Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 428] Rock Stardom: “I Lost My Passion for the Music” – with David Barnett

Transcript

[EP 428] Rock Stardom: “I Lost My Passion for the Music” – with David Barnett · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: At some point, I lost my passion for the music itself,
0:03
Speaker 1: and I was just aspiring to the archetype of the
0:06
Speaker 1: rock star. So I started ingesting anything and everything that
0:10
Speaker 1: was around and behaving in a way that you would
0:12
Speaker 1: think an outlandish fictional movie about rock stars would act.
0:17
Speaker 1: I would fall off stages drunk and blacked out and
0:20
Speaker 1: pushed another drummer from another band off his kit once.
0:24
Speaker 1: We're totally booked.
0:25
Speaker 2: Rock and roll! Wow.
0:27
Speaker 3: I think I'll leave you to your reading.
0:29
Speaker 1: Little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
0:31
Speaker 2: Rock and roll!
0:33
Speaker 1: We are totally booked.
0:38
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Booked on Rock. Conversations with authors, musicians,
0:42
Speaker 2: and insiders revealing the stories behind classic rock's greatest songs, albums,
0:47
Speaker 2: and artists. I'm Eric Senech. If you'd like to get
0:49
Speaker 2: the show commercial free and get episodes before everybody else,
0:53
Speaker 2: it's just $ 5 a month. Grab the backstage pass. through BookedOnRock.com
0:59
Speaker 2: or click the link in the show notes. Now onto
1:02
Speaker 2: our show. What happens when a teenager's dream of rock
1:05
Speaker 2: stardom leads him down a path of drugs, rebellion, and
1:10
Speaker 2: a friendship pushed to the breaking point? Joining me is
1:13
Speaker 2: author David Barnett, whose memoir, Foxtail, takes us inside Austin's
1:17
Speaker 2: underground music scene for stories of wild performances, dangerous decisions,
1:22
Speaker 2: and the music that helped him survive it all. David,
1:25
Speaker 2: thank you for being here.
1:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eric, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
1:29
Speaker 2: This is an intensely personal memoir. It's filled with stories
1:33
Speaker 2: that I suppose most people would probably prefer, maybe keep private.
1:37
Speaker 2: You really put it all out there. What convinced you
1:39
Speaker 2: to share these experiences? And was there anything you almost
1:42
Speaker 2: couldn't bring yourself to include in the book?
1:45
Speaker 1: There were things I couldn't bring myself to face at first.
1:49
Speaker 1: But once I went down that road and made that
1:51
Speaker 1: decision that this is going to be my confessionals and
1:54
Speaker 1: I'm telling everything, as it, as it occurred, as it happened,
1:59
Speaker 1: as I experienced it, you know, um, that became the
2:03
Speaker 1: mission and I, I became unafraid to reveal my secrets and,
2:09
Speaker 1: and my actions and everything like that. And, um, that,
2:12
Speaker 1: that wasn't a conscious decision that was made at the beginning. Uh,
2:18
Speaker 1: the reason that happened, that, that was a development that,
2:25
Speaker 1: because I never intended for this to be a book
2:29
Speaker 1: at the beginning. All it was was supposed to be
2:32
Speaker 1: an exercise, a writing exercise intended to exercise some demons,
2:37
Speaker 1: if you will.
2:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:39
Speaker 1: The friend you alluded to in the opening, pushing to
2:43
Speaker 1: a breaking point, there was a very complex situation that
2:49
Speaker 1: arose between he and I And there were, you know,
2:53
Speaker 1: 25 years of context and interaction behind it. And I was, uh,
2:59
Speaker 1: in a bad place and I was all twisted up
3:01
Speaker 1: inside about it and just did not know how to
3:04
Speaker 1: navigate that, that labyrinth of circumstances. Couldn't find my way out.
3:11
Speaker 1: So I, uh, I got shit faced and went and
3:15
Speaker 1: hung out with another good buddy of mine who, uh,
3:19
Speaker 1: He always knows what to say to put things in perspective,
3:22
Speaker 1: and he's got quite a bit of wisdom in him.
3:25
Speaker 1: His name's Alonzo, and he's the only guy I can
3:29
Speaker 1: go to to calm me down when I'm feeling a
3:33
Speaker 1: certain way. So I was up at 3 a.m., went
3:37
Speaker 1: on a three-hour manic rant in which I elucidated about
3:41
Speaker 1: the entire history, the You know, he sat and listened.
3:50
Speaker 1: And this time around, after I was done with my diatribe,
3:57
Speaker 1: he didn't have any advice for me. What he said was, man,
4:01
Speaker 1: I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should
4:03
Speaker 1: write about it. And it was like a light bulb
4:07
Speaker 1: going off because at the time I had just transitioned
4:13
Speaker 1: into a new phase of life. I was going to college.
4:16
Speaker 1: I'd been doing that for a couple of years and
4:19
Speaker 1: gradually falling in love with writing, but just, you know,
4:24
Speaker 1: writing college papers. I was good at it, getting A's. And, um,
4:29
Speaker 1: this was an opportunity to like, oh man, I get
4:31
Speaker 1: to do like a, a cool writing project. It's just
4:35
Speaker 1: for me. So I dove in and it was just
4:39
Speaker 1: supposed to be to like, get to work that situation
4:43
Speaker 1: out and find a way out. And, and, find a
4:46
Speaker 1: pathway to try to reconcile the friendship, the situation, and
4:52
Speaker 1: to move forward amicably. However, in order to kind of
4:58
Speaker 1: excavate and do the excavation and try to find that
5:04
Speaker 1: ultimate route, I had to go all the way back,
5:09
Speaker 1: you know, because we'd known each other 25 years and
5:12
Speaker 1: Every bit of context I felt was important. So I
5:15
Speaker 1: went back to the back of our friendship, our relationship.
5:18
Speaker 1: And then as I started writing that, you know, little strings,
5:21
Speaker 1: little branches arise, other people get involved. And pretty soon
5:25
Speaker 1: I realized, oh, I'm, I'm writing my life story. This
5:29
Speaker 1: is no longer an exercise, you know? So it was
5:34
Speaker 1: really important that it happened organically like that because I
5:40
Speaker 1: When I started, I'll be honest, I had like vengeance
5:43
Speaker 1: in my heart. Not in the sense that, you know,
5:47
Speaker 1: I was going to publish a tell-all and use it to,
5:51
Speaker 1: you know, scorn him, smite him publicly. But it was
5:56
Speaker 1: just like, it was the exercise. I wanted to outlet
5:59
Speaker 1: my rage, my anger that I was, it was projection,
6:03
Speaker 1: you know? And what I discovered was when you write a,
6:09
Speaker 1: memoir you know when you're journaling and exploring your own
6:13
Speaker 1: actions your own feelings your own um and trying to
6:18
Speaker 1: shine a comic light on it which is just you
6:20
Speaker 1: know my nature you start to realize your own mistakes
6:25
Speaker 1: how you affected people the you know the ripples the
6:28
Speaker 1: ripples behind you and the uh you know collateral damage
6:32
Speaker 1: you left in your wake.
6:33
Speaker 2: And what point did this transition into something that was
6:36
Speaker 2: going to become a book that was going to be published.
6:39
Speaker 1: I don't remember the exact time I came to that realization.
