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#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain Podcast Episode Description
Oliver Anthony is singer-songwriter who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with many of his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life.
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Transcript:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Oliver’s X: https://x.com/AintGottaDollar
Oliver’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/oliver_anthony_music_
Oliver’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/@oliveranthonymusic
Oliver’s TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@oliveranthonymusic
Oliver’s Website: https://oliveranthonymusic.com/
Oliver’s FaceBook: https://facebook.com/OliverAnthonyMusicOfficial/
Oliver’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/oliveranthonymusic
SPONSORS:
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Tax Network USA: Full-service tax firm.
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LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix.
Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex
OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(09:00) – Open mics
(13:03) – Mainstream country music
(22:10) – Fame
(28:06) – Music vs politics
(36:56) – Rich Men North of Richmond
(47:06) – Popularity, money, and integrity
(1:01:54) – Blue-collar people
(1:13:57) – Depression
(1:38:50) – Nature
(2:01:26) – Three-legged cat
(2:09:57) – I Want to Go Home (live performance)
(2:13:36) – Guitar backstory
(2:17:58) – Playing live this year
PODCAST LINKS:
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#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain Podcast Episode Summary
In this podcast episode, the host engages in a conversation with Oliver Anthony, also known as Christopher Lunsford, discussing a range of topics from personal experiences to broader societal issues. The episode features reflections on the challenges of fame and maintaining integrity, with references to conversations with Joe Rogan about the pressures of public life. Oliver Anthony shares insights into his songwriting process, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and the impact of his music on listeners.
The episode touches on the complexities of modern life, including the influence of corporate structures and the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy. The host and guest discuss the importance of maintaining personal connections and the value of experiences over material possessions. They highlight the significance of community and relationships in providing meaning and purpose in life.
A recurring theme is the critique of political and economic systems, particularly the tax laws that disadvantage blue-collar workers. The conversation also explores the role of technology and social media in shaping public discourse and the need for genuine human interaction.
Actionable insights include the importance of staying true to oneself amidst external pressures and the value of connecting with others on a personal level. The episode encourages listeners to reflect on their own lives and consider what truly matters beyond material success.
Overall, the episode conveys a message of authenticity, integrity, and the enduring importance of human connection in navigating the complexities of modern life.
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#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:00
The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit, rich men north of Richmond. He became a voice ram many who are voiceless, with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life.
Speaker: 0
00:20
His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. Oliver Anthony was his grandfather’s name. And so Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 19 Thirties Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times, as Chris says. He’s happy to be called either one, by the way.
Speaker: 0
00:45
I’ve gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation. He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfredeman.com/sponsors. It’s the best way to support this podcast.
Speaker: 0
01:07
We got MasterClass for learning, Shopify for selling stuff, Oracle for computing, Sai Network USA for taxes, and Element for electrolytes. Choose one of my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsor and instead just take this quiet moment to talk about things I’m reading or thinking about.
Speaker: 0
01:32
A little Bob Ross like heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don’t do ads in the middle. So, they’re all bunched up here in one place. You can skip if you like, but if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff.
Speaker: 0
01:49
Maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfreeman.com/contact. Alright. Onto the ethereal realm of sponsor land. Let’s go.
Speaker: 0
02:01
This episode is brought to you by MasterClass, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. You know Ai know so little about filmmaking. This Scorsese MasterClass was instructive. Scorsese himself, his approach, his, deliberate, passionate, almost bipolar approach to, filmmaking into editing.
Speaker: 0
02:27
It’s inspiring to watch madness manifest into genius. I think about the hand drawn storyboards for Sai Driver. Haven’t seen them, heard about them. And that I think is the birthplace of great films is the storyboards. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:44
Really, it’s the vision in the mind of somebody like Scorsese that then is projected onto the storyboards. So the storyboards is just a slice, but that’s the first time they take shape in, visual physical reality. I should do that more. I should think in the speak, in the realm of storyboards, especially when I try to do sort of vlog, documentary, filmmaking type of stuff. Really inspiring.
Speaker: 0
03:10
Anyway, get unlimited access to every master class and get an additional 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lexpod. That’s masterclass.com/lexpod. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store.
Speaker: 0
03:28
I got a chance to talk to DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, for many, many, many hours. What a wonderful human being. Genius, but also fun and aggressive in his opinions, and holding those opinions, not in a personal ai of way, but in an almost backyard football kind of way.
Speaker: 0
03:50
Just seeing who wins with a particular idea just for the explicit purpose of, learning something from the interaction, from the tension between the ideas, from the debate. Such a fun person to talk to. Anyway, I meh it because I think about 10,000 or a hundred thousand times we give a shout out to to Shopify ai Shopify is really, an exemplary execution of a system used by a very large number of people that is built on Ruby on Rails.
Speaker: 0
04:23
That conversation, by the way, is just an homage to programming period. And you can think of Shopify as an homage to Ruby on Rails, which DHH really explains well why it’s such a beautiful programming language. Anyway, a lot of love for Shopify to go around. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex, all lowercase.
Speaker: 0
04:43
Go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by Oracle, a company providing fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about the weather in a way that’s, the most generic of topics but talked about in the least generic of ways.
Speaker: 0
05:08
And the discussion centered around how much computational power would be required to simulate the weather sufficiently to be able to predict it. And I’ve gotten a chance to talk to a few people who, chase storms. They’re storm chasers, and they actually have to do this kind of weather prediction.
Speaker: 0
05:27
Obviously, with simulation, you have to always choose a level of abstraction. You can’t get down to the sort of quantum mechanical simulation. Or if you do, you’re gonna need a large computer, probably as large or larger than the size of the universe if you wanna perfectly simulate a thing.
Speaker: 0
05:42
But ai, a laptop with a nice GPU will do. Anyway, cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, I believe that stands for. Offer is for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify at oracle.com/lex. That’s oracle.com/lex.
Speaker: 0
06:03
This episode is also brought to you by Tax Network USA, a full service tax firm focused on solving tax problems for individuals and small businesses. I think this is the right place to mention Oliver Anthony’s, Chris’ song, rich meh north of Richmond. Boy, does the tax law really fuck over the blue collar worker, the everyday man.
Speaker: 0
06:25
The more complexity there is, the more loopholes there are for people with, many lawyers and accountants and expert explorers of the loopholes, finders of the loopholes. It’s nuanced, of course, pros and cons. But, really, at the end of the day, I think a simpler tax law is better. I don’t know.
Speaker: 0
06:49
That song hit me hard, hit a lot of people hard, and a lot of, Chris’ songs do. Sometimes it feels hopeless. But I would say more than probably any country on Earth, The United States really puts a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But we live in the system we live in, so here we are. That’s why you need these guys. Talk with one of their strategist for free today.
Speaker: 0
07:18
Call +1 809581000 or go to tmusa.com/Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar delicious electrolyte mix. Whenever I think about thirst, whenever I think about water, whenever I think about electrolytes, I think about my time in the Amazon Jungle.
Speaker: 0
07:43
I recorded a bunch of different videos from that ai, and I need to put together a little, like, mini documentary of that time to celebrate, really, the jungle and to celebrate the human being of Paul Roseley. This Earth, this civilization creates some special humans, and he’s one.
Speaker: 0
08:04
But, anyway, I remember thinking about elements, like a like a cold, ai drink of water with some element in it. I remember thinking about that when going through the jungle. I’m deeply dehydrated. It’s the little things in life. Anyway, get a sample pack for free with any purchase.
Speaker: 0
08:25
Try it at drinkelement.com/Lex. This is a Lex Bryden podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Christopher Lunsford or as many of you know him as Oliver Anthony. So I was texting you, last night, sitting vatsal open ai, listening to a guy perform great balls of fire.
Speaker: 0
09:07
Like I told you, he’s giving everything he got for, like, five people in the audience plus me.
Speaker: 1
09:12
Well, you were there. I didn’t I’d have been doing it too if you were out there. Ai, oh, that’s, like, screaming.
Speaker: 0
09:16
No, man. He was, this big dude on a keyboard, just everything. Sweaty, long hair. You could tell, like, he was there in his own little world. I love the courage of that, of just giving it everything. I don’t think he wants to be famous. I don’t think he wants anything in life except to be there and to play, like, his heart out. That’s why I love open mics.
Speaker: 0
09:37
Like, some people still aspire to be famous when they play open mics, but some people, maybe they’ve given up, or maybe they never wanted to be famous. They’re just there for the pure artistry of it. So And you said arya started out playing open mics. What hit shitty bars. What was that like?
Speaker: 1
09:53
Well, yeah. Real quick before I forget too. A great example of a of a guy who had that same mindset and was able to maintain it really well is this mandolin player named Johnny Vatsal in West Virginia. To me, he’s one of the best, and he’s won all these awards and stuff, and he still works for UPS full time.
Speaker: 1
10:10
And, like, he could go out and tour with it, play mandolin for anybody he wanted to. But he but, man, when you meet Johnny, like, you can tell he’s just got this, this joy in him that I don’t think he would have if he but as far as me with the open mics, yeah, it was just it was a lot of them were really a lot of them were embarrassing.
Speaker: 1
10:33
There was a couple I remember there was times where I’d go up and try to do I ai, like, one song. I get, like, halfway through the next song, and I’d be so nervous by that point. I didn’t I couldn’t remember any of the words, and there’s a couple times I’ve I remember there was one time in particular that I just I just walked off halfway through the song, put my guitar in the case, and just well, I just left.
Speaker: 1
10:51
I didn’t even, like, couldn’t even stay in there. Just total, you know, just total freak out. Just embarrassment? And I never drank in bars either. Like, I’m not a I wasn’t really a social drinker, so I was just there to try to do the so it was it was kinda I was a little out of place anyway.
Speaker: 1
11:05
I feel kinda out of place in a bar to start with. So
Speaker: 0
11:07
Yeah. It’s back when you could smoke in bars. There’s a whole vibe to it. People smoking, drinking. And, yeah, definitely, you know, bombing in a place like that when the audience is is there’s, like, five people, and they’re bored.
Speaker: 1
11:21
Yeah. There was one like that. It was in Matoaka. It wasn’t that far from where I lived. The place is gone now, but, it was about as big as the room we’re in here, if that you know? Like, the the ceiling tiles were yellow from where everybody had smoked in it since the beginning of ai.
Speaker: 1
11:36
And but, like, yeah, that was my little speak, those little, like, the spots.
Speaker: 0
11:39
You did covers? What’d you play? What was your go to?
Speaker: 1
11:42
Back then, it was ai, I don’t know, Fishing in the Dark, Nitty Gritty Band, or, like, any of those old Hank like, Hank Junior songs, like, any of those bar type David Allen Coe, ai, You Never Call Me by My Name, any of that kinda stuff. And I haven’t even played any of those in forever now, but that was any of those ones where you get people singing along and stuff, that’s what I’d always try to do.
Speaker: 1
12:04
You know?
Speaker: 0
12:04
Yeah. That song you performed, Take Me Home, Country Road, and How’s That Go? West Virginia. Yeah. It’s a good song.
Speaker: 1
12:10
John Denver was just, one of those guys that it’s who knows where he woulda went long term if he wouldn’t have passed. But
Speaker: 0
12:18
You know what’s a fun song that I love? I shouldn’t, but I love is, what is it? Ai, thank God I’m a country boy.
Speaker: 1
12:27
I think that’s what I liked about John Denver was he was a little bit, like he let himself be a little bit corny in the spirit of, like, having fun with it. Like, great example, there’s this old older guy that not a lot of people have heard of named Roy Clark. But, my farm’s like a mile down the road from Roy Clark’s old farm. But he he used to be on Hee Haw.
Speaker: 1
12:46
Do you I don’t know if you ever heard of that old show from, like, the sixties or whatever, but crazy dude. He could pick any instrument up. Like, there’s videos on YouTube of him, but he would just sit there and just pick anything up and just rip it to death. But he would always just be real silly about it. He never had he never took it too never took himself too seriously. You know?
Speaker: 0
13:03
Some people go to the fun place. Some people go to the dark place. Yeah. Because, like, you know, country can do both. You you you more often go to the dark place to to the to the pain.
Speaker: 1
13:14
Yeah. Well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out. They’ll be probably not I mean, I don’t know what they’ll be. I don’t know. What is country anymore anyway? I don’t know that many people who listen to the type of music that I grew up listening to probably listen to country radio anymore anyway.
Speaker: 1
13:30
Like, I think there’s there’s quite a lot of people who don’t who’ve sort of disowned that space. You know? In commercialized country, you only really get what sells, which on and a lot of what sells isn’t necessarily what matters.
Speaker: 0
13:44
Well, you had that whole experience where they take what you recorded and polish it, quote, unquote, try to make it perfect, and in so doing, destroy the soul of the thing. And so probably that happens with these big artists. They’re so famous. It’s like a machine. And so Yeah. What the machine does is it over polishes things.
Speaker: 0
14:03
And so the raw, like, power of the person, the uniqueness of the person, the soul of the person is gone if you do that.
Speaker: 1
14:12
Yeah. Well, Ai think professionalism in general, like, applying the task the tactics of corporate America to anything that is
Speaker: 0
14:20
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
14:20
Baseline artistic is not gonna end well.
Speaker: 0
14:23
They’re all individually brilliant, but together, this corporate speak comes out. Yeah. Just the soul of the people dissipates. It, like, disappears. Why are you all pretending that, like, life is not terrible and beautiful, and, like, you’re both scared shitless and ai, and this guy’s going through a divorce.
Speaker: 0
14:47
This person just fell in love. Like, you’re Yeah. Forgetting the intensity of ai. With this corporate, like, nine to ai, like, hi, John. It’s great to see you today.
Speaker: 0
15:00
Oh, you too. You as well. You as well. But when I look at it, I’m like, why am I whining? I I feel like a Bukowski type character because, like, they’re all really nice. They’re all good people, but, like, something is gone when you have this corporate machine.
Speaker: 1
15:17
Well, they’re they’re there to fill a role contractually, and if they I think if they bring too many of their human elements into that, then they jeopardize losing their sense of security. And it’s all just out of fear. It’s out of fear of losing your job. I mean, it’s the reason why all the songs say Oliver Anthony and not Christopher Lunsford on them. You know?
Speaker: 1
15:34
Like, it’s fear of it’s so difficult to especially now, it seems Sai mean, who knows? I didn’t I was never around in the forties or fifties to work a job. I’m sure they were probably pretty miserable back then, but, you know, they talk about now, like, how difficult it is, like, the the impossibility of having a single family household or anything else.
Speaker: 1
15:52
But, like, when you find a decent paying job that you can do without it just torturing you every day, that’s a that’s a pretty important thing now, you know, like and so it it’s pretty easy to just it’s pretty easy to kinda turn yourself into a robot for eight or ten hours a day out of fear of it’s ai you don’t wanna be yourself too much because maybe part of yourself isn’t something that’s accepted in this, like, dystopian nightmare that you go to work at every day.
Speaker: 1
16:20
And so you just gotta do your best to just not step on any toes or do anything that that makes you stand out too meh. You know? And now it’s ai now, like, when you scroll through some of these videos that people, like, the big even when I was still, like, when I was still working my lame job, it was, like, there was this whole big thing of people talking about quiet quitting or something like that where they were just gonna go to work but not really do anything.
Speaker: 1
16:43
But
Speaker: 0
16:44
That hurts me so much. That hurts me when you just stop when you’re there, but you’re not really there. That makes me so sad.
Speaker: 1
16:51
Yeah. So then they wonder these companies just slowly kinda fall apart and disintegrate because they’re so worried about structure. And, you know, like, I mean, god, man. Even in even in America today, our culture has become because so many big corporations own and manage everything that we live under, like food, agriculture, health care, like social media, it’s all in corporate structures that it’s almost ai a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now with society, I think, are like it’s just because of it’s almost like h corporate HR has been implemented into our whole thought process of everything, you know.
