#1356 - Sturgill Simpson & His Band

[0] We willed it into existence to do, do Sturgle, motherfucking Simpson and his band.

[1] Just let's introduce everybody.

[2] Okay.

[3] Want to do that?

[4] Yeah, you can do it.

[5] All right.

[6] Next to you is my drummer Miles.

[7] We have Chuck.

[8] He plays the bass.

[9] Down on the end is Bob.

[10] He plays the keys.

[11] And this is our head of security.

[12] This is Justin.

[13] He's a, you know, we weren't sure about this place.

[14] So we brought up on a. It's a sketchy joint.

[15] um you guys were fucking fantastic last night we had a great time thanks man so the troubadour is such a great place to see you too because it's so intimate man you know it's such a it's a really interesting place it's so tight you know it's so old school and a fucking million shows have happened in that joint everybody everybody yeah it was interesting for us we didn't feel like it was a good show i think we kind of woke up about halfway through but also the first time we've been this close to people in a while.

[16] It was a great show, man. I enjoyed the fuck out of it.

[17] And Suzanne from Honey Honey, Suzanne Santos, she came with me too.

[18] She loved it.

[19] It was great, man. We had a good time.

[20] Yeah, yeah.

[21] It wasn't a bad show either.

[22] No, come on.

[23] It was amazing.

[24] We had a great fucking time.

[25] And it's just, it's such a treat to see someone in such a small venue.

[26] You know, that venue is so, like, everybody was, like, jammed up on top of everybody.

[27] So when people went nuts for the songs, you know, like you felt it.

[28] Like, you really realized, when you're in a venue like that, how much that contributes to the experience.

[29] You know, intimate, intimate venues.

[30] A venue can ruin a good show.

[31] Sure, yeah.

[32] I don't really like the amphitheater, like the outdoor amphitheater.

[33] Yes.

[34] The tin roof sheds.

[35] I feel the same.

[36] It's just not, there's no connection because everybody that is close to you is sitting down and then there's this giant picnic going on behind them up on the grass.

[37] It's always just a weird separation.

[38] What happened, Jamie?

[39] What do we do?

[40] doing oh i thought you were trying something new out um yeah the amphitheaters are weird i mean they can be great oh there oh there's the picture from the true door last night that was fun man nice that place i mean how many people's that seat probably 400 i think 500 they're stuffed in there that is a fire hazard for sure someone someone phobby's organs a fire hazard It was a good time though It really was I saw Everlast perform there recently He was there like just a few weeks ago I met that dude once He's awesome He is a chill guy man He really is The best It was up my This guy Dawn one was like a skate It's like a skate shop My buddy Ian took me to this skate shop And he had a bunch of sneakers there I was looking for some sneakers And it's just this little sleepy skate shop And then he's like Yeah let's go out back And we walked up back and there's like 12 X -Games champions back there just slaying this half pipe.

[41] I'd never really seen that shit up close like that, just like, you know, thrashing.

[42] And it was intense.

[43] And then we're sitting there hanging out and then fucking Everlast shows up.

[44] And I was just like, this dude from House of Payne is crazy.

[45] But he was so cool.

[46] He's super cool.

[47] But I remember one of the first times I ever met him, it's one of those weird ones where you're like, am I really hanging out with this guy?

[48] Is this really Everlast from House of Pain?

[49] Right.

[50] You know, jump around was such.

[51] a goddamn gigantic hit it was like one of the greatest hits of all time like one of the greatest i mean i guess you would call that a hip -hop song right but it was that was a giant hit with like my generation so just to be hanging out with him was super surreal i'm sure he's had a very interesting journey fuck yeah he has he was the first guy ever smoked a joint with with inside a casino too he just fired it up i go where he want to smoke that he goes where he just starts smoking it i was I was like, all right, I guess we're going to do that.

[52] That was a pretty, that album, I think I was in like seventh grade, sixth grade.

[53] It was very nefarious.

[54] I remember that.

[55] Nefarious is a good word for it.

[56] You know, a rip shit, kill it, cut your gut and spill it, treat you like a gas tank, take that ass and fill it.

[57] Yes, that's nefarious.

[58] Go for a ride to where I reside, put your face on a pillow, and have you weeping like a willow.

[59] It's what it is, y 'all.

[60] It's prolific.

[61] Yeah.

[62] That's prolific.

[63] That's intimidating.

[64] Right.

[65] For sure.

[66] That doesn't freak you out a little.

[67] Especially if someone says it with his voice.

[68] You know, all smooth and shit.

[69] And a Larry Bird jersey.

[70] You've tried a lot of different forms of music.

[71] Do you ever think you would ever do hip -hop?

[72] Oh, God, no. That would be a weird stretch.

[73] Well, there's just so many other people that should do it other than me. You know?

[74] I would love to, but no. I would love to produce a hip -hop record with Bob.

[75] I think we could probably make some fat fucking tracks and just get some rappers to do the actual art. Yeah.

[76] You know.

[77] I know what you're saying.

[78] I know how you're feeling, but I think you could pull it off.

[79] With rapping?

[80] Yeah, I think you could.

[81] Sturge ill?

[82] Yes.

[83] He kind of already does.

[84] All right, you're going to give me up, man?

[85] Yeah, he kind of wraps a little bit.

[86] No bullshit.

[87] I spit on the bus a little bit.

[88] be told all right you know yeah poems you'd have to be lit but you could do it you know who can fucking rap for a white guy shy a loboof man yeah he did some radio show years back out here in l .A. and like it was actually impressive wow yeah his freestyle was fire if for a dude it's a white guy it's a risky choice right it's a risky choice and you got to figure you got to decide whether or not you're going to go with urban access I want to produce a shy guy Leboof album, rap album.

[89] Wow.

[90] There you go.

[91] Open up the doors.

[92] Manifest it, make it happen.

[93] Yeah, white guy rappers have to, they have to be real careful with their accent.

[94] Like, you've got to figure out how you're going to do that.

[95] Yeah, that's always weird.

[96] How are you going to pull that off?

[97] I went to high school with a lot of those white guys that, like, that tried to, like, talk like they were black.

[98] I never could understand what was going on.

[99] It's a weird one.

[100] It's a weird one.

[101] Miles and I went to the same high school.

[102] He graduated.

[103] like 15 years after me so he knows about the woe foe what I'm talking about I'm sure it was still very much a thing oh it still is yeah we were just talking about like how few white guys become successful rappers like what are the if all the things that people attempt to do that might be one of like there's only like a few there's like you know Eric from Everlast from House of Pain there's a M &M there's Mac Miller Mac Miller yeah third base Base, third base for sure, those guys.

[104] Those guys were great.

[105] Eminem, of course.

[106] Yeah, Eminem of course.

[107] He might be number one.

[108] Yeah, he's number one, I think.

[109] He's just an all -time great rapper, period.

[110] White guy or not.

[111] But, like, white guys that want to rap, boy, the white guys that want to rap versus white guys are successful rapping, that fucking number's stupendous.

[112] Those are not good odds.

[113] That's intimidating, right?

[114] There's no denying that some white guys who pulled it off.

[115] You remember snow?

[116] Yes.

[117] Informa.

[118] Like he had like a whole He did the patois thing Yeah yeah yeah yeah Talking to Mike brother Sorry I just said he did the patois thing Yeah yeah yeah yeah He went Jamaican on us right But it was really good Which is even weirder It was so weird It was he?

[119] Oh was he?

[120] Yeah which does I mean it's not better But there's a lot of That just keeps getting better That's Canada That's good They're nice as hell up there How did he be Yeah Go to the mic Snow is from Toronto Yeah I would never get yeah let's look that up good call good call I loved that one song though that informer song was badass that's insane if he's from Toronto would be no idea what it doesn't say what city but he's from Toronto born in Toronto yeah born in Toronto 49 go wow there you go yeah he went Jamaican and no one else even ventured to step in his footsteps it was like a successful hit song but it didn't like open up a whole door of like Jamaican it didn't even open up a door for him man that's the only fucking song anybody ever heard like how can it be that good that always freaks me out about your business is that there are a few cats that come up with one song that just fucking smashes it well that happens because whoever is in charge of their career as one vetter's interest which is pushing that single and then it does its thing and if they can't come up with the identical thing again they don't know what to do and then they just stick them on a shelf and you never hear from them again i know but it just it's so it's so final like if you're a comic and you have a shitty special you can get your shit together and come up with a good neck special there's nothing like a huge hit to destroy your music career how many i mean really really good songs if you stop and think about history we're from a band where you heard like maybe two of their songs ever i would say 90 % of them so many so many in the pop in that in that world you know if you're like radio songs yeah and syndication yeah this is usually how much is that changing for you guys because of the internet i mean you when you first started your career like how much of an effect did the internet have on like promoting things or getting the word out on things versus now huge because we're not on radio even now when did you when when did we get triple a play now and things like that but you're not going to um i guess early on touring blogs and reviews uh press and things like like that gets circulated word of mouth from shows people come to shows they get their mind blown they talk about it on Twitter you know and then it just it's this organic grassroots kind of thing and you sort of realize at a point you don't really need any of that other antiquated shit people but to but to make it happen like we did you have to go out and do the laps you have to put the time in and earn your medals you can't like just sit on YouTube right right talking about yourself all the time that's a big part right your shows like how many live shows you guys are doing well now it's already out there so people just do it for you really it spreads easier and faster now but like you know miles has been with we've been playing together since he was 19 man like in a fan four people sleeping on one four wow this was about two weeks ago uh you drive seven miles or i'm sorry seven hours and you hope 13 people show up to maybe buy a t -shirt and shit so you got gas to get to the next town there's a lot of life questioning nights out there in the early days you know do you know roy wood is roy wood junior Really hilarious stand -up comedian.

[121] He had a really similar story when he was talking about his beginnings as a comedian that he would get these gigs and he wouldn't have enough money to get home and that he would get gigs.

[122] And while he was there, he would take a job, like a day job, like a day labor.

[123] He would wear fucking hard hats and gloves and shit, work all day and then do the stand -up at night.

[124] It's like those guys who go through that kind of stuff, there's no substitute for that.

[125] No. There's no other way.

[126] like to really get that there's something about the seasoning of the unsuccessful or barely successful early years it seems for all my favorite artists it's it's so critical like they all have it whether they're comics or whether the musicians there's that fucking grind in the beginning where it could go left or right like you could make it or it could completely fall apart you have to be almost delusional and a little crazy yes you know i was i mean i had a great job that i quit to go do this shit finally like give it a go i was probably 35 years old you know i mean there's a lot of nights where i was like what in the fuck am i doing you know what i mean but it worked and yeah but that's why last night's so fun because nobody else well i wrote a song about turtles and drugs one year and nobody else did so i just i feel yeah whenever a country music song comes out with DMT in it you got my attention psilocybin lSD that was a great song though it was a great song to introduce the world to a different idea that you know it's just music man you know like whether it's country or psychedelic or psychedelic country if it's great it's just great you know and you switch shit up this new album is so weird man it's great it's great but it's so interesting if you go back to like your first album and then listen to this album you're like that's not the same fucking guy but it is i know it's just they're all different uh expressions or interests but that's really exciting you know when when someone mixes their style up as much as you do and you guys put together these albums, you know, each one of them is, they're uniquely you, but they're all different.

[127] It's a, it's a, you've got a real weird thing going on, man. Like if you went back and listened to your first album and then listen to the, they're all awesome.

[128] But they're awesome in like all these different ways, man. You know, it's so cool to see all this experimentation, like this anime thing you're doing with this.

[129] And it's really bad ass.

[130] That was really just sort of a lot of things lining up out of my control that that that movie we only started on that literally a little over a year ago and just the way it all came together and how many people were working simultaneously is the only reason they got finished as fast as it it but it definitely delayed me releasing the record for at least a year but it's such a great idea yeah well I mean you know if we're here well the whole reason we went in the studio made this thing is because we reached a point of burnout I thought.

[131] I definitely did.

[132] And then you also reach a point where now you realize the only way we're going to survive and make money as musicians is touring.

[133] So why wouldn't we make this as fun for ourselves as possible?

[134] You know, you play these festivals and then you're rocking out three or four songs and the people are jumping them.

[135] And I just kind of asked everybody, why can't we just go do that for two hours and make music that people can dance and have a great time to?

[136] And still, you know, Miles has probably been listening to me talk about, making you know fucking dubstep rock and roll record for five years and we finally just did it but it's it's great that you take those steps you know these guys help a lot too the last we were touring in 2018 and the music was just sort of going there anyway on stage how's it how's it going there anyway on stage like you guys we're just stretching out more abandoning core fundamental structures of the songs like I don't want to be a karaoke machine here anymore.

[137] I just got so bored and burn out with staying up there and playing the shit the same way every night.

[138] And you do isolate some fans, but at the same time, like, if we're not inspired, how the fuck is anybody else going to be?

[139] So eventually you will find your audience that wants to go with you.

[140] And music, you know, one of these songs were turning into 10 and 15 minute.

[141] Just me being high and I was having a good time, you know?

[142] Yeah, that's what...

[143] I caught that.

[144] The brace for impact on Colbert, somebody shared it.

[145] Yeah.

[146] And, you know, I hadn't seen it basically since we did it in 2016 and it's almost a completely different song right like you could literally see the the changes from 2016 to now it's amazing yeah so we made this record June of 2017 and had to sit on it couldn't play any of it you know you go out and you do the other thing so now almost two almost two and a half years later from the time we recorded in the studio and I was writing those lyrics we were making this music in in the moment we'll go out we've been rehearsing for two weeks and it's already at a point like shit what i wish we could have recorded it now because you have all these ideas that you just don't have in that moment and you get a year and a half later on a tour playing that material it's a whole other animal you know because you just found all these little idiosyncratic nuances and things that you can flourish that you just don't think about when you're in a control room for 18 hours a day is that a common tactic where you're always changing your songs you're always fucking with them and continuing I hope so yeah but is it common with other artists it should be it should be if they're you know worth a shit but is that a normal thing like when you guys get together and talk about how you make songs like comedians talk about how they make jokes we don't really talk about it you guys don't ever get together I'll write lyrics and stuff or maybe have like a rough idea structure and form but these guys are all like bona fide musical geniuses man they're all like their flavor that's why, you know, like on this record I'd never done it before, but at a certain point anybody that's in the room is contributing whether they're writing the songs or not, just their presence, the energy they bring to that track.

[147] Like they're, if you got a guy that plays the perfect thing, the first take, what are you really producing?

[148] You know what I mean?

[149] You're hiring someone for what, as a tool and, you know, like Nashville, there's all these session players, so in a sense it's just this giant tool box.

[150] And there might be 10 guys you could call today to do this thing, but two of them might be way more perfect for this specific thing than those other eight.

[151] They're all badasses, but you know, you know, you can flavor, man, I just found the right flavors that I want to stand up there with because these guys, I could make 10 records with these guys and they're all going to sound like 10 different bands.

[152] Now, is this because you guys don't have, I mean, how much of influence do record companies have on new bands?

[153] like when new bands are coming up and they're trying to put together their music how much influence do record companies have in the creative process it just depends did they discover them or are they already are they jumping on board with something that's already working well I mean someone like as an artist like someone looking at you as an artist to go yeah you let them do whatever the fuck he wants you know like let them let them no that's a very rare thing it's rare if you're doing with record companies right yeah I had to I got it contractually written into my contract that nobody could tell me what to do so it's common that you get fucked with everybody's going to have their two cents their input there's gonna here's what we really want you to want to do right because like this is probably I would think there would be executives to go stop stop fucking with it right there just leave it right there trust me put it out like that those would be like actual record men the guys that used to run the record business like they knew what the real shit was and you don't fuck with the real shit but there's very few of those people actually working in the record business anymore.

[154] It's all like 25, 30 -year -old bottom -line quarterly report motherfuckers.

[155] It's all about the money.

[156] But wouldn't you think that excellence would bring money?

[157] Especially today.

[158] In this day and age, with the internet?

[159] They could sell excellence, but then they have to work and find it.

[160] As opposed to, like, formulating this tried and true Mrs. Butterworth recipe.

[161] Proven.

[162] Yeah.

[163] You know?

[164] Just give me 17 to the.

[165] those I get it I would suck to be in a business with art you know or like you're thinking about it like a business yeah but it's art yeah it's a product but your music is art you get enough people involved anything turns into a product right yeah but it's just the the business aspect of it like someone trying to think about what's the best way to sell it what's the best way to what's the best way to push it what if we change this and added that what we put some gospel singers in background what if we did this what if we you know yeah but you've avoided it what if we get this person to like wrap a verse on it how'd you avoid it what did you what did you do to avoid most of that bullshit still figuring it out i don't know man just didn't do it i say no a lot i think that's the thing to say yeah yeah i'm lazy as shit too i got really want to do something yeah especially when you don't have to, right?

[166] Right.

[167] What were you doing at 35 when you quit?

[168] You working a railroad show?

[169] I was an operations manager at a rail yard, an intermodal yard out in Utah.

[170] Wow.

[171] They were running a rail yard, just overseeing the switching crews that when the trains would pull in from the east and west side of the yard, we would break those trains apart and look at other manifests and drive cars off other rails and build them into those trains and then crew them again and get them on the line.

[172] So I was working like 90 -hour weeks.

[173] Mostly cleaning up train wrecks and derailments or like they blew a switch and put three cars on the ground.

[174] We were the central artery in the Midwest.

[175] Really, that corridor is kind of the cross -section of the entire country's shipping commerce.

