The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2340 - Charley Crockett

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

00:00:11.000 Yeah, they're doing something at the Viper Room and then trying to come here the next day.

00:00:21.000 The Viper Room's just notorious. 0.97

00:00:24.000 Like, even when you're in the building, it's just like, ugh.

00:00:26.000 It is notorious.

00:00:28.000 Yeah.

00:00:35.000 They had all the cameras out and took me around.

00:00:39.000 I'd never come in through the door on Sunset before I even recognized the place.

00:00:43.000 No, I'd never been through that door either.

00:00:44.000 Like I said, I've only been there once.

00:00:46.000 I was there for a comedy show.

00:00:47.000 It just feels weird.

00:00:49.000 There's certain buildings that just have bizarre history.

00:00:52.000 Yeah, well, Shooter was telling me last night, man.

00:00:55.000 River Phoenix died on the sidewalk right out that door. 1.00

00:00:58.000 I didn't know that.

00:00:58.000 I thought it was in front of the whiskey for some reason.

00:01:02.000 No, no.

00:01:03.000 It was the Viper Room.

00:01:04.000 I never realized that.

00:01:05.000 No.

00:01:06.000 It's a fucked up place.

00:01:07.000 Hey, man.

00:01:08.000 Nice to meet you.

00:01:09.000 Pleasure is all mine, Joe.

00:01:10.000 Thanks for having me.

00:01:10.000 I love your music.

00:01:11.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:01:11.000 Really?

00:01:12.000 Yeah, my friend Jake turned me on to you.

00:01:15.000 Your music is like, you've lived a life.

00:01:18.000 You can't fake that.

00:01:19.000 You know what I mean?

00:01:20.000 There's something about certain dudes' voices and songs.

00:01:24.000 They're like, all right, that guy's done some living.

00:01:26.000 You know?

00:01:27.000 You can't create that with AI.

00:01:30.000 Right?

00:01:31.000 They're going to try.

00:01:32.000 Everybody, I mean, it's crazy.

00:01:37.000 I mean, we're kind of reaching singularity, you know?

00:01:40.000 Yeah.

00:01:41.000 Where nobody can tell the difference.

00:01:42.000 I know.

00:01:43.000 I think we're right about there.

00:01:44.000 There was a new one that just got released today.

00:01:46.000 Did you hear the new one today?

00:01:47.000 It's even better than the Google one that was insane that was released last week.

00:01:52.000 Yeah.

00:01:53.000 It's weird.

00:01:54.000 What are you talking about?

00:01:55.000 Some new AI engine that does video.

00:01:58.000 I'll send it to you, Jamie.

00:01:59.000 It's pretty incredible.

00:02:02.000 The way they're able to make stuff now where it looks exactly like real human beings.

00:02:09.000 It doesn't look fake even a little bit.

00:02:13.000 I'll send it to you, Jamie.

00:02:19.000 It's called ByteDance.

00:02:22.000 So is that the China one?

00:02:24.000 Oh, okay.

00:02:25.000 My dance is the company that owns TikTok and stuff.

00:02:27.000 Oh, yeah, China.

00:02:29.000 Yeah.

00:02:30.000 Yeah.

00:02:31.000 This is their new AI.

00:02:34.000 So this is all fake.

00:02:35.000 All fake people.

00:02:36.000 All done by computers.

00:02:39.000 Indistinguishable.

00:02:40.000 You know, it's like very strange.

00:02:42.000 You got it?

00:02:44.000 Throw that up. 0.81

00:02:45.000 Give me some sound.

00:02:49.000 You got to click on it.

00:02:54.000 This is all fake.

00:03:08.000 I mean, what the fuck, man?

00:03:10.000 I mean, what the fuck?

00:03:29.000 We are living in the weirdest time ever, Charlie Crockett.

00:03:32.000 Oh, man, you're right.

00:03:33.000 This is the weirdest time ever to be alive because we are so close to not being able to tell what's real and what's fake.

00:03:41.000 We're so close.

00:03:43.000 I mean, we're essentially right there with video and then eventually it's going to move into some sort of perception.

00:03:51.000 It's going to be feel.

00:03:53.000 You're going to be able to put a helmet on and go into some position.

00:04:00.000 And you can't stop it.

00:04:01.000 You can't stop it.

00:04:02.000 It's coming.

00:04:03.000 It's coming.

00:04:04.000 And the people that are working on it in America, like, we have to, because China's working on it. 0.69

00:04:08.000 I'm like, okay.

00:04:09.000 I guess that's just what we're doing.

00:04:12.000 Space race, even if it's just a show.

00:04:14.000 Yeah, it's essentially the Manhattan Project for artificial intelligence.

00:04:18.000 It's a race around the world. 0.98

00:04:20.000 Joe, did we go to the moon?

00:04:21.000 I don't think so.

00:04:23.000 You know, I don't think so either.

00:04:24.000 I don't think so.

00:04:25.000 It makes you sound fucking completely insane to say it, but...

00:04:31.000 I did too.

00:04:33.000 I gained a lot of friends too, though.

00:04:34.000 I gained a lot of skills.

00:04:40.000 Yeah.

00:04:41.000 Well, see, you know what I figured?

00:04:41.000 Scientists.

00:04:43.000 I figured that would be the one time in the history of civilization that human beings got to a new place.

00:04:51.000 And said, nah, I'm good, and turned around.

00:04:54.000 Exactly.

00:04:55.000 I don't want to look around there anymore.

00:04:56.000 Well, Bart Sabrell, he's this researcher that's been doing these documentaries on the moon landing, and he's been saying it's fake since, like, I met him sometime in the early 2000s, I believe.

00:05:08.000 And he put out this documentary called The Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, and he's got a great quote.

00:05:13.000 And he says, there's not a single thing that's not easier.

00:05:17.000 Faster and cheaper to reproduce today from 1969, except the moon landing.

00:05:21.000 It's the one thing.

00:05:23.000 And everybody would go, oh, but they spent so much money.

00:05:25.000 Why would they spend the money on that again?

00:05:27.000 Why would they spend money on all the things they spend money on?

00:05:29.000 Like, what are you talking about?

00:05:30.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:05:31.000 The moon has trillions of dollars in rare minerals on it.

00:05:36.000 There's all sorts of shit on the moon that would be very beneficial to society.

00:05:40.000 And it was always going to be that we're going to have a base on the moon, and we're going to use that to go to other places.

00:05:44.000 I don't think so.

00:05:46.000 I mean, if you look at just the way they filmed it, like when you watched it on television, the people that watched it on television, it was the first time ever where there was a news thing where the news stations, the networks didn't have a direct feed.

00:06:02.000 What they had was they filmed the moon landing, they showed it on a projection screen, and then the networks pointed their camera at the projection screen.

00:06:12.000 That's why it looks so shitty.

00:06:16.000 Do you remember there was a movie that came out?

00:06:16.000 Wow.

00:06:19.000 It wasn't that far back, and it's all about this, like a legit movie.

00:06:23.000 And I should remember this actor's name because he's getting better and better known.

00:06:27.000 He's a really great actor.

00:06:29.000 He played the lawman in Killers of the Flower Moon that shows up there near the end and finally kind of takes them down.

00:06:39.000 But he's been on a lot of other stuff, and it's this really great movie about...

00:06:43.000 faking the moon landing and all that stuff for like, you know, American kind of, um, cultural and economic dominance over Russia and all that.

00:06:52.000 Oh, so it's like, Oh, okay.

00:06:55.000 Hey, Jamie, can you tell Jeff to bring in some coffee?

00:06:57.000 Oh, yeah.

00:06:59.000 So it's a drama.

00:07:02.000 It's a drama, yeah.

00:07:03.000 It's a Hollywood movie.

00:07:05.000 Oh, Jamie will find out what it is when he gets back.

00:07:08.000 Yeah, I only saw it once, but it was good.

00:07:09.000 And you know this actor because he's been everywhere, man.

00:07:11.000 He's been in everything.

00:07:12.000 I should know his name.

00:07:12.000 I need to call him out.

00:07:13.000 I think I saw him at the airport in Burbank a few months ago, actually.

00:07:18.000 It seems like a stupid thing to say, but I don't think it is.

00:07:21.000 And then after COVID, realizing how much stuff they can lie about, how much stuff the government can hide, how much stuff that people will just accept as being true despite...

00:07:33.000 How much experts will go along with things.

00:07:35.000 How easy it is to keep a secret.

00:07:37.000 It's not that hard to keep a secret.

00:07:38.000 Especially a secret that is essentially set up to let us think, sir.

00:07:44.000 Dang, that's how I know my wife stopped by. 1.00

00:07:45.000 Yerba mate? 0.98

00:07:46.000 Is that what you're into?

00:07:47.000 I love them, man.

00:07:48.000 Yeah, they're good.

00:07:49.000 You know why I like it, really?

00:07:50.000 I didn't realize it for like a year or two, and now I realize it because it tastes just like Coca-Cola.

00:07:56.000 It does, really?

00:07:56.000 It does.

00:07:57.000 It's close.

00:07:58.000 I think that's the secret.

00:07:59.000 It tastes like Coca-Cola.

00:08:00.000 Yeah.

00:08:02.000 I would like to try the original Coca-Cola with cocaine in it.

00:08:05.000 Oh, shit.

00:08:06.000 I wonder what that was like.

00:08:07.000 Non-habit forming.

00:08:08.000 Yeah, allegedly.

00:08:10.000 Right?

00:08:10.000 Yeah, another lie.

00:08:12.000 Was it true, right, that Bayer at first had heroin in it?

00:08:17.000 Or opium?

00:08:19.000 Real?

00:08:19.000 The original version of it?

00:08:20.000 Yeah, the original product.

00:08:23.000 We'll find that out.

00:08:24.000 Yeah, I think it did.

00:08:25.000 That makes sense.

00:08:26.000 I'm sure.

00:08:27.000 That's real great for headaches.

00:08:31.000 I mean, more lies, right?

00:08:33.000 How many times have we been lied to?

00:08:34.000 But you know what it is?

00:08:38.000 I'm preaching to the choir here, but I think it's a perception thing, right?

00:08:44.000 It's like planting that flag on the moon was a cultural thing.

00:08:50.000 An American pop culture thing.

00:08:54.000 Sure.

00:08:55.000 Well, they wanted us to be dominant militarily over Russia.

00:08:59.000 Shit worked.

00:09:00.000 I mean, sort of, kind of.

00:09:00.000 Yeah.

00:09:02.000 Kind of, I guess.

00:09:03.000 Yeah.

00:09:03.000 I mean, we definitely are dominant over, you know, militarily.

00:09:07.000 We definitely were back then, essentially.

00:09:10.000 Here it is.

00:09:11.000 Heroin.

00:09:12.000 Woo! 0.99

00:09:13.000 Wow.

00:09:14.000 Bearhead heroin.

00:09:16.000 Non-habit forming.

00:09:17.000 Right.

00:09:18.000 I gotta get the non-habit-forming kind.

00:09:20.000 But, I mean, like, what is the difference between that and...

00:09:26.000 It's not that much.

00:09:26.000 Sears Roebuck, once sold heroin.

00:09:28.000 Jesus Christ.

00:09:30.000 Must have been a wild time back then.

00:09:32.000 Man, that's a great illustration there.

00:09:35.000 Yeah, look at that.

00:09:36.000 Two needles, two vitals of heroin, only $1.50.

00:09:40.000 Less than $50 adjusted for inflation.

00:09:43.000 Wow.

00:09:44.000 This is the 19th century.

00:09:45.000 So the 1800 Sears catalog used to offer a heroin kit.

00:09:49.000 I think the actor you're talking about was Jesse Plemons, but I don't know what I'm talking about.

00:09:52.000 That's him, bro.

00:09:54.000 See if you can find it.

00:09:55.000 Jesse Plemons, just Google moon.

00:09:57.000 Yeah, moon, moon.

00:09:58.000 I did.

00:09:58.000 Well, the flowers of the summer moon keeps popping up.

00:10:01.000 But do space.

00:10:07.000 Hmm.

00:10:08.000 Discovery?

00:10:11.000 That's 2015?

00:10:13.000 No.

00:10:14.000 2017?

00:10:15.000 Try Jesse Plemons' moon conspiracy or space conspiracy.

00:10:20.000 Huh.

00:10:22.000 Are you sure it wasn't AI?

00:10:25.000 Because there's a lot of those.

00:10:27.000 I thought Keanu Reeves really wasn't a new Dracula movie.

00:10:33.000 Fake?

00:10:34.000 I'm just going to look.

00:10:34.000 I don't know.

00:10:36.000 Possibly fake?

00:10:37.000 What was the other question we had?

00:10:39.000 Oh, bear heroin.

00:10:40.000 Yeah, man, they've been, you know, they've been tricking people for a long fucking time.

00:10:45.000 You know, if they can make money, they'll trick you.

00:10:46.000 Yeah.

00:10:48.000 Back then, they were probably being tricked themselves.

00:10:49.000 People didn't really understand what was addictive and what wasn't, you know?

00:10:53.000 Doctors used to recommend cigarettes for people with emphysema.

00:10:57.000 You got asthma?

00:10:58.000 You need cigarettes.

00:10:58.000 Yeah.

00:10:59.000 Yeah, they were drinking.

00:11:01.000 Athletes are drinking Coca-Cola on the court.

00:11:04.000 Well, you know who drinks Coca-Cola?

00:11:05.000 Floyd Mayweather.

00:11:06.000 Floyd Mayweather, after training, would drink Coca-Cola.

00:11:10.000 And there's actually some science to that.

00:11:12.000 Like, having sugar, like, right after a really hard workout, actually replenishes glucose in the body.

00:11:19.000 Like Gatorade.

00:11:20.000 It's probably not a bad idea.

00:11:20.000 Yeah.

00:11:22.000 My wife's got me drinking Gatorade again. 0.80

00:11:25.000 That shit's not good for you.

00:11:27.000 There's better versions of electrolytes, you know?

00:11:30.000 Yeah, you're right.

00:11:32.000 Electrolytes are good for you.

00:11:33.000 Gatorade's okay.

00:11:34.000 It's just, it's got a lot of shit in it.

00:11:36.000 Yeah.

00:11:37.000 Corn syrup and Fly Me to the Moon. 0.58

00:11:40.000 Channing Tatum.

00:11:41.000 Oh, Channing Tatum.

00:11:43.000 Oh, that's the one.

00:11:43.000 Is that it?

00:11:44.000 That's it?

00:11:45.000 Wait a minute.

00:11:46.000 2024.

00:11:48.000 2024.

00:11:49.000 Oh, that's the one.

00:11:50.000 Yeah, he's not in it.

00:11:51.000 No, he is in it, I think.

00:11:53.000 Historical romantic comedy drama.

00:11:56.000 Huh.

00:11:58.000 Tasked with creating a false moon landing.

00:12:00.000 Apple TV.

00:12:01.000 I didn't see it.

00:12:02.000 Interesting.

00:12:03.000 What year was it?

00:12:04.000 It came out last year, like a year ago.

00:12:06.000 I never even heard of it.

00:12:07.000 Oh, I think it's still...

00:12:12.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:12:13.000 There's too many goddamn movies.

00:12:15.000 Bro, you know what I saw last night?

00:12:16.000 I think I'm still thinking of a different one, but there's another one.

00:12:19.000 There's another one?

00:12:20.000 Really?

00:12:21.000 I think so.

00:12:21.000 I saw it, man.

00:12:22.000 It was a wild movie, and they realized that the whole landing is being faked, and then, I mean, I won't spoil it, but then they get taken out.

00:12:37.000 Oh.

00:12:44.000 Yeah, there's a lot of those, man.

00:12:45.000 There's a lot of those.

00:12:46.000 I mean, there's almost nothing.

00:12:48.000 Vietnam, Gulf of Tonkin, there's almost nothing from history that's exactly as we're being told.

00:12:53.000 Almost nothing.

00:12:54.000 Yeah.

00:12:55.000 It's all a crack of shit.

00:12:56.000 It's Coke and Pepsi, you know, because I was thinking, like, you know, that's the one thing that they did that everybody liked, and then they've kept that, as long as they keep that flavor.

00:13:09.000 Right?

00:13:09.000 Right.

00:13:10.000 they can muscle everybody out.

00:13:12.000 You know, it's like...

00:13:16.000 Nobody's into that.

00:13:18.000 Only if you couldn't afford the Coca-Cola price in the Coke machine.

00:13:24.000 Bless you.

00:13:25.000 When I was a kid, that was the only reason we drank RC Colas, because it was 25 cents.

00:13:25.000 Thank you.

00:13:30.000 Right, because it was cheap.

00:13:31.000 And you drank it and you knew it wasn't Coke.

00:13:31.000 That's it.

00:13:33.000 They tried new Coke.

00:13:35.000 Do you remember that?

00:13:36.000 When I was a kid.

00:13:37.000 God, I think I was in high school.

00:13:39.000 They came up with a new formula of Coca-Cola.

00:13:42.000 Somewhere around the 80s, I think.

00:13:43.000 It was terrible.

00:13:45.000 They tried a new Coke and everybody's like, what the fuck are you doing?

00:13:48.000 Why would you get rid of Coke?

00:13:49.000 It's perfect.

00:13:50.000 Yeah, don't change that.

00:13:52.000 They can change and try everything else and buy everybody out as long as they keep Coca-Cola flowing.

00:13:58.000 Yeah, and then Pepsi's always like for weirdos.

00:14:00.000 People who prefer Pepsi.

00:14:01.000 I never liked it.

00:14:02.000 Yeah, it's weird.

00:14:03.000 I like Dr. Pepper.

00:14:04.000 Well, you know, Coca-Cola is to this day flavored with cocaine.

00:14:08.000 Do you know that?

00:14:09.000 You mean like...

00:14:11.000 That's the secret to the flavor of Coca-Cola.

00:14:15.000 Coca-Cola, the company that makes Coca-Cola, they are the biggest producers of medical grade cocaine.

00:14:24.000 For real.

00:14:25.000 Wow.

00:14:25.000 So they take the coca leaves, they extract the flavonoids out of the coca leaves, and they extract the cocaine.

00:14:31.000 So there's no cocaine in Coca-Cola.

00:14:33.000 But then they take those coca leaves, and the flavor goes into Coca-Cola, and then the cocaine goes into medical cocaine.

00:14:41.000 Wow.

00:14:41.000 Yeah.

00:14:42.000 To this day.

00:14:44.000 I think they're the only company that's allowed to use coca leaves.

00:14:44.000 Wow.

00:14:47.000 I think they're grandfathered in.

00:14:52.000 I believe they're grandfathered in.

00:14:54.000 But to this day, that's what they use.

00:14:58.000 As I sniff.

00:14:59.000 As I sniffle.

00:15:00.000 But these are real sniffles, folks.

00:15:01.000 These are allergy sniffles.

00:15:03.000 I watched the fucking craziest movie last night.

00:15:06.000 The Substance.

00:15:07.000 Have you heard of that movie?

00:15:08.000 I've heard of it.

00:15:09.000 That's that new Demi Moore movie? 1.00

00:15:10.000 Yeah, I was afraid to watch it.

00:15:12.000 Holy shit, man.

00:15:13.000 It's intense.

00:15:18.000 It's about this lady who's getting older and someone approaches her with this new experimental drug that allows you to live as a young person for seven days and then you have to switch back to the old person for seven days.

00:15:31.000 I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but...

00:15:35.000 I was like, I gotta watch something stupid on YouTube for a couple hours before I go to bed because I'm weirded out by this movie.

00:15:42.000 Yeah, that's the reason I haven't watched it yet.

00:15:44.000 I'm just saying.

00:15:47.000 I never liked the sensory overload horror movies.

00:15:54.000 I like classic horror movies.

00:15:55.000 This is a sensory overload.

00:15:57.000 I mean, it's fucking insane.

00:15:59.000 It's an insane movie.

00:16:01.000 It's really good.

00:16:02.000 I mean, it really grips you.

00:16:03.000 It's very entertaining.

00:16:04.000 But just, good lord.

00:16:06.000 Have you seen Uncut Gems?

00:16:10.000 Yes.

00:16:11.000 Loved that movie.

00:16:12.000 Isn't that a good movie?

00:16:13.000 Oh my god.

00:16:13.000 It was like a little much for me, but it was so good, and it wasn't so crazy, you know?

00:16:18.000 Yeah.

00:16:18.000 Well, I grew up with a lot of gambling addicts.

00:16:20.000 So for that movie, that movie really hit home for me.

00:16:24.000 I was like, oh god, gee, I got anxiety.

00:16:27.000 Howard, is that his name?

00:16:28.000 Howie Howard?

00:16:29.000 You know, Sandler's character.

00:16:31.000 Is that what his name is?

00:16:32.000 Yeah, and he's selling diamonds on 47th Street or whatever.

00:16:32.000 Howie?

00:16:36.000 That's every manager in the music business.

00:16:40.000 Oh, really?

00:16:40.000 A lot of them.

00:16:41.000 A bunch of gambling addicts?

00:16:42.000 That guy out there, you know?

00:16:44.000 They're juggling all these balls in front of you, which is fine.

00:16:48.000 I don't mind guys juggling.

00:16:49.000 What I don't like is when somebody's got all these balls in the air, they're juggling in front of me, and they're like, Charlie, I'm not juggling.

00:16:55.000 Oh, yeah, the music business.

00:16:57.000 Yeah, well.

00:16:58.000 There he is.

00:16:59.000 He's great in that movie, too.

00:17:01.000 Yeah, he's incredible.

00:17:02.000 I never knew he could act dramatically.

00:17:04.000 I mean, he's always been great in comedies, but he's incredible in that movie.

00:17:08.000 Incredible.

00:17:09.000 He had another one he did that was like a serious flick way back.

00:17:12.000 Do you remember Punch Drunk Love?

00:17:13.000 Did you ever see that one?

00:17:14.000 No, I never saw that.

