Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Matthew Hoopes: Relient K

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Matthew Hoopes: Relient K · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:25
  Why can't break your heart? It's like you're today we are joined by none
• 0:32
  other than Matthew Hoops from Reliant Kay. I'll just say right right out front.
• 0:37
  I don't know how this happened, but Reliant Kay was my most listened
• 0:41
  to artists according to Spotify this year, and uh, you know that probably
• 0:45
  hasn't been the case since like two thousand and four. So uh, it's
• 0:48
  really you know, something nostalgic was in me this year. I don't know
• 0:51
  what it was. Yeah, what happened? I know, I know you
• 0:55
  can't do one of our shows, but I did. Yeah. We haven't
• 0:58
  even put out a song in five years, so yeah, that's crazy.
• 1:02
  I'm trying to find a photo right now of Cullin and I or of Culin.
• 1:07
  Oh. I don't know where this Oh you know what it is.
• 1:10
  I know where it is. It's a photo I uploaded on Facebook and I'm
• 1:14
  gonna share my screen and you're gonna love this. This will bring you back.
• 1:18
  Oh, this might take a second because I got a lot of photos
• 1:19
  on here. Hey, Matthew, I heard you. They've got like a
• 1:23
  shout out that you need to give. Let's just do it right away.
• 1:26
  Oh, Nathan, I thank you so much. If you're listening. Uh,
• 1:30
  just wanted to shout shout out and say hey to Nathan, perfect,
• 1:34
  thank you. Yeah, yeah, just just a little personal speaking of shout
• 1:41
  out to you. Ready for this? How about that? Oh? Oh
• 1:45
  my, look at goodness? Look at that? Isn't that fun? Colin?
• 1:51
  You're like you were like, yeah, I was about to say you
• 1:53
  uh it was like you ate another culin and for real, I was over
• 1:59
  one hundred at that point. But look at look at I say, you
• 2:02
  look great. You look great in both here soots looking Now I know you're
• 2:07
  a liar, No, I love it. Yeah, where is that work?
• 2:12
  What does that work? Tour? Yeah? Yeah, see here I
• 2:16
  tell you what I had to have been at least ten years ago. Now
• 2:20
  there's twenty twelve, I think. Yeah, ten years ago that was wow?
• 2:24
  While agounshine. Yeah, back back when you were in your early thirties,
• 2:29
  Matthew, I know, look out, yeah, how about that?
• 2:32
  You know, we really don't have much that we want to talk about specifically
• 2:36
  other than kind of the history of Reliant K and then you know, anything
• 2:39
  else that we could maybe expect from Reliant K in the future. But yeah,
• 2:44
  I don't even know where to begin. Reliant K is one of my
• 2:47
  favorite bands of all time. There's a reason why you all were my top
• 2:52
  Spotify artists this year. Uh. I'll just start out with this. This
• 2:55
  is my history with Reliant K. I grew up in evangelical world, where
• 3:00
  the first music I ever knew, like I remembered, was Veggie Tail songs,
• 3:05
  okay, and I remember and then like, you know, Veggie Taiale
• 3:10
  songs, and then like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, all the
• 3:13
  stuff that my mom was listening to essentially right. And I remember, you
• 3:17
  know, being maybe I don't know, ten years old and realizing like,
• 3:21
  I don't really don't like this Michael W. Smith music. It's not really
• 3:24
  my taste. And I had an older neighbor friend of mine who lived right
• 3:30
  across the street. One day he invited me over and was like, hey,
• 3:31
  you need to listen to this, and it was the music video for
• 3:35
  Chapstick chap Lips and things like chemistry. You all are, you know,
• 3:39
  in the nursing home or whatever, and yeah, I remember listening to this
• 3:44
  and I'm like, what this. I've never heard music like this, and
• 3:47
  he's like and it's Christian, and I was like, oh, like deal,
• 3:53
  like this is it? Like I have my new favorite band now And
• 3:57
  I had heard maybe three minutes of the band, but it was my favorite
• 4:00
  band now. And I still remember from like that point on, if my
• 4:04
  dream as a professional football player wasn't gonna be fulfilled, I wanted to be
• 4:09
  the guitarist for rely On k. Clearly that didn't happen. But the next
• 4:14
  best, you know, the consolation prize to all of it is at least
• 4:15
  I get an interview the guitarist for Relan k Oh look out for that.
• 4:19
  Yeah, that's amazing that that story is not meant to uh you know,
• 4:25
  be like, oh, look at how old rely on KY is. That
• 4:28
  Mason was listening to that and he was ten years old is now at twenty
• 4:31
  eight. Yeah, that's perfect. No, I love it. I've heard
• 4:35
  a few of your guys podcasts before that. I think maybe Dan sent to
• 4:41
  me where you guys were doing, like, uh, you're going around and
• 4:44
  like picking like a final four thing. Yeah, and I I was.
• 4:47
  I was batting for Relying K and Dan, and Dan was betraying his friends
• 4:54
  and batting for MxPx. And let the record show, I am going to
• 5:00
  always bat for Reliant K over MxPx any day. Well, thank you.
• 5:03
  Yeah, I'm a huge MxPx fan obviously, And yeah, it was just
• 5:10
  it was funny to listen to you guys and Dan who had It's funny.
• 5:15
  It was funny for me to hear that. I remember laughing multiple I texted
• 5:19
  Dan Rafter I listened to it and I was like, I was laughing so
• 5:23
  many times at just it was funny to me to hear other people's perspective of
• 5:29
  what it was like, you know, what it was like to be in
• 5:32
  our band, you know, to be a part of our band, because
• 5:35
  to me, it's like a much different experience, you know. So it's,
• 5:39
  uh, it was funny to me to hear those things, and I
• 5:43
  loved that. I thought it was great, really positive. Well let's start
• 5:46
  at the very beginning. You are one of the original members of Reliant K.
• 5:51
  You you were there at the very beginning. Uh, And I'm just
• 5:55
  curious, like, what what was that original Like how did you guys form,
• 6:00
  Like what was that like in those early years, right when you guys
• 6:02
  were starting, Because I can't imagine in those early years you guys even could
• 6:06
  conceive that you would be here here, like what twenty five plus years later,
• 6:12
  still making music, still touring and still doing the thing. Like I
• 6:15
  anyway, I'm curious, like what those early years were like for you guys,
• 6:17
  and what kind of where you were, what you were thinking about the
• 6:20
  band at the time, Like how did you think about it? Yeah,
• 6:25
  we have so many stories it's almost hard to distill it down to kind of
• 6:30
  one specific theme even, but I mean I can just talk about that time
• 6:34
  and what it felt like to me. I think there was like a lot
• 6:40
  of just really unique things happening where me and Matt and Brian were all literally
• 6:46
  learning how to play our instruments when we started playing together, which is common.
• 6:50
  You know, we were in high school, and I mean we had
• 6:55
  each been playing for months, you know, when we started playing together and
• 7:00
  trying to do stuff, and we played. We would do play on the
• 7:05
  like the worship team for our little youth group, and so we learned a
• 7:09
  couple of church songs and then we would play it together and we'd go down
• 7:14
  to Matt's Matt's parents had this barn behind our house, and we would go
• 7:18
  and play there. And Matt had this one gigantic bass head or it was
• 7:23
  like an eight ten bass cabinet and he had a four channel pv PA head
• 7:30
  and all three of us would plug into that one and and we would just
• 7:33
  try to like play together. And we didn't even really understand chords, like
• 7:40
  had been like pretty close together. I would imagine you're you know you did,
• 7:43
  yeah, yeah, we kind of standing around a circle. We didn't
• 7:46
  have a drummer. We tried out a few of our friends that didn't It
• 7:49
  just didn't really work, and we were trying to play and I don't know,
• 7:55
  this is jumping ahead, but one day all these things started hitting,
• 7:58
  so we I don't literally don't even know where to start, Like I'm trying
• 8:03
  to figure out like how far back to go. But I would say if
• 8:07
  I was one of those drummers, if I was one of those drummers that,
• 8:09
  like, you know, for my time you got back together or the
• 8:13
  one time you guys got together when you were like what fourteen years old and
• 8:16
  I and I was like the middle school friend of yours and I was drumming
• 8:20
  to this day, I would be the guy that, hey, I was
• 8:22
  the original drummer of relying Kay, Yes, yes, I would absolutely say
• 8:26
  that for sure, best of kay, that's perfect. So we eventually we
• 8:33
  found a drummer, uh this worship band from the local college where we were
• 8:39
  near. It's called Malone College, and they came over and they played at
• 8:45
  our youth group one night, and we were like, that drummer, that's
• 8:46
  the best drummer I've ever seen. He probably was the best drummer we were
• 8:50
  ever seeing. It was this guy named Todd and he was just, you
• 8:54
  know, four or five years older than us and into very different music and
• 9:01
  but he was cool and we just asked him to play. We asked him
• 9:05
  to record, we asked him to do different things. He played shows with
• 9:09
  us, and he was the one that played on our original demo. But
• 9:13
  then he you know, was like, hey, I got a real job
• 9:18
  when he graduated college and I'm moving on. And this is like before we
• 9:20
  got signed or anything. So yeah, that was a funny experience. And
• 9:26
  I remember I remember first being in Matt Matt's barn behind his house. We
• 9:31
  called it the Apple Barn for what, I don't know why, and we
• 9:35
  were back there and we were all just playing single notes together. So like
• 9:39
  Matt and I were playing the same thing, and our bass player was playing
• 9:43
  the same thing. We didn't really understand even like a power chord or like
• 9:46
  a you know, a root chord. And we had been listening to all
• 9:52
  this like pop punk music, and we heard this, We got this Goati
• 9:56
  hook record and I figured out this song called Seasons, which is like probably
• 10:00
  the most famous song, and it literally changed. Like I was at the
• 10:05
  point where I was like not gonna play with Matt and Brian anymore because I
• 10:07
  didn't know what to play. I felt like kind of just extraneous for me
• 10:11
  to be playing through the same amplifier, the same thing that Matt is playing,
• 10:15
  and I just didn't understand how music worked, like I literally it was.
• 10:18
  It was like such a different time. And I figured out. I
• 10:22
  was listening to the album and I figured out. I was like, oh
• 10:24
  wait, one guitar is playing this and the other guitar is playing something totally
• 10:28
  different. And I figured it out both parts, and I came and showed
• 10:33
  it to the guys, and it was just like this, you know,
• 10:35
  just like this amazing moment that happened and we were like, oh, that's
• 10:39
  that's how we can put together songs. And then from there it was like
• 10:43
  Matt Matt, I mean just immediately started writing songs just on the spot,
• 10:46
  Like literally before he knew how to play chords, he was writing songs.
