Latest / onefjef / Faith, The Warped Tour & Real Life with Tim Waters

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Faith, The Warped Tour & Real Life with Tim Waters · onefjef

0:01
We lived on 5 per diems per member.
0:03
Jesus Christ.
0:04
Our tour bus would stop at a Flying J with an attached Wendy's and we would We
0:12
would get out and file with guys that I had, I remember my career was two people
0:18
in front of me in line at a Flying J. He's a singer for a band called MXPX.
0:22
Like I had a poster of them on my wall.
0:23
Like all these bands, huge bands, in line.
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Why are these And guess what?
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Spoiler alert.
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90 percent of these bands had a 5 per meal budget.
0:40
This is episode 44 of onefjef.
0:44
44 shows up in subtle ways.
0:45
It's the molecular weight of carbon dioxide, the air you're constantly
0:49
cycling, and a piano has 44 white keys shaping how music is laid out.
0:53
In Japan, it can feel unlucky since four can sound like the word for
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death, so 44 doubles that association.
1:01
And really, its pull comes from us.
1:03
Our brains latch onto repeating numbers like 44, turning simple patterns
1:08
into something that feels meaningful.
1:10
I keep thinking about getting rid of that number thing.
1:13
At the beginning.
1:15
But then I'll be talking to somebody and they'll be like, I like it.
1:18
So it remains in.
1:20
For now.
1:21
We shall see what happens when the new season begins.
1:24
Whenever the new season begins.
1:26
When does the new season begin?
1:28
Anyway, hello my parasocial friends.
1:31
I hope you're thriving, as always.
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I am not thriving, but I'm doing okay.
1:41
I played pickleball here in Mexico City a couple days ago, and I was not good.
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So bad, in fact, that my partner was telling me how to play, which,
1:52
honestly, I found to be a bit obnoxious.
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But he was quite good, so, okay.
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Anyway, after a few embarrassing games, I was talking to this guy And trying
2:04
to justify the sorry state of my game.
2:08
And he was like, yeah, the ball floats differently at this altitude.
2:12
It takes some getting used to.
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And I was like, whoa, okay.
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And it turns out this is true.
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Significantly.
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So we're at like 2, 250 meters here in Mexico city.
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And yeah, I'm using meters because I'm in Mexico city.
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And also because feet and inches, it's stupid.
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It's stupid.
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Anyway, the air's a lot thinner, and that thinner air makes the ball go faster,
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it makes it float longer, and it makes it go out of bounds more often, and it
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makes a person who's used to playing at basically ground level suck at it.
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Because I remember thinking like, what's going on?
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Why can't I hit anything in bounds?
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Why am I so terrible?
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I'm not this terrible in Ohio.
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But now we have the culprit.
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It's the elevation.
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It explains everything about my poor play.
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How long I can use this as a justification has yet to be determined,
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but for now, I am running with it.
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And also, in case you're wondering, pickleball in Spanish is pickleball.
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You're welcome.
3:24
My guest today is someone who I don't think has ever played
3:27
pickleball, but he has played in my poker game, and he has played On
3:34
the Warped Tour, which is honestly way cooler, his name is Tim Waters.
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Tim Waters is a Columbus, Ohio based vocalist, songwriter, and producer
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who got his start fronting the pop punk band Nothing Less, which
3:50
played the band's Warped Tour.
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He later became the frontman and production force behind We Are the Movies.
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A band that earned a spot on Alternative Press Magazine's Bands
4:00
to Watch list in 2020, and built a following through extensive touring,
4:04
sharing stages with Sum 41, sleeping with Sirens, and State Champs.
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Outside of performing, Waters runs Radio City Records, a Columbus studio
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where he has produced and shaped the sound of numerous regional artists.
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Tim and I talk about how we met at length in this episode,
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so I won't recount that here.
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But he's another one of these Rare humans who I immediately connected with.
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As if we'd been friends for years, and it's kind of been
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like that with us ever since.
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I honestly didn't see Tim as often as I would have liked to
4:40
when I was living in Columbus.
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He's got kids and, uh, he's got a full time job at a multinational
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corporation and all this stuff, and for a while I didn't know if
4:50
I'd get to see him before I left.
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But I'm so glad that I did because that's when we recorded this podcast.
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It was about two weeks before I left and I had taken down my podcast studio.
5:02
So we recorded it in my living room using these wireless lav mics.
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That I got for Christmas.
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So it doesn't sound quite as good as this does, but it still sounds good.
5:18
And you get some atmosphere, like the clinking of the ice
5:21
and the drinks and so forth.
5:22
So maybe that adds a little je ne sais quoi to the interview.
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Me saying, I really enjoyed this conversation with blank before every
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interview is kind of becoming a cliche.
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A me cliché, a meche, if you will, but it's true.
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But for this one, it's more true, I guess, because Tim and I really
5:47
just have good conversation.
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Maybe it was because we were just sitting in the living room, too,
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but this conversation just kind of went all sorts of different places.
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And I learned a lot about Tim and his early semi rockstar days.
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Thank you for listening.
6:07
Thank you for being here.
6:10
Here's Tim Waters.
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See, I always imagine when I think podcast, I think, like, you have your
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headphones on like you're in a radio room.
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Yeah, yeah, and that's more fun, but I've already kind of taken that down.
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Yeah, you had your chance.
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Anyway, Tim, here with Tim.
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Um, Tim's, uh, Last name is God, what is Tim's last name?
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How did I forget your last name?
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I'll get it.
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Redacted.
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Waters.
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Why, I knew, I didn't, you know why I didn't remember that?
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Because my best friend when I was, uh, in, uh, young, very young, in my, on
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my street, his name was Jason Waters.
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Maybe what you're, maybe you're related to him.
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No shit.
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And he lives in Columbus, but we have not once seen each other since I've been here,
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because he's, has a different life now.
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So, I, but I did run into his sister at a hair salon many years ago.
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Anyway, that's not who's here right now.
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Tim Waters is here.
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Uh, Tim Waters is, um, a very good friend of mine.
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This is the last time we may see each other for a long time until he
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comes to Mexico and, um, visit to me.
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And we get the tacos that make your brain reconsider the idea of a deity, of a God.
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Yeah.
7:20
Yes.
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Um, And we're sitting in my living room using the wireless
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lavalier mics, which is, uh, I don't think I've done this before.
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I have not done this.
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I don't think I've done this.
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I have not.
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I did it in a bar last night with another friend of mine in O'Reilly's.
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And it worked out?
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Yeah, because it's got good noise cancellation.
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That's wild.
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I don't really want to have to edit this this much, but I'm
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already going thinking about it.
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I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to edit some of this already.
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Goddammit.
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Son of a bitch.
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Um, anyway, Tim, tell me about Tim Waters.
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Tim waters.
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Oh God.
7:54
I don't know.
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You were born in Alaska then?
7:55
I was born in Anchorage, Alaska.
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Yeah.
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Yep.
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In the summer of 82.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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My dad was born in Alaska before it was a state.
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It was the territory of Alaska.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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What do they call that?
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What did they call it?
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I think it was actually known as like tent city or something.
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There's gotta be a name for those people who were like originators
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or originalists or something.
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Colonists?
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Colonist something.
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Yeah.
8:19
Yeah.
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That might be derogatory nowadays.
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Oh yeah.
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What's, so what was it, like growing up in Anchorage, Alaska?
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Cold.
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I get that.
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Probably cold.
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So it was cold.
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A lot of mosquitoes.
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Dark a lot of the time and then light a lot of the time.
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Yeah.
8:37
Yeah.
8:38
Yeah.
8:38
So I was born in Alaska and then when I was really little I ended
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up moving to the Pacific Northwest.
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Um, a little baby.
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Okay, so you don't really remember that much.
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The last time I saw my dad, I was five.
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Okay.
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Before I met him again.
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Right.
8:54
But you didn't spend a lot of time in Alaska then?
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No, it was, it wasn't very long.
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Right.
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And then, um, lived in, uh, the Everett, you know, Seattle area, Pacific Northwest.
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Always raining.
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Lived in a little town called Coos Bay, Oregon.
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Always reading.
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Koosbay?
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Koosbay.
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Koosbay, all right.
9:12
Koosbay.
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Koosbay.
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It's a town so small that on the map we were Koosbay slash North Bend, which
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is the other small town next to us.
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Well, it was so small.
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Yeah, they have an airport now, though.
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Just call it Koos Bend.
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Koos Bend.
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Because they could make it easy for everybody.
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But then you can't have high school rivalries.
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Oh, right.
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You guys hated the North Bend?
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Yeah, the North Bend Bulldogs.
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We were the Marshfield Pirates, because they never updated the high school name
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to match the town name when that updated.
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Oh, it was Marshfield before it was Coos Bend.
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Yeah, it was one of those things where you have like, you know, a
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handful of small little townships back before civilization, and then
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they all like, incorporated as a town.
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The good old days.
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Coos Bay, North Bend, is actually the, um, I learned this, A long time ago,
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so grain of salt, but I believe it is the, um, one of three natural deep water
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ports on the Pacific, uh, ocean on the U.
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S. San Francisco, Seattle, and Coos Bay.
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That sounds about right.
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It was a shipping town.
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Oh, all right.
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And logging.
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Those giant barges that you see?
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Yeah.
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Imagine filled with logs.
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Cut down all the trees, yeah.
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Oh yeah, yeah.
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I remember being really little when we first moved there.
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I was like 10 years old.
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Yeah.
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Um, and we were driving, my stepdad who was from there, um, that's why we moved
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there, uh, we were driving through, like, the hills and everything I was told
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was like, oh, you know, it's beautiful.
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Everyone wanted to just talk, like, my mommy, she was very excited to move there.
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She was like, oh, it's beautiful.
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It's so green.
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It's so green.
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And we drove through, and I can still close my eyes and picture
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it to this day, we drove through these hills, and it was just stumps.
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As far as you could see, I mean like as far to the horizon were just these little
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hills popping up covered in stumps.
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Beautiful.
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And it was so, and you know, like they, they replanted.
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Sure.
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Yeah, I mean, that's good, but it's not gonna be the old trees though.
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My stepdad who grew up there, Um, I remember him even at that age.
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He was like, oh, yeah, those liberals are coming in here making us plant new trees.
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Oh, God forbid.
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Yeah, and I'm like 10 thinking well, yeah, shouldn't you?
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Right, well, you know why Iceland is so barren.
