In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, I chat with country music singer-songwriter Duncan Trussell about his new album "Family Ties" and how he got his start in the music industry. We also talk about growing up in the small town of Morgantown, VA, and what it's like to grow up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and how it's hard to get a job in a city where there's no jobs, and no other jobs. We talk about how to deal with the lack of jobs in your hometown, and why it's a good thing you don't have to live in a big city like New York or Los Angeles, or even Nashville, to have a job. And we talk about crime in his hometown of Asheville, NC, which is in the midst of a massive economic downturn. Joe also talks about how he and his bandmates are doing their best to make a living in the rural communities of their hometowns, and the problems they face in the wake of the opioid crisis. Check it out! -Joe Rogan Podcast by day, by night, all day. -The Joe Rogans Experience by Night, by Night - by Day, All Day. All Day, all Day, By Night. Enjoy! -J.R. Podcast by Day - By Night - All Day by Night - By Day - All Night, All Night by Night! by Day By Night, By Day, Music: Family Ties by Duncan Trussell (featuring: ( ) by Duncan ( ) - Family Tied by Duncan's Song: "A Little Emo by Dan ( ) Music: ( ) by Duncan McElroy ( ) . . . , & Other Things ( ) By Night ( ) & Other People's Music: . . by , , Music: "No More Than This and Other Things by Jeff Perla ( ) ( ) and , "No Other Place by Mr. ( ) , . I Love You Podcast, by , ( ) I'll See You Soon ( ), , and podcast, I'll Talk About It ( ) Podcast by Night podcast, I'll Tell You About It Podcast, I'm Working With You Podcast by John Rocha ( ) And , &
00:00:54.000I was at Apple Studios in Nashville doing this live session thing with him when he messaged me on Twitter and asked me to be on his podcast.
00:02:59.000That's the stronghold there in the mountains.
00:03:00.000Duncan grew up there and he said when he was growing up there, there were so many cows that had magic mushrooms in their shit that the farmers started putting some sort of anti-fungal thing in the cow's food so that it would repel the fungus from the cow shit.
00:03:59.000If you have a small population of humans and they all live together, if the industry dries up, if businesses shut down, if things go under, everyone's fucked.
00:04:16.000And it's, you know, it has its ups and downs, and right now it's definitely a bit of a down.
00:04:21.000We had a big pharmaceutical company that was based out of West Virginia called Mylan.
00:04:27.000And the founder passed away a little over a decade ago.
00:04:32.000So then when that happens, you know, it goes into folks that didn't build it themselves and And they ended up selling to an Israeli company.
00:04:40.000And once that happened, they shut down this headquarters in Morgantown, where it had always been.
00:04:45.000I think that was 1,200 jobs in a town of 26,000 people in the city limits.
00:04:52.000So imagine how many people that affects.
00:04:55.000And the big circle, then COVID, which that happened during COVID, so then you also had COVID. So, you know, our main street, it's called High Street, is, you know, it's like one-third closed down, and it used to be all open.
00:06:59.000We play there once a year, and our shows are great, and the people are great, but man, I see all the towns across America, and that one's different.
00:08:03.000Just take tap water and fuel your car and, you know, use it as a candle.
00:08:08.000Yeah, you can never take, you know, when somebody's business is at stake, you gotta get some different points of view on those types of things.
00:08:18.000Yeah, it's very difficult to know what the fuck is actually going on, but overall, it seems like fracking does a lot of fucked up shit.
00:08:24.000It says they've got their lead levels below the federal threshold for like the sixth or seventh year in a row.
00:08:40.000Think about how much money they spent on Ukraine.
00:08:42.000How much would it cost to provide every family in Flint with a filtration system, like a real hardcore filtration system that provides them with absolutely clean water?
00:08:55.000I guarantee you it wouldn't be a hundred and fucking seventy billion dollars or whatever we've sent over to Ukraine.
00:10:32.000When you're buying it for $500, at least the way it was when I read it, you're making a commitment to get it up to code within seven days or something like that.
00:10:39.000You have a very limited amount of time.
00:10:42.000You don't know if you have to, but you're spending $60,000 on top of that to get it up to code.
00:12:18.000You know, if somebody wanted to rebuild it...
00:12:20.000Yeah, if you got a good idea and want some manufacturing space, that'd be a good spot to go.
00:12:24.000Back in the day, during the car boom, like Canton, Ohio, Detroit, Toledo, Flint, it was a lot of folks from the mountains that were moving up there and getting those jobs.
00:12:38.000And I think that was the Hillbilly Highway is where that term comes from.
