Chris Stapleton joins Jemele to talk about his new album, touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and being in a band with the greatest singer in the world, Gene Simmons. Chris also talks about how he and his band, Good Strong, came to be and what it's like to be in a rock and roll band, and how it all started with a song he wrote. Chris also discusses how he went from being a songwriter to touring with Gene Simmons and the rest of the band Good Strong and how he became the lead singer of the rock band GoodStrong. Chris and Jemele also talk about the band's new album coming out on iTunes on December 1st and how they plan to promote it and what they look forward to in the future of their music and their upcoming tour with Good Strong. And of course, they talk about how they met Gene Simmons on the side of the stage at a gig and how that was one of the weirdest things they've ever done... and why they think he's the best singer in rock and pop artist in the history of rock n roll. Enjoy the episode! And don't forget to Like, Share, and Retweet it! Thank you for listening to Gimlet Music! Cheers, Jon & Pete! -Jon & Pete and the crew at The Ryders! Music: - Jon and Pete, Pete and the R&B Jerks Jon & the Raving Grunge & the Crew (Music: (featuring: ) Jake & The R& the R & B (feat. Chris, The R & R ( ) & The Crew (Jon & the rest) . & The Good Strong Crew ( ) . (Song: , , and The Best of Good Strong (Chris, ) ( ) & in this episode ( ) (Singer/Song: "I'm So Good, I'm Too Good, So Good And Good, Too Good And So Bad And So Good & So Bad, Too Bad & So Good and So Bad and So Good To Be Good, & So Much More! & More) (Solo, and ( ) and is a tribute to Gene Simmons ( ) and ( ) on on . . . and (Selling Out)
00:02:42.000To the degree that it's happening right now, you know, probably since, you know, 2015. A couple years of Good Strong, we're going on three of, you know, playing shows to more people than we knew ever came to live shows.
00:02:56.000So, yeah, it's been, you know, a strange, life-altering thing.
00:03:02.000When you hear it, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Chris Stapleton.
00:04:26.000But I love talking to people that are like a year, two years into the situation you're in right now, where you're just kind of getting settled into it, where it still seems like Fantasyland.
00:04:37.000I'm not sure that it would ever not seem like Fantasyland, because I spent enough years not in Fantasyland to...
00:06:36.000But, I mean, it's got to be a weird world.
00:06:38.000I mean, the world of the music business is a very, very strange world.
00:06:41.000I've talked to a lot of musicians and, you know, navigating the world of commerce and music.
00:06:49.000There again, if you just simplify it down to let the music lead and let that kind of be always the focus, for me, that makes it real easy to not make decisions you would regret or feel like weren't you.
00:07:06.000So as long as that's the focus, that's okay.
00:07:10.000All that other stuff just kind of becomes external noise that we'll all...
00:08:19.000Wanting to make records and wanting to be in the music business and wanting to live and play music, having absolutely no opinion of what you want to do or who you are or how you do it, and you want everybody else to tell you how to do it and what to do and when and where and why, then yeah,
00:08:35.000it can be a confusing thing because there will be a lot of external opinions that aren't yours that will create someone that is not you that you will have to play for the rest of your life.
00:08:46.000So, Was that a lot of information in that moment?
00:09:28.000Maybe it makes you money, but you never really get to be yourself because you're sort of programmed into this thing that they've sort of manufactured.
00:09:36.000Yeah, well, or you ignore some other passion or talent that you have under the guise of it seeming risky or irresponsible and try to go do this thing that seems like, in your mind, is the normal thing to do.
00:09:51.000Like when Garth Brooks put on that wig and pretended to be that other dude?
00:11:23.000Yeah, he wrote a bunch of books under a pseudonym because he was so gigantic that he decided to write some books under a different name so that people would sort of appreciate the work for what it was instead of as a Stephen King book, I think, or just maybe even as an exercise.
00:13:21.000I don't want to control people's thing.
00:13:27.000Yeah, and sometimes it's just a song that gets them, and if you sell that song individually, that'll get them, and then maybe they'll check, all right, I'm listening to this a hundred times.