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It's because the Vikings came in and cut down all the trees and
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they can't even like plant new trees because the wind is so harsh.
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So the trees don't really take.
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So it's a lot of, it's just barren.
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And because the Vikings came in wanting to build other ships to
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Viking it up, it probably like shifted the entire climate for sure.
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You know, and everything.
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That's why liberals coming in, planting their new , God forbid we plant new trees.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Uh, I mean, they could call it, they could rename it Stump stump town.
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Stump stump something.
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Yeah.
12:09
You know, that'd be a good name of a bar stump.
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I mean, isn't there a, like a guy with a hook?
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Oh, it's STAs Coffee.
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It's not Stumps Coffee.
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There's gotta be a Stumps coffee somewhere.
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Like a guy with one leg?
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You know, my, my high school, one of my high school English teachers,
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we actually called her Old Stumpy.
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Oh, why'd you call her that?
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Because she did, had one missing leg?
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She was missing an arm, and it was a meat grinder accident, and she was very open
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with it, and she was an awesome teacher.
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I don't remember her at all.
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She ever talked about every class you told us about the meat grinder accident?
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No, but like, when I get my arm caught in a meat grinder,
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day one, she was like, yep.
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The rumors are true.
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When I was a kid, my, you know, we had a butcher shop or whatever,
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and I fell into the meat grinder.
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Um, and this is what I'm working with now.
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Anyway, what did she teach?
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English.
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Creative writing.
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So she'd be like, okay, and Macbeth in this part here, like
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the accident that I had with the meat grinder, uh, is also, yeah.
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Maybe.
13:07
Related to every single book that you're reading.
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Yeah.
13:11
We had a teacher in my school, Mrs.
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Wilder was the English teacher, and everybody liked her, but she was, she
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would, she would be drunk sometimes.
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No shit?
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Like actually drunk at school?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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People talked about it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, she just seemed eccentric, but then you're like, oh yeah, she was drinking.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Little Teacher's Lounge.
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Did you take Spanish in high school?
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No, unfortunately I didn't.
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I wish I had because it would be a lot more easy.
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Right now I took French, which Yeah.
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Oui, je parle français un peu, mais it's useless in Mexico.
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Yeah, I wish I'd learned Spanish when I was young, but now I'm trying to
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learn it as an older person and it's very hard to acquire a language when
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you're, you know, above 45 or 50.
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Yeah, they say the best time to learn is like before the age of five or when your
13:52
brain is malleable yeah yeah before but uh we'll do the best we can yeah um perdón
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solo hablo un poco espanol hold up one one more time slower perdón solo espanol
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excuse me i speak a little spanish i only speak a little spanish i only speak
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a little solo which is the only oh solo okay right i mean uh perdón yo hablo un
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poco espanol would be I speak a little bit, I speak a little bit of Spanish.
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I don't, I'm probably already screwing that up, but I can
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say, I'm getting better at it.
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Una mesa por tres personas, por favor.
14:35
Oh, bueno, bueno, si.
14:38
Gracias.
14:39
That was the extent of my Duolingo learning.
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Right.
14:42
I've been doing Duolingo.
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I got a 428 day streak right now.
14:47
Is that the longest streak you've ever had, or is that the only
14:49
streak I've ever had, yeah.
14:50
Okay.
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I just started Duolingo when, before I went to Mexico the first
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time, and I just kept it up.
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If you, if you don't keep it up, the whole thing unravels, I've learned.
15:00
My experience is not unique.
15:01
Oh, it unravels?
15:01
Yeah.
15:02
Like I was hardcore about, uh, Duolingo.
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I was like even doing like, you know, the pronunciation exercises and stuff.
15:09
I'm like, I'm gonna learn this.
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I'm gonna like, you know, I, I took a year of high school Spanish.
15:13
Did you do professional where you can actually do the AI that they have now?
15:16
Were you using that?
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Or is that, this is earlier than that?
15:18
It was a couple years ago.
15:19
Okay, they have AI now.
15:20
You can have a conversation, but I don't pay the extra money for that.
15:22
Yeah, no, don't.
15:24
Um, they, fucking AI.
15:27
They, they, now all I can think of is AI.
15:33
I mean, AI for language learning is actually pretty effective.
15:37
Like, it's not terrible.
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Like, you can, I'll talk to the chatbot sometime and be
15:40
like, hey, can you help me?
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And it'll be like, yeah, blah, blah.
15:42
But then I'll pronounce things.
15:43
It doesn't, it can't pick up on pronunciation nuances.
15:46
Like, it doesn't get that.
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So it's like, I can say something, I'll be like, so if I say, yo hablo un taco
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por favor, and it'll be like, perfect.
15:54
Yeah, I'll be like, yeah.
15:55
I started gaming the system at the end before I lost my streak.
15:59
You can buy streak freezes.
16:01
I'm gonna pay for it.
16:02
No, well, you can use the gems that you get those gems and you can use those
16:06
Yeah, I've done some of that Yeah when I hit when I finally hit the end of my
16:10
streak and I didn't have any of the gems or whatever to You know, the end of the
16:14
road, I was like, oh, I guess I'm done.
16:17
Cool.
16:18
There was no more dopamine.
16:19
There was no more trying to sustain it.
16:22
So sustaining that, it's like carrying that lottery, that winning lottery ticket
16:26
across your, you know, your driveway.
16:29
It's terrifying.
16:31
And that is what motivated me to keep going was the fear of losing that streak.
16:35
And once I lost it, it was, I was done.
16:38
I'm like, this is a reasonable amount.
16:40
It wasn't about learning Spanish at all.
16:42
Well, I mean, that's the psychological hook.
16:45
It's about the Spanish, but for my brain and the little addictive talons
16:51
that it gets in there Oh, no, that's it was purely the don't lose your streak
16:57
Oh that works that stuff works for me to a degree that is almost unhealthy
17:00
like with the I got an Apple watch and like I Close my rings every single day.
17:07
I always close my rings like I went through over the summer I didn't know
17:11
because I was traveling and stuff But like for the last four months I've closed
17:14
my rings every day and it's not an easy thing to do like but I you know Yoga
17:18
and whatever and I got but yeah, I'm upset but it helps me keeps me in shape.
17:22
So whatever works whatever works.
17:24
Yeah
17:26
Yeah, I don't know that I would Completely give up if I lost my streak on Duolingo,
17:31
but I have two streak freezes left.
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So I'm not going to, yeah, once I get to Mexico, maybe it'll change,
17:38
but, um, you'll have the perfect reason to not pick it back up.
17:41
You know, I'm already here.
17:42
I'm immersed.
17:43
What better way is there to learn the language?
17:45
Yeah.
17:46
I don't know.
17:46
It's good.
17:47
It doesn't really, I don't even know how much it teaches you.
17:49
It really more helps you with vocabulary as opposed to actually like real world
17:54
speaking situations is the thing.
17:56
And now there's so many, Apps that are trying to teach you Spanish.
17:58
Like now, since I, the algorithm now knows that I'm trying to learn
18:01
Spanish and probably knows I'm going to Mexico, so I, my Instagram is flooded
18:05
with Spanish stuff all the time.
18:06
It's nutso.
18:08
Um, and I'm even getting, I don't know how this has happened, but
18:12
on podcasts now, when I listen to them, I'll get Spanish commercials.
18:16
I'm like, how did this happen?
18:18
Like, how does it know?
18:19
Like, commercials in Spanish, commercial breaks in Spanish, because everywhere
18:22
you go, they change the commercials, you know, if you're in, you know,
18:25
but now I'm literally getting, I'm in Columbus, and I started getting
18:27
Spanish commercials like three weeks ago, and it's like, how does it know?
18:31
How does it know?
18:33
It knows.
18:34
Uh, or maybe it's just, yeah, I don't, I don't know.
18:37
It is a little bit creepy.
18:39
Um, anyway, so then you, um, you were a child.
18:43
You grew up and you started you, your music stuff.
18:45
When did this happen?
18:46
When I was 15 years old.
18:47
Um, when I was 14 years old, I discovered Green Day.
18:54
Oh, I've heard of them.
18:55
My, uh, my buddy Dookie, was it before Dookie?
18:58
Pre Dookie?
18:58
Um, insomniac was the first one I heard.
19:01
Oh, that's pre pre Dookie?
19:02
No, it was after.
19:03
Oh, that's after Do.
19:04
Oh, wow.
19:05
So I, yeah, I came into it a little late, like, I don't even remember.
19:08
Insomnia.
19:09
What's a song?
19:09
Off Insomniac?
19:10
Um, I'm having trouble trying to sleep.
19:14
Dun dun, dun dun.
19:17
Oh, yeah, that's a good song.
19:18
That's the big hit from that one.
19:19
Dun Yeah.
19:21
That's actually a good song.
19:22
Yeah.
19:22
But Dookie, that was a classic.
19:24
Oh, yeah, that was great.
19:26
One of the best.
19:26
That became my favorite album once, my buddy, so I didn't have That's
19:30
like five hits from that album.
19:31
It's crazy.
19:32
Yeah, yeah.
19:34
Um, I went from not having a CD player to, we did have a CD player in the house,
19:38
but I had a very sheltered upbringing, so if it wasn't, like, Christian
19:44
music, it wasn't allowed in the house.
19:46
You were raised Christian?
19:47
Like, hardcore Christian?
19:47
Oh, super hardcore.
19:48
Oh, really?
19:49
Oh, wow.
19:50
Super hardcore.
19:50
Like, how hardcore?
19:53
If I didn't go to church on Sunday morning, I was grounded
19:56
until I went to church.
19:57
But you weren't going every day, though.
20:00
No, no, no, no.
20:01
I went twice a week.
20:02
What denomination?
20:03
Like, what was the label?
20:05
The non denominational community church type thing.
20:10
Yeah, I got grounded for not, for ditching, for skipping church.
20:14
Did you get grounded until the next Sunday?
20:16
No, they caught me because they would let me drive to church.
20:19
I used to have to go with my parent, my mom.
20:21
My dad didn't go to church, but I used to go with my mom.
20:24
And then once I learned how to drive, they would let me go by myself.
20:27
And I was like, I don't want to go to church by myself.
20:28
I don't want to go to church.
20:29
So I would go to the record store and just hang out there for an hour.
20:31
Wait, so they trusted you to go to church on your own and not with them?
20:37
They weren't even at the church?
20:38
Her.
20:38
Me and my mom.
20:39
My dad didn't go.
20:39
Yeah.