• 10:50
  Are those are those early days just like super anxiety filled? Like I mean,
• 10:54
  I know I've played in like little like groups like that, and I've
• 10:58
  always just had tons and tons of anxiety like I'm not playing what I should
• 11:01
  be playing or something like that. But I mean, you're probably way better
• 11:05
  than I ever was, but you all know it's kind of at the same
• 11:07
  level of skill probably, right, Yeah, it was. It was totally
• 11:11
  the opposite. It was. It just felt fun. It just felt like,
• 11:15
  oh, this this other thing because I was actually coming out of you
• 11:18
  know, playing basketball in high school and I quit playing basketball my junior year
• 11:22
  because I realized it was going to affect our ability to play shows on the
• 11:28
  weekends because we almost always had games Friday Saturday night, and you know,
• 11:31
  by my junior year, I was like, I'm still like hardly playing,
• 11:37
  you know, in my sophomore year and just decided to, uh quit playing
• 11:43
  basketball on the team, just thinking you could have been, you know,
• 11:46
  you could be like an NBA player right now, but no, you decided
• 11:48
  to k Yeah. Yeah, so it was funny to think back then,
• 11:54
  because I would get very nervous and like basketball games like I like I think,
• 12:01
  I think I was a pretty talented player, but I'd never performed very
• 12:03
  well in games like I never played very well. But to go back to
• 12:07
  that point is I was very nervous in that scenario. But for whatever reason,
• 12:13
  playing shows and playing music with my friends, even though we were not
• 12:18
  very competent at the time we're starting out, it just always kind of felt
• 12:20
  fun. You know, competence over competence. That's punk music and Jada,
• 12:26
  and when it wasn't even over confidence, it was just like, oh,
• 12:30
  well, this is just something that we do for fun together. You know.
• 12:33
  Then how weird is it then that that that thing that's really fun that
• 12:37
  you just do together ends up becoming just this thing that engulfs your entire life
• 12:41
  and creates, you know, and and helps feed this really wonderful relationship with
• 12:46
  Matt. Yeah, I guess you can call it that sometimes, but it's
• 12:54
  like a yeah, it's I don't even I don't really know were to start
• 13:00
  with it, but it We never expected the band to do what it's done.
• 13:03
  We never expected the band to be our jobs. I was kind of
• 13:07
  thought I'd go back to college, you know, a year later, and
• 13:11
  then we were like, well, let's make one more album. Made one
• 13:13
  more album. Okay, I'll go to college next year, and we made
• 13:16
  one more album and then never went back to college. I think it was
• 13:20
  our third album that we have the song called maybe I'll get married and then
• 13:22
  that will be ed and maybe I'll just have a kid and that will be
• 13:24
  ed and yeah, yeah, and all those things happened, and yeah,
• 13:28
  it never it just never ended. I remember having this funny quote in our
• 13:33
  local like hometown newspaper, and so like, we know the guy that's interviewing
• 13:39
  us, he was being super funny, and you know, we go way
• 13:43
  back with him, and at the time he was asking me, he was
• 13:48
  asking me just all these questions about when Matt dated Katie Perry before she was
• 13:52
  famous, and so he just like only wanted to know about that those stories,
• 13:56
  and I was everything to ask about. I was humoring, like,
• 14:01
  I was humoring him, and I was just like telling, you know,
• 14:03
  like, oh yeah, this was funny, you know, and telling them
• 14:05
  stories about that time and the big quote that they blew up, which I
• 14:11
  didn't even really remember. Saying, was you know, everyone that you know
• 14:15
  that's in a cool band now used to be in some horrible pop punk band
• 14:18
  in high school. And the difference is that we're still in that band.
• 14:22
  You know, Like we started this horrible pop punk band in high school and
• 14:26
  we were just still in it. So you're just stuck. Well, I'm
• 14:31
  curious, at what point did you realize, oh, this this is a
• 14:33
  thing that like I can do. It's gonna pay the bills. We were
• 14:39
  talking with the artists earlier today and I like mentioned the story around at some
• 14:43
  point, you know, you went to a you know, Christmas and at
• 14:46
  some point somebody stopped asking you, asking you, hey, Matt, are
• 14:50
  you still doing that music thing? Like, at some point somebody realized,
• 14:54
  oh, this is just what you do and you're able to support yourself doing
• 14:58
  it. I'm curious what was that point for you in the band. I
• 15:01
  don't know if there was a specific point, but I'll say was it when
• 15:07
  ten year old Mason listened to you for the first time, You're like,
• 15:09
  finally we made it. We got Mason's ears. You know, it probably
• 15:15
  was that record, if I can think back, it probably was the two
• 15:18
  Left record where I was like, oh, yeah, I guess, I
• 15:22
  guess let's go for it. You know, it seemed like all our friends
• 15:24
  were getting signed to major labels and we're like, okay, yeah, I
• 15:28
  think I don't know, maybe we could do this. We're we're all just
• 15:33
  about living simply and doing everything's ourselves, everything ourselves and being you know,
• 15:37
  just kind of like a like a blue collar Ohio you know, like we're
• 15:41
  in a tour in a band, in a van forever, you know,
• 15:45
  and things like that, and we just really enjoyed doing it. And yeah,
• 15:52
  I think I think it's probably around the third record actually where where we
• 15:54
  stopped just looking to the next exit point. That's interesting because like Anatomy got
• 16:02
  pretty big. I mean, you guys were on different TV shows and everything,
• 16:06
  and you know, songs were featured in different TV you know, TV
• 16:08
  shows, and like at that point, like you got to point to the
• 16:11
  TV and say, hey, mom, like that's my song, like that,
• 16:14
  this isn't just a hobby anymore. Well, I'll say this, we
• 16:18
  didn't really make money for a while, like we and and any money that
• 16:25
  we did have we were very frugal with and you know, we we lived
• 16:30
  incredibly simply for many years and it uh, I think it was probably is
• 16:37
  probably until you know, three or four years into it, until we were
• 16:41
  like, oh yeah, like we could, I can maybe start thinking about
• 16:45
  buying a house. You know. That felt like real finance on a financial
• 16:51
  level. That's got to feel super weird, especially when you're in your mid
• 16:55
  twenties. I can't imagine being you have in twenties and thinking about buying a
• 16:57
  house when we were able to do that just on the band, We're like,
• 17:00
  oh wait, yeah we could, we could, Like this could be
• 17:03
  our job, you know, like that. That's what I'm saying, like
• 17:06
  turning point from this is just something we do we play shows to like,
• 17:10
  oh wait, I think this is actually like I'm making a living, you
• 17:15
  know, at like an adult at an adult wage. You know, like
• 17:18
  this is crazy. Mason, do you remember getting your first RELIANK record?
• 17:25
  I mean one had have been around, you know, around those years.
• 17:27
  Do you remember which Do you remember which record it was? It might have
• 17:30
  been mhmm. I got two left Stomaker right at Sam Goody and I begged
• 17:37
  and begged and begged my mother to buy it. Wow, she says,
• 17:41
  amazing, She said, as long as you get the Elvis Pressley album.
• 17:42
  First, I said, sounds good. I'm down for it. That's amazing.
• 17:48
  Although it was between two Lestomaker, right and Meteora, So there's that
• 17:55
  oh wow, yeah, I mean thank you. Yeah. And the Christian
• 17:59
  in him really, you know, chose the right Christian and God shined upon
• 18:04
  my life since then, yes you've known. Yeah, okay, So it
• 18:11
  was around those years that you guys kind of realized like, oh, this
• 18:15
  is like a thing for us. But then it really blew up right,
• 18:19
  um, Like I mean, I mean, you guys were it was beyond
• 18:23
  like hey, I'm on a TV show and hey I'm popular among like the
• 18:26
  Christian radio stuff. Now I'm on MTV and and like I remember like the
• 18:33
  non youth group kids knowing who relying? Kay, was Like that was a
• 18:37
  turn that ye too, I'm curious around like what those years were for you,
• 18:41
  Like how do you think back to those years? You know what?
• 18:45
  What what are some of those stories? But anyway, like that was a
• 18:48
  turn that I'm curious about. Yeah. Our time with Capitol Records was really
• 18:53
  funny because uh so I say this when we put out the two Laughs record,
• 19:00
  and it started to make sense We're like, oh, we're this is
• 19:03
  you know, we're making money, We're doing this. We're like, uh,
• 19:06
  we're a legitimate business at this point. You know, was really at
• 19:10
  that point we had sold you know, we had two gold records because Two
• 19:14
  Lefts and Anatomy both had sold five hundred thousand at that point. And it
• 19:19
  was really wild, and so there were a lot of major labels taking meetings
• 19:25
  with us. I think there were probably like nine or ten twelve different people
• 19:30
  that we met with, and they're all saying, you know, we're gonna
• 19:33
  sign you, We're gonna we're gonna give you a check for millions of dollars,
• 19:37
  you know, and so many bands that we knew were getting all these
• 19:40
  crazy major label deals where they were just you know, getting seven figure advances
• 19:47
  and things like that, and we, you know, we were always open
• 19:49
  to it. It was like a funny dynamic back then, thinking about not
• 19:53
  wanting to like sell out or not, you still wanting to like do what
• 19:56
  we want to do and be careful about that. And every single time that
• 20:03
  we met with the major label, it for whatever reason just fell through.
• 20:07
  And so we got to the point where we're going to make the MUHOM record,
• 20:11
  and you know, the last two records had sold really well. We
• 20:17
  had made Got Records a lot of money at that point, and you know,
• 20:21
  I remember sitting down with Joey from Gotee Records, who's kind of like
• 20:23
  a second dad to us, and he was like, Hey, you guys
• 20:26
  can just go spend, spend whatever you want to spend on this record,
• 20:30
  like make the best record you can make, like get get recorded wherever,
• 20:33
  do whatever. And you know, we were still probably fairly frugal with it,
• 20:38
  but we made the entire record with basically no budget, Like there was
• 20:45
  no ceiling on what we could do. And it was after we finished the
• 20:51
  MHM record that I mean, it was literally like coming out like it was
• 20:56
  in stores and they they let us know that they had upstreamed it from Goatee
• 21:02
  Records to Capital and so we're like, oh ha ha, you know another
• 21:07
  major label? Who who said that? Like did Goatee do that? Technically?