00:12:44.000And my grandparents were one of those.
00:13:56.000When I was a kid, not a kid, when I was 20, well, first of all, when I first started doing stand-up comedy, I would use one of these things, like a legal pad, and I would get a phone call, You know, and they'd go, hey, we got a gig for you.
00:14:14.000And you're like, okay, you're going to take the 405 to this, to that, to the nine, to the fucking, you're going to take a ride on this road, go two miles down the highway, you're going to find a building.
00:14:25.000So I used to have like a folder where I had the directions to all these different road gigs that were written down.
00:14:33.000That's how I got around and then when I came to California I got a Thomas guide I was like wow I'm in the fucking future You know I got a whole book of maps and everybody had a Thomas guide and you would I remember first time Bill Burr visited my house He took he had a Thomas guide he figured out to get to my house with the Thomas guide I gave him the address and he showed up with a fucking map book on his front seat and Unreal.
00:15:00.000Now, you know, when I was a little kid and on our family vacations, my brother, my older brother would be like, he would read the map and like give the directions to usually my dad was driving.
00:15:13.000But yeah, by the time I started like working, you know, thank God for that GPS. I can't imagine doing that, like trying to find my way because hell, I mean...
00:15:23.000First time I had GPS, it was like 98, something like that.
00:15:30.00098 or 99. It was like a CD-ROM that you stuck in the CD player.
00:15:59.000I had a little thing that sat on the roof that was like the GPS thing that would read the sky, and then it would somehow or another communicate with this map that was on my screen.
00:16:41.000Yeah, dealing with a lot of clowny shit.
00:16:43.000A lot of clowny shit, a lot of fucking irresponsible, impulsive people, a lot of substances, a lot of chaos, a lot of fun, a lot of rebels.
00:16:54.000You know, you don't pursue that dream if you've got, you know, a law degree and, you know, a future with the firm and, you know, everything's lined up and you got your 401k.
00:17:07.000No, it's like, you gotta be a wild person.
00:22:35.000Damn, I'm one of the least funny people you ever meet.
00:22:38.000So seeing folks that can play an arena just because of your jokes and shit, and your ability to tell a story and the timing and the punchline, that's something I can never do.
00:25:40.000Yeah, it was just going to be just another, like, just something to get into and, you know, a productive hobby.
00:25:48.000You know, I was just kind of looking for some more things because since I gave up, you know, trying to play football, it just wasn't going to happen.
00:25:56.000You know, all that time I used to spend working out and trying to make that happen became free time because, you know, So I just had to try to fill that time up with something because I just didn't want to sit around and bullshit with my friends all the time.
00:26:25.000So I was on the Promise Scholarship at West Virginia, and that was this thing for in-state kids.
00:26:33.000If you had good grades, you'd go to school for free at an in-state university.
00:26:39.000So I was at WVU going to school for free because of my grades.
00:26:43.000And they had a study abroad program and my junior year I was like I've never been overseas I was like that would be I'd like to experience that so I went in to the counselor's office and they kind of laid out some different options and I got a finance degree at WVU and there are four places I could go there's Hartfordshire England Bamberg Germany Tartu Estonia and Hong Kong So they kind of like were telling me all about the different
00:27:14.000I ended up landing on Tartu, Estonia as the place to go to.
00:27:18.000So I went over there and had brought my guitar and I just continued practicing a little bit in the evenings just for fun, but I had six flatmates.
00:27:28.000So there was no way that I could go anywhere and not be heard by them, you know, in our place.
00:27:34.000So And I was a little uncomfortable with that because I wasn't used to people listening to me at all or singing in front of anybody.
00:27:41.000But I didn't want to not play the guitar for half a year.
00:29:22.000And it had these two French doors and they had the sound all hooked up and a couple of my American buddies that were over there with me came with me and they got me set up and then it ended up being a lingerie fashion show.
00:33:15.000Yeah, sit with the notebook and that voice memo.
00:33:18.000And then when I'm out and about, though, that notes and voice memo app, I have them separate on my phone.
00:33:24.000And I'll jot down ideas, hum melodies into it.
00:33:27.000And I try to stay pretty consistent with it and show up every day and put some thought into it in front of the notebook to get my stuff.
00:33:37.000And so, do you wait for an inspiration to come to you, or do you sit down?
00:33:42.000No, I'll sit down even if I got nothing, just because if I do that, then I'll find myself maybe going a whole month without.
00:33:52.000Years ago, I listened to Jason Isbell, was given kind of...