00:17:15.000 That's a masterpiece.

00:17:16.000 I never saw it.

00:17:16.000 Yeah?

00:17:18.000 But Uncut Gems, the gambling aspect of it, like that sickness.

00:17:22.000 The gambling sickness is a wild sickness.

00:17:25.000 I grew up around gamblers, too.

00:17:26.000 Yeah?

00:17:26.000 Yeah, my uncle was always a big gambler.

00:17:29.000 My cousin and I spent a lot of time in casinos with him down in New Orleans on the Mississippi coast and all that.

00:17:35.000 Oh, Riverboat gamblers.

00:17:37.000 Man, yep, exactly.

00:17:38.000 Those are the craziest.

00:17:39.000 Man, I didn't mind.

00:17:41.000 He let me and my cousin run all over the place.

00:17:45.000 So we were stoked.

00:17:47.000 So you like the fact that he was a degenerate.

00:17:49.000 Yeah.

00:17:50.000 Oh, and any time he won, like if he won big, we used to play his bingo, he used to run this bingo hall in New Orleans.

00:17:57.000 And me and my cousin, we could, both of us with those bingo daubers, we could play like, we could play nine card pages for him.

00:18:05.000 We got that good that we could keep up with it.

00:18:07.000 And because he was running the place, nobody in there ever said shit about me and my cousin being like, you know, eight and 11 or whatever.

00:18:15.000 And if we hit though, It was always a good time.

00:18:18.000 It was Toys R Us and fried shrimp.

00:18:23.000 With how much your privacy is being invaded online, VPNs are no longer just a nice thing to have.

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00:19:41.000 For some people, that's their juice, man.

00:19:45.000 That's what keeps them going in life, just that next bet.

00:19:52.000 You know, when I was in my early 20s.

00:19:54.000 And I was just around so many people that just lived for gambling.

00:19:58.000 They would go straight from off-track betting right to the pool hall.

00:20:02.000 And, you know, they'd bet on anything.

00:20:03.000 They'd bet on two raindrops coming down a window pane.

00:20:06.000 They'd bet on roaches.

00:20:07.000 They'd bet on anything.

00:20:09.000 You name it.

00:20:10.000 They'd flip a coin for $10,000.

00:20:11.000 I saw dudes flip a coin for thousands of dollars.

00:20:14.000 A guy would win a tournament.

00:20:15.000 Like, this is like a famous thing in pool.

00:20:17.000 Guys would win a tournament, win $10,000, flip a coin, lose the whole thing.

00:20:22.000 And you had to have heart.

00:20:24.000 That was like part of the culture.

00:20:26.000 You had to be willing to bet.

00:20:27.000 And take the loss.

00:20:30.000 Yeah, the only way it's fun is if money's constantly flowing.

00:20:33.000 So if someone's trying to be conservative, someone's trying to save them, they called them a nit.

00:20:37.000 Like, you're a nit.

00:20:38.000 They didn't like you.

00:20:39.000 Nobody likes a nit.

00:20:41.000 Those are the guys that get shunned by the pool hall.

00:20:43.000 They're bad action.

00:20:45.000 Where'd you grow up?

00:20:46.000 Well, all over the place, really.

00:20:48.000 Where were those pool halls?

00:20:50.000 New York.

00:20:51.000 I moved to New York when I was in my 20s, my early 20s, like 23. And that's when I got indoctrinated into pool culture. 0.98

00:20:59.000 Wow.

00:21:00.000 Yeah, it was just the most fun group of degenerates and weirdos and outcasts.

00:21:05.000 You know, as a comedian, I never felt like I fit in in normal society.

00:21:11.000 You know, and then I'm around those dudes.

00:21:12.000 I'm like, oh, okay, you guys are just like me.

00:21:14.000 You don't fit in either.

00:21:16.000 Like, you're a bunch of fucking weirdos.

00:21:18.000 Man, you know the thing?

00:21:19.000 What I just thought about, Joe, when I was on the street in New York, you know, I played up there, and I'm sure you know, but I'd play on the street all day, and at first I was playing in the parks.

00:21:32.000 And then I moved downtown.

00:21:33.000 I was trying to play on street corners in the villages and all that.

00:21:36.000 And you're dealing with traffic and cops.

00:21:40.000 And that's what drove me down into the subway platforms.

00:21:44.000 And those were really competitive, too.

00:21:46.000 So even there, I started playing at the stations that nobody wanted or, you know, weren't desirable or, you know, nobody's really competing for the spots or whatever.

00:21:56.000 And I would do that all day, and then I would hit open mics all over the...

00:22:05.000 And the comedy guys were always the coolest, all of them, because we weren't in competition.

00:22:13.000 I know comedians can be really competitive on the circuit, and obviously same thing on the music side.

00:22:19.000 But I ended up playing a lot of Oh, cool.

00:22:27.000 Open guys up with two or three songs or play their breaks or whatever.

00:22:31.000 And, you know, all the comedy folks like me, I think, because, you know, I wasn't one of them.

00:22:36.000 Yeah, no.

00:22:36.000 We were cousins or something.

00:22:38.000 There's always been a relationship like that.

00:22:38.000 Right, right.

00:22:40.000 Like, Oliver Anthony was at the Mothership this weekend.

00:22:43.000 And it was the first music act we've ever had to perform there.

00:22:46.000 That's cool.

00:22:47.000 Yeah, you could perform there, too, if you ever want to, man.

00:22:49.000 I know where it's at.

00:22:49.000 Yeah, it'd be fun.

00:22:50.000 I like that you got it down there, man.

00:22:52.000 It's a great spot.

00:22:54.000 6th Street is just such a fucking wild place.

00:22:56.000 It is.

00:22:57.000 To have it right there is perfect.

00:22:58.000 And to have it at the old Ritz, yeah, it's amazing.

00:23:02.000 So, you know, it was great.

00:23:03.000 Is that what it is in the old Ritz?

00:23:05.000 Yeah.

00:23:06.000 Yeah, we bought the old Ritz.

00:23:07.000 Yeah.

00:23:08.000 We have to keep the Ritz sign because it's, you know, one of those historical buildings.

00:23:13.000 Oh, it's a great sign.

00:23:14.000 It's got so much history.

00:23:16.000 In the tunnel on the way to the stage, there's a big picture of Stevie Ray Vaughan on the stage in 1983.

00:23:23.000 Yeah.

00:23:24.000 You like SRV?

00:23:25.000 Fuck yeah.

00:23:25.000 Come on.

00:23:26.000 Come on, man.

00:23:27.000 Come on.

00:23:28.000 He's the only dude who can play Voodoo Child. 0.74

00:23:29.000 Doesn't make me sick.

00:23:30.000 Man.

00:23:31.000 You know, other than Hendrix?

00:23:32.000 That's right.

00:23:33.000 There's two dudes.

00:23:33.000 Yeah, you're right.

00:23:34.000 Hendrix and him.

00:23:35.000 I mean, I'm sure other people can do it.

00:23:36.000 I've never heard of him.

00:23:37.000 Nah, fuck that.

00:23:38.000 Just them.

00:23:42.000 Oh yeah, man.

00:23:43.000 There's certain songs that you can't fuck with.

00:23:47.000 Although I did see, one time I saw Honey Honey and Gary Clark Jr. play Midnight Rider.

00:23:51.000 And I didn't think anybody else could play Midnight Rider.

00:23:54.000 And to hear Gary's song with Midnight Rider, with that, you know, like Gary's signature sound.

00:24:00.000 Oh man.

00:24:00.000 Yeah, that signature guitar sound.

00:24:02.000 You've seen Gary live?

00:24:04.000 Oh yeah, I'm friends with Gary.

00:24:05.000 Man.

00:24:05.000 I've seen him a bunch of times.

00:24:06.000 Yeah, I love Gary too.

00:24:07.000 I love that dude.

00:24:08.000 That guy.

00:24:09.000 He's so good.

00:24:10.000 Man, I remember...

00:24:13.000 What is it?

00:24:14.000 This is a real, genuine, woolly mammoth guitar pick that is made out of woolly mammoth tusk.

00:24:23.000 Damn, that is something fierce, bud.

00:24:25.000 That is 10,000 plus years old.

00:24:28.000 Shout out to my friend John Reeves from the Boneyard in Alaska.

00:24:32.000 I got a buddy of mine who has this spot in Alaska where they just pull all kinds of crazy mastodon, woolly mammoth, fucking cave bear, all kinds of skulls, all kinds of wild shit out of this one piece of property where a lot of animals died.

00:24:46.000 And he's taken a lot of the woolly mammoth.

00:24:48.000 That's where I got this, too.

00:24:49.000 This is a tooth.

00:24:49.000 This is a tooth that was carved.

00:24:52.000 Wow.

00:24:53.000 Into a...

00:24:57.000 That's a big old goddamn two, son.

00:24:59.000 Imagine.

00:24:59.000 Can I see how heavy that is?

00:25:01.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:25:02.000 It's crazy, right?

00:25:03.000 It's beautiful, too, man.

00:25:04.000 Yeah, so that guitar pick is yours, brother.

00:25:07.000 Man, thanks, Joe.

00:25:08.000 Any cool guys who play guitar, give them one of them picks.

00:25:11.000 You know, I've never been good at holding a pick.

00:25:15.000 I've learned how to play with my hands because I could never hold a pick well.

00:25:19.000 But a lot of guys I know that are really great.

00:25:22.000 Pickers, they play these really hard picks, you know, and can real precise with them.

00:25:27.000 And I just, I still can't hold them.

00:25:29.000 You learned with your fingers?

00:25:30.000 Yeah.

00:25:31.000 Yeah, I never, never held, I just couldn't hold a pick.

00:25:34.000 I would try to hold it and it'd get sideways.

00:25:36.000 And I never, like all this, you know, like the straight cowboy chords, you know, C, F, G, whatever.

00:25:46.000 I couldn't hold any of those chords.

00:25:47.000 When I was teaching myself, the positioning was weird for me.

00:25:52.000 I kind of threw away the book and I did what you call choking the chicken on the fret.

00:25:58.000 Kind of hold it like you're choking the chicken.

00:26:01.000 And that's kind of where I developed my style.

00:26:03.000 And then I learned all the regular chords many years later.

00:26:06.000 Are you totally self-taught?

00:26:09.000 Oh, yeah.

00:26:10.000 Wow.

00:26:10.000 When did you start?

00:26:14.000 I was 17. My mama got me a guitar out of a pawn shop in South Irving.

00:26:20.000 It was Hohner guitar.

00:26:20.000 Wow.

00:26:22.000 And you just started messing around with it?

00:26:24.000 Yeah.

00:26:25.000 Yeah, you know, my mama tried to get me on the piano when I was younger, and I just couldn't focus.

00:26:33.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:26:35.000 17 was like the right age. 0.78

00:26:36.000 I needed it, you know?

00:26:38.000 Started banging around on that guitar, and I mean, it must have sounded terrible.

00:26:44.000 And my mama lived in this little-ass place, this tiny place, and I was, like, scared to play in front of her, you know.

00:26:51.000 But I was at first, and I would say, Mama, am I any good?

00:26:56.000 You know, and she wasn't going to lie to me, and she said, Well, son, when you play, people will believe you.

00:27:02.000 She wasn't going to lie to me and tell me I was good.

00:27:05.000 But she was trying to say, you know, just be honest with your music, and the rest will take care of it.

00:27:10.000 That's great advice.

00:27:11.000 Yeah.

00:27:11.000 When you play, people will believe you.

00:27:13.000 That's what she said.

00:27:14.000 Yeah.

00:27:15.000 Yeah.

00:27:16.000 And then the next time anybody believed in me wasn't until I started hitchhiking.

00:27:21.000 And I remember because I've been out in California a bunch recently.

00:27:25.000 And it was, I had caught a ride with this guy.

00:27:29.000 We were playing at this place called The Shanty up in Farmer's Branch, Dallas-Fort Worth area, years ago.

00:27:36.000 And there was this witch lady. 1.00

00:27:38.000 I mean, they called her a witch.

00:27:40.000 This kind of magic woman who had a barn out behind her house, and they called it the shanty. 1.00

00:27:49.000 And she would have people over on the weekends and just kind of any random night, travelers, misfits, whatever, back there in the barn, and everybody would be telling stories and trading songs and, you know, taking potions.

00:28:05.000 Stuff like that.

00:28:07.000 Long story short, this guy I met one night, his parents had, like, worked, they worked for, like, Texas Instruments, and he had disowned them, you know, because his parents were, like, scientists, and he woke up one day as a young man and realized they were, like, his parents were manufacturing, like, weapons, you know, and I never saw this guy again, but that was his whole deal, why he left Texas.

00:28:28.000 Oh, wow.

00:28:29.000 And he was just back visiting this gal that had this shanty deal. 1.00

00:28:35.000 I talked to that guy.

00:28:37.000 He was describing this town of Boonville, which is this community in Mendocino County, Northern California.

00:28:45.000 And the way he was describing it to me in this barn or whatever, it sounded like the Garden of Eden or something.

00:28:53.000 You know what I mean?

00:28:55.000 And I wanted so badly to go with him, and he promised me and this other guy that was playing guitar too that he would take us.

00:29:01.000 And we passed out at the ladies' house.

00:29:04.000 When we woke up that next morning, he was still there.

00:29:06.000 And I was like, man, you ready to go to California?

00:29:08.000 And he was like, what are you talking about?

00:29:12.000 What are you talking about?

00:29:13.000 When I pressed him, he was like, man, I was on acid.

00:29:18.000 I was on acid.

00:29:19.000 I don't remember any of that.

00:29:20.000 I don't have any room for you.

00:29:22.000 And I begged him like my life depended on it.

00:29:25.000 And he took me and this old boy who was playing guitar, actually taught me a lot of songs back then.

00:29:29.000 He took us to California.

00:29:31.000 But as we got closer, To Boonville.

00:29:34.000 And we were talking to naive young Texas boys who had never been anywhere.

00:29:39.000 He realized he, you know, didn't want us going anywhere near those hippies he was living with there in Boonville.

00:29:45.000 So he left us, he pulled into like a grocery store and left us in this parking lot in Vacaville.

00:29:52.000 And that's when I really started hitchhiking in my life is like when we kind of got abandoned in a parking lot.

00:29:58.000 Wow.

00:29:58.000 Kind of along the five, right?

00:29:59.000 How old were you?

00:30:02.000 One, probably 22, something like that.

00:30:04.000 And I had done a little bit of hitching before, like around the south, Texas and Louisiana, but I'd never really been way out there.

00:30:13.000 Anyway, I started hitchhiking around because I had to, but I remember it was in California the first time anybody besides my mama ever looked at me playing guitar as it having any kind of value.

00:30:30.000 Like, any economic value or, like, it was a trade of, you know, recognition, you know?

00:30:39.000 It was kind of the first time I was out there.

00:30:42.000 So you'd been playing about four or five years back then?

00:30:45.000 Yeah.

00:30:46.000 I was playing outside because our place was so small.

00:30:50.000 I wasn't playing outside to, like, make money or anything like that.

00:30:54.000 I would go to this park, had, like, a baseball diamond on it.

00:30:57.000 Sit on these bleachers or whatever.

00:31:00.000 And I'll never forget, the first time anybody threw, like, just a pocket full of change in my case, I'm sure it's because they, you know, were worried about me and felt bad for me or whatever, you know?

00:31:13.000 And it wasn't like that money hit the case and then, like, a light went off or anything, you know?

00:31:19.000 It was a slow, gradual deal.

00:31:24.000 Like, I was playing outside.

00:31:26.000 Because there wasn't enough room to play in the house or whatever.

00:31:32.000 And then I got in a lot of trouble with the law, which kind of put me on the run, put me on the road.

00:31:42.000 What was the trouble with the law?

00:31:46.000 You know, I've said it a lot, and it's funny, I'm a lot better known than I used to be, so it's like you say stuff about your family and they hear about it.

00:31:54.000 They get mad.

00:31:55.000 They get mad.

00:31:56.000 But that's so funny because it's all over the internet and they're the ones that had the government on their ass, not me.

00:32:04.000 But anyways, yeah, we just kind of, you know, shit hit the fan, got up in the newspapers.

00:32:08.000 My brother didn't go to high school.

00:32:09.000 You know, neither of my sister, neither of them went to high school.

00:32:11.000 They both dropped out, you know, because I'm from South Texas.

00:32:15.000 I was born in the Rio Grande Valley.

00:32:16.000 They were born up in Dallas, but my mama had moved down there to South Padre Island area, McAllen, Harlingen area there. 1.00

00:32:25.000 Anyway, it's poor and pretty hard living down there.

00:32:29.000 Hell, I didn't wear shoes until I was probably 9 or 10 years old, playing outside.

00:32:34.000 My brother and sister, they're 10 years older than me, half-brother and sister, and we have different daddies.

00:32:41.000 They really lived wild.

00:32:43.000 Things were pretty tough back then or whatever.

00:32:47.000 I'm telling you that background because my brother became a hustler because he had to.

00:32:55.000 Because of a lack of education, lack of access, you know, because of poverty.

00:33:01.000 And I've honestly always respected him for that, you know.

00:33:04.000 He used to take me around door-to-door selling newspapers when I was 11, right?

00:33:09.000 And you want to know why?

00:33:10.000 Because I had broken my arm, and he realized if you carted that young boy out in front of those apartments when that lady answered the door, and it's these two brothers, and one of them's got a broken arm, she's going to go ahead and subscribe.

00:33:24.000 Yeah, she was bad.

00:33:26.000 Yeah, and in a nutshell, man, he, you know, through all that stuff, you know, he started out as a door-to-door salesman, you know, hustling newspaper subscriptions, right?

00:33:37.000 Then he started like selling neckties and like men's clothing door to door in downtown Dallas office buildings, you know, and as a very young man.

00:33:49.000 And eventually he graduated.

00:33:52.000 I did And he got in with some big old wolves, you know, and eventually it, it knocked everybody out and a lot of people died.

00:34:13.000 A lot of people went to prison and, um, you know, we were in the paper and, uh, I couldn't So it ended up being like a Bob Marley type of thing.

00:34:30.000 He said, if you're not living good, travel wide.

00:34:35.000 And I literally just walked out of town because we had scarlet letters on our chest.

00:34:41.000 That's when I really started learning how to stand behind that guitar and write songs and slowly but surely start.

00:34:49.000 I learned how to play basically in front of people, and people just were giving me money kind of over time.

00:34:55.000 That and, you know, food and shelter in exchange for my story at their back door.

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00:35:37.000 Do you ever wonder?

00:35:40.000 How things could have gone?

00:35:42.000 Because things turned out great.

00:35:44.000 Like, look, you're a popular music artist now.

00:35:47.000 You know, worldwide.

00:35:48.000 You're famous.

00:35:49.000 I'm surprised.

00:35:50.000 You know what I'm surprised by?

00:35:52.000 I'm surprised I never got heavily addicted to drugs.

00:35:54.000 Yeah?

00:35:55.000 I am.

00:35:56.000 You know, my sister passed away ten years ago from substances and hard living and all that kind of stuff.

00:36:02.000 And, hell, my whole family's in AA.

00:36:05.000 Everybody top to bottom, left to right, turn them inside out.

00:36:09.000 I think about it a lot.

00:36:10.000 But I really do.

00:36:12.000 I remember I was living with that guy who was at the shanty that was playing guitar.

00:36:17.000 He's on the football team.

00:36:18.000 I knew him from sports.

00:36:19.000 His name was Daniel Harmon.

00:36:21.000 And he went out there to California with me that first time.

00:36:24.000 And we were living on farms, and I was working for ganja farmers, working on horse farms, working for winemakers, all kind of people.

00:36:35.000 Just doing grunt work for them.

00:36:37.000 Doing the fence work.

00:36:38.000 They didn't want to do.

00:36:39.000 Moving soil for people.

00:36:41.000 You know what I mean?

00:36:42.000 Digging ditches.

00:36:43.000 Laying pipe across really hard rocky roads.

00:36:48.000 Anything anybody can do.

00:36:50.000 You just need broad backing to be young.

00:36:54.000 Right.

00:36:56.000 But before I ever left Texas, I moved in with his sister.

00:37:02.000 And I remember, and she was just my friend.

00:37:05.000 I was never in a relationship with her or anything.

00:37:08.000 She was working at Silver City in West Dallas, the Gentleman's Club at 18, and making more money than anybody I'd ever seen.

00:37:17.000 The girl was 18, you know, and just making crazy, crazy money, and she let me rent a room from her and kind of gave me a deal and all that, and I ended up writing a song kind of about it more recently called Easy Money that I did with Shooter on the Lonesome Drifter record.

00:37:36.000 And that's kind of a thing, you know, if you're a poor kid from Texas, there's no such thing, you know, as easy money.

00:37:43.000 But I can't remember why I was telling you that, but it was hard on, I just remember like seeing, you'd see like young women working in strip clubs, making big money. 0.98

00:38:00.000 And the ones that I was around and have been around.

00:38:04.000 Very, very hard for that line of work, my line of work, your line of work, not to become addicted.

00:38:11.000 Yeah.

00:38:11.000 And I don't have a problem with a lot of the best artists I ever saw.

00:38:16.000 Struggled with addiction.

00:38:20.000 But in that way, I have been very fortunate.

00:38:22.000 Very, very fortunate.

00:38:23.000 How did you avoid it?

00:38:26.000 You know what it is, man?

00:38:26.000 I don't know.

00:38:27.000 I never had no kind of tolerance.

00:38:30.000 You know, I've always been like, And it's never changed.

00:38:38.000 I just felt it all, like, really strong, you know?

00:38:41.000 That's probably good.

00:38:42.000 Yeah.

00:38:43.000 Maybe it's a survival instinct, too.

00:38:45.000 I've never really thought about why, you know?

00:38:47.000 But I have considered it, because my brother's been through, you know, he did a lot of time in prison.