• 21:11
  Like EMI owned Goatee and Capital, So someone at EMI decided that we
• 21:19
  were now going to be on Capital. I think they just thought that we
• 21:23
  could we could go bigger with more of a push behind us. Was there
• 21:32
  was there ever, like a conversation or did you guys ever get like a
• 21:37
  feeling that maybe that wouldn't be the case, maybe because the label or something
• 21:42
  like that was like hey, oh yeah, or Christian adjacent or anything like
• 21:47
  that. Yeah, I mean we so we didn't enter Capitol Records from the
• 21:52
  traditional the way that you would normally enter is an A and R guy would
• 21:56
  find you, sign you, and they were they're kind of like, now
• 21:59
  you're liaison, literally, like they're your connection to everyone at the label,
• 22:03
  the marketing and the president, and they essentially just put this guy Jamie who
• 22:11
  was the president of the company, Andy Slater, he was like he was
• 22:15
  like his assistant or something, and they kind of just made him he was
• 22:18
  our an aw liaison, but he's not an A and R guy, and
• 22:19
  he's a super good guy. Like we're still friends with him. And it
• 22:25
  was just a funny experience. Like the whole time we were like, is
• 22:27
  this really happening? And so we put out the record and it wasn't maybe
• 22:33
  three months until we saw a copy of the record because the first pressing of
• 22:40
  that record, like all the CDs, does not say capital on it because
• 22:44
  the deal hadn't been done yet and so the first time we remember just like
• 22:48
  walking into a record store or something to find one of our records that had
• 22:53
  the Capital logo on it, because at this point we still hadn't even met
• 22:56
  anyone from Capital, Like there was just no it was not like this grand
• 23:03
  introduction. There was no seven figure advance. There was like there were like
• 23:08
  maybe a couple of phone calls. And then finally, when we were passing
• 23:11
  through LA we toured the label and mat a bunch of people, and you
• 23:17
  know, we're like, okay, yeah, I guess we're on this,
• 23:18
  and really it felt like nothing was different, except it all of a sudden
• 23:23
  became very easy to get on work tour. We've been trying to get on
• 23:29
  work tour for four years and we're not able to do that. We have
• 23:34
  the same booking agent, and the next year, I can't imagine you had
• 23:37
  two gold albums by that point, Yeah, yeah, and Warp Tours still
• 23:44
  wouldn't take you. I can't believe that. It was funny. Yeah,
• 23:47
  it was a funny time. And so after we're on Capitol, you know,
• 23:49
  we play the Jay Leno Show three times, we do like, you
• 23:55
  know, all the Tonight shows, you know, like we all the different
• 23:57
  like talk shows that we been trying also to get on. We've been trying
• 24:02
  to get on Conan. By the way, my favorite, my favorite Reliant
• 24:06
  K live video on YouTube right now if if I don't know if you can
• 24:08
  find this, but there is a I don't know if it was like TRL
• 24:14
  or something, but there was a like a show that you guys played where
• 24:18
  Nokia is in the background, like it was sponsored by And I'm like,
• 24:23
  now, that is like the most like two thousand four, two thousand and
• 24:27
  five thing to ever exist, Reliant K playing MMM and Nokia sponsoring that event.
• 24:34
  You know what should be the question though? What will last longer Reliant
• 24:38
  K or on Nokia phone. Yeah, that's yeah, could go either way.
• 24:45
  Yeah, it's it's funny. I think I remember that show. It
• 24:48
  was like an entire show that they filmed and it was just at the Nokia
• 24:52
  theater, but they they brought in like an extra Nokia background, so like
• 24:57
  that they already owned the theater, but they instead of us hanging our backdrop,
• 25:02
  they brought in this like giant Nokia sign. That's how I remember,
• 25:08
  At least I haven't seen it recently, but yeah, it was it was
• 25:11
  just that time. It was just that like mid two thousands, We're probably
• 25:15
  all wearing like low rise boot cut jeans and like, you know, just
• 25:18
  like horrible. Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually I'm trying to find it right
• 25:23
  now here here we go. It's just horrible style, I'm sure. Yeah.
• 25:27
  Oh man, yeah, we gotta see this. Oh even like what
• 25:30
  wait what was that like the download? It was illegally download Well yeah,
• 25:36
  they played without a shirt on for like years. Oh my god, you
• 25:40
  know, I can't even remember where this is. It's what is what is
• 25:42
  this website? You like could download videos illegal? What is that video pimp?
• 25:48
  Wow? Do you remember video pimp? Man? That was the thing.
• 25:51
  I don't remember you YouTube. I just I love the Nokia just like
• 25:57
  it's not TRL it's HRL but like that no key no keya. Yeah,
• 26:03
  just I love it. I just think it's like the most two thousand and
• 26:07
  fourth thing to ever exist. It really is. Yeah. Do you see
• 26:11
  yourself just looking like a baby there, like yourself or or how do you
• 26:17
  feel yourself from that time period? Yeah? I just I feel like it's
• 26:19
  just like super awkward. You know. I see myself then and I was
• 26:23
  like, you know, I think I think back to that time, and
• 26:26
  I'm like, man, I just didn't know who I was at all,
• 26:29
  you know, like I didn't I don't know. I mean I feel like
• 26:33
  I was just like twenty year old thinks they know exactly who they are,
• 26:36
  but then they never figure it out until like they're thirty. Yeah. I
• 26:38
  was just trying to go with the flow. It was funny. I was
• 26:41
  from I was doing like a like a timeline of my memory at one point
• 26:45
  with with my wife a while ago, and it was crazy to think that,
• 26:52
  Uh, there's just large chunks in there, like where I don't really
• 26:56
  remember a lot. I remember this show, but I don't really remember what
• 27:03
  my life was like. I don't remember, you know. It's like it
• 27:07
  almost feels like a like I was just on autopilot, Like I was just
• 27:10
  kind of going to the next thing, playing the next show too, in
• 27:12
  the next tour, and I was enjoying and I was thankful for it.
• 27:15
  But it's it was we were so busy and it was just so much happening.
• 27:21
  We just didn't slow down at all. Did you forget and slow down?
• 27:25
  Yeah, yeah, exactly, I thought I thought about that. It
• 27:26
  was actually probably right after that record that we did start to slow down a
• 27:30
  little bit, which is funny, you know around that time, you know,
• 27:34
  with forgetting not slow down, Like what would you say is like the
• 27:37
  height like what were the biggest shows, like you know, all of that,
• 27:41
  Like what has been the height of relying king not to say that it's
• 27:45
  it's been you know, shit since uh you know, yeah, you guys
• 27:48
  had a great tour, this last tour, you know, almost for eighteen
• 27:52
  years later. Yeah, still on on tons and tons and tons of people's
• 27:57
  top you know, Spotify wrapped everything recently even still too true. Yeah,
• 28:03
  but the support that we have on Spotify is just it boggles my mind.
• 28:07
  You know. I am thankful and kind of shocked that so many people continue
• 28:15
  to listen to our music. And yeah, I think it's I think it's
• 28:18
  just great. But it's it is funny to think back where I'm like,
• 28:23
  Okay, I understand that our band was bigger at a certain point, but
• 28:29
  uh it, we never really like cracked that. You know, we were
• 28:33
  never playing arenas or outdoor sheds or we were not especially by ourselves. Like
• 28:38
  we would play large shows, but it would be like a festival, it
• 28:41
  would be like a warp tour, it would be you know, just something
• 28:49
  with a lot of other things happening and really playing our own shows. We
• 28:53
  I mean, I don't I don't know exactly the number, but it wasn't
• 28:59
  like we were draw ever, you know, ten thousand people as far as
• 29:03
  I can remember. So yeah, even even thinking back to you know what,
• 29:10
  what feels like the height of it is, you know, probably touring
• 29:14
  doing like three thousand cap rooms, that feels like maybe the height of it
• 29:18
  and it and it does honestly doesn't feel like super memorable, like like it
• 29:25
  it doesn't feel like we made it. It's it's funny to you know,
• 29:27
  compare ourselves to we did this MTV spring Break thing with Fallout Boy in I'm
• 29:37
  trying to remember when it was. It was probably like O five and was
• 29:41
  before you know, Sugar We're Going Down came out as before that whole record,
• 29:45
  and you know, they were in a van, we were in a
• 29:49
  bus, and it just felt though like they were going to be popular.
• 29:56
  It felt like, you know, Pete was so good at like talking to
• 29:59
  the MT people and we were just awkward over there in the corner. High
• 30:04
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was funny and you know, so like
• 30:08
  comparing ourselves to that band. You know, it's like that band just got
• 30:12
  like massively huge. But I never really envied that. I never really was
• 30:18
  like, oh, that's that's like what I want, you know, like
• 30:21
  as as a human, as a person, as a band, and I
• 30:26
  don't know, it's it's it's funny to look back at that time though.
• 30:29
  That's a good like segue to my next question. And when you're at that
• 30:33
  height of whatever that was for you, guys with the biggest shows, most
• 30:37
  money coming in whatever that was for you, and whenever that was, how
• 30:41
  do you keep yourself thinking to yourself? We started when we were fourteen or
• 30:48
  fifteen years old, however old you were, and we were playing in Matt's
• 30:52
  basement, all plugged into the same amp, Like, how do you still
• 30:56
  think of yourselves as that band? Like this is how we started, this
• 31:00
  is how this whole thing began. How do you still like kind of humble
• 31:06
  yourself but this is this is the beginnings of this and this is where we're
• 31:10
  coming from. And however much success you might have, that's what it was,
• 31:15
  like. I feel like that that's an important way to think about that.
• 31:18
  I think if you're a healthy human being to think about that if you're
• 31:22
  having the success that you guys are having to think that, hey, we
• 31:26
  started from very humble beginnings. We're all plugged in the same amp. Yeah,
• 31:30
  yeah, yeah. This is not like a boy band that's all assembled.
• 31:33
  That's like, you know, the best singers ever and you immediately start
• 31:36
  out with millions and millions of records, like you guys are starting out with
• 31:40
  one amp, all playing in Matt's basement, and ten years later, yeah,
• 31:44
  you're one of the bigger bands in the world. I do think that
• 31:48
  during that time, thinking back on it, at least, it is harder
• 31:52
  to have humility and be grounded. Maybe it's part of like how the ages
• 31:57
  that we were at we were at in life, just not having as much
• 32:01
  experience. I'll say this, it feels easier to go out now. I
• 32:06
  feel like more of a sense of gratitude. I feel more of a sense
• 32:10
  of just like an honest humility, not like I'm trying to be humble about
• 32:14
  it, but that I am aware of how difficult it is, you know
• 32:20
  now in our forties to even get together to rehearse, you know, like
• 32:22
  how many things have to happen, how many flights have to be made or
• 32:28
  like, where does this happen? How many things, how many things need
• 32:31
  to come together, and it feels difficult, but I also feel very thankful
• 32:36
  for those times when they do happen at this at this point in my life,
• 32:40
  you know, even being able to just rehearse together. So kind of
• 32:45
  going kind of piggybacking off that to a certain extent. You know, you've
• 32:50
  you've been in the same band your whole life. I can't think of very
• 32:54
  many artists, Mason. Maybe you can help me out, Matt, maybe
• 32:59
  you can help me out. I don't know, I can't think of any
• 33:00
  artists who've been in the same band the entire time. Well, there's a
• 33:04
  couple that we grew up with, you know, Amberlance, which foot come
• 33:07
  to mind that all their very first bands. I mean, I gotta imagine
• 33:13
  there was at least I mean precursor bands, right I guess. Yeah,
• 33:15
  Stephen was in a band called Saga twenty four to seven, which is definitely
• 33:22
  worth checking out. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Yeah,
• 33:24
  it's it's funny to think back on all those times. So so coming
• 33:28
  from that perspective you've been, you know, with Matt, this entire time,
• 33:31
  and you kind of alluded to, you know, maybe like a weird
• 33:35
  relationship at times with Matt. Yeah, it's very curious to know what how
• 33:40
  that relationship has evolved from you know, early days to you know, the
• 33:45
  weird middle years to yeah, whatever's going on now, because I think a
• 33:50
  lot of people really don't know what's going on now, and I think I
• 33:52
  think a lot of people would like to know. Yeah, you know,
• 33:55
  you pull back that curtain a little bit and and help us understand little more.