Speaker: 1
17:25
It’s like, I think that’s kinda what you’re touching on though. It’s ai, it’s it’s hard to be it’s hard to be a human and be a good little corporate employee at the same time. And as our whole society moves more into, like, becoming a like, basically one big corporation, it’s ai, you don’t wanna piss the HR lady off, so it’s a lot easier for me to just beep boop.
Speaker: 1
17:48
We’re all sort of just turn we’re all turning into robots, you know.
Speaker: 0
17:51
And that’s the I’ve talked to to great engineers about this. Jim Keller is a legendary engineer. Elon Elon Musk is another example. But you need that I don’t know what’s a nice term for it, but you need the asshole because you you wanna get to the ground truth of things, to the first principle of things.
Speaker: 0
18:09
Like, how do we simplify? How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get shit done? And that has no place for this kind of polite speak.
Speaker: 0
18:17
And then, you know, other great team members swoop in and, like, repair the damage that the tornado has done.
Speaker: 1
18:26
Do you think that’s because I’m not I’m not super well versed about all this, so I’m probably dumb to even mention it. But, this guy who’s been helping me with doing a documentary, he’s been following me around since the very first show at the August of twenty three. He his background was doing, promotional videos for Boeing, like, for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever.
Speaker: 1
18:48
And so he was we touched we touched base a little bit on Boeing, and, of course, they’re having a lot of problems now, it sounds like. And he was comparing that with SpaceX or with, you know, ai, that that I I think it’s that exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of dehumanization within companies.
Speaker: 1
19:07
I think that’s what ultimately causes maybe I don’t know if there’s a connection there or not, but it seems like Boeing is a very would be more of that. They don’t have that tornado. They’re very, like, h like, he was telling me even just with his protocols and some of the people he worked with, like, everything’s just very, you know, lightly touch everything.
Speaker: 1
19:23
No one you don’t don’t touch anything too hard.
Speaker: 0
19:25
So it’s not just HR. It’s also it’s just this managerial class where it’s ai, Bob from this department has to schedule a meeting with John from this department and Debbie. Like, they have to have a meeting two and a half weeks from now, and then there’s paperwork, and that that bureaucracy that’s created in the managerial class just slows everything down.
Speaker: 0
19:48
And one of the things that slowing everything down does is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing this shit. Ai, the people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff, it’s, again, soul drenching to, like, be excited, show up, and now you hit this wall of paperwork.
Speaker: 0
20:08
Like, you can’t you have to wait for John and Debbie and I forgot the third guy’s name that I’ve imagined in my head, to have a meeting. It just and then you kinda slow down and you disappear in terms of that fire, that passion that’s required to create big things. So Yeah.
Speaker: 1
20:29
Because they don’t believe there’s a lack of leadership, and if they don’t believe in if they don’t believe in that leadership, then why the hell would they be motivated? I mean, I remember, a while back watching a Jocko Wilnick talk about a, talk about that when he was in leadership when he was leading his guys.
Speaker: 1
20:47
I think he mentions it in his book is probably where I remember seeing it, one of his books. And he talks about, like, how important it was for the people under him in rank to believe in what he was the actions he was giving them. Even if he necessarily didn’t agree with him himself, it was ai there it’s really hard to take orders and go and like to to have human spirit and especially in something that’s innovative and not if you if you’re working for a company where you just think everybody’s dumb.
Speaker: 1
21:14
I mean, I can certainly relate with that. I mean, god, that’s all And and my old job, that’s all we did was we spent half our day just talking about how how dumb we thought everybody was that was above a you know, it’s ai it’s easy to fall into that in the corporate world. And so, yeah, the morale gets terrible and and and everyone suffers as a result of it. You know?
Speaker: 1
21:33
Like, the the people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction suffer and the people at the bottom. It’s ai it’s not good for anybody. I had thought now that I’m doing this that I could escape away from that, but that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and that, that inefficiency, like, I still battle it every day.
Speaker: 0
21:53
That’s ai it takes it takes unique characters to lead the way. Such unique characters are very much needed in the music industry to revolutionize everything, cut through the bureaucracy, the bullshit, vatsal ultimately is is just a machine that steals money and doesn’t get any anything done, really.
Speaker: 0
22:08
We’ll talk about it. By the way, all the love in the world to Jocko. He’s great. I’ve been going through lots of ups and downs in ai, lots of low points for myself over the past, shit. Three years, really, but, recently, especially, and he always texts in this in this very high testosterone way of, ai, like, you good, bro? Just checking in.
Speaker: 0
22:36
I mean, he’s a good man. He’s a good man. He’s, obviously, an inspiration to millions of people, but also just, he’s a good human being himself. So
Speaker: 1
22:45
Maybe one sai one thing that we felt similarly, I’m just I I would imagine you way more than me is just feeling like ai, wow, I have the ability to influence or the ability to to to to either bring truth or to improve people’s lives or or, you know, every word that you say sometimes matters so meh, and you’re just like, man, I’m an idiot. Like, I don’t Yeah. Like, I don’t know. You know? Like, I woulda never guessed.
Speaker: 1
23:11
I mean, we were kinda talking about that before about, like, Sai woulda never guessed that it woulda that this woulda turned into all this, but it’s it is a it is a it is a weight that you bear, whether you really even acknowledge it or not. You know? Like,
Speaker: 0
23:24
Yeah. And I think it’s ai you know, the the songs you’ve created, they, speak to the human condition, to the struggle of, everyday working people in a society that has the elites that try to take advantage of those working people. And you’re just speaking through your music those truths of how life is. And then that has a huge impact on a lot of people that’s really positive.
Speaker: 0
23:54
But then you also get attacked and misrepresented and lied about from different angles. And just the turmoil, the intense chaos of that, it disoients it it disoients me, like, to be attacked by very large number of people, to be lied about, to be just the it it because I love people and just have I have a general optimism about humanity, it just disorients me.
Speaker: 0
24:24
Like, it gives me this feeling ai I generally, just like you said, think of myself as kind of an idiot, not really knowing what I’m doing. And when a lot of people tell you that you’re correct, you don’t know what you’re doing, you start to, like, wanna hide. You wanna hide from the world, hide from yourself. And then there’s also just the the chemistry of the brain.
Speaker: 0
24:48
It’s ai, you you shake up the brain a little bit, it starts getting it starts getting weird. And it’s so it can get on many, fronts. It can get real lonely. When getting attacked, when you’re kind of fucking things up, in many ways, it can get lonely. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
25:07
So it’s been and so you get a text from Jocko, like, you good? Yeah. Yeah. And then I I meh have good friends. Andrew Huberman’s been great.
Speaker: 0
25:15
Rogan’s been great.
Speaker: 1
25:17
Well, you know, you, Lex, however many years ago, was in a different place in society than Lex is now. And so it’s ai every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different, even if you aren’t any different. Friends that you had from before maybe or even just new people you meet, your interactions with them are gonna be a lot different than if this wasn’t a thing.
Speaker: 1
25:38
And so it’s ai that that can be tricky too. When you’ve spent your whole life, you know, from the time you’re three years old and you’re starting to play with other kids and, like, developmentally learning, like, how to share and how to interact and you’re on the you’re playing, you know, you’re playing on the playground with kids and learning how to, like, set rules and boundaries and how to, like, basically fit in a society and, like, so so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever point in time when when success happens.
Speaker: 1
26:05
And then it’s ai all that shifts pretty dramatically all, you know, in a relatively short period of time. And then so, like, how do you how do you think, like, managing your previous, like, previous friendships or your, ai, you know, how has that been tricky for you or, like,
Speaker: 0
26:20
has, It’s been tough. Ai, you know, I value deep, close, long term friendships. And yeah, but, I mean, I have amazing friends, but they certainly do treat me a little different. They they bust my balls noticeably less.
Speaker: 1
26:36
Yeah. And you need you need that sometimes. Sai not sometimes.
Speaker: 0
26:39
All the time. First of all, it’s how dudes show love is making fun of each other, at least my friends. Yeah. Like Yeah. You know, when you watch man, I’m gonna get in trouble. But when you watch, like, women interact, they’re often, like, really positive towards each other.
Speaker: 0
26:57
Like, oh, you look great. There’s ai a yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We watch dudes interact, like close friends. They’re just ai Sai mean, busting each other’s balls.
Speaker: 0
27:06
Ai stop making fun of each other. And so, yes, that has been a little bit harder. Ai I try I try to break those walls, like but that’s why with the famous friends, it’s a little bit easier because they can still, like, Bryden roasts me nonstop. So so it’s just it’s, and it just feels good. I just sit there and get made fun of, and it’s great. Yeah. It’s great.
Speaker: 1
27:30
And I still do it all the time. I just it’s just a different experience now, but I I’m like a Goodwill junkie. Like, most of, like, most of even my clothes were from Goodwill, but, like, I have this I have this, like, addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill. Nice. Ai, the $8 paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with, like, a Bob Ross. Yeah. Yeah. Video, and it didn’t work out quite right.
Speaker: 1
27:52
Like, I ai, I buy every one of those. So I’ll go in there and buy, like, 10 of and so just even you know, anytime you got into public now, it’s just ai, you know it’s gonna be a little different than it was. You know? I don’t know if that makes sense or not.
Speaker: 0
28:01
But Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, I know, I’m trying to deal with it. But all of it, when you talk to world leaders, when you step into politics a little bit, and you apparently stepped into politics even though you never meant to. You’re not a political person. That that world is like, what the fuck? It’s very intense, especially in an intense moment in history, in an in an extremely divided country.
Speaker: 0
28:26
So
Speaker: 1
28:27
Yeah. Like saying that I’m not in politics, people are like, well, of course you’re in politics. And I don’t know whether I am or not, but just I do think a lot of people in politics, like, as far as the people who sit on the Internet all day and argue about stuff on x or on whatever, you know, Facebook and all, like, I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons.
Speaker: 1
28:48
They observe that there’s a lot of things wrong in the world that they’d like to see different. It’s just, how do you get those people out of a how do you get those people out of this four by four square and, like, really like, they’re they’re entrapped in a in a same ai of box that the people at Boeing might be with that struck you know, it’s too there it’s the tornado metaphor.
Speaker: 1
29:11
I mean, it’s a bureau but it it applies in politics too. Like, there there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need to figure we need to just, like, lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out what’s really pissing everybody off, what’s really affecting our quality of life.
Speaker: 1
29:24
A lot of times, we’re arguing over the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems, if that makes any sense. I mean, if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning and, like, it but it is all the same.
Speaker: 0
29:36
Water and fire and ice meh. And there would definitely be a connection to the Ai, and then we will receive a three hour lecture and
Speaker: 1
29:43
you’ll be postponed. It’s all true.
Speaker: 0
29:45
Like It’s all true.
Speaker: 1
29:46
It is all it’s all a % accurate. Yeah. That’s the crazy thing. But it all ties into that same thing. Like, you yeah. In politics now, it’s almost like there’s a rule book that you have to follow. And if you you can’t agree with this unless you also agree with that, you know, it’s like and maybe it’s like the places the way that we receive information about what’s going on in the political landscape is always so ai.
Speaker: 1
30:08
And it’s like the, well, it’s it’s contingent upon this algorithm, this, like, algorithmic system that we live under where we’re fed. It’s ai we’re almost fed certain subcategories. And it’s and it’s easy to fall into that because you don’t like hearing things you disagree with.
Speaker: 1
30:22
And so it’s a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at whatever page post things that you know you’re gonna consistently agree with every day, and that’s not gonna challenge the way you think in any little way, you know, or or, like, expand your thinking at all.
Speaker: 1
30:36
It’s it’s easy to just it’s kinda like a it’s a cult like type of thing. It’s like, you know, here’s this is what we all agree with, and if you don’t, then go and get, you know? Like but it it doesn’t it we’re far too complicated for it to really work that way.
Speaker: 0
30:52
Well, this actually relates to one of my favorite things in your conversation with Jordan where you’re just where where you’re just shooting a shit about, like, playing live music, and he goes to Kierkegaard.
Speaker: 1
31:04
Yes. Which
Speaker: 0
31:04
is ai Kierkegaard, the philosopher. Yes. I I love George so much. I do too. It just goes to Paul Young and Nietzsche. And there, this idea from Kierkegaard that the crowd is untruth. So when you there’s elements to the crowd that loses the humanity and the honesty of an individual that makes up the crowd, because the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some kind of narrative.
Speaker: 0
31:36
It’s like a it’s like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative, and the narrative holds control over that crowd as opposed to the individual humans who are thinking for themselves and being honest with their own thoughts and realities and so on. And so that he he was saying that as a reason ram a communication perspective to speak to individuals in the crowd, not to the crowd.
Speaker: 0
32:02
So from the performer perspective, the moment you speak to the crowd, you’re speaking to the lie that is the crowd according to Soren Kierkegaard. It’s pretty hardcore. Kierkegaard is pretty hardcore. Jordan’s pretty hardcore.
Speaker: 1
32:14
But that is true. I mean, in but but specifically in my case, I mean, really, it applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music. You know, talking about Richmond, I wasn’t necessarily even excited that Richmond did as well as it did. It was ai, in a way, it was almost, like, alarming that it did so well. You know?
Speaker: 1
32:36
And so those crowds that show up, like, maybe they do like my music, but I also think they’re there for something there is something bigger about it. I mean, I I wish I would have done a better job of having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in ’24, man.
Speaker: 0
32:53
You mean the size, the intensity?
Speaker: 1
32:55
The intensity. Like, it was revolutionary almost.
Speaker: 0
32:59
Song of revolution. Yeah. I think of redemption song from Bob Marley. Like, that song, it just connected with people. There’s something there.
Speaker: 1
33:08
Well and so many people identified different element. Like I said, it goes back to when we were kinda talking when we first got here, but it was it was crazy how it was almost like at the beginning with along with the scrutiny and some of the other things, it was a lot of different people, like, almost fighting over me or fighting over it, like, because it resonated with different it it resonated with people who voted differently than each other, which is which is probably a pretty terrifying thing if you’re if you’re in the business of keeping people divided and angry at each other.
Speaker: 1
33:37
So it, you know, it was a it was one of the fur one of the only times that I can think where there was that that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn’t. I mean, ai, I mean, I think ai nine eleven when I was a kid. I was in fourth grade, but God, man, people were just ai people just put everything aside there for a little while, and it was kinda it was kinda ai there’s bigger problems that just aren’t in our face.
Speaker: 1
34:04
And if, man, if they’re in your face for just for a second or two, you realize, like, it’s it’s hard to it’s hard in your mind to create a a graph that’s got, like, all these but, you know, we argue about a lot of these problems. But if you were to really look at them, ai, if you really just stand back and look at all the problems we spend time focusing about on the Internet versus all the things that are affecting us, like, that really and probably at our core even piss us off, it’s it’s gotta be very disproportionate.
Speaker: 1
34:33
And, like, the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all like, no matter what it is that we’re upset about or what we think needs to be different in the world or our opinions of things or how we’re raised or what our parents taught us, it’s ai, I think we all feel a little bit out of control in this new society.
Speaker: 1
34:47
We all feel like we’re probably we probably all feel like we’re falling into this ai, like, corporate power structure where none of us where we arya where we all are just robots. We’re all just we’re not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost. You know?
Speaker: 0
35:03
And there was enough people feeling that. I mean, people on the left feeling like the people in power are fucking over the working class. People on the right feeling the exact same with different words assigned to it, the deep state, you know, fucking over Middle America
Speaker: 1
35:20
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
35:21
Whatever the narratives arya. And they’re just when enough of that is happening, again, with the corporate polite speak, there’s something about politeness that’s really dangerous. I feel like there’s a lot of politeness in the Soviet Union.
Speaker: 1
35:37
Yeah. Ai example.