6:42
Speaker 1: It was pretty early on, but the, the period of
6:46
Speaker 1: time in which I really dove in and had time
6:50
Speaker 1: to make it my primary and, and only focus was
6:55
Speaker 1: summer 2020 COVID, you know, I was in my COVID cave.
6:59
Speaker 1: I was, uh, you know, going to school at Texas state, uh,
7:04
Speaker 1: no roommates, just alone in my apartment. And it was,
7:08
Speaker 1: I reflect back on it as a wonderful time, just personally,
7:13
Speaker 1: because I sat down every day. I had a routine
7:16
Speaker 1: and I woke up, made breakfast, wrote for a few hours,
7:20
Speaker 1: went outside, went for a run, came back, made a
7:22
Speaker 1: cup of tea, wrote some more and, you know, had
7:26
Speaker 1: notepads all around the apartment. If I woke up in
7:29
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, you know, transient thought I
7:32
Speaker 1: had to write down so it didn't become transient. It stuck,
7:36
Speaker 1: you know? Um, and within from May, 2020 to September,
7:42
Speaker 1: mid September, 2020, I finished the first draft. Um, but
7:47
Speaker 1: at the time it was, uh, much, much shorter. Um,
7:50
Speaker 1: and it would grow.
7:51
Speaker 2: Now your parents, you grew up listening to their music,
7:54
Speaker 2: including the Beatles, the doors, Jefferson airplane, Hendrix, um, What
7:58
Speaker 2: was it about those artists that first attracted you to
8:00
Speaker 2: the idea of becoming a rock star?
8:03
Speaker 1: Initially, I would say it was just the way it
8:06
Speaker 1: made me feel. You know, in the book, I talk
8:11
Speaker 1: about briefly how my parents bought me the blue and
8:16
Speaker 1: white striped shirt that the Beach Boys wore in their
8:19
Speaker 1: early 1960s heyday. And I must have been on a
8:23
Speaker 1: real Beach Boys kick at that time. And I, you know,
8:26
Speaker 1: I slit my hair to the side like Brian Wilson
8:29
Speaker 1: and just like, like playtime for me wasn't Cowboys and Indians.
8:34
Speaker 1: It was Brian Wilson. It was John Lennon, you know?
8:38
Speaker 1: And I would, I remember putting on the albums and
8:42
Speaker 1: like my parents had the stereo in their room and
8:46
Speaker 1: I would go in there by myself and just like
8:48
Speaker 1: jump on the bed and like, you know, pretend I would,
8:52
Speaker 1: I would become like imbued by the spirit of music
8:56
Speaker 1: and jump around and kind of do my own performance,
8:58
Speaker 1: you know, forward rolls and jumping jacks and little kid
9:01
Speaker 1: goofy stuff. So, um, it, it was something that allowed
9:08
Speaker 1: me to escape because I've always had an overactive mind.
9:12
Speaker 1: I've always had ADHD and obsessive compulsive disorder. And, um,
9:18
Speaker 1: those things manifested in, in very, um, outlandish ways when
9:25
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I just broke things and threw
9:28
Speaker 1: tantrums and had night terrors. So music was something that
9:32
Speaker 1: could distract me and pull me out and just exit
9:36
Speaker 1: that mess of cognition and just become the stream of
9:41
Speaker 1: that music and just meld with it.
9:45
Speaker 2: Early in the book, you challenge Oscar Wilde's famous idea
9:48
Speaker 2: that life imitates art more than art imitates life. Instead,
9:52
Speaker 2: you agree with writer Ernst Fischer, who believed art should
9:55
Speaker 2: reflect the society in which it's created, including its darker side.
9:59
Speaker 2: What led you to embrace Fischer's view? And how do
10:02
Speaker 2: you think the rock music you grew up with reflects
10:06
Speaker 2: the society that produced it?
10:09
Speaker 1: Unless we're living in a complete state of denial, we
10:12
Speaker 1: can all look around and recognize that there are infinite,
10:17
Speaker 1: problems and issues with the world, a lot of ugliness. And, um,
10:24
Speaker 1: you know, we, we should, we should be aware of
10:28
Speaker 1: it and discuss it. And I think writing music or,
10:32
Speaker 1: you know, movies, books that explore the nuances of this
10:38
Speaker 1: darkness shines a light on it. And, you know, we
10:42
Speaker 1: don't want to just push things in corners and cover
10:46
Speaker 1: them up. Maybe if we understand and get to the
10:49
Speaker 1: root of issues and kind of think about them in
10:52
Speaker 1: a different way, we see something that resonates with us,
10:56
Speaker 1: you know, and kind of opens our eyes or makes
11:00
Speaker 1: us think about things differently. It can be very impactful.
11:04
Speaker 1: And then on a, you know, extrapolate that on a
11:07
Speaker 1: greater scale, you know, becomes movement, you know, like grunge
11:12
Speaker 1: was a movement. I'm not going to say it, you know,
11:16
Speaker 1: save the world by any means. But, um, you know,
11:20
Speaker 1: there is something to be said for kind of that.
11:24
Speaker 1: There's this obscure sociological term that was one of my back,
11:27
Speaker 1: one of my textbooks called collective effervescence. And basically the
11:32
Speaker 1: term means like when a group of people come together
11:36
Speaker 1: around a certain thing, um, a notion, an idea, or
11:44
Speaker 1: a piece of art anything that really has resonant value
11:49
Speaker 1: and impact the group kind of becomes illuminated in a
11:55
Speaker 1: sense and not like you know literally they they're glowing
11:59
Speaker 1: like superheroes but they they gain some sort of power
12:04
Speaker 1: to be able to change things maybe or just just
12:10
Speaker 1: live in a happier way together create a society that's
12:14
Speaker 1: different that breeds more difference and beauty and art.
12:20
Speaker 2: You question our tendency to idolize celebrities pointing to figures
12:24
Speaker 2: like Michael Jackson, Hulk Hogan, Bill Cosby, OJ Simpson as
12:28
Speaker 2: examples of how our heroes can disappoint us. Do you
12:31
Speaker 2: think we expect too much from our heroes or are
12:35
Speaker 2: we often drawn to people for the wrong reasons?
12:38
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's a tough one. I mean, we can't
12:41
Speaker 1: foresee the future and people like that and are generally
12:46
Speaker 1: pretty good at, you know, hiding their, uh, their issues.
12:51
Speaker 1: And then the structures they build around them are, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: contribute to that secrecy as well. So, um, but in
13:02
Speaker 1: a general sense, you know, we, it's easy to identify
13:08
Speaker 1: an idol. You know, we all, I mean, Take religion,
13:13
Speaker 1: and I don't want to get into a big religious thing,
13:15
Speaker 1: but just as a concept, you know, people are drawn
13:19
Speaker 1: to idols. And it's such an empowering thing to have
13:25
Speaker 1: this person you put on a pedestal, this person or
13:29
Speaker 1: this idea or this entity or whatever. And if you
13:33
Speaker 1: believe wholeheartedly in the story surrounding them, or if it's,
13:39
Speaker 1: you know, a rock star or a current popular figure,
13:42
Speaker 1: Just like their art, it resonates with you so much
13:47
Speaker 1: that it becomes kind of central to your identity. You know,
13:53
Speaker 1: these things can drive us and become such an important
13:58
Speaker 1: part of how we operate in every facet of our lives. So,
14:02
Speaker 1: you know, in that sense, you could look at, you know, like,
14:08
Speaker 1: cardi b and jesus christ on the same level i
14:10
Speaker 1: guess i don't know.