• 34:00
  Yeah, me and Matt were best friends in high school. Uh,
• 34:05
  he would come and stay at my parents' house over the weekend every single weekend,
• 34:12
  So he would come up and and then it was probably three or four
• 34:15
  more friends. I lived in the basement of my parents' house when I was
• 34:17
  in high school, and there was just always a group of people and we
• 34:22
  got into a hilariously famously got into zero of trouble at all. Ever,
• 34:30
  we were like, we're like not ever, We're I don't know, not
• 34:35
  ever doing anything that various, right, Yeah, we were just having fun,
• 34:39
  just playing music together. But yeah, so Matt and I were really
• 34:43
  close, you know, I remember just like talking to him on the phone
• 34:46
  all the time. We would just call each other and talk for like hours,
• 34:50
  you know, just about like because minutes were free back then at night.
• 34:53
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well I remember even calling him
• 34:58
  on my parents landline, you know, like when we were in high school
• 35:01
  and just talking to Hi about guitar and writing and what shows were coming up,
• 35:07
  and uh, you know, at that time we started going to a
• 35:09
  lot of shows together. We would do you know, any any tour that
• 35:13
  would come through, whether it's like MxPx or five and Frenzy or Goadie Hook
• 35:19
  or you know whoever it was at the time, it was we just had
• 35:24
  such a common bond in that love of music and really wanting to be a
• 35:29
  part of that scene, you know, like that early Tooth and Nail scene
• 35:31
  especially, and uh yeah, I mean as it went over time. You
• 35:36
  know, Matt, he's legitimately one of the best songwriters. He's a natural
• 35:43
  songwriter. It's funny to see certain people doing what they do and it just
• 35:50
  clicks. You know. You see someone on stage maybe that's performing, or
• 35:53
  someone that is, you know, playing basketball at a high level. You
• 36:00
  know, they see Michael Jordan, You're like, that guy's doing what he's
• 36:02
  supposed to be doing and like, you know, like everything makes sense.
• 36:07
  And when Matt is writing, I feel that he's the Michael Jordan. Yeah.
• 36:12
  No, it's really cool. And he's able to like tap into different
• 36:15
  energy and he's very fast and very intelligent, but there's it's more of like
• 36:22
  a knowing than than an intelligence or a musical intelligence. It's more like he's
• 36:27
  able to chase this like energy of something feeling exciting or feeling anything, you
• 36:38
  know, Like he's able to tap into that emotional side of music, and
• 36:45
  he's able to do it really quickly. And it's you know, funny going
• 36:50
  into writing situations with with people that have written massive songs and we're in there,
• 36:54
  you know, with guys that have written for you know, like Lady
• 36:59
  Gaga, you know, like just like big pop writers. And I've been
• 37:02
  in rooms with those guys and Matt and I always walk out and just thinking,
• 37:07
  like, man, Matt is writing circles around these guys literally like they
• 37:10
  are struggling to keep up with his energy level, not not his like hey
• 37:15
  let's go here, let's go do this. It's just like, hey,
• 37:17
  what if the notes did this? And what if I sang this over it?
• 37:22
  And what do you think about that? And it's just like it's like
• 37:23
  a calmness, but it's incredible and it's something that he was able to do
• 37:30
  at a very young age with very little understanding of the guitar. Yeah.
• 37:36
  I don't mean to just like talk up my friend here, but I do.
• 37:39
  I do really appreciate that about him. I really do think he's one
• 37:44
  of the best writers that I've ever been around. Can I say two things
• 37:47
  about that? First off, obviously, you guys get kind of thrown in
• 37:52
  that like pop punk world, right, Yeah, especially early on. I
• 37:57
  do think out of all of the bands, even like the mainstream bands out
• 38:01
  of that world, I think your guys's stuff holds up better than anybody else,
• 38:08
  Like I I truly believe. Yeah, I mean even comparison to like
• 38:14
  Blink, Win Ay Two Good Charlotte, Newfound Glory, like all those big
• 38:16
  bands, you know, Simple Plan, all of them. There is something
• 38:22
  about the writing of Reliant K that sets you, guys apart from all of
• 38:27
  those other bands. That's the first thing I think maybe one of the reasons
• 38:31
  for that. I'm curious to hear your thoughts around it, but I think
• 38:37
  Matt might be one of the best bridge writers of all time. Oh yeah,
• 38:42
  and like of any genre, not just pop punk, any genre.
• 38:45
  His bridges on almost every song are like to a next level, like it
• 38:52
  takes this like lyrically, it takes the song to kind of like you know,
• 38:55
  it kind of moves you in the story sonically, you guys are able
• 39:00
  to move the song to the next thing towards that like kind of final ending.
• 39:06
  Matt is incredible as a songwriter when it comes to that bridge, like
• 39:09
  it is a pinnacle part of reliant k songwriting. And I'm just curious,
• 39:15
  like to hear your thoughts around that. Oh thank you? Yeah that is
• 39:19
  I mean, yeah, I totally agree. And Matt is very aware of
• 39:22
  that. He's aware that he enjoys writing bridges. There are only a few
• 39:28
  songs that I can think of where he's let himself do things like write two
• 39:31
  bridges or three bridges or different not not really give himself a time frame to
• 39:39
  stop playing the bridge. Most of the time, he's fairly he'll call it
• 39:45
  like the middle eight or something like that, or he'll call it like you
• 39:47
  know, like eight bars that you can kind of just do something fun.
• 39:52
  And he always loves it and I think it's probably goes back to that just
• 39:54
  being a natural writer. He's it's like he's excited to say something else and
• 40:01
  attach it to what he's already done. And yeah, I think I think
• 40:07
  that I do. Yeah, I will agree with that. I think he's
• 40:08
  one of the best bridge writers, definitely in pop punk music, but maybe
• 40:14
  in pop music. You know, like it's it's incredible. I've never heard
• 40:19
  a bridge where it's like, oh, that that's a reliant cape bridge.
• 40:22
  You just know that that's going to be a bridge because of Matt. I
• 40:27
  mean, it's just so distinctive to him, and he's so damn good at
• 40:30
  it. Well, thanks, Yeah, what I'm actually interested what eras or
• 40:37
  specific songs or specific albums do you listen to of our catalog? I mean,
• 40:43
  I mean, I like, MMM is like, for sure one of
• 40:46
  my favorites. I mean it really it might be even like a top twenty
• 40:50
  five favorite album of mine of all time, and okay, I've got a
• 40:52
  lot up there, but like it is up there as one of my favorites.
• 40:58
  I'm just kind of interesting because when I think back on our catalog,
• 41:00
  and obviously I don't pull up our own music all the time, although I
• 41:05
  did in trying to figure out what songs we're going to play on the tour
• 41:08
  and like go back and revisit a lot of things, and I have even
• 41:13
  sensed the tour, you know, just trying to like remember. I don't
• 41:16
  know if I've been nostalgic, but when I go back and listen, I
• 41:22
  I still like most of the Forget record. I like most of are for
• 41:27
  Free, and I like most of the record, but those are really the
• 41:31
  only ones that I listened to that I still kind of connect with, you
• 41:37
  know, like there there may be like spots on five score that I connect
• 41:42
  to, maybe spots on two lefts that yeah, exactly, No, definitely
• 41:51
  not. I've always been super interested in your your listening audience because I feel
• 41:58
  like every person who listens to reliant Ka religiously has a yeah, well there
• 42:07
  was a little bit of a double in there. You mean it a relationship
• 42:10
  Lee, right, Yeah, a relationship Lee, that's right, that's right.
• 42:16
  Um. It seems like everyone has a different album that they completely glom
• 42:21
  onto and that's that's the album that that that takes them to a different place
• 42:25
  or that makes them, you know, feel something that they've never felt.
• 42:30
  Before um and and it just it's like locked into that album and that album
• 42:36
  alone, And I don't know what it is about Reliant K. I don't
• 42:39
  know any other band that has this. I can't think of a single one,
• 42:45
  you know. For my buddy Nathan that you shouted out earlier, Forget
• 42:47
  is like the album that he will listen to every single day. Almost for
• 42:52
  me, it's five score for Mason. Uh you said, m right,
• 42:58
  Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's it's a different it's a different album
• 43:01
  for everyone. And I find that to be a very curious thing because I
• 43:07
  don't know why that is. Yeah, that's any thoughts on that, I
• 43:12
  mean, do you do you have any thoughts about like why there's certain records
• 43:15
  that you guys have done that have just really grabbed their hooks into people.
• 43:21
  Well, it is funny, I'll say this on I think when Forgetting Out
• 43:28
  So Down came out, it was not entirely embraced by our fan base.
• 43:35
  There were a lot of people who just didn't appreciate it. They didn't like
• 43:39
  the song, what the songs were about. They didn't like the sound of
• 43:43
  it, they didn't like the energy of it, they didn't like the feeling
• 43:45
  I don't know, they were wanting something else. They were wanting Part two
• 43:49
  or five score or you know, more things like that. And it was
• 43:53
  funny because the Forget record was probably the first record where while we were recording,
• 43:59
  it's just you could feel the energy in the room. It was really
• 44:02
  wild to think back on that time. And you know, maybe I won't
• 44:07
  say that as a whole. There were times on our earlier records that I
• 44:10
  felt that, but the entire Forget record really felt like something that I could
• 44:16
  connect to you. And then I'm trying to remember maybe maybe at some point
• 44:22
  in the next year, I personally went through a divorce and the whole record
• 44:29
  just made sense to me, like and I was like, oh my goodness,
• 44:32
  I know all these songs inside, and now I've helped write these songs.
• 44:36
  I've helped I wrote some of them myself, you know, like lyrically.
