In this episode, I catch up with my good friend and former co-worker, Sturgill Simpson. We talk about how he got his start as a radio host, how he became one of the most in-demand artists of all time, and what it's like being in the public eye as a kid growing up in the late 80s and early 90s. We also talk about the early days of his radio career and how he dealt with the media scrutiny that came with being a child prodigy, and how it helped shape him into the man that he is today. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed getting to know him and his story, and that you enjoy listening to it. If you haven t done so already, please take a minute to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and share it with a friend who needs a good friend to listen to this episode. I appreciate it greatly! Timestamps: 1:00 - How I got my start in radio 4:30 - How Sturgll Simpson got his break 6:15 - How he became famous 8:00 - What it s like being a kid in the music business 9:40 - The early days 12:20 - How to deal with media scrutiny 13:30 How he got recognition 16:40 What does it feel like to be in the limelight? 17:15 18:00- What is it like being an artist? 19:20 21: How does he feel about being famous? 22: What s a kid? 23: How he s a poor guy? 24:30 What s he s good at music? 25:00 | What s it like to him? 26:30 | What does he do with it? 27:10 28:50 29:40 | Where does he think he s going to go from here? 30:50 | Where s he want to go next? 31:00 + 32:00 // 33:00 / 32:10 | What do you want to do with his music career? 35:30 // 35:00 & 35:15 | Who s he wants to do next ? 36:30 + 35:20 | How do you feel about the future? 37:10 + 36:40 + 39:00 Is it possible?
00:03:02.000Transitionally, it's been in the last couple years, three years, but I've been doing this my whole life to various levels of thanklessness.
00:03:11.000But yeah, a lot of years in honky-tonks and just dive bars where you were background noise.
00:03:16.000And now that I'm older, I think that's been the best part of it is I'm clear and focused enough and I have enough responsibilities in my life to where I'm not taking it for granted.
00:05:59.000Even that said, as long as it took to get here, and even the last three years, we toured our asses off, going in circles to kind of build it organically.
00:06:09.000I feel really proud about that, because no matter what happens up or down, I can feel like I've accomplished something with merit.
00:10:47.000Are you, like, when you were touring, like, all those three years, when you were going crazy and touring like a maniac, have you settled that down to more manageable sort of a schedule?
00:11:10.000So in that regard, it's kind of ideal, but the timing was a little bittersweet.
00:11:15.000My son was born about a month after the last record came out.
00:11:20.000So I was home for that, and then basically three or four days after he was born, I had to go to Europe for some shows, and then Press started rolling in, word of mouth, and record just started selling.
00:11:35.000And my wife is very supportive, and I wouldn't have moved to Nashville in the first place to do anything without her telling me, you can do this, you know what I mean?
00:11:47.000I'd probably still be working at the railroad.
00:11:49.000When it all kind of came about, you know, she basically said, you know, we didn't come here and like, you do everything up until this point to not be able to go and...
00:12:04.000I think missing out what was going on at home and carrying some sense of guilt maybe for that, because even though I'm out here and my dreams are coming true, it's providing for my family, but when we come home after five or six weeks and I've got a week at home before leaving again,
00:12:20.000I was seeing what I was missing in incremental stages, and I think it took a toll on me emotionally in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.
00:12:29.000So that's kind of where this record came from.
00:12:32.000I don't go on that kind of tour, but when I go away just for a few days, just for four or five days, it bumps me out.
00:12:40.000When you come back home, this rush of love.
00:12:55.000And when your kids run up to you and jump into your arms and you're carrying them and talking to them, it's very hard to describe for anybody that doesn't have any children or doesn't have close friends with children.
00:13:26.000Because, man, you used to bum me the fuck out when people who were fathers or mothers would treat you like you were doing something wrong because you didn't have kids.
00:13:36.000Or like there was something wrong with you if you didn't have...
00:15:14.000Because what I grew up with was just chaos.
00:15:16.000I grew up with people yelling at each other and hitting each other and, ah, fuck this!