00:33:55.000Some advice on it and he said you know treat it treat it like a job like consistent Yeah, show up to the notebook consistently show up every day even when you're not inspired and that'll kind of like Making your own luck so to speak.
00:34:10.000Have you ever read Steven Pressfield's the war of art?
00:34:30.000I don't remember who recommended it to me originally.
00:34:33.000I probably mentioned it on the podcast and I forgot who it was.
00:34:36.000But it's one of the best books in terms of like a practical guide to creativity because you really genuinely have to treat it like you like he considers it the muse like there is a muse and you contact this muse and if you do it deliberately and you do it with respect and you do it Every day those ideas will come mm-hmm and they do if they really do come like it's a muse like I think there's a reason why I Yeah,
00:35:06.000if you don't, and for me, if I don't show up to the notebook and put my time in and come up with a bunch of junk, I don't think I would have as many of the days where a beautiful line or a melody would just pop into my head.
00:35:21.000It's like you're just kind of laying, you're like paving the way for more of those sparks.
00:36:13.000You know, the muse, you address the muse, the muse gives you these ideas, you create these things and you exhibit them.
00:36:19.000Yeah, we were driving down from Dallas this morning listening to Willie Nelson's autobiography, and he was talking about almost being like a mouthpiece for the gods.
00:36:34.000He was saying that all the songs—I'm paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines like, It was an interesting idea.
00:37:02.000It's a good way to look at it if you just think that there's an endless well of inspiration and creativity that's inside you.
00:37:11.000That God gave you this thing and you just gotta just keep working and get it out of you.
00:37:19.000Yeah, and that train of thought helps you when you're in a rut, too.
00:37:23.000If you tell yourself, this is what I'm put here to do, this is what I'm meant to do, so I'm going to do it.
00:37:28.000And, you know, I found myself in 2022, that was me.
00:37:34.000I was in a rut because just a lot of circumstances in my life and in my work life had new things in it, new pressure.
00:37:45.000That I was having a hard time writing because before I'd just been so free and didn't have people depending on me and all kinds of expectations.
00:37:54.000And just being reminded by my father-in-law about, you know, this is what you're put on this earth to do.
00:38:04.000Don't worry about all the other stuff you can't control.
00:38:07.000There's a lot of that with creative people.
00:38:10.000There's this sort of wrestling match in your mind about anxieties, what you desire, what you hope to happen, where is it going, what's the future,
00:38:25.000how's it all going to unfold, do I run dry, do I have any more songs left inside of me?
00:38:58.000So their livelihoods were dependent upon it.
00:39:02.000And it took me a lot of work to shake all that off and get back to that clean slate of mind of just writing because I love doing it and that's what I'm put here to do.
00:39:19.000Yeah, that if you can have like a mindset that you could call upon, like an understanding, a calling that's in your mind that you know, like no matter how much confusion there is, no matter how much doubt, things go sideways,
00:39:34.000you're not real sure, just stay on the path.
00:39:47.000Yeah, and once you've gone through something like that, it makes you a lot better on the other end because when you see it again, you're like, oh, I know what this is.
00:39:53.000I'm just going to keep working right through it and we'll be fine.
00:41:41.000Boy, that's one of the things that is positive and negative about things like COVID. You know, like some major upheaval of everything, where the whole world just gets thrown sideways.
00:41:56.000The negative, I mean, there's so many negatives, right?
00:41:59.000Loss of life, loss of businesses, everybody fucking at each other's throats.
00:42:03.000But on the other side of it, on the other end of it, you're like, oh, now I kind of understand people a little bit better.
00:42:09.000Now I understand why character and discipline is so important in friends and people that you love, people that can hang in there and deal with things versus people that cannot adapt and just fall apart and then look for someone to rescue them.
00:42:27.000And these things, you only learn them.
00:42:35.000Yeah, if you would have asked me in 2019, how was I going to get through and react to what ended up happening there in 2020, you know, I would have been bullshitting you if I pretended like I knew, you know.
00:43:50.000What was so rare about that video is it's just this stable camera on them where you're watching somebody Like, trying to keep it together and keeping it together.
00:46:07.000But that part of the world is a wild part of the world.
00:46:12.000I was just in the British Virgin Islands, and one of the people that I was with was this lady who was from South Africa, and she was explaining to us what it's like there.
00:46:21.000She's like, you know, my generation, it wasn't that bad, but now it's pretty bad.
00:47:24.000Like in America, well shit, in the world, you're going to have violence.
00:47:30.000Especially, it seems like post-COVID, everything just got kind of, like norms sort of dissolved.