00:13:57.000I'm 39. And how many years did you do that for?
00:14:01.000Well, I moved to Nashville when I was 23. And probably the first three years I was in town, I only wrote three times a day, living, eating, sleeping, breathing, songwriting.
00:14:39.000You know, those terms are worked out, whether you have what percentage of publishing they have and what percentage you have, and they pay you a salary in exchange for, you know.
00:14:50.000It can be, you know, if you have a bunch of songs on the radio.
00:14:55.000And so for you, you were getting by doing this?
00:14:57.000Well, no, I made a very comfortable living up to the point.
00:15:03.000And that allowed me to go out and play bluegrass for next to no money or play rock and roll and have fun doing it and not worry about that being how I'm making a living.
00:15:13.000But I got to do it for the right reasons.
00:15:15.000And so, in a lot of ways, you know, the songwriting thing, the commerce paid for the art, I guess, in that.
00:15:22.000Which I'm a firm believer in, and some people will argue, this is a conversation that Sergio and I will have, the commerce paid for the art.
00:15:37.000I still write with people when they ask me to do that because it's cool to get in somebody else's head or kind of sit down with them and try to help them realize some vision of what it is they want to do.
00:15:50.000That's still one of my favorite things to do.
00:15:53.000Just as interested in that as I am in doing my own thing a lot.
00:16:36.000And hopefully somewhere in humming the melody, a word would pop out that...
00:16:40.000Or a noise I would make would turn into a word.
00:16:44.000And from there, you can kind of grow this...
00:16:57.000It's not like an affliction that you have.
00:17:07.000In some way, so you're just kind of walking around unconsciously, things will hit you, you know, or moments will hit you, or a visual will hit you, and that will spark something.
00:17:19.000So that's really, it can come from anywhere, and that's the truth.
00:18:57.000On the Traveler record that we had a couple records back, Traveler, I wrote driving down the road, you know, driving down through the desert on Interstate 40, you know, wrote the whole thing driving, and then I had to go figure out how to play it.
00:19:45.000Do you have stacks of them like laying around somewhere?
00:19:48.000I mean, they're all cataloged, you know, at the publishing company I write for, you know, and they're all, you know, accounted for for the most part, and I can kind of go back through them and dig in them if I need to.
00:19:59.000Would you do that, like, for an album?
00:20:03.000Yeah, all the, you know, this record we're putting out and the last record that we have out, save for a few covers, they're all songs that are, you know, a decade old or something.
00:22:12.000On some nights, I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.
00:22:25.000Yeah, it's uniquely inspirational, like very few things.
00:22:30.000And the art of music and music creation is such a...
00:22:36.000I think when it's done correctly I should say is it's a very pure art form in the sense that the people that are doing it are really like digging into their creative engines and You know just getting the gears turning and pulling these things out and It represents,
00:22:53.000like, however much burden you have in your personality, in your life, that can either help you or hurt you in this process.
00:23:02.000And some people's music sort of represents the torment of their life.
00:23:06.000And some people's music represents the purity of their vision.
00:23:09.000But it all has different effects on people in some sort of strange and bizarre way.
00:23:14.000Yeah, I like to say that, you know, the songs, I was talking about, I forget what I was talking about this, but I like songs that allow you to take ownership of them and make them personal to you.
00:24:02.000That's the thing that makes a song complete.
00:24:05.000I don't feel like they're even done until somebody listens to it and attaches to it.
00:24:11.000That's the thing that I love so much about songs.
00:24:16.000Yeah, and everybody's thing is different too, right?
00:24:19.000It's like you can have two songs that are the exact same song, but they're sung by different people and they have a completely different feeling.
00:24:26.000Certain covers, you listen to certain covers, you're just like, whoa!
00:24:31.000It just hits you in a totally different way.
00:24:35.000And then the other side of that is two different people can listen to the same version of a song and it means totally different things to them.
00:26:31.000Man, it's just the, just to be an artist in any form, right, requires all this vulnerability and just trying to Trying to find whatever it is when you're trying to create something.