00:38:53.000 And, you know, my sister and my mama, you know what I mean, they both had their first kid, you know, when they were two.

00:39:05.000 A lot of it I do credit to my mama, you know.

00:39:07.000 It's like, you know, she told me something I remember that stuck with me.

00:39:10.000 I've been saying this all the time, Joe.

00:39:13.000 And, like, we had a lot of trouble in our family and a lot of people that we knew, a lot of dysfunction, a lot of trauma.

00:39:23.000 But when my mama kind of got out of that, she kind of is the person in the family.

00:39:29.000 That said, I'm going to change the trajectory of this line now in my generation. 0.69

00:39:36.000 And she didn't have an education.

00:39:40.000 She took herself back to school after I was born.

00:39:44.000 And cleaned up her act and got out of it. 0.74

00:39:49.000 And isolated me from a lot of that shit.

00:39:54.000 Which I think is a big part of the reason that I maybe didn't.

00:39:57.000 Right, you had a role model.

00:39:59.000 Yeah, I had a role model.

00:40:00.000 There was no male role models, not at home.

00:40:03.000 They were only pro athletes and coaches at school.

00:40:07.000 It's increasingly difficult for young men to find strong men of courage and vision that can help them grow into good men too.

00:40:19.000 It seems almost impossible these days.

00:40:21.000 It's unbelievable.

00:40:22.000 It's very difficult to find in your personal life.

00:40:24.000 It's hard, man.

00:40:25.000 You have to find it in other ways.

00:40:27.000 You have to find people online or people in the world.

00:40:31.000 I found it in athletes, in excellence in athletics.

00:40:42.000 Right.

00:40:44.000 Where the only way you can get there is hard work.

00:40:46.000 Yeah, and the odds are stacked against you, and it requires incredible focus.

00:40:51.000 I mean, I think that's why...

00:41:01.000 But what I wanted to say to you that my mama said, she said, what happened to you when you were young is not your fault.

00:41:09.000 But now you're a man, and it's your responsibility.

00:41:14.000 And I've been living off of that.

00:41:17.000 You know, for a long time, you know, because it's like, if you don't take responsibility at some point, man, it'll never leave you alone.

00:41:25.000 Right, you can't think that you're a victim.

00:41:28.000 Yeah, you can't think that it's not your fault.

00:41:31.000 You gotta take responsibility.

00:41:33.000 That's hard for people to accept when they know they've been victimized.

00:41:36.000 When they know they've been dealt a shitty hand of cards, you can just kind of wallow in it.

00:41:42.000 But that's a trap.

00:41:44.000 That's a trap that'll fuck you up.

00:41:46.000 It'll fuck up everybody around you, too.

00:41:48.000 Damn right.

00:41:49.000 Yeah, but it's a mindset thing.

00:41:51.000 It's like you can think your way out of that.

00:41:53.000 You have to have an example, though.

00:41:55.000 Either you have to be your own example, or you have to find an example of someone else who thought their way out of it.

00:42:01.000 And for my brother, for all the trouble that he's been in, in a way, I think he also was trying to help me.

00:42:13.000 You know, and so, you know, his hustle and his work ethic, in another sense, you know, was, that's been helpful to me too, you know, because I remember he used to hand out flyers and shit all over the place.

00:42:25.000 And when I'd be like a teenager, he'd be like, he'd be like, listen to me now.

00:42:29.000 If you leave an event at the other day that you're handing out flyers and you're flooding it with promotion, if you can even see that pavement underneath the, you know, pamphlets that you're handing out, you didn't promote it.

00:42:41.000 Wow.

00:42:42.000 That's what he used to tell me.

00:42:43.000 I was like, 15, 16. That mentality came in handy for me because I was just a street performer, just an itinerant performer.

00:42:56.000 I did have to learn how to market myself.

00:43:00.000 Part of the reason that I was...

00:43:20.000 you know, you ever seen Moneyball?

00:43:24.000 Brad Pitt flick Moneyball?

00:43:26.000 Yeah.

00:43:26.000 Right?

00:43:27.000 Yeah.

00:43:27.000 How they, you know, they introduced that concept of looking at the data to like maximize the It's kind of a pumping

00:43:58.000 dump.

00:44:01.000 The thing about that, it works.

00:44:03.000 Like if somebody has a, you know, if somebody, like some of these guys, you mentioned Oliver Anthony and some of these guys, they have a viral hit out of nowhere.

00:44:12.000 They've never played a venue or anything in their life.

00:44:16.000 You know, it can happen really fast.

00:44:20.000 And then obviously there's tremendous challenges, you know, down the line trying to keep that, you know, astronomical.

00:44:28.000 You know, quick rise up there. 0.61

00:44:31.000 But back in the day, the business deals weren't any good.

00:44:35.000 You know that.

00:44:35.000 They were terrible.

00:44:37.000 What they were good about, though, in a lot of cases, was developing these artists on these rosters, even if they were taking advantage of these poor farm boys, taking advantage, you know, of, you know, poor black artists from the South or women or whatever.

00:44:52.000 Nobody was getting a good deal, basically.

00:44:54.000 But, you know, like guys like Willie Nelson.

00:44:58.000 And Waylon Jennings.

00:45:00.000 Those guys were making two, three records a year.

00:45:03.000 Wow.

00:45:03.000 You know?

00:45:04.000 And you think about when Waylon breaks through, right, in the mid-70s, you know, as he's doing, you know, coming into his own in 1974, 1975.

00:45:18.000 I mean, how many records in is he at that point?

00:45:21.000 Wow.

00:45:21.000 He's, I mean, you know, Willie's red-headed stranger, which...

00:45:39.000 You know, those guys were 15, those guys were 15, 16, 17 records in, you know?

00:45:46.000 Aretha Franklin popped off on her 9th or 10th record.

00:45:50.000 Wow.

00:45:51.000 And most of these...

00:45:51.000 You know?

00:45:57.000 Right.

00:45:58.000 That's crazy to me.

00:45:59.000 That is crazy.

00:46:00.000 And what better way to develop than to just keep constantly producing new music and learn along the way?

00:46:05.000 In being neglected or misunderstood by the business when I was first dealing with it, it was really a blessing because I ended up making so many records, you know?

00:46:20.000 Yeah.

00:46:22.000 The music business has always been so predatory.

00:46:25.000 But it's like, it's the way I describe a lot of things.

00:46:30.000 It's like when you get something that's good combined with a bunch of people that want to make money off that something that's good.

00:46:36.000 You know, whether it's medicine, or whether it's music, or even in comedy, you get the same thing.

00:46:42.000 You get a bunch of people that just think they can make money off you.

00:46:45.000 Man, I always thought comedy was the hardest.

00:46:48.000 I always figured it was the hardest.

00:46:50.000 Because you mean, like, you gotta make them laugh or they're gonna fucking kill you.

00:46:50.000 Right?

00:46:53.000 And you have new shit all the time.

00:46:55.000 There's nothing behind you.

00:46:57.000 There's not even a guitar covering you up.

00:46:59.000 Right.

00:46:59.000 It's crazy to me.

00:47:00.000 Just to watch all those guys do their bit and shit.

00:47:03.000 So, like, I was always amazed by even people going up at, like, the open mics and, like, trying out their routine.

00:47:11.000 That always terrified me.

00:47:13.000 It terrifies me still when I watch open mics.

00:47:15.000 I watch open mics and I watch someone bombing.

00:47:18.000 I gotta leave the room.

00:47:19.000 I fear that it's contagious.

00:47:23.000 If I was on the road and I didn't get to pick my opening acts, like if I was working at a club and they had some local act in Florida or something like that and the guy was fucking terrible, I would literally have to not listen.

00:47:35.000 I'd have to leave the room and just sort of time when I was going to go on stage so I could go on stage.

00:47:41.000 With a fresh mindset, I couldn't think that this audience had been poisoned by this guy's shitty comedy.

00:47:47.000 I get that.

00:47:48.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:50.000 It's terrible, and it's like you think that nothing could be funny.

00:47:54.000 He's hypnotized them into this mediocre state of mind.

00:48:01.000 Like, I can't listen.

00:48:02.000 I gotta hide.

00:48:03.000 Yeah, and it's crazy that they could have that.

00:48:06.000 That strong an effect on the audience like that that quick I mean somebody can be up there fucking it up like crazy musically Yeah, and you kind of get a pass, you know, right, you know poetic license or whatever Well, you know people it's tolerable if the guy's into it, you know He could be into his own music and you're like I'm not into it, but he's into it at least he's like doing his song if you're not indie if you're Doing comedy and the audience is not into it, you're fucked.

00:48:32.000 You're like really fucked.

00:48:34.000 You have to engage those people.

00:48:35.000 It's unbelievable.

00:48:35.000 Yeah, I see that.

00:48:36.000 You got to be connected to those people and you can't fake it.

00:48:39.000 Like you can't even be saying the words perfectly and not be thinking about it.

00:48:43.000 You have to be thinking about what you're saying.

00:48:45.000 They know.

00:48:46.000 They're little animals.

00:48:47.000 They smell you.

00:48:48.000 They know.

00:48:49.000 They know if you're faking it.

00:48:51.000 And you just gotta lock in, man.

00:48:54.000 And you gotta learn how to lock in.

00:48:55.000 It takes about 10 years.

00:48:57.000 It takes 10 years of eating shit.

00:49:00.000 Just fucking bombing and traveling around and opening up for people and barely getting by.

00:49:07.000 That's the same thing with music, though, about the 10-year deal, you know, the 10,000-hour thing.

00:49:12.000 There's no doubt about it.

00:49:13.000 I think it's probably almost everything.

00:49:15.000 Yeah.

00:49:16.000 Anything you dedicate yourself to.

00:49:16.000 Almost everything.

00:49:18.000 You know, you like Noam Chomsky?

00:49:21.000 Yeah, sure.

00:49:22.000 I like old Noam Chomsky.

00:49:24.000 When I listen to him today, I'm like, Jesus, stop talking.

00:49:27.000 Yeah, he's popping off, isn't he?

00:49:28.000 Well, he just went the COVID vaccine stuff.

00:49:30.000 He was out of his fucking mind.

00:49:32.000 He wanted people to be isolated and quarantined and taken away from society if they weren't willing to take this fucking experimental shit.

00:49:39.000 I haven't kept up with him in recent years.

00:49:42.000 Well, he's old, right?

00:49:43.000 And old people, unfortunately, also, he's an academic. 0.98

00:49:47.000 So academics tend to trust experts in whatever field they're in.

00:49:51.000 And if he doesn't have an understanding—he has a deep understanding of how compromised people are politically by money.

00:49:58.000 And he's written some brilliant work on essentially the way the media is compromised and the way politics are compromised.

00:50:10.000 I don't think he applied that same skepticism towards the pharmaceutical-industrial complex.

00:50:15.000 Which is strange.

00:50:16.000 Well, people have their blind spots.

00:50:18.000 Yeah, we all do.

00:50:20.000 And they trust experts.

00:50:21.000 And if he, you know, he's got experts that are academics and you trust them.

00:50:25.000 And also he's old.

00:50:27.000 And old people get real scared of diseases.

00:50:29.000 They get real scared because they know how fucking vulnerable they are.

00:50:32.000 All the people that I knew that were old had the craziest reaction to COVID.

00:50:36.000 Terrified.

00:50:37.000 Even my own parents tried to, you know, talk them through some of the stuff.

00:50:41.000 They didn't want to hear it.

00:50:42.000 They only wanted to listen to doctors.

00:50:43.000 I'm like, I don't think this is what they're telling you.

00:50:47.000 Yeah.

00:50:48.000 Doctors are crazy.

00:50:50.000 They got a cabinet full of pills that they've been sold to sell you.

00:50:58.000 And they're incentivized.

00:51:00.000 That's what's really crazy.

00:51:01.000 When I found that out, I learned so much during the pandemic about the medical industry where I just thought they were there.

00:51:08.000 I'm so naive.

00:51:10.000 I didn't even realize that hospitals are privately owned.

00:51:14.000 I thought these were things set up by the government to make sure that people can get healed.

00:51:19.000 I thought it was all about making people better.

00:51:19.000 Right.

00:51:22.000 They're not public.

00:51:23.000 The closest thing to public is if they're owned by a religious organization, a church.

00:51:29.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:51:30.000 It's crazy.

00:51:31.000 It's crazy, and they're just fucking shuffling people in and out, trying to prescribe them as many things, and they're financially incentivized to prescribe things.

00:51:40.000 And then they have extreme overhead because they have liability insurance, they have student loan debt, and they have, you know, a high overhead to keep their practice running.

00:51:50.000 Where's Bernie Sanders when you need him?

00:51:52.000 Yeah.

00:51:53.000 Well, no, see, so I had open heart surgery right here in Austin to fix a valve here.

00:52:00.000 What was wrong with your heart?

00:52:01.000 Well, I was born with Parkinson's white disease.

00:52:05.000 It's an electrical issue in your heart.

00:52:08.000 Basically, like...

00:52:12.000 All this electricity is moving through it all the time.

00:52:16.000 You know, like a semiconductor or whatever.

00:52:19.000 And there was like a section of it that was like misfiring and it would cause an arrhythmia with me.

00:52:25.000 And when I was a kid in South Texas, we were told that was all I knew about.

00:52:29.000 And we were told that it was an annoyance.

00:52:32.000 Because I almost died a couple times when I was really, really young from it.

00:52:36.000 And, you know, my mama noticed and saved my life a couple times by getting, driving in, you know, into the city there in the San Benito and them hooking me up to all the wires and saving me.

00:52:49.000 Anyways, they told me as I got older that it would just, I could get, you know, an ablation for it where they apply heat basically and close this electrical.

00:53:00.000 Channel that's stuck in a loop or whatever But it but it wasn't life-threatening And then I got out here, you know, I was on the street for years And then when I was coming off the street Through kind of blues jams and I had been you know,

00:53:16.000 I was working on Gondra farms and it started selling, you know Weed in the mail and all that to kind of get off street buy myself some better clothes Get myself a good guitar and amp and all that started showing up at blues jams and then I could like you know because everything takes money you know like Problem with being a street player was even go play the open mics that have a two damn drink minimum And they'd see my crazy ass come in and knew knew that I was You know pretty wild and they didn't have any money and it didn't smell and I didn't smell good So

00:53:47.000 they really didn't like me for the longest time or whatever.

00:53:50.000 But through blues jams, I started leading bands and bars.

00:53:55.000 Deep Ellum, first gig I ever got.

00:53:57.000 And Austin was right there at Darwin's Pub, you know, on 6th Street, playing kind of solo in the afternoon.

00:54:03.000 It was the only guy, CJ was the only guy that gave me a gig, even on 6th Street.

00:54:07.000 I always owed him for that.

00:54:08.000 He was giving me 50 bucks.

00:54:09.000 He wanted me to get paid out of the well whiskey and those...

00:54:18.000 Those gyros or whatever the hell he's got over there. 1.00

00:54:22.000 Anyway, I get on the road.

00:54:24.000 I get an agent.

00:54:25.000 I was standing out of Green Hall handing CDs out on a street corner because I couldn't get into the show.

00:54:30.000 Handed a guy a CD.

00:54:32.000 His name's Evan Felker.

00:54:34.000 I didn't know who he was at the time, but he's the front man for Turnpike Troubadours.

00:54:39.000 I gave him a CD.

00:54:43.000 Well, he took it home and he listened to it with his then girlfriend and now wife.

00:54:47.000 And lo and behold, his agent, John Folk, called me up and started booking me.

00:54:51.000 And then that's when I started playing the old Red Dirt, I like to call it the Hank Williams circuit, you know, the kind of old country chitlin circuit.

00:55:00.000 John Folk had kind of inherited it from like Buddy Lee attractions from an earlier generation.

00:55:07.000 It goes all the way back to Lucky Moeller and that old South Circuit that all the...

00:55:20.000 And then they, you know, then Coke and Pepsi came in, you know, CAA and William Morris and Wazerman and bought it all off, you know, bought it all out.

00:55:29.000 And you had no choice.

00:55:31.000 I mean, they were going to part it out no matter what.

00:55:32.000 And that's the way that it works, right?

00:55:34.000 When you get Coca-Cola's attention, right?

00:55:37.000 And they show up and they're like, good job.

00:55:39.000 You're taking some of our money away from us.

00:55:41.000 We're going to buy you out, son.

00:55:43.000 I think you can refuse them once or twice, and they'll come back with a better deal, right?

00:55:48.000 After that, if you keep turning them down, then they put all their energy into knocking you out.

00:55:54.000 That's what I mean.

00:55:55.000 As long as Coke doesn't change the flavor of Coca-Cola, right, they can...

00:56:07.000 So I'm on that circuit working my ass off.

00:56:07.000 Right.

00:56:10.000 200 and whatever shows a year for a bunch of years in a row, playing all over the place.

00:56:15.000 Seems like sometimes we play 21 nights in a row out there, you know, for shit kickers at Bonita Creek Hall and punk rock clubs in New Jersey and shit, you know?

00:56:24.000 Playing at the fucking, you know, Saint?

00:56:26.000 That little club, the Saint in Asbury Park?

00:56:29.000 It's like a 40 cap, man.

00:56:30.000 It's a badass place.

00:56:31.000 Anyway, I was like blacking out.

00:56:35.000 I moved up to a bus and shit, and I was like, I was getting really lightheaded.

00:56:40.000 And I'd be sitting in the back of the bus, and I would be so lightheaded.

00:56:43.000 I'd be blacking out a lot, right?

00:56:46.000 Just sitting there.

00:56:47.000 Short of breath, but I just thought, you know, I'm grinding.

00:56:52.000 I'm playing all these shows.

00:56:53.000 I'm going as hard as you can go.

00:56:56.000 Taking potions.

00:56:59.000 Just doing all this dumb shit.

00:57:00.000 Working hard.

00:57:02.000 And I was playing at the old Shady Grove here in town that's now closed down.

00:57:07.000 It was the KGSR radio thing.

00:57:11.000 Marsha Millam put it on or whatever and then it turned into ACL radio and then Shady Grove closed down there on Barton Springs or wherever. 0.98

00:57:18.000 But I played it a handful of times.

00:57:20.000 First time I played it, there was nobody there.

00:57:21.000 Second time I played it, it was packed and I had Willie's old There it is.

00:57:44.000 somehow this guy gets it.

00:57:46.000 I shouldn't call him a shyster, but he definitely shits at me.

00:57:49.000 That's a shyster then.

00:57:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:51.000 The music business is crazy because it's so...

00:57:55.000 Here it is.

00:57:56.000 Yeah.

00:57:57.000 Wow.

00:57:59.000 That's the one, man.

00:58:00.000 Yeah, that's the one.

00:58:01.000 On the other side, it says, driven only by the finest bass players.

00:58:05.000 Wow.

00:58:06.000 Because somebody in the band always drove those old buses.

00:58:09.000 I had that bus.

00:58:10.000 I used that bus exclusively for about a year or whatever.

00:58:14.000 And we get off the stage at Shady Grove, and my heart had gone out of rhythm.

00:58:21.000 How do I just say this?

00:58:22.000 I almost died in the back of that bus.

00:58:24.000 I end up finding because it won't go...

00:58:30.000 My arrhythmia is out.

00:58:32.000 It's going out, and it's getting harder and harder to get back in, to shock it back into normal rhythm.

00:58:39.000 And I just kept ignoring it because somebody told me in South Texas in the 80s not to worry about it.

00:58:45.000 Anyway.

00:58:47.000 Anyway, And I had to get surgery.

00:58:54.000 The point, long round point that I'm making to you about medical industry that I learned the hard way, man, is like, no one's advocating for you.

00:59:02.000 Only you.

00:59:03.000 You have to be your own advocate.

00:59:05.000 They don't give a fuck.

00:59:06.000 You know?

00:59:07.000 Like, they were just going to automatically put a mechanical valve in my heart, right?

00:59:07.000 They don't.

00:59:13.000 Didn't present any other options.

00:59:13.000 Automatically.

00:59:15.000 Anything.

00:59:16.000 Right?

00:59:18.000 And I get there on the American Heart Association webpage or whatever because I didn't have insurance at the time or anything.

00:59:24.000 Nothing.

00:59:26.000 The only reason that they covered me at the time was the Affordable Care Act and I had the right window where they could not deny me.

00:59:34.000 Otherwise, I don't know what I would have done.

00:59:36.000 And that is absolutely an imperfect system.

00:59:39.000 Right?

00:59:39.000 I just didn't have health insurance.

00:59:41.000 So here they are covering me, and probably because I don't have money and they're dealing with, you know, how it is, you know, American business practices or whatever.

00:59:50.000 They're like, here's this mechanical valve.

00:59:53.000 And I go and look it up, Joe, and it's like, you know, if you have a mechanical valve, you automatically are on blood thinner the rest of your life.

01:00:04.000 Automatically.

01:00:04.000 No matter what.

01:00:06.000 And that's just how it's going to be.

01:00:09.000 It lasts twice as long as a prosthetic valve, which I had not heard of at that point.

01:00:15.000 But that was the whole thing.

01:00:16.000 This can last up to 20 years.

01:00:17.000 But guess what?

01:00:19.000 You have like 300% higher risk of a stroke with a mechanical valve as a bioprosthetic cow valve.

01:00:29.000 And then the third thing was that you can hear that thing clicking.

01:00:34.000 You can hear the valve.

01:00:37.000 Ticking.

01:00:38.000 My buddy Everlast has one of those.

01:00:39.000 Really?

01:00:40.000 Yeah, he could go like this.

01:00:41.000 You can hear it.

01:00:45.000 And I was reading about that, and man, I'm like neurotic like I knew.

01:00:49.000 I'm like, I'll never get over it.

01:00:51.000 So that's when I found out about the bovine cow valve.

01:00:55.000 So it's made out of a cow?

01:00:57.000 Yeah.

01:00:58.000 Edwards Scientific makes it.