00:47:38.000Reality sort of shifted into this new strange place where things get, there are more heightened tensions and things are more bizarre, I think, than ever before.
00:47:48.000And I think you just get accustomed to that.
00:47:50.000And if you live in South Africa, I guess you just get accustomed to life in that vibe.
00:48:47.000I mean, that's one of the cruelest things about Colorado, when Colorado changed over and became legal, and marijuana was legal and Colorado was the first state.
00:48:56.000There's dudes in penitentiaries that could look out their fucking window and see a weed store.
00:49:07.000A parole board granted Pistorius' petition in November on the grounds that he had served half of his 13-year sentence for murder in Steenkamp, making him eligible according to South African law.
00:49:21.000If all you have to do is 13 years for killing people, boy, there's a lot of people that are out there like, I think I'll kill that dude now.
00:49:29.000I'll do 13 years and get him off the fucking planet.
00:49:31.000There's a lot of people, like, and him out there wandering around.
00:49:35.000How many people out there are like, that's your daughter?
00:49:38.000That guy killed your daughter and he only did nine years?
00:52:37.000But you're gonna have people that are just addicted to drugs, and they're gonna overdose because of availability.
00:52:42.000And you're gonna have also people that try drugs that wouldn't have tried them because they're illegal, and they wouldn't know where to buy them.
00:53:06.000There's a bunch of different things that could be set up to mitigate that.
00:53:09.000And I think that's the better direction for society, better than propping up cartels.
00:53:14.000We've got this fucking thing that's happening right across our border where there's immense organizations that have insane amounts of money because they've been selling drugs that are illegal in America.
00:53:47.000He's like, you can't approach them, can't go anywhere near them, you have no idea what they're carrying, you have no idea who they are, what they're doing, and who they work for.
00:53:56.000They're just traveling across your property with a backpack, you know, and you just gotta just let it happen.
00:54:02.000Yeah, and two years ago, I played a show down in San Antonio, and there was a rancher there at the show, and we were talking afterwards, and he said, and this would have been like right around that time.
00:54:15.000So this is April 21. He said one of his best friends, who's also a rancher, got a bunch of feds rolled up to their house one day and put him and his family on house arrest.
00:54:29.000For two days without any explanation as to why.
00:54:34.000And then two days go by and they say, okay, it's all good.
00:54:48.000And I guess, I don't know if I'm not getting somebody in trouble here, but the guy's like...
00:54:53.000I'm not supposed to tell you this, but there are nine insurgents that had crossed the border, and we just so happened to get them here on your property.
00:55:12.000I mean, you got your kids are out maybe doing a chore on your ranch, on your own farm.
00:55:21.000Yeah, you got thousands of acres or something, and who knows what you could be running into.
00:55:28.000Have you seen some of the recent videos of the lines, the migration lines moving, not just in Mexico, they're moving from South America through Mexico into the United States?
00:55:41.000I saw the ones from like a few years back, but I've almost like tuned out.
00:55:50.000Somebody just released a graph that shows the numbers of illegal aliens over the last year in comparison to previous years.
00:55:57.000So it's like you see the graph and it's like 2014, 2015, 2016, and it gets to 2021. It's just like, yikes!
00:56:06.000There's more illegals have made it into this country over the last year, I believe, than our people that live in five different states legally.
00:56:20.000I mean, West Virginia's got 1.8 million on a real good year, maybe.
00:56:25.000It's probably a little less than that.
00:56:27.000There's a lot more illegal aliens every year coming in.
00:56:30.000I mean, what's the number per month now?
00:56:32.000What's the fix for something like that?
00:56:34.000Well, you gotta fucking have a secure border if you want to fix it.
00:56:38.000It doesn't seem like they want to fix it.
00:56:39.000Like, AOC was on TV the other day doing an interview, and she was saying, you know, she was calling them undocumented people, and the way to do it is to give them a path to citizenship.
00:56:50.000Well, how about you know who the fuck they are?
00:56:53.000Because if you're a person from another country, say, if you're in Europe and you want to come to America and become an American citizen, you know, you're an architect or whatever, this is like a long, lengthy process.
00:57:03.000They only take a certain amount of people every year.
00:57:06.000And you have to prove that you have a skill.
00:57:08.000There's a reason why you should be here.
00:57:42.000You set up, because back in the day, you know, when there's, you know, I don't know everything, obviously, but, like, maybe the similar time in American history would have been the early 1900s.
00:57:54.000And you had all those Europeans coming over on the boats to work over in the U.S. That's how my family got here.
00:57:59.000Yeah, and everybody went through Ellis Island or somewhere like it where you go in and you got some sort of papers.