Speaker: 0
35:38
Yeah. Underneath that, it’s ai Chernobyl, which is this nuclear power plant that melted down. I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility and paperwork to function. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
35:55
And
Speaker: 0
35:55
then atrocities can happen underneath that. Mhmm. So everybody people in power with a smile on their face can just do horrific things Mhmm. And then give propaganda that, look. You know, it’s rainbows and sunshine and and unicorns. Yeah. So people that are rude I mean, I’m starting to awaken to this a little bit.
Speaker: 0
36:17
Like, you need a little like Tom Wei says, I like my tongue with a little drop of poison. You need some, like, some poison, some some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, some, like, intensity to shake up a system because when it, sort of converges towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen and bryden away.
Speaker: 1
36:44
And what’s probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just theatrical, whereas it it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society if we were healthy and functional.
Speaker: 0
36:56
What was the process of writing that song? I mean, it really spoke to the pain of and anger of millions of people. Sai there’s magic there. Yeah. How’s that well, how many how many edits? How many, like, lines did you write? Were there any lines that you were, like, tormented by, haunted by, come back?
Speaker: 0
37:16
Should I do it this way or this way or that?
Speaker: 1
37:18
Do you do you have a I don’t know. Do you can you pull TikTok up on this? So if you go to my page so if you go to Chickens. Go, yeah, go down pre Richmond. You can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up.
Speaker: 0
37:32
This is so cool to see the evolution.
Speaker: 1
37:34
There it is. Okay. So that’s that’s if you play that, that’s
Speaker: 0
37:38
Ai have too many unfinished songs?
Speaker: 1
37:39
Yeah. Play that. Click that and play it. Seven twenty four. Oh, wow.
Speaker: 2
37:48
For bullshit. Wow. So I can sit out here, waste my life away, drive back home, drink my troubles
Speaker: 0
37:57
And if you read
Speaker: 1
37:58
through this, it’s so funny. Everybody’s like, you’re about to blow up.
Speaker: 2
38:00
But that’s world’s gotten to people like me.
Speaker: 1
38:05
That’s all I have. You. So I had I had just that.
Speaker: 0
38:11
You should probably finish this one. Ai be real popular. That’s sai post for
Speaker: 1
38:15
a few days later. That was in that was in July.
Speaker: 0
38:20
Fuck. That’s so ai, man.
Speaker: 1
38:22
Sai that’s what I had.
Speaker: 0
38:23
That’s so inspiring. That’s what, like, a couple weeks before, you posted the final one.
Speaker: 1
38:30
Well, that’s all I had ver yeah. That’s all I had written at that point. Like, that in my mind, that’s that’s the inspiration for the song was that little bit, and I wrote that just because I was on job sites all day and, you know, going into, like, all these just terrible places to work, ai, dealing with different contractors and stuff.
Speaker: 1
38:49
You were talking about wanting to go and talk to blue collar people and ai. It’s like, that’s what I did for work, basically, for eight years was build long term relationships with people in blue collar. I was in the industrial space, so I would talk sometimes, I’d talk to 20 different people a day.
Speaker: 1
39:02
When you sit in a job site trailer and talk to and talk to a group of dudes, ai, and you’re not there with some news camera, you’re just there as ai a random dude, like, you hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of the structure of what builds, what builds this country and keeps it going.
Speaker: 1
39:18
And, I think that’s probably what it was. It was just a it was how I felt, but also how, I guess, a lot of other like, you know, it was just, I don’t know, it just seemed like the truth. So
Speaker: 0
39:29
So you jot it down even to the details, like, in a notebook? Ai, those words?
Speaker: 1
39:34
No. It’s always just on my phone. I would just keep recording the I would just keep you know, like so if you were to go back to TikTok, like, and look at any of those original videos, so, like, the songs that ended up charting, let’s say, like, the ones that were on there that charted with Richmond, like, this I’ve got to get sober.
Speaker: 1
39:57
So literally That’s
Speaker: 0
39:58
good song. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
39:59
So literally, what I did was this video, I took at my property. This is my carport where my camper was.
Speaker: 0
40:04
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
40:05
And, I took this video. I went to some sketchy virus bryden m p three to wave file or m p four to WAV file transfer thing. I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on TikTok, and then put that on Distrokid, and that’s the that was the song. But, basically, like, this would this would have been the first time I played I’ve Got to Get Sober all the way through.
Speaker: 1
40:26
Like, I would just keep writing it and working on it and writing it and record myself. And maybe I would record myself 30 times over the period of, like, two months. You know what I mean?
Speaker: 0
40:34
Oh, but it’s when you say writing, you mean in your head, not actually typed out or written out.
Speaker: 1
40:38
Right. It was just yeah. It was mostly just video.
Speaker: 0
40:41
Over and over. It’s just videos.
Speaker: 1
40:42
I’m just trying to figure out how to make it yeah. But that’s what all these all these are like, the audio file from all these videos is what’s is what ended up on Spotify and all that. You know what I mean? Like
Speaker: 0
40:53
This is it’s cool to see these videos before you blew up. So So this is a good song. You’re playing out guys. So what what is this? At the end?
Speaker: 2
41:00
Ai. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
41:01
And what given Yeah. These were all
Speaker: 2
41:03
the way we’ve been living
Speaker: 0
41:05
Don’t sell your soul, brother. This is the best music I’ve heard in a long time. That’s a comment before you blew up.
Speaker: 1
41:12
Yeah. Yeah. I think I had about 10,000 followers or something.
Speaker: 0
41:18
Ai a fucking song. That’s a good one.
Speaker: 1
41:23
And you gotta think, like, this was ai, that was my
Speaker: 2
41:27
that sounds so speak.
Speaker: 1
41:29
That was when I quit drinking. You know what I mean? Like, so that
Speaker: 2
41:33
But the troubles and the sand of the world that we’re in knocked me back off my feet.
Speaker: 0
41:42
Sai that’s coming from from from your heart right there. Over. Just imagine
Speaker: 2
41:48
god that’s hard and living right
Speaker: 0
41:50
The thousands of people you help with that.
Speaker: 2
41:52
Know how it’s gonna go.
Speaker: 1
41:55
Yeah. But
Speaker: 2
41:56
it ain’t gonna happen ai. So pour them down strong till I drown. And if I wake up tomorrow, when that sun comes back around, I’ll be wishing I was over.
Speaker: 1
42:20
It’s so crazy how those cicadas and stuff come in. Ai, I just felt like it was a god. I don’t know how to Yeah. Have the bird. Like, that’s just off my phone. All that stuff’s just there. You know?
Speaker: 2
42:32
And the bowl, they’ve been saving my soul from the pain that the world’s put on me. And, Lord, I know that upstairs there’s an old man who cares, and one day he’ll set me free. I’ll go on the whim, start hiding the hair.
Speaker: 0
42:58
That’s a genius of Sai. That’s a genius, brother. It’s just great. Genius.
Speaker: 1
43:01
It’s just crazy to think about.
Speaker: 0
43:05
Yeah. And what’s this one right before? What is this?
Speaker: 1
43:11
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s, like, the private
Speaker: 0
43:15
And this was a nice recording. Got it.
Speaker: 1
43:17
Yeah. So this video got uploaded, and then Draven from RadioWV would have gotten a hold of me in between this and that. He watched this and was like, dude, you got he said, we gotta record that one. And that ai, so I didn’t have it all. But I just had whatever was in that video is all I had written. It was I I think it was just the chorus in the first verse.
Speaker: 1
43:38
Draven saw that video
Speaker: 0
43:40
And sai, we gotta do this one.
Speaker: 1
43:41
Reach out to me to record, and he’s like, yeah. He’s like, no. We gotta do that one. And I was like, dude, that’s all I got.
Speaker: 0
43:47
Tell me about that guy, Draven.
Speaker: 1
43:49
He probably is ai you know, he’s probably like my best friend now. We we hit it off with this, and we’re ai they we’re like brothers now, I guess. But he’s
Speaker: 0
43:57
talk about, like, what he’s doing for country for music in general, for country music, for discovering talent, for, like
Speaker: 1
44:03
Yeah. I
Speaker: 0
44:04
mean, he’s clearly sees something in people.
Speaker: 1
44:07
Yeah. He’s just this he’s a little bit younger than I ai, and he’s he wrote music and played, and he’s got some of his if you look up Draven Rife, he’s gonna kill me for even saying this, but he’s got some pretty dude, he can if he was, like, a pop singer, he would be, like, a he can write the most catchy stuff ever.
Speaker: 1
44:24
Let’s go. Yes. Click on, ai, I don’t know, like Bye bye. Here. Alright.
Speaker: 0
44:31
That’s him? Yeah.
Speaker: 1
44:40
Where is
Speaker: 0
44:40
this from? Five years ago.
Speaker: 2
44:44
I was feeling on my way. I was 10 years old walking underneath the blanket of West Virginia snow. Then I walked ai by no trespass sign near the grass. Look bryden across property line. Bye ai. Bye bye.
Speaker: 0
45:02
You know, he could probably do if he does what? He could he could probably be real famous. Well, he He’s got a certain look.
Speaker: 1
45:10
That dude will sit there, and he’ll just, like we’ll just be sitting there at, like, two in the morning, and he’ll just all of a sudden do this little thing. And he’s got, like, the most amazing first part of this, like, song or we just started to ai together, like, in the last few months.
Speaker: 1
45:22
So I’m really excited for that. But if you go to his this is really funny too. I’m sorry, Draven. I love you, man. So go to videos and go to oldest first. This is what’s so awesome about Draven.
Speaker: 1
45:33
He was originally working for this lady who was trying to develop different types of hair care products.
Speaker: 0
45:38
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
45:38
But he thought the market was too saturated, so he was gonna get into beard oil. So he created Radio WV sai, like, a fake plug page for his burly boy beard brand he was working on. Sai, like, click like, if you look at, yeah, like, that very first Yeah. Video. Yeah. It’s ai it’s got all his beard products.
Speaker: 1
45:58
If you look, there’s a there’s multiple ones like that. Yeah. So he started it just to do this beard thing with, and then, like, I don’t know. He just kinda felt called to, like, keep going with it, and it and it just sorta naturally progressed from there.
Speaker: 0
46:10
That too is inspiring. Like, you start out one way, and then you discover something real special. I mean, he’s got a he’s got an eye for how to bring out I don’t know what it is, ai, the both the audio side and the video side, how to bring out the best impression.
Speaker: 1
46:25
He says he just wants it to sound ai the way he likes hearing it, which kinda makes sense, you know. Like, it’s kinda in the same way talking about when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you you needed three ai. And you’re like, well, I think it would work with the he’s just kinda like, well, it’ll just work like ai.
Speaker: 1
46:39
And And
Speaker: 0
46:40
do it in a way where he likes it. Yeah. Just do it for yourself.
Speaker: 1
46:43
He does it because he loves it. And that and you can see it shows. You know?
Speaker: 0
46:46
Yeah. You can see it in there. And there’s some good talent. Like, you were showing me this new lady, Gabrielle.
Speaker: 1
46:51
Yeah. She’s got it, but not a lot of people would, record her doing that song. He’s like, I don’t know. It just was different. I just thought people ought to hear it. But he’s man, it was a blessing that he came along when he did. It was ai, it really changed both of our lives. We gotta talk about that.
Speaker: 1
47:07
So you posted
Speaker: 0
47:08
the the song Richmond North of Richmond on 08/08/2023.
Speaker: 1
47:13
I remember I was at work that day when it went up. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
47:16
So it blew the fuck up straight to number one on the charts, tens of millions of views and listens. And a few days later on August 17, he made a post that I thought was pretty gangster. I was beautiful and gangster. So one one of the things you said is it’s been difficult as I browse through the 50,000 plus messages and emails I’ve received in the last week.
Speaker: 0
47:41
The stories that have been shared paint a brutally honest picture. Suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on. And then you went on to write, people in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off $8,000,000 offers.
Speaker: 0
47:59
I don’t want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers, and a jet. I don’t want to play stadium shows. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they’ve been sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung.
Speaker: 0
48:25
No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place. So huge props for that, for walking away from lucrative multimillion dollar record deals, and I’m sure the money that was just coming your way, huge props. You know?
Speaker: 0
48:46
Moments happen where, you know, the world tests you, and integrity is what you do in those moments. So huge props for that. What was your philosophy? What was your thinking behind that?
Speaker: 1
49:01
It was all those messages I got. I mean, you can see it in the meh sections of a lot of the videos after everything hap but people just, like, felt this speak, like like, wow. Like, maybe we actually have a chance to like, maybe we actually do have some ai of power. You know?
Speaker: 1
49:16
Like, those people put that song there, nobody else, and, like, gave me the opportunity to make even without sign anything, I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom. And, like, I just I just felt like Ai felt like if I was gonna do anything like that, that I’d be I’d be betraying like, I would be taking those people and and almost betraying them somehow.
Speaker: 1
49:40
You know? Like, like, they I hate the big machine just like everybody else, and I the last thing I’d wanna do is be is ever support it or be a part of it. Like, I wanna watch it crash and burn. You know? Like
Speaker: 0
49:56
Sai, this is the really important thing is whether it was betrayal or not, we’ll never know. But you felt that it was, and to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money when you felt that way. That’s fucking
Speaker: 1
50:12
epic. It was also, you gotta think, a couple months before this, like, of course, I had, you know, I had a wife and kids that I loved and, like, I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn’t have a whole lot to lose. Ai, like, none of this was even really real. Like, it I didn’t care about the like, I didn’t care to lose this just as quick as I got it.
Speaker: 1
50:32
Like, this didn’t this was this didn’t mean anything to me. It just meant something to me that, like, that I could do something for like, you know, you it’s ai even if I’m not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else’s, like, that meant a hell of a lot more to me than any that’s what I didn’t wanna lose.
Speaker: 1
50:52
I didn’t wanna lose those people’s trust or, like, feel you know what I mean?
Speaker: 0
50:55
Like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
50:58
And so I’ve just tried to make every decision around, like, as best as I can, like, what I think the right thing is to do, and who knows what the hell the right thing is to do, but I just try to follow you know, we all have that little voice in us like that. We all have some what and and I think sometimes we mask, and it’s hard for us to listen to that little voice speak, whether whether it’s ai, you know, whether it’s our gluttony or our lust or our or our, you know, we we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol or we we scroll on YouTube for four hours a night and instead of because we don’t wanna listen to our conscience.
Speaker: 1
51:36
But there is this, like, very intelligent and discerning thing inside of us that’s able to tell us what’s right and wrong, and it’s a it’s a spiritual thing, I guess. And I just try to I just try to listen to that when I can. I don’t know. I just still feel like I haven’t done enough.
Speaker: 0
51:50
I think you, I think you did a lot. I think you did a lot. I think you’re an inspiration. You have helped a huge number of people, and you’re also an inspiration to the other side of it, which is the artists and just to humans to have integrity. I don’t think people realize how much of a test of integrity, fame, money, you know, power also is. You know, Rogan and I talk about this quite a bit.
Speaker: 0
52:20
We get to see I mean, Joe especially, but I haven’t I’ve had a bit of the same. You get to see people become famous, and you get to see how they deal with that. And it’s not easy. A lot of people will sell themselves a bit, sell the soul a bit, give away a bit of their integrity of the spirit that made them who they are.
Speaker: 0
52:44
You get caught up in the wave of it. You know? And so to to keep on holding on to that, that’s a powerful thing. That’s a really
Speaker: 1
52:52
powerful thing. Though. You know?
Speaker: 0
52:54
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:54
When you lose that, what the hell are you? Like and you see it. Like, you see these celebrity people that just, like, fall off the they fall off this you know, they go off the deep end. It’s ai is you gotta have you have to have something in your life to and to keep you centered and to keep you, you know, your whole perception of reality and, like, your just existence in reality is all contingent upon this sort of, like, this center that you exist in, and you have to if you don’t have that, then you’re just flying through space through I mean, we’re all just riding on this rock that’s going who knows how fast.