[176] So if we fucked up and tied up the main lines, then we kind of shut down the railroad.

[177] Do you know what's fucked up?

[178] You could never tell a kid, hey, you want to make meaningful music.

[179] This is what you got to do.

[180] you got a struggle in like difficult jobs till you're about 35 and you know barely get to where you want to be where you're really kind of freaking out about your future and then pour yourself your heart and soul and then find success after that that's a good move if you want to have impactful music but if you if you get into music like early on in your life and make a career early on in your life you miss everything that you did by being an older like you're you know a 35 year old man that makes a jump.

[181] That's a bold move.

[182] That makes sense, but there's been a lot of incredible artists that made some truly visionary shit at 20, you know.

[183] For sure.

[184] But there's a life experience aspect to your music.

[185] Oh, yeah.

[186] I mean, I wouldn't know what the, I wouldn't have any of the shit to write about if I'd done it at 20.

[187] Yeah.

[188] I'd be right.

[189] Who God knows what I'd be right about.

[190] Probably pussy.

[191] Yeah.

[192] For sure.

[193] For sure.

[194] Yeah.

[195] And you're young?

[196] Well, what are you thinking about?

[197] You know, if you're talking about stars and horoscopes and shit, you're probably bullshitting people.

[198] This podcast got weird real quick, huh?

[199] He does that now.

[200] Sturgle talks about stars and horoscopes now.

[201] Right.

[202] What do you think about horoscopes?

[203] Do you think that shit's real?

[204] Like astrology?

[205] What do you think about horoscopes?

[206] I'm actually interested what he thinks about horoscopes.

[207] Yeah, what do you think about it, man?

[208] I mean, somebody's just making shit up.

[209] for other people to read.

[210] You can move that mic so you don't have to break your neck.

[211] Yeah, you're just making stuff up.

[212] If you're if you're reading a horoscope or someone's trying to play, like give you some sort of indication of what's going to happen serendipitously or by fate.

[213] Either way, it's just someone making the shit up.

[214] It's just horseshit.

[215] People looking for patterns, I think.

[216] I'd have to learn about like the astrology aspect if they're trying to, if they're using that or something effectively.

[217] Numerology is the only thing in that world that even remotely interests me. How's that interesting?

[218] It's based on like mathematics and universal equations and I don't know, basically like don't, right, some people can get a little loopy with it and they, like they won't fly on an airplane.

[219] They'll have their numerologists look at the flight numbers, the number on the plane and how these things all correlate whether this is a wise decision or not, you know, that to me is just like, what?

[220] You know, Nancy Reagan was all deep into that.

[221] Really?

[222] She was deep into astrology, actually.

[223] And she had like some famous astrologer who would read do the readings for them and she would dictate whether or not Ronald Reagan should go and do shit based on numeralogy based on astrology it's not the same right numerology is just numbers but astrology is but she didn't she is that the case I'm pretty sure she was like balls deep into it like really into astrology after the assassination we look that up What's that?

[224] We should look that up.

[225] Yeah, we're looking that up.

[226] Jamie's always on it.

[227] You got it?

[228] You got it?

[229] What do you got?

[230] Here it goes.

[231] Quigley was born in Kansas City, Missouri.

[232] She was called on by First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1981 after John Hinkley's attempted assassination of the president and stayed on as the White House astrologer in secret until being ousted in 1988 by ousted former chief of staff, Donald Reagan.

[233] She said, I was responsible for timing all press conferences.

[234] most speeches, the state of the union addresses, the take -offs, and the landings of Air Force One.

[235] What's the fuck?

[236] She claimed a bigger role in her 1990 book.

[237] We'll see.

[238] What does Joan say?

[239] Well, yeah, interesting.

[240] That's crazy.

[241] Interesting.

[242] Yeah, people love to believe in patterns.

[243] But then there are patterns.

[244] So, like, maybe there's a thing.

[245] You know, maybe there's a reason why we like to believe in patterns.

[246] But I agree with you.

[247] this idea that someone's going to be able to like, when were you born?

[248] Oh, Tuesday?

[249] 7 a .m.?

[250] Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, stay home tonight.

[251] What the fuck out of here?

[252] Bitch, you don't know what the hell's going on.

[253] This is guesswork.

[254] But also statistically, you're going to have patterns.

[255] 330 million people.

[256] Yep.

[257] The same thing they were talking about earlier.

[258] Yeah, 100%.

[259] I don't really notice patterns.

[260] And people also find, they find a way to take what someone has said and make it seem like, oh, that's, he means my brother.

[261] my brother and I have this problem we really have to work it out that's what you're saying yes I think it is your brother in fact what colors his hair it's black yes this guy's black hair oh my god you know everything about my brother like if you ever been to an empath no I have not no what do you think about that exactly what is that means they I don't know I guess that's what they call psychics now so you don't feel like you're getting ripped off oh really they call them empaths they're very empathic they feel things oh is that what it is your dead family and i don't think that anyone on this planet i don't think there's a an an equal ability to perceive anything i think some people are way more perceptive some people are smarter they see patterns better they see trouble coming they see problems they see things better than other people do and i think there's feelings that you get sometimes like weird feelings then someone will call you and you're like fuck i was just thinking about that dude that is weird.

[262] Like someone sends you a text.

[263] You haven't thought about them or talked to them in months and months and months and all of a sudden you think about them and bam, a text comes through or they're calling you.

[264] I don't know what that is.

[265] One time we were all texting by Jean -Claude Van Damme and five minutes later my Netflix recommendations are full of Jean -Claude Van Damme.

[266] I've never watched the Jean -Claude Van Damme movie on Netflix of my life.

[267] Most of them there's like eight of them.

[268] Someone's listening.

[269] That should creep you out.

[270] That should creep you out.

[271] I had a meeting with Netflix about this anime thing early on and I brought this shit up and asked on point blank they said no Of course they did Maybe they just get results Maybe it's like they have a cleaner And they say to this guy Listen I don't give a fuck How you find out what these people are talking about But you could find out right Yeah maybe We'll say just don't tell me Just do it Just do it And this guy just like this thing is just listen To every goddamn word you say And providing suggestions for things you could buy On Amazon Maybe What I was thinking about psychics though Is I think some people are probably better at that.

[272] I bet there is moments where some people have a weird sense.

[273] I just don't think it's consistent enough for anybody to pay money for it.

[274] I don't think anybody's ever demonstrated a real, like, provable psychic power.

[275] But it doesn't mean that I don't think that that's, look, we can smell.

[276] Why can we smell?

[277] What is that?

[278] Some shit you can't even see and you can determine whether or not something's terrible based on it.

[279] I mean, you can smell rotten meat.

[280] You're like, oh, what the fuck?

[281] That's your whole body.

[282] you don't even see anything where is that how do we not know that there's other senses that we can develop like our ability to perceive good and bad at people our ability to perceive whether or not someone's like a truly kind person or whether someone's sociopathic maybe there's ways to see whether or not people are compatible with your way of thinking maybe there's ways to see weird shit that people are thinking like if someone's planning and they're angry they're about to hit somebody maybe you could see it maybe you could feel it Maybe you don't even know what the fuck it is, but it smells like the same way rotten meat smells.

[283] Like, whoa, I got to get the fuck out of here.

[284] There's feelings you get from certain people that are just unhinged.

[285] Spidey sense.

[286] Spidey sense.

[287] Yeah.

[288] I mean, it just sucks.

[289] Just like early chimps were really bad at talking, you know?

[290] And then eventually they became people who talk for a living.

[291] We talk all day.

[292] You sing.

[293] You know, fucking chimps say, a couple fucking noises.

[294] That's all they have.

[295] Do you know they lie to each other?

[296] Monkeys do?

[297] I was listening to this podcast.

[298] I forget what they were talking about but they got to this thing where it was deception with primates that they'll pretend that there's an eagle coming so that everybody dives down and they'll steal the fruit they'll make noises they'll make noises like different animals coming to get you and they fuck with each other like they have noises that equals eagles and they'll duck down and they hear fucking eagles oh Jesus like they imitate the eagle no no they have a word for it the word for these monkeys He's like there's a certain screech that they make that represents something coming down from above.

[299] Miles just sings, take it easy on the bus.

[300] I do the same thing.

[301] It's your favorite song.

[302] I got to sing it.

[303] He loves the Eagles.

[304] I like some of the...

[305] After Joe Walsh, they were a different band.

[306] Right?

[307] Yeah, yeah.

[308] He actually...

[309] There's like pre -Joe Walsh, Eagles.

[310] Joe Walsh makes everything better.

[311] Joe Walsh is the savage.

[312] Victim of Love.

[313] Anybody doesn't love that song?

[314] You can fuck off.

[315] It's a great goddamn song.

[316] this is uh oh do we even did we didn't introduce you properly no okay that's justin i think we did introduce it's mike tyson yes i'm hanging out with these guys because i'm a green beret and i got hurt and you saw the show last night so i'm speaking at the shows because uh sturgle on his own well let me back up i got blown up in march and i was in the hospital previous year i'd like come off of a deployment had like 11 months before the second one was a bit down in the down of the dumps got divorced had a dude die in the first trip so it was kind of like it was real rough to deal with and then I was listening to these dudes quite a bit and then led into the next deployment I was there a month boom almost died pretty hard um teammates saved me and uh we had blood on the ground like I got blood on on target and then they made a halacious movement to get me to the Medevac.

[317] Long story short, I'm eating dinner in the hospital, one of the first meals jamming out to these dudes.

[318] And I was like, Mom, I want to meet Sturzel Simpson.

[319] And then she tried to get a hold of them.

[320] Socom eventually did.

[321] And he came, hung out for like two hours.

[322] I made my friend now, General Bodette, wait like 15 minutes so that we could finish talking about what we were talking about, which when you're an enlisted dude, you don't make Generals wait.

[323] But I was on a lot of ketamine so it was sweet but uh then uh sturgle had it on his own had it on his own accord to like donate to the foundation so this little tour going on that coincides with the actual album release is donating to the special forces foundation so um that helps gold star families which are the families that remain of remained of the friends that got killed on this trip uh so there were four green berets and two eOD techs and uh so that money's going to them and that That's what I care about.

[324] I'm alive.

[325] I don't have any legs below my knees for those I can't.

[326] I can't see my legs on the video anyway.

[327] And I don't have my testicles either.

[328] So that's a different set of challenges.

[329] But I don't care about getting taken care of other than the normal army processes, but I want them to get taken care of from the foundation.

[330] So I'm grateful to have these guys as friends now.

[331] They're awesome.

[332] They're amazing musicians, but amazing people.

[333] And then I'm grateful to be here and just to push that out.

[334] So people that are coming to the shows, all that money goes to the foundation, and then people can go on the foundation's website, which is special forces foundation .org.

[335] And, yeah, I appreciate it.

[336] That's fucking awesome, man. That's really, really cool.

[337] That's really cool that you're doing this.

[338] And thank you for coming here and telling everybody this.

[339] You know, this is a great way to, it's a great way to help out and your music, you know, to connect it to that, I think that's just a fucking incredible thing.

[340] It's really cool.

[341] You know, when you were sending me the text messages, telling me that you were going to the hospital, you know, it's very touching.

[342] It was like, yeah.

[343] Yeah, you were, you know, you could tell you were seriously moved by this.

[344] And, you know, for someone like you truly understands the consequences of war, like the physical consequences in a way that none of us will understand you know it's it's very not just it's brave of you to talk about this but it's also it's so so valuable so valuable for everybody that that hasn't served to understand what it really is so thank you for that well i always say i really like combat because i was in a lot of it uh relatively speaking but bunch of guys have been in way more combat bunch of people treated more casualties i'm a medic but i was a fair amount almost got killed on the first trip a good handful of times and then uh so i just don't like the war aspect when you see your friends get killed and uh you're stuck in a hospital bed on top of all this stuff that's you know i didn't shit for a week i pissed blood for a week i've had tons and nights of excruciating pain that's the life of an amputee or they're guys that are worse than me so i'm just grateful for having what i have and uh yeah that's the beginning of it like especially on ketamine when you're going through all that and you're just like i was telling like the people that took the trash out in the room like hey i'm grateful for you brother like right on brother what is uh what is ketamine like after catastrophic injury like that does it relieve the pain does it just put you in another dimension so ketamine is a an mda sucker yeah and ketamine is a an mda antagonist in the brain so essentially is a dissociative So the way that it feels, because we learn this in class as a medic and everything, but the way that it feels is kind of, it takes your perspective and it's like, it always felt like a whirlwind if I was getting a push of it.

[345] But things, it's like you're starting to get your vision masked and you're still there, but you're dipping into like subconscious because you're still conscious.

[346] Because unconscious would mean that you're like, you pass out and you cannot have a gag reflex depending on how unconscious you are.

[347] So ketamine, I would close my eyes and immediately trip the most insane balls that you can imagine and open them and I'd be back in the room and I'd be like, what the fuck?

[348] And then a friend of mine, when I left my first rotation, he was an Air Force CCTV that got blown up in the same village.

[349] I had a few casualties in.

[350] He stepped in ID, he's in above the knee, some missing fingers.

[351] But when he was on ketamine, when he was awake and looking around, he'd see the walls on fire.

[352] And then there'd be like women, like white, pale skin in the corners, peeling the skin off their back.

[353] And he was like awake.

[354] And I was like, dude, that's like whatever.

[355] I don't know.

[356] It must be like someone's psychology when they go in, like set and setting type thing.

[357] But I was in it when I got a lot of ketamine.

[358] My legs are blown off.

[359] I'm getting worked on.

[360] I'm telling dudes how to treat me. I cut my own shirt off.

[361] And then I get the ketamine.

[362] And I'm like in and out and I see these visions back and forth.

[363] And like I was convinced that there are two distinct moments.

[364] I was like, I'm not going to make it and had that conversation.

[365] And what's surreal about this right here is that you were talking to him on this show and you guys talked about combat medics.

[366] And you were like, and I just sing in key.

[367] And I was like, right on, they're talking about me. And then I got all kinds of jacked up.

[368] makes you appreciate life and I've gone through a huge development last year through depression and then this year after this blast of like being grateful and like do an introspection and communicating and having empathy for other people and being compassionate human which General Mattis has told us a group of us on the way back from my first trip it's like don't let this experience of war make you a more hateful human being because people haven't experienced it, let it allow yourself to go through post -traumatic growth and become a better human being and treat other people like you want to be treated.

[369] And I would add on to that, which came from Tim Ferriss, treat yourself the way you treat other people too.

[370] That's not a side of Mattis that you ever hear in the press, huh?

[371] I suppose not.

[372] I think that would be very valuable for people to know that he thinks that way.

[373] That's a, it's a very powerful way to view.

[374] this inevitable the inevitable consequences of war that that started scraping me off the bottom to focus on that after that trip yeah that ketamine shit is a weird one because a lot of people do it recreationally and apparently they they blast off and go into other dimensions and shit and they go into k -holes and yeah I never did it I never tried it I knew a dude who died from it he was really into it it's doing it a lot what what happened I don't know.

[375] Like an infection?

[376] I know he probably was doing a bunch of other things as well, but he was getting treated for ketamine, for addiction, and then he wound up dying.

[377] You can dose the shit out of ketamine.

[378] Yeah.

[379] You couldn't.

[380] And it doesn't kill you.

[381] You can give a kid 300 megs of it, and they will fucking trip balls, but they're not going to die.

[382] It's like the opposite of all the other drugs.

[383] I think he was doing other shit, too.

[384] Yeah.

[385] I think the ketamine was just something.

[386] he was treated for i think he was doing a bunch of speed and stuff too which uh it's um ketamine was originally like isn't a cat tranquilizer or something like that they give it my wife's best friends a veterinarian she definitely is like jacking animals with ketamine on the drug it's it's it's increasing now in like civilian hospitals but started as like a veterinarian drug which i mean it works great and you combine it with some other stuff do you know who john lily is no John Lilly was the scientist that he was a pioneer in interspecies communication.

[387] He did all this work with dolphins, and he was also a big acid freak.

[388] And he would like to take, he would take acid and try to communicate with dolphins.

[389] He would have allegedly give dolphins acid.

[390] He was a part of his longstanding program to try to get dolphins to talk to him.

[391] But one of the things he invented was...

[392] Why is there not a movie about this guy?

[393] There is, altered states.

[394] No way.

[395] Altered states is based a lot on John Lilly, because he invented the sensory deprivation tank.

[396] Does he give the dolphins?

[397] Adam's ass in the movie?

[398] No, because it just was loosely based on him because in the movie, the guy experiments with a bunch of different types of sensory deprivation tanks, and everybody knew that this guy, he was a legitimate doctor, a brilliant guy, but he was also a ketamine freak.

[399] And one thing he would do is, like, he would take intramuscular ketamine and then get into the sensory deprivation tank.

[400] Oh.

[401] Yeah.

[402] That'd be, that's a double whammy.

[403] Yeah, a double whammy.

[404] So is that stuff difficult?

[405] to get off of, or do you have to worry about that?

[406] Is there, like, a withdrawal symptom?

[407] The issue would be with the pain.

[408] Like, when you have something that's controlling some sort of level of pain, and then coming off of that, you usually wean off of it.

[409] But there's not a physical addiction issue?

[410] You know, I should know the answer to that definitively, but as a medic.

[411] Yeah.

[412] But I haven't heard of anything that words card to come off of.

[413] They had you on other stuff way harder to come off.

[414] Oh, yeah.

[415] I was on methadone.

[416] Oof.