00:58:35.000The law is that you're supposed to go through this process where they vet you and they find out if you're a criminal and they find out if you're a terrorist.
00:59:16.000If you're just a regular person that was unfortunate to be born in a terrible environment, and you realize, if I can get to America, I can feed my family.
00:59:54.000Do we have in this country that just fuck off and don't want to do jack shit?
00:59:58.000And they're just fucking me when we got people walk in here from Mexico Yeah, yeah, you see it and that's the thing like back to the covet thing man it it Like a flip to switch and a lot of folks heads from one end of that to the other with yes Yeah,
01:00:15.000you know, I mean if you're not where you're at in life and You're never going to get there half-assing your day.
01:01:22.000And that was like, you know, I'm 31 and I released my first album in 2019, but I didn't get booking and management and stuff like that until even after that.
01:01:40.000Things were just starting to actually look a little bit legitimate, you know, in my life.
01:01:47.000And COVID cut the legs out from under that.
01:01:49.000So on the other side of that is really where, you know, I could have gone two ways.
01:01:56.000And I went back on tour in the spring of 21, and then I started taking my full band out with me, or a seven-piece, including myself, in the summer of 21. And I went broke in the fall.
01:05:05.000Like in the comedy world, when you start out as an open-miker, you start out with a bunch of fucking mental patients and crazy people, because anybody can go on stage, you know?
01:05:16.000And there's always like one or two guys that you're with, or girls, and they got something.
01:07:34.000And if you can hear a story like that, if you're a person out there listening, And you're not sure what to do and you hear a story like that, goddammit, go for it.
01:07:54.000And sometimes, and this is with me, because, like, you know, and even though it was a small thing, you know, I wanted to play football for West Virginia, and I wasn't good enough.
01:08:04.000And everybody I grew up with knew I was trying to do it.
01:08:08.000My hometown knew what I was trying to do.
01:08:10.000And, you know, it was embarrassing failing in front of all those folks.
01:10:29.000And I remember listening to that as a kid, and I hadn't figured that out yet for myself, but hearing that, I was like, oh yeah, that's smart.
01:10:36.000Just be happy for folks and keep moving and focus on you.
01:10:38.000And that was one of the most valuable things that I ever, you know, learned from somebody else.
01:10:45.000Just to get that out of my head way back at the beginning and just have that, like, healthy mindset going into, you know, what is a decade-long crucible of trying to make it in the music industry.
01:10:58.000Is getting that just positive frame of mind where you're just working on you and if you see something good happen to somebody else, hell yeah, good for them.
01:11:31.000And especially if you know those people.
01:11:33.000The saddest thing to me is when there's a friend and one friend has something really big happen and the other friend gets jealous and starts shitting on that friend because of it.
01:11:44.000You see it in comedy all the time, and it's a terrible mindset.
01:11:49.000And the same experience could be approached in a completely different way, where your friend makes it, and you're like, dude, fuck yeah.
01:13:49.000Just those years, you have got to muster up all the positivity you can, because you're not getting it from the bar, the restaurant, and the brewery, and the cafes, and sleeping in the back of your car, being broke,
01:14:06.000folks coming up and telling you to turn it off.
01:14:15.000So yeah, having that frame of mind gets you through those hard times.
01:14:19.000And the scene, I came up, you know, and basically in the West Virginia music scene, there isn't much of one, and it was not that.
01:14:27.000It was very much the famine mentality.
01:14:29.000So I got help from certain promoters and venue owners, but other established musicians in the state, No.
01:14:37.000And when, you know, I recognized that at the time, and I told myself, if I ever have the opportunity to, I'm going to do things differently.
01:14:48.000And then once I started getting out there into the music world a little bit and actually playing some proper shows...
01:14:53.000Man, I was blessed to get to open for very supportive people that helped me out and were happy to bring me on the road.
01:15:11.000Who's the first person that brought you on the road?
01:15:12.000The first legit shows that I got to play and open for somebody, you know, travel and show to show with them was William Clark Green here out of Texas.
01:15:27.000And, you know, I was nervous going into it because these are some of my first, like, actual venue shows outside of my hometown that I ever played.
01:15:33.000I'd only done restaurants and bars before that.
01:15:36.000And I remember one night, William was like, he told the crowd towards the end of his set, he's like, if one of y'all, if you guys buy a piece of Chuck's merch, I'll give you a free CD. Like a free signed CD or something like that.
01:16:42.000And, you know, those three in particular, like, were huge.
01:16:48.000And then, you know, I've opened for some fantastic people since then.