Speaker: 1
53:26
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
53:27
You said something, I think to Jocko that I really liked. Everything that has purpose behind it comes with risk. So there in that moment, I mean, you’re taking a hell of a risk.
Speaker: 1
53:42
I was terrified. I talked about this a little bit with him too, but I was terrified to even put the song out. Like, I knew I was gonna be the subject of scrutiny and judgment, and I knew people were sana, like, you know, I kind of knew all that was gonna happen. Ai was like, going back to that, talking about crowds, like to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense of unity.
Speaker: 1
54:03
Like a lot of times when I end the shows, I’ll always I’ll always end with this statement that just says, you know, no matter what, like, no matter how you feel when you go online, you know, everyone feels so small and insignificant and and powerless. But I just say, no matter how they make you feel online or when you turn on the TV or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, ai, when you just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like, you’re there’s always there will always be more of us than them and and all that.
Speaker: 1
54:38
And but, like, to see the, like, just to see the light in people’s eyes when you say that, but the truth is, like and it’s, like, who is us and who is them? And it’s, like, us just represents humanity and ai and and all the things we talked about so ai, like just, you know, the fire and the chaos and but also the, like, the love and just just life.
Speaker: 1
55:01
Life is just such a crazy, complicated, beautiful, disastrous thing. And then them is ai it is. It’s the power structure. It’s the it’s that same terrible side of us that created things like the Soviet Union and and and is ultimately what’s created this this, like, monster that we all live under today, which now is not just doesn’t just exist within the confines of the Soviet Union, but seems to almost be a global epidemic.
Speaker: 0
55:26
And then that song became the rebel call against vatsal, against the power structures that creates that.
Speaker: 1
55:34
Yeah. It’s like how much fire am I willing to play with? Because I know at some point, I am gonna get burned from it. I just pray a lot that god I don’t have a lot of self worth in myself anyway, so I don’t really care what they say or do to meh, or I don’t care, like, I don’t even care if I die.
Speaker: 1
55:50
Whatever. Just don’t just just protect the people I love is all. That’s all I ask of God. I have this dream of just creating this parallel system that sits beside all these stupid systems that we live under that are all sort of engulfed in this this thing that we talked about at the beginning, this this type of structure, you know, where none of us where we’re all just robots.
Speaker: 1
56:10
And it’s like if we hate, you know, if we hate the way music is and all these artists are complaining about the way the venues are monopolized and the ticket sales are monopolized, then let’s just go find other places to play music because there’s so many people hungry for music in places they don’t ever get it.
Speaker: 1
56:26
And if you look at it, there’s so many passionate people that are fighting all these different causes, like just in food. It’s the word they use for more or less starvation. It’s a more polite It’s called food insecurity. But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia, in the rural areas, how much food insecurity there is and how many empty vacant farms there arya.
Speaker: 1
56:48
It’s like, this is an obvious problem that we should be on Twitter talking about nonstop. Like, this is like everyone has to eat. You know? It don’t matter what you vote for or what, like, what you look like or any of that crap. You can you know, like so, like, let’s just like, why why are we living in a country where we have why are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don’t know any better?
Speaker: 1
57:12
And then the other half of us don’t have like, how does it’s just it’s lack of leadership that’s caused dysfunction. And so if we’re tired of that, then then let’s just fix it. Like, we don’t need anybody’s permission. Like, that’s the whole beauty. Like, that’s the whole beauty of what America is is, like, we don’t we don’t need some greasy haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong.
Speaker: 1
57:33
Let’s just go do it. And if they don’t like it, fuck them. You know?
Speaker: 0
57:36
In all domains of life, from from food to the music industry, honestly, to education, also to government vatsal, all of it. And that you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit that makes America great of just constantly trying to revitalize itself. When the bullshit piles up a little too high, there’s that revolutionary spirit that says, like, we need to fix this shit.
Speaker: 1
58:09
And and that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny. Like, we forget the story of the people who really created this country. Like, it’s funny. I one of the statements I made at the very beginning, they got taken way out of context, but I wasn’t in a position to, like, even begin to have a conversation about it.
Speaker: 1
58:27
As I made this comment early on in one of the shows about about how about how our diversity is a strength. But that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means.
Speaker: 0
58:38
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
58:38
But it’s ai, think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country, like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking. So many different people came together to even create this place now, and, like, we’ve just forgotten about all that.
Speaker: 1
58:52
They didn’t all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle, essentially, that had no structure like, no infrastructure, no medicine, no like, they didn’t come here for, like, some glorified camping trip.
Speaker: 1
59:06
It’s because they were tired of, like, generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their you know, it’s not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn’t want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday.
Speaker: 1
59:20
It’s because they weren’t allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn’t, and they were just tired of it. That’s what we’re losing now. It’s ai we’ve forgotten that we’re those people. Ai, the same structures that have plagued this country are they’re multinational corporations, and they’re and it’s just the ideology behind them, and their and their structure is what the problem is.
Speaker: 0
59:41
Yeah. I mean, it’s, multinational corporations. It’s nation states that are deeply corrupt and are authoritarian and ultimately abuse power and, yes, create elements of tyranny. And from that, the the human spirit rises, like I said, with with with songs ai the ones you write or at the founding in this country.
Speaker: 0
01:00:09
You know, that’s why all these diverse outcasts come together and write something as crazy as all men are created equal. What a gangster line. I guess not an easy thing to take a lot of that stuff for granted now, but that’s not an easy thing to come up with. That’s a really gutsy thing to to see to see the value in all people equally. And, of course, they also were, suffering from delusion. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:00:41
They didn’t see black people as equal. They didn’t see women as equal. But even that first leap of, like, all men are created equal, that’s ai a gigantic fuck you to the past.
Speaker: 1
01:00:54
Taking that leap forward really took a lot in a age and a time when when it probably sounded and it’s not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter. Like, they they like, think about how much just think about the insanity. Like, I can’t even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that like, even from the revolutionary war until now to try to preserve that idea.
Speaker: 1
01:01:17
You know? So, like, so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made and just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity.
Speaker: 0
01:01:24
Even the twentieth century has got two world wars. And, you know, especially in the second World War, the United States played a very crucial role. And there was a lot of ideological, like, battle of ideas going on at that time Yeah. Of the role of war and peace, of the role of The United States as the as the center place for the ideal of human freedom and human rights. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:01:51
We continue to innovate. So I’d love to get back to talking to blue collar people you mentioned. Those are some of my favorite people. So it was actually really cool to find out that for many years through your life, basically, the way you made a living is talking to blue collar people and getting their story.
Speaker: 0
01:02:10
So I’m traveling across the world for a bit, but, of course, the world that I love the most and I’m most curious about is the different subcultures and towns of The United States. So I I I took a road trip across The US in my early twenties for for several months, and that was, like, a transformative experience for me.
Speaker: 0
01:02:33
And and that’s something, one of the luxuries I have is to to have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want now. And sai, I wanna take a road trip across The United States for several months. And one of the things I wanted to do is to just to to talk to to people in in small towns in Middle America.
Speaker: 0
01:02:56
I don’t know what words to put on it, but to talk to the very people that you talked about that that, you know, construction workers, plumbers, waitresses, oil rig workers, just people that do something real, people that are real, that don’t make much money, that struggle, but have a as you talked about, have, like, a richness to them that’s not often revealed, that’s not often talked about.
Speaker: 0
01:03:30
So maybe can you speak to that, to your to your time with blue collar folk?
Speaker: 1
01:03:35
When I got all those messages at the we’re talking about early on, earlier in this, like, so many of them. And even now, it’s even since I even, like, in the last couple days, I’ve gotten some where they start with, hey. I’m a nobody, but, like, that’s how a lot of those start. You know? Like, the nobodies of the world, if you wanna call them.
Speaker: 1
01:03:55
Like, that’s it’s it’s frustrating that the the people who literally have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in, those people have the least amount of representation. They’re ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists, but the some of the most dimwitted, irrelevant, terrible people are put here and are idolized and ai, and they’re all over television, and they’re all over the Internet, and we act like they’re like they’re kings and queens and, like, that they’re royalty.
Speaker: 1
01:04:34
And then all these people who do jobs that most of us will be too tariff either either wouldn’t have the even the ability to do, we’d be tyler like like, how many people are gonna go underwater and weld? But if we didn’t have underwater welders, like, one of my best friends whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, The dude works seventy, eighty hours every week.
Speaker: 1
01:04:57
He’s on the Chesapeake Bay, tunnel job now. But the dude’s gotten up on gotten on heights that I couldn’t get on. He’s went he’s went underground places I wouldn’t go, and nobody will ever know like, nobody even knows those people’s stories or what they went through or, like, the kind of lives they ai.
Speaker: 1
01:05:13
And and they’re the they’re, like, the the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and, like, all these factory jobs that I worked in. All those people, ai, the You talk about the craziest place Sai ever worked and the craziest people I ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion, North Ai.
Speaker: 1
01:05:30
And it was this commercial air conditioning factory, which is, I think, closed now. But they didn’t pay very well. And sai, everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn’t get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn’t work elsewhere ai me.
Speaker: 1
01:05:45
And so, I was 18 years old working in this place with people who arya mostly in their fifties and sixties. But you wanna talk about being exposed to just a whole another world of peep like, and just the stories and the just those people are far more interesting than it than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities.
Speaker: 1
01:06:01
Like, most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don’t really even know what real life is about. They’re pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world, and so it would be really cool. I mean, that’s the whole reason that I wanna go out and do these shows in places that haven’t had music in them in ten years because those speak like, that is America to me.
Speaker: 1
01:06:17
You know? How many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh? And even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours southwest, you’re in a whole another planet. Like, the people, the accents, the culture. And sai, I feel driven in the same way.
Speaker: 1
01:06:32
Like, I would love to I would love to find a way to to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant and to make because they are, like, some of the most and, like and it’s funny because we emulate a lot of those peep like, you know, modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people.
Speaker: 0
01:06:50
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:06:51
You know?
Speaker: 0
01:06:51
And there’s also, like, I love people that have a skill and become masters of that skill also. So that element is also there. Even if it’s, like, insanely difficult work, ai, being a miner, like, there’s skill to that. There’s stories there. There’s, like, what it takes to do that.
Speaker: 0
01:07:09
Sai, I mean, some of my favorite humans are engineers, and all they do is solve really hard problems, and they develop I mean, it’s a pain in the ass job. Yeah. Anything in the factory is is extremely difficult, but then you learn so much about what it takes to solve intricate, like, nuanced problems in the physical world.
Speaker: 0
01:07:30
So coal mining, oil rigs, like you mentioned, welding, that’s a fascinating line of work.
Speaker: 1
01:07:37
And and those are trades that are in many cases dying because we don’t because they aren’t popular in culture anymore. For everything from agricultural to plumbing and electrical, it’s ai, those are all areas Ai think. If you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it, it would ai, you could change the you could change the entire landscape in America of how of how it’s perceived and, like, and make it cool, you know?
Speaker: 0
01:08:01
Yeah. So thank you what you’re doing on that front. I I wanna say I wrote it down. Please, if you know people that’ll be willing to talk, reach out to me. A good way to do that is lux freeman dot com slash contact.
Speaker: 1
01:08:15
This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about and I thought was getting done, and it wasn’t that I I’ve gotta go back and try to figure out is doing prison shows and, doing rehab shows and all that. But I am really intrigued with, like, going into those places and trying to immerse myself and just the the mental state that those people are in and, like, it’s not talked about
Speaker: 0
01:08:41
a whole lot. But Also people who get out, ex comics, I mean, that that’s a hard life. That’s just a hard life to try to reintegrate back into society.
Speaker: 1
01:08:52
Yeah. And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble. Ai was a lady that worked on the assembly line sai me named Denise. And, her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it. She only had to go on probation. He was still in prison.
Speaker: 1
01:09:10
But, man, like, Denise was a very sweet lady. And, like, aside from the meth manufacturing, like, she was, like, great. You know? Like and just such a character, like, in such a good way. And sai it’s ai, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:09:22
Just Denise, Meh freeman dot com slash contact. Let’s talk. I meh, yeah. You know, like, both both sort of the plumbers and the coal miners and, Denise with the the old meth habits. I mean, they’re walking the line of, like you know, surviving is hard.
Speaker: 1
01:09:44
Yeah. So you
Speaker: 0
01:09:45
have to do a real hard job, and then you also have to live life, which is in general hard. You know, divorce, kids, people ai, you lose, like, the medical issues, and that that can destroy you completely. All of a sudden, something happens, you can’t afford it, and then the the insurance system destroys people, all of that.
Speaker: 0
01:10:09
So you have to somehow navigate life while working your ass off in a real hard job. And those people, their stories, that’s a real pain. And from that pain, from that anger, that’s where, Richmond, North of Richmond, that was that that you could just feel their pain come through with that song and with your other work.
Speaker: 0
01:10:31
So that like, there is a landscape of suffering.
Speaker: 1
01:10:36
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be that we don’t all have to be that decentralized either. Like, if all if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is, like, just innately and suffering and and and yeah. Like, there’s a guy there’s a guy in West Virginia that I talked to that he’s got a piece of property beside of mine that he was interested in selling.
Speaker: 1
01:10:57
But the reason he’s he’s got this dream of opening a, ai, putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb. He works at Lowe’s full time, but his son’s got this his son’s ai 19 and he’s got this heart surgery he’s gotta have. And so, he’s trying to sell the place for that.
Speaker: 1
01:11:13
And just ai just that guy and all and all you’d ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe’s, like pulling lumber or whatever, but he’s got this very insanely complex life he’s trying to manage. He doesn’t wanna lose his sai. Like, he’s just gonna sell everything. And, like, at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of, like, when people really fell off track and they didn’t have a support system and they were, like, on this tiny boat out in the ocean, they figured out some ai of way to rally it.
Speaker: 1
01:11:37
In my mind, that’s, like, the dream of all this. If I if I die and there’s any, like, legacy left or anything done, it’s, like, finding a way to take all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them. It’s rebuilding the community, but in a real way, not in this fairy tale bullshit. Everybody’s sana love each other and we’re all just gonna be one big happy family.
Speaker: 1
01:11:58
Like, everybody’s still gonna get mad and hate each other in certain ways and that’s good. Like, we all we need those tornadoes. Like you said, we need people pissed off and angry and and we need people to feel ai they can be angry and open about things that are wrong. Like, people should be able to speak their mind and we shouldn’t all just kiss each other’s ass sana we shouldn’t all just pretend to be overly polite and say, hey, Debbie.
Speaker: 1
01:12:17
You have a good weekend. Like you said, like, we need all this controversy and this turmoil and, like, we need the hell of what that side that that the Internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life and it needs to be in a way where we’re all, like, we all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don’t wanna starve and we wanna have decent health and and we wanna be able to, like, provide a decent life for our kids, or at least we just don’t you know, we just wanna live a decent life.
Speaker: 1
01:12:42
Like, I think somehow that that fixes, like, that fixes what you ai, like, the people who who fall in despair and are isolated in. It it it’s a terrifying world to live in. It’s that principle. Again, this is I need to phone a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things, but, like, he explains about there’s this principle in the ai about about those who about the more you have, the more you’ll receive, and the less you have, the less you’ll the less you’ll receive ai of a thing.
Speaker: 1
01:13:11
And it’s a it’s just a universal law in society where it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it’s almost ai the more like, the less resources you have available and the less the less friends you have and it’s ai you just the the further you go snowballs into where it’s like people just hit rock bottom.
Speaker: 1
01:13:28
And then and then what? It’s like when you get out of prison, what do you what are you supposed to do? Or when you’re a veteran with mental health, like, what are you supposed to do? Like, in my mind, that’s what the church is supposed to be there for is, like but, obviously, it doesn’t fill that role anymore.
Speaker: 0
01:13:42
To some people, at least religion does a little bit. It gives, it’s at least a foundation of community, a foundation of hope for people in when they’re really struggling. Yeah. You got thousands of meh, like, you talked about from people. You’ve gotten to talk to thousands of people about their pain.