[417] And Sturgle, friend.

[418] shooter and Duff McCagan came to the hospital and Duff was like methadone is worse than heroin because G &R guys were rocking it in the 80s but that was like I mean one one week I dropped down 20 migs instead of the 10 and it was like being a junkie like for nine hours I was just like rubbing my legs like because they're just lit up with nerve pain it feels like there's daggers in your leg or some sort of electrocution and you look like on a movie with like someone cracked out or something.

[419] I was just like rubbing my shit.

[420] We used to see these guys who would come into the pool hall when I used to play pool in White Plains.

[421] They would come in.

[422] There was a methadone clinic down the street.

[423] And they were all heroin people.

[424] And my friend Johnny B. would call them methadonians.

[425] It's because they would come in.

[426] They all had like this sort of like dull shuffle to them.

[427] They were all slowed down.

[428] And I can never understand it.

[429] It was like, I was like is this like a culturally like, did someone agree?

[430] Did we make some sort of agreement?

[431] Like, this drug's okay.

[432] This is, it's got, you know, it's got some, some stamp of approval.

[433] So we're accepting that they have to get methadone every day, but they can't get heroin anymore.

[434] Why don't we just give them heroin?

[435] Like, is how much different is the methadone?

[436] Is the methadone get them high?

[437] Well, it's synthesized, so it's easier to control.

[438] But does it get them high?

[439] I didn't have any effect.

[440] After a while, no, it's just fighting off the physiology.

[441] So it just fights the physiology of, they're not, you'll never get high like the first time you spike.

[442] But it's a potent narcotic.

[443] for like the other the adverse effects but don't people have like the best effects with like ibegain and things like that when it comes to getting off of opiates for getting kicking opiates yeah i mean if you want to go through that i would say you know that would probably be your best but for a quick solution if that's what you mean like the methadone's like it is actually bad for you isn't it yes it fucks your i didn't sleep i didn't have deep sleep for four months and i was i'd go to get in bed at nine not falsely until 3 in the morning That fucks with everything too Yeah It's a pretty shitty year Damn And how long does it take Get you off of the methadone I mean once you're off of it The doctors were saying that it stays in your adipose tissue Which is your fat for like two or three weeks Because I'd have random nights when I was off of it And just get lit up with nerve pain And like I'm getting hit with a hammer in my toes So probably four to there's probably like six weeks of weaning that and then I weaned another drug Lyrica I mean for you it had to feel I mean because you were there at Waltersbury the whole time you had to feel frustrated but for somebody like my first time I came to see you it was only what how much what a month after the blast at most so he was still in a lot of I mean more pain than I could even comprehend somebody being in you know from nerve pain for how many They would have any surgeries on each leg?

[444] It's close to 30 surgeries total, which is a lot, but there's a guy.

[445] He still had staples in your back, too, where they'd taken, I mean, you describe this, man, I was just like, how can anybody, you know, and then he was still, as he said, the first time we met, he was highest giraffe balls on Academy, but, like, I was profoundly impressed by even And then, like, how clear -headed and articulate.

[446] And I was obviously, like, this guy's obviously brilliant.

[447] You know what I mean?

[448] Like, you just threw the fog and awareness of everything going on in the room.

[449] Despite the pain, he was trying to pretend like he wasn't in.

[450] I just, and then that place was full of guys like him.

[451] And then when I went back, it's like all new faces, you know, these people.

[452] But then when I went back, the second time I went to see him was there for a couple days.

[453] And it was like just in a matter of short time, it was leaps and bounds.

[454] And he's in the gym on one leg Like fucking busting out 20 pull -ups and everything You know It's just kind of like There's got to be something we can Anything you can do to help In whatever way And these guys Since I've known him I've never once ever heard him ask for anything His only concerns were like For the families Of the guys that didn't make it You know So It's just like really around an album release If I'm going to have a bunch of attention on me I thought it would be a good opportunity to put attention on what other people can do to help these guys and their families because you know the sacrifices is especially sitting in these rooms and looking at these dudes man i can't even you can't you know what do what do you what do you call that yeah well i want to help so uh after the show let's uh figure out what we can do to jump in i want to i want to help so uh help with the podcast help with some comedy shows maybe to just whatever we can do do.

[455] I appreciate that.

[456] I'm, you know, listen, I'm blown away by all this, as much as I think all these people are listening and watching.

[457] This is, it's beautiful that you're doing this, man. And I think that, you know, that's inspiring me to do something.

[458] I think it's probably inspiring a bunch of other people, and that's those things that people talk about, one thing that you might experience are here in life that sort of changes your worldview and moves you in a better direction.

[459] This could be one of those things.

[460] you know well you're a good man I'm not fucking anything man he's I'm just a dude well you're just an awesome dude all you guys it's cool I'm very happy that you're bringing awareness to this I'm real happy that you're doing that makes me feel great and it's you know like Justin said the the worst side of it is the the tragedy I guess so it's not like you know right or left it's just like this is the reality of it and people are making these sacrifices is for you and when they come home what do we do for them you know it's a hard thought for people to accept that war is inevitable it's a hard thought and it doesn't seem like it's inevitable because it's not inevitable in this room i mean if we were the last people on earth and there was a bunch of food and places to sleep i think we'd probably not kill each other probably wouldn't go to war right it's like what is the number where you go to war is it a million is it two million is it separated by oceans?

[461] Is it just mountains or boundaries?

[462] But the fact that no one thinks that war can be solved.

[463] Like no one that I know thinks that in our lifetime there'll be no war.

[464] There's never been a period where someone on earth that's human hasn't been going to war with each other.

[465] It's a horrible truth of being a person and nobody knows it the way you do.

[466] So for you to come on and tell your story the way you just did, I appreciate the fight.

[467] out of that man and i would just want people if if if they hear that and it moves them it's more of like a i just be grateful on a regular basis for what for anything yeah i mean Stephen pinker was on your show i ended up facetiming with him as a result of all this but like he has that book about basically the the enlightenment worked and we still have war and then there are people still fighting it but overall the world is continuing to improve and like steadily getting better and fewer people are dying from genocide and war but it still exists so I would want the respect for war if someone is wanting to go to war you know if someone is going to be a commander -in -chief and that's a that's a heavy thing to like toss back and forth yeah extremely it means that I may never have kids because I don't have my balls you know like like that you there's sacrifice like I and I'm the one that lived and I didn't have any kids but like my friends have four girls my other my other friend has three kids so like when you're if you're going to move the chess piece to war then we need to understand the implications of what that means and try to do everything in political power in state strategy to avoid overt war because it's yeah especially nasty a near peer you mean that's Russia Russia near peer war would be the worst thing That's World War III.

[468] Mutually assured destruction is the strangest thing on Earth that we all have enough weapons pointing each other to literally nuke every fucking man, woman, and child off the face of the earth many times over.

[469] And that's what keeps us from using them.

[470] But yet we still have them.

[471] And we still have them pointed each other.

[472] I mean, remember when you were kids and we were worried about Russia?

[473] Do you remember that shit?

[474] I'm older.

[475] I'm older than you guys.

[476] I have kids and I'm worried about people walking into Target with a suicide vest.

[477] Yeah, yeah.

[478] When's that coming?

[479] Right.

[480] Yeah, you could, all of it.

[481] Because Europe's been dealing with that shit for decades.

[482] You know, we really haven't tasted that yet.

[483] Like on a widespread habitual scale.

[484] So it means a lot of people are working very hard to make sure we don't.

[485] Yes.

[486] Like, how does anybody ever fix that?

[487] How does any country, how does civilization as a whole ever fix that?

[488] I don't think you really can Because it's an idea It's like you have to change somebody's mind I was going to say mushrooms But the Vikings took mushrooms The Vikings love taking mushrooms And fucking people up Can't have me in isolation tanks It would be a pretty big start I think That would put everybody in a good place Yeah It's weird It's just the I mean Most people most of the time Are not thinking about killing somebody But we know that it is a just inevitable part of being a human that groups of people are going to get together and fuck up other groups of people yeah it's always been a part of us it's one of the strangest things about human beings it's truly strange because the consequences are so awful and yet it's inevitable i had to make that decision this year i found out i'm not a psychopath it was very reassuring yeah you told me about that story yeah um yeah that was i don't know To be honest, I'll tell the story, before I forget the thought, it was everything else associated with what happened after it that I found more impactful and, you know, the stuff that lasted or stays with you.

[489] It wasn't what actually happened.

[490] It was seeing the aftermath and, like, the system and how it all pans out.

[491] We had two home invasions within 36 hours, I guess.

[492] The first time the guy came in in the middle of night, about 2 .30, 3 a .m. And our back door had the sensor on.

[493] It made a very signature noise.

[494] And if you live in your house, you know the noise is in your house.

[495] And for whatever reason, it just woke me up from a dead sleep.

[496] And I knew what I heard.

[497] And there's the only thing that would make that noise.

[498] So I kind of snake my way out the hall and down to the top of the stairs.

[499] And when I hit the top of the stairs, I heard the dog growl and the door closed.

[500] back so i knew that was somebody leaving we have a huge fucking dog um basically useless but he did growl and he made a very primitive noise i was proud of him and uh the guy didn't come in because of that and i so went downstairs and kind of swept the ground floor and then he was gone um i didn't want to freak my wife out so i waited until the morning to tell her and then we called police of course one of the neighbors got it on like a ring cam in the back alley the guy leaving and going down the street so i had a very clear view of him and uh So for whatever reason, my wife and the kids, they had to go on down to where we actually live.

[501] I was working that week in Nashville, probably mixing a record or something, so I had to stay behind.

[502] And as a result of me being home alone that day, I was cleaning and working on a firearm I had recently purchased and assembled.

[503] And so I went to bed that night, locked everything up.

[504] And, you know, because they weren't home, I put the gun on the floor.

[505] on a padded case next to the bed.

[506] So I'm looking the next morning.

[507] It's like 7 .15 a .m. Like sun shining, neighbor's going to work.

[508] I hear the back door open again.

[509] And I was like, this can't, you know, what the fuck?

[510] Is it like the maid?

[511] Who would be here that early?

[512] And I guess out of paranoia or whatever reason, I grabbed that gun and just went to the top of the stairs to look.

[513] I still think it's the maid.

[514] And when I hit the top of stairs and looked down the staircase, same guy, same clothes, just standing in my living room, rolling the cord up on my headphones and I was like well all right I was almost impressed one that he came back but it was just like I couldn't believe it was happening at this time and so I started down the stairs on him very quietly and I got about halfway down by the time he like turned and saw me and I was looking at his fucking head through a red dot like a video game I'll never forget that image of this guy like probably thinking he's about to die and the back door was thankfully still open and the only thing I said to him was what are we doing here man and I hit him with a strobe which kind of like probably he to his brain he thought was the gun going off because he kind of like seizure and then I saw the adrenaline spike and he turned and went out the back door and jumped clean off my fucking porch like never hit a single step and ran at the back gate he had latched it and I saw this on the video later when he came in he shut the back gate back so he hit that back gate on a dead rant on a dead run and just like blew it to hell latches and wood splinters flying and like took off down the alley and i was just i'm still i'm standing on my porch with a fucking you know yeah looking like a jackass and my like my neighbors literally walking out of the house going to work and shit i'm just like okay that happened and then uh so then the next thing there's like eight police officers in my living room all they wanted to see was my gun and every single one of them asked me why i didn't shoot the guy and uh which i found very interesting i was like well i mean and i thought about it finally you would one when i'm down going down the stairs you would not believe how much shit can go through your head in like four seconds like i had this whole conversation with myself as to like wife and kids aren't here you know this guy doesn't even know i'm I'm here yet.

[515] I'm holding a fucking assault rifle and he's not a threat to me. But if I put one through his dome, which I have every legal right to do right now, there's going to be news vans on my lawn.

[516] This is going to be on your fucking Wikipedia page.

[517] You know what I mean?

[518] Like all of that.

[519] I'm just like, this guy is not a threat.

[520] Yeah.

[521] And thankfully he chose to go out the door.

[522] But all those, it was just so weird.

[523] They were like, why didn't you shoot him?

[524] I was like, well, and I said that.

[525] And they just kind of looked at me and uh and uh and i was like and by the you know literally by the time we engaged man two seconds later he's running out the doors what i'm going to shoot him in the back and then you put me in prison and they were like ah fuck man twice in a week you'd been fine we'd figured something out figured something out and uh who wants to take that chance oh yeah yeah with uh life in prison or not right yeah roll the dice i mean if he'd have turned and ran at me we'd probably be having a different conversation but he didn't you know or if he reached for a gun anything yeah which But he didn't.

[526] Was he a junkie?

[527] No. No, he's like 25.

[528] Honestly, I saw his whole fucking life on his face.

[529] You know what I mean?

[530] Just like, probably hard times.

[531] Just a mess?

[532] Punk kid, probably like I was.

[533] I didn't do any shit like that when I was his age.

[534] But no, his toxic college came back clean.

[535] He had like one prior for possession.

[536] It was just hard time.

[537] I was desperate.

[538] And so I got subpoenaed because I was the only one that actually met him.

[539] And I go to the court case.

[540] And, you know, it was very interesting and telling experience for him.

[541] because I'd never really been to anything like that.

[542] And he was one of maybe eight or nine other people on the docket that day, all assigned the same public defender who literally shows up 15 minutes before they start the day to familiarize himself with every single case.

[543] And you just saw this factory, like these young underprivileged black males just getting pumped into the system.

[544] The DA came over and she was just like, thanks for being here, yada, yada.

[545] and you know unluckily for him he broke into like 13 other houses and they had him on tape and a lot of things so we had 13 or 14 aggravated burglary charges which is pretty fucking heavy you know every one of those is like a class B so he was looking at 12 to 15 I think he was saying like a bird pleaded down he got six and then if he does a successful rehabilitation program in prison he could be out in two and she was like yada yada and I just really I was like, wow, they're just throwing this kid's life away because he you know, granted, he came into some people's houses and he almost got fucking killed and they caught him the next night like three streets over in the act doing the same thing.

[546] But he had no priors.

[547] He wasn't on drugs.

[548] It was just like no direction, probably no discipline, no guidance, no heroes.

[549] And I struggle with that.

[550] I was like, man, there's got to be like what if I gave him a job?

[551] It depends entirely.

[552] on who he is right which i never got the chance to sit down and find that find that out i never got to talk to him face to face it might turn out awesome he was just some punk fucking kid i'd be like good luck man you know i mean it might turn out awesome it might turn on terrible it's depending upon the person but there's so many people in this country that are set up to fail so their circumstances their life their environment the way what they're surrounded by all day long they're set up to fail and I've always said that if we really cared I mean if someone we have this plan that we always sort of impart we put X amount of money toward this and Y amount of money towards that but if we wanted to make this country we want to really make it stronger you would want less losers so how do you get less losers you prevent them from ever becoming losers but you help them when you're their kids during their developmental period you mean spend more money on spend more money on cleaning up impoverished neighborhoods and crime -ridden neighborhoods.

[553] It's not impossible.

[554] It's not like fucking breathing on the sun.

[555] Like it can be done.

[556] Like, neighborhoods can get better.

[557] They get better.

[558] But the idea that there's so little time and effort put into fixing those parts of our own country.

[559] I mean, we have the most resources.

[560] We have this fucking spectacular country filled with amazing people.

[561] And some of them just don't get a chance because they're stuck in a rut from the moment they come out of their mother's body.

[562] They're stuck in this rut.

[563] You've been assigned your lot.

[564] You got fucked.

[565] You got a bad roll of the dice.

[566] And that's a lot of countries, man. This is one of the few countries where, like, anybody can just put the fucking boots down and make something happen.

[567] One of the few.

[568] Like, you know, Japan, you pretty much know by second or third grade what your lot's going to be by your test scores already.

[569] Like, you know if you're going to be working class or if you're going to university.

[570] This country, we applaud when you started out poor.

[571] Right.

[572] We love it.

[573] Like, people who start out poor and then become successful, that's like our favorite shit.

[574] It is, right?

[575] Like, what does this country like more than a success story?

[576] Right.

[577] You know?

[578] Like, he started out eating bread.

[579] And all he had his money to barely get to school and barely get home, but he keeps showing up every day.

[580] Everybody wants to hear that story.

[581] That's the fucking story.

[582] Rocky Hart, bro.

[583] Yeah, bro.

[584] How many shows are you guys doing?

[585] What?

[586] We're doing six of these just as a conversation starter.

[587] But then the real tour will be, oh, I should probably announce that.

[588] They told me to while we're here.

[589] We're going to do a U .S. full U .S. tour starting mid or late February.

[590] And with myself and a young man named Tyler Childers opening.

[591] I love that dude.

[592] Yeah, we do too.

[593] Big fan of that dude.

[594] So that's happening next year.

[595] And those will also tie into fundraising, Ticketmaster, and A .D .G. And everybody participate in that's going to.

[596] I was listening to his purgatory album on the way over here.

[597] Were you?

[598] Miles and I both fucked around in the room when that got made.

[599] It's great shit.

[600] Miles played drums on both records, right?

[601] Yeah.

[602] I just stood in the control room and pretended to do stuff.

[603] I could confirm that.

[604] Yeah.

[605] That's, so when you do a show like the troubadour, is it like a knock the rust off?

[606] Let's fucking start.

[607] Well, definitely, we haven't played in over a year.

[608] Right.