01:00:59.000 I carry a little card around in my wallet with the tag of...

01:01:08.000 Wow.

01:01:09.000 How long does that last?

01:01:09.000 You know?

01:01:11.000 They're supposed to last around 10 years.

01:01:14.000 And I had mine done right there at Seton, you know, Seton Medical there on 38th in January 2019.

01:01:26.000 So we're coming back around to it.

01:01:27.000 So you have to get another operation?

01:01:29.000 Yeah, but what they did is they put a...

01:01:38.000 The medical industry is, I think, really fucked up and really predatory, totally profit-driven, and people's health and preventative well-being and all that, we don't give a fuck about that in this country.

01:01:53.000 There's no money to be made off of people taking care of themselves and eating right and being preventative.

01:02:00.000 There's nothing in that.

01:02:02.000 The part about it that is amazing, though, even in the kind of insanity of all the land of cheap traders, is the technological advancements.

01:02:13.000 The technological advancements in the medical field, though not really, you know, available to the common person, they are incredible advancements.

01:02:24.000 Right.

01:02:24.000 So it's like they're moving so quickly that by the time I need to get another one, I don't think they'll.

01:02:35.000 They could do it at that time.

01:02:36.000 It was just more experimental and they didn't want to do it.

01:02:39.000 They were only doing it on really high-risk older patients.

01:02:43.000 But I think it's already kind of gone more mainstream from where when they cut me open to if I did it right now, I could probably get around cutting it.

01:02:52.000 So they're going through an artery?

01:02:54.000 Yeah.

01:02:55.000 And then what do they have to do to it?

01:02:57.000 Well, so with me, what was happening was is I had to get the ablation first before I could deal with aortic valve disease is what it's called.

01:03:08.000 And what it basically is is that over your aorta, there's these three valves that sit over the top of your aorta that they look like a Mercedes symbol is what they look like.

01:03:20.000 It's like the best example.

01:03:20.000 It really looks like a Mercedes symbol.

01:03:22.000 And some people...

01:03:27.000 Some people are born with two of the three fused together or just one missing altogether.

01:03:33.000 And it turned out that I was missing one.

01:03:35.000 It's like a leaky carburetor, you know?

01:03:37.000 So as the time goes, that old carburetor in that truck over time, it's just leaking more and more and more.

01:03:42.000 Wow.

01:03:43.000 And, I mean, I just got lucky, man, because I was, like, in the back of that fucking bus, and there was this lady driving us back then that, like...

01:03:43.000 You know?

01:03:58.000 That was going to heal me.

01:04:01.000 That shit didn't work.

01:04:03.000 And she doesn't drive me anymore. 0.89

01:04:07.000 Get yourself a good bus driver.

01:04:09.000 You have to get a good bus driver or you'll never get good sleep.

01:04:12.000 Yeah, because you'll be freaking out.

01:04:14.000 You'd be thinking, what if this person falls asleep?

01:04:16.000 Yeah, there's a lot of them.

01:04:18.000 Especially the late night drives?

01:04:19.000 Oh, man.

01:04:20.000 Ooh, late night drives are scary.

01:04:21.000 That highway starts hypnotizing you.

01:04:23.000 There was this guy, there was a video going around.

01:04:25.000 He drove us around for a little bit.

01:04:27.000 And there was this video passing around the industry, this guy they called Jimbo.

01:04:31.000 And it was this bus driver that was like, you know, just a speed freak.

01:04:34.000 And it was like this video of him where he was like on whatever he was on.

01:04:39.000 Somebody had recorded him and they'd put a phone up or something because they knew it was nuts and he was having one of those fucking methamphetamine freakouts driving the bus down the road and it was getting all passed around the industry and I saw it because he was driving us at the time.

01:04:57.000 I remember we woke up somewhere in New Mexico one morning because we were going on this road all of a sudden and I get up and I go to the front of the bus and we're like on some Fucking two-track, you know, Caliche fucking dirt road that was like behind a gate in a bus, that bus, right?

01:05:20.000 And I get up there, and he's looking all crazy, and the door handle, the inside door handle, the bus had been pulled off and shit.

01:05:27.000 It was crazy, man.

01:05:28.000 When we got back down here in Texas, man, I never saw a fool again.

01:05:33.000 Jesus Christ.

01:05:35.000 Well, you got to think, if you're driving buses all through the night, There's a high likelihood you're on amphetamines.

01:05:41.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:05:43.000 High likelihood.

01:05:43.000 For the business, it's probably the best way to stay awake.

01:05:46.000 Oh, no doubt about it.

01:05:47.000 Yeah.

01:05:48.000 And then, obviously, that shit's very addictive.

01:05:51.000 And you need it.

01:05:53.000 This band has to get to Cincinnati.

01:05:55.000 They gotta get to Cincinnati.

01:05:56.000 It's an eight-hour drive.

01:05:57.000 There's only one way to do it.

01:05:59.000 We gotta drive through the night.

01:06:00.000 That's why all the old performers were all on pills, you know?

01:06:03.000 They were getting prescribed that shit by the doctor.

01:06:07.000 Yeah.

01:06:07.000 You know?

01:06:08.000 Oh, yeah.

01:06:09.000 Does this give you a greater appreciation for life, the value of life, like knowing you almost lost it?

01:06:17.000 Yeah.

01:06:18.000 Oh, yeah.

01:06:20.000 I hadn't thought about I hadn't really thought about it before, you know?

01:06:20.000 Yeah, I don't know.

01:06:31.000 Of course.

01:06:32.000 Everybody feels invulnerable when you're young.

01:06:34.000 Yeah.

01:06:35.000 Especially if you're young and you're living that wild.

01:06:38.000 You know, transient, moving around, no roots.

01:06:41.000 When I was in my 20s, I guess I really, looking back now, I was like, man, I was young.

01:06:47.000 I thought I could live like that forever.

01:06:48.000 I thought I could live hand in mouth and, you know, sleep in people's pastures and, you know, do the gentleman hobo thing forever.

01:07:02.000 But, you know, I was 26. There's something romantic about that too, right?

01:07:07.000 Yeah.

01:07:08.000 I loved it.

01:07:09.000 I wouldn't take it back, man.

01:07:10.000 I mean, like, you know, I believe that, you know, I think mental slavery is something that is real.

01:07:24.000 But so much of it is us.

01:07:28.000 We do it to ourselves, you know?

01:07:31.000 Yeah.

01:07:31.000 And so that's what I was going to say about Chomsky.

01:07:34.000 I haven't kept up with him in years.

01:07:36.000 But I remember something he said a long time ago that stuck with me where he was talking about American consumerism over the last hundred years.

01:07:48.000 It really kind of illuminated my mind.

01:07:55.000 He was saying, there are people working really, really, really hard to eliminate your sense of purpose for the explicit goal.

01:08:06.000 Of making you a more efficient consumer, right?

01:08:12.000 All human beings live for and desire a life of purpose.

01:08:22.000 Purpose.

01:08:23.000 It doesn't matter what it is.

01:08:24.000 Something that you can dedicate yourself to.

01:08:27.000 The 10,000 hours, the 10 years.

01:08:29.000 It can be, you know, anything.

01:08:32.000 Wood making or your buddy with this ancient tooth that he's carving into this beautiful piece of art You know?

01:09:01.000 90s radio just Blasting my brain as a kid.

01:09:11.000 that like it's like so much programming is so hard for me to watch because you know that it's only a vehicle for the commercials right right so whenever i'm watching something and as soon as i think that it's not that good

01:09:41.000 I feel like I killed a lot of the false version of me that I was becoming that I only realized when I walked away from Crystal City.

01:09:59.000 You know what I mean?

01:10:02.000 And then I really started becoming me.

01:10:09.000 That's when I really started becoming me.

01:10:10.000 A lot of people are prisoners to that their whole life because the only value they place is in how much stuff they're able to acquire.

01:10:19.000 That's the only value that they see in life.

01:10:22.000 They look at numbers on a ledger.

01:10:24.000 They look at numbers in their bank account.

01:10:26.000 And they look at the stuff they're willing to acquire or that they're able to acquire.

01:10:30.000 Right.

01:10:30.000 And that's their only measure of success in this life.

01:10:33.000 Yeah, the very definition of the word rich has changed so much over the last, you know, 100 years.

01:10:40.000 You know, it's kind of moved entirely.

01:10:41.000 It really, richness wasn't a material idea, you know, but it, You know, richness of life, fullness of life.

01:10:54.000 Right.

01:10:55.000 Fulfillment.

01:10:56.000 Fulfillment.

01:10:58.000 Purpose.

01:10:59.000 Health.

01:11:00.000 Community.

01:11:02.000 Family.

01:11:03.000 Friends.

01:11:05.000 Real life.

01:11:06.000 But so many people, they forego all that.

01:11:11.000 They'll throw everything out the window just for the numbers.

01:11:14.000 For numbers, and they think they're successful.

01:11:17.000 I mean, it's the way that it's being run, you know, like, I mean...

01:11:24.000 All this free social media shit ain't free.

01:11:27.000 You give up your attention.

01:11:27.000 No.

01:11:29.000 Your attention is very, very valuable.

01:11:31.000 Your data and your attention.

01:11:33.000 Yeah, your privacy.

01:11:34.000 The Transparent Society.

01:11:35.000 But man, y 'all pulled up that AI stuff.

01:11:39.000 I remember, I won't tell you the whole thing, but I was playing on the street in Europe when I was younger.

01:11:46.000 I'd met a guy down on the Lower East Side.

01:11:49.000 He's a Danish jazz singer.

01:11:51.000 And he would show up over in the States a couple times a year, and he was doing really well there in Denmark, and the state really sponsors the arts there in a big way, and it's a small country, high quality of life.

01:12:05.000 He really had it made over there, and when he was coming over to the States to play music, it was almost more of a leisure thing for him.

01:12:11.000 Benjamin Agerbach is his name.

01:12:12.000 Great singer.

01:12:13.000 great jazz singer.

01:12:15.000 And he'd show up at the open mics and all this shit.

01:12:17.000 And he, I think he really, And he eventually helped me get over to Europe.

01:12:28.000 And I played the club circuit in Copenhagen for like six weeks or whatever.

01:12:33.000 And I was really rough around the edges.

01:12:36.000 And the American novelty in the folk, in blues clubs around Copenhagen wore off really quick.

01:12:43.000 And I wound up back on the street, but this time in Europe.

01:12:46.000 And as soon as I started playing on the street in Copenhagen, man, then being a real Texan in Europe in front of tourists on the street, man, that's when I started making money.

01:12:59.000 It was crazy.

01:13:00.000 My money, like, quadrupled.

01:13:01.000 Because all of a sudden, I was like a truly exotic.

01:13:05.000 Texas is exotic.

01:13:06.000 And everywhere you go in the world, it means something, right?

01:13:09.000 They either want to shake your hand or they step back.

01:13:11.000 And it doesn't matter where you go in the world.

01:13:14.000 There's not an inch of the world that hadn't heard of Texas.

01:13:17.000 And so musically, I think culturally it means something, no matter what.

01:13:26.000 And to play music and be a Texan is worth a lot on its own.

01:13:31.000 You know what I mean?

01:13:32.000 It's a big part of it, is just being a Texan.

01:13:34.000 Gary Clark Jr. learning how to hold his own.

01:13:40.000 Under the tradition of Austin blues players in Texas, guitar slingers, I mean, it's second to none in the world, you know?

01:13:48.000 So if you've seen them live, you know what it is.

01:13:53.000 But I remember seeing, like, there were no self-checkouts at grocery stores and shit in the United States back then.

01:14:01.000 Not one.

01:14:02.000 And then I was like...

01:14:19.000 and I went down there.

01:14:22.000 I'm glad I didn't think about it, man, because the language barrier was really difficult.

01:14:25.000 And I didn't really realize it until I was pulling into the city, you know?

01:14:29.000 And actually, there was an Algerian guy who spoke English that was like, man, go to Montmartre.

01:14:33.000 Go to Les Sacré-Cœur.

01:14:34.000 Go to Les Sacré-Cœur.

01:14:35.000 That's where the tourists are, whatever.

01:14:37.000 And I kind of learned how to hustle tourists with gypsies, kind of, that were using me kind of as a decoy on the steps. 1.00

01:14:46.000 And I thought, this is great.

01:14:47.000 These gypsies love me.

01:14:49.000 And I'm sitting there playing.

01:14:51.000 And while I'm playing, I realize that I'm just a distraction while they're pickpocketing these tourists.

01:14:55.000 It was a good trip.

01:14:56.000 Of course, I didn't say anything.

01:14:58.000 Also, I didn't stick with them too much.

01:15:00.000 But the automation thing, you know?

01:15:06.000 Europe is way ahead of us on all of that because in a lot of ways America when you try to like analyze America against Europe and But we're more similar to Latin or South America in a lot of ways, with just how big the country is.

01:15:28.000 You know, and, you know, the, you know.

01:15:37.000 Because the country's so big, we got the states that are divided up, all that type of shit, those kind of technologies to hit the people and become mainstream, it's a slower process here, right?

01:15:48.000 And one of the things about the pandemic that is obvious to me now is a lot of people realized that they could speed that up.

01:16:00.000 I think they'd been trying to eliminate the risks.

01:16:07.000 And what's the word?

01:16:10.000 Externalizing costs, right?

01:16:11.000 How do we get these machines in here and these people out?

01:16:17.000 And we've probably jumped ahead in that process in America a decade or more in just a couple of years.

01:16:25.000 And I just remember, this was probably 2010.

01:16:30.000 You'd go into a grocery store in Paris, and there was only one person.

01:16:35.000 Working there and everything else was self-checkout.

01:16:38.000 And that was years before I saw it here.

01:16:40.000 And then you think about the way that that's hitting in every single industry in America.

01:16:45.000 Yeah.

01:16:46.000 Right?

01:16:47.000 Well, it's so easy for people to be completely disconnected from other people now.

01:16:51.000 You know, you don't have to interact.

01:16:54.000 You know, and that's part of it, and if they don't have to pay people, they can maximize their profits, and then it becomes a very impersonal experience.

01:17:03.000 Soylent Green is coming, baby.

01:17:05.000 It's coming.

01:17:05.000 You seen that movie?

01:17:06.000 Yeah.

01:17:06.000 It's a good movie, man.

01:17:07.000 It's a good movie.

01:17:08.000 It's a scary fucking movie.

01:17:10.000 Yeah.

01:17:10.000 Well, I think all the dystopian movies about the future, they undersold it.

01:17:14.000 It's gonna get real weird real soon.

01:17:17.000 And because automation is not just going to apply to self-checkout.

01:17:21.000 It's going to apply to everything.

01:17:22.000 All that truck driving shit, that's all gone.

01:17:25.000 That's going to be gone.

01:17:26.000 It's all going to be self-driving trucks.

01:17:26.000 Right.

01:17:29.000 And they're going to be more efficient, less accidents, safer.

01:17:33.000 Just remember those big business people.

01:17:35.000 Just remember those people.

01:17:37.000 I know a whole lot of people who have relied on undocumented workers.

01:17:43.000 In this state, for decades, voting against the very thing that they were using themselves this entire time.

01:17:50.000 How are you going to rely on undocumented workers?

01:17:54.000 Yourself.

01:17:54.000 Right.

01:17:55.000 Right.

01:17:56.000 You ain't paying taxes on it.

01:17:57.000 You're not, you know, those people got no safety net or anything.

01:18:01.000 Right.

01:18:01.000 And then, you know, here comes the, that's where it's going to happen.

01:18:06.000 You know, I'm not saying just as a negative thing.

01:18:08.000 Like, I think you can already see.

01:18:12.000 In social media, I do think there's this exhaustion, even in the youth, with this monolith, you know, with this thing.

01:18:23.000 The phones.

01:18:24.000 Yeah, you know, and I've been saying that in the music business, like in country music, you know, like Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

01:18:37.000 You know, and so it's like...

01:18:37.000 Right.

01:19:03.000 that you can't use your band, you can't choose your studio, right?

01:19:08.000 Like, any of that.

01:19:10.000 Like, Waylon, you have to think how crazy that is.

01:19:12.000 You couldn't use your band, and you couldn't even pick the studio.

01:19:15.000 You couldn't produce.

01:19:17.000 You didn't have creative control at all.

01:19:19.000 Waylon's the guy that breaks through that wall.

01:19:23.000 How did he do it?

01:19:25.000 I think a couple of ways.

01:19:28.000 It's the yin and yang of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

01:19:32.000 They were both on RCA.

01:19:33.000 Willie was...

01:19:38.000 Stapleton made his career as a songwriter early on, you know, and that's what catapulted.

01:19:44.000 Really, for everything, you know, that he's got going on now, there's a really great foundation there of a guy that's spent his whole life writing songs.

01:19:52.000 And that's what Willie did, you know.

01:19:54.000 So Willie actually had success pretty early when he got to Nashville with, you know, songs like Nightlife and Crazy and all that kind of stuff.

01:20:04.000 Baron Young and Patsy Cline and these kinds of really big artists were cutting his songs pretty early on, right?

01:20:10.000 But he was so weird to the establishment at the time.

01:20:15.000 So, you know, kind of had this like philosophical thing to his writing that was going over the heads of the hillbilly deal.

01:20:26.000 So he was really neglected as a...

01:20:31.000 Waylon was more favored, actually, by like Chet Atkins and them.

01:20:36.000 But like, you'd be number one on the country charts in Nashville in the mid-60s and be in debt.

01:20:43.000 Wow.

01:20:43.000 You know, that's what Waylon said.

01:20:44.000 Waylon was like, man, I'd be number one all the time and I was fucking dead broke.

01:20:48.000 You know, it's like, man, they got you out there seven nights a week and you're coming back and Lucky Moeller's telling them that you owe him fucking 10 grand.

01:20:56.000 You know, that was...

01:21:00.000 Willie ends up leaving RCA.

01:21:02.000 They're over him.

01:21:03.000 He leaves RCA because Jerry Wexler is coming down and A&R and Texans out of this progressive Central Texas scene of that era that was so unique.

01:21:14.000 And it happened then and just totally unique.

01:21:17.000 The whole scene, everything here, the movement, the hippies and the cowboys, where everybody could hear in the capital of Texas, It was weird, but they were in the same rooms.

01:21:31.000 We're still doing that here, you know, which is what I'm really proud of, you know, and glad that this town never turned into Nashville or LA or any of those towns.

01:21:41.000 The best thing that ever happened to us is that the business didn't grow up like that.

01:21:43.000 Right.

01:21:44.000 I really do believe that because it's allowed our unique culture to continue to grow, even if it's, like I said, and sometimes it's good to be neglected by that machine.

01:21:54.000 For sure.

01:21:55.000 But so Willie leaves, Jerry Wexler pulls him out of there because RCA doesn't give a fuck about him anyway, right?

01:22:00.000 He goes to Atlantic, sells 400,000 records.

01:22:04.000 The boys up in New York don't even realize there's a country division.

01:22:08.000 After Willie sells 400,000 records, which is a lot, right?

01:22:12.000 They close the division.

01:22:14.000 And that's when Willie lands at Columbia.

01:22:18.000 And he's having success.

01:22:22.000 Well, they were starting to think that Waylon was past his prime, too.

01:22:26.000 But then Willie's blowing up on the other label.

01:22:28.000 And Willie and Waylon got the same manager at the time, Neil Reshin.

01:22:31.000 And what's Reshin doing?

01:22:33.000 Reshin's leveraging it all.

01:22:34.000 And so Waylon was about to leave RCA.

01:22:40.000 And they doubled down and matched.

01:22:43.000 Kind of Willie's deal because they didn't want to lose Waylon.

01:22:49.000 And Waylon was like, I'm only Stan.

01:22:55.000 I've got to be producing my own records.

01:22:59.000 I've got to be my band and I've got to pick the place that I'm playing.

01:23:02.000 And he manages to do that.

01:23:05.000 So it's not just Waylon.

01:23:06.000 It's Willie and Waylon together.

01:23:07.000 That's why they're so tied together, you know, is these two guys that – You know what I mean?

01:23:23.000 Because you'd be in Nashville, it's still like this now.

01:23:27.000 When I got signed to Nashville by 30 Tigers, it was purely because John Folk was my agent.

01:23:34.000 And those guys, they'd tell you this themselves.

01:23:36.000 They didn't understand what I was doing.

01:23:38.000 and they didn't get it.

01:23:39.000 I was only put...

01:23:47.000 Openly saying, I don't understand this.

01:23:50.000 Right?

01:23:51.000 which at least they're being honest about, you know?

01:23:52.000 But then what they would do that was so weird is, like, they'd give you – Like a tenth of that, you know, kind of on the independent, alt-country, Americana circuit.

01:24:17.000 But what frustrated me about it, Joe, was that they're only giving you a tenth of money, but they're behaving like major labels with these two-year record cycles.

01:24:30.000 That just kills an artist that hasn't broken through.

01:24:35.000 It just kills you.

01:24:36.000 That's a 100% Industry model because they can always get another horse.

01:24:43.000 You know what I mean?

01:24:44.000 They can always get another horse.

01:24:48.000 They bet on 10 young guys and one of those amateur realists blows up.

01:24:55.000 They're good.

01:24:56.000 But you're never going to get a Waylon Jennings out of that model.

01:25:00.000 It's not going to happen.

01:25:01.000 mean it's not it's not gonna happen you know and so how did but how did Waylon get Because Willie left, right?

01:25:17.000 Because Willie left, and all of a sudden, Waylon was really going to leave.

01:25:22.000 That's all of a sudden.

01:25:24.000 That was his leverage.

01:25:25.000 They gave him everything.

01:25:26.000 They gave him everything, and everything was changing.

01:25:30.000 Everything was changing in Nashville.

01:25:31.000 we're talking about when I say like 1974 here, you got to think about it.

01:25:34.000 You know, this is America in Vietnam.

01:25:39.000 I am.