• 44:43
  But it's a lot of the things that Matt was saying literally connected with
• 44:46
  me after I went through that kind of thing. And I think that is
• 44:50
  the type of thing that happens with a lot of our fan base who also
• 44:53
  connect to that record. It makes more sense if you have if you've been
• 44:59
  through something like that, and you can kind of relate to a lot of
• 45:02
  the feelings that Matt is able to articulate, even some of them a little
• 45:08
  bit, you know, like angry and know that he's probably in the wrong,
• 45:13
  but he's still angry, you know, or just kind of that kind
• 45:16
  of being able to be sad over the disintegration of a relationship. And I
• 45:22
  think that's something that's just very human. But if you haven't gone through it,
• 45:25
  it's you have a different lens to especially for that album before I ask
• 45:31
  questions around like faith stuff, because I'm just so curious for you and what
• 45:36
  that journey has been like for you. One of the things that I think
• 45:39
  Reliant K especially excels at beyond the fact that you know that Matt is an
• 45:46
  incredible bridge writer and I think just a great writer in general, one of
• 45:51
  the things that you guys excel at is there's something about like branding of Reliant
• 45:58
  K that is so good and has always been so spot on with like what
• 46:01
  you guys are about, what the sound is, what your audience is.
• 46:06
  I'm really curious around that, you know, Like you think back to like
• 46:09
  that first album right like and you guys, you know you got the track
• 46:13
  and field thing going on, and then with you got like kind of that,
• 46:17
  you know, and like kind of cartoonish animation of the daisy forgetting not
• 46:23
  slow down right, Like it's just like that whatever that like camper old camper
• 46:28
  trailer thing is Like there's just something. And then even from the new tour,
• 46:32
  right you have the pennants and like there's just something about like you guys
• 46:40
  kind of seem to know like what your audience aesthetically through the ages, you
• 46:47
  know, from like when you're eighteen nineteen years old and you're doing track and
• 46:52
  field stuff too. Here you are in your forties and you've got pennants.
• 46:55
  Like there's just something aesthetically that Reliant Kay has always tapped into really well,
• 47:00
  both in your artwork and your tours all of that. I'm really curious around
• 47:06
  what that Like. There's got to be somebody who's kind of the mastermind around
• 47:09
  that, because they clearly haven't figured out. And I like, I'm kind
• 47:13
  of jealous around it too, Like I think it's amazing, you know what
• 47:17
  it's it's probably me of anyone in the band, and that's why I also
• 47:23
  feel I've always felt jealous of other bands in that way because I will go
• 47:30
  back and think, I'll see another band play and I'll see this amazing stage
• 47:36
  set up and lights set up, and and I'm like, who did that?
• 47:39
  Did someone in the band do that? Did they do that for themselves?
• 47:43
  And I mean, we've really just learned from talking to people and everyone
• 47:46
  does it differently, where even even touring with someone like Toby Mack, you
• 47:51
  know who signed us initially out of the gate, he has also been just
• 47:55
  nothing but supportive and just a really cool guy to us, and watching how
• 48:02
  he literally is like micromanaging every single thing that happens on stage, everything,
• 48:09
  every single thing that someone is wearing, every light he's going out and moving
• 48:13
  lights himself before the show, every single show, and it blows my mind.
• 48:17
  And anyway, I just go back to all that to say, I
• 48:21
  always wondered how other bands did that. I'm like, do you hire a
• 48:22
  production company? Is it someone at your label? Is it someone with your
• 48:27
  management? And every situation was different, So it kind of came back to
• 48:32
  that do it yourself mentality of like, well, what is who are we
• 48:38
  and what are we and how can we just be trying to be ourselves?
• 48:45
  You know? And so thinking about at different times, different things that we've
• 48:50
  done. It's it's a lot of times not been very cohesive because we were
• 48:54
  just like a band of four guys who would jump on stage with our thrift
• 48:59
  storage t shirts and like ill fitting pants, and you know, it's like,
• 49:05
  you know, you see other bands and they're all wearing black, or
• 49:07
  they're wearing suits and ties, or you know, like doing different things that
• 49:10
  are very stylized, and yeah, for us, it's like for the last
• 49:16
  tour, for example, I really thought through what I wanted to feel like,
• 49:22
  and I wanted to feel nostalgic. I wanted to feel like like n
• 49:28
  on the amps, like thinking about small things like that, but then trying
• 49:30
  to think about big things that would connect in a nostalgic way. But I
• 49:34
  was like, I really think it's important that we all have large martial amps
• 49:37
  behind us, Like I think it's important that we you know, our MAT's
• 49:40
  piano was white, and I was like, I really think it's important that
• 49:44
  it's black, you know, so we spray painted it black the day before
• 49:46
  we left for the road, and you know, a lot of it is
• 49:50
  just it ends up feeling kind of put together, but it is probably more
• 49:54
  hodgepodge than you would probably then a person would guess on the outside. But
• 50:00
  it's perfect, Like it just nails it every time where, every like.
• 50:05
  And the thing is, it's like you you've gone on the journey with your
• 50:07
  audience on it too. That's the thing that's impressive is you're not just trying
• 50:12
  to do nostalgia for nostalgia's sake, but like you're actually tapping into hey,
• 50:19
  what's the aesthetic we haven't done before that like actually is going to fit perfectly
• 50:22
  with what we're trying to do in this thing. And whether it's a tour
• 50:25
  or whether it's an album, you guys are like, you just are masters
• 50:29
  at it and it's amazing and there's very few bands that do it as well
• 50:32
  as you guys do. Oh thank you. Yeah, it's a It's funny,
• 50:37
  you know, thinking of touring with bands like switch Foot because their tour,
• 50:42
  you know, their show is so professional, so good, and so
• 50:45
  they just have a very programmed light show and you know they do different things
• 50:51
  that are just that they're like an arena band and we are more like a
• 50:55
  club band in comparison. And you're like, when we went on tour with
• 51:00
  them, there are last tour that we did, it was just so funny
• 51:05
  to you know, we would roll out this green AstroTurf on the stage and
• 51:09
  we had you know, like we literally brought out a grill and some fake
• 51:14
  plants and like just we just did funny stuff like that that we just actually
• 51:17
  did ourselves and didn't really worry about the light show. We didn't really worry
• 51:23
  about like if we had a giant led screen or like any kind of level
• 51:30
  of professionalism. But it we were just trying to do our own thing and
• 51:35
  it was just funny because it's in juxtaposition to us playing and then switch foot
• 51:39
  Plane was it was funny, it was It was very noticeable from from the
• 51:45
  audience. I'm sure it is kind of cool that you guys are still kind
• 51:49
  of doing like that DIY type of thing though, right, I mean that's
• 51:52
  well, we're trying to be ourselves. Yeah, so yeah, it doesn't
• 51:55
  it doesn't make sense to us to be an arena rock bank. So we
• 52:00
  never been, you know, totally totally. It feels very all high when
• 52:05
  yeah, yeah, maybe Seth maybe s Yeah. I'm a Florida man,
• 52:08
  now, I've been down in Florida for like two years here, so so
• 52:12
  well, Hey, how's the sunshine man? It's beautiful, Yeah, it's
• 52:15
  it's perfect out today. You know, one other thing I want to talk
• 52:17
  about before Mason gets into faith, So I want to talk about how much
• 52:22
  better of a follow Laura is than you on Twitter? She is so much
• 52:25
  better, Yeah, on every on every social media. Yeah, and she's
• 52:32
  she's got the best takes. I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying
• 52:36
  she really does better than you. I got a step up your man on
• 52:40
  Twitter. I never I don't think to use it super often, to be
• 52:45
  honest, and I I feel like I maybe was funny on it, like
• 52:52
  ten years ago, maybe maybe seven years ago, I don't know, like
• 52:54
  a while ago. Mason funny too, and then he got big and he's
• 52:59
  yeah and funny ruin everything. I feel. Yeah, I feel like I
• 53:02
  was looking down my timeline the other day and I just opened it up.
• 53:06
  I'm like, all I'm doing is like complaining about Trump or people wearing,
• 53:13
  people wearing masks or not wearing masks, or like I'm just like complaining and
• 53:16
  I'm like, I don't want to be more positive and just funny and like
• 53:21
  I don't know. It was just I was just like it came to light.
• 53:24
  Well, you might need to take some notes with with Laura because she's
• 53:28
  incredible. Yeah, she she really is. She's such a cool person and
• 53:34
  such an amazing energy and personality and it's it's so cool. I like how
• 53:42
  you guys have a joint Zoom account. That's a step up from like a
• 53:45
  joint Facebook account. You know what. I think it's because I'm signed in
• 53:51
  to Our family has an email account that we just keep like all of our
• 53:55
  family calendars and school schedules and doctor appointments, and uh, you are already
• 54:04
  you are an organized Yes, Uh, I do things like that because I'm
• 54:09
  trying. I'm trying to uh keep a handle on everything. But we have
• 54:14
  I mean, we have nine kids between us, so it is crazy.
• 54:17
  Our life, Our life a zoo. I don't know if you guys knew
• 54:22
  that she had five kids from previous marriage. I had two kids from previous
• 54:27
  marriage and then we had uh cedar right after we got married in twenty seventeen,
• 54:34
  and then and then adopted another baby two years later. Wow. So
• 54:39
  yeah, we are full nine nine deep. So our crew is crazy and
• 54:45
  the amount of back and forth and traveling and custody and the amount of you
• 54:52
  know, trying to figure out how many people are here for dinner tonight,
• 54:55
  and you know, just like it is. It is wild. We were
• 54:59
  like doing everything we can do to keep our heads above water. So yeah,
• 55:01
  it is funny that we're uh, we don't have a joint zoom account.
• 55:06
  I don't know why it is why it showed up to that. I
• 55:09
  think it's just because I'm logged into our family email. It's the first thing
• 55:14
  that pops up. All right, let's talk about the least important thing of
• 55:16
  the night. Let's talk about faith. I'm so curious about this, you
• 55:22
  know, I feel like this is sort of the reason why we got connected
• 55:27
  in the first place. You know, I'm We're not one of those uh
• 55:30
  journalists that's like, hey, are you a Christian band or are you a
• 55:36
  Christians in a band? Uh? You know, we could give a shit
• 55:39
  about that. You you used to be, but now I'm just that's really
• 55:44
  well, we're curious about like, what what has this journey been like for
• 55:47
  you and your faith? What where were you guys at at the beginning and
• 55:52
  where are you at personally? And that's not to say that you're gonna have
• 55:54
  to be at that for the rest of the you know, other forty one
• 55:57
  years of your life. But where are you at right now? And you
• 56:00
  know, who knows what's going to happen in the future. But I'm just
• 56:02
  curious, like it's been twenty five years of being in this band, where
• 56:06
  you where were you at then and where have you kind of journeyed through through
• 56:09
  all of them. Yeah. I'll start off by saying, uh, yeah,
• 56:14
  I've been I've been very encouraged by your social media presence. I feel
• 56:20
  like reading some of your tweets. I know I texted you about this,
• 56:23
  but reading some of your tweets where you're just like making fun of Calvinism,
• 56:29
  and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's okay to do, you know,
• 56:32
  like that is like not even it's not it's not wrong or bad or
• 56:37
  evil. It's just okay to think that it's okay to even be John Piper
• 56:44
  for a day. Yeah, can you can do whatever you want? Yeah?