01:16:52.000But, like, those were the three that were, like, you know, William was the first and then Ward and Zach were the ones that I opened for the longest.
01:17:14.000You know, the internet, hearsay, and you just hear things about folks.
01:17:19.000One guy that he opened a West Coast tour with us this summer.
01:17:23.000And this is like kind of that great example of just like having a good circle of folks that you're able to work with.
01:17:32.000Wyatt Flores and Wyatt can't be opening for me now.
01:17:35.000I mean, we did our last show together.
01:17:38.000He was one of my openers at the Ryman.
01:17:42.000We did a shot after the second show, and I said, now you've got to remember this, bud, and remember when you play Madison Square Garden the first time, you make sure you have me and the boys as your opener for that one, because, you know, just everybody's on their own timeline, and Wyatt's just, you know, his is going real fast.
01:22:48.000I kind of like everything's the same except I don't I my that afternoon like I could take a nap I don't have that when I'm taking that that's the big difference I've been getting from that one the hard thing is the diet when you're on the road that's the hard thing yeah really make sure you eat clean just as a giant factor and whether or not you can recover Yeah,
01:23:08.000the discipline there after the show is a big part of it.
01:23:11.000Yeah, the jack-in-the-box, Burger King pull is strong.
01:23:15.000Yeah, if I had perfect discipline, I'd look like an Olympian.
01:23:19.000You know, I'd be pretty, you know, I wouldn't be that strong, but I'd be pretty ripped.
01:23:24.000But we're moving to the bus this year.
01:23:26.000So this will be my first year in the bus, and I'm looking forward to that sleep.
01:24:05.000And then who knows what kind of fuckheads are on the road doing stupid shit and crashing into things.
01:24:11.000But I've been driving myself for seven years with my dogs and then sleeping in a rollout mat in the back of my car behind venues and then three years in the van with me and the guys and driving all day.
01:24:30.000So this is the only way I see me being able to keep my health up for the rest of my life is getting that sleep.
01:26:53.000The year was 1938, years before Sinatra would go on to star in his first movie or release his first single.
01:26:58.000He was just 23 years old by today's standards.
01:27:01.000Shocking that he spent any time in jail for his crime, even though it was less than 16 hours.
01:27:06.000So, during that time period, a person could be arrested for seduction, which was a charge usually given to a man who slept with a woman based on false promises or using some kind of lie.
01:28:11.000I thought about that right as I said it.
01:28:13.000See if you can find some recordings of Sinatra from when he was young, because it really is crazy when you listen to the difference in that music.
01:30:24.000What's crazy is, if you go back and watch those shows, especially like the late night talk shows, like the Jack Parr show and stuff like that, that thing where you have the desk and then someone sits beside on the couch, they still do it that way today!
01:32:07.000Like live podcasts in front of an audience, they can be great, but it's a different thing.
01:32:12.000It's not the same thing that you get from just sitting in a room with someone and having a conversation with them, which is the best way to talk to people.
01:32:20.000Yeah, you're getting a little bit of the public persona of somebody if you're in a theater and you're doing an interview.
01:32:29.000Yeah, I mean, and everybody does it differently.
01:32:31.000Like B-Real, who we were talking about before, he has a show called Hot Box.
01:32:52.000I mean barbecue, you don't know what you're talking about five seconds ago, and you're on this podcast just getting baked, and you're stuck in this car with Be Real, and those guys are...
01:36:53.000Yeah, and that's another thing I'm looking forward to that bus is because, you know, we can stash some better options on there for after a show.
01:37:02.000And, yeah, I think it's going to help.
01:37:04.000They pulled over Willie's bus in Texas and arrested him.
01:38:46.000Yeah, we're going to do Canada for the first time this year, and that was like a thing that our tour manager was telling all the guys, you know, make sure you get your passports going now, and like, you know, make sure, plan on,
01:39:02.000like, not having any weed when we cross the border.
01:39:15.000Yeah, I remember when it was illegal in Canada and then all of a sudden I went there one year and it's like, oh my god, there's weed stores everywhere.
01:39:32.000Yeah, I was kind of hoping back home they would have legalized it in West Virginia, kind of more at the front end of the states and made some of that money.
01:41:44.000It's nice that someone's not trying to angle on you and just use you for something else or get to this to you or connect themselves to you or hitch a ride.
01:41:52.000There's so many social climbers and so many people that, you know, they've got a business they want you to invest in.
01:44:57.000There's something I was like, I would kind of tell myself in the last handful of years, I would say yes to...