20:40
Yeah.
20:41
But yeah, they, they expected I was gonna go to church and I
20:43
went to the record store instead.
20:44
My generation best record store in Cleveland, Ohio for many years.
20:47
And I would just spend an hour there.
20:48
I spent so much time in a record stores when I was a kid, but, uh, and then
20:52
they needed the car, so they went to the parking lot of the church.
20:55
They couldn't find the car, and then they, they went to the record store
20:57
and they, they found the car and then I got grounded and had to walk home.
21:01
And Jesus was mad.
21:03
Jesus was pissed.
21:04
Uh, pissed off.
21:04
Mm-hmm . But he understood, 'cause Jesus is a cool guy ultimately.
21:07
And he understood music.
21:08
He's like, I get it buddy.
21:09
Yeah.
21:10
My parents didn't understand.
21:11
Jesus is the reason I'm an atheist.
21:14
What does that mean?
21:15
And so, and I, when I say atheist, I mean it loosely because I'm, I feel
21:21
like I'm a very, like, I'm open to all sorts of possibilities, right?
21:25
Uh, but when I was growing up in the church, like, so I had a very sheltered
21:29
upbringing where I had to learn to be a duplicitous and be that good Christian
21:36
boy at home and then go to school or hang out with my friends and be myself.
21:40
And the thing is, that they used.
21:45
This was really popular in the 90s, was to have some, like, recovered,
21:50
troubled teen come to a youth group or church and give his testimony or
21:55
witness or whatever it's called, right?
21:58
And I noticed, when I was a teenager, that literally all of the, like, the
22:05
coolest thing you could do at church was to be, like, a bad kid that finds Jesus.
22:13
Right.
22:14
Right.
22:14
And I remember when I was, uh, 17 years old.
22:19
And my youth group decided that their age bracket stopped at 17
22:25
and I could no longer attend.
22:28
I was like, holy shit.
22:30
I was essentially excommunicated from that community that I had become
22:35
so embedded in because I was so involved in the youth group aspect
22:40
that like I aged out of it, right?
22:41
Oh, that's wild.
22:42
Um, and I, I remember feeling so just like rejected in a way.
22:48
And I was, I had a studio apartment.
22:52
I was 18.
22:52
It wasn't 17.
22:53
18, that makes more sense, right?
22:54
Oh, whatever.
22:55
Yeah.
22:56
Um, but I had a studio apartment at the time.
22:59
This is summer right after I graduated at 17.
23:01
And, uh, I was walking by the church from my job bagging groceries.
23:10
I had to walk by the church and it was on Thursday night, youth group night.
23:15
And I saw everyone out there having fun, like playing.
23:19
And, uh, I remember the last conversation I had with them about how, you know,
23:24
it's Yeah, it's totally normal to like, you know age out of these things like
23:28
you'll be going off and living your life and stuff and I thought you know what?
23:34
Fuck it.
23:36
All right, God if you're real bring me back I'm gonna be
23:40
doing my own thing for a while.
23:41
Mm hmm.
23:44
Does it do anything?
23:45
Yeah.
23:46
Oh, that's not Jesus's fault That's God's fault.
23:49
I know but it's the uh, I guess that the point I was trying to make is that
23:53
Jesus was so big on The forgiveness, and the second chances, and the, and
23:58
the, sure, the mingling with the Right, everything that the church in America
24:02
generally is against these days, about open mindedness, and treating your
24:05
neighbor as yourself, and all that.
24:06
Yes, and so the best thing that you could do is be like a, uh,
24:12
a delinquent that found Jesus.
24:14
And I was like, it's time to shift into my delinquent chapter.
24:18
So you became a delinquent just in order so you could be cool
24:20
with the Jesus people again?
24:21
Yes!
24:22
Yes!
24:24
Okay, you're starting to get it.
24:25
Okay, I was like, I am going to try and live my life going forward
24:31
as if I never even was introduced to the concept of religion or
24:36
God, because it is so difficult to get that voice out of your head.
24:42
It took years and when I finally did, I rejoiced and I was like,
24:47
hell yeah, I'm an atheist.
24:48
I went on Reddit.
24:50
I was like, yeah, atheism.
24:51
What subreddit did you go on to do that?
24:53
Atheism?
24:53
Atheism.
24:55
Slash atheism.
24:56
It like, it was so freeing.
25:00
And once I finally.
25:01
Did but once I was finally cut free from all that.
25:06
Yeah, I Realized that there is nothing that really could happen to me in my
25:13
life Knock on wood that would bring me into that form of religion again.
25:17
It's religion is the problem It's not the it's the the God stuff doesn't bother me
25:21
so much because the ideas are good It's that the religion screws it up entirely.
25:25
It's like if Jesus came back, I always feel like he'd be
25:28
like, what are you guys doing?
25:30
This is not what I meant at all.
25:32
This is nothing.
25:32
None of this is what I meant.
25:33
I'm going back until you figure it out because this is not, you
25:36
don't reinterpret the Bible.
25:38
It's not like what Jesus meant to say was that we should hate the gays.
25:41
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
25:42
That's not how.
25:43
Right.
25:43
Yeah.
25:43
I think that the teachings of Jesus It's really unfortunate that, like, myself
25:51
and a lot of my friends grew up in that, that overbearing religious household, and
25:59
so we naturally rebel against religion.
26:03
You wouldn't put like the teachings of Jesus on a pedestal because you know
26:07
you kind of group them in your mind like oh Yeah, well, that's kind of
26:09
religion and religion is bullshit, right?
26:11
But the teachings of Jesus like honestly need to be socialized better
26:17
Oh, there's good stuff in there.
26:18
Take all the good shit strip out all the supernatural and I'm sorry I understand
26:23
that's blasphemy and you know burn me for this but strip out all the supernatural
26:28
and And you've got a pretty damn good, like, how to be a decent human.
26:34
Except for turning water into wine.
26:35
That's the only supernatural they should keep in, because that's a good trick.
26:38
And that would make anybody be loved, you know?
26:40
Yes.
26:41
Bing bong, boom.
26:43
I mean, if you're at parties, can you imagine?
26:45
We're out of booze.
26:46
Jesus, do your thing.
26:47
Right.
26:48
Oh, the water's we didn't pay the water bill.
26:51
Oh, we can't even get wine from Jesus this time.
26:54
Sorry, that was a tangent.
26:56
Yeah, I mean, Jesus was the first hippie, really.
26:58
Hated the money stuff, money people.
27:00
He was like, fuck you money people.
27:01
He was like, just everybody be nice to each other and love each other.
27:04
Right.
27:04
And people have taken that and turned it into, uh, gay people are bad and whatever.
27:09
A system of control.
27:10
All the things.
27:10
Yeah, of course it is.
27:11
Yeah.
27:12
Because everything eventually becomes a system of control.
27:15
I don't know if I entirely agree with that, but, but,
27:17
but, but I understand the idea.
27:19
Yeah, yeah, so then the music stuff happened because you listen to Green Day
27:25
and you heard that song Okay, I'm having trouble trying to steal it Didn't yeah,
27:30
I was like, this is awesome before Green Day I I, so I played in, I played in band.
27:38
They were like the first power punk band, really, in a way, weren't they?
27:41
Like the first power pop punk band, really?
27:43
They were like one of the first mainstream, yeah.
27:46
And it's weird, so, you know, every generation still has their thing.
27:50
So I heard Green Day, and to me, Green Day was a completely unique sound.
27:53
I'd never had music resonate with me like that before, and all of a
27:56
sudden, I'm like, oh, this is cool.
27:59
I want, I want to just bathe in this, right?
28:02
But now, looking back, you know, with decades of, of, Experience.
28:07
I can see that Green Day was just like a tiny tweak of the dial from the
28:13
previous seven things before them, right?
28:15
Of course.
28:15
It's just, it's slow iterations.
28:17
We see it as revolutionary because it's new to us.
28:20
Yeah, but I mean, I mean, what would you say that the predecessors of
28:26
Green Day would be like the Clash?
28:28
The Clash.
28:29
But I mean even that was not quite as, like Green Day took the things
28:33
that the punk stuff that had come before and turned it into something
28:37
much more polished and much more radio friendly in a way that was like not,
28:42
was a very new thing at the time.
28:44
And they're still doing it now.
28:44
It's classic rock.
28:45
It's crazy.
28:46
There were a dozen Green Days.
28:49
Playing throughout different little unknown scenes.
28:52
Right.
28:52
And they got lucky.
28:53
And then it's like, who gets to this level?
28:56
Who gets to this level?
28:56
Who gets to this level?
28:57
And then the first person out there to establish that narrative.
29:00
Who got the prize?
29:01
Yeah, they got the prize.
29:02
Yeah.
29:02
And now they own that lane.
29:04
They sure do.
29:05
And then everything else is compared to them.
29:08
Although when they did that song, I hope you had the time of your life.
29:12
That was when I felt like they kind of went off the rails a
29:14
little bit because like that was.
29:15
I fucking hate that song.
29:16
I remember thinking Green Day did an acoustic song.
29:19
Fucking sellouts.
29:20
Right.
29:20
Totally.
29:21
And it was like, oh, this is for high school graduation.
29:23
That's what that's for.
29:24
That's for like the end of high school.
29:26
That's the song they play at every high school graduation.
29:28
I really wanted it to be for my class.
29:31
Yeah.
29:32
Because as much as I hated the song.
29:34
Right.
29:34
But it was Green Day.
29:35
What was the song though?
29:36
I think ours was like, I don't think it was closing time.
29:39
It could have been closing time.
29:41
That's a great song.
29:42
That song was the song of my high school, my college graduation
29:45
that was like happening when I would graduate from college.
29:48
Wow.
29:48
That was a good album.
29:50
What year was that?
29:51
I mean, when did I graduate from college?
29:53
I mean, I'm trying to make a year of the song.
29:56
98, 97, 98. Feeling Strangely Fine was the album, but that guy's a good songwriter.
30:01
He still writes songs for a lot of other artists.
30:03
That's so What, that they write songs for other Yeah, like a good songwriter.
30:10
Gotta make money, yeah.
30:11
They've got credits across the spectrum.
30:13
Right.
30:13
Yeah, if you're a good songwriter, it's hard to be a good songwriter.
30:16
It's funny how many musicians don't even write their own songs, you know?
30:19
I mean, Taylor Swift does.
30:20
Well, at this point Unfortunately.