Speaker: 0
01:14:05
Through your work, through your music, you’ve been an inspiration to those people to find a way out of the pain. Can you tell the full story of your own lowest point? Before before all of this, before the before the music, before you blew up, can you take me through the story of the depression, the drinking, and just the roughest times in your life?
Speaker: 1
01:14:35
It’s ai it’s not even, you know, it it’s funny, but it’s almost not even where you’re at in life. It’s where you perceive yourself at in life and what your, what your goals are moving forward. And I think, like, you know, I was I dropped out of high school at 17, basically ram away from home.
Speaker: 1
01:14:51
I just I couldn’t I have always had this authority problem, and so I just didn’t wanna listen to my parents. I didn’t wanna go to college. I just wanted to go move into the mountains. I was running away from responsibility, I guess, is what I was doing. And so, got this girl pregnant.
Speaker: 1
01:15:07
Had my first kid when I was 18 or just about to turn 19. And ai I said, I’m working in an air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons. And so, from there, everything was just reactionary. I never really had a plan. I would jump from job to job, just like most everybody else. I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:15:23
I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in ai, and I knew that I wasn’t doing I just knew I wasn’t doing I wasn’t feeling my purpose and I wasn’t being the best version of myself I could be. And so the the alternative to, like, facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that that I’m not a shitty person. I’ve just let myself fall.
Speaker: 1
01:15:44
You know, it’s ai it’s so hard to accept when you’ve had that fall that it’s just easier to just just to get drunk and, you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of ai moving saloni, but you don’t really care if you live or die. You don’t you don’t really care about much anything ai your whole you know, I don’t know. Life is just so beautiful when you’re a child.
Speaker: 1
01:16:04
You’re sai imaginative and exploratory and you’re learning all these things and you just you just can’t wait to be an adult because you’re just sana go out and do all these incredible, you know, and then
Speaker: 0
01:16:14
You face the reality of it. Yeah. And the
Speaker: 1
01:16:16
pressure and the fear of failure. Like, I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove is what drove me. And but yeah, you just and you you think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and you, like, you don’t even have a real self awareness of, like, what you’re doing or how destructive you’ve become, but you always have that that discernment in you, that, like, that conscious, you know, that little voice in your in your spirit that is letting you know you’re messing up.
Speaker: 1
01:16:46
You know? Mhmm. I was almost like you know, I was wrestling with myself. You know? And so Ai don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:16:52
I just got to a point where it just, like Ai yeah. Just a just a very just a very overwhelming sense of numbness. Like like, Sai don’t like, nothing really nothing that mattered before really matters anymore. Like, I guess that’s that’s probably, to me, the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless, and you can’t find you really can’t find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything.
Speaker: 1
01:17:22
You know? Like ai, I think especially with men that commit suicide, it’s a it’s a prolonged period of that. It’s not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves. It’s like you self reflect negatively about yourself and your life and you don’t do the things that you’re supposed to do every day for a long enough period of ai.
Speaker: 1
01:17:45
And it’s like pretty soon you’ve built this whole mountain of of of mismanaged, neglected stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along. And then the and then on the other side of it, it’s like, well, I could just die.
Speaker: 1
01:18:08
Like, that seems a lot like, it’s almost like for I think ram a man’s perspective, maybe. The friends that I’ve had that I’ve lost, it seems like a lot of times you think just think you you’d never see it coming. You know? Like, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a general thing with it seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don’t pick up on it as meh.
Speaker: 1
01:18:25
But, I think it’s like you just dig yourself into a point to where it’s like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven’t faced, that you don’t know how to face and you you haven’t been able to do so for a long ai. But there’s this really easy detour and it’s just, you know, putting your big toe on the trigger. And it’s ai, which one of those are I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:18:48
Like, they both seem but at that point, your your perception of reality is so distorted that, like, you don’t all the things that can that would normally compel you to to move saloni, like your, like, love and joy and, like, your your draw you know, your drive to to be that, none of that really, it’s not there for you to even contemplate, if that makes sense.
Speaker: 1
01:19:12
It’s it’s like that part is it is is almost ai, at least for a little ai, invisible. And all you see is fear and responsibility and just this like I said, I just Ai just envision it like a mountain that you don’t you don’t really know if you’re even able to ai. And then the other option is just so I Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:19:31
I think that’s probably where that’s probably where a lot of people go, and that’s probably where I was was just, like, you know?
Speaker: 0
01:19:40
Yeah. I mean, there is the it’s not just responsibilities. It’s the immensity of it, the mountain. And I think you’re accurately describing how it happens, which is gradually. Yeah. Seeing yourself in a negative light over time slowly suffocates you, and then the burden of the responsibility that piles up.
Speaker: 0
01:20:03
And, unfortunately, of course, one of the ways out is to pull the trigger, and the other way out is the Jordan Peterson back to Jordan sort of one gradual step at a time, like make your bed. Mhmm. It’s ai start climbing out. Like, the responsibility is before you one at a time every single day, just climbing out and have faith that it will work out.
Speaker: 1
01:20:32
That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff, like, a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings, but, like, you know, an apostle would be in prison, like, basically being tortured and facing death, but, like, just overjoyed in writing about talking out it’s all about your perspective of things. Like, sai, like, that’s why I never could understand why, you know, like, celebrities arya professional I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain type scenario where you have a guy that’s just immensely talented, just will always be loved by plenty of people.
Speaker: 1
01:21:11
Like, I never could understand why that guy.
Speaker: 0
01:21:14
There’s a ocean of quiet suffering in, in a lot of and I think it is disproportionately in meh, in a lot of men, and they hide it well.
Speaker: 1
01:21:25
That’s why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate and all too and why it is so important to talk to those people. And
Speaker: 0
01:21:32
Yeah. It’s and, you could see it in the eyes. And there there there is there there is a lot of pain there.
Speaker: 1
01:21:39
Without, like, trying to get without, like, trying to open up too many doors, I think that’s probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really just a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions. You know? Like, I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how it’s a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule, but not themselves.
Speaker: 1
01:22:05
You know, you love your dog, and your dog, like, is just this great little thing, and you just you don’t see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself. So it’s much more likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day, but, like, there’s this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don’t even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do.
Speaker: 1
01:22:30
And and then that also, like, over time, you know, like, if you quit taking care of yourself and you’re not in good health and you’re and you’re you’re not in a good routine, you’re not doing you’re not like, a a long series of doing enough of those things ai you do, it’s easy for you to just think that tyler self worth is zero.
Speaker: 1
01:22:48
Because if you’re not even willing to, like, if you’re not even willing to, like, have basic hygiene and and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself, it’s ai, ai how, like, how on earth are you gonna go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better if you can’t you don’t even care enough to do that.
Speaker: 1
01:23:05
It’s just ai, hey. But it is. It’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a long tragic road to get to that point, I ai. At least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person.
Speaker: 1
01:23:21
That’s what, at least in my situation, that’s what I think helped put more than anything. Like I said, that’s certainly where the motivation to quit the Once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot because I was able to even though it was a pain, it was difficult, I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were and, you know, you gotta think, like I said, I we watched the I mean, it was like with of course, in my case, it was a little unfair of an example because within a month, all this stuff had happened, like, after I quit.
Speaker: 1
01:23:47
But, you know, Ai see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around and it, you know, it’s ai it’s it’s it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody, like, come to life again after being in one of those. You’re able to, like, sort of, like, escape this shell of of all those terrible things.
Speaker: 1
01:24:06
And even if you are still in a bad position and you’re still you got $30 worth of credit card debt and you’re working some shit job and your car doesn’t start half the time and, like, you know, your girlfriend left you for some other dude and, like, don’t matter what it is.
Speaker: 1
01:24:19
Like, if if at least that little glimmer of hope that, like, that faith that there is a chance sai something greater, like, that can that’ll push people. You can put you can push you can push them out and ai with that. You know? Like, you can do anything with that. And I think it’s also good I think it is important to have a a good support structure.
Speaker: 1
01:24:38
Like, when you get to that point, I don’t think you should I don’t think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves. And there’s plenty of other people out there that are in the same position. And I think that’s, again, I think that’s why it’s so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication because, like, we don’t real we don’t all we see of each other online is the good stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:24:59
Yeah. Very rarely are people on posted on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even it’s ai all you see is the best of people, but I don’t think we realize that we’re all going through a lot of the same things anyway, you know, the low points and stuff.
Speaker: 0
01:25:12
Ai what happens when you either lose your job or can’t quite figure out a good job, and you’re not making that much money, or you’re basically broke, and you have a girlfriend that’s not happy about you being broke, she’s gonna leave you. Or if it’s a wife that could face divorce and, like, the breakups and divorce can break a lot of people even when they’re doing well. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:25:34
And now when they’re not doing well, well, that’s a rough one. And that basically your support system for a lot of people is the relationship, is the is the wife and the Mhmm. And so, like, that’s taken the support system from underneath you. And I’ve had good friends
Speaker: 1
01:25:50
of mine I’ve seen get in destructive relationships. And, like, they’ll start to date a girl, and then, like, within a year, they’re just ai a shell of what they were. Because ai, I do think it’s I do think you have to be careful with, like, your self validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it’s you giving yourself that and not somebody else.
Speaker: 1
01:26:08
Because I do think too it’s ai yeah. Like, you’re you know, how are you supposed to if you can’t even if you can’t even keep a woman around to love you, right, like, how are you supposed to love yourself? It’s easy to think about that. Like, Ai I’ve seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff too. That’s it’s sai it’s tough. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:26:26
Yeah. Ultimately, I think, maybe dark to say, but there is there is a base layer at which we’re we’re alone in this world. Like, you need to be strong by yourself first and foremost. Because sometimes there’ll be times in life where everybody leaves you. Yeah. The wife leaves you.
Speaker: 0
01:26:47
The job leaves you. And for some people, it might even people you thought are friends will backstab you. And even then, you have to have the strength to find your footing again. Like, that that ultimately comes from you. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:27:02
I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I’ve been through, just I can’t I’d be a fool to deny it, but, like, I do think there is God there that that’s always there if you’re but you certainly can self isolate yourself too even from that.
Speaker: 0
01:27:15
If you can find faith in yourself, I’ve seen it do wonderful things for human beings. You sana God, faith in something bigger than you. Yeah. That can give strength to a lot of people. But, allowing yourself to derive strength solely from other people can be a dangerous thing. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:27:37
Because people are complicated, and they can betray. They can, just like they can fill your life with love, they can also destroy you. That’s also the beautiful thing about life. Yeah. It is. You make yourself vulnerable to other people. You form deep relationships. That means they can also destroy you.
Speaker: 0
01:27:59
So that’s life. That’s that’s what makes this whole thing that’s what and then you write really great heartbreak songs.
Speaker: 1
01:28:08
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:28:08
You know, people you know, there’s something valuable about people fucking you over and and hardship and all that ai of stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:28:17
Even the best of us have terrible parts of us. Like, we are all flawed inherently because we’re human, and so there there’ll never be, there’ll never be another Bryden of Eden on Earth, like figuratively, where where we all just live harmoniously and everything’s great and happy and wonderful.
Speaker: 1
01:28:37
But it is it’s those basic principles that you talk about, ai, love and our and those relationships and those connections that we have that that make it all because think about it. I mean, like, in a lot of cases, it’s like, what even? That’s the position you get in when you get too when you get so depressed and you get so low. It’s like, what’s the point in even doing all this?
Speaker: 1
01:28:52
Like, it is it is just for anyone, it’s just so crazy, overly complicated, and exhausting to ai. Isn’t it? Like, even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we can just have food delivered right to our door if we want and all this kind of ram.
Speaker: 1
01:29:07
It’s ai people are still, like, more depressed now than they’ve ever been and, like, all the mental ai and all the mental health stuff is just probably just as prevalent as it’s ever been. It’s it’s people talk about money not making you happy and, you know, it’s, like, easy when you’re it’s easy when you’re broke to think, man, if I had some money, I and, of course, financial freedom is what you’re really looking for, not like an abundance of wealth.
Speaker: 1
01:29:32
But the things that we talk about that make life worth living aren’t things that you can buy. They are things that you obtain through relationships and love and and life. And sai, it is just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about, but it’s like, that human component of us is what we, is what’s so important to our, to our long term existence, like our, our ability to, to have connection with each other and the joy we find in that, the purpose we find in that is, it’s not re it’s not anything that’s replaceable by with anything, you know?
Speaker: 0
01:30:11
Yeah. I’ve seen that with, just seeing the effects of war on the people. And, basically, war strips away everything. You lose your home. You you you lose everything. And, you get to see what’s actually really important. That’s the other people in your ai, friends, family. It’s almost cliche to say, but it’s, it’s the people you love in your life that make up the essence of what makes life worth living.
Speaker: 0
01:30:45
It’s not the homes, the material possessions, the even the job and whatever else. It’s the the the humans. So meh. Yeah. It’s important to remember.
Speaker: 0
01:30:57
A lot of us, especially in The United States under a capital system, are chasing money. Yeah. It’s it’s important, like, to remember what you’re doing it all for. I gotta talk to you about your, your writing process. You’ve written just, a bunch of really incredible, songs.
Speaker: 0
01:31:15
You say you’re not good at you’re not a good musician, which is hilarious.
Speaker: 1
01:31:19
Dude, I have no so I have, like, zero self confidence about any I mean, just about anything, but I when I say that, I’m not being funny. Like, I’m like
Speaker: 0
01:31:27
You get nervous when you, like, get on stage? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:31:34
Like, I can think about shows coming up, and my hands will sweat thinking about them.
Speaker: 0
01:31:37
Yeah. You told me that you, like, haven’t really played the songs for, like, a couple months. Like, old songs
Speaker: 1
01:31:44
Since September. Yeah. Since September. Well, dude, like, think about how, ai, you know, I can’t I’m not going to sit around and play Ai gotta get sober for fun, like, and, like, you know?
Speaker: 0
01:31:56
So you feel you feel the songs when you play them? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s rough. That’s that’s rough.
Speaker: 1
01:32:05
A lot of musicians talk about that ai of thing, though. Right? Like, about this. I don’t know. I’ve heard about that with people, like, about hating to play songs because of that side of it. But
Speaker: 0
01:32:16
Oh, yeah. I’ve, become close friends with the Dan Reynolds, who’s, the lead singer for Imagine Dragons. Yeah. And he says every time he performs a song, then he he has songs that have depression in them and all that kind of stuff. And he says, like, the only real way to do it is to feel it. You you have to you can’t just fake it.
Speaker: 0
01:32:34
You have to, like, be in it. You have to, like, really feel the song as if you’re singing it, as if you’re writing it for the first time. So as a performer, that that he says that that’s his duty he has to to the to the audience, but then that takes a toll. That’s not easy to do. That’s like vatsal, especially with the songs you write. I mean, there’s a lot of darkness there in your songs.
Speaker: 1
01:33:00
Yeah. And I do have some I do have some lighter arya ones too that that I’ll you know? I mean, I’ve the thing is is, like, I’ve only put out I I’m a little funny about, like, really like, god. I don’t know how many songs I have written that I will probably never do anything with.
Speaker: 1
01:33:17
Like, I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just, like they’re just not I just don’t know why I don’t wanna put them out, but just
Speaker: 0
01:33:24
What does it look like? What do you have, like, a notebook with ai, or do you mean you have, like, literal videos of half baked songs?
Speaker: 1
01:33:32
Yeah. I’ve got my old phone. Ai, even just that old phone that I recorded all the stuff for TikTok and all on, it’s got loads of, like, little just like the way that Richmond One was where it was, like, in the bathroom facing this, and I had, like, that. You know, that’s all that even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my phone probably a couple months before it that’s why I said I have too many unfinished songs.