14:12
Speaker 2: Well but it's interesting in that art and music and
14:15
Speaker 2: the ability to make people laugh will have that kind
14:18
Speaker 2: of a connection whereas the heroes that we should be
14:23
Speaker 2: looking to would be firemen teachers doctors right but so
14:30
Speaker 2: that's that's the thing that's why i ask are we
14:32
Speaker 2: often drawn to people for the wrong reasons.
14:35
Speaker 1: Right ego ego right you know We want to, we
14:39
Speaker 1: want to be, we want to know what it's like
14:42
Speaker 1: to have that cachet, that recognition, that star power and
14:46
Speaker 1: like be adored, you know? And I, that kind of
14:53
Speaker 1: mentality really ruled my life for a long time because
14:57
Speaker 1: I was aspiring. At some point I lost my passion
15:01
Speaker 1: for the music itself and I was just aspiring to
15:04
Speaker 1: the archetype of the rock star. So I started ingesting
15:07
Speaker 1: anything and everything that was around and behaving in a
15:12
Speaker 1: way that, you know, behaving, doing, behaving in a way
15:17
Speaker 1: that you would think a, uh, you know, an outlandish
15:21
Speaker 1: fictional movie about rock stars, you know, would act, I
15:25
Speaker 1: would fall off stages drunk and, you know, I, uh,
15:30
Speaker 1: blacked out and pushed another drummer from another band off
15:35
Speaker 1: his kit once, apparently. Yeah, just dickhead stuff.
15:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you thought that was the cool thing to do.
15:42
Speaker 2: At least I know when I was growing up thinking
15:45
Speaker 2: that way, I would look at Jim Morrison and there
15:47
Speaker 2: was a period there where I thought he was the
15:49
Speaker 2: coolest guy, man. You got to live like him. And
15:52
Speaker 2: then as I got older, I thought, man, this guy
15:55
Speaker 2: had some serious depression, right? There's something going on.
15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:00
Speaker 2: That comes with getting older, right? You start to mature
16:03
Speaker 2: and the brain starts to develop and you start to
16:05
Speaker 2: understand things differently. But we were just talking before we
16:08
Speaker 2: started recording about this documentary on Matthew Perry. It's on Netflix.
16:12
Speaker 2: Started watching it. And he says, there's an interview with him.
16:16
Speaker 2: And this is right before Friends. He says, I never prayed,
16:20
Speaker 2: but I prayed to God. And I said, God, you
16:24
Speaker 2: could do whatever you want to me, anything you want,
16:27
Speaker 2: but please just make me famous. It's all he wanted.
16:32
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a deal with the devil,
16:35
Speaker 1: but the analog of that in a sense. Yeah, he
16:39
Speaker 1: signed his soul over. Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating. I mean,
16:44
Speaker 1: I think I did that on a subconscious level for
16:47
Speaker 1: sure because I was so blindly committed to this singular
16:52
Speaker 1: ambition that nothing else would suffice. And a byproduct of
16:57
Speaker 1: that is that you have tunnel vision. So anything, anybody you.
17:03
Speaker 3: Affect negatively, it's like mostly doesn't register, but if it does,
17:08
Speaker 3: it's easy to kind of shake it off and just whatever,
17:11
Speaker 3: you know, cause I have a, I have a purpose
17:14
Speaker 3: and that makes me superior in a sense.
17:18
Speaker 1: I really did have a pretty bad ego problem back then, which,
17:23
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't, I wasn't a popular musician. I wasn't,
17:26
Speaker 1: you know, reaching great heights. So it's kind of sad,
17:32
Speaker 1: you know?
17:35
Speaker 2: The honesty in which you are telling me this and
17:38
Speaker 2: you're putting it onto paper and now in this book
17:42
Speaker 2: is admirable. It really is. You're being honest and upfront.
17:45
Speaker 2: You're pouring it all out into the pages. You did
17:47
Speaker 2: have a moment with your childhood friend, Doug. He's basically,
17:52
Speaker 2: he's one of the emotional foundations of this book. And
17:54
Speaker 2: you describe a night when the two of you made
17:56
Speaker 2: a pact. he would become a basketball star and you
17:59
Speaker 2: would become a rock star. When you look back at that,
18:01
Speaker 2: how much did that promise influence the decisions that you
18:05
Speaker 2: made as you got older?
18:06
Speaker 1: I think it impacted us greatly. And I don't know
18:11
Speaker 1: if it was the pact itself. We were all, we
18:13
Speaker 1: were already on that path, you know, and that was just,
18:16
Speaker 1: that was a night, a sleepover we had after eighth
18:19
Speaker 1: grade when we were, you know, it was the official
18:21
Speaker 1: night that marked our transition from, from childhood into college.
18:26
Speaker 1: not adulthood, but like we're big kids now. We're going
18:29
Speaker 1: to high school, you know? And so our dreams that
18:34
Speaker 1: we had, you know, just that were part of who
18:39
Speaker 1: we were, but they hadn't become crystallized and solidified as
18:44
Speaker 1: like ambitions, goals. I guess that pact kind of solidified
18:51
Speaker 1: that and sent us both down paths that you know, um, intersected,
18:57
Speaker 1: then ran parallel and then crashed into each other. And, um, yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: it was a, it's been, there were times of, uh,
19:06
Speaker 1: great tumult between us, but things like that can make
19:10
Speaker 1: you stronger, you know, if you work through it.
19:12
Speaker 2: When you were 16, you learned that your mother had
19:15
Speaker 2: breast cancer and you described that moment as a complete
19:18
Speaker 2: collapse of the world you thought you understood. How did
19:21
Speaker 2: your diagnosis change the way you viewed your future and
19:24
Speaker 2: the risks that you were willing to take.
19:26
Speaker 1: To contextualize, when she made that revelation, I had just
19:34
Speaker 1: started smoking pot about a month before that. And as
19:38
Speaker 1: someone who's ADHD, OCD, I was very, very strongly affected
19:45
Speaker 1: by marijuana. It was very potent to me. I was
19:50
Speaker 1: somebody who could smoke a joint and do my homework.
19:53
Speaker 1: Like I would, you know, I could hang out with friends,
19:56
Speaker 1: go to, you know, record store, that type of thing.
19:59
Speaker 1: But when I was alone and I would smoke, I
20:00
Speaker 1: would really like get into these kind of not transcendental,
20:07
Speaker 1: but like meditative states. And not on purpose, I just
20:10
Speaker 1: like put on some music and lay back and just
20:12
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, be able to leave my body,
20:18
Speaker 1: leave my problems and just kind of escape. And so
20:23
Speaker 1: I was already in this kind of like explorative existential space.
20:28
Speaker 1: And then when my mom revealed her diagnosis, it kind of...