01:25:40.000 This is America coming out of the 60s.

01:25:45.000 It's coming.

01:25:47.000 Everything was...

01:25:58.000 you know what I mean and then by the time we get to the 80s you know it's like this level of like pop culture and like American pop culture as a global export Kind of in the 80s and 90s.

01:26:28.000 Nashville was such an old system.

01:26:30.000 It's kind of like in country music today.

01:26:33.000 One of the reasons everybody's sprinting into it.

01:26:36.000 It's because it's like one of the only places left where there's like loyalty, long-term loyalty in the fan base compared to like, you know, what happened with pop music in the last 20 years with pop and hip-hop and all that.

01:26:36.000 Right?

01:26:55.000 I mean, every one of those guys called me at one point and were like, I want to get into country music because you got loyal fans.

01:27:01.000 Wow.

01:27:02.000 All hip-hop industry guys.

01:27:03.000 Wow.

01:27:04.000 All of them.

01:27:04.000 Every last one of them.

01:27:05.000 And they've had success with a whole bunch of guys since then.

01:27:08.000 I just didn't do it.

01:27:09.000 Well, country music has always been connected to authenticity.

01:27:12.000 And that's the reason why you keep the loyal fans.

01:27:12.000 Yeah.

01:27:15.000 Because people know that it's real.

01:27:15.000 That's right.

01:27:17.000 That's right.

01:27:18.000 Whether it's Coulter Wall or whoever it is, it's authentic.

01:27:21.000 You hear it and you go, this is not mass produced.

01:27:24.000 This is not a bunch of executives sitting around looking at a focus group trying to figure out what's going to hit.

01:27:30.000 That's right.

01:27:31.000 Man, you mentioned Coulter.

01:27:31.000 Yeah.

01:27:33.000 I wanted to say this.

01:27:35.000 Something I wanted to bring up with the Willie and Waylon thing, and I've been meaning to tell Coulter this, so I'll just tell him on your show.

01:27:41.000 So we were both on the 30 Tigers roster for years.

01:27:45.000 I met Coulter out at Willie's Ranch goddamn 10 years ago, right?

01:27:49.000 And he's one of my favorites.

01:27:51.000 I've always loved his songwriting.

01:27:53.000 I mean, everything he puts out is great.

01:27:54.000 Don't you agree?

01:27:55.000 Yeah, I love him.

01:27:56.000 Special, you know, really special.

01:27:58.000 Jamie turned me on to him when I heard Kate McKinnon the first time.

01:28:02.000 No, Jamie, this Jamie.

01:28:02.000 Jamie Johnson?

01:28:03.000 Oh, this Jamie.

01:28:04.000 Yeah.

01:28:05.000 He texted me and he's like, you're going to love this guy.

01:28:07.000 Yeah.

01:28:08.000 He sent me that song.

01:28:09.000 I was like, holy shit.

01:28:10.000 When I found out he was 21 when he made that song, I was like, you got to be kidding me.

01:28:13.000 That sounds like a 60-year-old chain smoker.

01:28:16.000 Man, it bowled us all over.

01:28:17.000 And you know what's funny, man?

01:28:18.000 He's just getting better.

01:28:19.000 Yeah.

01:28:19.000 You know, he is.

01:28:20.000 He's incredible.

01:28:21.000 Here's something about that.

01:28:23.000 I told him I need to.

01:28:24.000 I wanted to buy him a pickup truck as a gift for this.

01:28:24.000 I'm going to.

01:28:27.000 This is why.

01:28:28.000 So he was on the roster.

01:28:30.000 I was on the roster.

01:28:31.000 And I started way down at the back of the line.

01:28:34.000 Right?

01:28:35.000 And made a lot of records.

01:28:38.000 And more and more of the labels are calling.

01:28:42.000 And each record I'm putting out is doing better than the previous one.

01:28:45.000 And there's more money and promotion going into each album.

01:28:51.000 But a lot of outside guys are calling.

01:28:53.000 All the coastal labels are calling.

01:28:55.000 New York and L.A. are all over me.

01:28:59.000 Culture ends up pulling up stakes and going to RCA.

01:29:03.000 And he didn't just go to RCA.

01:29:05.000 He took everything with him.

01:29:06.000 He took the whole catalog over there.

01:29:10.000 And I wasn't really aware of that.

01:29:11.000 I didn't know what was going on.

01:29:15.000 And RCA, they had hollered at me through one of their A&R guys or whatever.

01:29:20.000 Their big guys were never really interested in me out there, right?

01:29:23.000 So they weren't one of the ones that was really hot on me.

01:29:27.000 But David Macias at 30 Tigers, very similar to...

01:29:38.000 And when he left, all of a sudden, those guys, because he took everything with him, were about to lose me, and they fucking handed the keys over to me.

01:29:49.000 You know what I mean?

01:29:51.000 Because, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Coulter had left and just took everything.

01:29:57.000 And so that ended up happening on a record cycle for me for an album called $10 Cowboy.

01:30:03.000 And I was this close to going to, you know, the New York boys.

01:30:10.000 And Macias comes in last minute and beats them all on the royalty rate, on the money, on everything.

01:30:15.000 Right?

01:30:18.000 I guess what I'm saying is culture's kind of my Willie Nelson.

01:30:21.000 Appreciate you, bud.

01:30:23.000 You're doing good.

01:30:24.000 Yeah, he won't do podcasts.

01:30:26.000 I try to get him in.

01:30:27.000 He sent me a bunch of records, sent me some cool shit, said sorry, but no.

01:30:27.000 Yeah, I know.

01:30:31.000 But, I mean, that's probably better.

01:30:31.000 Yeah.

01:30:34.000 Yeah.

01:30:34.000 I mean, he wants to just be as authentic as possible.

01:30:37.000 The dude spends time actually working on a ranch.

01:30:40.000 Well, that's what he loves to do.

01:30:41.000 Yeah.

01:30:41.000 You ever been up there to Saskatchewan?

01:30:43.000 No.

01:30:43.000 Man, it's in their blood.

01:30:45.000 That's what that land is.

01:30:45.000 Yeah.

01:30:48.000 That's what they do up there.

01:30:49.000 Yeah.

01:30:49.000 I've been right through Saskatoon, even that big town there, you know, and I guess he's not too far down south from there, but, like, it's a – Yeah.

01:31:01.000 Well, it's in his music, clearly.

01:31:03.000 Mm-hmm.

01:31:03.000 You know, I mean, that guy screams authenticity.

01:31:06.000 Yep, he does.

01:31:07.000 And he grew up on, you know, Waylon and all that stuff, you know, and all the cowboy and all the, you know, he knows that cowboy music probably better than anybody.

01:31:15.000 Yeah.

01:31:16.000 Yeah, well, that's the thing that when you're talking about these hip-hop artists and pop artists, that's what they feel.

01:31:23.000 You know, all artists, I mean, even someone who's a pop artist, what do they want to be?

01:31:27.000 They want something that resonates with people.

01:31:29.000 They want something that really connects with people.

01:31:31.000 You know, and if they think the vehicle to doing that is a hip-hop song, they'll take that route.

01:31:37.000 But then they'll hear something like Kate McKinnon, like, God.

01:31:41.000 Damn.

01:31:42.000 That's what I really want to do.

01:31:44.000 You can't duplicate that.

01:31:46.000 The only way to do that is to live it.

01:31:48.000 Yeah, it's got to be real.

01:31:52.000 Just like I was talking about with comedy, they have to know that you're really thinking that.

01:31:58.000 It's something in music, too.

01:31:59.000 They have to know that this is...

01:32:04.000 You know that it's coming from someone's mind and their soul.

01:32:08.000 It's coming from their life experience.

01:32:10.000 It's who they are as a human being.

01:32:12.000 This is their art.

01:32:13.000 This is a true expression of their being.

01:32:17.000 And that's what makes people loyal.

01:32:19.000 Those pop artists just want to take a picture standing next to authenticity. 0.92

01:32:23.000 Yeah, they do.

01:32:24.000 Well, they want to be it, but they don't know how to get there, and they don't know how to do it, and they've never lived it, and they've been paying attention to all the polls and the focus groups, and they've been listening to the executives, and they've been taking the advances and driving the Mercedes.

01:32:38.000 They're doing all the shit that leads you down the wrong path.

01:32:42.000 And then one day you realize, like, fuck.

01:32:45.000 It's not what I want, you know?

01:32:47.000 It's interesting, because it's like, you know, there's always going to be these examples of something that pops through that's real, that people gravitate towards, and then there's always going to be these people trying to capitalize on it and make money off of it and trying to figure out how to recreate it in an inauthentic way.

01:33:04.000 It's not possible.

01:33:05.000 That's the one thing that might save us from this AI shit.

01:33:09.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:33:10.000 Because AI is going to create a bunch of really catchy songs, you know?

01:33:14.000 But it's never going to create an Oliver Anthony song.

01:33:16.000 It's never going to create hard times.

01:33:18.000 It's never going to create some of your shit.

01:33:20.000 It's not going to.

01:33:22.000 It's got to come from a real human being.

01:33:24.000 And there's a thing that people are always going to want.

01:33:27.000 You're always going to want something that you know a real human being made.

01:33:31.000 There's something in it.

01:33:32.000 That's why this building's filled with art.

01:33:35.000 I love looking at something that somebody made.

01:33:38.000 It came from their soul.

01:33:41.000 It came from whoever they are as a human.

01:33:43.000 They laid it down, whether it's music or whether it's art, comedy, whatever it is.

01:33:49.000 That's coming from a human being.

01:33:52.000 we're always going to want to be connected to that.

01:33:54.000 Yeah, I was looking at you saying that with your...

01:34:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:34:03.000 I stole it from Jimmy.

01:34:06.000 When we first started doing it.

01:34:07.000 The greats never reveal their sources.

01:34:10.000 No.

01:34:10.000 I couldn't help it.

01:34:11.000 I'm just kidding.

01:34:12.000 I had to.

01:34:13.000 Well, it's obvious.

01:34:14.000 I had to give it up.

01:34:14.000 It wasn't obvious to me, man.

01:34:16.000 I'm kind of slow.

01:34:16.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:34:17.000 Well, I had to give it up.

01:34:19.000 It's like, but you know.

01:34:20.000 Austin, Texas or Bust, it says right there.

01:34:22.000 I used to listen to.

01:34:23.000 Jimmy all the time on the way to the Comedy Store.

01:34:26.000 It was like Jimmy and Led Zeppelin.

01:34:28.000 I'd listen to A Whole Lotta Love and If Six Was Nine.

01:34:31.000 I'd listen to that all the time on the way down Laurel Canyon.

01:34:37.000 Can you imagine how crazy that must have sounded coming through the radio or coming through people's sound systems in America in the late 60s?

01:34:49.000 Well, my friend Phil Hartman.

01:34:51.000 When he was a kid, he used to work at the Whiskey.

01:34:55.000 He was like, you know, like a grip.

01:34:57.000 And it was his job.

01:34:59.000 The speakers were precariously placed on the edge of the stage.

01:35:04.000 And Jimmy performed there.

01:35:06.000 And it was his job to stand there and make sure that Jimmy didn't kick over the speaker into the audience.

01:35:12.000 So he stood right there while Hendrix played right above him.

01:35:17.000 And the way he talked about it, man, it was just, to him, it was like this magical moment.

01:35:24.000 Because I think he was a teenager at the time.

01:35:26.000 And it was...

01:35:31.000 No, he was just working for the club.

01:35:33.000 You know, he was just a guy that was hired to work there, you know, just a kid.

01:35:37.000 And he was basically literally just there to make sure the speaker doesn't fall into the ground.

01:35:42.000 And, you know, Jimmy was playing right above him.

01:35:46.000 Just right there.

01:35:47.000 He said it was incredible.

01:35:48.000 It was insane.

01:35:49.000 He said it was just like this magical moment.

01:35:52.000 Because Jimmy live.

01:35:53.000 You know, there's something about seeing someone live.

01:35:57.000 You know, like I was talking about when I saw Gary play Midnight Rider.

01:36:00.000 There's something live.

01:36:01.000 And I was with my oldest daughter, and we were at this downtown L.A. club.

01:36:05.000 And it was like a Monday or Tuesday night.

01:36:08.000 It was a weeknight, and it was a midnight show.

01:36:11.000 It was like a real late night show.

01:36:13.000 And it was sponsored by an alcohol company.

01:36:16.000 I wish I could remember the company.

01:36:17.000 But they put together this very small show.

01:36:20.000 And it was just, it was a total impromptu session.

01:36:24.000 And Suzanne, my friend Suzanne Santo, who's the lead singer of Honey Honey at the time, she's incredibly talented.

01:36:31.000 She was singing it and she didn't know the exact words.

01:36:34.000 So she had a... 0.99

01:36:38.000 So she's singing Midnight Rider off her phone and Gary's in the background.

01:36:44.000 And I recorded it on my phone.

01:36:48.000 See if you can find it, Jamie.

01:36:49.000 I have somebody else's version.

01:36:53.000 Oh, shit.

01:36:55.000 That's what I'm talking about right there.

01:36:59.000 Jameson.

01:36:59.000 It was Jameson.

01:37:00.000 It was Jameson.

01:37:09.000 Come on! 0.61

01:37:11.000 I just love when he gets into it.

01:37:14.000 Yeah.

01:38:13.000 Blues will never go out of style.

01:38:14.000 Woo! 0.99

01:38:33.000 guitar solo

01:39:03.000 guitar solo Come on, Gary.

01:39:10.000 Let's go.

01:39:11.000 What the hell?

01:39:33.000 Oh.

01:39:34.000 Are we out of lyrics?

01:39:41.000 That's a nice jacket, G. Yeah.

01:39:45.000 Oh, that's it, yeah.

01:39:49.000 Jamie, see if you can find Midnight Rider on my Instagram.

01:39:52.000 I know it's on there.

01:39:53.000 I want to play that part because it was fucking insane.

01:39:57.000 It was just one of those magical moments where you see someone perform live.

01:40:02.000 There's just something about, There it is.

01:40:14.000 That's it.

01:40:15.000 That's it.

01:40:45.000 Oh, yeah.

01:41:02.000 you See how she's looking at her phone?

01:41:06.000 She had to read the lyrics off her phone.

01:41:08.000 They're all doing that now.

01:41:09.000 It's crazy.

01:41:10.000 She had to because she didn't know exactly the lyrics.

01:41:13.000 What if you didn't have this fucking thing, though?

01:41:16.000 Then you might have to remember them.

01:41:18.000 Well, she would have had to get a piece of paper.

01:41:20.000 Or make some shit up.

01:41:22.000 Yeah, make some shit up.

01:41:24.000 Man, you know, listening to Gary do that, and you talking about how much you love Stevie Ray Vaughan, it just, you know, it reminds me.

01:41:30.000 It's like, you know, this, to me, it's like, you know.

01:41:38.000 Because if you're in Texas, all that shit over there on the other side of Mississippi, it goes away for us.

01:41:46.000 There's a brashness, there's a boldness in any sound, whether it's coming out of honky-tonk or coming out of a blues joint.

01:41:57.000 In Texas, it's a totally different sound.

01:42:00.000 You know, it's like Billy Gibbons talked about this a lot, you know, like when those guys were trying to break through on the national scene, the idea of Texas is just a total stigma, right?

01:42:10.000 It's all hillbillies, it's all provincial, you know, and all this shit, you know, and so it's like you go to Nashville or whatever and it's all Appalachia.

01:42:22.000 It's all, you know what I mean?

01:42:23.000 And that's the thing.

01:42:29.000 But one thing you can't explain away is place, right?

01:42:35.000 You can't explain away region, right?

01:42:38.000 Like, you are from where you're from.

01:42:41.000 Gary Clark Jr. is from right here.

01:42:41.000 Yeah.

01:42:43.000 Yeah.

01:42:43.000 And he fucking sounds like it.

01:42:45.000 You know what I mean?

01:42:46.000 Yeah.

01:42:46.000 He sounds like it.

01:42:47.000 And it's like, it's not that it's rock, blues, soul, country, whatever.

01:42:54.000 It's Texas.

01:42:55.000 And what happens with Texans of any background, right? 1.00

01:42:59.000 They discount you, for sure.

01:43:01.000 Look at us as provincial, right?

01:43:04.000 I mean, people got some ideas about what Texas is who have never stepped foot in the state.

01:43:09.000 That's not any different than, you know, people who've never been to California claiming to be an expert on it.

01:43:14.000 Right?

01:43:15.000 And so it's like, there's two roads for a Texas artist.

01:43:19.000 You either let somebody in Nashville or New York or LA convince you to lose your accent, you know, wash the Texas off, do it our way. 0.98

01:43:31.000 Or, which is the only way, is to take your brand of Texas to the world.

01:43:36.000 Whatever it is.

01:43:37.000 Whether it's Gary or Selena or anybody.

01:43:41.000 Stevie Ray Vaughan.

01:43:42.000 Stevie Ray Vaughan, man.

01:43:43.000 Yeah.

01:43:45.000 That's with comedy, too, man.

01:43:47.000 I mean, Bill Hicks, who's one of the greatest of all time.

01:43:49.000 He's my favorite.

01:43:50.000 That's right.

01:43:50.000 Right from here.

01:43:51.000 The scene was hot, man.

01:43:52.000 The scene was hot.

01:43:53.000 It was hot because of him.

01:43:54.000 It was hot because of him and Kennison.

01:43:56.000 It's Texas.

01:43:59.000 No.

01:43:59.000 Met him once.

01:44:00.000 Met him once real briefly.

01:44:02.000 Didn't even get a chance to talk to him.

01:44:04.000 But I saw him perform live a few times before he died.

01:44:06.000 You did see him live?

01:44:07.000 Yeah.

01:44:08.000 Saw Kennison a few times live.

01:44:09.000 I saw Kennison live before he died, too, but he had already passed his prime.

01:44:14.000 Kennison passed his prime real quick because he's a cautionary tale because of the partying.

01:44:21.000 He was the fucking man.

01:44:24.000 Y 'all got a party scene. 0.66

01:44:25.000 You comedians got a party scene.

01:44:27.000 Well, that party scene in LA at the time was the cocaine party scene.

01:44:32.000 It was a different party scene.

01:44:34.000 Mark Maron said that he hung out with Kennison and they did so much coke that he had voices in his head for a fucking year afterwards.

01:44:40.000 a year like literally like schizophrenic you know like hearing voices in his head for a year before they stopped talking to him yeah they were doing cocaine yeah and they were doing at the viper room everywhere yeah he was doing it everywhere yeah but kenison became almost like a caricature of himself it became sort of captured by this The perception by this character that they had created.

01:45:05.000 And Kenison is what birthed Hicks.

01:45:07.000 You know, Hicks was a great comic, but he was one of the outlaws.

01:45:12.000 It was Kenison and Hicks that sort of defined the Texas style.

01:45:17.000 And when we were living in, at the time, I was living in New York, and there was really two places in the country.

01:45:24.000 There was L.A., where you wanted to go to get on TV.

01:45:26.000 Everybody wanted to go get a fucking sitcom.

01:45:28.000 They all wanted to be Jerry Seinfeld.

01:45:30.000 And New York, which is like the club comics.

01:45:32.000 That was like the Dave Vittels and these guys that would like – And then there was this new scene, this new scene out of Houston, this new scene out of the Laugh Stop in River Oaks.

01:45:48.000 And I remember the first time I ever worked there, man, you could feel it in the building.

01:45:53.000 You could feel that they had been there.

01:45:55.000 They were both gone.

01:45:56.000 By the time I had worked there, they were both dead.

01:45:59.000 But you could feel it in the building, man.

01:46:01.000 You could feel it in the comics, the open mic scene.

01:46:03.000 You could feel it.

01:46:04.000 They were pure.

01:46:05.000 There was a Texas quality to the way they were doing comedy.

01:46:09.000 It was a fuck you, fuck you.

01:46:11.000 That's what I like.

01:46:13.000 Hicks would fuck with both sides of the room.

01:46:16.000 Absolutely.

01:46:17.000 And just fuck him up and cross him over and put him in his pocket. 0.62

01:46:23.000 No one knew what he was.

01:46:25.000 They didn't know what he was.

01:46:26.000 The first time I ever saw him, he bombed.

01:46:28.000 He bombed, except for the comedians.

01:46:30.000 We were dying laughing.

01:46:32.000 I've seen video of him.

01:46:32.000 Because, you know, there's quite a bit of video of him from these clubs here and in Houston when he was younger.

01:46:37.000 Because even in the 90s, they were filming.

01:46:40.000 Yeah.

01:46:40.000 And I've seen some of those clips where he's like, like you're talking about, he just couldn't fucking, the whole room's afraid of him.

01:46:47.000 Yeah.

01:46:48.000 No one's laughing.

01:46:49.000 Everyone's afraid.

01:46:50.000 And he's like super fucked up.

01:46:52.000 Well, he was the first comic.

01:46:53.000 Really, that had a message.

01:46:55.000 You know, he had like a, there was a social commentary to his, like a dark poetry to his comedy.

01:46:55.000 Right.

01:47:02.000 And so many people tried to emulate it that at the green room, the punchline in Atlanta, there was a, like people wrote a bunch of shit on the walls in the green room, but one of the big ones that said, quit trying to be Hicks.

01:47:13.000 Wow.

01:47:14.000 I remember seeing that going, yes.

01:47:15.000 Everybody did.

01:47:16.000 We all did.

01:47:17.000 Everybody wanted to be Hicks.

01:47:19.000 Dude, you'd come, so after Stevie Ray Vaughan passed, right?

01:47:23.000 I remember, you know, we were up in Dallas-Fort Worth, and you'd come down here, we'd come down here in high school and shit, and go up and down 6th Street.

01:47:34.000 I will never forget this.

01:47:37.000 Every single guitar player in every little bar on 6th Street, every single one of them was playing like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

01:47:45.000 Yeah.