Speaker: 1
01:33:52
It’s exactly what I meant. I’ve got all these little snippets of things, like
Speaker: 2
01:33:55
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:33:56
A little blip here or there. But the writing process is well, it’s a lot different than I thought most people write because, like, in the there’s a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff and they’ll have or, you know, these ai where they’ll have people sit down and they, like, sit on the couch and smoke a joint and they’re ai, alright, let’s write this song and they just, like, start plugging away, and they to me, that’s ai, I can’t do that.
Speaker: 1
01:34:21
I have to just it’s like almost the it’s like the a lot of times the songs come when I’m not prepared for them. You like to be alone? Well, alone in my head. I could be out in I could be anywhere in it. Right.
Speaker: 1
01:34:36
You know, some of them, I’ll just be in the shower, and they’ll just, like and I’m, like, scram because the thing is is, ai, it’s a certain part of your brain, I guess, that creates that stuff or picks it up or does whatever, but they come just they come and meh they go just as quick as they come.
Speaker: 1
01:34:52
It’s like when you wake up. It’s ex they it’s exactly like when you wake up, you’ve had this crazy vivid dream in your head, And you wake up and it’s all right there, and then you stop thinking about it for, like, half a saloni, and then it all goes away and you’ll never remember it again.
Speaker: 1
01:35:04
You know, like, you can’t remember your dreams like that. It’s exactly like that. It’s ai it’ll be there. It’s, like, perfect. Like, it’s all right.
Speaker: 1
01:35:11
It’s like it’s it’s almost like given to you, like, just perfect, like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever. And then, you get into this flow state to where you just ai, it’s all there in front of you and you just figure it all out. And it’s like ai it’s like somehow you’ve, like, unlocked this little part of your brain that you don’t even really know how to get to, but you just get to and it’s all there and you figure it out.
Speaker: 1
01:35:29
But, man, if you don’t get it, it’s gone. Like, you’ll never you’ll never get it again. Like, you’ll never even be able to replicate that song ever again. It’s ai it’ll just go away. And, typically, it’s ai, it’s only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I’ll get, or it’ll be, like, the chorus line I’ll get.
Speaker: 1
01:35:45
And then I’ll build the rest of the song around that, if that makes sense, I guess.
Speaker: 0
01:35:48
Well, the words or the music or the melody, like, what what pops into your head?
Speaker: 1
01:35:53
The the emotion, I guess, the words. Sometimes it’s a phrase, like, like, one thing I will do is, like, especially out in the country, people say the craziest people say the craziest things, and so sometimes I’ll, like, jot down a little bit of some like, I will sometimes on my phone take a little note if somebody says something real crazy that I’ve never heard before.
Speaker: 1
01:36:13
And then maybe one day it’ll just pop in my head like, oh, yeah. You know? I don’t know. It’s very ram, though. Like, I don’t sit and just try to write songs.
Speaker: 1
01:36:20
That’s why I haven’t put out, like that’s why I haven’t just been dumping out even though I have been writing a lot of songs, I haven’t just been, like, dumping out all this crazy music. I don’t wanna force it. I don’t wanna do Truck Beer Girl songs or, ai, I you know, I don’t wanna force song.
Speaker: 1
01:36:33
I don’t wanna, like
Speaker: 0
01:36:35
Do you have any truck beer girl songs? Because that that would be an interesting Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:36:39
I’ve got the silly one about this guy in West Virginia that, he’s, like, the most he’s the most laid back because I always get in my head and go over analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things. And he’s like, buddy, you just gotta take a drag off this thing.
Speaker: 1
01:36:55
And he’ll you know, he was the one he’d always, like like, peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something and, like, just try to cheer. And And he just didn’t take life so seriously. So I’ve written this song about it’s called Doctor Dan and it’s about you know, he’s a doctor, but he’s not like a he’s not like a conventional doctor.
Speaker: 1
01:37:10
That’s a silly one that I’ll put out. So I do have some silly ones like that. I have a couple funny ones that I’ll that I’ll never ever ever probably play to the public, but I did I played them at the mothership, only because nobody has their phones in there. But, when after right after we did Bryden, I ai I got a chance I got somehow, I got connected with Tom Segura right after Rogen.
Speaker: 1
01:37:33
And we went over to the mothership, and I got to meet him. And I love Adam Maguette. You know, he he was on the thing with Norm Macdonald is how I got introduced to him, that show Norm Macdonald had. But he’s just he’s an awesome dude. And so we we ended up at the mothership, I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast.
Speaker: 1
01:37:49
And, Tom’s like, well, they’ve never had they’ve never had live music in here. He’s like, you could be the first one. And I was like, whatever. And so, we only had one guitar, and I had my guitarist, Joey, with me. So Ron White was there. It was Tom Segura and then Ron White that night.
Speaker: 1
01:38:07
And Ron took Joey in his car, drove him across town to his, to his house and grabbed another guitar and came back. And we got up there, and we did, like, two really silly songs and then Richmond in between, in between Tom’s set and Ron’s set. And I was ai again, that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, what? Like, what Yeah. What is this?
Speaker: 1
01:38:30
Like, what is this crazy reality I’m in? But I do have some funny I used to because a lot of when I wasn’t playing open mics, you know, the well, like, you know, Brian that you met, a lot of my guitar playing was spent at places like his house, and we were all heavy drinkers, and we were just sitting around at a party playing or whatever, you know.
Speaker: 1
01:38:47
And so Ai definitely like the silly stuff too, but I was really in my head when we were talking about being low and what I ai suggest people to do if they’re in that point. But if I was just to, ai, not to flip this, but just it just popped in my head. But probably what I would tell anybody to do if they’re, like, suicidal and thinking about, like, if they’re to that point is just to go find some go find somewhere outside, like, in nature and go.
Speaker: 0
01:39:09
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:39:09
That’s what you know, that’s I kinda missed this step when we were talking about things, but, like, selling my house and buying that property and putting a camper on it and trying to go into this whole off grid thing really, like I don’t know. It it does a lot of good for you being reconnected to nature because we are a part of it.
Speaker: 1
01:39:27
But
Speaker: 0
01:39:27
Oh, yeah. That’s I’ve been to the I went to the jungle for that reason. Yeah. Being out in nature in every way is just is beautiful. I saw you got some maybe maybe that’s what Sai need to do is get some goats. You get I saw
Speaker: 1
01:39:39
I got two I can give you.
Speaker: 0
01:39:41
Got I have more questions. Why are you giving them so easily?
Speaker: 1
01:39:44
Are there are there issues Ai need to know about? Well, they’re goats. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:39:48
There’s no there’s no free lunch, man. Ai what how many you got goats? You got you got all kinds of animals? What’s the so what’s the story of you out in the woods? What are you doing out there?
Speaker: 1
01:39:59
No comment. No. I’m just kidding. Just as ai to escape this dystopian nightmare that we’re all living under. Like
Speaker: 0
01:40:05
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:40:05
Just it was just a form of escapism, I guess. But, you know, my well, yeah. I think in such a short period of time, my grandfather grew up, like, you know, they were in a ai state, like, trying to make enough money to pay the tax on their land growing tobacco. And then here I am, like, in this digital world two generations later, and I’m just like, something’s not you know, I just felt just felt called to try to figure out figure all that out and how to get back into that.
Speaker: 1
01:40:33
There’s just a there’s such a purity to man, if you raise an animal and kill it and eat it, like and I’m not talking about, like like, Ted Nugent style, but just, like, you know, raising meat birds and pigs and stuff and being having the ability to put those in the freezer and cook them for dinner, like
Speaker: 0
01:40:50
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:40:51
They taste so much better, but it’s just it feel it’s just I don’t know how to describe it, but it just brings me joy, being able to grow stuff and even just flowers and everything else. Just watching stuff that’s alive like that is just such a you know, my what we’re doing now is I bought this permaculture farm that hadn’t been operational in, like, six or seven years.
Speaker: 1
01:41:11
And, they did a lot of herbs. They had a big orchard, blueberries, you know. But, my dream there is to create this space that, that’s like the optimal place for humans to go to fix their mind. Sai, like, ai the animals and the food that I can have there and the trees that I can plant and the certain types of wildlife that I can bring in and attract, ai, the noises and the sounds and the smells that are optimal for a human to be in in order to, like, fix whatever it is.
Speaker: 1
01:41:40
You know, like, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Kennedy Junior early on with all this. And, you know, he actually came out to my property and all. We taught and we’re still I think the idea is that we’re gonna launch this kinda, like, healing center thing out there. Once he get once they get through all the meh, they’re, like, they got their hands full a little bit right now with things.
Speaker: 1
01:41:59
But whether I go that route or not, it’s like that’s my goal is to basically create a place that people can go and, like, and fix their mind and find the optimal thing. You know, we’ve got laying birds and meat birds. So we have we get our eggs and meh, and then, we’ve done pigs and sheep and goats.
Speaker: 1
01:42:16
And then I’m gonna start with cat I’m gonna get cattle in the spring. So we’ll start doing, like, Wagyu and Angus and playing around with and I wanna get some funny stuff too, like, I just large animals have a lot of you know, there’s all these, like, large animal therapies out there for mental health, like, with vets and stuff.
Speaker: 1
01:42:33
It’s just something it’s something really relaxing and rewarding about being in that space.
Speaker: 0
01:42:39
What do you, what do you find out there in nature that you can’t find anywhere else? Ai can’t find in the in the, quote, civilized world?
Speaker: 1
01:42:50
Well, everything in civilization seems so like, everything we’ve talked about, it seems sai, like, there’s such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just, like and all and all these, like, terrible parts of life that seem, like, so unstructured and just so uncertain. But in nature, everything is certain.
Speaker: 1
01:43:10
Everything has a system, like, even on the microbial level of soil, there’s this, like, intricate system and, you know, soil soils fixes it, ai, the bacteria fixes the soil and, ai, and you can grow certain types of plants to restore certain types of nutrients, and then that can grow certain types of trees, and then that can bring in certain types of birds.
Speaker: 1
01:43:30
And it’s like this whole big nature is just this whole big beautiful system, you know. Like, Earth is just such an intricate complex system that is structured. And although there is chaos, there’s literal tornadoes. You know? Ai, the metaphor we were using earlier.
Speaker: 1
01:43:44
Like, there are literal tornadoes in nature and other things, but there’s there’s a piece about observing the structure there. And to me, it, like, it just helps it helps remind and restore my faith that there is something bigger than me that, like yeah. And there’s a spiritual side to it that I don’t know that I can really correctly articulate, but, man, sitting out in the woods with some creek flowing by you and just sitting in stillness, like, where you you don’t hear anything.
Speaker: 1
01:44:12
There’s no traffic from a road. There’s no you know, you’re just you’re just there in stillness and just watching watching the Earth do its things. Just
Speaker: 0
01:44:21
I’ve gotten a chance to spend, a day and a night alone in deep in the Amazon Jungle.
Speaker: 1
01:44:28
Vatsal ai my dream, man.
Speaker: 0
01:44:30
Got it. You basically take the woods and the and the creek and the quiet. Let’s put that ai a three on a scale of one to 10. The Amazon Jungle is ai an 11 because you’re not just listening to the creek. You’re listening to, like, a lot of different species of animal having sex or or trying to kill each other. And you’re just, like, birds, monkeys, just everything.
Speaker: 0
01:44:55
And the the the the floor full of insects. Yeah. Bigger kinds of ants murdering smaller kinds of ants. It’s an orchestra of of insects, but there it’s quiet in the sense that there’s no machinery. The the really dark thing about the Amazon Rainforest vatsal ai, depending on where you are, you’ll sometimes hear in a distance the sound of a chainsaw.
Speaker: 0
01:45:19
You’ll hear it ai
Speaker: 1
01:45:20
Yeah. It
Speaker: 0
01:45:20
just and it pierces
Speaker: 1
01:45:23
Yep.
Speaker: 0
01:45:23
The day because, like, there’s just no machinery anywhere around. But once you hear it, it’s in you know? It is ai this undeniable symbol of, what human civilization does Mhmm. To nature.
Speaker: 1
01:45:40
It pains me seeing woods getting knocked down and residential residential subdivisions taking their place. Ai, this like, the monkey part of my brain wants to just go burn it all down. Like, it’s just, like, not good. Like, I don’t know. I just instinctually observe it as being not good. And I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I’m with you.
Speaker: 1
01:46:00
Like, I, that was like I said, that’s why I felt so compelled. I mean, we had I had this little house that I had maybe a little bit of equity in, and I it was in 02/2019 and the housing market was up. And I was like, I sold our little house and got that. I was able to find 92 acres for, like, 1,100 an acre.
Speaker: 1
01:46:16
And so I still had to finance it, but it was at least, like, within my barely within my and so that’s what we did. We had a you know, I was paying 600 a month on the land, and I bought a little camper for for $750 off this Hunt Club in Waverly, Virginia and drug it up there, and that’s that’s what we had.
Speaker: 1
01:46:35
And, like, went and bought a little I got a little Kubota tractor for 0% financing and was, like, cutting like, this property was a mile off the road, so I had to cut basically, like, recut in the old logging road and stuff. And you wanna talk about putting sai strain on your meh, that’ll do it, buddy. It’s selling your selling your modest little rancher and doing that.
Speaker: 1
01:46:55
But, man, I was that’s when I really started to live. And I think probably my that was, like, the beginning point of the restoration of of of me, you know. And I feel bad that a lot of people just don’t even know what that’s like to be on a farm or be out in nature. And I can’t imagine just living in a suburb or a city your whole life and never getting to experience that.
Speaker: 1
01:47:15
You know, it’s good that we have all this technology. It’s great. And, like, the the science and the innovation is important. And even the fact that you can go on YouTube and look how look up how to do almost anything is important. It’s just that there isn’t a clear definitive line between what’s beneficial and educational and what’s predatory and harmful.
Speaker: 1
01:47:34
And so it’s ai it happens to me all the time, but I could go on YouTube and look up how to change the brake shoes on my truck or something. And if I click on a short of somebody doing it, I automatically, like, I automatically go to the next video, and I may be three or four videos deep before I catch I’m watching, like, you know, some lady throw a pie at somebody, and then pretty soon, I’m like, wait.
Speaker: 1
01:47:55
I’m changing my break. That’s the only issue with that.
Speaker: 0
01:47:59
Doom scrolling, and it it it does something to your mind that just completely takes the humanity away. Yeah. It is it’s it’s it’s really horrible. Like, that dopamine thing does something to my mind that I hate, which really is the opposite of nature. Like, the feeling I remember being out in nature, and not just a ai.
Speaker: 0
01:48:20
Hike is good, but, like, for prolonged periods of time, several days away from the Internet, away from all that. Yeah. What is that? I don’t know what that is, but I don’t like what x Twitter are doing. I don’t like what Instagram is doing.
Speaker: 0
01:48:34
Whatever that is, I don’t think that’s good for the soul.
Speaker: 1
01:48:37
Yeah. Well, it’s it’s emulating things that we need to be healthy humans, but it’s just ai feeding it visually and and audibly to us, but it’s not giving us the it’s giving us the instant gratification of it, but it’s not giving us the long term pleasure or fulfillment of it.
Speaker: 1
01:48:54
Like I said, like and the beauty is we’re in this weird period in ai, like it’s a breadth of time that we’re in, where where we are able to conceptualize and observe what life was like in that transition point this got us up till now. And we also have the because in order for all this to to continue to evolve, ai, in or like, even with AI, Like, it needs us more than we need it right now still for a very short period of time, but we have access to nearly all the information that the world has theoretically.
Speaker: 1
01:49:27
But we also still have the perception and the the memory of what life was like before. And so this is ai a very short window of time, like a breath of time where I think we can find a way to, like, incorporate this into normal ai. But I think, like, if that breath leaves us, like, I don’t know.
Speaker: 1
01:49:47
I think it’s you know, I believe that I truly believe it is irreversible, and I think, like and that’s just gonna be the end of us. And and it and it could take two or three more generations to get to that point. But, like, I I think, like, why don’t we find people that are way smarter than me and and look at all the things that trend on social media?