30:22
At this point, like, Taylor Swift says, I want to record an album,
30:25
or I'm ready to do an album.
30:27
She's already has a nearly infinite supply of songs that are
30:33
vetted and ready to go for her.
30:35
But she writes her own songs though.
30:37
Right.
30:37
Yeah.
30:38
But like, she writes her own songs, other songwriters.
30:45
Of course, yeah.
30:45
With the guy who did the, yeah.
30:46
So she brings the vibe.
30:48
Yeah.
30:48
And they help turn it into something that translates.
30:52
Well, he has, he has the producer, the, the guy from Fun.
30:55
Got that.
30:55
Jack Antonoff.
30:56
Yeah.
30:57
Or whatever.
30:57
Who she should probably drop because she's kind of retreading new
31:01
territory, but he does some good stuff.
31:03
He's a talented guy.
31:04
Um, he's a singer for a band called Bleachers.
31:07
I fucking love some songs by Bleachers.
31:09
I Wanna Get Better is like one of my, it's like an amazing drop anthemic song.
31:15
I love that song.
31:17
The drop is so good in that song.
31:18
Have you listened to the Taylor Swift albums that he produced?
31:21
Yeah.
31:21
It sounds like Bleachers.
31:23
Yeah, kind of.
31:25
Which is awesome.
31:26
That's his strength.
31:28
But he brought like that really cool indie vibe to hers.
31:32
It's a mix with the pop.
31:33
There is a universal of colors or sounds or textures or whatever you have.
31:39
What is around us naturally and what we can create through
31:43
manipulating electricity or whatever.
31:45
And nobody is showing up with new colors that you've never seen.
31:50
No, it's people are finding interesting new color combinations and adding
31:55
their own outliers to You know, throw in something non complementary and
32:01
it jumps out and it's like, whoa, that's new, but it's not, right?
32:05
Like, well, there's only so many chord combinations you can really do, right?
32:08
Exactly.
32:09
Um, and there are, there are even, we're at the point because
32:13
so much music is being generated.
32:14
Oh yeah.
32:15
And then if you were to calculate, you know, The AI generated music on top of it.
32:19
Holy shit.
32:20
We're basically, we've reached critical mass where every melody has been sung.
32:27
Every guitar chord, every chord progression has been played, right?
32:32
So what, now let's talk about like intellectual property law.
32:36
How can you own something that is essentially common because
32:40
what you're really selling.
32:43
Through the art is you're telling your story.
32:46
It's your experience.
32:48
It's your words.
32:49
You're a storyteller Yeah, it may not be your own story, but you're telling
32:54
the story and a good storyteller is captivating for sure so like I've always
33:00
leaned more towards the performance aspect of music versus the I love
33:07
the recordings, but they just make me want to see the band live, because
33:10
it's about that shared experience.
33:12
Although I will say that I think what's interesting about new music,
33:16
which I've started to listen to more than I used to, is that the
33:19
production has really become the thing.
33:22
It's like, since there's only so many chords, and there's only so many songs,
33:27
People are still writing the same songs, but now there's like really interesting
33:30
and unique production stuff going into these songs that are making them sound
33:34
really unique and different and weird in ways that you're like, whoa, I don't
33:38
know how they can do that on stage.
33:39
Frankly, they probably oftentimes can't because it's pre recorded, right?
33:43
But, um, a lot of it is, although Bad Bunny was not pre recorded.
33:47
And if you saw Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl show, the first time they'd done
33:50
the Super Bowl show live, really.
33:51
I didn't even know the Super Bowl was happening.
33:53
No.
33:54
Every year I go to Vegas with my dad and we meet up.
33:59
He plays the slot machines and I hang out drinking, um, free beers.
34:04
Right.
34:04
I got so busy just with, honestly, I just like got caught up in this weird twilight
34:10
swirl of, is the world collapsing?
34:12
So I didn't really process the things around me.
34:13
And I was like, okay, I'm going to do this.
34:15
I'm going to I'm still kind of there and So I didn't end up going and then Joanna
34:23
was like, oh the Super Bowl is on what?
34:26
So she put it on and I saw I saw part of the half I didn't watch any I didn't
34:31
watch a single full play of the game.
34:32
The game was horrible.
34:33
Yeah, it usually it I mean, honestly, this was one of the worst Super
34:37
Bowls I've ever seen in my life.
34:38
I didn't see a single Super Bowl commercial Oh, the Super
34:41
Bowl commercials were half AI.
34:42
It was crazy.
34:43
That was the weird part about the Super Bowl.
34:44
AI companies?
34:45
Both.
34:46
Both.
34:46
Both.
34:47
Yeah, it was nuts.
34:48
Yeah.
34:49
But Bad Bunny, I'll say this, like, I've watched a lot of Super Bowl halftime
34:51
shows and I, most of them don't care for, you know, I find the pre recorded
34:56
thing really to be problematic.
34:57
Yes.
34:58
But this, this was live and it was flawed and he, you know, his voice
35:02
isn't perfect, but like, it was joyful.
35:04
And I was like, this is exactly what we need right now.
35:07
But don't get me wrong, The NFL is a, you know, an evil, you
35:11
know, money making organization.
35:12
This is a very cynical move to basically get the audience that the NFL wants.
35:17
But whatever it was, I can separate myself from it to say I watched that Super Bowl
35:21
halftime show and I felt joy in my heart.
35:23
And I was like, that is all we need.
35:25
That's what music is for.
35:27
It's to make you feel something, to help you feel something.
35:29
For sure.
35:30
Yeah.
35:30
To like surface And if you don't understand the language, it's even
35:33
better because you think he's saying something more interesting than he is.
35:36
And the reality is he was just saying things like, I have so many
35:38
girlfriends, girlfriends, girlfriends, so many girlfriends, girlfriends.
35:41
I'm going to take them to the VIP room, girlfriends, girlfriends.
35:45
I don't want to know the words.
35:46
I just want to hear this vibe.
35:47
That's all I want.
35:48
Yeah, that's dope.
35:50
I have exciting news.
35:51
Two days ago, I got a new Patreon subscriber.
35:55
You know who you are, John.
35:59
I won't use your last name.
36:01
Thank you for signing up, John.
36:02
While I am extremely grateful to have another Patreon subscriber, as
36:06
always, I am very excited for the day when I get a Patreon subscriber
36:11
that I do not know, personally.
36:15
So, if you're listening to this right now, and you don't know me, go immediately
36:20
to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.
36:24
For as little as 5 a month, you, stranger, can make me feel like
36:29
this podcast is on its way up.
36:32
I mean, I know that it is, but I would love to have your help in
36:38
making it tangible in some way.
36:41
So please do go to patreon.com/onefjef
36:45
and sign up.
36:47
And also, if you do know me and you haven't signed up for the Patreon
36:50
yet, what are you waiting for?
36:52
What in God's name are you waiting for?
36:55
If you've been listening to this for as long as I've been making it,
36:57
which is almost a year now, and you haven't signed up for the Patreon,
37:01
number one, I'm angry with you.
37:03
I'm disappointed.
37:05
Maybe you don't have a lot of money.
37:06
That's okay.
37:07
But if you do, and you just haven't done it, come on now.
37:11
I've been giving you free content for almost a year now, and
37:14
you haven't given me anything?
37:17
I'm not trying to guilt you into this, but I'm guilting you into this.
37:20
So get thee to patreon.
37:23
com and sign the fuck up, biatch!
37:28
Sorry, it just felt natural to do that, to say that.
37:33
But I apologize.
37:35
Please go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.
37:39
The end.
37:42
I really enjoyed.
37:43
When did you start your first band?
37:45
So I, I got a paper route.
37:47
Yeah.
37:47
Saved up 50 bucks, 75 bucks.
37:50
I don't know, over the summer.
37:51
Wow.
37:51
And I bought a little student model, electric guitar and a little amp.
37:55
And, uh.
37:56
Taught yourself how to play?
37:57
Yeah, I went and got a little book at the music store that.
38:01
Taught me how to play electric guitar and acoustic guitar electric, but
38:04
it was like a child sized model.
38:06
It was embarrassing like when I Took it to Youth group because they're like,
38:13
hey, does anyone want to be in the band?
38:15
And I was allowed into the band because the guy felt so bad for
38:18
me He was the first thing we did was he took me to a pawn shop and
38:20
he bought me a 50 guitar Right.
38:23
It was a decent one and that was awesome.
38:25
Um, what color what color was this black?
38:27
All right, that's cool.
38:28
Yeah every You Every guitar I have ever owned, besides one that
38:33
I built myself, has been black.
38:36
And that's not intentional.
38:38
It's just, I don't own very many guitars, because to me it's like a relationship.
38:45
Like I feel a connection playing an instrument.
38:49
I like the sound of it.
38:50
I like the feel of it.
38:51
It's a whole thing.
38:54
And then I'm like, it's like art.
38:57
I'm not leaving without that.
38:59
Now that I've experienced it, I need that.
39:01
It's a part of me now.
39:02
Right.
39:02
So, um, That's how I am with all my instruments, and just for whatever reason,
39:07
they just happen to all be sexy and black.
39:09
Plus, people who collect guitars, or anything really, I feel like
39:14
collecting things is a weird, I don't know, I don't really understand.
39:17
At what point does it become a numbers game?
39:19
Exactly, right.
39:20
And how many of these do you play?
39:21
Or do you just have them on your wall?
39:22
Like people who, you know, you go on Reddit, 50 guitars and
39:25
it's like, what are you doing?
39:26
Even to ski collections.
39:27
What are we doing?
39:28
Yeah.
39:29
Like, what do you, like, spend that money on?
39:30
Go travel.
39:31
Go do something.
39:32
You know, what are you, whatever, who am I to judge?
39:34
Maybe people like to, but I feel like collecting is just
39:38
a way of trying to prevent it.
39:40
There's a, there's a relationship between collecting and our
39:42
relationship with death.
39:44
That's very, that I feel is kind of direct.
39:46
That's good.
39:47
Yeah.
39:48
Because we're like being stewards of this memorabilia.
39:52
Right, but you can't take it with you, and that's the end of
39:54
the collecting thing is when you realize you can't take it with you.
39:56
But if we ritualize it and make it really important, then we can
40:00
pass on that memorabilia to the next, to our kids or whatever.
40:04
And in that, that's the same way that our memories and stuff.
40:07
I knew a guy in high school who had, he was a Jethro Tull fan, the biggest Jethro
40:12
Tull fan you would ever meet in your life.