00:15:22.000And you don't realize, I think, until you have a little baby that you're watching learn and develop, and you're sort of data crunching all this shit, all these events in this child's life, and you're experiencing all this with them.
00:15:34.000And the way you're experiencing with them is this intense bond of love, but also of guidance.
00:15:41.000So you have to guide this little person.
00:15:42.000And so while I'm doing that, and just little moments and events in my daughter's lives, little conversations that we have, That make me sort of process how they view the world and how they think about things.
00:15:54.000That has made me just so much more aware of where a lot of my own weird personality quirks have come from.
00:16:24.000And if you can open up lines of communication with them really young and get them constantly used to talking about feelings and about thoughts and about why do you get those feelings?
00:16:35.000You know, they'll get jealous of each other.
00:17:57.000My daughter was three and we were skiing and she was packing her stuff up and she didn't have her helmet or suitcase so she had her suitcase closed and then my wife goes, hey, you forgot your helmet.
00:18:19.000I had to bite my hand to keep from laughing.
00:18:22.000I mean, I try to encourage stuff that's funny as much as possible, but you can't encourage them swearing because they don't have the self-control to shut it off when they go to school.
00:18:34.000You don't want to be the parents that teach the kids that's swearing around the house.
00:19:29.000I think it comes from anxieties and stress-induced variables.
00:19:35.000I remember in the Navy, it's fuck this, fuck that, fuck every other word.
00:19:39.000When I worked at the railroads, I'm salty language out there, because you're under this...
00:19:43.000Highly efficient expectation all the time.
00:19:46.000And there's all these creative personalities and ideas bouncing off each other in these little confined spaces and everybody's just wound tighter than a banjo string.
00:19:53.000It can be used again in ways though, right?
00:19:55.000It's also used as like a pause sometimes.
00:20:03.000Well, you know, sometimes people don't know what they're going to say next, and they want to say, uh, but instead they replace it with fuck.
00:20:10.000Like, a fucking guy with his fucking...
00:20:41.000Like, people have that little weird roadblock, and they have a blind side, they didn't see it, a blind spot, and they just say like all the time.
00:22:44.000The memories of those things get weird.
00:22:46.000I realized, like I said, I've been playing music forever, but all this other stuff was very sudden transition.
00:22:52.000But being a naturally skeptical person and self-aware, you get in these situations, and I sort of realize there's a certain theatric to it all.
00:23:02.000And then once you get past the reality of that, and then you learn enough about it to know that you can sit and talk for three hours, literally.
00:23:12.000It's not a representation of what you talked about.
00:23:15.000You can talk about everything under the sun, and they might take one little sentence that had nothing to do with anything, and an editor decides that that should be the title of the article that is now written from some preconceived stance that you were unaware of during the conversation.
00:23:32.000The written word is especially problematic.
00:24:07.000But the way to do that is with a good entertainment.
00:24:10.000So it doesn't necessarily have to be an actual factual representation of who you are.
00:24:16.000Like if someone writes a story about you...
00:24:18.000Like, what's almost more important is this art of getting something salacious, this art of writing something, something that makes you say, oh, this guy is wild, or this guy is, you know, it has to be like this one thing, you know, Sturgill Simpson first fucked a man when he was 14,
00:25:39.000It's got to be hard to look at some fake outlaws with designer scratches in their jeans like they got attacked by a fucking leopard or some shit.
00:25:57.000You know, when they see these guys with a hat that they just got 15 minutes before they went on stage, someone handed it to them and placed it perfectly, and someone's doing their hair and checking to make sure everything's good, then they send them out there to be an outlaw.
00:26:11.000Sober, on Adderall, probably beta blockers.
00:29:15.000I'm just now getting to spend any time out here, but there's something about that world, just the couple of times I've gone and spent time in that place.
00:29:24.000It's a totally different headspace than anything I'm used to or accustomed to, and you can see there's definitely a sense of community.