01:47:45.000 Every single one of them.

01:47:47.000 And there were 30 of them.

01:47:49.000 Like there were 30 different ones coming in and out of bars doing all the shit.

01:47:52.000 It was unbelievable.

01:47:54.000 Yeah, there's always going to be someone like that that sets this standard.

01:47:57.000 Quit trying to be Hicks.

01:47:58.000 Yeah, quit trying to be Hicks.

01:47:59.000 But it was like that was a— My daddy died for that.

01:48:02.000 It's made in China.

01:48:11.000 But he could do it because he was a Texan.

01:48:13.000 The vernacular was real.

01:48:15.000 And then he'd turn around and, you know, fuck up the other side.

01:48:19.000 Yeah, no, it was genius.

01:48:21.000 Well, when I first saw him, he went on in Boston.

01:48:24.000 And it was at Nick's Comedy Stop.

01:48:25.000 And the guy who went on before him was this...

01:48:30.000 It was just like cops and donuts, normal shit, stupid jokes.

01:48:34.000 But the stupid jokes were working.

01:48:35.000 It was a cartoon character smoking pot.

01:48:37.000 What would happen if Daffy Duck smoked a joint with Donald Duck?

01:48:41.000 It was dumb.

01:48:42.000 Watered down Dangerfield?

01:48:44.000 But it was getting people to laugh.

01:48:46.000 And then Hicks went on stage and immediately started bombing.

01:48:51.000 Immediately he opened up with saying that he's tired of performing and tired of going up and...

01:49:07.000 But the comics were dying, and there was like 300 people in the room.

01:49:11.000 By the time he was done performing, there was 50. There was 50, and there was maybe me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons were in the back of the room just dying, laughing, and maybe 10 comics.

01:49:21.000 We had all come to see Hicks because we had heard about him.

01:49:24.000 And then I saw him.

01:49:25.000 A month later at the Comedy Connection and he fucking murdered.

01:49:28.000 The Comedy Connection was this little tiny club.

01:49:31.000 It was like 150 seats, real low ceilings.

01:49:33.000 Boston as well.

01:49:33.000 Where?

01:49:35.000 This is when I was first starting.

01:49:36.000 So this is like 1988.

01:49:38.000 And it was before he had really popped.

01:49:39.000 I had heard about him from the Rodney Dangerfield HBO special.

01:49:43.000 You know, so Rodney Dangerfield had these young comedian specials.

01:49:46.000 Rodney was the best at introducing the world to talented comedians.

01:50:00.000 And that's where Kinison emerged and Hicks.

01:50:03.000 Hicks was one of them too.

01:50:04.000 And I remember I'd seen Hicks on that, so I went to see him live.

01:50:07.000 And like I said, the first time he bombed, the second time he fucking murdered.

01:50:10.000 It was Tiffany meeting Jimi Hendrix at the mall.

01:50:13.000 He was doing this.

01:50:15.000 Bit about Tiffany playing at the mall and Jimi Hendrix shows up.

01:50:20.000 It was this fucking genius bit.

01:50:23.000 It was so funny, man.

01:50:25.000 Is that something that's out there?

01:50:26.000 Can you see that?

01:50:27.000 I wonder, man.

01:50:28.000 Because I don't think he ever put that on anything.

01:50:28.000 I wonder.

01:50:30.000 It might be on an album somewhere.

01:50:32.000 But it was back when there was all this like pop mall comedy or pop mall music and he fucking hated it You know and it was and he was just Yeah, rallying against corporatism.

01:50:46.000 It's going to make a comeback, that little sub-genre.

01:50:48.000 Yeah, I mean, it has.

01:50:49.000 Or do something new with it.

01:50:51.000 It kind of has.

01:50:52.000 Austin has a great comedy scene right now.

01:50:54.000 It really does.

01:50:55.000 And it's really just emerged from the pandemic.

01:50:58.000 Was that like the main thing that drew you here?

01:51:00.000 Well, we all moved here to start it.

01:51:02.000 We didn't even move here to start it.

01:51:03.000 We moved here to just keep doing what we were doing in L.A. But L.A. had shut down.

01:51:08.000 And in 2020, we were all like, we were all without a country.

01:51:13.000 You know, we were living in L.A. and the comedy store was shut down for a fucking year and a half.

01:51:17.000 Man, y'all were wild.

01:51:20.000 So shut down out there.

01:51:21.000 It was so shut down, and I knew – And I came to Texas, and Ron White was already here.

01:51:34.000 So Ron White, who's a very good friend of mine, and Gary, I knew Gary from L.A. He used to hang out at the Comedy Store, too, and that's why I became friends with him.

01:51:43.000 And he moved here, I think, 2017 or 2018, and I talked to him on the phone.

01:51:48.000 I'm like, why'd you go back to Austin?

01:51:49.000 He's like, man, I can't fuck with those people in L.A. It's just like, I'm tired of it, man.

01:51:53.000 He goes, I love Texas.

01:51:55.000 This is real, and it's like, I need to go back home.

01:51:58.000 And I was like, wow, that sounds right.

01:52:00.000 That sounds right.

01:52:01.000 And then when I talked to Ron, and Ron's the same way, Ron's a Texas boy.

01:52:05.000 I just don't want to do this anymore.

01:52:07.000 I'll stay here.

01:52:09.000 It's great.

01:52:09.000 He goes, it's great.

01:52:10.000 It's the middle of the fucking country.

01:52:11.000 I can fly anywhere.

01:52:13.000 Fucking food's good.

01:52:14.000 People are nice.

01:52:15.000 And so I knew when I came here.

01:52:18.000 That's all you needed to know.

01:52:19.000 I was like, at the very least, Ron's here.

01:52:21.000 And Ron's a good friend.

01:52:22.000 And then when we came here, we could perform live.

01:52:25.000 I first started doing shows outside.

01:52:27.000 Me and Dave Chappelle started doing shows at Stubbs.

01:52:30.000 And we were doing outside shows where we had to test the whole crowd.

01:52:33.000 Everybody had to get tested.

01:52:34.000 So everybody had to show up like two hours in advance.

01:52:36.000 We tested everybody for COVID.

01:52:38.000 They had to wear a mask outside.

01:52:39.000 It was so fucking stupid.

01:52:40.000 The whole thing was so ridiculous.

01:52:41.000 But we were hanging out in the back, getting drunk, smoking weed.

01:52:45.000 And it was like normal.

01:52:47.000 It was like normal times.

01:52:48.000 And it was like this cultural thing.

01:52:50.000 Like we were the only ones doing comedy.

01:52:55.000 They all just started coming here.

01:52:56.000 And then we started doing shows inside at the Vulcan Gas Company, which is a music club that's on 6th Street.

01:53:02.000 So we started performing there.

01:53:04.000 And, you know, Nick, the guy who's the owner, is just a wild dude.

01:53:07.000 He's like, fuck it.

01:53:08.000 Let's just do shows.

01:53:09.000 We started doing shows in November of 2020.

01:53:12.000 And it just felt like we were baby killers.

01:53:14.000 We were killing grandma.

01:53:15.000 You know, we were out there just spreading diseases.

01:53:17.000 We were super spreaders.

01:53:18.000 Have you spent enough time on 6th Street?

01:53:21.000 Anyway, it'll make you immune.

01:53:24.000 We had developed some strong antibodies.

01:53:26.000 I never got sick off of 6th Street.

01:53:28.000 I got sick in Florida.

01:53:29.000 That's what I mean, though.

01:53:30.000 6th Street will make you bulletproof to that shit.

01:53:32.000 Well, except the bullets.

01:53:33.000 Yeah, except the bullets.

01:53:34.000 and there's a lot of that going on there too.

01:53:36.000 So we started doing shows there live and then...

01:53:41.000 Man, they started moving in droves.

01:53:43.000 They started all moving to Texas because they could do shows here.

01:53:45.000 We were just lost.

01:53:46.000 I didn't know that.

01:53:47.000 Without doing shows, we just all felt lost.

01:53:49.000 And then by the time 2021, There was like 15, 16 world-class comics living in Austin.

01:53:58.000 Wow.

01:53:58.000 And then I was like, fuck it.

01:53:59.000 I'm buying a club.

01:54:00.000 And Ron talked me into it.

01:54:01.000 He's like, you gotta get a fucking club.

01:54:02.000 We gotta do this.

01:54:03.000 Because, you know, he knew I got a bunch of money from the Spotify deal.

01:54:06.000 So I was like, all right, let's fucking do it.

01:54:08.000 And so then in 2022 or three, I guess, we opened up.

01:54:13.000 And it's just been gangbusters ever since.

01:54:16.000 And now it's like this is the hub of comedy in the country, which makes it the hub of comedy in the known universe.

01:54:21.000 It's all here in Texas.

01:54:23.000 It's all at that club.

01:54:24.000 I like that.

01:54:25.000 Well, that's really cool, man.

01:54:27.000 Props to you for pulling that off.

01:54:29.000 Well, I mean, I think I pulled it off, but I think everybody pulled it off.

01:54:33.000 People are proud of the comedy history in this town.

01:54:37.000 You know?

01:54:37.000 Yes.

01:54:38.000 And it's a great...

01:54:42.000 You know, everybody likes to use that term inclusive and diversity.

01:54:46.000 Well, our scene is diverse and inclusive, but everybody's great.

01:54:50.000 It's only diverse because they just happen to be—everybody's fucking diverse.

01:54:55.000 We're all—you know, you get artists.

01:54:56.000 They're all different, weird people.

01:54:59.000 And we didn't seek that out.

01:55:01.000 It was just what happened.

01:55:04.000 It was just who's good?

01:55:05.000 Who's good?

01:55:06.000 Who's really all about this?

01:55:08.000 Who really wants to live this life?

01:55:09.000 who really wants to just do comedy.

01:55:11.000 And we set it up where we have...

01:55:18.000 All the amateurs get a chance to be seen in front of the whole world and the biggest live comedy show in the world on YouTube.

01:55:24.000 And it just became this hub, man.

01:55:26.000 And now it's just fucking every night.

01:55:27.000 It's sold out.

01:55:28.000 It's crazy.

01:55:29.000 It's a vibrant, wild scene.

01:55:32.000 And now on 6th Street, there's five full-time clubs within two blocks of my club.

01:55:39.000 Comedy clubs?

01:55:40.000 Comedy clubs.

01:55:41.000 Oh shit.

01:55:41.000 Yeah.

01:55:42.000 The scene is insane.

01:55:43.000 I mean, it's the best scene in the country.

01:55:44.000 It's like there's never been a scene like this before that just emerged.

01:55:48.000 And we had to hit every green light.

01:55:51.000 Like the comedy store had to be closed down.

01:55:53.000 So I hired everybody that was working at the comedy store before we even had a club.

01:55:57.000 I said, I'm going to pay you full time.

01:56:00.000 You get benefits.

01:56:01.000 You get all insurance, all that shit.

01:56:02.000 Just come move to Austin.

01:56:04.000 We'll call on you in like a year.

01:56:06.000 It's going to take like a year to build this place.

01:56:08.000 But meanwhile, you'll get paid.

01:56:10.000 You'll be able to just like live here, set your roots, get established.

01:56:15.000 It's a beautiful place to live.

01:56:17.000 Everybody fucking loved it.

01:56:18.000 And then when we opened, we hit the ground running.

01:56:21.000 We opened up one night.

01:56:22.000 We did a couple of test shows.

01:56:24.000 Like, let's try the venues, make sure everything works good.

01:56:27.000 And then we'll say, fuck it, let's stay open.

01:56:28.000 And we just stayed open.

01:56:29.000 Before you know it, it was seven nights a week, and then it was just, it's been...

01:56:34.000 You gonna keep it rolling?

01:56:35.000 Fuck yeah.

01:56:36.000 Hell yeah.

01:56:37.000 Fuck yeah.

01:56:37.000 We're talking about doing it in other places now.

01:56:39.000 That's cool.

01:56:39.000 We just don't want to water it down.

01:56:41.000 You know, we've talked about doing it in some other city and trying to figure out what the next one would be.

01:56:45.000 But it would have to be a city that has a real group of talent.

01:56:48.000 You have to have talent.

01:56:49.000 Like, that's every...

01:56:56.000 It's the only way it works.

01:56:57.000 And then we feed off of each other.

01:56:59.000 There's no lone wolves in comedy.

01:57:03.000 Comedy, it's only iron sharpens iron.

01:57:06.000 There's no, like, the best comic in the world living in Pittsburgh.

01:57:10.000 It doesn't exist.

01:57:11.000 They all live where they're not in competition.

01:57:16.000 But in cooperation with each other.

01:57:18.000 We're all inspired by each other.

01:57:20.000 You have to have that.

01:57:21.000 And so we had to have every green light.

01:57:24.000 The Comedy Store had to be shut down for a solid year and a half.

01:57:27.000 All those people had to be unemployed.

01:57:28.000 I had to have all this money from Spotify.

01:57:31.000 I had to be in a place like Texas that allows you to open up and have a show indoors when everything in California was closed.

01:57:38.000 They wouldn't even let you do outdoor shows.

01:57:40.000 We weren't even allowed to do shows.

01:57:41.000 We tried to do shows in the parking lot at the Comedy Store and they wouldn't allow us.

01:57:44.000 It was crazy.

01:57:46.000 No, I remember how shut down it was.

01:57:48.000 70% of all the restaurants went under.

01:57:50.000 I mean, it was fucking madness.

01:57:52.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

01:57:53.000 Yeah.

01:57:54.000 A lot has changed.

01:57:56.000 Yeah.

01:57:57.000 Really fast.

01:57:58.000 Yeah, real fast.

01:57:59.000 So we had to hit every green light.

01:58:02.000 And we had to have all these people that were willing to take a chance.

01:58:04.000 All the Tom Segura's and Tim Dillon's and Tony Hinchcliffe's and Duncan Trussell's.

01:58:09.000 All these great comics.

01:58:10.000 It just was like, fuck it.

01:58:11.000 We'll move there.

01:58:13.000 Bryan Simpson and Tony Hinchcliffe and all these guys just said, fuck it.

01:58:17.000 Let's take a chance.

01:58:19.000 Like, I don't want to live like this.

01:58:20.000 I want to live where I can't do comedy.

01:58:23.000 It's like we were just like junkies with no fix, you know?

01:58:27.000 Yeah.

01:58:28.000 I was still working the red dirt circuit when the pandemic hit.

01:58:33.000 So to be honest with you, those boys, it never closed.

01:58:36.000 Wow.

01:58:37.000 It didn't.

01:58:38.000 Not all those old dance halls and beer joints.

01:58:44.000 Thank God.

01:58:45.000 None of those places closed.

01:58:47.000 Thank fucking God.

01:58:48.000 Thank God they were right.

01:58:50.000 It kept us working, man.

01:58:51.000 You know, it was the thing.

01:58:52.000 And I was just working so hard, I never really thought about anything else.

01:58:56.000 But something about the California shutdown that's funny.

01:59:01.000 Not funny, but the pandemic hit, and I was unknown.

01:59:07.000 But I had just finished that record, Welcome to Hard Times, and it didn't have anything to do with – I'd had the two surgeries.

01:59:16.000 I'd gone through a relationship that crashed and burned in a tailspin.

01:59:23.000 I'd gotten rid of a management relationship that was going nowhere.

01:59:30.000 And I wrote Welcome to Hard Times just kind of out of my own personal kind of dark feelings about where I was going through and just the whole like rigged...

01:59:45.000 America is a casino.

01:59:46.000 I have thought that since I was a kid because I kind of lived in them.

01:59:49.000 You're talking about being in pool halls.

01:59:52.000 And then I cut the record in Georgia, South Georgia, with Mark Neal.

01:59:59.000 The whole thing, I cut it.

02:00:01.000 I wrote the record in November, cut it in December, got the Masters back, and a week or two later, I remember me and Taylor Grace, my now wife, Dayton, and we were at a diner in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

02:00:18.000 And my manager at the time called me and said that South by Southwest was canceled.

02:00:22.000 And that, for us here at that time, that's when we knew the shit was real.

02:00:28.000 Nothing could stop that machine that was South by Southwest at the time.

02:00:31.000 And strangely for me, I'm not, I knew a lot of people that have known a lot of people that have, But for me, my career trajectory totally changed early on in the pandemic because no one was putting out records.

02:00:54.000 No one had any interest in putting out records.

02:00:58.000 And for that reason, David Macias, because I was riding his ass, actually thanks to John Folk at the time, was like, don't let him shelve your record.

02:01:07.000 Put that record out right now.

02:01:09.000 We're talking about July of 2020.

02:01:12.000 Wow.

02:01:13.000 And I demanded more money.

02:01:16.000 No one had ever put a dollar into marketing my records.

02:01:19.000 I'm talking about nothing.

02:01:21.000 Before the shit hit the fan, these guys were talking about spending like 10, 15 grand total marketing Welcome to Hard Times.

02:01:30.000 Wow.

02:01:31.000 Total.

02:01:31.000 I mean, shit, I spent...

02:01:36.000 And that's still a cheap record.

02:01:38.000 I remember a publicist told me once, you should spend at least double the money marketing your record that it costs you to make it and at least match it.

02:01:47.000 And here I was.

02:01:48.000 That's what I mean.

02:01:49.000 I was caught on this broke-dick Americana scene on these two-year record cycles with no money.

02:01:56.000 I was on a broke dick deal just like Waylon was talking about.

02:02:05.000 You know, I mean, I'm glad I showed up on the map somewhere.

02:02:08.000 But we went ahead and put it out in July of 2020.

02:02:12.000 And I'd been wanting to buy billboards, and it just so happened, especially in California, but even in New York.

02:02:19.000 I mean, everything was shut down.

02:02:20.000 I mean, totally shut down.

02:02:22.000 So I remember we bought a billboard in Silver Lake and in Times Square, right?

02:02:28.000 Static, traditional static billboards for like $80.

02:02:34.000 Not a single other billboard over the course of like nine months or a year, and those neighborhoods changed.

02:02:40.000 And I bought all those billboards, I bought like one month billboards, and some of those motherfuckers stayed up over six months. 1.00

02:02:47.000 You know what I mean?

02:02:48.000 At like 75% off.

02:02:50.000 And, you know, sometimes you write a song that, get lucky, I was writing about personal experience.

02:03:00.000 And it spoke, for me, it wasn't a big record, but it changed my trajectory because Welcome to Hard Times, the song, really spoke to what was happening in America.

02:03:15.000 Yeah.

02:03:15.000 And that's when my train really started rolling.

02:03:18.000 That's when it really started rolling.

02:03:20.000 You know what I mean?

02:03:21.000 It's like, and then I did all those records and Welcome to Hard Times and Music City USA coming like kind of right for the...

02:03:31.000 And then the man from Waco that I made down in Lockhart with Bruce Robinson, which was like the first time really that I'd made a studio record with my guys, you know, with more money.

02:03:43.000 And Bruce Robinson, a songwriting friend that was not stopping me from being me, you know?

02:03:49.000 And then that one was my first one to hit the Billboard 200.

02:03:55.000 And then $10 Cowboy.

02:03:57.000 Really took off another big step from there.

02:04:00.000 And then I got hooked back up with Shooter.

02:04:02.000 See, I used to open up for Shooter because Shooter was getting booked by John Folk too, right?

02:04:06.000 And the two guys that took a liking to me early on, like pretty much nobody else did, was Evan Felker and the Turnpike Troubadours and Shooter Jennings.

02:04:14.000 You know, a shooter would take me out and, like, I mean, he's fucking Waylon's son.

02:04:20.000 But he was always so cool.

02:04:21.000 He's just cool.

02:04:22.000 And so thoughtful, you know?

02:04:24.000 Yeah, he's a great guy.

02:04:25.000 And he would give me little things to live by.

02:04:26.000 Like, when he saw how hard I was working out there, he's like, it says you can't park behind the Nashville Palace, but between me and you, you fucking camp there and nobody's going to say shit.

02:04:35.000 And I lived in that fucking parking lot.

02:04:37.000 That's the kind of shit you get by on, you know what I mean?

02:04:40.000 Yeah.

02:04:40.000 And we, I've got this movie that I funded, you know, how slow the movie business is.

02:04:46.000 That I was going to be called $10 Cowboy.

02:04:48.000 And it's this thing I put together.

02:04:51.000 I finished my touring season at the rodeo finals in Vegas.

02:04:56.000 And then I get back to Texas.

02:04:57.000 And all the pressure of the business is mounting on me.

02:05:01.000 And I'm just trying to get away from my manager and the machine and my phone and all that shit.

02:05:06.000 And I decide to leave the phone at the house.

02:05:09.000 And I had heard from a journalist about this secret shrine in a liquor store.

02:05:16.000 Dedicated to Waylon Jennings in his hometown of Littlefield, Texas, there on 84. I'd known about it, but in the movie, I'm playing like I've never heard of it, and I'm going on this pilgrimage to find out if this little museum really exists, which it does.

02:05:31.000 It's run by his youngest brother, James D., Waylon's youngest brother.

02:05:34.000 Oh, wow.

02:05:35.000 And so to get the movie going, I needed to get on the phone with Shooter, you know, to get hooked up with James D and them, and we got the idea to get his mama, Jesse Coulter, involved, and all that.

02:05:45.000 And I wanted to use some of Waylon's music for the film, and I was scared to death to ask for it.

02:05:51.000 But Shooter had always been good to me, and so we ended up having the conversation.

02:05:56.000 We caught up on a lot of stuff, because, see, I'd been hearing that he was producing, right?

02:06:01.000 But I couldn't make heads or tails of it, where he was going with it.

02:06:04.000 And truthfully, I was, like, avoiding producers altogether.

02:06:07.000 Because a lot of these guys, it's like, you know, they're such big names, it overshadows the artist.

02:06:14.000 You know what I mean?

02:06:15.000 And then they have the deal.

02:06:17.000 Like, they have the artist deal.