[609] And we're going back in, like, like working up material we literally haven't played since we recorded it two and a half years ago and just to get we don't really rehearse we just sort of knock the rust off it takes us about three or four shows to feel like we even know what the fuck's happening so you guys don't get together before you know chuck and bob both live in detroit miles and honor in tennessee we haven't seen these guys since october we get a lot done at sound check yeah basically but you're all still active as musicians even when you're not together touring i don't know what they do.

[610] I am.

[611] I'm a freelancer in Detroit.

[612] So when you say a freelancer, like what does that involve, like what he was saying if someone needs?

[613] Yeah, I've been in the area for like 25 years, so I play with a lot of bands, a lot of friends who's a big group of people.

[614] Detroit's a great city for musicians, so you can stay busy, you know, if you know the right people and you're not a dick, so.

[615] Dude, just, I mean, I have zero musical talent or never pursued any of it, so I love music it's one of my favorite things to hear stories about people because i i just love like the idea of you going out and and you know hey we need a badass bass player and they send you over to this place and that like a fucking gun for hire like to me as like a kid growing up uh in newton massachusetts used to always listen to music i never thought about doing it so when i see people that do do it's like whoa that guy is making a live and making music it's one of the to me one of the coolest forms of art because um everybody gets inspired by almost everybody loves it and um almost nobody knows how to do it you can you can always tell the people who do it better than others too i mean yes there's levels to it man yeah i mean there's there's there's such me uh suzanne santo and i were talking about gary clark junior last night like this guy he's got some weird thing going on with his fucking guitar like it's it's a gary clark junior you know what i mean like it's a sound he puts out.

[616] He has a certain sound that's like you could hear it like I hear a new song.

[617] Oh, that's a Gary Clark Jr. song.

[618] Like by his guitar sound.

[619] Yeah.

[620] There's like something to the way he's got like this.

[621] He he did a cover of a Midnight Rider with Suzanne and Honey Honey Honey at this like little hole in the wall place in downtown L .A. It was like maybe maybe a hundred people in the room.

[622] Tiny ass little crowded like midnight on Tuesday night.

[623] And I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe there's 300 people, but it was fucking small shit.

[624] And he did his Gary Clark Jr. version of Midnight Rider.

[625] Fuck, it was amazing.

[626] It was amazing.

[627] It's like, there's...

[628] Yeah, but a guy like him, he could pick up any guitar and plug it in any app, and it's still going to sound like him.

[629] Yeah, yeah.

[630] Yeah, I mean, I don't know that, but I believe it.

[631] I don't know shit about playing a a guitar, but it makes sense to me. It was still, yeah, he's got a thing.

[632] I think it's awesome that a guitar -driven act is headlining huge rooms too in the theaters and they play the Hollywood Bowl.

[633] Yeah.

[634] That's amazing.

[635] He's undeniable.

[636] You just got to get the fuck out of the way.

[637] You know, he's undeniable.

[638] Yeah, I mean, that kind of music is...

[639] I've never met him.

[640] We played a festival once he was at and I just saw him walking across the grass backstage and I was like, that's a cool motherfucker right there.

[641] He's a nicest guy ever.

[642] You'd love him.

[643] He's so nice.

[644] He's a really, really cool guy.

[645] Does any of your family play music or did?

[646] No. Well, my oldest daughter does.

[647] Yeah.

[648] But no one in my mom's side or my dad's side, no one in that part of the family played music.

[649] But everybody loves it.

[650] I think there's some kind of music in everybody.

[651] You can repeat rhythms back.

[652] For sure.

[653] And that counts.

[654] Conjunction, junction, what's your function?

[655] You're a musician.

[656] Everybody.

[657] Everybody has music in their life.

[658] I mean, everybody People who don't like The only person I know who doesn't like music He might have changed his stance on is Doug Stanhope It's like, ah, I fucking hate music I hate songs But I don't know if that's true Or if he's just working on a bit You know what I mean?

[659] It's hard to tell But he's the only guy I know That's even espoused those ideas That he doesn't like music Do you ever do that?

[660] Do you ever have conversations with people And they don't know you're actually working on material?

[661] No, because if I'm saying it I probably really do mean it or I'm just trying to be funny and then it turns out like oh I could say this on stage but it's never like hey I'm going to work out my IHop joke on Sturgle today Hey Sturgell have been in IHop lately Waffle House actually Well Waffle House is synonymous That was a better choice Waffle House is synonymous with fucking knife fights And brawls and Sturgele Simpson 24 hour food Actually I used to work at IHop My loyalties Go back I'll sing for Waffle House But no one's totally relaxed at a waffle house at 2 in the morning.

[662] Fuck, no. No. You gotta be like a fucking deer listening for branches now.

[663] Nobody's even sober in a waffle house at 2 a year.

[664] It's not even the cook.

[665] Some of the most interesting people I've ever met my life were in the wee hours of the night in a waffle house.

[666] Oh, for sure.

[667] Yeah, for sure.

[668] But you've got to take a risk.

[669] Well.

[670] Yeah, you're taking a risk.

[671] For that delicious -ass food, man. Delicious ass food, man. Dude, you take those big slabs of butter and you lather the.

[672] shit out of that waffle and just don't even worry about your cholesterol count.

[673] Just pour that fucking syrup on it.

[674] What gets the fuck about calories?

[675] Tonight we live.

[676] And you cut up that ham steak and eggs with that fucking waffle with thick, like a half an inch of butter and syrup all over it.

[677] We do the truck stops in the south sometimes two, three to more.

[678] And him and some of the other younger dudes, they go in hard and brave men.

[679] We're like, what the chili?

[680] What the fuck?

[681] Well, no, that was...

[682] Who did that?

[683] Dalton.

[684] Dalton, yeah.

[685] Dalton.

[686] Shout out to Dalton.

[687] Was Dalton?

[688] Yeah, was he born before after Roadhouse?

[689] That's really important.

[690] After, but he'd never seen the movie.

[691] We immediately started calling him Roadhouse or double douche.

[692] And he finally had to see it.

[693] He's like, man, this shit was fucking whacked.

[694] I don't want to be Roadhouse.

[695] I was like, you know nothing.

[696] No. How can he say it's whack?

[697] He's got the wrong context.

[698] But you dare talk bad about Patrick Swayze.

[699] That's an all -time classic terrible movie.

[700] but in the best way like you get super excited it's extremely homoerotic looking back now I mean that whole fight scene with him and the guys I used to fuck guys like you in prison like what was going on there yeah I think that's just bad writing is that tough guy talking I think it's Patrick Swayze so handsome everything with him was homoerotic right because he's beautiful beautiful guy man he was literally a ballet dancer yeah he moved like one yeah when he's like the karate expert and shit like he said just a right amount of muscular red dawn brother that too uh oh shit what we got here oh man this is one of the worst fight scenes look how bad this is like in terms of movement ha dude the speed of his techniques the impact of these strikes look at this is where Sam Elliott shows up eventually right yeah boom boom oh the double headbutt move Oh, the bottle over the head.

[701] There he is.

[702] Oh, my goodness.

[703] Sam Elliott.

[704] We've actually seen a guy take a bottle to the head so I can attest for a fact that you can still fight after taking a giant full, unopened bottle of gray goose to the head.

[705] Oh, fuck.

[706] But only in a Mexican disco tech in McCallin, Texas.

[707] After a Dwight Yon.

[708] He had a big white cowboy hat on and he looked like a bodybuilder and he had two ladies at the table and he was flossing hard.

[709] And I think he turned around and like spit a little game at somebody else's woman.

[710] And Miles, we, oh, yeah, let me back up, that fucking story.

[711] It was the first real tour we ever did.

[712] We finally got a booking agent, and we went out and we did two weeks opening for Dwight Yokem, which was fucking awesome.

[713] It felt like an actual huge break.

[714] You know what I mean?

[715] We're like, went from playing dive bar shit holes to 12 drunks to, like, standing in front of four or five thousand people.

[716] So, uh...

[717] Texans.

[718] Texans.

[719] With hats.

[720] And we were down in far Texas with PHA double R, which is right on the board.

[721] order and we went down and did the gig and it was fucking amazing because it was in this giant auditorium and they had these long tables like you would have in like a school cafeteria but they were just they were rows of them as far back as I could see and when they had it looked like it might as well be in 1955 man and we were playing the hayride or some shit because it was like white cowboy hats just an ocean and white cowboy hats uh whites and Hispanics and Like, everybody was, like, seated and sort of, like, turned sideways and joining the show.

[722] It was a very civil little vibe.

[723] And then after the show, the promoters, these guys were like, you guys want to go to a club.

[724] You know, I was like, not really, but, you know, the younger guys might.

[725] I was basically babysitting, you assholes at that point.

[726] They're all fucking kids.

[727] And so they round us up and take us to this fucking disco tech.

[728] And we're the only green goes in this place, man. And it was like, there was some serious machismo being thrown around.

[729] It was a little threatening.

[730] and the guy starts telling it they get on the mic with a DJ and they're telling everybody that we're Dwight Yolkham's band and I realize like oh shit this guy we're a promotion tool you know what I mean to make his club look cool like we don't play for Dwight Yokam but they said it like 50 fucking times you know and finally we're just kind of sitting in the corner not speaking in mind our own business so that we don't die and Miles and I were sitting at a table on some chairs and all of a sudden it's just liquid and broken glass just raining down on us from behind and I kind of turned around to see this guy sort of stumble and the dude's still standing there holding the bottle neck and it was like he had these big unopened bottles of gray goose like big ass gray goose bottles on ice and the dude just came up to his table behind and like fucking necked one and took it to the dome.

[731] And the guy kind of stutter stepped he turned around he took his cowboy hat off and he went at him and beat the fuck out of both of him and I told him I was like I think this is where we leave.

[732] Yeah everybody left yeah it just cleared the whole place out whoa but i couldn't believe it i thought like would kill somebody it depends on where you hit him and how you hit him how hard you hit him you could definitely kill somebody with a bottle though right i mean it certainly happened i was reading some horrible story about a 13 year old kid who got sucker punched and wound up dying yeah i mean you get you could kill somebody accidentally even if you didn't mean to he hit somebody they fall they hit their head they die it happens all the time like that dad at the the hockey game oh that was horrible man this kid like watched that happen oh over nothing over hockey over kids hockey yeah man people get real weird bob's being awfully quiet i just want you know he's fucking bob bob was so high last night he could say anything this is probably bob just was hitting that joint so hard i didn't have anywhere to put put it down you know it's playing so I thought you're going to come over and take it.

[733] I'd keep going on it.

[734] The path wasn't quite as clear as I thought it might be.

[735] Yeah.

[736] I noticed that right when we walked out, Justin introduced, and it was like, where do I walk to get to the thing, you know?

[737] Was it, what was the instrument that was facing the crowd, like, to your left?

[738] Well, up there was the keyboard.

[739] It was a Hammond B3, and then on top of that was a Clavenette.

[740] And what was this one that was facing?

[741] like it was facing you but the back of it was to the crowd it was all exposed wiring yeah that's a trip to look back into the gears well bob's like a gearhead uh kind of a reverse engineering genius and he only uses like primitive audio gear and i'm pretty sure now i've known him for since like 2011 i'm convinced he only does it you buy a shitty nose a little break so he can fix it that's it right there yeah there's a picture from my instagram yeah it looks cool I mean, it's supposed to have a woodback, but it looks cool.

[742] It looks cool as fuck.

[743] Yeah, man. But it's, it's very revealing.

[744] Like, oh, there's a lot going on there.

[745] You can surf them, too.

[746] I've seen him do it.

[747] On top of it, you mean?

[748] Oh, yeah.

[749] Saturday Night Live.

[750] Just Saturday Night Live.

[751] We got pretty fired up.

[752] Yeah, that's a big deal.

[753] I looked over and Bob's fucking planting wolf on his organ, and I was like, all right.

[754] Yeah, that was going there.

[755] Terror and absolute joy at the same time.

[756] When I saw that symbol fall off and I looked up like what was going on and Bobby was standing on his organ, I was just like, oh, my God.

[757] Why not?

[758] Why not?

[759] Hey, man. Fucking do whatever you want.

[760] Just keep doing what you're doing.

[761] Do whatever the fuck you want.

[762] If you guys can keep doing what you did last night, I love it.

[763] I'm in.

[764] It's only going up from there, really.

[765] That was the first one.

[766] So we were very, like, critical and unhappy.

[767] It was fun as fuck, man. It was fun as fuck, man. There we go.

[768] Oh, that's when he did it on SNL.

[769] Oh, there it is.

[770] Boom.

[771] That was the first time we played that record last night.

[772] Mm -hmm.

[773] Damn.

[774] That's some good shit right there, man. I'm going to say so myself.

[775] That was a lot of adrenaline, man. Because we'd all, literally everybody, we had all the horns with us, but everybody in the band, you know, you as a kid, you dream about that shit right there from the time you even think about playing music.

[776] You know what I mean?

[777] Yeah.

[778] Going out rocking SNL.

[779] So before the second song, we were backstage, and I just told everybody, like, you know, this is most likely the only time we may ever get to fucking do this.

[780] So don't leave anything out there, you know.

[781] Somebody wrote a great article about it saying that a musical artist named Sturgle Simpson just snuck in a song about the illegal heroin trade on SNL.

[782] Yeah.

[783] Yeah, that happened.

[784] I didn't think about it that way.

[785] We just knew that should be fun to play.

[786] Yeah, it is kind of a...

[787] I mean, that's what you did.

[788] Yeah.

[789] I mean, that's what it's about.

[790] Do you remember, do you ever see that video of Geraldo Rivera walking through the poppy fields where the military was guarding the poppy fields?

[791] No. Yeah, the military was guarding the poppy fields because in order to get information from the people that lived there, you had to get them on your side.

[792] So the way to get them on their side was to protect their heroin production.

[793] So got the United States.

[794] military walking through these poppy fields with Geraldo Rivera's interviewing them and they're trying to explain suspect it's the craziest thing you've ever seen in your life feel like this is a movie this is not real this is a movie Haraldi Rivera is interviewing soldiers and the soldiers United States soldiers fucking machine guns out are guarding poppy fields and you're like what?

[795] Wait a minute they're guarding heroin where Afghanistan It's a fucking trip if we play it, we have an issue, right?

[796] If we play it how does that work?

[797] We'll get kicked off for it.

[798] I'm searching for it.

[799] It's not as easy to find it anymore.

[800] Why would you get kicked off of YouTube?

[801] I mean, I'm just looking it.

[802] It's hard to find now?

[803] We've played it on the podcast many times.

[804] They might be trying to wash it from the internet.

[805] Wow.

[806] They know.

[807] Dude, it's a trip.

[808] It's Haralda Rivera interviewing this guy.

[809] Yes, old clip.

[810] Here it is.

[811] So Harald, we won't play the volume because otherwise we'll get kicked off of YouTube.

[812] But when we're watching this, Harald Rivera is interviewing these soldiers who are talking about how they have to guard these poppy fields so they guard these poppy fields so that they can get information on the Taliban and that these guys who are the farmers would be on their side you have to see it you have to see the whole thing it's a long video that plays out was it was it was the Taliban would they burn it down or did they just control the money from it it's a good question I don't know are you protecting the heroin or these farmers like means of income that's a good question yeah I think it's the farmer's means of Politically, I guess you're asking a very important question.

[813] Everything's about money.

[814] Everything's about money.

[815] Was it the Taliban anti -heroine?

[816] Do we know that?

[817] I don't know.

[818] Heroin is ramped up since this time period.

[819] Heroin use.

[820] Well, from that time period of that video, yeah.

[821] Yeah.

[822] It just keeps ramping up, right?

[823] Yeah.

[824] Ramped up in Vietnam pretty hard, too.

[825] Yeah.

[826] What a coincidence.

[827] Crazy.

[828] There's no way that the United States government back then the 60s when no one was accountable, would ever be involved in heroin trade?

[829] I've met at least two elder gentlemen in my life randomly in bars who claim to fly airplanes for the CIA in Vietnam.

[830] I just assumed they were both completely full of shit.

[831] Who knows?

[832] Did you ever see that CIA drug plane that crashed in Mexico with like a ton of cocaine on it?

[833] They ran out of gas and they would let them land in Mexico to refuel because they knew what they were doing.

[834] These guys are like, you know, they have way too much weight and they crashed.

[835] and it's the craziest fucking series of images you look at this plane all fucked up strewn across the field but all the hair or the cocaine is intact it's all stuffed into this airplane wow this is what that's what they recovered all from this but there's pictures of the wreckage oh you can kind of see the wreckage in the background there yeah so in the wreckage like as these planes crashed it's just plumb full of cocaine four tons of cocaine cocaine That's 8 ,000 pounds, man That's so heavy 400 tons What?

[836] Oh, not four What?

[837] I don't know one of these is not accurate But it's just all memes That can't be right 400 tons It's a lot Did you ever see that Tom Cruise movie about Barry Seal?

[838] Yes It's all about that It's all about a few Cowboys Rogue CIA agents That decided to try to make a little money My buddy Caleb was in that movie For like five minutes And he steals the whole fucking thing He plays his wife's younger brother.

[839] Oh, yeah.

[840] The, like, the little degenerate dip shit.

[841] He was awesome.

[842] He's a great.

[843] He's a funny dude.

[844] That's a lot like the bluegrass conspiracy.

[845] You know about that?

[846] What's that?

[847] The bluegrass.

[848] There was, basically, it was a Lexington, Kentucky police officer.

[849] Oh, man. It went all the way up to, like, the governor's office.

[850] Yeah, and it was deep in Kentucky politics for years and years and years.