• 56:46
  Not now, probably, but yeah, we'll see, We'll see how
• 56:51
  it goes. But uh yeah, it's uh, it's funny that our band
• 56:55
  has so much religious content because I would say that between Matt and I were.
• 57:02
  I don't think either of us would put theology as something that we know
• 57:07
  a lot about, you know. I think I think we're figuring it out.
• 57:10
  Like everyone in our faith has been important to us, you know,
• 57:15
  since high school, we were really very active in our church and our youth
• 57:21
  group. We were played, you know, worship songs with the kids,
• 57:25
  and we like really meant it. We were really like earnest about it at
• 57:29
  the time. And you know, I remember our youth pastor at the time
• 57:36
  wanted us to call He wanted us to call our band reliant Reliant Pray like
• 57:43
  yeah, like Reliant on the King or Reliant Christian with the k or he
• 57:46
  like, uh, wanted us to somehow put a religious connotation in the in
• 57:54
  the and we walked out. He literally called a meeting with us, and
• 57:58
  we walked out of there. We're like, oh my good, Yeah,
• 58:00
  that we can't ever do that, you know, that's crazy and felt like
• 58:04
  the cringe of that. Even then, I feel like it really helped us
• 58:07
  to start out. And we're still really good friends with both these guys.
• 58:10
  So it's not it's not a cut on either one. But we toured with
• 58:15
  five oron Frenzy and then we toured with Super Tones, and we thought to
• 58:22
  ourselves out loud, we want to be like five ourn Frenzy. You know.
• 58:28
  It was like very early, We're like, we want to do everything
• 58:30
  like they do. That's who we feel connected to. We just feel like
• 58:37
  they are just good, earnest people who care about their faith, you know
• 58:42
  who Their faith is important to them, and it really is evident in the
• 58:46
  way they treat people, in the way they treat their fans, and the
• 58:49
  way they treat the opening bands and the way they It was we learned how
• 58:55
  to be a band from I would say five Frenzy and Switch Food, who
• 59:02
  one of our tours was with both those bands actually, but we would watch
• 59:07
  those bands, and we would watch and we would have other experiences with other
• 59:10
  bands, and it was just such a stark difference in how we wanted to
• 59:19
  be it just as community members, as our band, as a community member,
• 59:23
  and I just I just bring that all around to say that also,
• 59:27
  I think we theologically kind of started leaning more to what those guys were thinking
• 59:35
  in Vin and Frenzy, in Switch Food, and then maybe what more traditional
• 59:39
  Christianity culture was thinking at the time. Does that get you to a point
• 59:45
  where And again we've talked to John about this, but I'm curious from your
• 59:49
  perspective, but it's a bull move to have someone like Similar on tour with
• 59:53
  you, Like you know that that's going to potentially alienate some fans, although
• 59:59
  I I think if if any of those people were still fans, like,
• 1:00:02
  they're not going to be the fans they're gonna buy a ticket to go support
• 1:00:06
  you. But yeah, I'm curious, like when you announced something like that
• 1:00:10
  that you're going to be with Similar, a openly queer Christian artist that like
• 1:00:16
  puts a kind of like a land like a line in the sand honestly about
• 1:00:22
  like, hey, this is where we're at theologically, this is where we're
• 1:00:24
  at politically to a certain degree. I'm like, for you, what was
• 1:00:29
  that like to make that an announcement like that because you know that it's going
• 1:00:34
  to be somewhat of a risk. Yeah, I honestly didn't expect as much
• 1:00:38
  negativity as came, but it it really was probably limited to two or three
• 1:00:44
  posts that and we got any negative comments back on and yeah I did.
• 1:00:52
  It ended up not being a big deal, I think, and and it
• 1:00:55
  really wasn't supposed to be we didn't do it to necessarily make a statement,
• 1:01:04
  but realizing that doing it would would be making a statement, right, like
• 1:01:09
  first and foremost, like similar is a great artist, and like you just
• 1:01:13
  want a great artists to support you on the tour, Like that's first and
• 1:01:15
  foremost. But also that does kind of mean that there's going to be something
• 1:01:20
  along with that, right, Yeah. There were probably ten or twelve people
• 1:01:23
  that reach out to me directly and I would just forward them to our manager
• 1:01:28
  or whatever because they asked for refunds, because of because Grace was on the
• 1:01:34
  tour, and you know, our response was always like sure, yeah,
• 1:01:37
  how can we make it easy for you, you know, if you don't
• 1:01:39
  want to come, if you don't feel like it's the right place for you.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah, we're not trying to take your money, you know. And
• 1:01:45
  there are a few of those people that I got into a little bit of
• 1:01:49
  a conversation with where I just asked them things just to try to understand.
• 1:01:54
  And I said, I said that, I said, I'm not trying to
• 1:02:00
  vince you otherwise, or you know, this is not about even a right
• 1:02:02
  or wrong or the Bible or whatever, but like, do you you know,
• 1:02:08
  how would you feel if we brought a band on tour who was struggling
• 1:02:15
  with the gambling addiction, or how would you feel if we had an opening
• 1:02:20
  band that was not a Christian band, and they would constantly go back to
• 1:02:25
  this idea that it's uh, you know that they felt that homosexuality was this
• 1:02:31
  evil sin and that they did not want to be a part of it.
• 1:02:35
  They also didn't like that she used strong language, and we were like,
• 1:02:40
  okay, you know, it wasn't about trying to like convince people like that
• 1:02:46
  otherwise, but it is something that we felt I don't even know how to
• 1:02:52
  like wrap that up. It's it's something that we felt like we were cool
• 1:02:58
  with. I don't know, it's like we're we're cool with. Like,
• 1:03:01
  Grace has become one of our best friends, she wrote on the bus for
• 1:03:06
  most of the tour. She is a great person, and yeah, we
• 1:03:12
  just had honestly had so much in common, you know, we had so
• 1:03:15
  much. We had such a fun time just hanging out and it was easy,
• 1:03:20
  maybe more so than anyone we've ever toured with. And that was unexpected.
• 1:03:24
  You know, we didn't we didn't necessarily know her before. We actually
• 1:03:29
  kind of were aware of her Matt was especially because of her TikTok Reliant Gay
• 1:03:37
  yeah cover band, you know. So that's that's why we were aware of
• 1:03:39
  her, and we just thought it was funny, you know, and it's
• 1:03:44
  almost kind of funny that, you know, some some people would come at
• 1:03:50
  us and say, you know, call us reliant gay in a derogatory way,
• 1:03:53
  and we're like, what if we just embraced that whole, you know,
• 1:03:57
  like it's not a big deal to us. It's not derogatory, you
• 1:04:00
  know, like it's like whatever, And I don't, I don't know.
• 1:04:03
  Yeah, it was. It was a funny season to um to have her
• 1:04:10
  out on tour and to hear kind of some of the uh backlash from that.
• 1:04:16
  So how does how does your your faith then, uh in the modern
• 1:04:23
  day as you are now? How does that? How does that look?
• 1:04:27
  Yeah? I don't I don't even know how to wrap that up personally,
• 1:04:30
  like in a in a little uh a two minutes you know kind of thoughts
• 1:04:34
  a little answer for sure. Elevator speech right now, Matt, I will
• 1:04:42
  say that that my faith is important. I still feel like it is important
• 1:04:50
  to me, uh to have a relationship with God whatever that means, you
• 1:05:00
  know, like it is important to me to live in a way that is
• 1:05:06
  in love and not you know, to try for that, you know,
• 1:05:11
  like to try for that kind of acceptance and love and wanting to uh,
• 1:05:23
  you know, just in the way that that we connect with other people,
• 1:05:26
  in the way that I parent my kids, in the way that I try
• 1:05:29
  to show up in my marriage. You know, it's a it's something that's
• 1:05:32
  important. But as far as like Christian culture, I don't think I've ever
• 1:05:36
  felt more disconnected from the church. And we moved on to Florida during the
• 1:05:43
  pandemic, and which is a great time to be kind of questioning your relationship
• 1:05:48
  with the church when you moved to Florida. I know, yeah, so
• 1:05:53
  it it's funny. And I wouldn't even consider myself someone that is very political,
• 1:05:59
  but I mean, everything is polarized right now so hard, and it
• 1:06:01
  is I basically have not really been in a church since the pandemic hit,
• 1:06:09
  and I don't necessarily feel like that is something that I need in my life.
• 1:06:14
  But I do want to have community still, but I feel very disenfranchised.
• 1:06:21
  I feel like out of place in within Christian culture, just even based
• 1:06:27
  on how many people voted for Donald Trump that are Christian in Christian culture,
• 1:06:31
  I feel very out of place and not. I don't know. It's just
• 1:06:38
  just like, can I be myself and still be accepted in this? And
• 1:06:43
  I'm my answer is I'm not sure. I don't. I don't know if
• 1:06:45
  I feel accepted in that. And I'm trying to get to like any kind
• 1:06:53
  of like give you some sort of like answer to this. But it's you
• 1:06:57
  know, my faith is still important still. I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily even
• 1:07:04
  use the word deconstruction. But I'm also not at all opposed to that word
• 1:07:11
  either. You know. It's uh, it just I haven't labeled it as
• 1:07:15
  such. I'll say that, sure, you're just reading damn good theology right
• 1:07:19
  now, and uh, you know, one of these days maybe I'll be
• 1:07:21
  a part of the whole crew that exists out there. Let's put it that.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah. No, that's perfect. Yeah, yeah, And thank you
• 1:07:29
  for recommending that book. I was reading The Open and Relational Theology by Thomas
• 1:07:34
  j ord and it is it really really kind of it hit me, you
• 1:07:45
  know, it was it was a really cool thing, and it um I
• 1:07:47
  felt so much positivity and acceptance and love and also a lot of challenging,
• 1:07:57
  a lot of these things that have not made sense to me in the church
• 1:08:00
  and in Christian culture, and it felt like a lot of things really came
• 1:08:05
  together as far as this feels like what God feels like to me, This
• 1:08:14
  feels like what love feels like to me. This feels like more in line
• 1:08:17
  with how I want to live. You know, that's best process theology and
• 1:08:25
  in the nutshell, couple questions before we get to your top five. First
• 1:08:30
  off, who is the best athlete? And relying, Kay, if we
• 1:08:35
  were to do like a dodgeball team, a baseball team, a basketball team
• 1:08:39
  right now, and we were picking and we have to go through all five
• 1:08:42
  members, who is the first person that we're going to be picking to be
• 1:08:45
  a part of our team. I mean I would say that I'm definitely the
• 1:08:50
  best at basketball and golf. Oh okay, those are the two my two
• 1:08:58
  main sports that I love. Okay, but yeah, I don't know.