00:26:50.000And then when you're dealing with your own personal demons, especially the deep drug demons, seem to produce some of the most insane music ever.
00:26:58.000You know, you think of Hendrix and Kurt Cobain.
00:27:02.000And you keep going down that list forever, really.
00:27:05.000Yeah, and I have a songwriter friend who is convinced that you can't really produce something that is, you know, really noteworthy unless you have some kind of an addiction issue.
00:27:21.000I don't know if that's true, but you're saying that very thing.
00:27:24.000You look back at history of rock and roll and music in general, there's a lot of heavy drugs and a lot of getting out there on the edge that has in fact produced some of the greatest music that we've ever heard.
00:28:23.000Most people that I meet that are successful in one way or another, they have at the very least kind of obsessive tendencies about something.
00:30:32.000And he's probably the one guy that we have in modern times that really can carry that torch for the blues and all those great guitar players that we don't have a lot of them left.
00:30:50.000I mean, he can do that, and that's real kind of, you know, B.B. King approach, you know, just playing some real straight-in-line stuff.
00:30:59.000But then he can do Hendrix and be crazy and psychedelic, too.
00:35:21.000I knew nothing about New Orleans jazz whatsoever, but I went down to New Orleans and I participated in this and wrote these songs that now live in the jazz world.
00:35:31.000So that really is thrilling to me to get to that thing I was telling you about where I get to go hop into somebody else's space and see if I'm helpful.
00:35:47.000It feels like, to me, like that's a feather in my cap.
00:35:50.000I got to go participate with those guys, and they're so great, every one of them.
00:35:53.000I have some friends that love that sort of collaboration thing, too, whether it's in music.
00:35:57.000I have a good buddy of mine who writes a lot, my friend Tony Hinchcliffe, writes a lot for people for roasts, and he does punch-up on shows and things along those lines, but he relishes that opportunity.
00:36:08.000He likes collaborating, likes helping people out on stuff.
00:38:58.000I've done it in Hawaii, in Mexico, and the great thing is, say, if you're staying at a resort, you could rent a boat, they'll take you out, you catch a tuna or something like that, and then you cook it and eat it for lunch, and it's amazing.
00:39:52.000It's weird that we, it's this weird thing that we have in our head where we're trying to activate those reward systems that were there in place in order to keep ourselves fed.
00:40:05.000There's a thing that happens when you catch a fish.
00:40:08.000Like I've seen with my little kids, I've taken my daughter's fishing, and when they catch a fish, they have this look on their face like, oh, oh, I got it, I got it, I got it!
00:40:18.000It's super exciting when they pull it out of the boat, and then the fact that they're going to get to eat it later, there's some weird primal DNA thing that gets activated when you catch something.
00:40:29.000And I think that's what these fly fishermen that are letting the fish go are trying to do.
00:40:33.000They're just little junkies for that feeling, that DNA activation, that reward system thing.
00:40:41.000And obviously it's difficult, and obviously there's a tremendous amount of skill and finesse involved in fly casting and roll casting and trying to place this...
00:40:51.000Fly right in this little pool and drag it with the current and get that nasty trout to bite onto it.
00:41:56.000A good percentage, I don't know what the number is, especially when you're like salmon fishing and you're using like heavy tackle, a good percentage if you're catching and releasing that those fish are never going to make it.
00:42:05.000Catch them with a big lure, barbed hooks, you get them deep in the throat, you pull them out, their gills are bleeding.
00:42:48.000Yeah, I was listening to this lecture once by Terence McKenna, and he was talking about that.
00:42:53.000Terence Kent McKenna, the great psychedelic author and lecturer, he was talking about how he was really into butterfly catching at one point in time.
00:43:02.000And the odd thing is that it activates this very primal reward system in your body the same way catching a fish would.
00:43:11.000Because human beings used to be insectivores.
00:43:54.000I went to an ashram once, and this lady who was running the ashram had a can of Raid, and she was talking to me about the ant problem that they have.
00:44:55.000Well, that's one of the things that they talk about in terms of the future of protein, that insects provide very complex, complete proteins, and they can provide it to large amounts of people fairly inexpensively.