00:30:35.000I missed the festivities, but from what I understand, Martin Lawrence was in the audience, and him and Holtzman were going back and forth, and Holtzman went over to the table to point out that it was actually Martin Lawrence that he was being heckled by.
00:30:51.000Martin's bodyguard gets up, punches him in the head, knocks him out.
00:31:11.000I'm sure many people got murdered with one of those fucking things.
00:31:14.000Well, Holtzman was talking about Charlie's Angels and how angry he was that anybody really fucking believes a woman could kick all those men's asses.
00:31:24.000I take her and he grabs the ashtray and I'll fucking crush her and he throws the ashtray at the table and shatters his fucking ashtray.
00:33:01.000I don't know, I was just enamored after the fact, and then looking back on what I'd just seen, how when he's in the moment of playing the frustrated, you know, like, this is such, you know, like, what's the fucking, what's the point?
00:33:47.000In this day and age, look, what we all should try to do, and I know you agree, is try to be as harmonious as you can in your life, in your personal life, in your friendships, harmonious as you can.
00:33:59.000The problem today is that in this day and age, we have access to all the stories.
00:37:00.000And this is land owned by the people of the United States.
00:37:03.000And there's been a lot of really shady politicians that have looked at our debt, because the United States has massive debt, and they've said, look, this is one way we can get rid of this debt.
00:37:15.000I think Paul Ryan, that guy that's one of the presidential guys, I think he bowed out of the presidential election, but he was one of the guys that was...
00:39:11.000You should check it out if you're ever out there.
00:39:13.000Imagine those days, man, when they only, you know, we have a pretty clear view.
00:39:20.000From all the data we've taken in, all the photographs and video and all the people's accounts, we have a clear view of what this country's like.
00:41:09.000If there is a grizzly sighting, you get there and there's like 20 carloads of people standing out on the street with their cameras out and a ranger standing there saying...
00:41:37.000I think I'd rather get eaten by a great white shark than taken out by a cougar, man, because it's going to play with you like a ball of yarn.
00:41:42.000Back it up, Jamie, because before that, you actually see them duking it out before the mountain lion wins.
00:43:00.000And my buddy, he jumps up on a rock, and he's just laughing at me like a dumbass, because I'm standing there at this point, and this thing's 15 feet in front of me.
00:45:00.000See, a rifle thing is it's all just about understanding how to use a scope and understanding trigger discipline.
00:45:07.000You've got to understand how to squeeze a trigger and not pull it.
00:45:11.000But archery involves a lot of weird hand-eye coordination and balance.
00:45:16.000There's so many different factors going on.
00:45:18.000There's like a little sight that you have, and you have to balance that sight out where the bubble is in the center, you know, the level bubble.
00:45:25.000You got to make sure you're not torquing your bow left or right.
00:45:28.000You got to make sure that the peep sight, the little string hole that you're looking through, lines up and eclipses perfectly your housing.
00:45:37.000You have to make sure that your hand is completely steady.
00:45:40.000You have to make sure you don't flinch at all when you release the arrow.
00:46:40.000There's a real possibility that if you hit a bear, although I know people that have hit a moose, my friend Ranella got run over by a moose.
00:46:49.000He shot it with a rifle and went to move in for the final shot and the thing was in much better shape than he thought it was.
00:46:56.000And it got up and charged him and knocked him over.
00:47:00.000Yeah, and I've seen another guy who shot a moose with a bow, and the moose charged him.
00:47:06.000But most of the time, they want to get the fuck away from you.
00:48:27.000And he said, and once they had killed two, this alpha hung around the edge of this ridge and looked down at them and just decided enough was enough and just went ghost.
00:48:37.000And they all disappeared the entire pack.
00:49:09.000Everybody has this idea, and I talk about this way too much, so I'll stop, but everybody has this idea of predators, that they're like some character in a movie that knows the script.
00:49:56.000You know, like you said, unless you live there, it's hard to have an opinion one way or another, I guess.
00:50:00.000Well, everybody that has an opinion, it's all, I mean, people that have unrealistic opinions about wolves, it's all coming from a beautiful place.