40:14
Yeah.
40:14
You know the man Jethro Tull.
40:15
Yeah.
40:16
Um, the flute, right?
40:18
Flute.
40:19
And that's all that you, you know, the flute.
40:21
Yeah.
40:21
Um, anyway, he had, I think one of the biggest collections of, cause this is
40:26
bootleg days and all that, he had one of the biggest collections of Jethro Tull
40:29
albums and bootlegs probably in the world.
40:31
He had so many, like, and he knew them all.
40:34
Yeah.
40:35
And now he's, he's literally a insane.
40:38
Jethro Tull?
40:38
No, the, the guy who was collecting Jethro Tull, he's, he's an insane person now.
40:42
Yeah, he's, he's gone off the rails I haven't heard from in years.
40:44
The last time I heard from him he left a message on my answering
40:46
machine where he was making cat noises and then talking in French.
40:53
That's fun.
40:54
Yep.
40:55
Drugs or psychotic break?
40:57
Uh, I think it was a combination of both.
40:59
Usually is.
41:00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:01
One leads to the other.
41:02
Yeah, anyway, uh, his dad was the vice principal of the high school too.
41:06
Weirdly enough.
41:06
Yeah.
41:07
Anywho, um, so the first big band was, what was the name of the first big band?
41:12
The first real band?
41:13
Uh, so after high school, I got that studio apartment, um,
41:18
lost my youth group community.
41:19
Which was probably for the best.
41:20
Realized there's nothing here in Coos Bay, Oregon for me.
41:23
So I called my dad and I was like, can I come up to Alaska
41:28
and figure shit out up there?
41:29
And he was like, son, I've been waiting for this phone call,
41:32
which was the, one of the kindest.
41:34
Is that what he said?
41:34
Yeah.
41:35
Yes.
41:35
Oh, wow.
41:35
And it was one of the most emotionally significant moments of my entire life.
41:40
No, that's beautiful.
41:41
You're like 18, 19 years old.
41:43
I was 18.
41:44
Yeah.
41:44
Yeah.
41:45
I moved up there, um, when I was 18.
41:48
And then I love my dad.
41:52
He's such a great person.
41:53
Like, Hey, we all have our flaws, but we sure do.
41:57
That man, he was in my life from 15 years old onward.
42:03
And we had a couple of falling outs where we didn't talk For a few years
42:07
because we're both stubborn assholes.
42:08
Mm hmm, but man, I try to be more like him Um, what's your mom like?
42:15
She's a lovely woman fair enough.
42:20
Love you mom if you hear this Probably not.
42:23
Um, no, no, my mom raised me.
42:25
Uh, my mom raised me as a single mother.
42:27
We lived in the projects What was your dad?
42:29
Was your dad religious at all?
42:31
My dad is Religious in the way that george carlin is religious He's like,
42:39
there's a great ball of energy out there.
42:42
Oh, that's kind of the way that I'm a religious.
42:44
Yeah.
42:44
Yeah.
42:44
And that's how I've found the higher consciousness,
42:47
something, something, something.
42:48
Yeah.
42:48
We're all connected.
42:49
We're all part of it.
42:49
I mean, if you've done anything, you know, hallucinogenic, it's all energy.
42:54
Yes.
42:54
100%. It's all energy.
42:56
And that energy is love.
42:57
And the energy goes somewhere when you die.
42:59
Energy doesn't just disappear.
43:01
Remember when my dad died, we were, we, you know, we had him, we had him burned,
43:04
you know, cremated and all that, and, uh, and I thought, you know, the, you know,
43:10
you burn something and then it's just energy turning into something else that's
43:14
going into the But energy is a constant.
43:16
I'm not a scientist, but I understand that energy is a constant.
43:18
So it's kind of this idea that, where did that energy go?
43:20
It had to go somewhere.
43:21
Mm hmm.
43:22
Um, who knows?
43:24
Who knows?
43:25
And if there's nothing, then that's also cool, because you wouldn't even know.
43:28
He'll be, it's already gone.
43:30
When I was a little kid, we would, um, you know, we had some dogs and
43:35
a couple of them passed away and we would bury them in my grandparents
43:40
backyard and plant a tree on top of it.
43:43
And it was almost like you were like directing that energy into.
43:47
So because they're using the energy.
43:49
Yeah.
43:49
Yeah, right.
43:51
Yeah, and Now that I think about it as a kid there were a lot of
43:57
trees back there Why are there so many dead dogs grandma, right?
44:04
Fido, well your grandpa liked to shoot dogs.
44:07
We didn't tell you that when you were a boy, but my grandpa My stepdad's dad.
44:11
Mm-hmm . Um, I remember I watched Old Yeller at their house.
44:18
Yeah.
44:18
And he just was, he was so, he was a Korean War vet. Mm-hmm . So,
44:26
you know, give him grace.
44:27
But, um, I cried.
44:30
I was so sad.
44:31
I was like, why did they have to kill the dog?
44:33
He like, oh, how can you not cry the movie?
44:34
He's like, I'd do it today if I had to.
44:39
Yeah.
44:39
He's like.
44:40
Gotta face the real world!
44:43
Oh, yeah.
44:46
I saw Koreans in the face when I was out there.
44:49
That was a brutal war, too.
44:51
I mean, they don't talk about how brutal that war was.
44:53
Boy, we bombed the living hell out of North Korea.
44:55
He did not talk about his time in Korea until he was literally on his deathbed.
45:00
He opened up to my stepdad.
45:02
Wow.
45:03
Yeah, and yeah, I heard some secondhand accounts and he was like,
45:06
no, he saw real messed up stuff.
45:08
Yeah, like the korean war is far more dark than people talk about.
45:11
Yeah.
45:11
It was a really disturbing.
45:13
I remember being a kid and um, Asking him about like an army thing.
45:17
I was like, oh like you were in war like that's so cool or whatever
45:21
And he was just stoic and silent.
45:23
He did not talk about it at all At all.
45:25
But how can you like, I mean, I can't imagine having, experiencing that
45:30
kind of, if I got drafted, like I would go to Canada 'cause I could
45:33
not, like my Constitution is not made up to deal with that kind of thing.
45:38
Like I'm not, no.
45:39
Um, but like, people who did it, like, good lord.
45:42
I mean, of course you're.
45:43
You come back from Vietnam and then the people are spitting on you.
45:46
I mean it was, it was the craziest, not just as in Vietnam of course, but still.
45:50
It's the same concept.
45:51
The only people that can even come close to comprehending or understanding your
45:56
experience are people that were there.
45:58
They were there, yeah.
45:59
And that's it.
46:00
Full stop.
46:01
Yeah.
46:01
Like good luck integrating into what is we call normal life,
46:05
which for them is nothing.
46:08
Close to normal.
46:09
Yeah, right once you've been exposed to that like you don't know what you
46:13
don't know and that's for the better and once You've seen some shit.
46:16
Well, nothing is ever the same and it's so pared down like out there I
46:20
would imagine to like you're down to the basics of existence It's life and
46:24
death period like you're gonna you got to kill that guy or that guy's gonna
46:27
kill you and that's it It's gotta be.
46:29
I can't.
46:30
And survival instinct is running the show.
46:32
You're training.
46:33
The reason they drill that shit so hard is because in the moment,
46:37
you will not have time to think.
46:39
You can only react.
46:40
And shoot.
46:41
Yeah.
46:41
And shoot.
46:41
And so that has to be muscle memory.
46:43
That has to be instinct because you're operating in a fight or flight situation.
46:48
Emotion is running the show.
46:50
You're not thinking.
46:51
Yeah.
46:51
And opioids to a degree.
46:52
I mean, if you were thinking, do you really think that if you were
46:56
not a murderer that you could just start murdering people?
46:59
Yeah, no.
47:00
I mean, it's, you've got to do.
47:01
Yeah.
47:02
Yeah.
47:02
Yeah.
47:03
Anyway.
47:03
So your first band, we're going to get to that at some point.
47:06
So I played in, I played, uh, you know, some music in high school.
47:09
Um, We got up to the paper route, got the guitar, did that.
47:13
Right, got that.
47:14
Youth group, learned some chords.
47:16
Yep.
47:17
Cool.
47:19
Actually, I got kicked out of the youth group a year into it.
47:21
We're getting to the band though, we're getting to the band.
47:22
It's because my mom found out that I was also playing secular music.
47:27
Oh, Satan music.
47:28
Yeah, Satan music.
47:28
And well, you can't have two good things.
47:30
No, you gotta play praise music.
47:32
Yeah.
47:32
Yeah.
47:35
And so then I went back up to Alaska and 2018.
47:40
Started a band pretty much immediately.
47:43
What was the name of that band?
47:44
That band was called Nothing Less.
47:46
Oh, that's not bad.
47:47
And we were a little trio, pop punk kind of green day.
47:50
But you know, we were not very good.
47:52
I go back and I listen to it.
47:53
I'm like, it was a vibe, you know.
47:55
But the Anchorage music scene is not flourishing.
47:57
Exactly.
47:58
I mean, Honestly, the Anchorage music scene for the entirety of the
48:03
time I was there and even several years afterwards, very active.
48:07
But name a band that's come out of Anchorage.
48:09
Besides like 36 Crazy Fists or Jewel.
48:12
Jewel, Jewel.
48:13
Yeah, Jewel's the one that he got.
48:14
The only one that I can reckon is Jewel.
48:15
Because that's mainstream.
48:16
The thing about Alaska is that She's such a good poet though.
48:21
Did you read her poetry?
48:21
It's beautiful.
48:22
Jewel.
48:26
Alaska is a bit of a closed community.
48:29
It doesn't matter what's mainstream.
48:31
If it's mainstream in Alaska, it matters in Alaska.
48:33
Right, but you're not breaking.
48:35
Right.
48:36
You know, it's hard to break into the mainstream.
48:37
Yes, yes, yes.
48:38
So we were like a, you know, medium sized fish in a pretty Small ass pond up there,
48:44
played for like a year or two, booked a tour in 2002 down the west coast and back.
48:50
And you're the lead singer.
48:51
Yeah, yeah, I was the lead singer, songwriter, guitarist.
48:54
And what was your big hit?
48:55
Oh, we didn't have a big hit.
48:56
You had one song that everybody liked though.
48:59
The one song that everybody liked that we did a music video
49:03
for was called Record Store.
49:04
Okay.
49:05
And the chorus is literally, I'm in love with the girl at the record store.
49:09
Love it.