01:45:04.000Damn near everything because like what the story I was telling you about in 21, that's where I'm coming from.
01:45:10.000So, you know, you say yes so that you get to that point where you can say no for the long term.
01:45:18.000And finally this year, like, you know, the quantity of shows is going to dial back a little bit.
01:45:26.000I've said no to some things that I would have dreamed of just having the opportunity to do in years past, but it's more time with my wife and my kids and doing my best to find that balance with the babies.
01:45:40.000Do you take them on the road with you at all?
01:46:32.000Yeah, I mean, I've had these guys on that are WWE wrestlers, and not only are they gone hundreds of days a year, it's like some of them were doing 250, 260 days a year.
01:46:43.000But they're also getting thrown onto tables 260 days a year.
01:46:48.000They're getting pile-drived and fucking body-slammed.
01:49:27.000So, you know, there's coal companies, and then sometimes there'd just be this guy that was a landowner back in the day that would get, you know, the right permits and stuff to be able to mine a SEMA coal on some property he bought.
01:49:37.000And that's what the case was with, you know, that job that he had there for three years was it was like for a small, like, private mine.
01:50:08.000He was born in 53, so he started in the early 70s, and he went into the early 90s.
01:50:15.000So he was at that unique time where there was still some of that old-time stuff, and then, you know, it was transitioning into the modern-day mines, you know, today, where it's just underground cities, like...
01:50:29.000When he left, he was the longwall boss at Federal No.
01:50:32.0002 for Consol, and that was the biggest longwall in the world at the time.
01:50:37.000I mean, that mine, it stretches like over 100 miles underground.
01:50:57.000Oh, they got mines in Utah where, because of the elevation of the mountains, they can drive in to a seam of coal and automatically be already 10,000 feet underground because of the height of the mountain above them.
01:51:15.000And then it's like 16 foot seams of coal and stuff like that.
01:51:21.000The stuff that my dad started out in is just a thing of the past.
01:51:25.000So when your dad was doing it, he was, would you say 27 inches?
01:52:14.000Yeah, like, they'll keep, you know, from what I understand, I think we got mines that start in western Mon County and go all the way to, like, Wetzel County.
01:52:44.000There's a town in Pennsylvania, I think, that, you know, there's like a before and after picture, because it ended up one, like an old mine ended up catching fire, and the thing's still, like, smoking.
01:56:44.000underground just using machines to cut out chunks of the earth that people gonna light on fire and then most people want to ban that shit anyway but meanwhile China we're just looking at how many like when people are talking about we gotta stop people from eating meat to save the planet bitch you need to pay attention to the world because most of that shit's coming from China there's more than a thousand coal mines in China and Yeah.
01:57:09.000There's more tonnage of coal being mined now than ever before in history.
01:57:39.000That's not to say that maybe, you know, there will come a day where coal probably becomes a thing of the past and isn't used anymore, but...
01:57:58.000Pockets out of the earth and things are gonna collapse.
01:58:01.000Yeah, and then you know it at the end of the day if That's not gonna that's not gonna solve the world's problems if they just shut all that down in the US overnight.
01:58:09.000I watched a video of a coal mine collapsing in China and it was horrifying My friend Tom Segura and I we every day we send each other the worst shit we find on Instagram It's it's very traumatizing It's like, I'll show it to you on my phone after the podcast is over.
01:59:43.000Over there in Paris, like, when they're all having that conference, like, they don't give a shit about what they're saying and those things.
01:59:49.000Well, it's just crazy when they're talking about climate change and then they cornered Bill Gates.
01:59:52.000They're like, you fly here on a private jet.
02:00:04.000You probably have a business that profits from people deciding to take a green angle, and that's really what's going on.
02:00:11.000He's trying to push plant-based meat and a bunch of other bullshit, and that's why it's important for him to get that narrative out there about climate change.
02:00:20.000Just like during the pandemic, he was heavily invested in mRNA vaccines.
02:01:36.000This is during Omicron, which is like the most mild version of COVID. It was basically just a mild cold for most people, especially healthy people.
02:01:45.000And the White House put out a release that said, for the vaccinated people, you've done your job.
02:01:52.000For the unvaccinated people, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death.
02:02:25.000And most of the people that died, even during the pandemic, it was someone in the range of 90% of the people that died had an average of four comorbidities.
02:02:36.000Four things that were killing them, and then COVID got them.
02:02:39.000And then, also, there was the thing where the hospital had an incentive to say that so-and-so died from COVID. My friend's grandpa had some horrible disease, and he didn't have COVID. And when he died,
02:02:56.000he died in a nursing home, they listed him as a COVID death.