00:45:09.000And so cricket protein is very popular today.
00:45:23.000And apparently they taste pretty good.
00:45:24.000Well, you know, my daughter ate, you know, we bought like on vacation somewhere, like this novelty sack of like barbecue crickets or something.
00:48:13.000Like, I think if you're around a real wild game chef, like there's a guy named Hank Shaw who's been on this podcast before who's a hunter who's also like a real extraordinary chef, and he makes these amazing dishes with wild game.
00:48:25.000And he's one of those guys that's like, you know, you think it's bad because you haven't cooked it right.
00:48:49.000Yeah, because it's what's called a dry hurricane, meaning there's hurricane-force winds, but there's no rain, and the fires are going fucking crazy.
00:48:57.00050,000 acres down in a day is nothing right now.
00:49:01.000Yeah, we've been here a few days and we got in two or three days ago and we've been doing some other things, TV things, whatever, but waking up to that on the news is not a fun thing to watch and I'm so heartbroken for everybody losing their homes and it's a pretty tragic,
00:49:30.000It so rarely rains here, you know, and when you get, like, these crazy winds, the Santa Ana winds that happen every year, just, this is extraordinary, the winds here, and just perfect time for fires, obviously.
00:49:41.000So is somebody kicking these things up, or what's the deal, really?
00:50:29.000All during the same crazy conditions and they happen like way far apart from each other So you talk to firefighters about it and they're like there's a lot of times We don't know but there's a lot of times some serious suspicions.
00:50:38.000Yeah, you know, it's just It's unfortunate you would have to think about that.
00:50:43.000I mean think about all these human beings and there's one or two or however whatever the number is that are so tortured And so in pain and so fucked up, the wires are so crossed.
00:50:59.000But I watched all these guys on the news, you know, up on the roofs trying to save their property or, you know, firefighters putting themselves in harm's way or guys flying helicopters dumping water in zero visibility conditions.
00:51:12.000And it's just like, man, it's just, it's awful.
00:51:31.000And when they do do some shit, you realize, like, oh, without them...
00:51:35.000Like, I talked to a firefighter once, it freaked me the fuck out.
00:51:38.000He was saying, it's just a matter of time to one day...
00:51:42.000With the right winds, there's a fire that burns all the way to the ocean, just goes right through L.A., and there's nothing we can do about it.
00:53:27.000I mean, it's got to be interesting to them too to see their dad go from being a singer-songwriter to all of a sudden being a celebrity singer.
00:55:31.000I think all his years of working regular jobs, you know, working on the railroad and doing all the shit that he had to do, when success came, he was like, Jesus Christ, I've got to keep this fire going.
00:55:46.000You have this moment, you know, when you have a little something going on where you're like, well, I've got to, you know, make hate while the sun's shining.
00:59:03.000Yeah, what I've heard about Nashville is that Nashville started out as sort of this pure sort of music environment and then over time it became a money grab and people realized that it's a music environment and they said how do we capitalize on this and then people said oh I heard this is a music environment I'm gonna move there and then it became like a place to be to be seen and that it's it's still got the music there but it's it's also like weirdly compromised does that make sense?
01:00:36.000Yeah, I think that's some kind of unicorn that you're inventing in your mind if you think that that's any town that you're going to.
01:00:43.000It's like, I don't know, I don't know what the equivalent would be, but feeling like you moved to some island somewhere and everybody walks around and has yachts and just drinks martinis all day or whatever.
01:01:11.000And everybody sort of came to that place.
01:01:13.000It drew everybody in from across the country.
01:01:16.000And from my friends, like Honey Honey and other people that I know that lived in Nashville for a while, Nashville was kind of that to them.
01:01:23.000What it was, was this kind of It's a place where you'd seen and heard so much amazing music has come out of that part of the world, and it's so music-centered.
01:01:33.000It has a different vibe, because it's a very artistic city.
01:01:40.000But there's also a side to it now, and it's been in the last five...
01:01:45.000Sorry, Nashville, if you feel like I'm talking about you, but there's a thing now where you go downtown, and It's more like you're going to a giant bachelorette party or something.