20:37
Speaker 1: took that existential space and just like turned it from
20:41
Speaker 1: this beautiful, glowing, awestruck wonder about like this beautiful universe
20:49
Speaker 1: that I'm so lucky to exist in to like the
20:54
Speaker 1: photo negative version of that, you know? And instantly it
21:00
Speaker 1: was like, Oh wait, so everything's random and meaningless. And like,
21:05
Speaker 1: horrible things can happen for no apparent reason. So I
21:12
Speaker 1: immediately went into a dark place and, uh, that was
21:16
Speaker 1: the point in time that I decided would be, um,
21:20
Speaker 1: it would be appropriate to have my first psychedelic experience,
21:23
Speaker 1: which in retrospect, not the greatest decision. Um, and it
21:29
Speaker 1: didn't wind up too good. And, uh, Yeah, I had
21:34
Speaker 1: a very, very just shattering experience where the best way
21:45
Speaker 1: I can describe it in a truncated way is that
21:52
Speaker 1: human beings, it said we don't have the capacity to
21:56
Speaker 1: comprehend infinity, right? But like at one moment, this one instant,
22:04
Speaker 1: I felt like I understood what infinity was. And it
22:08
Speaker 1: was this just meaningless void. And it was terrifying. And
22:16
Speaker 1: I like freaked out, you know. And that experience kind
22:22
Speaker 1: of burrowed itself into me for a long time. And
22:26
Speaker 1: I refer to it as a parasite in the book.
22:30
Speaker 1: And that became... another driving, motivating factor to escape through
22:39
Speaker 1: the conduit of music. Because right at that time was
22:43
Speaker 1: when the band was already kind of organically coming together.
22:48
Speaker 1: And so I start, I switched from a pot to
22:53
Speaker 1: alcohol because the pot kind of put me in flashbacks and, um,
22:58
Speaker 1: just getting drunk and got my band together and, That
23:02
Speaker 1: was it. That was like, all right, I'm focused on
23:04
Speaker 1: that now. I have to be focused on something to
23:08
Speaker 1: outrun this fucking specter behind me.
23:14
Speaker 2: There was focus, yet you also talk about the more
23:17
Speaker 2: chaotic your life became, the less you had to confront
23:20
Speaker 2: the fear and uncertainty that you felt inside. So that's interesting.
23:25
Speaker 2: At what point does the reckless behavior stop being something
23:28
Speaker 2: that you enjoyed and then it's now something that you
23:31
Speaker 2: felt that you needed?
23:33
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, wow. That's an interesting question. I mean... Did
23:40
Speaker 1: you like losing control? Yes, absolutely. The reason this is
23:46
Speaker 1: a tough question is because I think both of those
23:48
Speaker 1: things were true, and I don't think I ever transitioned
23:51
Speaker 1: from liking them to needing them. I think it was
23:56
Speaker 1: both right off the bat. Although actually reflecting back my
24:01
Speaker 1: young childhood, I was always a dramatic, performative, avant-garde performance
24:08
Speaker 1: artist type of kid. I was like... My dad showed
24:11
Speaker 1: me a lot of Andy Kaufman stuff. So I like
24:14
Speaker 1: to do weird pranks and stunts just to see the
24:20
Speaker 1: preposterous looks on people's faces. And so... Those were more innocent, though.
24:28
Speaker 1: But you can kind of see how it transformed as
24:32
Speaker 1: I got into my teens and started utilizing substances. That
24:37
Speaker 1: sort of wiring can manifest in more, you know, I
24:40
Speaker 1: don't know, damaging, not malignant ways, but, you know, destructive ways.
24:47
Speaker 1: Self-destructive and destructive to anyone, anything in my vicinity, you know.
24:55
Speaker 1: And I never enjoyed, um, you know, the, the collateral damage,
25:01
Speaker 1: but I enjoyed, uh, being the guy who was gonna
25:09
Speaker 1: boot and rally at every party and probably pass out
25:12
Speaker 1: my own puke and like, you know, be the, the
25:16
Speaker 1: craziest person there.
25:18
Speaker 2: Like I just, like a badge of honor. Yeah.
25:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, uh, this stunts escalated, uh, until they just
25:28
Speaker 1: got out of control and got in a lot of
25:30
Speaker 1: trouble at school for quite a few just outlandish stunts.
25:36
Speaker 1: And they're all detailed in the book. And, you know,
25:39
Speaker 1: I won't say I'm proud of those things I did, but,
25:45
Speaker 1: you know, in retrospect, I'm glad they happened because not
25:49
Speaker 1: only does it make a great story, but writing it
25:53
Speaker 1: helped me recognize you know, how I was dealing with
25:59
Speaker 1: my problems in a very unhealthy way. And when you
26:02
Speaker 1: recognize that, like, all right, how can I change to
26:07
Speaker 1: deal with those problems in a healthy way?
26:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the book is titled Foxtail. David Barnett is
26:14
Speaker 2: the author. Where did that title come from?
26:16
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, there was a toy.
26:19
Speaker 1: It was from my childhood. I'm 38. I think probably
26:21
Speaker 1: in the same general range there. There was a toy
26:25
Speaker 1: called the Foxtail, and it was basically a baseball with
26:29
Speaker 1: a windsock, a technicolor windsock sewed onto it. You kind
26:34
Speaker 1: of grab it by the tail, whip it around, you know,
26:38
Speaker 1: send it flying into the sky.
26:39
Speaker 2: Right.
26:41
Speaker 1: And it was one of my favorite toys just because
26:44
Speaker 1: it really was a graceful sight to see, you know,
26:49
Speaker 1: kind of. bounced around on air pockets. It was hard
26:52
Speaker 1: to judge the trajectory and the tail would kind of
26:54
Speaker 1: move with the invisible currents in the sky. And there's
27:01
Speaker 1: a scene in the book that I describe kind of
27:04
Speaker 1: when my best friend Doug and I, our relationship became
27:09
Speaker 1: like solidified. And the moment we had that bond where
27:13
Speaker 1: we both knew like, this is a lifelong friendship. And
27:17
Speaker 1: it was a camping trip we took together. And I
27:20
Speaker 1: have just this vivid memory of right before we were
27:25
Speaker 1: packed up and left, but I noticed the foxtail was
27:29
Speaker 1: still sitting in the car, hidden under the car seat.
27:32
Speaker 1: I grabbed it. And so we had our final session
27:35
Speaker 1: and we were just like, you know, on the banks
27:36
Speaker 1: of this beautiful river. I remember it in kind of
27:39
Speaker 1: like slow motion, like an ambient dreamscape movie scene, you know,
27:46
Speaker 1: two kids kind of just like, our faint voices throwing
27:51
Speaker 1: it and the laughter. And it is, it's like, it's
27:53
Speaker 1: a vivid memory in my head. And it was just
27:55
Speaker 1: kind of like, it seemed like the way that object
28:00
Speaker 1: moved physically in our, you know, space. And then just
28:05
Speaker 1: kind of like the metaphysical properties of it. It's representative
28:09
Speaker 1: of kind of just riding the wake, you know? And
28:15
Speaker 1: it kind of just was like, yeah, that's it. That's
28:18
Speaker 1: it right there. And as soon as I recognized it,
28:22
Speaker 1: that was it. I never wavered on it. It's like,
28:26
Speaker 1: that's it right there.
28:27
Speaker 2: 16 years old, you formed Dome Factor. Started pursuing your
28:33
Speaker 2: dream of fronting a rock band. There's a story about
28:37
Speaker 2: Dome Factor playing Austin's Back Room, a venue where you'd
28:40
Speaker 2: seen some of your musical heroes, only to have five
28:44
Speaker 2: people show up. How devastating was that experience and what
28:49
Speaker 2: did it teach you about the difference between imagining rock
28:52
Speaker 2: stardom and actually pursuing it? That was a sobering moment
28:55
Speaker 2: for you?
28:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, man. So for the longest time, that was this
29:03
Speaker 1: goal I set or this kind of checkbox I set.
29:07
Speaker 1: It's like, you play there, that makes you a real
29:10
Speaker 1: musician and rock star because the list of names that
29:14
Speaker 1: have played that stage is crazy you know Phil Anselmo
29:19
Speaker 1: the list the singer Lane Staley Lemmy Kilmeister played that
29:23
Speaker 1: stage Wayne Static Manson the list goes on and on
29:30
Speaker 1: and on and I had seen some of my personal
29:35
Speaker 1: heroes there like Mushroomhead was one of my favorite bands
29:38
Speaker 1: back there and I went and I saw them with
29:40
Speaker 1: the the dude who would become my guitarist in the
29:43
Speaker 1: band um and uh yeah it's just a resonant place
29:51
Speaker 1: and then also it was kind of uh austin's mythological
29:55
Speaker 1: uh rock club. You know, it was the gritty place.
29:59
Speaker 1: It had been around since I think the mid seventies.
30:03
Speaker 1: It started as a biker bar and then they bought
30:05
Speaker 1: a bigger property and it kind of just like evolved
30:09
Speaker 1: into just this dirty, grimy place.
30:12
Speaker 2: Kind of like a CBGB type of thing, right? Yeah.
30:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So to me it was, it was Mecca. And, um,
30:21
Speaker 1: the first time we played there, I had been sent
30:25
Speaker 1: away to reform school. Um, after I got kicked out
30:30
Speaker 1: of school for performing with my band during a, uh,
30:34
Speaker 1: male beauty pageant, uh, where, uh, we each got a talent. Yeah.
30:42
Speaker 1: I didn't, uh, I didn't really care if I, uh,
30:44
Speaker 1: placed first, second or third, but, uh, they told me
30:46
Speaker 1: you get a talent and I was like, oh, hell yeah.
30:49
Speaker 1: We're going to perform in front of the whole student body. Like, yeah. So, uh,
30:54
Speaker 1: I got. pretty hammered backstage. And there was another band
31:00
Speaker 1: they played right before intermission. Intermission switched our gear, and
31:04
Speaker 1: then we're getting ready to go on. And right as
31:06
Speaker 1: the curtain's about to come up, one of the pageant
31:11
Speaker 1: directors walks up to me and she says, David, I'm sorry,
31:14
Speaker 1: we're going to have to cut your set short because
31:16
Speaker 1: we're running long. You can only do one song now
31:20
Speaker 1: instead of two. And I was like, no way. we
31:25
Speaker 1: will see these songs trying to fucking stop us, you know,
31:30
Speaker 1: and then signal to the theater nerd to raise the curtain.
31:34
Speaker 1: And he did very, uh, unwisely. And I went out
31:39
Speaker 1: there and we got through one song, everything seemed to
31:43
Speaker 1: be going fine. And, uh, then the second song, I
31:48
Speaker 1: was just on microphone, handed my guitar off. And, um,
31:52
Speaker 1: we got about, I don't know, 45 minutes or 45 seconds,
31:55
Speaker 1: a minute into it. And this, this girl starts walking
31:58
Speaker 1: up the steps on the front of the stage and
32:01
Speaker 1: the lights are shining out. So I can't really discern
32:04
Speaker 1: who she is. I'm like, what the hell is she doing?
32:06
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of a performance. This random girl's
32:09
Speaker 1: walking up here and she passed through the light field.
32:13
Speaker 1: And it's, it's one of my friends, Nuri that we
32:15
Speaker 1: partied with all the time. And she's, She gets right
32:17
Speaker 1: up in my face and starts screaming. And I'm like,
32:20
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I'm a little tied up right now,
32:25
Speaker 1: if you notice. She like gets closer. She screams right
32:29
Speaker 1: in my ear. David, they cut your microphone. I was like, no. Motherfucker.
32:39
Speaker 1: And I look to my left and our campus officer,
32:44
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Lugo, is just barreling towards me. from the side
32:47
Speaker 1: of the stage. And I just instinctually, I chucked the
32:50
Speaker 1: microphone into the crowd and ran off like a bat
32:56
Speaker 1: out of hell the other direction.
32:57
Speaker 2: That was your Jim Morrison moment right there, man. Yeah. Yeah.
33:01
Speaker 1: I made a total ass of myself in front of
33:03
Speaker 1: the entire school. But yeah, I like ran outside and
33:07
Speaker 1: I was hiding by the tennis courts and my friends
33:10
Speaker 1: ran out and got in their car and were like
33:12
Speaker 1: looking for me and saved my ass, picked me up.
33:14
Speaker 1: But they still kicked me out of school. It was
33:16
Speaker 1: pretty obvious since they didn't need any real evidence, uh,
33:21
Speaker 1: of that. I was, um, inebriated. It was pretty, I
33:24
Speaker 1: was pretty, uh, I was the evidence.
33:27
Speaker 2: It was pretty obvious. Yeah.
33:28
Speaker 1: So yeah, to move on to the backroom thing, I was,
33:32
Speaker 1: I was kicked out of school and I was completely
33:34
Speaker 1: kind of separated from my friend group. Cause this, you know,
33:38
Speaker 1: this was before smartphones and, you know, tick talk. And
33:44
Speaker 1: it was in the infancy of, of, you know, like, uh,
33:47
Speaker 1: social media, we used MySpace. And so when I was,
33:50
Speaker 1: you know, removed physically from the group, I kind of
33:55
Speaker 1: fell out of touch with them, especially because, you know,
33:59
Speaker 1: it was very time consuming to get to reform school.
34:03
Speaker 1: And I just didn't see my friends very much, but
34:06
Speaker 1: we had booked this gig and I put my faith
34:10
Speaker 1: in them to, to promote it. And, uh, They didn't
34:14
Speaker 1: do a very good job and I was pretty pissed off.
34:18
Speaker 1: So we played our first show at like the Mecca,
34:22
Speaker 1: my goal, we got to do it. And it was mortifying,
34:26
Speaker 1: you know, it was a couple of our friends and
34:29
Speaker 1: my dad. And I was up there just like, you know,
34:34
Speaker 1: just hating it. And I mean, it just drove me more, though,
34:40
Speaker 1: because I ultimately got back up there and kind of
34:43
Speaker 1: righted that wrong. And, you know, it came to that
34:48
Speaker 1: culmination where I did get my chance to take that
34:53
Speaker 1: stage in the right way. And in the book, there's
34:57
Speaker 1: a line I said right before, you know, we did
35:00
Speaker 1: the big show there, the one that actually mattered and
35:03
Speaker 1: people showed up. A concert is kind of like a
35:10
Speaker 1: tree falling in the woods. If no one's there to
35:13
Speaker 1: watch it go down, it didn't really happen. And that's
35:16
Speaker 1: how I look at our first show at the back room.
35:20
Speaker 1: Never fucking happened.
35:22
Speaker 2: But you turn it into a positive, though.
35:24
Speaker 1: Yeah.
35:25
Speaker 2: Use it to drive you further rather than give it up.
35:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And now it's an amusing anecdote.
35:34
Speaker 2: It is. It's one of many great stories from the book,
35:37
Speaker 2: which features music from artists ranging from Slayer and Static
35:40
Speaker 2: X to Houston rapper Lil' Kiki. And in your press release,
35:44
Speaker 2: there was something interesting. You mentioned obtaining permission to include
35:47
Speaker 2: lyrics from a song that was actually playing during a
35:50
Speaker 2: police chase you experienced. Can you tell us what happened
35:54
Speaker 2: that night and how that song became part of the story?
35:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was senior prom night, and... You know,
36:02
Speaker 1: I had to do it big and, you know, ostentatious.
36:06
Speaker 1: So first thing I did was go order a custom
36:09
Speaker 1: Technicolor tuxedo, you know. Why not do my own Joseph
36:13
Speaker 1: and the Technicolor tuxedo for our culmination? And I had
36:17
Speaker 1: just returned from my second stint at reform school just
36:22
Speaker 1: in time for prom. So it was like double celebration.
36:25
Speaker 1: Or my first stint, excuse me. Just returned from my
36:28
Speaker 1: first stint. So it was like the welcome back. We
36:31
Speaker 1: rented a big party bus, our whole group, about 20
36:36
Speaker 1: of us. And it was, you know, the term murdered
36:38
Speaker 1: out we used back then, which just means everything's black.
36:43
Speaker 1: And so we called it the murder bus. And, you know,
36:49
Speaker 1: we brought enough booze on that bus to probably get
36:53
Speaker 1: the entire school drunk. And I went into the prom.
37:01
Speaker 1: And we kind of went in staggered groups because people
37:04
Speaker 1: were enjoying themselves on the party bus and didn't want
37:06
Speaker 1: to go in yet. So I went in right away
37:08
Speaker 1: because I was getting a little claustrophobic. And I remember
37:14
Speaker 1: I was standing at the back of the prom near
37:16
Speaker 1: the concessions. There was a giant mound of cookies and
37:20
Speaker 1: I was shoving cookies in my mouth and putting in
37:24
Speaker 1: my pockets to bring home because... I hadn't eaten anything
37:27
Speaker 1: at Romano's Macaroni Grill earlier. And I figured like, yeah,
37:31
Speaker 1: cookies for later. All right. And another dude, this guy, Brad,
37:36
Speaker 1: I used to take theater classes with. We decided to
37:40
Speaker 1: have a competition who could hit the DJ with a cookie.
37:43
Speaker 1: Because the tunes he was playing were not to our liking.
37:48
Speaker 1: And we were drunk assholes. So we were throwing cookies
37:53
Speaker 1: at him. And then all of a sudden, my friend
37:56
Speaker 1: Brian just like appears in front of me. White as
38:00
Speaker 1: a ghost, panic. Never seen this face on him before.
38:04
Speaker 1: Known him for 10 years at the time. And he's
38:08
Speaker 1: legit like just terrified. I'm like, dude, what's up? And
38:12
Speaker 1: he's like, dude, so the character is Randy in the book.
38:17
Speaker 1: And that was the guy who was one of my
38:20
Speaker 1: closest friends in addition to Doug and my lead guitarist.
38:24
Speaker 1: He was passed out outside on the floor, puking up
38:26
Speaker 1: blood and an ambulance had to come and pick him up.
38:31
Speaker 1: And Brian says, the principals got the names of everybody
38:34
Speaker 1: on the bus and they're out to get us. We
38:37
Speaker 1: got to get the fuck out of here. And that
38:42
Speaker 1: song with little Kiki was playing in the background at
38:45
Speaker 1: the time. And that's kind of an epic Texas song
38:52
Speaker 1: and anthem. So before Brian showed up, the beginning of
38:58
Speaker 1: the chorus played. So everybody's singing along and then he
39:03
Speaker 1: shows up and kind of just like changes the tone.
39:08
Speaker 1: And we decided like, we did a, you go this away,
39:12
Speaker 1: I'll go that away. And our goal is to warn
39:15
Speaker 1: everybody else in the group what was going down and
39:18
Speaker 1: that we were being stalked, um, So I took off
39:23
Speaker 1: into the crowd and found a friend of mine, tried
39:27
Speaker 1: to warn him, but he was too drunk to even,
39:29
Speaker 1: you know, recognize the, uh, dire situations. I was like,
39:32
Speaker 1: all right, do whatever. And, and suddenly I just felt, uh,
39:36
Speaker 1: someone grabbed my arm and shook loose. And apparently it
39:40
Speaker 1: was a police officer who wrote a grammatical abomination of
39:47
Speaker 1: a police report that is included in the book. And
39:51
Speaker 1: it tells in great detail his side of what went
39:57
Speaker 1: down after he grabbed my arm. And I tell mine
40:05
Speaker 1: as well, but his is much more entertaining. Not just
40:07
Speaker 1: because of the unintentional comedy of the awful grammar, but
40:16
Speaker 1: it's pretty outlandish stuff in there. and some of it's
40:21
Speaker 1: accurate and, uh, yeah. Um, like, so those lyrics felt
40:27
Speaker 1: essential to have in there. Cause they were a little,
40:29
Speaker 1: literally the soundtrack to this like chase scene. And I,
40:35
Speaker 1: I didn't do a good job right now of kind of, um,
40:38
Speaker 1: laying them in the proper parts. Cause I was kind
40:40
Speaker 1: of swept up in the story there, but in the book, um,
40:46
Speaker 1: the way the lyrics are utilized to highlight the story
40:50
Speaker 1: is much more impactful.
40:56
Speaker 2: There's a position that you're in that I wonder how
40:59
Speaker 2: many have been in when your friend is getting married
41:02
Speaker 2: and you have to write a best man speech and
41:05
Speaker 2: pretty much every story you had about the two of
41:08
Speaker 2: you involved drugs, wild nights. Something completely inappropriate for a
41:12
Speaker 2: wedding reception. How do you manage to celebrate your friendship
41:15
Speaker 2: without scaring the hell out of the bride's family?
41:18
Speaker 1: Man.
41:18
Speaker 2: So, yeah. This is a scene out of a movie.
41:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is one of the kind of like
41:25
Speaker 1: diatribes that I go on in the book that has
41:28
Speaker 1: a greater meaning. And I write about how difficult it
41:32
Speaker 1: was to write that speech because of all the things
41:34
Speaker 1: you just said. talked about. It's like how, how, you know,
41:38
Speaker 1: there are awesome, funny resident stories and a great way
41:42
Speaker 1: to start a speech is with an anecdote. You know,
41:44
Speaker 1: you tell a silly story, lighten everybody up, get a
41:47
Speaker 1: few laughs, you know, and then you dive into the
41:51
Speaker 1: sentimental stuff. That's kind of a formula for the, you know,
41:56
Speaker 1: best man speech. And I would have gone that way,
42:01
Speaker 1: even though it's formulaic, because like, it's, works. It's good,
42:05
Speaker 1: you know, but like you said, none of the stories
42:08
Speaker 1: were appropriate. Um, you know, I, uh, had to, uh,
42:14
Speaker 1: pick him up on the side of the road cause
42:16
Speaker 1: he was bleeding to death, uh, because he punched through
42:21
Speaker 1: a window because our roommate wouldn't give him his diabetes medicine.
42:25
Speaker 1: And I had to pick him up on the side
42:27
Speaker 1: of the road. He said he was bleeding to death and, uh,
42:30
Speaker 1: I had just smoked DMT for the first time.
42:32
Speaker 2: So, uh, And how many of these stories does the
42:34
Speaker 2: bride know?