• 1:09:02
  We're We're honestly, hilariously not uh not very athletic. Um Matt is Matt
• 1:09:10
  is pretty good at a lot of sports too. He has a lot of
• 1:09:12
  natural aptitude. But actually, Brian, our original bass player who was with
• 1:09:17
  us, until two thousand and four. He and I always played on basketball
• 1:09:21
  teams together and he is way better than me for sure, So that would
• 1:09:26
  be the uh. And we're actually I keep calling Brian and he's not picking
• 1:09:30
  up the calls. But I would really love for him to uh to play
• 1:09:35
  some some bass with us again. So hey, Brian, if you're listening,
• 1:09:43
  give me a call back. Yeah. No, And I talked to
• 1:09:45
  him. I talked to him from time to time, but yeah, he's
• 1:09:47
  I'm just like, dude, call me back, like come down and make
• 1:09:51
  a song with us or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:09:54
  dude. Second thing, you have a super Nintendo like probably what ten feet
• 1:10:01
  from you right now? Yeah, yeah, so you're a Nintendo guy.
• 1:10:05
  If you're going to be playing Mario Kart, what's your character that you're gonna
• 1:10:11
  picking one hundred percent of the time. That's a good question. Like,
• 1:10:15
  you know, people like care about like Myers, Briggs, Anio, Graham,
• 1:10:20
  astrology, all that bullshit. I don't give a shit about any of
• 1:10:24
  that. What's your Mario Kart character? Because that says everything about you.
• 1:10:28
  I think your Mario Kart character is exactly like you said, it is a
• 1:10:30
  personality test. It is. That is a total personality test. Mine's Donkey
• 1:10:35
  Kong, right, Mason, what's yours? I'm told one percent of course
• 1:10:41
  you're Toad, and of course your Donkey Kong. Exactly. See it makes
• 1:10:45
  sense. What are you, Matt? I bet, Matt? You know
• 1:10:50
  what? I think that? I am also told I was actually just looking
• 1:10:55
  back up at this. I like how he's kind of smaller, a little
• 1:10:59
  bit faster star. Yeah, I was actually just looking at the last I
• 1:11:04
  was a I was a slot receiver in football. That's what that was a
• 1:11:09
  position I played. So like I was like the small, little white guy
• 1:11:12
  running around. So I just felt like Toad and I we kind of,
• 1:11:15
  you know, we had the same energy. Yeah, no, that's great.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, we uh got really into Mario Kart when we did the Nintendo
• 1:11:23
  Fusion Tour with Hawthorne Heights and Emery and I can't remember who else was on
• 1:11:29
  that plain white teas. So this is like when the other this is when
• 1:11:36
  the original Nintendo DS came out or not not DS. I'm sorry, No,
• 1:11:45
  it's the one that flipped open. I think it's a DS, isn't
• 1:11:48
  it. Yeah that's the DS I think. Okay, Yeah, so yeah,
• 1:11:53
  yeah, it was probably it's probably that, and they gave one to
• 1:11:56
  all of us and it was probably halfway through the tour. We were like,
• 1:11:58
  hey, you guys have these things over here, can we like have
• 1:12:00
  one? And they're like, no, you can buy one. And then
• 1:12:02
  eventually they came around and they they they just dropped like ten of them off
• 1:12:08
  at our bus. And we loved Mario Kart. We would sit there and
• 1:12:11
  just play it and you can play it, you know, so we'd all
• 1:12:14
  be in our bunks playing against each other and it was awesome. You just
• 1:12:18
  hear this, like, there's got to be one person in Reliant k that's
• 1:12:21
  just like better at than everybody. It was John Warren. He was playing
• 1:12:27
  bass for us for us at the time. I mean he's with us for
• 1:12:29
  many years. And John is the best at all video games, Like he
• 1:12:35
  will just crush you at every Okay, so he's he's the guy you want
• 1:12:40
  to pick on a video game, uh, you know if you're playing video
• 1:12:43
  game multiplayer type thing. But you or or your former bassis is like the
• 1:12:48
  athlete you want to pick if you're playing. Yeah, sort that's fair,
• 1:12:51
  that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. And Dave is actually pretty good at
• 1:12:56
  both two or drummer. He is really good at He has a high aptitude
• 1:13:00
  for video games. Does he play shirtless when he plays video games? Too?
• 1:13:08
  I don't not anymore? You know? Alright? Alright, wait one
• 1:13:14
  one one last question, question before last question. All right. One of
• 1:13:17
  my favorite songs of all time, un ironically is a Reliant K cover of
• 1:13:25
  the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, which, by the way, I did
• 1:13:29
  u A. I did a karaoke version of I'm sure there's video out there.
• 1:13:33
  I did a karaoke version of the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything but the
• 1:13:38
  cover from Reliant K at Theology Beer camp a few months ago to this day,
• 1:13:43
  one of my favorite songs ever. Is there any chance we could ever
• 1:13:47
  get another Silly Songs with Larry cover from Reliant K. I mean it's definitely
• 1:13:54
  not out of the question. Great, that's all I need to know.
• 1:13:57
  Yeah, we would love like hair Brow song. I mean, any of
• 1:14:00
  them, they're all great. That one one was so funny. Water Buffalo
• 1:14:05
  that was That was the first CD I ever bought. Ever. Wow was
• 1:14:11
  the the Veggie Rocks one with like you know you guys were with like what
• 1:14:15
  Rebecca Saint James, OC, Super Tones, Michael Tay Skillet, all those
• 1:14:19
  bands to this day, Yes, one of the best albums ever. Un
• 1:14:25
  ironically. Yeah, that was such a funny experience because we uh, Steve
• 1:14:30
  Taylor, who had written a lot of those songs. He had written I
• 1:14:33
  mean he started the News Boys. Steve Taylor wrote those songs. Uh.
• 1:14:39
  I don't think he wrote those songs. He wrote some with Veggie Tales,
• 1:14:43
  but he was the one who was putting together this whole thing. So he
• 1:14:45
  called us up and was like, Hey, I'm driving to Ohio, I'm
• 1:14:48
  gonna I'll produce the song for you guys. And so this is like shattering
• 1:14:55
  my and he is the one who was you know. He added like this
• 1:15:00
  spoken word parts to it, and we just kind of showed up and played
• 1:15:01
  it. I mean, I think we recorded the whole song in a couple
• 1:15:04
  of hours. But it was such a funny experience, you know, because
• 1:15:06
  we're he I think there's four key changes in the song, Like it just
• 1:15:11
  seems like going up by half a step. I think it's like almost like
• 1:15:15
  every verse or something. Yeah, it's pretty weird, and a lot of
• 1:15:20
  that is Steve and his strange genius, I guess too, like, uh,
• 1:15:28
  you know, he has a lot of fun, you know, and
• 1:15:30
  we we go pretty far back with him as well, and he uh you
• 1:15:33
  know that that was really funn experience. And yeah, I definitely wouldn't rule
• 1:15:36
  out doing anything for details. But I mean the only reason we did that
• 1:15:39
  was because they specifically asked us to do that song. I mean, perfect
• 1:15:45
  song for you guys, all right. Top five most influential albums of Matt
• 1:15:53
  Hoops. Okay, I've just had to think about this from the beginning,
• 1:15:58
  and I'm gonna kind of stay in the same zone, I think, but
• 1:16:03
  I'm going to go with Weezer Blue album. That's got to be one of
• 1:16:09
  the most mentioned ones, right Colin, Yeah, totally. Also it's the
• 1:16:14
  one that I've stripped to the most, probably that yeah he spry, Yeah,
• 1:16:19
  yeah, I will if I hear the sweater song, I will take
• 1:16:23
  off my clothes right now. Well uh yeah yeah, all right, um,
• 1:16:32
  all right, so that that's my first response to that, by the
• 1:16:35
  way, Yeah all right, yeah, don't be aroused or anything, just
• 1:16:40
  like, yep, that's just what it is. That's what it is.
• 1:16:43
  Yeah, I will try to think of my other uh, get Up Kids,
• 1:16:49
  something to write home about. Oh wow, oh that one credible album.
• 1:16:56
  That one really that one really hit and that that one affected our band
• 1:17:00
  a lot. I'll say that see the God So good Jimmy World Clarity,
• 1:17:10
  Oh for sure. Of course, both those were kind of a similar era.
• 1:17:15
  What about Age Troubleshooter, Age Troubleshooter, Yes, definitely that one.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah, we love John let me think probably food Fighters. Color in the
• 1:17:29
  Shape, Oh hey, every time I do karaoke ever Long is definitely one
• 1:17:34
  of those songs I sing. Yeah, that one. That one just really
• 1:17:40
  connected for me on guitar. You know, it just came out at that
• 1:17:46
  time when I was like wanting to that. That to me was just like
• 1:17:51
  this perfect example of just really big loud guitars that it just has. It
• 1:17:58
  had a profound effect on me. And you're like, oh wait, I
• 1:18:00
  have to like change the tuning of that top string. What the fuck is
• 1:18:03
  going on here? Yeah? Yeah? They all drop d yeah look out?
• 1:18:09
  Uh wait, so what do I need one more? One more?
• 1:18:12
  Yep? Yes, that's tough one. I maybe can it's this This may
• 1:18:18
  ruffle some feathers, So I'm maybe gonna go with Radiohead okay Computer. Oh
• 1:18:23
  that's not ruffle in any feathers. That's a that's perfect man. Yeah,
• 1:18:28
  that that one has stuck around for me. Uh. I still listen to
• 1:18:33
  that record, really enjoy it. It's not the best radio Head record,
• 1:18:39
  but it is their most influential. Yeah. Yeah, that one to me
• 1:18:43
  is I don't what is their best record. I think it's in Rainbows.