49:09
Can I still find this?
49:10
Can I include this in the podcast?
49:11
Um, it's actually floating around on, um, YouTube.
49:16
There's a music video.
49:17
You can send me a link or I'll find it and I'll include it in the podcast.
49:19
Oh my god.
49:20
Okay.
49:33
So we did a tour and that went pretty well.
49:36
We actually had some label interest.
49:38
How far did you go?
49:39
Uh, we went all the way down to San Diego.
49:41
And you're in a van?
49:42
In a van.
49:43
Wow.
49:43
That we blew the headgasket.
49:44
You drove from Anchorage to Alaska to San Diego.
49:47
And back.
49:48
Wow.
49:48
And we blew the headgasket in Fresno.
49:51
What's a headgasket?
49:52
The engine of the van.
49:53
Okay, that's the headgasket.
49:54
And we had to greyhound.
49:58
Down to, uh, to San Diego.
50:01
And then we stayed with, uh, like my girlfriend had family at the time.
50:06
We basically ended up just crashing at places and like spending our
50:10
days in guitar centers and stuff.
50:12
Just, um, you know, just hawking.
50:14
I mean, are you living the rockstar life?
50:16
Like, are you like, you know, drinking, doing drugs, whatever it is, and playing
50:19
gigs at night in these same places and all this, We're playing gigs at night.
50:23
We're partying to this.
50:25
I did, I didn't have a drop of alcohol until I was 23.
50:29
So, okay, before this I was just 100 percent like focused and um, I Yeah,
50:36
it was like, it was all consuming, but there were no lines of people
50:40
coming up to, coming to see us.
50:41
It was like fighting for scraps and just hustling.
50:44
Right, tiny little plans.
50:45
So how much would you get for a particular, like a gig?
50:47
You'd get to play.
50:49
Oh, and you wouldn't get any money at all?
50:50
Sometimes.
50:51
Okay.
50:52
But like, like the door money.
50:54
So here's the reality of music and like touring.
50:57
Most bands are somewhere in between we'd like the hobby to pay for itself
51:03
and we're investing our time now In hopes for a later, later payoff.
51:10
So your tours, if you can do a breakeven tour, you're winning.
51:15
You're winning, right?
51:17
If you can do a breakeven tour and have people come to the shows, like
51:21
how many people would be at your shows?
51:23
For this tour.
51:24
Uh, for this tour, it was since we were from Alaska.
51:27
Right?
51:28
Right.
51:28
So we were hopping on shows with local bands.
51:31
Mm-hmm . And so it was just whoever they would bring.
51:34
But we're talking like the biggest venue we played there was like scully's size.
51:38
Right.
51:39
So we're talking like maybe 200 people, cat.
51:43
But like, there's 50 to 300 people there a night, and it's 100
51:48
percent dependent on their job.
51:50
But you're learning how to do the thing.
51:51
We're learning how to do the thing, and learning that like, I just loved it.
51:55
God, I loved it.
51:56
Yeah, I always wanted to do it.
51:57
I didn't care if I ever made a dime.
52:00
I just, there's something about it.
52:02
No, I always wanted to be a
52:06
So we, uh, we go back to Alaska after that, stars in our eyes.
52:12
Um, we signed a little independent one album deal with
52:17
a label in, uh, San Francisco.
52:21
We went back the summer of 2003 to Oakland, Stout Studios, I
52:26
think it's what it was called.
52:27
It was like a tape machine, like old school.
52:31
And um, we recorded our, our debut full length, released it locally in
52:37
Alaska, and then decided, all right, we've done all we can do in Alaska.
52:42
Let's move to California.
52:44
So they got, and the two guys were still in college.
52:48
Okay.
52:48
And so the plan was we're going to move down to California
52:51
right after we graduated.
52:52
So we did, we moved down.
52:53
Um, and then that summer, uh, Where'd you move to?
52:58
Modesto.
52:59
Wow.
53:00
Cowtown.
53:01
Strange choice.
53:02
Yeah.
53:02
Right.
53:03
The, so we moved to Modesto because the most responsible member of
53:07
the band had a girlfriend that he had met when we were recording
53:13
that happened to live in Modesto.
53:15
Oh, so that's why you have to end up Which was kind of, in the end, uh,
53:19
when we parted ways, it was revealed that essentially we were all just.
53:23
He was gonna do these things anyway, and he was just convincing
53:28
the band to come with him.
53:30
He wasn't investing his own It was a manipulative one, yes, yes, yes, yes.
53:34
Um, so, yes.
53:36
Modesto would not be my choice for a music town in California.
53:40
Right.
53:40
Modesto music scene is not well known.
53:42
No, but it was He convinced us that it was cheap.
53:46
Compared to most places in California, I would say it's probably cheap.
53:49
Yeah, because nobody wants to be there.
53:51
Right, right, right.
53:54
Oh my god.
53:55
Yeah.
53:55
I mean, why don't you go to Sacramento or something?
53:58
It's an amazing town, like, yeah.
53:59
Well, you know, it's it's kind of like how I ended up in Columbus, Ohio.
54:02
The idea is that you're sort of centrally located and So you're two hours from
54:07
Frisco, you're two hours from Sacramento, you're two hours from, well, you're,
54:12
you're way more hours to L. A. Well, whatever, but Modesto, got it all, yeah.
54:17
So we did that, and then we got a little break, um, got invited out
54:21
onto the Warped Tour, uh, in 2005.
54:24
That's big.
54:25
To basically be merch people.
54:27
Oh, okay.
54:29
So this is, this is the reality of it, right?
54:31
It's, we weren't a very well known band.
54:34
Of course.
54:34
We just happened to make the right friends at the right time that were like,
54:37
hey, come out, uh, help us sell CDs.
54:41
And we're like, okay, can we bring our gear?
54:43
And they're like, yeah, sure.
54:43
Sure.
54:44
If you want to haul it around, I'm not going to play it, but yeah, so we did.
54:47
And the very first day that we were there, we played, Oh, on a stage right outside
54:54
of the main gates, like the parking lot stage, which was, that was ran by.
55:01
The bassist for a band called the Ataris.
55:04
Okay.
55:04
Yeah.
55:05
And he was super cool, dude.
55:07
Um, made a lot of good friends that year.
55:09
Uh, we played that stage a handful of times.
55:12
Um, but we also, we were up at 6 AM every day.
55:15
We were selling CDs in the lines.
55:17
We were helping, uh, we were helping set up stages.
55:21
We were just carrying shit.
55:23
We're just being useful.
55:24
But you're networking and meeting people and Right, exactly.
55:27
And just wanting to be a part of it and contribute to this huge thing.
55:30
Like for me, that life I was living that summer, I had made it.
55:34
For sure.
55:35
And we went from, can we bring our stuff?
55:37
Sure, but you're focusing on selling CDs to, um, By the end of it, we were
55:43
in a tour bus and we were the, uh, the everyday main act at the MySpace tent.
55:50
The parking lot act, yeah, yeah.
55:51
We had the conversation with the MySpace people.
55:55
That convinced them to start doing music in their tent.
55:59
Huh?
56:00
Yeah, Jack.
56:00
Was that the guy's name?
56:01
Everybody was friends with Tom.
56:03
I never met Tom, but my, my, uh, my bandmates did.
56:07
They went to Tom's house.
56:08
Wow.
56:09
Yeah.
56:10
Um, nothing less was, uh, in the running to be the first signed.
56:15
band to Myspace Records.
56:18
What happened to Myspace Records, Disney?
56:20
That was, yeah, right, that was 2006.
56:23
Right, right before Myspace started to Yeah, it was, and it was that year.
56:29
So I found out when we got back from that tour in 2005, that we were
56:33
at the number one, the number one slot on the MySpace Unsigned band.
56:37
So they used to have these charts.
56:38
Yeah.
56:38
And it was signed.
56:39
Yeah.
56:40
Unsigned.
56:41
And we were on the unsigned.
56:42
It was just wild and mind, mind boggling because we were
56:45
like out there in the trenches.
56:46
Right.
56:47
Not seeing it.
56:48
Right.
56:48
Didn't even have access to a computer.
56:50
Right.
56:50
Came back, was like.
56:51
Are we a big deal?
56:52
And then things started coming our way.
56:55
Uh, we did castings for MTV.
56:57
They were going to do a reality show about us.
57:00
This band from Alaska comes down and lives the dream.
57:02
No, it's a great story.
57:03
And then I learned that, oh my god, the pseudo pilot, which was
57:09
essentially just interviews, like, like talking head interviews.
57:12
They, they were feeding us not just lines, but entirely fabricated backstories.
57:17
Of course.
57:18
He's like, to sell, oh, to sell this.
57:20
Okay.
57:20
So there's this process where they basically, they make all
57:24
these pitches for shows and then they, you know, see who gets one.
57:28
Yeah.
57:28
So we were one of those that did that.
57:30
That didn't get picked.
57:31
Um, it lost out to something.
57:32
I had a friend who was a PA for MTV, um, unrelated to this.
57:36
Yeah.
57:37
Uh, who did tell us what show got picked?
57:41
It was something along the lines of like, oh, my best friend's mom is hot.
57:44
And what was the of the show that you were gonna be in?
57:47
The working title of the show is Pimp My Band.
57:53
It was the Pimp My Ride.
57:54
And there's no irony there that you're actually kind of pimping yourselves
57:57
out in a way to make this show.
58:01
Oh, dude, they had like this list of requirements.
58:03
They're like, okay, so here's how we're going to do it.
58:05
Here's the arc. The band is going to go from like this really shitty,
58:10
like, so we had to find A garage that was really shitty and run down.
58:17
They just build a set.
58:18
That they could transform into a really nice rehearsal area
58:23
with studio recording equipment.
58:24
Right.
58:25
Like Pimp My Ride type thing.
58:27
And then it would end with us getting to go and open up for like Green Day
58:31
or some big band that we idolized.
58:34
So I remember like we, a friend of a friend of a friend was like, yeah, yeah.
58:38
She has a condo that has, you know, A garage, a detached garage, and then we're
58:43
like trying to figure it out because it's like, well, we don't get the stuff.
58:46
Like, she would get this stuff.
58:48
It's like, okay, can we sell it to like fund another year of
58:52
doing the band thing and shit?
58:54
Because our money, we made money during Warped Tour by selling CDs.
58:58
Right.
58:59
And we lived on five dollar per diems.
59:03
We lived on the, on the Wendy's value menu, right?