01:01:58.000It's just like everybody's, I don't know, just looking to drink their face off and listen to bad covers.
01:02:12.000But it's, you know, and it's great for the city in a lot of ways, tourism-wise and monetarily and all those things, but it also changes that, whatever, some notions of that romantic thing that you're talking about.
01:02:24.000Those things still exist, but they have to be, like a lot of things that have sold, they need to be sought out.
01:02:52.000My point about all of it really is the idea of artistic integrity is a fleeting thing and a sacred thing and a critical thing for a guy like you to create the kind of music that you make.
01:03:02.000And I'm always interested like how someone cultivates that.
01:06:22.000For it to win a thing or not win a thing.
01:06:25.000You know, and some of the things that have won, you can tell that the win is tainted by the political climate, that the people are, like, leaning towards something that's socially aware and kind.
01:06:35.000So somebody made a movie with lesbians that saved the planet from, you know what I mean?
01:06:39.000It's like, that kind of shit becomes, like, transparent and obvious, and you can do that and rig the system and win an award.
01:06:45.000I think that awards for art are goofy.
01:06:49.000Awards for comedy or every comedy competition I've ever seen, they're super goofy.
01:06:55.000It's missing the whole idea of the thing.
01:06:58.000The whole idea of the thing is supposed to be the art.
01:07:00.000It's not supposed to be trying to win an award.
01:07:44.000Because people also like the idea that you can be one thing one minute and one moment on television can make you some other totally different person.
01:08:20.000The other good moments are like when they have American Idol and they have those people that have no business being there and they play their auditions too.
01:08:28.000Those are the other good moments for the wrong reasons, right?
01:09:16.000You're telling me about all these artists I've got to go look into, and I'm sure there's a bunch that are coming up that are probably equally talented, and maybe they just need an opportunity like that.
01:09:25.000Something along those lines, some sort of a show, a variety show where really talented people can come out and show their songs.
01:10:14.000He bought a machine gun and shot up a demo at it.
01:10:17.000It was next door to $50,000 worth of false teeth.
01:10:20.000I knew he was fixing to shoot, and I didn't want to be in the land of fire.
01:10:26.000So they would tell stories and then they'd animate them.
01:10:29.000Yeah, but all these guys that you see animated, these are the real guys that lived a lot of these things and are telling these stories.
01:10:35.000These are not made up characters in any way and I know some of the guys that wind up being animated on these things and And I have for years said, you know, if even half of the folklore that exists in country music could be told, it would be the biggest thing in the world,
01:10:53.000And that's what he's doing right now with that show, and he's doing an excellent job of it, and it's really...
01:10:58.000For me, and maybe it's not as entertaining to other people, I don't know, but for me as a musician, knowing some of the folklore and knowing how many great characters and storytellers exist in country music and have existed, it's so refreshing to see these guys get stories told about them.
01:11:49.000I like, you know, I like kind of science fiction based things and, you know, I like, but I like, I like things that are done well, whatever it is.
01:11:57.000And I think both of those are done well.
01:12:28.000I'm hopeful that we get to continue to do some cool things and have fun doing it.
01:12:36.000I'm at that age where I'm just old enough not to be stupid with what we're doing and hopefully young enough to really get to keep doing it for a little while.
01:12:52.000I'm grateful for anything that we've gotten to do and we'll get to do in the future, and hopefully the next few years will just be a continuation of that.
01:13:25.000I have freedom to do basically whatever I want, and play however I want, and sing about whatever I want, and it's the greatest thing in the world.
01:13:39.000Do you get young guys coming up to you, young girls coming up to you that have dreams of being a singer-songwriter?
01:14:33.000I mean, but you know, when you start, and I don't know how it works from your end what you do, when you start And when you get your first little, you know, I get a publishing deal and you get to be around some of what an industry is.
01:14:48.000And then you slowly but surely get to meet people who are successful in different facets of it.
01:14:54.000And I think what I find is the people that I gravitate towards and that I really respect and look at and go, A career like that would be nice.