Speaker: 1
01:50:06
Like, the videos that everybody watches. Like, I don’t know what it is. If it’s wood splitting and plumbing and blacksmithing and doing something with like, let’s find all the things that people are attracted to online that they obviously arya, like, interested in and just figure out a way to have them in real life for people to immerse themselves in.
Speaker: 0
01:50:24
Yeah. I mean, it’s a transition state, and I one one of the responsibilities I take very seriously, because I agree with you, is I tried to pierce the bubble that is Sana Francisco, that is the Silicon Valley, that is the people that build these technologies. They they often live a bit in a bubble.
Speaker: 1
01:50:39
Yeah. That
Speaker: 0
01:50:40
said, the people that criticize tech folks also live in a bubble. Yeah. And to sort of first of all, piercing bubbles in general is is good for people to to get along to understand each other. Because, people that say all technology is evil, unfortunately, techno even if that’s true, which I don’t think it is, you it’s coming. It’s going to be built. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:51:04
And so you have to figure out how to do it in a way that preserves our humanity, that that doesn’t drag us into this black hole of, like, just maximizing engagement, maximizing this dopamine thing where where instead of reading Dostoevsky, which I should be doing, I’m looking at some girl doing shaking her ass on Instagram and then feeling horrible about myself five minutes later.
Speaker: 1
01:51:25
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:51:26
That at scale is what seems to be happening. And so, like, reminding ourselves that this is not the way to steer human civilization to progress, to flourishing.
Speaker: 1
01:51:37
The problem is is I think we’re wasting a lot of our our bandwidth. Like, a lot of the like, we only have so many minutes in the day to even use our brains, and our brains can only do but so much in a day anyway. And when we’re wasting any of it on just that, it’s like the pro it’s like Ai I see it in my own professional opinion as the world is becoming just a little more in the last decade or two, as the world becomes a little more dreary and dark and more problems happen and city streets become more littered and jobs are like, all these kind of problems that we’ve that we all argue about all the ai.
Speaker: 1
01:52:13
As they become more prevalent, it’s ai the Internet and and just the visuals of the Internet become so much more immersive, and video games are so much more everything’s so much better. Everything’s improving at lightning speed and technology, and it’s degrading in society and in the real world.
Speaker: 1
01:52:30
And somehow, there’s gotta there’s gotta be a way to find a balance there. But right now, it seems like as technology becomes more immersive and addictive and and interactive, you know, like the way these algorithms, like, feed us exactly what we sana, and there’s so much psychology and just so much research that goes into making them as addictive as possible.
Speaker: 1
01:52:46
It’s ai the real world kinda sucks. Like, you know, cities that were beautiful and thriving are now falling apart, like and and and have all kinds of problems that are being unaddressed and lack a leader. It’s like there’s gotta be some ai of way, but it’s and so it’s easy for us to feel more and more inclined to escape into the digital realm because the digital realm is becoming more fun while real life is becoming less fun, and there’s gotta be some kind of way to balance between the two.
Speaker: 1
01:53:11
I’m with you. I’m not against technology at all. I think, evil most certainly existed long before there were computers, like and and in even more treacherous ways, like, now we have the ability to do we’re like I said, we’re in a very we’re in a very temporary state right now in 2025 where we have access where the general public has access to basically all the information there is and artificial intelligence and just immense and the ability that, like, a guy can just set a bunch of cameras up and start doing podcast and have just the like, even just the fact that this that your platform could be created is, like, immensely powerful.
Speaker: 1
01:53:46
It never probably never existed in world history up until now. But we also still have the problem is is if we just keep going without being careful about about losing the real world aspect of it is that, like, at some point, we’re just gonna get so lost and so immersed in the speak.
Speaker: 1
01:54:02
We’re not even gonna know what we’re we’re not even gonna know what we’re missing out on. You know? All there’s gonna be is girls on Instagram. Like, all there’s gonna be is that.
Speaker: 0
01:54:09
Yeah. I’ve been trying to figure it all out. I I just did a super long podcast with, Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games who created Ai. He created Unreal Engine, a lot of interesting video games, like, revolutionary video games. So I don’t know if you know, but Fortnite is this gigantic video game where people go into, into an online world, and they shoot stuff. It’s fun.
Speaker: 0
01:54:33
It’s it’s not like Call of Duty intense, militaristic, like, ram, real kind of shooting. It’s more fun shooting at each other. But, you know, at first, I was skeptical. Like, is that a good way to have to hang out with friends? But then I got to do it with people that I’m actually friends with in physical reality.
Speaker: 0
01:54:53
Yeah. And you get to hear each other’s voice, and you just talk and and talk shit about each other together. This it’s basically a phone call, honestly, with some visuals. Mhmm. You’re not it’s not about the visuals.
Speaker: 0
01:55:06
It’s about the phone call, and it just makes it a little more convenient to connect regularly. Yeah. But I think you do need to remember that all of that only works if you’re consistently returning to physical reality. You know? In this case, like, taking the, quote, unquote, guy trip, not the Brokeback Mountain style, but just friends, you know, just friends.
Speaker: 0
01:55:29
A trip out in nature together, like like dudes on a hunting trip or or just fishing or just hanging out in physical reality together. It’s really a fun like, we should not forget the the importance of that.
Speaker: 1
01:55:40
You talked earlier about loneliness. I think that got brought up at some point, but I do think vatsal, like, a big that’s a problem that’s caused a lot of our symptoms is that we are all, like, very lonely. Even though we are all we all seem to be so well connected digitally, we are all so lonely.
Speaker: 1
01:55:55
You gotta think, I mean, Modern Warfare two is a big thing. I was I was supposed to be in class of 2,010, so you you can think, like, when I was in whatever grade, eighth grade or whatever, Call of Duty was ai the thing. You know, I I’ve certainly like, trust meh. I’m not saying that I I’m right in this space of digital immersion with anybody else.
Speaker: 1
01:56:14
Like, I’ve I’ve I’ve been there and seen it and done you know, ai, but I I’ve wasted who knows how many hundreds of hours on modern warfare too. And, like, I I really built some great friendships from it. You know? I like, I there’s there’s a place for all that stuff. It’s just ai we like, there is just this we have this innate responsibility to, like, to again, it just goes back to this it goes back to talking about our founding fathers and the way this country was created and the importance and the like, the importance of of what it did for the world.
Speaker: 1
01:56:47
You know, and my my understanding is, a, it was the first it was the first time ever that people got together and agreed that, like you said, every man was equal. Because they were created in the image of God, they had unalienable rights that no government could take away from them, and that’s really important.
Speaker: 1
01:57:02
Like, we there won’t be Fortnite if we don’t worry about that. And it and, honestly, like, just the collapsing in our structure with the mental health with our youth and the suicide rates with our blue collar workers and all these ai of things we’ve touched and talked about.
Speaker: 1
01:57:15
Like, those are all just things we just need more time together in real life to fix those problems. Those are just things, like I said, I I make the joke, but, ai, like, there’s never been one argument that I’ve there’s never been one dispute with my wife that I’ve been able to figure out how to fix through a text message or like, it takes it takes being in person with people and and, like, having human connection to fix any problem and heal anything, you know.
Speaker: 1
01:57:40
And so it’s difficult. It’s ai Sai don’t it’s not anybody’s fault that we’re like that. We’re not even able to really get to know each other and understand each other through the internet. Ai almost have to be together in person to even just get each other’s point of view and perspectives on things. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:57:54
Yeah. Fuck the division that the internet creates, honestly. Ai left and the right, it’s been it’s been it’s been ai of a nightmare for me just to watch because I see the very simple reality that we’re in it together and that there’s a lot more commonality between people. It seems cliche to say, but it’s ai, now that needs to be said more than ever.
Speaker: 0
01:58:15
Because it when you look on x, it feels like everybody’s divided, but we’re not.
Speaker: 1
01:58:20
Well, and people are always gonna think differently too. Like, just in our structure and the way we you know, again, it’s like that it goes back to that Jordan Peterson lecture about, I think, in Maps of Meaning where he talks about people who think more conservatively or more liberally about things.
Speaker: 1
01:58:33
Like, it’s been applied to politics, but it is more it’s based more in psychology than anything. Like, some people are gonna have some people are gonna think more inside the box, and some people are gonna think more outside the box, but we have to have both in order to have a healthy society.
Speaker: 1
01:58:48
Like
Speaker: 0
01:58:49
Oh, and, also, the the thing that bothers me, your song Richmond north of Richmond, a lot of people so a pretty even split people on the left and the right in terms of, friends of ai. And, sadly, they’ve drifted to towards the extremes a bit. Those on the left definitely have developed a case of, Trump derangement syndrome.
Speaker: 0
01:59:12
Those on the right seem to think that every person on the left is a kinda radical leftist. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s, like, hilarious to listen to to people talk. It’s like everybody’s lost their mind, it feels like. But also, on top of that, people on the right see Trump as, as a savior, as this figure who is who could do no wrong, who’s going to restore freedom in America and all, you know, continue you can do a full list of really positive things.
Speaker: 0
01:59:44
And to me, he’s yet another rich man in North Of Richmond. Biden, Trump, it’s all the same thing. Now some might be able to do more good than others, but, ultimately, they’re in positions of power sana power corrupts. And those in in those positions often forget about the everyday person, the working class, and they leave them ai.
Speaker: 0
02:00:07
Ultimately, serve the people that are close to them and sometimes serve themselves to maintain power, to grow their power. I think the good thing you can say about them is they ai I could say that about both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, is that they really love their family.
Speaker: 0
02:00:27
Is that as I ai I could say that one of the things that I love about both people is that they genuinely love their family. And, like, it was always heartwarming to me to see how much Joe Biden loves his family. Yeah. Like and and, honestly, like, just do anything for his family, and this the same is true for Trump. And it just reminds you that they’re human beings.
Speaker: 0
02:00:50
And, yeah, all that to say is, like, we need to see the humanity in each of us, and to some degree, always distrust the people in power.
Speaker: 1
02:01:01
The power that people have only exists because we allow it, whether willingly or just through our own negligence. But I think that’s the important thing is, like, like I said, there’s always more of us than there will be of them. There’s always more there’s always more nobodies than there ever will be people at the top, and we just have to figure out what to do with that and how to and I think this is, like I said, a short window of time to to where we can still figure that out, you know?
Speaker: 0
02:01:26
I gotta ask you about something before I forget. I think I saw on Instagram you talked about a three legged cat. Is that a real thing? What’s the story behind the three legged cat? The reason I wanna ask you that first of all, I wanna hear this story. And second of all, I wanna read to you, one of my favorite Bukowski poems afterwards.
Speaker: 1
02:01:43
Ai. Exactly. Another cat.
Speaker: 0
02:01:44
Alright. What’s the story?
Speaker: 1
02:01:46
I had this cat lady neighbor who’s a real sweet lady, but, older lady lives in a trail single wide tyler, has probably got, I don’t know, 30 or 40 cats
Speaker: 0
02:01:59
Nice.
Speaker: 1
02:01:59
That she feeds at her house.
Speaker: 0
02:02:01
Nice.
Speaker: 1
02:02:02
It was this rainy Saturday morning. It was pouring down rain. It was gonna be ai it was like 08:00 in the morning on Saturday. It was gonna be a great day. I was gonna and then I hear this lady yelling,
Speaker: 2
02:02:11
there’s this cat stuck in my car.
Speaker: 1
02:02:13
And she’s all freaking out and don’t know what to do. And, like I said, my wife’s a veterinary technician or whatever, so she’s got a little bit more sense about animals than any of us. But we go over there and the lady’s tried to start her arya, and there’s this kitten that has was up under the hood.
Speaker: 1
02:02:26
And she started the car and the cat, basically, it it it basically almost ripped its whole front leg off already. There was just a little bit still attached, like some tendon or whatever. But the the leg was, like, wrapped up under the water pump, like, the pulley of the water pump Yeah. Knocked the bell off.
Speaker: 1
02:02:42
There was no way to get there was no way to save this leg on this guy. It was like and but the cat was, like, pinned upside down, and so we ended up grabbing a we asked the lady if she had, like, a knife in the house. So she gave us this, like, terrible looking knife, but it’s all that we had. You know, I was like, we were trying to get this sana.
Speaker: 1
02:03:00
Sai, yeah, my wife was the one that did it, but we, like, got the rest of the stuff cut and got the cat out. And, and I don’t know. I just, like, to spend, like, have ram I was, like, over a grand we spent given, like, getting this vatsal, like, getting it properly sutured or whatever to where the cat could have a healthy recovery and all.
Speaker: 1
02:03:22
But I’m one of those type of people, like, I’m not gonna I couldn’t just let this little Ai not gonna go they were gonna just go put the cat down or whatever.
Speaker: 0
02:03:28
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:03:29
The lady you know? Sai, yeah, it’s my I named her Hop. So that’s my little vatsal, and it hops around and but it was one of those things where, yeah, I don’t know. I great example with animals. Ai guess it’s the same way with people. I just always see the best sana I just couldn’t
Speaker: 0
02:03:45
Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the most amazing things about humans. It’s it’s irrational to spend that much money on this cat. Right? Because there’s so many other cats that are suffering and dying and so on, but that’s what makes humans really special. We see that the the the the the the person or the creature suffering in front of us, and we’re we’re willing to move mountains to save that person.
Speaker: 0
02:04:10
Like Yeah. It’s irrational. Maybe it doesn’t make sense because the allocation of money and effort might not be correct, whatever. We just don’t give a shit.
Speaker: 1
02:04:20
The reason that we’re willing to do it for a cat, like I said, it’s just like the thing with the dogs about giving the dogs your medication ai not yourself. So we see all the flaws and all the problems and the all the disagreements and all the anger we have with each other, just like you said, your friends on the right and the left and stuff.
Speaker: 1
02:04:35
And, like, we could show that ai of compassion, and we do. I mean, humanity does from time to time shah that kind of compassion. But we could show that ai, like, just undeserved, just just love, you know Mhmm. To each other too. Like and love is like it’s funny, you know, you talked about how both of those presidents, you could say they at least love their family, but love is ai I think everyone’s capable of love.
Speaker: 1
02:05:02
It’s probably the most powerful thing there is even beyond hate, I think, is what you know, like but it is crazy with animal. And so we it comes out of us so easily with animals because they to to us, they’re in they’re there’s these innocent little lives. We don’t have anything against them. You know? Mhmm. Like, they don’t have they don’t they don’t they don’t talk. They don’t have political views.
Speaker: 1
02:05:23
They don’t they’re just little creatures, but the reality is is we’re all just we’re all just creatures like that. You know?
Speaker: 0
02:05:29
We do that with human children Yeah. But we don’t do it enough with adults who are also kinds of children. They’re still we’re still, like, we’re still fucking lost in this world. So I gotta I gotta read you I gotta read you this. Ai gotta be one of my favorite poems. It’s called the history of one tough motherfucker by Charles Bukowski. And people should go look at videos.
Speaker: 0
02:05:51
Well, there’s videos of Bukowski doing interviews with a cat by his side, and that’s the cat he’s talking about. Alright. It goes like this. He came to the door one ai, wet, thin, beaten, and terrorized. A white cross eyed, tailless cat. I took him in and fed him, and he stayed.
Speaker: 0
02:06:13
Grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway and ran him over. I took what was left to a vet who said, not much chance. Give him these pills. His backbone is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow mended. If he lives, he’ll never walk. Look at these X rays. He’s been shot.
Speaker: 0
02:06:34
Look here. The pellets are still there. Also, he once had a tail. Somebody cut it off. I took the cat back.
Speaker: 0
02:06:43
It was a hot summer, one of the hottest in decades. I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills he wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t touch the water. I dipped my finger into it and wet his mouth, and I talked to him. I didn’t go anywhere.