59:07
Our tour bus would stop at a Flying J with an attached Wendy's and we would
59:15
get out and file with guys that I had.
59:19
I remember my career was two people in front of me in line, at a Flying J.
59:23
He's a singer for a band called MXPX.
59:25
Like I had a poster of them on my wall, like, like, All these bands, like
59:30
huge bands, I was surrounded by it.
59:33
I was just like a part of that crowd.
59:34
They were just in line.
59:36
Wendy's.
59:37
At Wendy's.
59:38
Rock and roll.
59:39
And guess what?
59:40
Spoiler alert, 90 percent of these bands had a 5 per meal budget.
59:47
You really gotta want it.
59:49
You really gotta want it.
59:50
You really gotta want it.
59:51
It's a sickness, and man, I was Well, I mean also, I think that
59:54
there's a story here about the, you know, the lecherous nature of the
59:58
entertainment industry in general, right?
1:00:01
Yeah.
1:00:01
Because they're paying you five dollars per diem because they can.
1:00:04
Because you're making them money.
1:00:06
Because they know that you want it, and they'll do whatever you can, and
1:00:09
they can get away with paying you garbage just to chase your dream.
1:00:13
Yeah.
1:00:15
Well, it sounds like a remarkable time.
1:00:16
It sounds like, like it was like a time of, like Remarkable highs and
1:00:20
also like profound horrible lows.
1:00:22
Yeah, that was the big high and then it was like this sort of roller
1:00:26
coaster of oh a big opportunity.
1:00:29
Nope, hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait and nothing really happened.
1:00:33
We went for another year or so and it just sort of fizzled.
1:00:36
Uh, 2008 is when we, right.
1:00:38
That was our last Warp tour run.
1:00:40
We only did two weeks.
1:00:42
And, uh, but still, I mean, and yeah, awesome story.
1:00:47
I mean, I mean, we run the Warp Tour for Christ's sake.
1:00:49
It's like, it was huge.
1:00:50
Yeah.
1:00:50
Yeah.
1:00:50
I will say a little capstone for me was, uh, later on I started another band,
1:00:55
which was actually, we did way more stuff.
1:00:57
We were more active.
1:00:58
It was called, we Are the Movies and.
1:01:00
We're all still friends.
1:01:02
Like we, some of my best friends, um, if not entirely my best
1:01:09
friends, but life got in the way.
1:01:12
So we just need that external, like motivation to get back to making music.
1:01:19
Cause the pandemic just wiped everyone out.
1:01:20
Well, it's also hard to, The thing that has to motivate you is doing
1:01:25
the thing itself and not the goal.
1:01:27
Yes.
1:01:27
Because if you, if you're living for the goal of this is that I'm going to
1:01:30
be big or whatever it is, then you're going to be perpetually unsatisfied.
1:01:34
You've got to enjoy this.
1:01:35
Also never be living in the true reality.
1:01:38
Right.
1:01:38
You need to experience, you need to joy.
1:01:40
It's got to be in the moment of the doing the thing itself, the making
1:01:43
the movie, the making the music, the living on doing the work to
1:01:46
whatever it is, making the thing.
1:01:48
And whatever else happens is gravy.
1:01:49
But like, really.
1:01:51
Yeah, that's winning, really, is enjoying the thing itself, enjoying the
1:01:56
creative act itself, as opposed to doing a creative act and planning it to be
1:02:01
bigger than, you know, like, well, we, you know, but most people do that, like,
1:02:06
this is what our brains do as we live.
1:02:08
At least when you're younger, I feel like my brain was always in
1:02:11
a space of like, this isn't life.
1:02:13
Life is coming.
1:02:14
Yeah.
1:02:14
Life is coming down the road.
1:02:15
This isn't the real thing.
1:02:16
Yeah.
1:02:16
Right.
1:02:17
But then actually it was when, after I moved to Columbus, it was like a
1:02:20
year, maybe after I moved to Columbus, I remember realizing I was like in the
1:02:23
backyard of my friend's place and just like drinking beer, sitting around a fire.
1:02:27
And I had, I was like, realized that, oh no, this is it.
1:02:30
This has always been it.
1:02:32
This, me and you sitting here talking right now is, is it, is this is it.
1:02:36
Literally it.
1:02:36
Right, literally it.
1:02:37
And this is the things that, and that's good.
1:02:39
That's okay.
1:02:41
That's life, right?
1:02:42
Yeah.
1:02:42
And to find that is the, I think it's a profound, profound thing.
1:02:45
I mean, it felt profound at the time, and it still kind of does, because I think
1:02:48
it's people spend so much time living for a future or dwelling in the past.
1:02:54
We like to push that boulder up the hill.
1:02:57
Right, the Sisyphean boulder.
1:02:58
Well, we're a race in America, too, and American bullshit mythology is that,
1:03:02
you know, anybody can be a success.
1:03:03
You just gotta He's got to really want it.
1:03:05
But yeah, that's always been the biggest lie of American, you know, the
1:03:09
American mythology has always been.
1:03:12
When I was a kid, uh, we had a Nintendo.
1:03:15
It was a really big deal.
1:03:16
The first one?
1:03:17
The first one.
1:03:17
Me too.
1:03:18
It was awesome.
1:03:20
The silver, the gold Legend of Zelda cartridge.
1:03:22
Oh, I never, I never had that.
1:03:24
Oh, you didn't get the gold one?
1:03:25
Well, you weren't that rich.
1:03:27
We were, we were doing well than you.
1:03:28
We were doing better than you.
1:03:29
Yeah.
1:03:30
My parents got me that for Christmas.
1:03:31
They had some money.
1:03:32
Well, mine was like, my parents kind of like, Kind of got it for themselves.
1:03:36
Oh, they were in the games.
1:03:37
Okay, and so When I did get to play the nintendo It was a really big deal and I
1:03:45
got a game for my for my birthday metroid.
1:03:49
Oh, that was a great game I was too young to really appreciate that game.
1:03:53
It was just really hard and really complex I had to figure that shit out completely
1:03:56
on my own like through trial and error.
1:03:59
This is early struggle part of the podcast frustrating Right?
1:04:03
But in pursuit of something bigger.
1:04:06
Now, I cherished that game.
1:04:08
I hated it.
1:04:09
I won't, if you had Nintendo games lined up and Metroid was
1:04:12
in the list, I would not play it.
1:04:14
I had no connection to joy in that game.
1:04:20
I had connection to struggle.
1:04:22
The struggle and the sense of, I owned this, this was my game, and if
1:04:26
I beat it, that is my accomplishment.
1:04:29
Yeah, but the thing with video games is once you beat it, it's like, Okay.
1:04:33
Now what do I do?
1:04:34
Well, you play it again.
1:04:35
All right.
1:04:35
You try going left instead of right.
1:04:37
All right.
1:04:37
You go faster.
1:04:38
So I went over to this kid's house.
1:04:41
You know, I was a few years older, I think I was in high school and it was like a
1:04:45
new cousin through marriage or something.
1:04:47
Anyway, you know, they were well off.
1:04:51
The kid had a wall of video games, like he, um, they're like, Oh, you and Danny,
1:04:58
whatever, go play in the bedroom while the parents, you know, get fucking zonked.
1:05:03
And this kid had like the whole built in, you know, And it was
1:05:08
like every NES game you could imagine, the Game Genie, everything.
1:05:14
And I remember being so excited, like a kid in a candy store.
1:05:19
And I remember picked up the first one.
1:05:22
I put it in the Nintendo.
1:05:24
It's on.
1:05:25
Sweet.
1:05:25
Oh, this is so cool.
1:05:27
Wait, I don't, how do you, how do you control it?
1:05:31
Right, next one.
1:05:31
This is, all right, anyway, next one.
1:05:33
Right.
1:05:34
And I played a dozen video games for like 30 seconds each, never
1:05:40
able to invest myself into one because there was no scarcity.
1:05:44
And that was this realization that I realized, like, I'd go back to that
1:05:50
moment as an adult and I realized that, and this is, this is almost
1:05:55
like a philosophical question, right?
1:05:57
How is it that I am more happy?
1:06:00
I, I feel more, I don't know if happy is the word, but I feel more
1:06:07
alive and like life has meaning when I'm struggling towards happiness.
1:06:14
A bigger cause than if I am just surrounded in everything I want.
1:06:20
For sure.
1:06:21
I mean, it's like Spotify, really.
1:06:22
It's like when we grew up, when I grew up, it was like we, I would get like, I'd have
1:06:25
enough money for one album and I would listen to the album non stop, non stop.
1:06:29
I'd know the whole album back and forth.
1:06:31
Slippery When Wet was one of the first ones I remember very well.
1:06:34
The Bon Jovi, yeah, Living on a Prayer and all that.
1:06:36
Yeah.
1:06:37
Knew the album backwards and forwards.
1:06:38
Um, but now Spotify is I mean, it's a different experience of music, and it's
1:06:43
wonderful to be able to pay, what, 15 a month to have every song, almost,
1:06:48
from anywhere, but it's also, like, Made the experience of music much more.
1:06:54
I don't know.
1:06:54
It's just it's like when you get every option It's also the scarcity
1:06:58
of choice, you know toothpaste aisles, right in toothpaste aisles.
1:07:02
They try to overwhelm you with choice They got tartar control.
1:07:04
They got whitening.
1:07:06
They got gum control and then they've got one that's got all of them total, right?
1:07:10
It's got all of them.
1:07:10
So like what am I picking like which was it's all the same probably toothpaste But
1:07:14
they've got so many of them And you get paralyzed, you're like, which, I mean,
1:07:17
of course you should get Total, I would imagine, but is Total really the best one?
1:07:21
Or is, like, if I really do want to fix my gums, do I get the gum one?
1:07:24
Because I'm really focused on my gums right now.
1:07:26
Right.
1:07:27
So, I don't know where I was going with that, necessarily, but even, like,
1:07:30
with music, it's like, I rarely listen to an entire album anymore, because
1:07:33
I've got, I mean, I've always been a singles guy, generally, but still, I
1:07:36
rarely listen to a whole album, because you've got every single music that's
1:07:40
ever been, and it's overwhelming.
1:07:42
Yeah.
1:07:43
It's overwhelming.
1:07:44
It's too much.
1:07:45
But you know, the funny thing is that the thing that keeps us struggling is the
1:07:52
idea that one day we'll have everything.
1:07:56
Right, but we already And we won't need to struggle anymore.