[851] And he was flying a plane, a little prop, playing with weed and, like, money, millions of dollars in cocaine he crashed in knoxville tennessee and they found everything they didn't know he was a police officer until he died and he was like he he jumps out of the plane with a parachute with the coke strapped to him the weight the fuck to shoot up Gucci loafers they found him on the ground with this shoot half open and just like yeah like a powder coke yeah and a bear also ate all the cocaine and died right like that big strawberry shortcake just laying there in a horse farm field you know there's pictures of all well not all of that how much coke does it take to kill a bear it says how much he ate I don't know off the top of my head but poor thing I think they have it stuffed in Lexington that's a really good book you should read that book Bluegrass Conspiracy because it wanted a true story but it small state level corruption at the utmost level in terms of drugs Pablo Escobar the story the legendary Coke cane bear of Kentucky Wow Is that the bear They mounted him?

[852] Wow That's a He's got a fucking sign around His neck This cocaine bear I think that's A company I love Kentucky Kentucky Kentucky for Kentucky That's the best That's what it is That's like a gold chain It's like he's a rapper Look he's got his hat sideways He's got a fucking sign around his neck Says cocaine bear It's all gold Yeah Bluegrass I got a reason I definitely had heard about The bear Eat in the Coke The Barry Seals one is a terrible one Because the reason why they found out about it Is because these two kids Found the Coke drop They found the Coke and they wound up murdering these two kids When they went to achieve the Coke And they put their bodies on the railroad tracks And they told the parents That the kids got high And fell asleep on the railroad tracks But the parents did an independent autos And they found stab wounds in the kids You know it's really fucked up also What would give that away?

[853] I've seen That when like transients or bums get come in on you know it's always part of our we would have to find like young kids and shit playing hop car and you know doing the gutter rat lifestyle and a thousand dollar fucking north face parkas and shit he's like what are you doing man you're gonna die right um but like bums would come in on the trains and this didn't happen on our yard is over the north guard this guy he thought they were done with the movement you know he took 5 ,700 foot steel with fucking 45 ,000 horsepower on the front of it Like when it starts moving, it's very sudden and hard.

[854] So if you just go to stand up all that thing, all of a sudden, when it starts rolling, and then you lose your footing and you fall down on the tracks between the cars.

[855] But when you get run over by a train, it's not bloody and messy.

[856] Because especially if it's been on the main line, it's rolling really hard and hot.

[857] You put a limb on a track or a body or a corpse.

[858] All that weight and friction and heat when it goes over, it just cuts it like butter and carterizes everything, like pinches you off like sausage.

[859] so we find pieces not a mess just pieces unless you hit a fucking cow or something standing in the middle of the track and you're going 70 miles an hour and then it's just asshole and guts hanging off the front of the train does that even slow the train down no no not at all a cow doesn't slow the train down it's less than a bug on your windshield whoa could you imagine being in the fucking seat the driver seat I've done it.

[860] Have you, you've actually seen a cow?

[861] Yeah, I've operated locomotives.

[862] I've never hit a cow, but I've definitely driven a train.

[863] But what was the biggest thing you hit?

[864] I didn't really hit anything.

[865] Nothing?

[866] No. I mean, imagine, though, being in the front of seeing cows.

[867] I only operated one within the yard, so probably like 35, 40 miles an hour tops.

[868] But on the main line, when they're really rolling, they're doing like 70, 72 miles an hour.

[869] Like I said, it's, you know, a mile and a half long train with five, four, five locomotives on the front.

[870] of it all 30 ,000 horsepower each.

[871] So look, I mean, you're just a bag of fucking blood, man. You're not even gonna, but it just like, do they have special fronts that are designed to hit things like that?

[872] Yeah, it's a big giant steel plow.

[873] It's designed to push 10 feet of fucking snow out of the way it has to.

[874] Whoa.

[875] So, like, essentially, like, those things that semis used for deer on the middle of the night, those giant, but it's actually a big steel shovel with, like, an axe wedge in it.

[876] Whoa.

[877] And it just kind of, it just hangs and it sits about six inches off the rail itself.

[878] And its whole idea is to just splatter everything.

[879] Just push anything out of the way and destroy it.

[880] So to keep the train from derailing.

[881] Because the only thing holding those things on the rail, the inner flange of a wheel set, you know, there's like a little three quarter inch lip that kind of hangs over on the inside of the rails.

[882] Yeah.

[883] So it's all just gravity and downforce, keeping the, that thing going.

[884] So you could put like a brick technically.

[885] You could take anything, a piece of fucking metal or a carjack and just lay it on that thing.

[886] When that train hits it at 70 miles an hour, it's coming off the rail.

[887] And everything behind it is still going 70 miles an hour, stacking up behind it.

[888] And, I mean, you don't think about every time you pull up to a crossing in the city and you see a train go by 10 miles an hour and there's like 20 tankers on there full of raw chlorine, you could really fuck some shit up if you knew what you were doing you know kill a whole city you derail that train we had to have to think about that and like homeland security would come out and we'd have to have courses and shit but you have so many miles of track how do you make sure that nobody does anything there are crews that drive that track on a daily basis and repair things and dude you freak me out fuck trains that's why I quit the job I watched enough of those things happen right in front of me, and it was my job to clean them up and get a crane out there.

[889] I had a fucking cot in my office.

[890] I would live at the yard for three or four days until we got everything repaired and back together and rolling.

[891] But, like, you know, two or three times where you'd be sitting out there in the middle of the switching leads, this happened where I'd be in a pickup truck at night or during the daytime, like, with one of the guys I work with.

[892] You know, maybe it's a guy you're tired, you're trying to get done early, and you've got a bunch of empty cars on the back, and the dude puts the throttle down before the air goes through the system all the way the rear of the train.

[893] So you know, you've got this dead weight and he thinks, oh, fuck it, I got three locomotives.

[894] I can push it.

[895] It'll be okay.

[896] Until when they designed the system 100 plus years ago, nothing has changed since then.

[897] It's a very primitive, functional air brake system design.

[898] You hook all these hoses up from the front of the back.

[899] It runs air through, which allows the brakes to release.

[900] So then the engineer can control those brakes.

[901] Well, if the air doesn't go all the way to the back, the brakes are still on those cars.

[902] So when all this horsepower, pushing rolling metal hits metal that does not want to roll, it just buckles up in a TP almost instantaneously, goes off, and you won't even feel it if you're 30 cars up that you're pushing shit into the dirt.

[903] And it's all just piling the top of itself.

[904] And like, I went in like two seconds.

[905] I watched this triangle from being on the track to literally digging out a 10 foot trough of earth and just displacing it.

[906] And I think, like, every day, me or one of my guys is standing right there.

[907] I was like, I'm going to go write songs.

[908] Dude, good thinking.

[909] Yeah.

[910] Yeah, very good thinking.

[911] It's a good job, but it should have killed it.

[912] Somewhere someone is on a fucking train listening to this.

[913] Right.

[914] Freaking out.

[915] Freaking out.

[916] They're just about to go to sleep.

[917] I'll just listen as Tergil Simpson.

[918] They should just go write songs, brother.

[919] Are they trying to do some bullet train?

[920] Is that one of the Elon Musk's ideas?

[921] Want to do a train that goes all over across the country in 30 minutes or something?

[922] We got to get from here to Vegas first and then maybe one up to Sacramento.

[923] You think people would use it?

[924] Do you think Americans would use a mass transit train system?

[925] I don't know.

[926] They don't use the one we have really much.

[927] Well, not down here.

[928] We don't.

[929] Yeah, because it's slow.

[930] It sucks.

[931] We ride them in Europe because it's awesome.

[932] You don't ever want to get on a fucking train from D .C. to New York be the worst day of your life really yeah man i did it once never again i did a whole tour on the east coast by myself by train awful experience why is it so bad uh self -importance lack of uh compassion or understanding of considerations of other space on the part of americans we don't we don't function well in cram spaces okay that's very specific yeah and then when i was in dc i can't what what stays that what station is a big one in dc union is it union no that's i'm just guessing that's a good name for a station okay yeah the train the train got delayed they announced this delay because of weather there's like a down power line there's a fucking winter storm there's nothing you do and we travel all the time and as you do so if you travel all the time you don't get the same anxieties about travel that most people that don't travel all the time get you i would rather ride a bus for 20 hours then go get on an hour flight in the airport because that anxiety is just fucking palpable man and you see if you're just like we kind of like you go to this like calm weird place like when we're out in the bubble on a long tour where everybody's just sort of like not talking at the airport or whatever it is and you're just in your little happy zone and I'm at this fucking terminal in D .C. and they announced this cancellation and this place just erupts and it's like 30 people literally screaming at the Amtrak employees.

[933] Like, it's their fault.

[934] I saw a pregnant lady get pushed down in front of me, like when they finally opened the doors and people were, like, trying to get up on the train, straight up, just knock this pregnant lady down.

[935] No, you know, I was just like, wow.

[936] You go to Europe or Japan, everybody rides the tram.

[937] In Japan, they'd be like, more people than you've ever imagined in your train car, and nobody's touching one another.

[938] It's like sardines, yet no one is touching you.

[939] They're so considerate for the space and privacy and existence of everyone around them that you feel somewhat less crowded somehow.

[940] Isn't it interesting culturally that they have that, whereas China has very, very different.

[941] China, they just bump into each other.

[942] It's so weird.

[943] And then, you know, every country has their own way of interacting.

[944] It's so interesting.

[945] And Japanese, when I'm, when I've only been to Tokyo once, but I was like, if you told.

[946] me if I didn't know about Tokyo at all and someone said hey I'm going to take you to another planet where human beings live and they're so much like you but their city is very orderly and they have like beautiful neon signs and great architecture and they're all like there's millions of them in this one island but they're super considerate it's this weird parallel universe that's what it felt like it's like if you didn't know about the Japanese culture and then you went over there you'd be like what is happening here why is this a real place?

[947] Like, what's going on here?

[948] It is about the most foreign or alien experience as especially as American.

[949] If I was going to tell anybody to go anywhere to feel like a mind fuck, that would be the one.

[950] Yeah.

[951] That's what you told me earlier.

[952] It's kind of the place too that you can go drinking at night and going bars and there's people passed out drunk right there on the floor.

[953] On the street.

[954] On the street with their cell phone wallet, nobody's going to fuck.

[955] Nobody.

[956] Yeah.

[957] Yeah.

[958] Where does that happen?

[959] It's such a unique country.

[960] And you think about the history and their contributions to the martial arts in particular just i mean the the warrior ethic of the samurai like that book miyamoto masashi is the book of five rings that's a great book for your life just to just to think about excellence in your life and pursuit in your life and how all things balance out all other aspects of your life like his idea of being a great samurai you had to also be great at calligraphy you had to be a great artist you had to be able to write poetry you had to be a balanced human being in order to fight correctly.

[961] You know, this fucking guy was like 60 and oh in one -on -one sword fights.

[962] And became a pacifist in his later life.

[963] And that book of Five Rings is, fuck, man. It's an amazing book, man. We got a Musashi quote at the end of the anime film.

[964] That's him.

[965] Yeah.

[966] That's him on my arm.

[967] Yeah.

[968] Just that whole, the culture.

[969] like what their contributions to martial arts like what they've been able to do with design like it's a interesting place even their automobiles you know i mean they make like bulletproof cars that last forever like they were the first people to figure it out just make cars that don't break and go really fast yeah they're it's a fascinating culture so what what connection did they have to the anime thing do who like who was making all that uh animation for you?

[970] Well, I had the idea for the record first, and we played Fuji Rock in 2017.

[971] I have a very good friend, a Japanese friend who grew up in Kentucky on an exchange program with my wife, and he later moved back to Tokyo for college, became a radio DJ.

[972] His name was Shunsky Oce.

[973] And he did the radio thing for one.

[974] Then he got into voice narration for Marvel over there.

[975] he's just a good dude and we were talking I went over for a couple weeks before we played Fuji Rock to hang out with him and my buddies get some time on the ground and the record was recorded the month before and I was like man it'd be really cool to do some animated videos for this album if it's like one or two and we were sitting around his place watching a lot of old animation and anime films and the textures and the color and everything's just stuff you don't really see anymore and I was just thinking about like some of my favorite cartoons from that, especially the older stuff, the 70s and 80s that came from that world.

[976] So he, we decided to start taking meetings with producers just to get an idea of like, what would this cost?

[977] How long will it take?

[978] Is it even possible?

[979] Would they do it?

[980] And it was kind of trial in there for a while.

[981] We finally had a meeting with a guy named Hiroki who was very understated in the meeting, sold himself short.

[982] You know, it was just like a mid -50s guy on a track suit.

[983] but we come to find out a week later he's the fucking man and like all his buddies are the man too and those guys are also used to working under not necessarily restrictions but if they take a project on it's from a big studio the story's already dictated the parameters are dictated like basically they have to stay within someone else's lane with their vision and so one of the first he asked me this what kind of animation I was interested in so I named off some of the references of the things that I loved and was looking to sort of get in terms of aesthetic and texture and he just went straight to the guys that made those things because they were drinking buddies with all of them and Junpei Mizusaki especially was the one director who I think Shun translated all the lyrics for them because I wanted them to know one what the record was about and so they could gauge interest and he just sort of said at dinner one night he's like you're talking about the same things that I deal with as an artist he's like I feel like this is this could be me talking we deal with the same things in terms of dealing with business and commerce versus art so he just sort of reacted passionately to the music and he just said I want to do the whole record he's like this is kind of a dream project for me and I said okay and then I was like well how are you going to do the whole record in a year because we've already been sitting on this thing for a year and a half now and they assembled four other directors who are running teams or project teams at the same time simultaneously and breaking the songs up into chapters.

[984] So even though there's somewhat of a linear narrative told out of chronological order and then two little side vignettes, which are sort of same universe, different world, just to give a different perspective on some of those songs because some directors were doing one song, other teams had two, and he was overseeing the entire team, but had them all working simultaneously on it so we could finish on time.

[985] So I went over six times.

[986] in the last year and I realized about the second trip that those visits were very beneficial because those guys don't do half ass you know what I mean and they definitely pride themselves on their work and they all wanted me to be impressed so every time I would come back they knew I was coming I could tell that it was really motivating them to go outside the box and everybody wanted to be the guy that blew my mind the most you know what I mean and they did every fucking time it's just like some of that stuff I know how they did it and I don't know how they did it you know where can anybody see the whole thing Netflix oh it's all on Netflix right now but you put some of it on YouTube uh well yeah I didn't want to the label has to have a single because they go you know they got the relationship of Spotify and all that shit so they got a which is also frustrating because we make cohesive concept records that are meant to be consumed as a whole right and then like if I'm not going to radio why do I need a single you know what I mean right put the fucking record out skip the lead up the whole traditional setup because we're not we don't fit that model right just by making records were antiquated you know but they put a single out so they put one section of the movie up on YouTube which I think we'll take down now that the whole film's out but uh yeah for people they they'd be like what is going on here yeah yeah we basically made a you know heavy metal or the wall but with Japanese animators I love it I wouldn't compare it to the wall but uh Same idea.

[987] Just a visual.

[988] It's a visual age.

[989] It's beautiful, too.

[990] The animation that they did for, it's really, it's incredible.

[991] Was it weird scene, like, their vision connected to your music?

[992] No, I mean, I wrote the initial story, the main byline screenplay, and then told Junpei, like, we were trying to do an homage of, specifically, Ojimbo, and then a couple other famous samurai films, like Takeshi Katano's Zatwechi.

[993] and a lot of Kurosawa things like very reoccurring storylines and we were watching Kurosawa films in the studio making the record on silent in the control room just to kind of keep our mood bright like to keep everything kind of dark and ominous and no second guessing so but yeah it's kind of like a futuristic dystopian yojimbo which which is also a fistful of dollars where you got one town of people being oppressed by a couple rival factions or gang leaders and sort of using them for their own billing.

[994] So in the future now, Jimpa and I talked about it, well, sex, drugs, and weapons and war are really the main drivers of the economy.

[995] So let's just say that those are the only economy.

[996] You know, this is the only things that have value anymore at that point.

[997] And you got weird.

[998] So I gave him a rough script.

[999] And then they just, I said, but you know, I want you guys to do what you do.

[1000] So feel free to add or take things in any direction you want at any time.

[1001] So then you get 30 women with their tits out dancing.

[1002] And, which was, that was Junpei's idea.

[1003] I told him there was a very old famous samurai film called Zatouichi.

[1004] And at the end of it, this blind swordsman conquers this evil force.

[1005] And the townspeople celebrate.

[1006] And there's this very famous scene in the end of it with this traditional dance.

[1007] And they're doing this dance and I said can we sneak this in as a dance sequence slash homage and anybody that has to be like a film buff geek like me would get it anybody else just me like this is fucking cool so they decided to take the gimps and the sex trafficked slaves so to speak and then just make a big chorus line but then they had a woman a traditional Japanese dancer come in and they put her on motion capture and green screen and she did the actual dance from the film and they animated everyone to that well I was like that's pretty sweet I wouldn't thought of that but he did what i wanted he just gave me what he wanted to do with it now how long is the whole thing four the same links the audio is the album it's 42 minutes wow it's a fucking brilliant idea man it's really cool i just love the idea that you're experimenting with something like that just trying it out but it had to be a long stretch it was that was the hardest part was sitting on it so long and then hyperfocusing i mixed the record i think three times and mastered it twice and then we had to do a surround sound mix for the movies so I'm pretty fucking burn out on it I'll be honest.