42:35
Speaker 1: Um, I think she knows. I don't know if she
42:40
Speaker 1: knew him at that point. She, she knows him now.
42:42
Speaker 3: She's now.
42:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:44
Speaker 1: But like, that's pretty much the antithesis of, you know,
42:48
Speaker 1: how you want to prime people for it. So I
42:52
Speaker 1: was like, and, and really literally, honestly, like we didn't
42:55
Speaker 1: have any wholesome moments, but we were both, so passionate
43:01
Speaker 1: about music. And, and my friend Cole, who I was
43:04
Speaker 1: writing the speech for, he, he's a really skilled musician,
43:10
Speaker 1: like way better than, than I ever was. He's a
43:12
Speaker 1: drummer and he's, he's got perfect pitch singing. Um, and
43:18
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I look up to him. He's,
43:20
Speaker 1: he's incredible. And he really understands like musical theory and
43:24
Speaker 1: all the technicalities of drumming. And he's got that internal metronome,
43:28
Speaker 1: that meter he's in the pockets. So my love for
43:32
Speaker 1: music is more just like the vibes, you know, where
43:35
Speaker 1: it takes me. But he loves the technicality of it.
43:39
Speaker 1: So it's always been interesting to me to like, we
43:42
Speaker 1: love the same thing for completely different reasons. And I
43:46
Speaker 1: thought that would be an interesting thing to explore. And
43:50
Speaker 1: I thought that like, I just had this idea pop
43:53
Speaker 1: in my head that like, maybe if I wrote about love,
43:57
Speaker 1: romantic love, as a giant metaphor, incorporating musical technical musical
44:05
Speaker 1: terms you know like melody I guess it's not technical
44:08
Speaker 1: but you know add components of music melody rhythm um
44:14
Speaker 1: the other ones that are escaping my mind but yeah
44:18
Speaker 1: yeah you know or harmony like so harmony obviously it's
44:22
Speaker 1: easy you know it's in two people have different pitches,
44:27
Speaker 1: but they perfectly align together and create something more beautiful
44:32
Speaker 1: and resonant. And then the melody is the hook. Every
44:35
Speaker 1: individual human has their own melody. It's their personality. And
44:41
Speaker 1: I started with those kind of simple ones, and then
44:43
Speaker 1: it kind of expanded. I haven't read it in quite
44:46
Speaker 1: a while, but it went over real well, real, real well.
44:51
Speaker 1: And in the end, that's all that matters.
44:55
Speaker 2: Foxtail is really only a part of a much larger story.
44:57
Speaker 2: There are plans for two more books?
44:59
Speaker 1: Two or three, depending on how much more expansion there
45:03
Speaker 1: is in the drafting process. Like I said, when I
45:06
Speaker 1: finished Rough Draft number one, it was 85 pages. In
45:10
Speaker 1: totality now, just on the Word file, I think it's
45:16
Speaker 1: pushing 1,000 or over 1,000. I always looked at it as,
45:21
Speaker 1: I started looking at it as one book, and there
45:24
Speaker 1: were four parts to the book. And I would edit
45:27
Speaker 1: one part at a time, and those parts kept expanding.
45:30
Speaker 1: And eventually I realized, like, oh, the parts aren't parts
45:34
Speaker 1: of the book. They're their own books. So they're already developed,
45:40
Speaker 1: some sections much more than others. So I'm a little
45:44
Speaker 1: scared to dive back into them, but I'm also excited,
45:47
Speaker 1: you know, because... the publishing, the self-publishing process has been
45:52
Speaker 1: all consuming, time consuming.
45:54
Speaker 2: I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.
45:56
Speaker 1: And like the number one thing that if there's any
46:00
Speaker 1: aspiring independent authors listening is that like, it's so time
46:04
Speaker 1: consuming that if you even find a couple minutes to write,
46:09
Speaker 1: you're going to be so fried. Your nerves are gonna
46:11
Speaker 1: be so fried that like, it's just not going to
46:14
Speaker 1: come out. You know, it's, it's so basically time, you
46:17
Speaker 1: don't have very much time to do the thing you're
46:19
Speaker 1: passionate about.
46:21
Speaker 2: Right now you're promoting this one, so that'll keep you busy.
46:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
46:25
Speaker 2: You have something coming up soon. Talk about that.
46:28
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, I do. So I have a marketing
46:31
Speaker 1: company working for me, and they're doing a bang-up job.
46:35
Speaker 1: They're really getting my story out there. And this is
46:38
Speaker 1: my first book. So naively, I had this vision in
46:42
Speaker 1: my head that on the release date, I will be
46:46
Speaker 1: in a bookstore at a podium with the rose and
46:49
Speaker 1: doing that, you know, traditional reading thing. But then as
46:54
Speaker 1: it started getting closer to the publication date, it dawned
46:57
Speaker 1: on me that like, that doesn't make sense. Cause why
46:59
Speaker 1: would you do a reading when nobody's read it yet?
47:01
Speaker 1: You know, nobody's going to show up if nobody's read it.
47:05
Speaker 1: So I was like, so then if there's no event
47:10
Speaker 1: on November 9th, the publication date, then all that happens
47:13
Speaker 1: is an invisible switch flips. And it goes from not
47:18
Speaker 1: on sale to on sale. And I'll just be sitting
47:20
Speaker 1: at home watching The Simpsons or whatever. And that just
47:27
Speaker 1: didn't work for me. So I was like, you know what?
47:30
Speaker 1: I just got an idea in my head and I
47:34
Speaker 1: jumped off a cliff. I was like, maybe I can
47:35
Speaker 1: do it. And I wanted to put together a heavy
47:38
Speaker 1: metal show slash spoken word set where I'm going to
47:45
Speaker 1: do a reading, but I'm also going to just kind
47:48
Speaker 1: of freestyle up there. I have an outline. I know
47:52
Speaker 1: where I want to go. I have a few anecdotes
47:54
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell that contextualize the readings. But I
47:59
Speaker 1: don't want to write a script for it. I just
48:02
Speaker 1: want to go up there and work on kind of
48:04
Speaker 1: the skeleton and fill it in. So I'm going to
48:07
Speaker 1: do vaguely, I don't know, 30, 35 minutes up there
48:11
Speaker 1: and still kind of wiggling with it. It's... The event
48:16
Speaker 1: itself is November 7th, a Texas heavy metal underground showcase
48:21
Speaker 1: and transgressive spoken word tour, which that's what I named it,
48:25
Speaker 1: not realizing maybe a little shorter would have been better,
48:28
Speaker 1: but hindsight, right?
48:31
Speaker 2: It works.
48:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the bands are really the selling point. I
48:37
Speaker 1: got a couple really, really cool, awesome bands coming, local bands.
48:41
Speaker 1: There's this group of guys, Hate Waker, from San Marcos
48:46
Speaker 1: and they do some, some killer death core stuff. And
48:50
Speaker 1: not like, you know, death core as a genre is
48:53
Speaker 1: just so oversaturated right now. These guys do it uniquely.
48:58
Speaker 1: They really have their own thing. They write songs, you know,
49:01
Speaker 1: they're not just emulating the style and getting in a
49:06
Speaker 1: studio and the producers are like, all right, fart out
49:08
Speaker 1: 11 tracks in this style. That's not what they're doing.