00:53:07.000I was saying earlier, I forgot what I was talking about for a second, but a friend of mine is a guide in Colorado, and they found these mountain lion tracks, like all these mountain lion tracks, and then elk tracks, and then the mountain lion tracks and the elk tracks together, and then there's a space of like several hundred yards where there was just elk tracks.
00:53:29.000And so they followed that elk track and they found a mountain lion on top of the elk killing it.
00:53:35.000This fucking giant elk, like a thousand pound elk.
00:58:55.000And these people are filming this from their fucking car, following them behind them on the road.
00:59:01.000And the martin just finally, the rabbit starts trying to veer off the road, and he gets into the sick shit, and the martin closes the distance.
01:00:38.000The glass windshield cut his face all up so now he's got all this shit down in the blood and in his face.
01:00:44.000So they bring this guy and so he came in and Where he went through the windshield and laid down in this creek bed after he hit the deer and laid there.
01:00:54.000And while he was laying in the damn creek bed, raccoons came and snacked on his fucking face.
01:02:49.000You get out of it, and he got out of it.
01:02:51.000When he got out of it, it was just like this big breath, like...
01:02:55.000Whoa, what the fuck did I just experience?
01:02:57.000But now, the knowledge that not only was that a real thing that he was experiencing on a daily basis, all that insane violence, all the gunshots, all the craziness, he knows that even if it's not like that anymore, like even if people, the cocaine days are kind of over,
01:03:14.000Miami's much more calm, the violence is not as bad, he knows that that is what people are capable of within his lifetime.
01:03:20.000I'm sure you still see that shit all the time.
01:03:22.000I bet you do, but I think there was a level of it during the 80s in Miami.
01:03:27.000Do you know who Billy Corbin is, the documentary filmmaker?
01:03:32.000He's got these two great documentaries called Cocaine Cowboys and Cocaine Cowboys 2. And Billy, he's been on the podcast before talking about it, but he did a great job of showing how insane that time was.
01:03:49.000One of the things that he talked about was how one year, the graduating class of the police academy, every single one of them within a year was either dead or in jail.
01:04:01.000They'd been murdered or they were in jail for corruption.
01:04:04.000Like the whole police department was just massively corrupt.
01:04:16.000Yeah, who's the, what's one of the guy's names from the documentary, the white dude with the mustache that was kind of like a ringleader of it all.
01:04:24.000I think he went to prison and he's out now.
01:04:36.000That lady, I think she's still alive, man.
01:04:39.000She might have died recently, but I think she was alive and free in Columbia.
01:04:44.000Yeah, she's living in South America for a long time in hiding.
01:04:46.000Yeah, she got out of jail in America, and if her hitman who's in jail, who's in the documentary, is being honest about how many people she killed, like, whoa, whoa, Jack...
01:04:58.000She died in 2012. So when the second movie was made, they focused on her and her being released.
01:06:17.000Different layers of society you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and having to hold any type of firm belief in humanity or civilization.
01:07:20.000You know, there's a certain amount of stress that I think comes with any kind of job where you're looking at death a lot.
01:07:26.000I mean, how much PTSD does a doctor have?
01:07:29.000Like, emergency room doctors, how much do they just get accustomed to it?
01:07:34.000I think it takes a very special type of personality.
01:07:36.000You know what I think it also does, man?
01:07:38.000I think it's really a lot like what we were talking about when you're taking in all these stories in the world, because you can manage your own life, but if you're paying attention to the news, you're going to get inundated with stories by the seven billion people, and it's just too much.
01:07:54.000There's just too much data coming at you, and too much of it is negative.
01:07:57.000I think that's probably the same way with an emergency room doctor.
01:08:00.000It's okay if you see somebody get hurt once in your life, a few times in your life, or maybe even...
01:10:14.000See, that's the beautiful thing about Southern California is you could live in San Diego, like La Jolla, which is beautiful and quiet and fucking picturesque.