[1008] I'm ready to go play it live but I don't ever want to hear that shit again.

[1009] Does that contribute to you the way you get creative with the sound when you perform in live and you change up?

[1010] Absolutely.

[1011] Yeah.

[1012] Yeah.

[1013] Do you think you're going to do this in the future again?

[1014] Like this kind of animation thing?

[1015] Or is this a one -off?

[1016] Oh no there's already talk of doing I wouldn't do the music again I would certainly I might If they want to run with the story I'd be all about it Either prequel or sequel action But I wouldn't want to make This Sonic signature Again I would probably use Traditional Japanese musicians And then contemporary production methods And like actually have dialogue And sound effects And make a story You're gonna get into the cartoon business I got three kids That would be fucking awesome and it looks awesome i gotta watch the whole thing i gotta check it out it's really fucking weird man it's super trippy light a big right like that big mike tyson blunt when you get home at midnight and your kids are asleep and watch that shit and then you think about what a weird motherfucker i am all right now when you when you think about like doing another storyline like that following that storyline i haven't thought about it'd be pretty easy though i mean she rides off with the two robots and there's like an AI monster on left dealt with or you could go back in time to the origins of the two slick and slim's feud with their dad and why they show up to the dojo and kill everybody I don't know there's all kinds of just right making up shit pretty straightforward yeah now when you when you go back to writing new music do you are you constantly working on new music like when do you decide like when you have an album release like when will you decide to try because you've been pretty consistent like every what How many years?

[1017] Every three.

[1018] High Top and Metamodern came out like nine months apart from each other.

[1019] Sailor's Guide was 2016.

[1020] Now here we were our 2019, but we recorded that record 2017.

[1021] No, man, it's like there is a treadwater or drown mentality now.

[1022] Everybody thinks you have to be in front of people all the fucking time, or you've got to be like blowing air into your brain balloon on Twitter and showing everybody how funny and enlightened you are to be a musician.

[1023] but like I think sometimes the best thing you do is just go the fuck away and process and recharge and like look for holes that aren't being filled um and exercise other interests you know this like I said these guys I don't want to play music with anybody else and the only reason I would need another band is like if I made a bluegrass record you know so you just get the hang down and the people you want to be around and love and have a good time with like we could like I said we could make 10 records it's all going to sound like 10 different bands Because all these guys have an extremely broad and diverse influences and ability.

[1024] So I just don't, you know, I don't want to be in a box.

[1025] I don't want anybody to put a lid on it for me. And we love all kinds of music.

[1026] So it's not really saying we're going to make this kind of record.

[1027] We just went in and made fucking noise.

[1028] And this is what happened with those tools.

[1029] It's interesting to see your conscious decision to sort of just check out and recharge.

[1030] Well, yeah, you got at a certain point, you just realize you're not in charge.

[1031] And I'm a very controlling personality.

[1032] I like to be, I like to feel like I'm in control at least of myself.

[1033] With music, I've learned, like, you can put ideas out there, but they decide what they want to be.

[1034] You know, I knew I didn't want to put a wanky, fucking noodley guitar solo on every single song.

[1035] Two or three of those on a record, you're pretty good to go, especially now, and the guitar's kind of dead.

[1036] But Bob's an amazing keyboard player, and we had this badass old Moog Model D synthesizer.

[1037] that does the Dr. Dre shit and we did it on one song and we just kept going and cracking it out and like putting like a higher and a lower octave and then running it through amps and blowing it out and getting it really dirty like a big cracked out laser beam and I was just like that's the fucking sound man we got to put that on everything and like cohesively tie the album together so most of the solos are Bob making this fucking sweet ass like scent thing over some black Sabbath and I never heard that record growing up you know So we made that record.

[1038] Wow.

[1039] So when you're touring with this music now and you're fucking with it and you're switching things up, like when will you decide that it's time to write some new shit?

[1040] Will you just tour and then stop touring?

[1041] Well, I'm always writing poetry.

[1042] Do you what?

[1043] I used to sit down with a guitar and like, I'm going to write this song and you get like a part and words and you find meter and phrase.

[1044] I've discovered I'm really just a poet.

[1045] it's easier to write the words out and craft the meter and phrase to those words musically in the studio I would say both all the other three records I probably wrote half of them while you go in to make the record.

[1046] You think you have the songs and you realize that those songs are not supposed to be a part of this record I would go home at night and write songs that fit that record where I would come in with parts like Sailor's got a lot of parts of music that get pieced together in the studio and these guys probably all thought I was fucking insane.

[1047] First It scared Ferg to death because he's like, I want to hear the songs.

[1048] I was like, I got some notes, you know.

[1049] But really the music happens.

[1050] You lock yourself in that room with the right people for a matter of days, and you just keep going until it's done.

[1051] And you have ideas in the moment.

[1052] But now I don't even pick a guitar up too right.

[1053] I just write what I want to say, what I'm feeling.

[1054] And then these guys, you know, push and encourage and motivate me to try to do the other thing as well as I'm able.

[1055] So are you writing.

[1056] long hand?

[1057] Are you writing on a computer?

[1058] No, I always write it.

[1059] You always write it out with your hand?

[1060] And I have notepads and I'll go through and just scribble out sections or pick this can fit with this.

[1061] This record was very deconstructed, I guess.

[1062] We did some loops and we would like record riffs in a certain key and then record that same riff in every other key so I could take it and chop it to a loop and make it super precise like a hip -hop album.

[1063] And then some stuff was just live as fuck, you know.

[1064] and you just having fun we had a lot of fun the improvisational part of it sounds terrifying but awesome that's what you want yeah I mean sometimes you get something if it's a melodic hook or something the first take it's usually the one you keep you know you go back and try to make it perfect and it sounds cool and we knew that having done this before so with these sessions we win that was the only rule there was no second guessing or indecision hence the samurai films on the wall because like in a sword fight you got one fucking move you know what I mean and that was like that was the MO for these sessions like the first thing is doesn't matter if it's the right thing it's the thing so when you're doing that and you're recording things do you do you pause and go listen to it and play it again how do you how do you guys do it sometimes it depends you know if it sounds cool like Bobby said then you probably just keep it and if you're like it didn't really work try something else most of his solos on the record were like first second take i mean chuck i don't think i've ever fucking punched a single thing in chuck's life chuck's perfect he just kills it he's the man um but bob i've got a bunch of videos somewhere on a computer like i made him record all of his solos with a joint in his mouth well like the intro thing they were like we need a thing for this and i was like well i need a i need a doobie and i just played that i have some of those videos too on my so from that point on every time he he played he had a jointness mouse so he was like not just thinking about the music it was like you know anything to just settle and it was it was pretty fun i mean we're kind of just we were fucking wasted you know just kind of like doing the arsonio who who who yeah can you get too high and play music um only if you have to remember i'm still trying he's always what did you say so you said you said you want to get so high you don't even know what's chord your player yeah i don't want to know what song we're playing I was just like, yeah.

[1065] No, the problem is, like, we get so high when we record that, and then we have to remember that live or relearn it.

[1066] And then if you get high live, you can't remember what you played high when you record.

[1067] That is an issue.

[1068] So then do you go back and listen to recordings and go, what?

[1069] Yeah, what was that?

[1070] The fuck were we doing?

[1071] I mean, we had to go back after, before rehearsals, this was a really weird thing that's never happened.

[1072] I went from mixing and, like, processing, looking at this film for the, past year to now we have to learn these songs.

[1073] So you're actually like paying attention to what you did there or played these chords.

[1074] I was like, wow, how fuck did I do that?

[1075] You know?

[1076] Just so weird.

[1077] That and we did it so relatively quick, quicker than the other stuff that we did shit you know, we'd, yeah, we had to learn it all over again because we didn't remember doing any of it.

[1078] It was just so creative and quick like that.

[1079] They hadn't heard any of the songs since we recorded them until I sent them the record three weeks ago.

[1080] Yeah.

[1081] Yeah.

[1082] Is it surreal going and listen to all of it after it's all pieced together?

[1083] A little bit.

[1084] Yeah.

[1085] For me it was, yeah.

[1086] Yeah.

[1087] It's like riding a bike, though, really.

[1088] You know, especially not playing in a year.

[1089] We know each other, you know, just jump back on it.

[1090] I'm still catching things in the recordings that I have, don't play live.

[1091] I'll hear little bits and things still.

[1092] Wow.

[1093] I got a question.

[1094] When you're in the studio with them, are you in person?

[1095] producer mode because you've produced other artists or you kind of are they kind of producers with you and you guys are finding it together oh man I couldn't I couldn't tell these guys to do what they do why would I mean I don't want to work with you I want to work with the guys that just do shit that amazes me um but no I'm not like I have a rough structure in my head of what what it sounds like um you know there I guess I don't know maybe you guys should answer that question.

[1096] Yeah, I mean, you said it, but you have an idea of what you want, but you kind of give us the reins.

[1097] Yeah, if it sucks, I tell them.

[1098] You'll tell us.

[1099] You know, but I give them an opportunity to not fuck up.

[1100] You'll say, like, you know, a Wu -Tang vibe or something.

[1101] And then, you know, Wootang vibe.

[1102] So there's definitely, I have, like, the idea of the sound I'm chasing, and it's hard to articulate.

[1103] But with this, it was just, I realized, like, maybe by the end of the second day, we were doing something I know I hadn't really heard before or maybe I was hearing like 15 of my favorite records all at the same time I was just like okay this is what this is going to be and it's probably going to destroy my career and that's okay because this is fucking I like it you know everyone everyone brings such a different element to it you know and I'm obsessed with old records and equipment and getting sounds like oh what's this sound it's this piece of year and this and just like I'm obsessed with it you know like we can find those things and put them all together and you know big part of it too to be completely honest was like every other record I've made even the ones that some of these guys have played on it was much more like I came in you're the songwriter and like it's session musicians you know and then you go out and you're the commodity you're the singing head you're the star and I think maybe around 2017 there's a big part of me that really rejected all that the newness of it and like the responsibility of it I just all everyone to just play guitar and a band you know as a kid and um maybe i wanted to feel like a part of something that wasn't all about my fucking head right i mean and i realized like i was finally in the band i'd always wanted to be in since i was 13 in my bedroom you know so like why wouldn't i make those records right it's funny because we imagine i mean think about the first one that we made together right opposed to yeah bobby i met i actually met bobby before i met miles bobby played organ my very first record i'd never met him he got called down by the producer and we instantly i was just like okay this guy's cool as shit and then i think like we were hanging out for like a week and we were going out we were both going pretty hard in the paint still back then and like we bobby and i would go out drinking and then come home and wake my wife up at four in the morning at eat all ice cream and that was like uh yeah and i think it was one night in particular in nashville i was working at a fucking grocery store.

[1104] He was sleeping in his car.

[1105] You know, we're both just like pretending we're not miserable and enjoying each other's company.

[1106] We went out and got real shit -faced, man. And we were walking up Dummbray and going to the only place that was still open to get some food at like three in the morning so all these meat market bars are letting out.

[1107] And we both look like a couple degenerate scumbags probably.

[1108] And we walked by and there's this group of like four or five obviously Vandy fucking football players.

[1109] Like just huge dudes, young men and pretty inebriated and we're walking by and I hear one of them say oh look it's the strokes he's like I love your records man you know and I blew it off whatever I'm a grown ass man and I kept walking and then I got about 10 feet I don't know why I could just tell Bobby wasn't with me anymore and I turn around and look back to see this motherfucker standing in the middle of the circle of all of them like literally eight inches from this guy's face with his hands on his hip wearing his leather jacket.

[1110] Bobby's from Detroit, man. He don't fucking play, you know.

[1111] And I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to jail with Bob tonight.

[1112] And I turn around and, like, kind of walk back over there.

[1113] And about the time I get to the group of dudes, one of them was eating a street hot dog.

[1114] And I will never forget this as long as I live.

[1115] Bobby, like, snatched the hot dog out of his hand and kind of crushed it like a paper wad and bounced it off his forehead.

[1116] Oh, Bobby.

[1117] And I was like, well, now I'm definitely going to jail with Bob the night, you know, so...

[1118] Bradley Coopers.

[1119] And you could, yeah, the Bradley Coopers.

[1120] We call them Bradley Coopers, because there's, like, this swarm of, like, dudes that had pink shirts on that were like, like, Bradley Coopers, we're surrounded by.

[1121] And, uh, I don't know.

[1122] It was pretty fascinating to watch them all immediately knew that they were dealing with something that they'd never experienced and they wanted fucking none of it.

[1123] I was like, I'm gonna, I think I, this is my new best friend.

[1124] I would be friends with this guy the rest of my life.

[1125] This hot dog destroying man It's not to be fucked with This David Lee Roth Oregon playing motherfucker Is all right with me We were just walking Having a drink We were bothering nobody They were dicks Total Dicks And then we went back And ate all of his Ice cream Out of the same container With it It was disgusting And now we sleep on a bus And have our own hotel rooms The bus thing's got to be a trip, huh?

[1126] It's a lot like a like being on a ship.

[1127] It's just like the Navy.

[1128] You sleep in bunks and you wake up every day and wonder where you are.

[1129] But no shitting on the bus, right?

[1130] Can't poop on the bus.

[1131] No. That's $1 ,000, you know.

[1132] You pay $1 ,000?

[1133] You can poop on other people's buses.

[1134] Yeah, or on other people's buses.

[1135] You don't poop on our bus.

[1136] Right.

[1137] So what do you guys do?

[1138] Just tell the guy to pull over to a rest stop.

[1139] Yeah.

[1140] You find a nice pilot somewhere in Omaha and shit on the toilet the same 38 truckers have today.

[1141] It's already warm.

[1142] it's all the glory it beats being in a van though by far oh for sure right so you guys listening to music playing music what are you doing when you're on the bus movies movies movies or you know watching chuck and serial very few comics travel like that burke crash is like one of the rare ones he travels by bus honestly man it's the end of the day and this we are very grateful i want to touch on that but like the bus thing it's a quality life issue as you will know touring is all about quality of life there's no way to make it not suck other than the shows themselves right but everything else that 22 hours a day it's like just trying to see one some kind of circadian rhythm so you don't get all serotonin weird and shit when that nightly adrenaline blasts is the hardest thing on me i find after a tour that i have to like figure out what's going on in my brain and not be you get home from that after six weeks you can't get off the couch for a week.

[1143] It's like this weird, strange fatigue I've never experienced in anything else.

[1144] But the bus, we kind of, I'd rather, like I said, I'd rather ride the bus for three days than go to an airport.

[1145] Amen.

[1146] Yeah.

[1147] It's just, you're in a cocoon.

[1148] It's your home.

[1149] It's familiar.

[1150] It's a safe haven.

[1151] We're all just chilling.

[1152] Yeah, we hang out.

[1153] We're all around each other more than we are our families most of the time.

[1154] And we're in this little motor home.

[1155] And if you get off, it's just like fucking Joseph Conrad.

[1156] man don't get off the boat if you step off the boat that's when weird shit happens you know right how many like when you guys go out how long do you go out for like if you do it well the first couple of tours when those records were pretty brutal we played about 300 plus two or three years straight and 300 nights a year yeah well you know i'm i'm i'm got a problem where like i felt i had to i felt i had to do that because i had a wife and kids on the way and it was like this is it's got to make this fucking happen you know and then then you makes you happen.

[1157] And then other people are making you do that now because it's making so much money.

[1158] They can't afford for if you to not be out there doing it.

[1159] And you reach a point of like exhaustion and burnout you're not even aware of because you're still doing what you love every night.

[1160] Right.

[1161] But all the other shit catches up.

[1162] And it caught up to me pretty hard around the second kid.

[1163] And I just realized like there's a smarter way to do this that will still provide for my family and all these guys, which is like less is more.

[1164] And now I'll never tour like that again, because there's no need, one, but two, it's just not healthy.

[1165] You're making a lot of people happy, but, like, it's not healthy.

[1166] No, it's not.

[1167] And that's where a lot of guys get into substance abuse, right?

[1168] Exactly.

[1169] James Hadfield just checked himself back in a rehab.

[1170] Yeah, because those guys, at their age, they got fucking more money than God, and they're still out hitting it harder than ever.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] You know, after the live...

[1173] Well, that actually might get me sued.

[1174] say that yeah no need um yeah that's a that's a tough call man yeah it's a real tough call yeah those guys like uh the great things about comedies you only have to go out for a weekend you know you're like sometimes i'll travel somewhere for one night and come home you know and most of the shit i do is around l a it's like the practice stuff just to stay sharp but i have friends that do the long touring and they start to go crazy it get a little nutty man I mean, if you're single, you don't have children.

[1175] Yeah, but even then.

[1176] Even then, it gets a little nutty.

[1177] But even more dangerous, if you were single, I have no kids, it'd be real easy just to stay out there forever.

[1178] Yes.

[1179] Lost in that cycle of like...

[1180] Especially if you like Coke.

[1181] Well, if you're partying and drinking, you don't realize how tired you are.

[1182] Right.

[1183] And then where you do it's sober, you're like, holy shit.

[1184] Yeah, right?

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] It's the greatest job in the world, like to be a...

[1188] a professional entertainer, but there's definitely some pitfalls to it.

[1189] Just like everything else, there's a balance.

[1190] And those guys that run it too hard, they run that engine too hot.

[1191] Which I think anybody that really cares about it is going to be accused of that at some point.

[1192] I definitely push things too hard.

[1193] I sing really hard.

[1194] I learn like singing very hard and physical.