49:11
Speaker 1: Like every song you listen to has its own, Um,
49:16
Speaker 1: you know, uh, attitude its own essence um and sometimes
49:23
Speaker 1: or a lot of times that's that's difficult to do
49:25
Speaker 1: in any music but heavy metal music maybe a little
49:28
Speaker 1: bit more so to give a song like its own
49:31
Speaker 1: personality or maybe not i don't know but uh we
49:34
Speaker 1: got another band from uh from austin called serotonin and
49:38
Speaker 1: they're kind of a new metal band that blends some
49:42
Speaker 1: kind of hardcore elements and also some some you know
49:46
Speaker 1: just dirty punk vibes in there you know i i
49:50
Speaker 1: got a little bit of like cold chamber vibe just
49:53
Speaker 1: kind of the guitars the way they play guitars is
49:56
Speaker 1: really you know gnarly and uh so i wanted to
49:59
Speaker 1: kind of get the um but to, I wanted to
50:04
Speaker 1: do the juxtaposition of like my, the songs I listened
50:07
Speaker 1: to growing up, new metal. And then now I'm into
50:10
Speaker 1: kind of death core genre. So I'll kind of put
50:12
Speaker 1: together this, this, um, tandem that's representative of kind of,
50:19
Speaker 1: I guess my journey, you know?
50:20
Speaker 2: Um, that's cool. It's a great idea. That's November 7th.
50:23
Speaker 2: And then the book comes out two days later, November 9th. Right.
50:27
Speaker 1: Right. But, um, you know, as an independent author, um,
50:30
Speaker 1: I get to decide, you know, when it's, you know, published,
50:34
Speaker 1: quote unquote. Um, so as part of the event, it's
50:38
Speaker 1: $ 25 ticket. You get a copy of the paperback book,
50:41
Speaker 1: which is retails for 1899. So you're going to get
50:45
Speaker 1: to see hate waker and serotonin and me ramble and
50:50
Speaker 1: make an ass out of myself for, I don't know what's,
50:53
Speaker 1: what's a 25 minus 1899. What is that? Uh, seven bucks,
50:57
Speaker 1: something like that.
50:58
Speaker 2: Something like that.
50:59
Speaker 1: I think, I think $ 7 for a pretty kick-ass metal
51:02
Speaker 1: show and the high probability you'll get to see me
51:06
Speaker 1: make a fool of myself. I think it's a good deal.
51:08
Speaker 2: That's a kick-ass cover to the book, by the way.
51:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate it.
51:13
Speaker 2: Is that you? Right here?
51:14
Speaker 1: No, no, no. I hired a company called Face Out
51:19
Speaker 1: Studio to do it for me. Great decision. They were.
51:26
Speaker 1: So responsive and their whole thing is like they wanted
51:28
Speaker 1: to be collaborative. Like I gave them a very detailed
51:34
Speaker 1: document of like my ideas. They returned me five options.
51:40
Speaker 1: I picked my favorite and then we went through like
51:42
Speaker 1: six rounds of drafting where they would send a new draft.
51:46
Speaker 1: I'd send notes and it was amazing process just to
51:49
Speaker 1: like tweak it more and more and perfect it. And
51:52
Speaker 1: then they were also responsible for doing the actual interior
51:56
Speaker 1: typesetting design.
51:57
Speaker 2: Which is great. Yeah. It's, it's really nice.
52:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so much more goes into that.
52:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
52:03
Speaker 1: There's some cool designs that they put in it too.
52:06
Speaker 2: Like if you see the. Yeah. The font, the designs,
52:08
Speaker 2: the way it's done. It's yeah. I'm not surprised. You're
52:12
Speaker 2: very happy with how that came out and it's on Amazon.
52:15
Speaker 2: It's on all the other usual outlets. You can get
52:18
Speaker 2: books online.
52:20
Speaker 1: And, Yeah, so actually I want to mention, so you
52:23
Speaker 1: can pre-order the paperback on Barnes & Noble's.
52:28
Speaker 2: Okay.
52:29
Speaker 1: You can pre-order the e-book on Amazon, but I'm having
52:33
Speaker 1: some sort of technical issue with the paperback in Amazon
52:37
Speaker 1: right now that I'm trying to resolve. Hopefully I'll have
52:40
Speaker 1: it for pre-order soon because it's annoying. But, you know,
52:44
Speaker 1: Barnes & Noble works, and for some reason Barnes &
52:47
Speaker 1: Noble retails it for one cent cheaper.
52:50
Speaker 2: So, hey. Oh, there you go. Let's go to Barnes
52:52
Speaker 2: & Noble.
52:53
Speaker 1: I'll save you a penny.
52:54
Speaker 2: Exactly.
52:55
Speaker 1: It's the market.
52:56
Speaker 2: All right. What other links? Any social media websites?
53:02
Speaker 1: So, I have a website and you can access everything there.
53:06
Speaker 1: I keep it pretty updated. Like on the top section,
53:10
Speaker 1: there's the links to, you know, Amazon and Barnes &
53:13
Speaker 1: Noble's and there's also a link to the event that's
53:16
Speaker 1: pretty prominent. It'll take you to Another section on the
53:20
Speaker 1: website that kind of lays it out and then you
53:22
Speaker 1: could buy tickets. It'll take you to Eventbrite. So it's
53:25
Speaker 1: pretty intuitive. And yeah.
53:28
Speaker 2: Tell us what that is. What's the web address?
53:31
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a good call. It's The Barnett. My last
53:35
Speaker 1: name is T-H-E-B-A-R-N-E-T-T dot C-O. And don't put the M
53:42
Speaker 1: on there because that's a hotel. So just TheBarnett.co. All right.
53:47
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it now. Now, here we go again.
53:49
Speaker 2: Another beautiful layout on this website. What's this art I'm
53:53
Speaker 2: looking at here? This is cool.
53:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.
53:56
Speaker 1: I've always been a big fan of Salvador Dali realism.
54:01
Speaker 1: I mean, excuse me, surrealism. I went to his museum
54:05
Speaker 1: in California. I think it was St. Petersburg. It was
54:09
Speaker 1: in Florida, Tampa adjacent. I went there, um, right before
54:14
Speaker 1: I started working on kind of all the, the publishing
54:19
Speaker 1: logistical stuff. So I was kind of inspired to do,
54:22
Speaker 1: you know, a rock and roll dolly scene, melting clocks
54:29
Speaker 1: and melting faces, you know.
54:31
Speaker 2: Nice layout.
54:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
54:33
Speaker 2: Excellent. Excellent job, man. This is great. Yeah. David, thank you.
54:37
Speaker 2: for coming on glad we were able to make this
54:40
Speaker 2: happen and all the best for that event on November
54:44
Speaker 2: 7 if I was in the area I'd show up.
54:46
Speaker 1: Yeah absolutely well if you stumble in just give me
54:49
Speaker 1: a call I'll hook you up with some free tickets
54:51
Speaker 1: but I'm hoping to do it again you know like
54:54
Speaker 1: it was tough putting together but I think I learned
54:58
Speaker 1: how to do it maybe for part two I'll have
55:00
Speaker 1: more of a runway so I can let you know.
55:03
Speaker 2: Well you know where to find me now you got
55:05
Speaker 2: my email absolutely David Barnett, thank you, man. Thank you
55:10
Speaker 2: so much.
55:10
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric. It's really been a pleasure. Thanks for
55:12
Speaker 1: having me on. That's it.
55:20
Speaker 2: It's in the books.