01:13:06.000So for him to be so normal and also be a musician and not be some weirdo who fucking desperately craves attention or needs validation, he's a genuine artist and very content.
01:13:22.000If anything, I've seen him use his position to only try to help other people instead of himself.
01:13:49.000It's the weird businessman trying to...
01:13:52.000I mean, everyone out there, everyone, I think, that's trying...
01:13:56.000I mean, everyone that's not some sort of a perfect person is trying to do better with their life.
01:14:01.000You know, you're trying to improve on whatever you're doing, whether it's your job or, you know, your business or whatever your hobby is or your obsession.
01:15:37.000But it's almost like you're so tied to this thing and in it that by the time it's finished, you just don't even want to think about it anymore.
01:15:47.000It gets like, all right, well, that's done.
01:16:10.000You're living that life experience out in real time.
01:16:14.000So this has all been really educational and new for me in terms of figuring out how to navigate that in as artistic a way as possible without compromising anything, I guess.
01:16:28.000I think we all learn from each other in that way.
01:16:48.000I mean, you definitely notice traits in other people that you wish you had more of or that you could maybe adhere to, and it's motivating.
01:16:57.000But like you said, it's just about trying to be a better person and use whatever outlet this is in order to hopefully make other people feel good, too.
01:17:08.000Or to deal with things that maybe they don't know how to express, which for me, I think, is the most important part of making music.
01:17:15.000That's what it's always given me in the past, before I was a performer, and I just loved it from a sheer listener's position.
01:17:21.000You know, it offers us a lot of comfort and...
01:17:26.000People tell you this after the shows, that you're making an impact on their life.
01:17:31.000My buddy Giordo said that his friend, her grandmother's laying in her hospital bed, and the last thing she heard, she played her one of my songs.
01:17:49.000And it's easy to get hung up on Mechanics or expectations or pressures or the industry and all that but like it feels like if you just kind of step back and hit pause it's easy to remember that anybody doing this job is very lucky to be able to do this job and for me like I don't think I think in a lot of ways modern media and industry is sort of not ruined music but it's Made it really hard for people to focus
01:18:35.000Making a competition out of something that's supposed to make everybody feel included.
01:18:39.000Well, it's definitely contrary to what seems to be your primary focus, which is making the best music for your expression.
01:18:47.000Expressing yourself in the best way you can and making something that's going to impact people in a way where your thoughts are going to get across.
01:20:08.000I go underwater and swim and they try to stand on me.
01:20:12.000It's hard to hold your breath for as long as it takes for a five-year-old to stand on your back as you're floating.
01:20:18.000But I mean, other things as well, like as far as not just family and loved ones and friends, which are definitely important, but I also think that other disciplines are important.
01:20:29.000Other focuses, other things you're equally interested in, you know, because they alleviate some of the pressure of what it is to be singularly focused on one thing.
01:22:19.000I was in Colorado, and when you get high in Colorado, when you're at 8,000 feet, or Utah actually, 8,000 feet, It just hits you in some crazy...
01:22:28.000You feel like you're on a spaceship on top of the world.
01:22:32.000I was feeling like I was connected to the world in some really weird way.
01:23:55.000Yeah, well, you know, all of my favorite records, like in my top four or five records, are all concept records.
01:24:02.000And a lot of them are in Song Cycle, which is what they call it, like, you know, Dark Side of the Moon, where it's just one continuous flow.
01:24:43.000That's what he called his commercial album because Astral Weeks, although it's now considered probably one of the greatest records ever recorded, it didn't sell very well because it was too artsy for a lot of people.
01:24:53.000So then he turned around and intentionally made a more commercially accessible album, which was Moondance and, of course, sold a gazillion copies.
01:25:01.000Whenever I think about Marvin Gaye, I think about this chick that I used to date.
01:25:04.000Because when Marvin Gaye got shot and killed by his dad...
01:27:18.000As a grown-ass man and while he's Marvin fucking gay.
01:27:21.000And then they think a lot of people say that's where the source of all the trauma and pain, him going back to that at that stage in his life is the worst thing that could have happened.