[1195] It's just like, I don't know, it's like you're tired from the outside in and then back out.

[1196] It's a weird feeling, man. comics always talk about it the same way that when they're on the road too much the words stop meaning anything they're saying these things but they don't have a connection to it anymore they lose their connection to the material and the only way to get around that is to constantly be writing new shit because if you're doing the same shit for too many shows in the row you start to go bonkers yeah that's that's i mean it seems to be correct me if i'm wrong but like similar to why you guys are always changing your songs you're changing like there's a few songs you did last night that i recognized the song but it was like a totally different beat right and A lot of it was different.

[1197] You can't change the words, but I can change the notes.

[1198] I can keep it inspiring for me by focusing on the notes that I'm singing or playing.

[1199] I don't even read music.

[1200] I don't know what fucking notes I'm singing.

[1201] I just know, like, he can probably tell you more about that.

[1202] Theory Master.

[1203] When I was a kid, I used to hate live albums because I felt like they went too fast.

[1204] Very few of them actually were live.

[1205] Really?

[1206] They're faking it?

[1207] They're faking it.

[1208] Like Kiss Alive too.

[1209] Totally not a live album.

[1210] What?

[1211] Frampton comes alive.

[1212] That's real.

[1213] No. What?

[1214] Are you fucking.

[1215] The Kiss record is definitely a studio record with audience.

[1216] Really?

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] Maybe we should look it up.

[1219] That's marketing genius.

[1220] Come on, man. Is that true?

[1221] 100 %?

[1222] Maybe we should look it up.

[1223] Are you looking it up?

[1224] I'll see.

[1225] Are you guessing?

[1226] Are you guessing?

[1227] Are you guessing?

[1228] Right on.

[1229] For sure.

[1230] I'm pretty sure the kiss record was a fucking...

[1231] But they sounded different.

[1232] I think so, too.

[1233] The kiss thing is like...

[1234] They were like, they sounded different.

[1235] And it sounded different.

[1236] And it sounded.

[1237] Well, I'm a moron.

[1238] I don't know anything about music.

[1239] But to me, it sounded like they were performing the songs faster, which I always attributed to them being, like, hyped up because they're in front of an audience.

[1240] Yeah, that's exactly.

[1241] The tempo, is that how...

[1242] That's exactly right.

[1243] The adrenaline, because everyone's going crazy and you just...

[1244] Yeah, that's what I assumed, because I would listen.

[1245] They would sound different.

[1246] On some of those records, it might not even be them playing on some of the parts.

[1247] How dare you!

[1248] They get ghost players, and they have to sound...

[1249] Waivers and stuff Like the monkeys Which those records are incredible You know Because it's all the record crew Playing the music Those are good songs They're Harry Nilsson and Neil Diamond Wrote 90 % of that shit That's why they're great songs You know it's like The Beach Boys The Beach Boys exactly And they were all cut out here With the A team musicians The monkeys made some killer records Man Porpus song Almost psychedelic things I've ever heard Yeah, they got They got dismissed Because everybody knew They were kind of an artificially created band Well, they were Yeah, that they were put on television But they were singing it Yeah, they were actually singing it Who do you guys think is the best singer Of the monkeys?

[1250] Ooh, Mickey?

[1251] Man I don't know, who's the best?

[1252] I don't know.

[1253] The best singer?

[1254] I think so.

[1255] I only know one name.

[1256] I know Mickey.

[1257] Mickey Dolans.

[1258] Davy Jones.

[1259] Davy had the cleanest voice, I think, but I don't know if I, if he was my favorite singer.

[1260] Who are the other monkeys?

[1261] Mickey Dolans, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork.

[1262] Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork.

[1263] Peter was, Mike and Peter were the real musicians.

[1264] Mike made the best solo records, I think.

[1265] But I think Mickey's a good singer.

[1266] Mickey was a good singer.

[1267] He kind of sings, it's kind of annoying the way he sings some of the R &B stuff on like head or something, you know.

[1268] It's annoying?

[1269] Yeah, it's a little much.

[1270] Have you seen Head?

[1271] I don't remember it, no. Oh, man, you got to watch the movie.

[1272] It's, uh...

[1273] What is it?

[1274] The Monkey's movie.

[1275] The Monkey's made a movie?

[1276] It's like psychedelic has like Brian Brian Auger and like Julie Driscoll.

[1277] It's called Head?

[1278] Yeah, all these like guest musicians.

[1279] Like as in your head?

[1280] Like feed your head?

[1281] Like Jefferson Airplane?

[1282] Like, do drugs?

[1283] Really?

[1284] Yeah.

[1285] It's an insane, like, psychedelic movie, you know?

[1286] What in the fuck?

[1287] Oh my God.

[1288] The visual.

[1289] are pretty incredible it's a I live in an alternate universe I didn't know this existed do you think that's on Netflix please check what was that anette event Funnicelli's in it whoa powerful Annette Funnichelie Jekyllsen Sunny Liston's in it The boxer?

[1290] Oh my God look at Jack fucking Nicholson man I forgot about it Western Desert Saga Orofilm musical or film science fiction It's memorable It's memorable It find out of the things on Netflix Might have to recommend that to people We should have a fight companion Where we just watch Head We just get blitzed It's on YouTube Okay, good Good to know That's what we'll do We'll have a fight companion Where we watch the monkey's head A list of movies Oh Jack Nicholson wrote the screenplay Did he really?

[1291] Yeah Wow Bob Raffelson That's crazy What does it say?

[1292] 68 68 Big box office Whoa, it made $16 ,000 It made, bro, it made $16 ,000 in the box office Somebody got fired for that fucking movie When did they try to make it?

[1293] 68, when was the monkey, when was it over for the monkeys?

[1294] It was just like their attempt at 67, 68 was sort of the peak, right?

[1295] I don't know.

[1296] Probably after that movie, man. When was the TV show?

[1297] Late 60s.

[1298] Late 60s.

[1299] They had to make, they got to cancel so they could make room for Joyce DeWitt.

[1300] Joyce DeWitt.

[1301] Chiffin' Three's company?

[1302] Chuck and I have the official Joyce DeWitt Appreciation Fan Club.

[1303] If you want to be a member, we can talk about it.

[1304] I think I'm already in.

[1305] All right.

[1306] I have my own chapter.

[1307] Yeah, but you're in these guys' chapters, man. It's different.

[1308] How do you guys rock it?

[1309] Can't say it on air.

[1310] Five -year -old fetish obsession level, maybe.

[1311] I don't know.

[1312] I used to be a Mary Tyler Moore fan.

[1313] That was my gal.

[1314] she's no choice to wit no but it's not suzanne summers no chrisie can go home really why do you think that do you think she's too needy what happens with chrissey she's just not choice to wit I don't know that's just your thing do you feel like she was overlooked sort of like ginger no not ginger marianne sort of like marianne from gilgan's island was janet overlooked she seemed like it Marianne was definitely overlooked Everybody was in a ginger What a conversation Mary Ann looked like a giant pain in the I mean ginger rather Look like a giant pain in the ass This Joyce duet Oh look at that one there up though though that's not her is it Everybody gets old come on Is that a mugshot?

[1315] Yeah probably looks good Cops D -U -I yo Mugshot sorry sorry Joyce But when she was in her prime What a doll And she very confident Love goddess creation Is that what it says on her shirt there No No. Polo.

[1316] Do you remember when they took Suzanne Summers off the show?

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] She had a call in.

[1319] She was, like, calling in.

[1320] It's like, hey, it's me. I know I'm still on the show, but I'm on a vacation.

[1321] I'll miss you guys.

[1322] Bye.

[1323] Like, that was her being on the show.

[1324] They'd have a phone call with her.

[1325] And she wouldn't be interacting with them.

[1326] Your cousin Cindy took over.

[1327] Yeah, and then they fired her, right?

[1328] It was like contract negotiation.

[1329] that was the first time you realized like even people on TV are never happy right even they're on TV they want more money like woo the regal beagle oh I remember that remember when they they switched the the old folks too yeah I went from Mr. Roper to Mr. Furley that's right Mr. Farley was a decent Don Knott's you know that was a good feeling our guy at Dan Tannas last night was basically Mr. Furley really that's Mr. Furley never Mr. Furler never broke the wall, though, the way Mr. Roper did.

[1330] That was the best part.

[1331] He'd get a zinger in and, like, look at the camera.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] That's the funny shit ever, man. Mr. Roper had a special sense of humor, and he was also, like, a lovable pervert.

[1334] Right?

[1335] Remember?

[1336] He was, like, really into the girls?

[1337] Mr. Roper was, for sure.

[1338] I don't know.

[1339] I think it was Mr. Roper.

[1340] Yeah, that's Mr. Furler.

[1341] Was it Don Nott?

[1342] That's Mr. Furliss.

[1343] Who was the lovable pervert?

[1344] Was it Don Nots?

[1345] Yeah, Don Nots.

[1346] But I thought the other one was kind of a perv, too.

[1347] No, he was married.

[1348] he'd miss his roper he was though wasn't he kind of a perv to the girls yeah yeah he just yeah guys can be way more pervy on TV back then oh yeah oh man there you go yeah Dinots was a player remember look at that I met John Ritter John Ritter was on an episode of news radio super nice guy real real nice guy like everybody loved him yeah I'm a big kid I always as I got older I always wondered about that guy because I've always been fascinating by people who do a lot of pratt falls.

[1349] Mm -hmm.

[1350] Like, those guys get really hurt.

[1351] Yeah.

[1352] Like, that, that pratfall shit is like, it's a, it's like you're playing rugby with yourself.

[1353] You're throwing yourself into chairs and onto the ground.

[1354] You're falling down the way somebody falling down falls down.

[1355] Yeah, you're falling down and taking the impact on your fucking back.

[1356] And a lot of those guys get, like, significantly injured.

[1357] And if you read back on, like, ancient movie stars, like, a lot of them got it.

[1358] really badly hurt was Buster Keaton had the broken neck we showed this video of him he did these crazy stunts and one of the stunts he did like he had this water come down from this thing and hit him in the head who told us about this was it Penn Pend Jolette and he broke his fucking neck from the water hitting him they didn't anticipate the weight of the water and the water was so powerful that slammed him to the ground and broke his fucking neck and he continued with the scene and then later when he was older the doctor was examining when he was like when did you break your neck He's like, I never did.

[1359] It's like, the fuck you didn't.

[1360] Like, bro, you broke your neck.

[1361] You didn't even know.

[1362] He was running around with a broken neck.

[1363] Different humans back then, son.

[1364] They made people different.

[1365] All the cliff booths of the world.

[1366] But him, uh, Jack Tripper, John Ritter, was, uh, he did a lot of Pratt Falls, man, a lot.

[1367] I always wondered about guys like that.

[1368] I'm like, how much pain is that dude in?

[1369] Like you're, like, um, what's his face?

[1370] Chevy Chase?

[1371] That was a, I got to think that was a contributor to him being cranky.

[1372] Because people always say that Chevy Chase is cranky.

[1373] Like there was some recent thing where he's yelling at somebody for something.

[1374] Guy's probably in fucking pain all the time from falling down.

[1375] Like guys with back injuries from doing a lot of those, those pratfalls.

[1376] Like they're always throwing themselves up in your legs up.

[1377] Bam!

[1378] Bouncing off the ground.

[1379] It hurts being Clark Griswold.

[1380] Yes.

[1381] That's right.

[1382] All that shit he did.

[1383] Right?

[1384] He was always falling down.

[1385] Right?

[1386] He was always falling down on SNL.

[1387] Always getting fucked up, man. Yeah.

[1388] he fell off the roof that's right he did fall out of the attic I wonder what they did with that how did they set that up these stunt guys you think it's hard to say man I don't know I've ventured into this being a little sizzle a little bit myself but no no it's not really the stunt guys do the crazy shit but like you know you can still get fucked up stunt guys get fucked up a lot my friend Tate just got a severe concussion from doing some stunt work in a movie.

[1389] He's having a hard time looking at lights.

[1390] Yeah.

[1391] I fell on my back in some rehearsals for a movie last year.

[1392] We had to go to New Orleans for like a week and rehearse this scene because it was going to be one like 12 -minute shot.

[1393] And Daniel Klui and I had to like body slam each other on the pavement about 20 times one day and I guess I landed on the pad on the curb wrong.

[1394] And I got home that night and it felt like my kidneys were on fire and then I had to piss like every three minutes for the next week had some blood tracing and so of course the next week is when we went to actually film the fucking thing in Cleveland in the middle of polar vortex were out there in the shoot and the whole time I'm just like I feel like I got a bladder infection from just from falling down one time wrong and you have to do it again oh we did it like 150 times just for this movie for one scene in the movie yeah I'll never like question how hard those people work ever again man did you get an MRI did you get I went to a doctor in New Orleans and she checked it out and said there wasn't like there was trace blood but nothing was she said don't be a pussy essentially yeah pretty much i was like all right i won't be a pussy oh yeah that kind of impact's not that's no bueno you know it's a weird way to make a living i mean you guys probably have every single person that does your job after at least a few years probably has sustained impact and stress injuries i would imagine oh yeah dudes are jacked up all the time dudes are jacked up while they're active duty like the guys that actually walk in here and are on your show they're probably all jacked up and then they're probably the better off ones because they took care of their bodies a lot of people don't do that that's like becoming more of a thing like the tactical athlete but knees I mean my knee was getting jenky before the foot blew off how much of that was from squatting 8 ,000 pounds all three of your 20s though I would say that was a preventative measure.

[1395] Really?

[1396] Like, you're maintaining, like, same, like, you train all the time.

[1397] Like, you maintain going through full ranges of motion and keeping structures loaded and pliable, strength train, and do conditioning, endurance -based stuff, and maintain mobility.

[1398] That's like, you lose mobility, you start dying.

[1399] Yeah.

[1400] Yeah, for sure.

[1401] Definitely with, when it comes to, like, anything that's going to be throwing you around or battering you into something, the more muscle, more strength you can put into your body, the more you can protect yourself, but obviously only so much.

[1402] But when you think about wrestlers or anybody who does anything when they're getting slammed to the ground a lot, you know, they're mostly doing it if they're doing it as a competitive wrestler, doing it on mats, you know, that are cushioned.

[1403] You know, if you're doing it on the street, like, and they've got you doing some sort of stunt maneuvers, like what kind of pads they have underneath you?

[1404] like a basic martial arts like a big thick bad boy not real thick no it's just like those little blue thin ones really because they want to see your body actually hit the ground correct and then when they actually shot the thing the only thing that we didn't what the act there was a part where I definitely had to like judo flip his ass off onto a pad and we did all that but then like the stunt guys came out and did that shit for real onto frozen fucking concrete and negative 20 degrees And I was like, oh, yeah, y 'all can have that, you know.

[1405] But they, for real, like, dude straight up suplex this motherfucker on the pavement.

[1406] And they had knee pads and elbow pads on everything.

[1407] But, you know, it had to look real.

[1408] Those are the guys you wonder how long that career lasts.

[1409] That's where I can't wait for robots to get really good at body slams.

[1410] You know, you see what they're doing now with the parkour robots and shit?

[1411] That's what we need.

[1412] Just robots, body slams.

[1413] slam at each other or just get it to where CGI doesn't offend me, you know?

[1414] Right.

[1415] You know, like I watched Avatar the other night again.

[1416] Remember, you go back and like look at all those old Jackie Chan movies knowing what that guy is putting his body through?

[1417] Oh my God, for sure.

[1418] Yeah, no doubt about it.

[1419] Definitely was slammed into things left and right.

[1420] But if you go back and watch Avatar, it's fucking, first of all, it's fucking awesome.

[1421] I mean, it's fucking awesome.

[1422] It's really good.

[1423] But the CGI, it's so obvious that it's not real people.

[1424] So the guy who invented the software that James Cameron used to make Avatar did the video for the number four song on this film, Michael Arias.

[1425] Still a great fucking movie.

[1426] The guy was so fucking genius he couldn't articulate sentences.

[1427] It was like the driest meetings I've ever been in because his brain, there was so much shit going on on levels we could never comprehend that he was just like, so I thought you're just like wow you know but he's making computers and shit i can't do that that was 10 years ago that avatar came out too which is crazy i didn't know it was that long ago some fucking great scenes in that movie man people got depression after that movie they got a thing they're called avatar depression because they wish that they were living in avatar they wish that they were on pandora they wish they were the navi like living a spiritual life connected to the mother earth what would they call her Iwa right if they only knew they are yeah yeah but you know cell phones and shit they really want to be flying around on dragons turtles man shooting those and arrows of people you know I see I need to be on Twitter man but that's a powerful movie where people actually got depression from not living in the place where the movie was taking place never seen it never seen Avatar I haven't seen it either You've never seen the Goonies either, though, so that's not really, you know.

[1428] How have you never seen the Goonies?

[1429] He's born in 1992.

[1430] Yeah, but how have you not going back?

[1431] Avatar, that doesn't make any sense, man. That's 2009.

[1432] Do you get abused as a child?

[1433] No, I'm just waiting to go on the road so we can watch the Gunis.

[1434] Dude, you got to watch Avatar, man. It's a three -hour masterpiece.

[1435] You might tear up a little bit.

[1436] Yeah.

[1437] Now I got something to do on the bus.

[1438] Dude, it's a dope movie.

[1439] James Cameron can direct the fuck out of a movie.

