year coming into, I mean, what's the number per month now?
What's the fix for something like that?
You got to fucking have a secure border if you want to fix it. It doesn't seem like they want to fix it. Like AOC was on TV the other day doing an interview, and she was saying, you know, she was calling them undocumented people, and the way to do it is to give them a path to citizenship. Well, how about you know who the fuck they are? Because if you're a person from another country, say, if you're in Europe and you want to come to America and become an American citizen, you know, you're an architect or whatever, this is like a long, lengthy process.
Oh, yeah. And they only take a certain amount of people every year, and you have to prove that you have a skill. There's a reason why you should be here legally. Yeah. But if you want to do it illegally, they'll give you money.
They'll give you a cell phone. There's people in Mexico. What they're doing is, this is pretty wild, because there's a radio station in San Diego that is a Mexican radio station. This guy was on the Mexican radio station. He's explaining how we do it.
He's like, he's gone back four times that month. So every time he crosses over, he gets $2,000..
He's gaming it.
So he's gaming it. He made $8,000 in a month from the federal government.
Like, what do you do? You set up, because back in the day, you know, when there's, you know, I don't know everything, obviously, but like, maybe the similar time in American history would have been the early 1900s. And you had all those Europeans coming over on the boats to work over in the U.S.
That's how my family got here.
Yeah, and everybody went through Ellis Island or somewhere like it, where you go in, and you got some sort of papers. Yeah, it was pretty easy. Yeah. Honestly, they didn't really check. At least, you know, they got you.
Like, they got, at least they got a name.
Yeah.
And they...
Well, not even. People change their names.
Yeah, they change it right there if it's like, too hard to pronounce sometimes.
Yeah, a lot of people do that. Yeah, yeah.
My bass player's last name got fucked with a little bit. I'm sure.
Yeah, a lot of people's names got changed. It was easy to come over here back then when my grandparents came here. But, you know, that was the law back then. This is not the law. The law is that you're supposed to go through this process where they vet you, and they find out if you're a criminal, and they find out if you're a terrorist.
Yeah.
They're not doing that at all. They're just opening the border, and they're essentially buying votes.
Yeah.
They're doing this. They're letting these people come in, and they're assuming these people are going to vote for the Democrats.
Mm-hmm.
And it's wild. It's wild that it's happening right in front of everybody's eyes, and most people aren't aware of it unless they see these videos. Or, like, Elon was telling me that when you go there, you really understand the scope of it. He goes, it's extraordinary. He just, you can't believe the numbers of people that are making their way across.
It's just insane. It's just, and everyone knows about it. So, all these people that live in these, and I don't blame them at all, man. Mm-hmm. If you're just a regular person that was unfortunate to be born in a terrible environment, and you realize, if I can get to America, I can feed my family.
I can get a job. I can work on a farm. I can, whatever it is, I can work in a factory, and we can live in a good way instead of being trapped. In this hellhole in which we were just unfortunately born in. Yeah, I get it.
Yeah, you're gonna go for it. Fuck yeah.
If I was in Guatemala, 100% I'd have a backpack. Yeah. 100%, I'd be on that fucking trek. Let's go.
Yeah, if you get up here and get some work and send money home.
How many lazy Americans do we have in this country that just fuck off and don't want to do jack shit, and they're just fucking. Meanwhile, we got people walking here from Mexico. Yeah.
Yeah, you see it. And that's the thing, like. back to the COVID thing, man, it's like a flip, the switch in a lot of folks heads from one end of that to the other with.
Yeah, you know, I mean, if you're not where you're at in life, you know, then you're never going to get there half ass in your day. No. Wherever you happen to be, it might be the best idea to like, give it your best. Yeah. Or else you're just going to be a miserable fuck the rest of your life.
Well, that was one thing that happened to a lot of people. that was good. They realized that this job that they had, they hated, that just went away. Okay, you know, not only did I fucking hate this job, but I thought it was necessary because it was the only thing that I had. I didn't want to lose it.
But then they just fucking took it away from me. God damn it, I'm going to go for my fucking dream. And a lot of people did. They went for their dream. They started small businesses.
They got their shit together. They lost weight. A lot of people did a lot of very positive things when their back was against the wall. Yeah. And then a lot of people just went on unemployment.
And a lot of people never wanted to get on. I mean, I had friends that were in the bar business and they couldn't get people to work. They couldn't get bartenders. They couldn't because people were making more money being unemployed.
Yeah.
Taking unemployment. And they would rather live like that. They'd rather get that free check.
Yeah. And that was like, you know, I'm 31 and I released my first album in 2019.. But I didn't get booking and management and stuff like that until even after that. So COVID cut the legs out from me. Things were just starting to actually look a little bit legitimate, you know, in my life.
And COVID cut the legs out from under that. So on the other side of that is really where, you know, I could have gone two ways. And I went back on tour in the spring of 21.. And then I started taking my full band out with me. And we're a seven piece, including myself, in the summer of 21..
And I went broke in the fall.
Whoa.
Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't pay my guys one week. And I had my second album, which we made during the COVID year, went on pre-sale that next week. And I explained to my guys what was happening.
And they stuck with me. And once I put the pre-sales up, then I got a little bit, you know, to keep paying them. And we were able to keep working. And then I was bleeding real bad in 21.. And it came down to one point.
in Bloomington, Indiana. We played the Bluebird one night. And I had just gotten a new day-to-day manager who's done a phenomenal job for me. But anyways, he had just gotten on the job and basically broke it down for me on the phone how much I was losing per month. And was just saying, he was like, you're going belly up here.
This is over. You have to cut half these guys. And even then, we're going to have a hard time making it. And after that gig, we all sat outside in the alleyway. And I explained to them what was happening.
And they all took half pay. Damn. So my guys were willing to go. $50 a show. Damn.
And they were in 100%. They didn't have their jobs and stuff back home. They were with me.
Wow.
And they were game to go for that, which you can't live off that. And we kept hanging on there for a couple months. And then that second album came out in November. And we got on the road with. Zach Bryan brought us out on the road with him.
And it worked. The album did great. And we made the most of our opportunity getting to open that tour for him.
And we made it. The universe rewards that. It was that close to just, even if I wanted to, I wouldn't have had money to even put in the gas tank.
But that's what makes the story beautiful. The terrible story is you quit. That's the terrible story. You're sitting on the porch one day, and you're an old man. Going, God damn it, I think I could have made it.
Those are the most bitter of people, man. Those are the ones that talk the most shit about other artists. They talk the most shit about other people. The people that just have these regrets. The failed attempts.
They didn't go through the door. They didn't do it. They didn't take that risk. They didn't just run. They didn't just fucking suck it up and try it.
That's a scary thing. But if you can get through that scary thing, that's a better life. That's a better life. The life of fear and the life of regret, that's a terrible life. That life of wishing.
The could've life. That's the shittiest life.
Yeah, you don't want to be that.
God damn, you don't want to be that. Especially when there was a spark. When there's some potential.
Yeah.
In the comedy world, when you start out as an open mic, or you start out with a bunch of fucking mental patients and crazy people. Because anybody can go on stage. And there's always one or two guys that you're with, or girls. And they got something. They got something.
And some of them make it, and some of them don't. And if there's a hundred of them, maybe one of them will become a professional. Maybe. It's probably not even that. It's probably for 500 open micers, one, it's probably not even that.
It's probably a thousand. For every 1,000 open micers that regularly shows up, one of them will become a working professional.
Yeah, that can actually sell tickets.
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