01:15:07.000They're very nice caring, giving individuals who support younger artists and they do nice things for their communities and they do nice things for people out in the world.
01:15:19.000And they make music that's in their heart.
01:15:22.000And those are the things that I think are good to aspire to as a musician.
01:15:56.000I say write as much as you can with as many people as you can find who know what they're doing.
01:16:01.000And that's how you learn how to write songs.
01:16:05.000But I'll also say, I used to have a songwriter friend who said, you can't learn how to be a songwriter.
01:16:11.000You can learn how to write better songs more often.
01:16:15.000But it's not, you know, it's like, and forgive me if this is a wrong analogy, but I don't think you can really learn how to be funny if you're a comedian.
01:16:45.000Some of it has to be innate, and then you have to learn how to sharpen that tool a little bit.
01:16:50.000Well, I think whoever you are can change.
01:16:52.000And I think if you are in a position where you are incapable of writing songs or incapable of being funny or incapable of writing books or doing paintings, whatever it is, it's because of whoever you are right now.
01:17:04.000But that doesn't mean that whoever you are right now is who you're going to be five years from now or whatever.
01:17:08.000I think if you can go through enough personal growth and enough introspective thinking and objective realization of your environment and the way you interface with people slowly but surely changes and evolves and matures, your art will, your expression will, because you're not who you were.
01:17:24.000You know, you're not who you were five years ago.
01:17:26.000You're not who you were ten years ago.
01:17:36.000But I used to think that it was just, if you sucked in the beginning, you're going to suck.
01:17:40.000And then I met some people that sucked.
01:17:42.000But there has to be some element of spark or drive, even.
01:17:47.000I think, would you say that if the person that was trying to be funny was not funny at first, they at least knew that they weren't funny and had to get better at it?
01:18:00.000Sometimes they think they're funny and then they become funny.
01:18:03.000I used to think that there was much more of a clear, defined pattern than I think now.
01:18:10.000But I think it's about being clueless.
01:18:13.000I think cluelessness is the enemy of anything that you're going to make that's going to have a real impact on people, if you're clueless.
01:18:23.000If you don't see how people perceive you, if you're not aware of how they're taking you in when you're communicating with them, your art is going to suck.
01:18:32.000You don't have a connection with them.
01:18:34.000You don't have a connection with people.
01:18:35.000You don't have a connection with yourself.
01:18:38.000Unless there's some sort of a solitary thing that you do, like maybe sculpting or painting, like you could be a madman who's totally in your own world and create some crazy art form that someone can come along and look at and go, wow.
01:18:50.000But anything where you're interacting with people, I think there's a big part of that interaction is...
01:18:56.000The way you look through other people's eyes and the way they take in what you're saying, not just what you want to get out, but also your recognition, whether peripherally or whether it's obviously, your realization of how they're perceiving your thoughts and ideas and what vehicle you're delivering these ideas in.
01:19:17.000Is it clunky and too loud, or do you have the same thought and make it smooth and calm and sinking into people with The right words and the right cadence and the right...
01:19:28.000You can have the same ideas, but they just need a better vehicle to get through.
01:19:32.000And I think cluelessness prevents you from objectively analyzing your own work.
01:21:17.000But I'm just trying to see if there's parallels, because comedy is probably ten to one.
01:21:21.000Ten things I write are bullshit in one thing.
01:21:24.000I'm like, hmm, might be something there.
01:21:26.000Yeah, I think if you're doing ten percent of what you do is work that you deem good enough to put out in the world, I think you're probably doing pretty good.
01:21:37.000I mean, I think that's a pretty good average of things that are worth something.
01:21:44.000You hope for better, but if you're doing that, I think that's doing your job.
01:21:49.000I also believe you've got to go through some of the ones that aren't there just to kind of flush them out.
01:22:15.000And then you can push it out and kind of move on.
01:22:19.000I think that's important to kind of flush out your mind that way creatively.
01:22:22.000Do you ever come back to your stuff, like sort of almost like come back to it when you haven't thought about it in forever and look at it with fresh eyes, almost like you're collaborating with somebody else and redoing their stuff?