02:04:33.000Like, by the way, it was one medication amongst many medications that I said I took, and here I am three days after this thing that's supposed to kill you.
02:04:42.000I'm 55. I'm not young, but I'm healthy, and I work out all the time, and I take a lot of vitamins, and I'm always fit, and I got over it quick.
02:04:51.000I'm saying, sorry, I can't make the dates.
02:04:53.000It was about a concert that I was supposed to do with Chappelle.
02:05:23.000A doctor that, by the way, they have prescribed that medication over, like, what, three billion times for who knows how many people all over the world?
02:05:34.000It's on the World Health Organization list of essential medicines.
02:07:30.000I was like wow you corrupt cocksuckers You don't give a shit about health if you did you'd be saying hey look This guy who's not young, who got COVID and is not vaccinated, got over it pretty quickly.
02:07:44.000So look, maybe it's not as bad as we think it is, or maybe it's not as bad if you're fit and healthy, or maybe there's some other options other than just taking this experimental medication that's never been mass injected into hundreds of millions of people in this country.
02:07:59.000But no, they were all corrupt because they're all a part of this industry that was relying on the advertising revenue from the pharmaceutical drug industry.
02:08:14.000And, you know, most folks around the country, you know, a lot of folks, they don't speak publicly on it, but they saw that and knew exactly what it was and Well, it killed their credibility.
02:08:24.000They're going for Joe and then just kept, you know, moved on and never tuned in anyways to watch them.
02:08:30.000Well, there's a lot of people now that will watch those news reports on things, especially medical things, and go, hmm, how much are you telling the truth?
02:11:32.000And it's just like following around the fire chief of Huntington.
02:11:37.000This is just like a day in the life, and she's just going from person to person, apartment to house, just either saving somebody or finding somebody too late, just all day.
02:15:28.000I saw the writing on the wall in May of 2020. So the country shut down in March, and I was like, well, you know, two weeks, you know, flatten the curve.
02:15:37.000And then when it was like a month later, I was like, what the fuck is going on?
02:15:40.000I'm always distrustful of authority, and I'm always distrustful of narratives.
02:15:46.000There's just too much bullshit in the world, and I've read too many books.
02:15:51.000I've been exposed to too many conspiracies.
02:15:53.000I went too far down the JFK rabbit hole and the 9-11 rabbit hole and the fucking NDAA and the fucking Patriot Act and I'm friends with Alex Jones, right?
02:16:05.000So my fucking head is filled with conspiracies.
02:16:10.000You know, with all this Epstein shit Alex Jones taught me about that a long time ago.
02:17:55.000One of the reports of the people that went to this thing at this conference were all eating chicken and steak, and they're talking about how people need to stop eating meat.
02:19:14.000If they're giving you a million dollars or five million dollars, that means they think they can make 10 or 20. And they're gonna make it off of you.
02:21:51.000This guy was smoking too much weed, drinking all the time, wasting his life, and then has this epiphany of giving his life to Christ.
02:22:01.000And then within weeks, This song comes out within weeks and all of a sudden he's fucking huge.
02:22:09.000It's like he did this thing where it's it's so cliche It's like in the movie like I'm gonna change my ways and and and then it all happens right after that like It's hard to know what to believe in but it's hard not to believe when something like that happens You're telling me that's a coincidence.
02:22:29.000Are you fucking sure it's a coincidence because I'm not yeah, I'm not sure Seems like he's kind of like a messenger, like something connected in him, like whatever you want to say, whatever name you want to attribute to it,
02:22:44.000whether it's God, whether it's love, whether it's the universe, whatever it is, something got inside of him and he changed his life and he changed his mind and then he started changing the world.
02:23:26.000And then when you think about the history of the Bible, And you think about the history of the human race, the human race was essentially almost wiped out somewhere around 12,000 years ago.
02:23:38.000Well, these stories all come from before that.
02:23:41.000These stories were all oral traditions.
02:23:43.000They're so similar to like the stories of 6,000 years ago, like the Epic of Gilgamesh is so similar to the story of Noah and the Ark.
02:23:58.000And there's so many parts of it that resonate with people still in their core.
02:24:02.000Like when they think about, when they have feelings of love and companionship and they see beauty in the world and they have these moments, they say, God damn, I know there's something.
02:24:12.000I don't mean to say God damn there, but damn it, I know there's something there.
02:26:10.000It'd be three more hours Until those halls are full But long walls don't run all nine to five I didn't get it then Every day that man would fight To punch the clock And make it home alive He's got minor imperfections,