[1440] he can do just about anything he wants to do it basically if he can't do it he just invent some shit so he can go do it but i forgot how good that movie was i haven't seen it in forever i watched again i was like fuck this is a good movie it's fun people go oh it's like an alien version of pocahontas save it save that shit keep it to yourself i enjoy it it's a trippy fucking movie man it's fun but every story is like a version of another story that's always existed.

[1441] There's just classic archetypes that are unavoidable.

[1442] Doesn't mean it's not an awesome movie you fucking pain in the ass.

[1443] God damn malcontents out there.

[1444] There's always somebody.

[1445] Avatar is fucking terrible.

[1446] You like that movie.

[1447] It's terrible.

[1448] You have no soul.

[1449] There's nothing inside you.

[1450] It's a lot like Roadhouse.

[1451] Exactly.

[1452] There's a few.

[1453] Were you sober when you watched it?

[1454] Yes.

[1455] I was.

[1456] How dare you for the insinuation?

[1457] Well, there's a lot of colors to be like it's the perfect movie you know what you can't be sober for show girls show girls might be the ultimate bad movie Elizabeth Berkeley oh remember she played a girl trying to make it as a showgirl on Vegas and it's just like cartoonishly ridiculous and they have a scene where she's having sex with Kyle what the fuck's his name what's that dude's name Jamie look it up the guy from Twin Peaks Jamie anyway she has the most preposterous sex scene in the history of film where she starts flopping around they're having sex in a pool and she starts flailing just flailing like you would have to be an asshole to keep fucking her like a healthy person would be like this girl is having a psychotic break I need to step away stop thinking about my dick and help her she's my friend and she's fucking she's having some sort of a psychotic seizure she's flailing like flopping back and forth and flailing if you were dating a girl like that would be like oh my god dude she's so annoying everything she does she has to throw her body around flail you've never seen that scene we've pulled it up on here before I think but Sturgle's never seen it Oh oh I wasn't okay What year is this movie 95?

[1458] 95 I was thinking It's right when I first moved to L .A I was like this is how it is out here huh?

[1459] I've seen it Try to block it out Dude I still remember the billboards on sunset I was driving down sunset First year living in L .A. And I was like look at this shit What the fuck on a piece?

[1460] It's a shit movie is this?

[1461] Is this what these people are into?

[1462] But it's one of those movies where you watch.

[1463] People forgot how bad it is.

[1464] It's the cocaine days of films when they were making these movies.

[1465] There were obviously someone was on Coke.

[1466] Someone making that movie is on Coke.

[1467] Is there, but did they have the...

[1468] Oh, I have seen that.

[1469] Yeah, you see her tattas, too.

[1470] Her tattas are up.

[1471] I've absolutely seen the scene before.

[1472] You never seen it, Sturgeon?

[1473] It's all seen it.

[1474] It's awful.

[1475] It's awful.

[1476] But if you get really, really high, it might be good again.

[1477] That sex scene's not good.

[1478] It's a terrible sex scene.

[1479] It's not how much weed I smoke.

[1480] But that's what's good about it is.

[1481] It's how terrible it is.

[1482] The other movie you have to see on the road?

[1483] Grizzly, man. Have you seen that?

[1484] I've seen that.

[1485] The documentary?

[1486] Yeah.

[1487] Yeah, I've seen that shit.

[1488] The greatest unintentional comedy in the history of comedies.

[1489] What could go wrong?

[1490] What was the thing you showed us yesterday?

[1491] The bear?

[1492] Is that the 80s movie?

[1493] The bear eats mushrooms?

[1494] When he eats the mushrooms?

[1495] Yeah, it's the bear.

[1496] I hadn't seen it, but maybe have you seen that?

[1497] No, there's a movie about a bear with mushrooms.

[1498] Like Jamie, look up the scene on YouTube.

[1499] Yeah, he got to look it up.

[1500] What is this movie about?

[1501] It's about a...

[1502] Yeah, dude.

[1503] You get Jamie to say, holy shit.

[1504] You got it.

[1505] It didn't look real.

[1506] This has happened.

[1507] Oh, these are aminida miscaria.

[1508] When I was a kid, this was fucking terrifying.

[1509] He, like, sees a butterfly or something, and he's tripping balls.

[1510] So this is a nature documentary.

[1511] Well, it looks like a real bear, though, so we don't...

[1512] sure they did uh mean i don't think that's what the bear's seeing things maybe the bear's taking a nap bro oh that's just hilarious that aminita muscaria mushroom is a weird mushroom that's that one that they think is uh that's from the john marco allegro book the sacred mushroom in the cross he attributed that to the birth of christianity makes a pretty good outfit though yes it does the santa cla's outfit fuck or the pope yeah the pope yeah there's a lot of connections between mushrooms in ancient christianity it's fucking really interesting stuff holy shit what are we watching this is what this is what the bear's the bear's tripping balls this is the bear's tripping balls they glued a butterfly to him he loves it look at that you know that butterfly's not really there oh it is real yeah oh god well you ever see the jaguar tripping out on uh iahuasca jaguars eat the the either they eat um pork they're either eating the um they're either eating the harmine or they're eating the ayahuasca vine one of the two might just be the harming but whatever the eating is having some sort of a psychedelic effect on them and the jaguars eat these leaves and then they're just lying on their and their pupils are dilated and they're tripping balls like obviously tripping balls like to see a jaguar rolling around on the floor in the middle of the jungle after eating leaves it's very strange you never seen that no young jamie please I was trying to find out what that movie the bear was all about I just found It's from 1988.

[1513] I found the whole movie.

[1514] I don't know.

[1515] It's about Life of a Bear.

[1516] I don't know.

[1517] Some kids' movie from France or something.

[1518] Huh.

[1519] It's a kids movie.

[1520] I mean, Alice in Wonderling.

[1521] Find a Jaguar high on DMT to trip.

[1522] You watch this Jaguar eat these leaves.

[1523] Here it goes.

[1524] Go full screen, young Jamie.

[1525] Go full screen.

[1526] Look at him.

[1527] He's tripping.

[1528] So this Jaguar, he seeks out these.

[1529] These plants eats them, and then he's just lying there, like, whoa.

[1530] The thing about the people who take that ayahuasca, too, is they see jaguars.

[1531] It's part of the vision.

[1532] I wonder what they're doing is connecting to some jaguars that are out there tripping balls, too.

[1533] Look at them.

[1534] Really?

[1535] Yeah, look at them.

[1536] Yeah, that's a really common vision that people who take ayahuasca.

[1537] They see serpents, and they see jaguars.

[1538] Spirit animals, bass, ho.

[1539] You ever seen a young gun?

[1540] smiles?

[1541] When they go to the spirit world, they say, how come they ain't killing us?

[1542] He's like, because we're in a spirit world, assholes.

[1543] They can't see us.

[1544] That was Charlie Sheen's brother.

[1545] Emilio Estavis.

[1546] He's the only one who kept the family name, right?

[1547] Yeah.

[1548] They're all, their real name was Estevez.

[1549] But Emilio took a chance.

[1550] He's like, I'm going to go with this whole Latino angle.

[1551] My first name's Emilio.

[1552] Latino angle.

[1553] Right?

[1554] Because Charlie Estevez is like, Yeah.

[1555] He'd been compromised.

[1556] He made his own name.

[1557] Fucking tiger blood.

[1558] Yeah, there it is.

[1559] Fucking, uh...

[1560] Bunch of handsome bastards.

[1561] Kiefer's other one.

[1562] Everybody, look at them all.

[1563] Lou Diamond Phillips.

[1564] In the house.

[1565] Who's that other guy in the back?

[1566] I don't know.

[1567] That guy.

[1568] He had a shitty agent.

[1569] Oh, Dermermann.

[1570] Morrini.

[1571] Dermann.

[1572] Dermann.

[1573] Yeah, he was in a bunch of those movies.

[1574] But the other guy, who's the guy?

[1575] The Casey Slamasco.

[1576] Oh.

[1577] Hey, Case.

[1578] Shout out to Casey.

[1579] Whatever.

[1580] So let's wrap this bitch up I think we're way too high To be making any sense to people I have a question for you though Please do you know who Butcher Brown is Oh yeah we gotta have this conversation Yeah who's Butcher Brown I think his first name is John He's a doctor that did a bunch of like unlicensed Sex change surgeries in like garages Motel He's on Murderpedia if Jamie wants to look at Butcher Brown Wow Wow.

[1581] So he did unlicensed sex change operations and people died from it?

[1582] Yeah.

[1583] He did so many.

[1584] All eating raw hot dogs, drinking coffee.

[1585] Raw hot dogs.

[1586] So he's eating hot dogs and cutting off dicks.

[1587] Nothing weird there.

[1588] Yeah, keep going, bro.

[1589] That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[1590] He was eating raw hot dogs and cutting off dicks.

[1591] That's what he does.

[1592] Ooh.

[1593] Man. While drinking diet, Dr. Pepper.

[1594] And how many people, did he, I think it was almost, I mean, it was hundreds.

[1595] There's a, like a detailed descriptive article that's, did it work on anybody?

[1596] Did everybody die?

[1597] You got to read it.

[1598] If you, watch head and read that.

[1599] Oh, no. Why did you, out of all the things to curse me with?

[1600] I was thinking about it.

[1601] But he's known as like America's worst doctor.

[1602] Will ever?

[1603] I think ever.

[1604] Once you read it.

[1605] Yeah, yeah.

[1606] have to look that up to see if that's actually Crazy glue.

[1607] And you see the guy's picture and you're like, yep.

[1608] Let me see his picture, Jamie.

[1609] He injects silicone wherever you want it for like $200 bucks, you know, and then...

[1610] Just like caulk?

[1611] Like silicone.

[1612] Plug it up with crazy glue and tell you to lay down flat for two days.

[1613] Oh my God.

[1614] But he's had a lot of business.

[1615] I'm not sure I found him yet.

[1616] Did it work on anybody?

[1617] Imagine if he made one bomb ass.

[1618] Like, look at that.

[1619] Great job.

[1620] It came out great once.

[1621] And he's like, I'm just chasing and that dragon.

[1622] Every time, I'm trying to get, one time I nailed it.

[1623] I put the right amount of cock in this lady's ass cheeks.

[1624] Dude, it helped.

[1625] It made it look better.

[1626] Most of the time, it looks like a disaster.

[1627] I found him.

[1628] You found him?

[1629] Let's see what butcher bob looks like.

[1630] I don't like to judge people based on appearances.

[1631] There he is.

[1632] But.

[1633] Oh, my God.

[1634] Look at the frown on his face.

[1635] He's like a caricature.

[1636] That's a smile.

[1637] I would not assume that guy's friendly.

[1638] Homicide.

[1639] Self -appointed sex change specialist practicing medicine without a license?

[1640] Oh, he didn't even have a license.

[1641] God damn it.

[1642] They should make a movie about this guy and let Brian Cranston sentenced to 15 years to life, died in prison in 2010.

[1643] The funny thing is you read in here that there's another guy that's his competition.

[1644] That's the second worst doctor, or debatable.

[1645] But was this guy a real doctor?

[1646] No, he said self -appointed.

[1647] right so I don't know I thought he had like some sort of a military thyroid surgery thing self -appointed sex change specialist carried out hundreds of operations yeah don't do that folks renegade doctor his place was called what was it called like the room of dreams born into a strict Mormon family Brown was a gifted child oh boy how many fucking disaster start out with that sentence born into a strict Mormon family Brown was a gifted child That's the open parts of a novel that goes terribly wrong.

[1648] He had a miniaturization technique for clitoris.

[1649] He took the patient's penis and turned into a clitoris, apparently guaranteeing his client's full sexual pleasure.

[1650] He presented his work in the 1973 medical conference where his technique earned him the respect of some of the world's most famous surgeons.

[1651] Without surgical qualifications, Brown had to perform his operations in the most unlikely and inappropriate locations.

[1652] One early patient remembers going to his office assuming he would do a check -up, but awoke from the anesthetic to discover that he had operated in the office.

[1653] He turned his garage into an operating theater.

[1654] And the more operations he did, the further his standard slipped.

[1655] Oh, no. Oh, my God.

[1656] Read this next paragraph.

[1657] Yeah, despite the concerns of his peers, many of Brown's patients appeared to be happy.

[1658] That's like, you bought a really small book.

[1659] It would end right there.

[1660] One of his early patients, Elizabeth, had been delighted with her surgery.

[1661] But a year later, things started to go wrong.

[1662] Her vagina started to tighten and close up.

[1663] That's a Hemingway sentence.

[1664] You wanted it tight.

[1665] Brown was abandoning his patients and leaving them to other surgeons like Dr. Jack Fisher to pick up the pieces.

[1666] He says, it's hard to imagine anyone worse than John Brown.

[1667] He didn't care much for evaluating his patients before surgery or for post -operative care.

[1668] He was totally focused on the technical procedure itself and he didn't do that very well.

[1669] Jesus Christ, man. Putting some good shit out in the world.

[1670] Oh, why have you done this to us?

[1671] You got to do head this and then watch Chuck and Buck.

[1672] Chuck and Buck?

[1673] Oh, what are you doing to me, man?

[1674] What is Chuck and Buck?

[1675] And why do I not want to look?

[1676] What the fuck you're doing me, man?

[1677] Do you want to play a game, Joe?

[1678] No!

[1679] Hey, Jamie, look up what you want to play a game?

[1680] What's Chuck and Buck?

[1681] The trailer is that...

[1682] The most awkward fucking film ever made?

[1683] Wait a minute, more awkward than that...

[1684] What was that one?

[1685] The dude, they made the room.

[1686] Where they made a movie...

[1687] What's his face?

[1688] The fucking handsome...

[1689] James Franco made a movie about the movie being made.

[1690] Remember the room?

[1691] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1692] Do you guys know that movie The Room?

[1693] Where you played the...

[1694] You know it is?

[1695] James Franco actually made a whole movie.

[1696] The movie's so insane.

[1697] James Franco made a movie about the making of the movie, about how insane it was.

[1698] A guy was like this dude who was like an actor and things weren't going so well.

[1699] So he put together enough money to make his own movie, but it was terrible.

[1700] And in every scene, he was like making out with girls.

[1701] Yeah.

[1702] Tommy was now.

[1703] Never saw it, but I haven't read about it.

[1704] Bro, it's hard to watch.

[1705] It's one of those movies that's so.

[1706] bad like you think you're going to get schizophrenia from watching it.

[1707] It's a distorting reality in a way that does not, it's not compatible with your senses.

[1708] It's confusing.

[1709] You watch scenes in the film.

[1710] That's the, that's the movie called The Room.

[1711] And he bought billboards around town.

[1712] When I first moved to L .A., there was a billboard around town for the room for like a long time.

[1713] Where do you get the money?

[1714] I don't know.

[1715] Somewhere terrible.

[1716] That shit's not cheap.

[1717] Yeah.

[1718] I think that movie was.

[1719] Oh, boy.

[1720] The movie crossed.

[1721] Are we watching?

[1722] Chuck and Buck?

[1723] It's just a trailer in case there's anything worth mentioning?

[1724] This is the Chuck and Buck trailer?

[1725] What is Chuck and Buck about?

[1726] I think the scene, what is it?

[1727] Is there a scene called Let's play a game?

[1728] So what is Chuck doing here?

[1729] He's messing with some dials and then he's laying back and then this guy's packing up his gear and he's getting his car.

[1730] It's getting out of town, man. What the fuck is this movie about, man?

[1731] You'll have to find out.

[1732] What am I going to get it from watching?

[1733] Is that Ashton Coucher?

[1734] No. Who's that guy that handsome bastard.

[1735] What year is this?

[1736] 2000.

[1737] That might be Ashton Cudgerboro.

[1738] That is Jack Black's roommate from school around.

[1739] Yeah, true.

[1740] Oh, that guy right there?

[1741] So if we can't listen to this, I have no fucking idea what's going on.

[1742] There's no way we can listen to this.

[1743] So I'm going to have to do this offline.

[1744] You're going to have to just, like I said, go home, kids are asleep, spoke blunt, watch our anime film, and then right after that, watch Chuck and Buck.

[1745] Yeah, I'm going to definitely watch your anime film first.

[1746] Yeah, Chuck and Buck would be a good.

[1747] know if Chuck and Buck is next.

[1748] I think I've got to go with head next.

[1749] You might actually want to end on sound inferior to end on something positive and cool and good.

[1750] Yeah, but I might be wrecked.

[1751] It's in like the...

[1752] Yeah, you might just want to go to sleep.

[1753] The amoeba what's in your bag, Joe Rogan.

[1754] Chuck and Buck, head, Dr. Richard Brown.

[1755] Yeah, that's a good description right there.

[1756] An oddly naive manchild stalks his childhood best friend and tries to reconnect with their past.

[1757] Jesus.

[1758] All right.

[1759] Gentlemen, thank you for last night.

[1760] It was fucking awesome.

[1761] Thanks for being here today.

[1762] The album, it's out.

[1763] Sturgle tell these people what it is, where to get it.

[1764] Sound and Fury.

[1765] I don't know where the fuck you would go buy that.

[1766] Probably at a record store.

[1767] iTunes.

[1768] Records store.

[1769] Or you can steal it on Spotify and just come to the show.

[1770] Your call.

[1771] Open invitation.

[1772] Special Forces Foundation .org.

[1773] Get that shit.

[1774] Get that shit.

[1775] All right.

[1776] Thank you, gentlemen.

[1777] It was a lot of fun.

[1778] Appreciate it.

[1779] Fun times.

[1780] Thank you.

[1781] Thank you.

[1782] My pleasure.

[1783] Bye, everybody.