01:27:31.000Apparently he had an argument and he...
01:27:34.000I told his dad, like, if he ever touched his mom again, he'd kill him.
01:27:38.000And his dad said, well, if you ever lay a hand on me, I'll kill you.
01:27:41.000And some people speculate that Marvin was just so done with all of it, the fame and everything that he knew by punching his father, it would get him...
01:27:57.000And then I think he laid there for about 20 minutes bleeding.
01:28:01.000And then once the ambulance showed up, the paramedics couldn't come in the house as long as the dad was still in there with the gun.
01:28:07.000So I think his sister-in-law or brother or somebody had come in and like find the gun that his father had hidden because he wasn't talking.
01:30:22.000I think when Let's Get It On was blowing up, he was living in a cabin up on top of Topanga Canyon with his girlfriend and just hiding from the world doing blow.
01:34:39.000Like, once there was too many different distribution methods?
01:34:42.000It seems like that's what it is, right?
01:34:44.000Like, if you only have, like, a couple of different newspapers and a couple of different television shows, it can all be kind of controlled.
01:35:18.000I used to obsess about that shit and I wanted to know, you know, like, man, but now at this stage in my life, I mean, I just go ahead and assume that it's all fucking crooked.
01:35:31.000It is definitely all crooked, but you know what I think, man?
01:35:34.000I don't even think, I mean, I think everybody's got to pay attention to it, obviously.
01:35:38.000I mean, we're all paying attention to it, but...
01:35:41.000I don't think you could do it anymore.
01:35:42.000I think these leaks are going to come more and more frequently, and they're going to be more and more accessible and more and more easy to get.
01:35:49.000I just don't think you're going to be able to fuck people like that anymore.
01:36:09.000You're not supposed to be in control of Jamie.
01:36:11.000Jamie's not supposed to be in control of me.
01:36:12.000And the government's not supposed to be in control of you.
01:36:14.000There's supposed to be some operating principles that we all commune under.
01:36:18.000And our community should be established in a way that benefits us, not the big banks, not the politicians, not fucking Hillary Clinton giving $250,000 speeches to a bunch of Wall Street people.
01:36:52.000Once President Trump gets in office...
01:36:54.000Everyone's gonna realize what a fucking goddamn joke of a system we've put in place, and there'll be some real talk about having some kind of a radical reform.
01:37:17.000Well, there's just too many people that you don't know that have any say whatsoever on how you live your life.
01:37:24.000The idea that the Senate or that Congress or that the Supreme Court or any of these people could sit down and decide what you can and can't do with your body, what substances you can or can't put into them, what shouldn't and shouldn't be illegal.
01:39:05.000We knew that we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
01:41:07.000They were probably lit out of their fucking mind.
01:41:11.000And you want to talk about PTSD? Do you imagine the demons inside the brain of Dick Cheney?
01:41:18.000Just knowing what he knows, could you imagine?
01:41:23.000I mean, if that guy has an ounce of self-realization, an ounce of objectivity, of introspective thought, where he really thinks about it, did I do the right thing?
01:41:33.000Do you think that weapons of mass destruction, do you think that was cool?
01:41:54.000Former Vice President Dick Cheney seeks daily affirmation.
01:41:58.000Well, he's a biblical character in that right after he had done all these things, right, he clearly pulled the strings to get us into Iraq and there's clearly financial motives.
01:42:11.000I mean, he was the goddamn CEO of the company that got no bid, billion dollar contracts to rebuild.
01:43:10.000I was just reading about the actual event and how it happened and he shot him in the face and they blamed the guy, Whittington is his name, for walking in front of him.
01:44:18.000I used to do this bit about Dick Cheney where he had one extra Secret Service agent.
01:44:22.000Like, every other guy had five, but he had six.
01:44:25.000And this one, they put him on this all-vegetarian diet, and they had the dude jogging every day.
01:44:30.000He's like, why the fuck do I have to jog?
01:44:31.000And there was always a guy behind them with a giant cooler filled with ice.