02:06:18.000 then the artist just kind of, in a lot of ways, gets limited to acting talent, showing up at the fucking... 0.67

02:06:30.000 Yeah.

02:06:32.000 But I kept hearing records that he was making by people I knew, like Jamie Wyatt.

02:06:38.000 And I said, man, this is the best thing she's ever done.

02:06:40.000 Shooter Jennings.

02:06:41.000 Vincent Neal Emerson.

02:06:43.000 This is the best thing he's ever done.

02:06:44.000 Shooter Jennings.

02:06:45.000 Like, over and over.

02:06:47.000 And I had been noticing that.

02:06:48.000 And so we're on the phone, and he's all about the movie.

02:06:51.000 Yeah, I'm going to help you license the songs.

02:06:53.000 We'd love that.

02:06:55.000 You know, my mama loves your music and all that.

02:06:57.000 You know, she decided she's in the movie.

02:07:00.000 He just was helpful with everything.

02:07:02.000 And I had almost made a record at Sunset Sound there in old downtown Hollywood, the old Sunset Sound studio.

02:07:11.000 I'd wanted to go in there because Mark Neal had told me about it, and I was tired of making records in Georgia and didn't want to go over to the wrong side of Mississippi.

02:07:20.000 I wanted to make a record in California.

02:07:23.000 And I told Shooter in passing on the phone that it had fallen through and, you know, did he know such a sound?

02:07:29.000 And he was like, man, Charlie's crazy.

02:07:30.000 I'm signing the lease on Studio 3, the print studio, tomorrow.

02:07:34.000 Wow.

02:07:35.000 Just in passing, you know?

02:07:37.000 And I'm like, man, well, then let's make a record.

02:07:40.000 And we're right in the middle of a trilogy now.

02:07:42.000 I did Lonesome Drifter with him.

02:07:44.000 Man, and then the next one that's coming out is Dollar a Day on 8-8, which I think is a lucky number.

02:07:50.000 And then I've got a third one coming after that.

02:07:52.000 That we're calling the Sagebrush Trilogy.

02:07:55.000 And Shooter is the first guy I've ever been in a studio with where I truly don't feel judged.

02:08:00.000 You know what I mean?

02:08:01.000 And now, because I've got all these, it's just the perfect timing.

02:08:06.000 It's like, wow, that I have been out on the road with him 10 plus years ago.

02:08:10.000 And then, you know, think about what he's been through in the business, right?

02:08:14.000 I mean, he started cutting records 20 years ago.

02:08:16.000 I mean, he's a crucified son automatically.

02:08:20.000 You know what I mean?

02:08:21.000 Walking in that shadow.

02:08:26.000 Man, he said a crazy line to me the other day.

02:08:31.000 He said, in regards to some other situation he was in, he said, I went from one shadow to another.

02:08:39.000 Just a beautiful line.

02:08:40.000 I think he was talking about an old relationship he was in or something.

02:08:44.000 But he's overcome that.

02:08:46.000 Because, you know what I mean?

02:08:47.000 Like, he's stepped into, like...

02:09:03.000 He's totally going against the grain.

02:09:06.000 Nobody's sounding like that.

02:09:07.000 They're not sounding traditional and pushing the boundaries.

02:09:10.000 Like, he just was, you know, and I can tell you, constitutionally, he's just like his daddy.

02:09:15.000 I mean, he'd drink me and smoke me under the table.

02:09:18.000 I'm like, you are Waylon, son.

02:09:19.000 And for some reason, you get smarter the more weed you smoke.

02:09:25.000 And my brain is just pulverizing.

02:09:30.000 But I'm really proud and excited about everything that I'm doing with him because it's just taken me so long to get where I'm at.

02:09:40.000 And here I've got a partner in making records that isn't judging me.

02:09:49.000 It's pushing me to take it higher.

02:09:52.000 Because I'm trying to figure out how to transcend it too.

02:09:54.000 Everybody's always...

02:09:55.000 There's a lot of...

02:10:04.000 It's a love-hate thing.

02:10:07.000 And I've done a lot of styles.

02:10:09.000 And they've called me a stylistic chameleon.

02:10:13.000 Here in Austin, even the first time they put me on the Chronicle, they called me a stylistic chameleon.

02:10:17.000 And I had a hard time with that, you know, because I wasn't taking it as a compliment.

02:10:23.000 Right.

02:10:24.000 It's not a compliment.

02:10:25.000 No.

02:10:26.000 Yeah.

02:10:27.000 But it's that whole thing where it's like, okay, I can play the blues, I can play country music, I can play folk music, learn how to play all that shit on the street, matter of fact, right?

02:10:38.000 It's surprising to me that people would question my authenticity and point to me playing in subway cars.

02:10:46.000 as this aha moment that I'm not who I said I was.

02:10:51.000 Why don't you go try to play in those New York City train cars?

02:10:54.000 Well, that's people that are just talking.

02:10:55.000 Brother, I'd rather get on a fucking bull.

02:10:59.000 You know?

02:11:00.000 Yeah.

02:11:01.000 Yeah.

02:11:02.000 Do you think, man, synchronicity, that fate is a real thing?

02:11:07.000 Because just think about how all that lined up.

02:11:09.000 I feel like sometimes...

02:11:14.000 You know, the things are meant to be, like there's a plan for you.

02:11:18.000 It's silly, but it also isn't.

02:11:21.000 You know, fate seems to somehow or another be a real thing.

02:11:26.000 And sometimes the way things synchronize and the way things line up, you're like, man, this seems like it's meant to be.

02:11:34.000 There's certain things that just seem like they're meant to be.

02:11:37.000 And I feel like if you're on the right frequency and you're following the right path, Those doors open.

02:11:46.000 And these things do happen.

02:11:48.000 And they happen when they're supposed to happen.

02:11:50.000 They happen at the right time for the right reasons.

02:11:53.000 I believe completely in fate.

02:11:55.000 I don't really believe in faith.

02:11:58.000 I think there's a surrender and a helplessness in a lot of ways to a lot of people's idea of faith.

02:12:08.000 When people are like, love your struggle.

02:12:11.000 I never liked that saying.

02:12:13.000 It's like, no, love the strength that your creator gave you to overcome the struggle.

02:12:21.000 Don't love the struggle.

02:12:22.000 Nobody fucking loves the struggle.

02:12:24.000 Right?

02:12:25.000 Right, right.

02:12:26.000 It's the strength.

02:12:27.000 Especially real struggle.

02:12:28.000 Yeah.

02:12:29.000 Like, real struggle is not knowing if it's going to work out.

02:12:31.000 You're not going to love that.

02:12:32.000 That's what I mean.

02:12:32.000 I never understood that.

02:12:33.000 I mean, I guess I get it, but like, but fate.

02:12:35.000 You get it after it's successful.

02:12:37.000 Fate is a thing that's like, that's destiny.

02:12:40.000 You know, like Waylon, like Shooter and like the Waylon Jennings thing for me, you know, is like, you know, I was out there, you know, we were, I did my, I debuted at the Houston Rodeo back in the spring.

02:12:40.000 Yeah.

02:12:55.000 And for me, that was like my career goal, you know, because of Selena and George Strait and everybody.

02:13:03.000 Hell, Elvis played there twice.

02:13:05.000 I mean, it doesn't matter what your background is as a Texan, any background, the Houston Rodeo.

02:13:10.000 That's the top.

02:13:11.000 Culturally, I think, as a stage for an artist to perform, I think, is the Houston Rodeo.

02:13:16.000 And it was the Astrodome and not the NRG Stadium.

02:13:19.000 I would have never known that.

02:13:21.000 It's the truth.

02:13:22.000 And it crosses everything.

02:13:25.000 Economic, racial, everything.

02:13:27.000 It's the Houston Rodeo.

02:13:29.000 And it's the biggest rodeo on earth, you know, which is why you got everybody from, like I said, you know, Nowadays, you got Post Malone and Beyonce both playing it.

02:13:43.000 Wow.

02:13:44.000 I mean, it doesn't matter who it is.

02:13:46.000 That's the platform.

02:13:48.000 Anyway, I played there, and we were putting a live record out on it, and me and Shooter were mixing it there at Sunset Sound.

02:13:55.000 And then I stayed the extra night because he had the party at the Viper Room for the announcement of these three unreleased Waylon Jennings records.

02:14:02.000 And they're legit unreleased.

02:14:04.000 It's not AI bullshit.

02:14:05.000 It's not remixes.

02:14:07.000 This is truly, legitimately unreleased music by arguably the king, certainly the king of all the outlaws.

02:14:17.000 But in my opinion, when it comes to Nashville country music, whatever you want to call it, man, a buddy of mine, John Spong, a journalist here in town, a Texan, we were at the Sagebrush doing an interview a couple years back.

02:14:34.000 And he was saying that, like, if Willie Nelson to country music is like Che Guevara, right?

02:14:42.000 Waylon Jennings was the long-haired prince of darkness, right?

02:14:46.000 And, like, he's the guy that, like, he's from West Texas, right?

02:14:51.000 The guy learned, he learned how to play bass on stage.

02:14:56.000 He learned how to play bass on fucking stage, backing up Buddy Holly, right?

02:15:02.000 Who at the time, You know?

02:15:06.000 I mean, that style of rock and roll, right?

02:15:09.000 It's coming from everywhere.

02:15:10.000 I mean, nobody's just making their...

02:15:17.000 But, like, in some ways.

02:15:18.000 But these guys, whether it's Robert Johnson or B.B. King in the Delta or whatever, or Buddy Holly out in West Texas, you're influenced by the radio and all that.

02:15:28.000 But there's something to be said for how hard that earth is out there in West Texas.

02:15:34.000 People talk a lot of shit about Lubbock, right?

02:15:36.000 It smells like shit because it's cows everywhere.

02:15:38.000 It's so fucking flat.

02:15:40.000 You can stand on a fucking tin can and see 100 miles or whatever they say out there, right?

02:15:48.000 The best people to play a show for, probably anywhere in America, in many ways, in my opinion, is a show in Lubbock.

02:15:55.000 There's something about the people in that town where it's just the best place to play.

02:16:00.000 Willie Nelson is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he deserves it.

02:16:04.000 Dolly Parton now, too.

02:16:06.000 But Waylon Jennings was always rock and roll.

02:16:09.000 He was never traditional country. 0.99

02:16:11.000 Nothing about him.

02:16:12.000 If you know what you're listening to, even on his very first record, like, country folk, folk country, right?

02:16:18.000 There's nothing straight ahead.

02:16:20.000 Listen to anything coming out of Nashville in, like, 1965.

02:16:24.000 Anything.

02:16:25.000 Next to Waylon Jennings.

02:16:26.000 He's the long-haired prince of darkness.

02:16:28.000 You know, he is like, he is going to be their undoing of the, Because the coast had all the money and all the zeitgeist power.

02:16:42.000 And in response, Nashville walled themselves off.

02:16:46.000 You know what I mean?

02:16:47.000 That's really what they did.

02:16:49.000 And then Waylon busted through.

02:16:53.000 And I know I'm going back on that a lot, but my path that led to making records with Shooter was that when I started figuring out the map is when I cracked the code.

02:17:06.000 And realize what Waylon was doing musically.

02:17:09.000 I finally fell in love with him musically.

02:17:12.000 And it was on this specific record from 1968 called Hanging On.

02:17:17.000 And every swinging dick in this business that I ever knew coming up in Texas, if it had anything to do with Texas songwriters or country, every one of them wanted to be Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Towns Van Zandt, and Billy Joe Shaver.

02:17:31.000 Every single one.

02:17:33.000 And I naturally stepped wide of that because everybody I knew was trying to do it.

02:17:39.000 And, like, imitating an artist, like, for the advanced part of their movement in and of itself, that's worthless.

02:17:49.000 It's not that it's worthless.

02:17:50.000 It's that you will never touch it if you don't go walk your own path.

02:17:57.000 Right.

02:17:57.000 So a lot of guys I knew when I started playing all the shows with Willie, Willie called me up and got me on with his agent and shit and put me on like 50 shows.

02:18:05.000 And a lot of guys I knew were like looking at me like, man, why do you get to play with Willie?

02:18:09.000 You know?

02:18:10.000 And at first I didn't even, I didn't know.

02:18:12.000 Right?

02:18:13.000 Because I was realizing guys that I knew, like they knew Willie Nelson's shit in and out.

02:18:18.000 We're literally trying to sing like them.

02:18:19.000 So they're like, fuck you, I should have that spot.

02:18:26.000 I'm the best at being me.

02:18:28.000 Right.

02:18:29.000 You know, when, sometimes.

02:18:31.000 Right?

02:18:32.000 But, like, how I think I've landed with Shooter and his family and playing all those shows with Willie and getting married on his ranch and all that stuff is because, not because I worship Willie Nelson, but because I think Willie looked at me and was like, I like what you're doing.

02:18:52.000 I like how you got where you're at.

02:18:54.000 You can play with me.

02:18:56.000 You don't ask to take your picture with Willie.

02:18:58.000 He fucking lets you know when you're going to take your picture with him.

02:19:02.000 You know what I mean?

02:19:05.000 You're going to let you know.

02:19:06.000 It's time to get your picture taken with Willie.

02:19:07.000 That's how they did it.

02:19:08.000 Wow.

02:19:09.000 And we're standing.

02:19:10.000 There's like 100 nitrous cans behind us and shit.

02:19:13.000 It was like the greatest photo of my life.

02:19:18.000 Yeah, it's a natural inclination that people have when they want to be authentic, to imitate authenticity.

02:19:26.000 That's the thing is you've got to find your own path.

02:19:29.000 You have to put yourself out there.

02:19:35.000 When I was playing on the street, people knew I was different.

02:19:40.000 Artists, the hipsters, like in the Brooklyn scene and in Bushwick and Williamsburg. 0.91

02:19:47.000 All over the boroughs and shit.

02:19:49.000 To be on the street playing, there's credibility to that.

02:19:54.000 I didn't want to play in subway cars.

02:19:57.000 Actually, what it was was this young rapper, Jadon.

02:20:00.000 Jadon Woodard is his name.

02:20:04.000 He kept seeing me at the Metropolitan Avenue stop playing there at the platform for the cars coming by on the L train or whatever.

02:20:15.000 G-Train down there on Metropolitan.

02:20:17.000 G-Train sucks to ride on.

02:20:19.000 It's great for subway performers because it's the slowest train in the world, right?

02:20:25.000 So you get a huge audience between every fucking train.

02:20:30.000 So it's a goldmine for a street performer and a terrible drag for the New Yorkers waiting on it, right?

02:20:37.000 Anyways, this kid kept trying to get me.

02:20:40.000 He would always show up with a different guitar player and shit with an amp.

02:20:44.000 On his shoulder, which I copied.

02:20:46.000 I got an amp.

02:20:47.000 Ran off a 9-volt battery.

02:20:49.000 You get about 7-8 hours of it in this Telecaster.

02:20:52.000 And I learned it from this guy, Ghost, who was already doing it, that was playing with Jadon.

02:20:56.000 Who was kind of part of Citizen Coat, Clarence Greenwood's street team.

02:21:00.000 And he kept trying to get me to go on the subway cars.

02:21:03.000 And I was like, man, this kid's crazy.

02:21:04.000 He's rapping and shit.

02:21:07.000 Man, the subway cars?

02:21:09.000 I'm all right, you know.

02:21:10.000 And eventually he like kind of cornered me.

02:21:18.000 And then I was finished one day, and I get in the car.

02:21:20.000 It's on the L train.

02:21:22.000 And I'm riding in the car, and I'm just sitting there looking down the train.

02:21:26.000 And all of a sudden, I see that skinny motherfucker in a white tee walking toward me. 0.97

02:21:32.000 And he's moving, but he can't really know how the trains can be loud.

02:21:35.000 And I'm looking at him, trying to put it together.

02:21:36.000 And when he gets closer, I realize he's rapping.

02:21:38.000 And he's got that guitar player with him with the amp behind him.

02:21:44.000 And he's freestyling, like, you know, the hat you're wearing, he's rhyming to it.

02:21:49.000 The next stop, he's putting it in the verse and shit.

02:21:51.000 And he's got all these mixtapes in his hand.

02:21:53.000 And he's handing them out and shit.

02:21:54.000 And he sees me and he hands me one.

02:21:56.000 And that's how he got me.

02:21:57.000 Because I saw, like, it working.

02:21:59.000 And he was making money and, like, dropping product.

02:22:03.000 You know?

02:22:03.000 I thought, holy shit.

02:22:05.000 Right?

02:22:05.000 Because so, like, comedy scene, music scene, whatever.

02:22:07.000 Say you got a place on 6th Street.

02:22:10.000 Holds.

02:22:11.000 Right.

02:22:12.000 100 people.

02:22:13.000 And you get a residency, you play there 30 nights a month, right?

02:22:17.000 And you get 100 different people show up there every night.

02:22:21.000 What is that, 3,000 people?

02:22:23.000 It's like, dude, you could hit 3,000 people in like half a day on the train cars once we started working it.

02:22:29.000 And so it was like, it was his, and he was a spoken word poet.

02:22:34.000 This kid started fucking rapping on trains at like 15 in like Philly, which is fucking Philly's tough.

02:22:42.000 I don't have to tell you.

02:22:43.000 Philly's tough.

02:22:45.000 Train cars in Philly.

02:22:47.000 That's mind-blowing.

02:22:47.000 And then he comes to New York with that and takes that spoken word improvisational thing.

02:22:55.000 And like all the best rappers I saw in that town, they were all like spoken word poets because, you know, they just were smart and quick, you know, and like we then we got together and like.

02:23:08.000 And again, I went from making where I would make $30.

02:23:12.000 All of a sudden, we would make $300 and split it 50-50.

02:23:16.000 And we turned that into a whole really fine, pretty well-oiled machine where there started being five or six of us and we were bringing guys up and down from New Orleans and shit.

02:23:26.000 So that's where you see the trumpet players, different spoken word rappers.

02:23:29.000 We were squatting in warehouses.

02:23:33.000 Owned by Hasids that were, like, renting out space that was supposed to be for rehearsal, but really everybody was living there and selling drugs and shit. 1.00

02:23:39.000 Wiling out.

02:23:40.000 And, you know, I cranked that up.

02:23:44.000 We cranked that up and did get discovered by, like, the heart of the pop machine.

02:23:50.000 Right there on the R train.

02:23:51.000 Wow.

02:23:52.000 And, like, just what you would think.

02:23:54.000 You can see video of this stuff, but it's like, they saw that we were believable.

02:23:59.000 Yep.

02:24:00.000 And we're just trying to figure out.

02:24:01.000 And that's one of the spoken word dudes right there was Eric.

02:24:03.000 He was from Jacksonville, Florida.

02:24:06.000 And that hippie right there, that was my friend of mine's younger brother from high school down here in Texas.

02:24:13.000 There's something about street performing that is, there's no net.

02:24:20.000 You're performing for people that are involuntary.

02:24:23.000 Oh man, they don't want you in there.

02:24:24.000 And you're breaking like 10 laws.

02:24:26.000 You're breaking 10 laws and they don't want you in there.

02:24:28.000 Right, but if you're good, if you're good, it means a lot.

02:24:32.000 You ever see the video of Biggie when he's performing when he's 17 on a street corner in Brooklyn?

02:24:36.000 Oh, my God.

02:24:36.000 Oh, yeah.

02:24:37.000 You pull that one up.

02:24:38.000 Can we see it just for fun?

02:24:39.000 Yeah, pull that up.

02:24:40.000 That fucking video is like you watch him, this kid. 0.87

02:24:42.000 This kid with this...

02:24:44.000 Talk about it.

02:24:48.000 Do you know what I mean?

02:24:49.000 He's crazy underrated for that.

02:24:49.000 Yeah.

02:24:51.000 How smart he was.

02:24:52.000 Oh, he was so good.

02:24:53.000 He was so good.

02:24:54.000 Yeah, standing on a street corner.

02:24:56.000 Yeah, that's the one.

02:24:56.000 Let me hear this.

02:25:23.000 Man.

02:26:01.000 The blues never goes out of style.

02:26:03.000 What did he say?

02:26:03.000 Never.

02:26:05.000 What did he say?

02:26:06.000 Ice cream, I'll scoop you. 0.88

02:26:08.000 Yeah.

02:26:09.000 It's so clever.

02:26:11.000 Oh, he was so clever.

02:26:12.000 It was so clever.

02:26:13.000 There was comedy in his lyrics.

02:26:16.000 It was power.

02:26:17.000 I met his aunt on the train.

02:26:19.000 Really?

02:26:20.000 Yeah, we did.

02:26:21.000 And Jadon knew who she was because he was running the trains before I was.

02:26:25.000 And he knew all those people because he'd been working it so hard.

02:26:28.000 And it was crazy.

02:26:31.000 Like, who you come in contact with on those subway cars, you know what I mean?

02:26:34.000 It's like, I saw Jake Gyllenhaal on the train one day, and then some other day on the, you know, six train, it'd be like the NBA commissioner gave us a $100 bill.

02:26:43.000 You know, it's like, to me, that's like, that's all it is, you know?

02:26:43.000 Wow.

02:26:49.000 It's like, whatever the circuit is, it's like, putting yourself out there.

02:26:54.000 And when you go out in public, man, when you go out in public, and you put yourself out there, And you really do that, that's a transformation.

02:27:03.000 That's a metamorphosis for anybody.

02:27:06.000 For anybody.

02:27:07.000 It's just undeniable.

02:27:09.000 It's the most authentic form of performance ever.

02:27:13.000 That's not your audience.

02:27:14.000 They don't know you.

02:27:16.000 You have to earn it.

02:27:17.000 You have to break through.

02:27:20.000 You have to break through.

02:27:21.000 It has to hit.

02:27:23.000 It has to be real.

02:27:24.000 That's all I've been doing is swinging at him the whole time, Joe.

02:27:27.000 Yeah, man.