Speaker: 0
02:06:57
I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to him and gently touched him, and he looked back at me with those pale blue crossed eyes. And as the days went by, he made his first move, dragging himself forward by his front legs. The rear ones wouldn’t work. He made it to the litter box, crawled over and in. It was like the trumpet of possible victory blowing in that bathroom and into the city.
Speaker: 0
02:07:23
I related to that cat. I had it bad. Not that bad, but bad enough. One morning, he got up, stood up, fell back down, and just looked at me. You can make it, I said to him. He kept trying, getting up, falling down. Finally, he walked a few steps. He was like a drunk.
Speaker: 0
02:07:46
The rear legs just didn’t want to do it, and he fell again, rested, then got up. You know the rest. Now he’s better than ever. Cross eyed, almost toothless, but the grace is back. And that look in his eyes never left.
Speaker: 0
02:08:02
And now ai I’m interviewed, they want to hear about life and literature, and I get drunk and hold up my cross eyed shot, run over detailed cat. And I say, look. Look at this. But they don’t understand. They say something like, you say you’ve been influenced by Celine. No.
Speaker: 0
02:08:24
I hold the cat up influenced by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this. I shake the cat, hold him up in the smoky and drunken light. He’s relaxed. He knows. It’s then that the interviews end.
Speaker: 0
02:08:41
Although Ai am proud sometimes when I see the pictures later, and there I ram, and there’s the cat, and we are photographed together. He too knows it’s bullshit, but that somehow it all helps. So when you posted about the
Speaker: 1
02:08:59
What’s that?
Speaker: 0
02:09:00
The three legged cat, there you go. And I I I think of your music and your life story in the same way. It’s just been through some shah, just like Bukowski. Neither of you two have been through what that cat’s been through. But, you know, that’s kinda life. That’s what it’s all about. I was wondering if you could, play a couple songs. Sure.
Speaker: 1
02:09:23
Yeah.
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02:09:24
Cool. Do you wanna take a break or no?
Speaker: 1
02:09:26
No. I’m good. It might we might take a break just just to really get this figured out. That’ll happen very quickly. Of course. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:09:37
Where is where is the guitar? Like, where no. Like, positionally.
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02:09:40
I think, yeah, I think this will be fine.
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02:09:45
Sai ghetto.
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02:09:50
Call Draven and be like, who? Well, if you I guess I’ll do, if I was gonna do anything on here from the older songs that that was related both to everything we’ve talked about, it’d probably be I sana go home.
Speaker: 0
02:10:07
Sounds good.
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02:10:08
Ai it won’t for my whole dogs and the good lord, they’d have me strung up in the ai for it. Because every day living in this new world is one, two, many days to me. Son, we’re on the brink of the next world war, and I don’t think nobody’s praying no more, and I ain’t saying I know it for sure.
Speaker: 2
02:10:57
I’m just down on my knees, begging the Lord to take me home. I wanna go home. I don’t know which road to go. It’s been so long. I just know I didn’t used to wake up feeling this way, cussing myself every damn day. People have really gone and lost their way.
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02:11:30
They all just do what the TV say. I
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02:11:39
wanna go home.
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02:11:52
Four generations farm in the ground. Grandson sells it to a man out of town. And two weeks later, the trees go down. Only got concrete growing around, and I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I don’t know which road to go. It’s been so long. I just know I didn’t used to wake up feeling this ai. Cussing myself every damn day. There’s always some kind of bill to pay.
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02:12:38
People just doing what the rich man say. I wanna go home.
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02:13:28
That’s probably one of the first Sai don’t know. It’s not the first song I wrote, but one of them.
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02:13:32
What a song, man. What a song. What a song.
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02:13:36
What’s the story to that guitar? Well, the guy who made this, like, saved my butt because everything blew up, and I was playing that little Gretsch resonator that’s in all the original videos. And my my wife had got me that off of Amazon, I think, or something for, like, 3 or $400.
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02:13:52
It’s like ai just a entry level, like, import little Gretch. And the pickup never would work right in it. So this string would wouldn’t work when you plugged it in. Mhmm. So here we are. Everything happens all at once, and we’re trying to do these shows.
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02:14:04
And, ai, you know, I think the biggest one I did so, basically, what I ended up having to do was go I bought one of these suction cup rigs that sticks right here, and the mic goes down under here to pick that string up. And I played, like, we played, like, a I think the biggest show I did with it was, like, 10,000 people, but it was enough to where I couldn’t be doing a $300 guitar with a with a rigged up thing on it anymore.
Speaker: 1
02:14:28
It just wasn’t gonna work. So this guy reached out, and, Gretch wouldn’t help me with my Gretch. Like, you know, there’s no way to really get a hold of him because they’re such a big company. And Ai I finally did get a hold of Diane Gretch, and she’s, like, really nice. And so it’s nothing personal against Gretch.
Speaker: 1
02:14:44
It’s just sai the time, I couldn’t get a hold of him. I figured I would have been able to because, like, everywhere sold out of those that Gretsch model when the song blew up, you know, like Mhmm. It was a real pop, but that couldn’t get a hold of them. So this guy, Beard Guitar, Paul Beard in Maryland, he reached out, fixed my Gretsch, and then, gave me one of these and made it with the but it’s all handmade and all.
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02:15:03
It’s ai Yeah. You can, like, whack somebody over the head with it pretty good.
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02:15:10
Yeah. Ai and heavy.
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02:15:11
But, yeah, he makes them all by hand. Nice. Little family owned place and
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02:15:17
ai about resonated guitars. Ai that, like, do you play regular acoustic?
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02:15:24
Yeah. It’s just basically a regular acoustic. It’s just a full step down is the only difference. I’ve just got it tuned all the way down.
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02:15:29
Is that it? Because there’s also, like, the this whole vibe to it. Oh, yeah.
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02:15:33
Well, the body’s different. So you can see it’s got, like, a it’s got, like, a solid you know, instead of it being a hollow body like an acoustic, it’s got that it almost looks like a hubcap, that black And,
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02:15:42
like, all the chord that’s all the sai? Mhmm.
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02:15:44
Yeah. It’s just the same. Yeah. I I wouldn’t be smart enough to play anything special. Like, it’s just a regular old guitar.
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02:15:50
I don’t know. There’s a different vibe to it. Yeah.
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02:15:52
Well, I like that. Tyler. Well, the old I’m real I’m real fond of, like, the older music, like, sai, like, where all my family’s from so ai dad was adopted, so I don’t have any like, Lunsford’s not really even a real last name to me. They’re all just it was just my grandparents that adopted my dad. So all of my family’s Ingle is, like, I n g l e.
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02:16:16
That’s, like, my real that’s on my mom’s side of my family. And, they’re all from this place about 20 miles from where, like, the Carter family was from. Mhmm. So all that old Virginia, like, kinda bluegrass folk music and stuff. And so I I was just always attracted to that.
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02:16:33
And so that’s I I like the I like the resonator a full step down because it to me, it kinda gives it that old sound ai, you know, a lot of the instruments back then had, like, bad dull strings, and they were older, and they were out of tune a little bit and stuff. And I just Sai listened to a lot of that type of music.
Speaker: 1
02:16:49
So I like I like the strings being a little out of tune and dull and not everything and just that. Yeah. That’s why I was so attracted to it. Plus, like, some of the old blues players, like, you know, playing the bryden stuff, but that was my that’s why I wanted to get the resonator was just because of that old I mean, every that’s even why, like, you know, I had to use my grandpa’s name as a alias, but that Oliver Anthony music is really supposed to represent, like, old music from, like, nineteen thirties Virginia or something ai, you know, like, it’s kinda got that type of feel to it or at least in it in its core, you know.
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02:17:23
It feels ai from another time, but it also feels timeless.
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02:17:28
It’s also that my music catalog is so limited, like, of what I listen to vatsal lot of what’s in my head like, because you think about when you’re writing songs and, like, coming up with chord progressions and stuff, you real whether you realize it or not, it’s all being influenced off of other songs. So when you only have a lot of older music and, like, some a little bit of metal and stuff in there, it’s ai there’s not really a whole lot.
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02:17:48
It’s like that you know? It’s kinda gonna sound that way, I guess, just in anyway, because that’s what’s in your head already. But
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02:17:54
So you’re gonna go out there a little bit this year. What, what are some things you’re looking forward to? Are you gonna travel a bit? Are you gonna play a bit?
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02:18:05
The idea is is to go to a town ai let’s just use Iowa as an example. Instead of ins instead of the big city in Iowa playing at the venue where everybody books, let’s find a farm field forty five minutes outside of that big city, figure out the ingress, egress, the security, find a good promoter that can, ai, a show ai, basically, that has experience to where it’s still it’s still professional and it’s done correctly.
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02:18:27
Yeah. But establish, like, a new venue space that can’t be that can’t be put under contract by a monopoly that any artist can go play, like, without like, if if all these musicians are sick of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, then let’s just let’s just start playing in fields and on main streets and set these venues up and establish them correctly and professionally to where they exist as their own space.
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02:18:51
And then and then imagine the economic impact that would provide to a town that ai would never ai, and imagine what it you you wanna talk about trying to give blue collar people, like, some hope or give them some relatability or do anything for them. Like, bring a big band to their town that they would otherwise have to drive an hour and a half somewhere to see and couldn’t even afford the tickets to start with.
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02:19:11
Like, my tour last year, pretty much every show we did that was mine had a $25 ticket option And everybody scoffed at that. And I just I was basically, like, made fun of for that by people in the professional speak, even people I was working with. They just thought it was so stupid. But you know what?
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02:19:26
There were people at my shows that came up and the kids were wearing hand me down clothes and and, like, you could tell they didn’t have any money. And they and they said it meant a lot to them that they could come and that there was a $25 option. And so and I’ll continue to do these shows like this to where any band that wants to come play the show, all their expenses are covered.
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02:19:44
And I’m sure there’s some kind of tax write off component to them for them. But, basically, they can come in, do the show, help bring in a crowd. Like, I’m taking the risk setting the venue up and establishing it. The venue will be owned or managed by either the town or the farm or whatever, but it’s it’s it’ll be in a nonprofit.
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02:20:02
And then that that space will always exist for people to rent. And the ai is just like, man, imagine if I did if I could do 20 of these a year even if that’s even if that’s all I can get done. Like, that’s 20 places that will always have music and will always have a center where people can go and build this sense of community we talked about.
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02:20:21
It’s almost like a sanctuary if you sana to call it that, but it’s just a space that can’t be perverted by corporate America and just a place where people can go and, like, do all these things that we wanna do. What are you excited for this year? Obviously, you’re gonna travel overseas and you got sounds like you got some ex some other cool stuff you’re gonna do.
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02:20:41
Yeah. I’m gonna see, I’m gonna see some world leaders, hopefully not end up in prison anywhere. Part part of that, honestly, I’m excited, you know, like, India to see the same humans, but in very different parts of the world. I’m not a travel guy, but I love seeing humans. That there’s, like, a lot of us humans all over the place, and they’re very different.
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02:21:06
And they have funny accents and just funny way of being. You know? So I’m excited to take it all in because it I fundamentally love people.
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02:21:15
Yeah, man. Like, I I, I would definitely say if you’re ever up if you’re ever over towards Virginia or West Virginia, either one there, ai, yeah, it’d be cool to spend a couple days out in the woods or a day out in the woods and do I I haven’t really I was I’m really new to the whole psilocybin thing, but I have tried a few smaller doses of it actually to help with being up on stage and all.
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02:21:37
And, it’s an interesting thing. But
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02:21:40
It’s great.
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02:21:40
Yeah. The dog definitely the dogs and the woods part, I got you on that.
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02:21:45
I would love to join in. I mean, I’ve I’ve I’ve taken mushrooms a few times. And ai, I usually just love everything anyway, but with mushrooms, you just love it a little bit more, ai, especially out in nature. When I’m look out in nature, I’m just in awe of how incredibly beautiful it is, and just Ai could stare at a tree for hours.
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02:22:06
And then you take mushrooms, and, like, that tree starts, like, having some more dynamism to it. So it’s just a little boost, but, like
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02:22:14
Yeah. Sai get into this crazy like I said, it’s only been a handful of times because I’ve I don’t know. It’s one of those things where it’s, it’s still a little unfamiliar to me, but, ai, like, talking about trees and psilocybin, you know, you think about you start to look in those trees and you think, like, in their relative perspective of time, you know, because they’re constantly moving around and growing and doing all these things.
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02:22:38
And you think about, like, in their perspective, maybe we’re just we’re just moving way faster than their perception and they’re they’re moving at just a normal speed. I don’t it’s just that you get into all these crazy trains of thought when you sit out in the woods on that stuff.
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02:22:51
But
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02:22:51
A %, man. I mean, like, maybe that’s the history of, life. I mean, humans have some chance of destroying ninety five, ninety nine percent of the population with nuclear weapons, and the trees will remain, and they will reconstruct the environment of Earth and help the the few humans that remain to survive.
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02:23:11
And it’ll be the fucking trees that we’d be grateful for, their actual deep, ancient, wisdom. So maybe they’re the intelligent ones. Maybe we are the idiots.
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02:23:23
When you’re out in nature like that and just reading but just looking at and studying the way all those systems work with soil and trees and animals and how it all just integrates in together so perfectly, it does give you some sense of peace that maybe there is some there is some system at place that’s out of our hands that can just help us with our our faults and our repercussions. And again, like for me, just, yeah, I think just being out there, especially now that now looking at it through the lens of of god of their you know, of of god, it helps.
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02:23:52
There’s I’ve found no greater peace than just being out in the woods and and praying or just just trying to focus my mind on on that. Like, I but, yeah, I would love for you to come out there sometime ai I’m 100 low
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02:24:06
on this. See, like, feeling peaceful out in Virginia in the woods is easy. Try doing it in the Amazon jungle when a giant ant
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02:24:15
Oh, I dude. Sai
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02:24:16
and just bites you.
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02:24:17
Dude, I would do anything to go to the Amazon.
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02:24:19
All the pieces is is gone. You’re like, motherfucker. What do you do? What did and then it like, a second one joins in, kills the first one, and bites you again. And then you’re like, okay. Nature is not all
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02:24:32
Yeah.
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02:24:32
It’s not. I mean, there is, there is harmony to it, but it part of the harmony is the violence. Yeah. It’s just the reality of it. It’s sai and violence.
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02:24:45
Like, I guess that’s the thing about it, though, is, like, it has all the same components of humanity just almost, you know, like, almost to a comical level.
Speaker: 0
02:24:53
I mean, the real comedy is the monkeys up in the trees. They’re it’s like it’s like little humans, and they’re arguing and screaming at each other, throwing stuff, getting into fights. It’s like it’s like reality TV, but, like, more pure, more real, more distilled ai to his fundamentals. Like, we we are that. You know? Yeah.
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02:25:15
We we put on clothes these days and have fancy words that we say to each other and look all sexy on Instagram, but we’re the sai. Monkeys, apes.
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02:25:26
It’s like the old lobsters. You know? But it really is true. Ai like, we all we all, yeah, we’re all on that ai kinda same operating system in a way.
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02:25:39
Brother, this was a huge honor. I can’t I I don’t have the words to describe how incredible this was, and I think, it was just fun. It was really fun talking to you.
Speaker: 1
02:25:50
Total honor to be able to come on here for me as well and, especially just to get to meet you in real life and see, like, you know, you are what I you are what I expected you to be, like, in a good way. Like, you know, you just don’t ever like, yeah. You’re just you’re a good dude, sai I appreciate what you’re doing.
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02:26:07
I gotta show you the sex dungeon downstairs
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02:26:09
Nice.
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02:26:10
Where Sai
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02:26:11
Heck. Yeah.
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02:26:11
Where I keep sex slaves. It’s very different. No. Yeah, man. Alright. Time to wake up. Let’s go back to reality. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Anthony. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from George Orwell.
Speaker: 0
02:26:29
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Thank you for listening, and hope to see
Speaker: 1
02:26:44
you next time ai.