01:44:35.000And the moment Dick Cheney has a heart attack, they were going to take that dude out, cut his chest open, shove his heart inside of Dick Cheney.
01:45:02.000Around the time that I was in the Navy, they re-implemented this anthrax vaccination policy.
01:45:09.000I think they'd done it in the first Gulf War, too, and a lot of people think it's directly what's responsible for the Gulf War syndrome and all those guys dealing with chronic muscle spasms and fatigue.
01:45:31.000They recalled it, I can't remember, 98 or 99, but the Times and all these people had already kind of dug in and figured out that there was only one lab in the entire world authorized and regulated to manufacture the vaccine.
01:45:44.000I think their lab was Bioport up in Michigan.
01:46:31.000I remember boot camp, you go down this cattle line, and there's like six people, and you just keep going through, and you go through, and it's like, all these shots, guns.
01:46:42.000I have no idea to this day what a lot of it even was, man.
01:47:38.000It's going to mutate as soon as it hits the air.
01:47:41.000I guess the argument or the reasoning was that it might make you live 30 or 40 extra seconds longer so you can hit the button and launch some more missiles at them.
01:47:49.000I don't know what the reasoning behind it was.
01:48:58.000And they use that as a shell, and it just goes through everything.
01:49:04.000I mean, you're harnessing the power of the sun to blow a hole through a jeep, and then these poor fuckers, you know, they stumble upon this jeep, and nobody had told them shit.
01:49:14.000And they're, hey man, let's take this license plate home.
01:49:18.000You shouldn't even be anywhere near that.
01:49:20.000You shouldn't even be a mile away from that fucking Jeep.
01:49:23.000Meanwhile, they're hanging around that goddamn thing.
01:49:27.000My grandfather was in the South Pacific during World War II, and even as an older man, he must have gotten something in his blood over there, because it would be the middle of July, and he'd be sitting in the house with long johns and corduroy pants and a flannel shirt on talking about,
01:50:27.000We were talking about all sorts of different moisture-borne bacterial diseases that people get from dirty water and stuff that you just get from bugs and you get from the air.
01:50:47.000I mean, if you think about the jungle, right?
01:50:49.000If you go there and you see all that vegetation, right?
01:50:51.000Everywhere around you is just life and crickets and bugs and snakes and spiders and cats and fucking sloths and eagles and monkeys and shit.
01:56:09.000Encounters with wild animals, like really dangerous situations, almost starving to death, almost freezing to death, having to make fire on your own, and going there with a very limited amount of things to keep.
01:56:20.000Like he would go there with like a pocket knife, he would allow himself some string that he could go fishing with, go.
01:56:24.000And he would stay for seven days and have a drop-off point.
01:56:27.000Where they would drop him off, then a pickup point.
01:56:29.000And if he didn't go to the pickup point, then they'd have to go looking for him.
01:58:06.000And then you realize, like, of course they're gonna do that.
01:58:08.000Like, if they can shoot that rhino and make $50,000 from its magic horn, you know, or whatever the fuck they make, they probably make 50 bucks, you know?
01:58:16.000But if they can make that, and it's between them starving and not starving, like, that's literally what you're looking at.
02:02:19.000And then also on top of that thing being real, they also know that there was those little hobbit people in the island of Flores.
02:02:26.000And the theory about that thing is that it's either the most recent one, they think that it might have been as recently as 50,000 years ago, but I think they thought it was like 14,000 years ago until recently.
02:07:16.000I mean, anytime you see patterns, like even like a nautilus shell, you see these patterns, these repeating patterns that the animals have, like, you know, okay, well, why is there some sort of a geometric pattern into this animal's design?
02:07:36.000The Fibonacci sequence manifests itself in, like, sunflowers.
02:07:40.000Like, they say, like, if you look at a pine cone, the Fibonacci sequence is in a pine cone.
02:07:45.000It's a sequence of numbers, like zero, and then there's one, and then there's two, and one plus two, and then there's three, and three plus two is five, and then five plus three is eight, and it keeps going on and on and on, and it's this exponential equation.