01:22:32.000I'm very much the guy who believes the first instinct is probably the correct one most of the time.
01:23:13.000You know, my favorite songs are ones that just kind of fall down out of the sky in a bolt of lightning, and you write it in about 10 minutes, and you're like, that's exactly what it was supposed to be.
01:24:18.000It's an interesting thing that people have this different approach to essentially what's an open-ended creative avenue.
01:24:27.000Creating a song, it's a blank sheet of paper.
01:24:32.000And so many different people have different approaches to how to make that thing come out of their head.
01:24:38.000Yeah, well, and I'm not saying that I haven't tried many different ways to make things happen, but I find, you know, for me, the process of clarity works better than trying to alter myself to get to some other plane.
01:24:56.000Maybe there is another plane I don't know about, but I've never been there.
01:25:42.000Yeah, it depends on some styles of writing.
01:25:46.000Some guys write in bit form, like they say, so, the other day I walk, and they write it out like that.
01:25:52.000And other guys would just, like, say clocks, like the idea of clocks, like the arbitrary decision that we all made, that there's You know, these little numbers around this dial.
01:26:20.000Well, if you fucking show up late and you get fired, it's time for you to get a new job, bitch.
01:26:25.000That could be a way where you could take time and just take this big essay on it and you would extract an idea that could eventually be humor on stage.
01:26:36.000But everybody's got a different style of that.
01:27:13.000It's like whatever your end goal is, whatever you're trying to create, it's all about showing up and doing that work and staring at it and trying to figure it out.
01:27:21.000And then for comedy, it's a lot about getting in front of the crowds.
01:27:32.000You can't just create comedy on your own, whereas I think you with a bunch of talented musicians, you could probably develop a fucking jamming record before anybody ever got a chance to see it.
01:28:14.000Like maybe if I go do this, I'll figure out, I'll get some songs out of this or something.
01:28:20.000You know, I don't know that I'd ever specifically do something to get material out of it, but I do do things because Something comes up and I go that sounds so weird.
01:28:29.000I'm gonna go do that and then from that and then from that Either good things happen or I have a story that yeah sounds like it's fake That might be the best way to do it right to just live a happy Fulfilled life and mine that happy fulfilled life for ideas rather than chase Interesting things with a specific intention of turning them into creativity Yeah,
01:28:52.000no, I don't think I'd ever do that, but I'd definitely, I'd go do things that might make me uncomfortable or, you know, put myself in situations where, like, this sounds like the weirdest thing ever.
01:29:04.000Well, you know, case in point, and it turned out to be, you know, we're now good friends, but, you know, the first time I ever met Timberlake...
01:32:33.000Playing the guitar is one of those things where you never think that you're ever getting any better at it until one day you wake up and you understand something that you didn't understand and hadn't understood for the ten years you've been trying to understand it.
01:32:47.000And then all of a sudden you have this new You know, new space to live in on it.
01:32:53.000And it's the coolest thing in the world to me.
01:33:24.000I kind of understand the space you're talking about and I think that applies to a lot of different things.
01:33:31.000You know, there's this Miyamoto Musashi quote that I use all the time.
01:33:37.000Once you understand the way broadly, you see it in all things.
01:33:41.000And that this place that you're talking about, like these new level places, like that exists in martial arts, it exists in comedy, it exists in writing, it exists in...
01:33:52.000I'm sure it exists in music, although I don't do music.
01:33:54.000I think this thing of this Zen samurai thing you're talking about, of just like this constant focus until you reach some new understanding of the thing.
01:34:04.000And you don't even know how you're getting there, but you're...
01:34:08.000But you're working towards something that you don't know what it is until you get there.
01:34:12.000And then you get it and you have this new piece of knowledge or it's a piece of – and it's a new – all of a sudden you're something new too.
01:34:21.000And maybe that's the thing you were talking about earlier about people who suck at comedy.
01:34:41.000I don't belong in Gary Clark Jr. world or anything like that, but I do love guitar enough to know that I'm always playing enough to try to find that new space to live.
01:34:55.000And that's the coolest thing in the world to me, because I'll never get to whatever...