• 1:18:46
  I think it's in Rainbow. Okay, Yeah, yeah, I don't think
• 1:18:49
  that's like what most people would say, though. I think most people would
• 1:18:53
  say probably kid A. Wait, no, no, I I changed my
• 1:18:57
  answer. I changed my answer. I think okay, I differentiate best and
• 1:19:01
  favorite. My favorite is in Rainbows, their best is kid A, and
• 1:19:08
  their most influential is okay Computer. Interesting? Yeah yeah, okay. Computer
• 1:19:13
  also came out when we were in high school. It was very It made
• 1:19:17
  me and Matt think about music differently. The way they would put together songs,
• 1:19:24
  the way they would orchestrate songs, the way they would do his guitar,
• 1:19:27
  the way that they would um That record in particular was it was just
• 1:19:32
  like WHOA Like I can't I can't imagine anyone doing this. The funny thing
• 1:19:38
  is, if you ever hear the story about how they made Uh, I'm
• 1:19:41
  blanking on the name right now. It's like the like the whole like computer
• 1:19:44
  song. It was all computer What was that? Oh yeah yeah, fitter
• 1:19:48
  happier, Yeah, fitter happier. The funny thing is like it was literally
• 1:19:54
  Tom York coming back to the studio very drunk after a night of drinking,
• 1:19:59
  and yeah, he just like started mumbling words and like mumbled them into a
• 1:20:04
  microphone and then they just made those words out of the like weird Windows computer
• 1:20:11
  thing that was happening at the time, and that's how they made the song.
• 1:20:14
  But it was like there was no intentionality behind it other than Tom Yerke
• 1:20:17
  was super drunk one night and now we think of it as like this masterful
• 1:20:21
  piece, and it was just it's just him being drunk. Such a brilliant
• 1:20:26
  thing. That's the thing that only could do. I think, Well,
• 1:20:29
  Matt, we don't want to keep it too much longer. So what would
• 1:20:30
  you like to plug? You got you got a guitar pedal business, which
• 1:20:33
  is pretty sweet. Do you want to tell us about that? What else
• 1:20:38
  Reliant K has has coming up the pipe? Yeah? We Yeah, so
• 1:20:44
  I have been building guitars guitar pedals. My company is called nineteen eighty one
• 1:20:48
  Inventions. Uh cro was born. I love building guitar pedals. My buddy
• 1:20:54
  Jack from Bay Side also helps me make pedals, and oh yeah, it's
• 1:20:59
  just really fun. My wife Laura works works with me, help helps try
• 1:21:03
  to keep me in line, uh with you know, keeping up with every
• 1:21:08
  sure you actually make money from it. Yeah, yeah, it's been it's
• 1:21:11
  been a lot of fun. But it also has been a kind of difficult
• 1:21:17
  at times in that it always feels like we're catching up. It's all we're
• 1:21:21
  always behind. We're always like needing to increase in some level, or it's
• 1:21:29
  difficult to source certain pieces. It's it's been an odd struggle the last couple
• 1:21:32
  of years, but a very positive struggle. I'll say that. You know,
• 1:21:36
  so I love doing it. I still love building pedals. I still
• 1:21:39
  love testing them and playing guitar and doing all that stuff. So yeah,
• 1:21:44
  that is my nineteen eighty one Inventions is like my baby. You know.
• 1:21:47
  It's like from being in a band for so long, you know, it's
• 1:21:50
  every single decision has to be approved by all members of the band, or
• 1:21:55
  at least me and Matt and then our agent and our manager have to sign
• 1:22:00
  off on it, and like just all these people and it's like it always
• 1:22:03
  felt like two weeks before we could even decide one simple thing, you know,
• 1:22:09
  on a T shirt design or something. Now you just have to have
• 1:22:12
  things approved by your wife, which that's you know, that's nothing. Yeah.
• 1:22:15
  Yeah, Now, I I got kind of addicted to this feeling of
• 1:22:21
  like, oh man, I can I well, I can just do I
• 1:22:26
  can. I'm nimble, you know. It's like I can like have an
• 1:22:28
  idea and start it right now, Like I don't need to check in with
• 1:22:31
  anyone, Like I can actually just do it, like you know, and
• 1:22:34
  it's a it's been a lot of fun, but also it's been you know,
• 1:22:39
  it's I've been doing this company for four years and I've only had one
• 1:22:43
  circuit, and I'm about to come out with my second circuit, and hey,
• 1:22:46
  I'm super excited about it. H it is something that is very meaningful
• 1:22:54
  to me. It's I took a long time. I threw out many many
• 1:22:58
  second you know, it's kind of like coming out with the second album,
• 1:23:00
  except you can overthink it as much as you want, uh, And it
• 1:23:05
  took a long time for me to land on anything that I felt like was
• 1:23:10
  important enough, that felt good enough, And I actually used that pedal on
• 1:23:16
  most of the songs on our last tour, So yeah, it was I
• 1:23:21
  got a lot of real life experience with it, and um yeah, running
• 1:23:28
  Running nineteen, I want to mention is is just a dream so I love
• 1:23:31
  doing it. And then as far as the band goes, you know,
• 1:23:34
  I actually got lunch with Matt Teason yesterday and we were just talking about all
• 1:23:43
  these things. So we had what is Matt Teason order from Pania? You
• 1:23:46
  know? He I don't even know what. Where Where did you guys get
• 1:23:51
  Where did you guys get lunch? I mean, you guys are My wife
• 1:23:55
  is actually making fun of me for this because we uh, you know,
• 1:23:58
  Nashville has like literally some of the best restaurants in the country, and we're
• 1:24:03
  in East Nashville, which is where we used to live, and we love
• 1:24:06
  it there. There's so many great restaurants. And we are gonna meet at
• 1:24:13
  joy Land, which is an amazing burger places. This world class chef named
• 1:24:17
  Sean Brock that owns it. I know him through the guitar community. But
• 1:24:25
  we were going to beet there and then Matt was like, Hey, can
• 1:24:27
  we meet somewhere? Can we do something like a little more healthy leaning?
• 1:24:29
  And I was like, oh sure, And we literally met at the grocery
• 1:24:31
  store is called Turnip Truck, so it's kind of like a small it's kind
• 1:24:36
  of like a local whole foods. So so we literally just met at the
• 1:24:42
  grocery store and they have like a little hot bar. I got like a
• 1:24:45
  juice, you know, like I forget what Matt even got. He got
• 1:24:49
  like a burrito and like, yeah, I don't even know what he got.
• 1:24:56
  Yeah, he's he is mostly vegetarian, and he has gotten really into
• 1:25:04
  disc golfing. He goes almost every single day. And I've gone with him
• 1:25:09
  a few times when I've been visiting Nashville, and wow, those are the
• 1:25:13
  only times that I've ever been disc golfing is with him, and I just
• 1:25:15
  try to like not slow the group down. That's like my main goal.
• 1:25:20
  He's gotten really into the disc golf thing, and yeah, I don't know,
• 1:25:26
  it's a I'm really looking forward to making some new music with him.
• 1:25:30
  Oh so we could maybe expect some new music from Linka. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:25:35
  We're literally trying to figure out like the how to do it at this
• 1:25:40
  point, like how to approach it, how to record it, how to
• 1:25:44
  write it, how to even be in the same room with a drummer,
• 1:25:46
  and everything feels like there's a little bit of a high degree of difficulty.
• 1:25:50
  We had a little rehearsal space that was in the basement of this old church
• 1:25:56
  in Nashville, and we literally got like gentrified out of it. Were we
• 1:26:00
  had taken this old choir room that was you know, as friends with the
• 1:26:03
  pastor, and we had taken this old choir room that was just had junk
• 1:26:08
  in it, and we cleaned it all out. We threw away all the
• 1:26:11
  junk, and they were letting us rehearse down there. And now it's like
• 1:26:15
  this kind of like boogie co working in space, and it just wouldn't be
• 1:26:19
  the right fit for us to rehearse there. But now we're actively looking for
• 1:26:23
  a rehearsal space. We're actively looking for trying to figure out how to move
• 1:26:29
  forward, you know, because Matt Matt just played me a bunch of songs
• 1:26:31
  that he's been working on and they're they're great, you know. I think
• 1:26:34
  it's as maybe some of his best stuff, and I'm excited to move forward
• 1:26:41
  with it. Yeah, that's that's very fantastic to hear. When we talked
• 1:26:44
  to John, it wasn't sounding like that was going to be something that was
• 1:26:46
  going to happen, And that's that's that's wonderful to hear. Man Well,
• 1:26:50
  who knows. Yeah, I mean, it's we got to figure it out.
• 1:26:53
  A lot of the songs that he just showed me were kind of a
• 1:26:57
  little bit like orchestral leaning but very cool. It was hard to um,
• 1:27:08
  it was hard for me to hear like what a traditional drum kit would do,
• 1:27:12
  and a lot of the songs that he was and that's what I mean
• 1:27:14
  by that, But it's uh, I also really want to make some like
• 1:27:18
  just rock music, just loud amps and guitars and drums, and I almost
• 1:27:27
  imagine, like, um, you know, Deathbed was like a very theatrical
• 1:27:30
  um yeah, yeah, story driven song. I imagine like Reliant Ka could
• 1:27:34
  do a super cool, like rock opera kind of scenario. Yeah, that
• 1:27:40
  we've talked about that. We've talked about doing concept records and double albums.
• 1:27:45
  And Matt has actually written multiple songs in the Deathbed character, in like that
• 1:27:51
  life and in that kind of family tree of that character from the deathbed song
• 1:27:59
  and that we've always we've always talked about it. Yeah, team in an
• 1:28:01
  album. But we're like, is that even cool? Is that too much?
• 1:28:04
  Is that you know whatever? But that's super cool. Yeah, so
• 1:28:09
  someday maybe, you know, we'll see someday try to figure out what's next.
• 1:28:12
  Awesome. Uh, Matt, it's been absolutely wonderful to have you.
• 1:28:15
  We have taken far too much of your time. Um, you are a
• 1:28:20
  scholar, a gentleman, a kind heart, a genuine soul and uh we
• 1:28:26
  we love your music. We love your guitar playing. We love everything that
• 1:28:30
  Reliant K has meant to Mason and I and to everyone else who has made
• 1:28:36
  it or sorry that has made Reliant K. You know, in their their
• 1:28:40
  Spotify wrapped year after year after year, even even though the last album came
• 1:28:45
  on two sixteen. This it's just it's an incredible thing. I hope you
• 1:28:49
  understand just how much poll you have with your with your fan base, because
• 1:28:55
  it is a massive one. Oh well, thank you. Yeah, we're
• 1:28:59
  excited to do stuff. We're excited to find more ways to uh connect with
• 1:29:05
  our fan base that that feels easy, and maybe trying to think of ways
• 1:29:11
  to allow more direct communication and contact and really more of our day to day
• 1:29:19
  than and we're trying to keep it off social media. So that is something
• 1:29:25
  that's another that's another thing that we're working on, h that I think it
• 1:29:30
  would just I think would just be really fun, fun for us, and
• 1:29:33
  I think it could be something that could be kind of meaningful to some people.
• 1:29:39
  So absolutely love it, love it. Thank you so much, Matt.
• 1:29:44
  Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Mmmm