02:08:03.000And when you're adding all those things up, that same sequence can be found in the shape of people's faces and honeycombs and a bunch of different designs, like pinecones.
02:08:14.000There you see, Jamie's got some stuff they pull up with it.
02:13:31.000Yeah, something's happening to you when you listen to a jam that's done correctly.
02:13:35.000Oh, I mean, you hate to think about it.
02:13:37.000I think those guys actually experimented with frequencies and a lot of those deep down pitch tunings and time signatures are very, very, very Eastern and melodian time signatures that they're alternating in the off-down beat.
02:15:16.000Goddammit, I don't have it on this one.
02:15:17.000Well, I was going to say that you think it's meant, I mean, other than the people who are naturally from those areas where these things grow out of the ground and occur and they use them to connect with, I don't know, religious level, their spirit animals and things they believe in.
02:15:31.000But, you know, like the tourists going down there and drinking that shit.
02:15:39.000You're going to get legit ones, and then you're going to get people that realize there's a lot of money and tourists coming out here and taking this wacky shit, and so they figure out how to make it.
02:15:49.000So you're gonna get people that are taking advantage of people, you're gonna get people that are, you know, doing all sorts of negative shit, and then you're gonna get legit shaman, people that are legitimately involved in the spiritual quest of attaining enlightenment and reaching a neighboring dimension.
02:16:09.000Like, they really believe that they're reaching a neighboring dimension.
02:16:13.000That they're tapping into something that's around us all the time, but that we don't have access to in a normal state of consciousness.
02:16:20.000And it's the well of souls that you're tapping into.
02:16:24.000I mean, it's real easy to dismiss, especially for someone who's never experienced it.
02:16:29.000It's real easy to dismiss and say it's all in your imagination.
02:16:32.000But for someone who has experienced it, it's very difficult to accept.
02:16:36.000And it's very difficult for you to say that you know for sure that it's all your imagination if you haven't experienced it.
02:16:43.000I appreciate, from an intelligence standpoint, someone's perspective on it that hasn't experienced it.
02:16:52.000But the reality is, until you know what you're talking about, until you've actually gone into that thing and know how titanically alien it is, You're really just saying things.
02:17:04.000You're just making noises with your mouth.
02:17:19.000More real than what we normally interpret as reality.
02:17:23.000That's the most fucked up part about it is it's so much crisper and more vibrant and brighter and then reality itself seems muted in some odd way.
02:17:32.000It's almost like we're like having sex with a condom on, you know, and a big thick fucking trash bag condom.
02:17:40.000And when you pass through to whatever the fuck this other dimension is, That filter, the frosted window is removed, and you could see it all.
02:17:49.000The fog's gone, the clouds are gone, and you just, boom, get shot through a cannon to the middle of reality.
02:17:57.000And that middle of reality is some strange geometric living environment where there's no three-dimensional objects that aren't touching each other.
02:18:08.000Everything is connected to everything else.
02:18:25.000And you feel all together, like for the first time ever.
02:18:28.000You don't feel like you're sitting in Canoga Park in a chair with a roof over your head and above that roof is the sky and above the sky is the moon.
02:18:51.000So, I mean, it might all be in your imagination.
02:18:54.000But my take on it has always been, even if it is...
02:18:57.000Even if you're not going to a well of souls and experiencing God and experiencing purity and wisdom, it's the same exact experience as if you were.
02:19:06.000So even if it is in your imagination, your imagination has...
02:20:31.000You know, those TV things, as they go, it's always a strange...
02:20:36.000Dynamic, you know, even for performers, because you get there and you do it, and you wait, and you do it again for TV, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait.
02:20:43.000But of all of the ones that we played, I think that one, and maybe it's just because it's in California, but there's a far more mellow, laid-back vibe.
02:20:53.000A lot of the New York ones, it's still fun, but they're older, more tight buildings, and the Union crews are on a, you know, they're running it crack tight.