02:27:27.000 Well, you're killing it.

02:27:28.000 Sometimes they call me the Muhammad Ali of country music.

02:27:32.000 That's too good a compliment, but I like it.

02:27:35.000 But that's the only way you make Charlie Crockett.

02:27:41.000 Your story is important for people to hear because it's the only way you make someone like you.

02:27:47.000 You don't make someone like you in a mall.

02:27:49.000 You don't make someone like you with a bunch of executives making these decisions.

02:27:54.000 Based on what they think is going to be popular.

02:27:56.000 Man, it was crazy.

02:27:57.000 They were doing that shit you'd think they would do.

02:27:59.000 So this woman, Nell Muldary, saw us in the R-Train.

02:28:03.000 And she was in the Sony system and managing artists and kind of the star maker, that pop machine of 2010, 2011.

02:28:13.000 So they bring us up into the offices in Koreatown, right?

02:28:17.000 And on the edge of Hell's Kitchen there.

02:28:20.000 And her office was off the side of this Sony legacy.

02:28:24.000 Like, kind of catalog room.

02:28:26.000 Because at the time, she was married to Rob Santos, one of the guys at Sony Legacy.

02:28:31.000 And so she had this little office off the side of the, like, library thing, whatever.

02:28:35.000 And she brings us in there.

02:28:38.000 And they're putting us in front of these, like, computer screens and showing us, like, gym class heroes and the gorillas and Odd Future and Janelle Monae and, like, doing these focus group training.

02:28:54.000 You know, and where they're going to plug you in to the thing.

02:28:58.000 And it was like, what was so difficult about it for me, I'm not, they didn't do anything wrong.

02:29:03.000 You know, we were young, desperate men playing in public transit.

02:29:07.000 You know, be careful what you ask for, you know.

02:29:10.000 I was mad for a long time, but I've been eating off that plate forever because it...

02:29:23.000 You know what I mean?

02:29:25.000 It doesn't matter who it is.

02:29:26.000 It's not their fault.

02:29:27.000 That's what they do.

02:29:28.000 That was the best thing that could have happened to me.

02:29:31.000 I believed that there was some deal.

02:29:34.000 I wasn't on the trains for it, but I knew we'd find it.

02:29:37.000 It was fate.

02:29:40.000 It was fate.

02:29:43.000 It's that whole thing.

02:29:44.000 I got there.

02:29:45.000 It fell apart quick.

02:29:46.000 It wrecked me, man.

02:29:47.000 That's when I got off the street and I went back to California.

02:29:50.000 Started working on the ganja farms because I realized, like Big L said or whatever, I was going to get street struck.

02:29:57.000 You can't stay out there forever.

02:29:58.000 You really can't.

02:30:03.000 That's when I looked at it and it's like, man, okay, what?

02:30:11.000 What am I willing to sell?

02:30:14.000 What is Charlie Crockett willing to sell?

02:30:19.000 And I think that that's stronger than playing it cool and letting somebody else figure it out for you.

02:30:28.000 That's where it gets dangerous.

02:30:33.000 You know, and so it's like, I know a lot of these guys in the business, they're like, oh man, you know, I don't pay attention to the business shit and all that type of stuff.

02:30:39.000 I mean, you're crazy for that.

02:30:40.000 I don't care if it was Willie Nelson or James Brown.

02:30:43.000 They were poorer than you.

02:30:44.000 They both picked cotton, and they learned the business because they had to. 0.99

02:30:48.000 Someone gave me that bullshit.

02:30:50.000 We need to understand the business if you're in the business.

02:30:53.000 If you don't understand it, you'll be taken over by it.

02:30:56.000 Even if they got you on top.

02:30:56.000 There's no doubt.

02:30:58.000 And then you have to have autonomy.

02:30:58.000 Yeah.

02:30:59.000 You have to have this personal sense of self or you could avoid the influence.

02:31:06.000 You have to be able to just stick to your guns.

02:31:09.000 And that's the hard part, right?

02:31:11.000 Because then they dangle that carrot in front of you.

02:31:13.000 Man.

02:31:13.000 That carrot is juicy.

02:31:15.000 Especially if you've been out in the street.

02:31:17.000 It's right there.

02:31:18.000 Ooh, it's right there.

02:31:19.000 It's right there, and it's so juicy.

02:31:24.000 And a lot of people bite it.

02:31:26.000 A lot of people bite it, and then they don't want it anymore, and then they don't know how to be authentic.

02:31:30.000 Were you dealing with the, like on that circuit?

02:31:34.000 Because I mean, I know you're Did anybody ever fucking get you pretty good?

02:31:44.000 Well, I got lucky in that I got on television so early and I didn't want to be on television.

02:31:52.000 It wasn't something that I wanted.

02:31:54.000 But they offered me so much money to be on TV.

02:31:57.000 I was like, what?

02:31:58.000 Okay.

02:31:59.000 But I kept growing and doing my comedy at the comedy store.

02:32:03.000 And that was the most important thing that I just kept doing comedy.

02:32:06.000 And then the money was just like fuck you money.

02:32:09.000 So it's like because I had the fuck you money, I could kind of be myself.

02:32:13.000 And, you know, there was a lot of temptation.

02:32:15.000 Like, I remember the producers of Fear Factor were like, what are you doing?

02:32:18.000 Like, because some of my comedy was just out there.

02:32:20.000 Like, you know, this gets you in trouble.

02:32:22.000 This is not network television comedy.

02:32:25.000 I was like, well, then I won't do network television anymore.

02:32:28.000 Like, once I had a certain amount in the bank, I was like, all right, this is more money than I ever thought I'd ever have in my whole fucking life.

02:32:34.000 And I never thought I'd ever be wealthy.

02:32:36.000 And then all of a sudden I have money.

02:32:38.000 So if you have fuck you money and you don't say fuck you, what's the point?

02:32:43.000 What's no one's gonna say fuck you then if you're gonna be a prisoner right to that money like you the like Everybody says just afraid to be you afraid to be yourself Like that's the only time you can really do it is when you have you know It's like the universe gives you this gift and what is the gift is a gift of freedom and you have to choose to either accept it and take it and and run with it or Be captured by it and then want more and more and more forever Forever.

02:33:12.000 And there's no end.

02:33:13.000 You know, we were talking about my friend Brian has this friend who's worth three billion dollars and he feels poor because his friend is worth 80. You know how crazy that is?

02:33:22.000 Think how crazy that is.

02:33:23.000 Like, this guy's just constantly chasing to keep up with his friend who's worth $80 billion.

02:33:28.000 Because he's got three.

02:33:28.000 Man, that's how it works.

02:33:29.000 Yep, that's how it works.

02:33:30.000 You could get trapped.

02:33:34.000 Yeah, you got to hit show.

02:33:35.000 You want to hit movie.

02:33:36.000 You got a hit movie, you want to be I want to start singing.

02:33:41.000 You know, you start getting crazy.

02:33:43.000 No, it's true.

02:33:49.000 And the next thing you know, you don't even know who you are.

02:33:52.000 No one knows who you are.

02:33:53.000 And if you don't know who you are, they'll decide.

02:33:56.000 They'll decide who you are.

02:33:57.000 They'll sell you as a thing.

02:33:57.000 They'll sell you.

02:33:59.000 You know?

02:34:00.000 You know what's crazy about music business?

02:34:03.000 The manager is, in many cases, the most powerful and the least regulated.

02:34:12.000 You know?

02:34:13.000 I think that's what's wild about the music business.

02:34:15.000 There's basically no regulation.

02:34:18.000 You know what I mean?

02:34:19.000 Yeah.

02:34:20.000 I think that's what makes people say it's the shadiest business.

02:34:25.000 I don't think it's the shadiest business, but a guy told me that in New York, actually when I got caught up in the Sony thing with the train robbers deal y 'all were showing on the screen, A lot of people were trying to sign us.

02:34:39.000 Actually, the guys at A&R'd Wu-Tang, like DJ Scott Free and Matty C, they were trying to get us into a deal.

02:34:46.000 Citizen Cope had a deal on the table and all that shit.

02:34:51.000 And it was like, he was the one that told me that.

02:34:56.000 He was like, man, fuck what you heard.

02:34:57.000 This is the shadiest business.

02:34:59.000 Now, I had come from a background of dealing with some pretty crazy shit in Texas, you know, with everything.

02:35:06.000 But even in that business, like people that are, if you're trying to play the stock market or whatever, Wall Street, it's a corrupt business and it is really fucked up, but it's highly regulated.

02:35:18.000 I mean, compared to the music business.

02:35:19.000 Right.

02:35:20.000 You know what I mean?

02:35:21.000 Right, right, right.

02:35:21.000 And you're dealing in, like, you know, the stock exchange there, it's like, they're like dealing in culture.

02:35:30.000 Cultural power.

02:35:31.000 Right.

02:35:32.000 Cultural wars, whatever you want to call it.

02:35:35.000 And there's just very, very little regulation.

02:35:40.000 And a lot of power.

02:35:41.000 Man.

02:35:42.000 So much power and influence and the people that make the most money, the people that don't even create the art.

02:35:46.000 Because you're talking about, let's say an old boy's got his buddy that's worth $80 billion or whatever.

02:35:51.000 Still doesn't make you a star.

02:35:55.000 Right.

02:35:56.000 It's still not fame, actually.

02:35:58.000 That's what's crazy.

02:35:59.000 I have a friend who's a billionaire who desperately wants to be famous.

02:36:02.000 It seems like a lot of them want to be.

02:36:05.000 They do!

02:36:05.000 Because that's a thing they don't have.

02:36:07.000 They have everything else.

02:36:08.000 You can't exactly buy that.

02:36:11.000 You kind of can.

02:36:12.000 Kind of, but then it turns on you.

02:36:14.000 Yeah, it turns on you.

02:36:16.000 Yeah, to be the rich guy.

02:36:18.000 I mean, I see some of that stuff playing out.

02:36:20.000 I don't want nothing to do with that.

02:36:22.000 Look what they did to Elon.

02:36:22.000 Nothing.

02:36:24.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

02:36:25.000 You don't want that.

02:36:26.000 Yeah, it's a harsh world because there's no sympathy for you.

02:36:30.000 You're the wealthy oligarch.

02:36:32.000 Oh, and you want everybody looking at you, right?

02:36:35.000 And then all of a sudden...

02:36:39.000 My body just got nervous.

02:36:41.000 They got you under that eye of Sauron.

02:36:44.000 They're trying to find all your flaws.

02:36:45.000 That's what?

02:36:46.000 Everybody's got them.

02:36:47.000 I got this little bird right here.

02:36:48.000 What is that?

02:36:48.000 It tells me all the secrets.

02:36:50.000 I didn't know what this was when I bought it, right?

02:36:50.000 What is that bird?

02:36:52.000 This is Horace, right?

02:36:54.000 Oh, wow.

02:36:56.000 And I found it in this place, this found items place, about 10 years ago.

02:37:00.000 And I just liked it.

02:37:01.000 Actually, I thought it was native.

02:37:04.000 I didn't realize it was Egyptian.

02:37:06.000 And I've always liked this one because I felt like it was a little bit of both.

02:37:10.000 And I didn't know anything about it at first.

02:37:13.000 But the reason I never take it off anymore is when I started reading about what it meant to the Egyptians was that it meant safe passage as you journey through this world and get ready to go on to the next one.

02:37:32.000 You know what I mean?

02:37:33.000 And protect you against evil.

02:37:36.000 Protect you for health and happiness.

02:37:42.000 They call that initiation.

02:37:43.000 So it makes a lot of people tie it to stupid shit like Illuminati and all that kind of stuff.

02:37:49.000 But, I mean, it's just a thunderbird.

02:37:52.000 Well, you know, the eye of Horus is essentially the pineal gland.

02:37:57.000 Where the seat of the soul.

02:37:59.000 Where the brain produces dimethyltryptamine.

02:38:02.000 That's the eye of Horus.

02:38:03.000 Have you ever seen the image of the eye of Horus next to the pineal gland?

02:38:07.000 I'm not sure.

02:38:08.000 Maybe I have, but I'm ignorant.

02:38:12.000 The pineal gland is a gland that's in the center of your brain.

02:38:17.000 It's essentially the third eye.

02:38:18.000 In reptiles, it actually has a retina and a lens.

02:38:21.000 Or a cornea on the lens.

02:38:29.000 It's also produced by the liver and the lungs, but it's like the most spiritual of all the psychedelics.

02:38:33.000 And they believe that the Egyptians had some sort of, you know, there's so little understood about truly ancient Egypt.

02:38:42.000 But look at that.

02:38:43.000 Look what it looks like.

02:38:45.000 I mean, the eye of Horus essentially is, it's a diagram of the pineal gland.

02:38:54.000 Which is kind of crazy.

02:38:55.000 It's kind of crazy when you see it that way Wow.

02:38:59.000 Because they knew things, and we don't know what they knew.

02:39:02.000 We don't understand how they built the pyramids.

02:39:04.000 We don't understand how old they are.

02:39:05.000 There's so much speculation about the true age of that civilization.

02:39:09.000 And figuring out, like, how they harness the energy and all that stuff.

02:39:12.000 We have no idea.

02:39:13.000 I mean, there's this group of scientists that believe that there's structures under the pyramids that go two kilometers deep into the earth.

02:39:19.000 Right.

02:39:19.000 And there's a lot of controversy about that.

02:39:22.000 But these guys are, they've multiple readings of these things, and they're pretty sure that they're accurate.

02:39:27.000 They've been accurate with other things, like other temples that are underground, that are 50 feet underground.

02:39:33.000 They've mapped those things out with the same technology.

02:39:36.000 So there's a precedent to it.

02:39:37.000 These people knew things, and we don't understand how they knew it or what they knew.

02:39:41.000 And we don't know if the people that lived in ancient Egypt that we considered ancient Egypt, like, you know, 2000 BC, we don't know if they found those structures or if those people built those structures.

02:39:52.000 There's so much.

02:39:54.000 Weirdness with Egypt, because the construction is so beyond anything else that exists anywhere on Earth, and especially when you're dealing with 4,500 plus years ago. 0.98

02:40:06.000 4,500 years ago is the conventional estimations.

02:40:09.000 But there's a lot of these heretic archaeologists that think, no, this is a lot older than that.

02:40:16.000 I mean, there's a king's list that goes back 30,000 plus years.

02:40:20.000 30,000 years.

02:40:33.000 There's a lot.

02:40:35.000 The most profound evidence is just the vastness of the Egyptian Empire and just the vastness of the construction, the way they were able to bring these stones from 500 miles away through the mountains that are 80 tons.

02:40:51.000 How?

02:40:52.000 How did they cut them perfectly?

02:40:53.000 How did they put them 120 feet in the air and put them in the ceiling?

02:40:57.000 What the fuck was going on then?

02:41:00.000 What the fuck was going on with people who were supposedly just getting out of hunter and gathering?

02:41:05.000 I mean, this is like the emergence.

02:41:07.000 Like a couple thousand years earlier, we're supposed to be like using stone tools and throwing them at animals.

02:41:13.000 And now you have these people that build this building.

02:41:19.000 A true north, south, east, and west has 2,300,000 stones in it.

02:41:23.000 What?

02:41:24.000 It's aligned with Orion stars, the stars in the Orion belt.

02:41:28.000 Like, what?

02:41:29.000 Maybe what happened was AI took them down, too.

02:41:34.000 It might be.

02:41:35.000 Way, way back.

02:41:36.000 It might be.

02:41:37.000 I'm just saying, right?

02:41:38.000 It could be.

02:41:39.000 Stuff could be, I forget who said that, but it's like, I mean, I'm all for science, but.

02:41:52.000 You know, there's so much out there beyond what we can see.

02:41:57.000 Yeah.

02:41:58.000 So I always kind of thought that myself.

02:42:02.000 I mean, it's a basic thing nowadays.

02:42:03.000 You know, when I was like a kid, you know, a lot of people have had this thought, but it's like, you know, I'm always like looking up here in the stars and it's like, if they're saying that the stars are basically infinite.

02:42:14.000 Then it's infinite possibility for other planets with life on it, which basically is a certainty, right?

02:42:21.000 It's basically a certainty.

02:42:22.000 It's a certainty.

02:42:22.000 Yeah, it's basically a certainty.

02:42:24.000 And the more we explore in the known universe, the more we understand that it's much more likely that this is not an anomaly, that there's many, many planets out there.

02:42:33.000 Who knows?

02:42:34.000 Maybe an infinite number that have life.

02:42:36.000 So who knows what's going on with those Egyptians? 1.00

02:42:39.000 Well, we don't know how long ago they did this.

02:42:42.000 You know, there's just so much speculation.

02:42:44.000 Well, and the version of Egypt that we're taught about, it was like just the latest stage of it.

02:42:50.000 Oh, yeah.

02:42:51.000 Like I read where it went on for so many thousands of years and there was this whole evolution of those kingdoms.

02:42:58.000 I'm talking about throughout Africa.

02:43:00.000 Well, all the Sub-Saharan area. 0.51

02:43:00.000 Yep. 0.51

02:43:02.000 All of that, too.

02:43:03.000 That's where they believe that Atlantis was.

02:43:05.000 I mean, there's this thing called the Reshot structure that there's, again, these heretic archaeologists believe was the site of Atlantis. 0.70

02:43:12.000 I mean, the South Saharan, the Sub-Saharan Africa was a rich rainforest thousands of years ago.

02:43:21.000 There's whale bones.

02:43:22.000 They find whale bones in the Saharan Desert.

02:43:24.000 That's crazy.

02:43:25.000 It's fucking madness, man.

02:43:27.000 The history of Earth is so confusing.

02:43:29.000 Like Graham Hancock says it best, we're a species with amnesia.

02:43:33.000 You know?

02:43:34.000 And that's what's wild about all this ancient shit.

02:43:37.000 We don't remember anything.

02:43:38.000 Well, we definitely don't remember shit from 20,000 years ago.

02:43:42.000 It's all just speculation.

02:43:43.000 And people have been in this form.

02:43:46.000 You know, the form of homo sapiens now for 300-plus thousand years.

02:43:51.000 Like, who knows how long?

02:43:53.000 And who knows where they learned this stuff from?

02:43:56.000 I mean, who knows if they learned this stuff from visitors?

02:43:58.000 We don't know.

02:43:59.000 We don't know.

02:44:00.000 I mean, if we did get visited 20,000, 30,000 years ago, what evidence would be left?

02:44:05.000 You know?

02:44:06.000 And are we being visited now?

02:44:08.000 Well, we're about to find out because if this shit keeps popping off with Israel and Iran and they start going nuclear, That we're so close to emerging as a Type 1 civilization. 0.88

02:44:26.000 We're so close to getting out of this barbaric, you know, territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons. 1.00

02:44:34.000 We're so close to passing this stage that we're in right now, as long as we don't fuck it up.

02:44:41.000 And who knows how many times people might have fucked it up in the past.

02:44:44.000 I mean, that might be what we're looking at when we're looking at ancient Egypt.

02:44:47.000 There might be the remnants.

02:44:48.000 And there's also natural disasters.

02:44:50.000 Yeah, and that's all I meant by AI.

02:44:52.000 Yeah.

02:44:52.000 You know what I mean?

02:44:53.000 It could be our greatest natural disaster.

02:44:55.000 You get there, but I like your – there's a very positive outlook, though, when you're talking about getting to the next – Type...

02:45:04.000 Type one civilization.

02:45:05.000 What does that mean?

02:45:06.000 Okay.

02:45:15.000 It might have been Sagan.

02:45:18.000 Jamie, you can pull it up so I don't fuck this up.

02:45:20.000 Come on, Jamie.

02:45:21.000 But it's essentially our...

02:45:23.000 Here it is.

02:45:24.000 Type 1 civilization known as a planetary civilization defined by our Kardashev scale as the one that's harnessed and controls all available energy on its planet.

02:45:35.000 This includes utilizing all forms of energy from sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and potentially even harnessing nuclear fusion.

02:45:43.000 A Type 1 civilization is also characterized by a global technologically advanced society with a high degree of interconnectedness and the ability to manage planetary scale resources and weather.

02:45:58.000 And AI, in best case scenario, helps us achieve that.

02:46:02.000 And we're close.

02:46:03.000 We're probably a lot closer to that than we think.

02:46:07.000 Type 2 civilization is stellar, meaning we populate other planets.

02:46:12.000 Type 3 is galactic.

02:46:14.000 We populate the cosmos and we explore the cosmos.

02:46:20.000 We're on our way to that.

02:46:22.000 It's inevitable.

02:46:23.000 If we used to live in caves, and now we fly in hypersonic jets, this is what's coming.

02:46:29.000 And it's whether or not we fuck it up along the way.

02:46:35.000 Beam me up, man.

02:46:38.000 We should probably end on that.

02:46:39.000 Charlie Crockett, you're the man.

02:46:41.000 I appreciate you, brother.

02:46:42.000 Thank you very much for being here, man.

02:46:43.000 Pleasure is mine, man.

02:46:44.000 Texas forever.

02:46:45.000 Yeah, thanks a lot.

02:46:45.000 It's been a lot of fun.

02:46:46.000 Texas forever.

02:46:46.000 Thank you, sir.

02:46:47.000 Come on, man.

02:46:48.000 Thank you.

02:46:49.000 All right.

02:46:50.000 Tell everybody where they can find all your shit.

02:46:53.000 Do you have a social media?

02:46:54.000 Yeah, but you don't got to do all that.

02:46:56.000 Okay.

02:46:57.000 I mean, it's Charlie Crockett.

02:46:59.000 Charlie with an E-Y, like Charlie Pride. 0.63

02:47:02.000 Crockett with two T's, just like Davey.

02:47:02.000 That's it.

02:47:05.000 That's all they need to know.

02:47:06.000 That's it.

02:47:06.000 All right.

02:47:07.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - June 19, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2340 - Charley Crockett

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