1:07:58
Right, but the reality is we already do kind of have everything.
1:08:01
Absolutely.
1:08:01
We've always had everything.
1:08:02
We, we manufacture ways to struggle because we don't have as many naturally.
1:08:09
Yeah, we don't have to run away from animals in the woods or whatever.
1:08:12
Right.
1:08:12
Right.
1:08:13
Right.
1:08:15
So, the way me and Tim met, I should mention, in the podcast is that I was
1:08:20
at a Christmas party for this film group that I've mentioned before in the podcast.
1:08:24
And, uh, Tim had come with his girlfriend at the time.
1:08:27
And, uh, I just started talking to Tim randomly and we immediately
1:08:33
started talking about making
1:08:37
like, I mean, I've never connected with a human being so quickly in my
1:08:40
life because it was like we, we, we just locked into each other and we
1:08:44
just started talking about making this web series about A suicide hotline.
1:08:48
Yeah.
1:08:49
And, you know, this is pretty documented, so you can't take the
1:08:52
idea if you're listening to this.
1:08:54
Yes.
1:08:54
Um, because one day we will do this.
1:08:56
And, um, but yeah, we had this hilarious, and we were laughing.
1:09:00
I, I don't know.
1:09:00
We talked about that for a long time.
1:09:02
Eventually, your girlfriend just wandered away.
1:09:04
Yeah.
1:09:04
And just left us alone.
1:09:06
It was funny because that was the first.
1:09:08
Like film networking thing that I had ever been to.
1:09:11
Right, right, right.
1:09:11
And she took me and I was like, her plus one, I didn't know anyone there.
1:09:15
Right.
1:09:15
And like, so I'm thinking this is gonna be awkward.
1:09:18
Like I'm not even gonna be able to start a conversation.
1:09:21
Right, right.
1:09:22
Well, did you know there was a guy who was suicide hotline guy?
1:09:25
Right, right, right.
1:09:25
We're like pitching shows.
1:09:27
Right.
1:09:28
Dude, I still think that would be a great, I just, I don't know if, I don't
1:09:32
know, I, I don't know if the hard, it'd be a hard sell in this social climate,
1:09:36
the work world we live in right now, it's like, yeah, right, yeah, right,
1:09:39
it's like a, it's like a, uh, like a comedy web series about, uh, uh, illegal
1:09:43
immigrants running away from ice.
1:09:47
Yeah, that would not, that would not go well.
1:09:50
It depends how you spin it.
1:09:52
Yeah, I don't know that you could spin the illegal immigrant one too well.
1:09:55
I think the suicide hotline one could be spun in a way, but they would want,
1:09:59
the studio would buy it, and then they'd be like, you need to have a happy
1:10:01
ending at the end of all these things.
1:10:02
There has to be some sort of a happy thing, and we'd be like, oh Christ, we
1:10:05
have to make this joyful somehow, and it's like, like in my mind, that show is darkly
1:10:10
funny in a way that you really don't want to have to have to redeem it in the end,
1:10:13
but, and you'd have to be like, oh, who are we going to get to be in the show?
1:10:16
It's like, oh, we got to get her, you know.
1:10:19
You don't want it to be successful.
1:10:22
Right.
1:10:22
Chasing the success of anything is what taints it and makes
1:10:26
it less genuine, right?
1:10:28
Yeah.
1:10:29
Like your movie, right?
1:10:31
Right.
1:10:32
It's about that human connection more than it is about the I
1:10:39
don't know, the white balancing.
1:10:41
Well, I also think that being an artist is in many ways like
1:10:45
being, having good taste, right?
1:10:47
And like, like that's what I think a lot of artists have in there.
1:10:49
They're, you're obsessing with music or you're obsessed with films or whatever.
1:10:52
So you know the films, you understand what you like and what you don't like.
1:10:55
Do you have taste?
1:10:56
You have your, Taste first, and you put that into your work, right?
1:10:58
You take what you've under, what you love about whatever it is that you're into.
1:11:02
You make the art that you want to enjoy.
1:11:05
Right, right.
1:11:06
Because you have good taste, and you can put that good taste
1:11:08
into a thing, hopefully, right?
1:11:10
Yeah.
1:11:10
Anyway, we haven't made the Suicide Hotline web series yet, but we will.
1:11:14
We will one day.
1:11:15
Yeah.
1:11:16
Yeah.
1:11:16
When the world is ready.
1:11:17
Make it in Mexico.
1:11:19
Maybe it'll be a Mexican thing.
1:11:22
So, I, I've recently become aware of something.
1:11:27
That has been like, I don't want to say weighing on me, but it
1:11:31
just keeps coming top of mind.
1:11:33
And it's realizing in my like going on mid forties, how much of my life experience
1:11:42
is actually based On the media that I consumed versus my actual life experience.
1:11:48
For sure.
1:11:49
Yeah, like a lot of the my understanding of what existence was
1:11:53
and what like love and all these things and emotions were is so much
1:11:57
based on the movies that I watched.
1:11:58
Oh, entirely, entirely.
1:12:01
Yeah.
1:12:01
And it's crazy.
1:12:02
It's, it's kind of like the, the struggle versus the have it all thing, right?
1:12:07
Where we always believe it.
1:12:10
There's some big payoff.
1:12:12
Like, if we do it this way, we live happily ever after.
1:12:16
And that just wasn't the case because guess what?
1:12:19
Happily ever after is day one.
1:12:22
The days don't stop.
1:12:24
Where are you going to go from there?
1:12:26
At this point you have to coexist as two people that actually want to be with each
1:12:31
other and once the romanticism of the idea that you're in love and you did it and
1:12:36
you beat the odds fades with your 20s, it's just kind of like you're just kind
1:12:42
of left with the reality that is work.
1:12:45
Oh yeah.
1:12:46
I mean if you can accept that Happily Ever After is every single moment
1:12:50
of your life, then I think that's really the goal at a certain point.
1:12:53
Which I think is the thing that, that this idea of even mindfulness that has
1:12:57
been, it's obviously, it's a little oversaturated now with all the apps
1:13:00
and everything, but like the idea of meditating when I was a kid was not
1:13:04
even, nobody talked about meditating.
1:13:05
Yoga was kind of a thing.
1:13:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:13:08
It was very cliched, kind of ridiculous, but like now that it's
1:13:11
like almost, it's mainstream, I think that's, I think that's great.
1:13:15
I wish it wasn't mainstream in a way that it was like now we make.
1:13:18
podcasts about it or whatever.
1:13:20
I wish it was just like everybody was actually doing it because I think it
1:13:22
would do a lot of people some good.
1:13:24
But, you know, it's all about just living in the present because if you can let
1:13:27
go of everything that's happened in the past, your failures, your successes, and
1:13:32
you can stop thinking about the future, like, You can do anything, really.
1:13:37
Like, how much of the stuff that we think that we can do is based on our
1:13:42
understanding of what we failed at or succeeded at in the past, right?
1:13:46
If you can clean slate it, as it were, you can kind of, the world is yours.
1:13:51
And that's the trick, right?
1:13:52
Yeah, living in that moment with no Right.
1:13:57
You just That's the real trick.
1:13:58
Yeah.
1:13:59
Ah, to be young.
1:14:01
Before we get to the last question, I'll say this.
1:14:03
Tim, I'm leaving in a A week and a half.
1:14:06
I'm leaving Columbus in a week and a half.
1:14:07
I know.
1:14:08
And, uh, I'm gonna miss you so much.
1:14:11
You're one of these people that I met here that I'm like, we light each
1:14:14
other up and I really appreciate that.
1:14:16
And there's not a lot of people in the world that, that light
1:14:18
me up in the way that you do.
1:14:19
And I really, really appreciate that connection.
1:14:22
Jef, same.
1:14:24
The night we met, I remember having a conversation with Joanna saying,
1:14:29
I think I made a new friend.
1:14:32
Like that doesn't happen as an adult, right?
1:14:33
It's difficult.
1:14:34
Yeah.
1:14:35
I mean, it takes work.
1:14:36
Not only like, was I, I think I made a new friend.
1:14:38
I was like, Is it weird to like, want to be his friend?
1:14:45
You know what I mean?
1:14:45
I felt the same way, dude.
1:14:46
I was like, dude, I'm gonna hang out with that guy.
1:14:47
And then you're like, yeah, let's just grab beers.
1:14:49
Let's, let's hang out.
1:14:50
Let's, you know, play poker.
1:14:54
It was dope.
1:14:54
Yeah, and you came to the poker game.
1:14:55
And Tim, I should mention, but before the podcast, Tim introduced
1:14:59
me to Gummy Nerd Clusters.
1:15:00
He was the first person to bring those to the poker game, and I
1:15:03
never experienced those before.
1:15:04
And now, and I'm I've addicted other people to them.
1:15:07
I brought them to Super Bowl games and people are mad at me because they got
1:15:09
addicted to them and and it is like now, honestly, that candy has blown
1:15:14
up to a degree that is unbelievable.
1:15:16
Who would have thought a candy would be a, uh, like a, like a six dollar bag?
1:15:21
They're very expensive now.
1:15:22
It's insane.
1:15:23
They're making, I had to quit.
1:15:25
And they're trying other kinds now.
1:15:27
They've got giant ones now, and it's not nearly as good.
1:15:30
They're trying to branch out, but really, you've got, you've got it down.
1:15:33
But it's like, it was really, if you look at the nerds, you know, the, the
1:15:36
timeline, they had the ropes, right?
1:15:39
They had the ropes with nerds.
1:15:40
And that's basic, but, but it's not as good as the gummy nerds clusters.
1:15:43
It's like the, you can see that the, the timeline, because the ropes
1:15:46
were just like a rope of nerd with, with the gummy nerds on the outside.
1:15:50
And they're like, we'll just make And some guy was in a meeting.
1:15:53
He's like, I have an idea.
1:15:55
Bob, what do you got?
1:15:56
What if we took the ropes and just made little bitty pieces
1:16:00
and covered them with nerds?
1:16:02
Like, Bob, you get a, you get a promotion, you're getting a new office.
1:16:05
Right.
1:16:05
And now Bob is running the company.
1:16:08
And they're like, Bob, what else you got?
1:16:09
He was like, I don't got anything else.
1:16:10
Let's just make them bigger.
1:16:11
That was my one idea.
1:16:12
We need more.
1:16:13
We can do more big ideas.
1:16:14
Bob, we need to keep the shareholders happy.
1:16:16
Bigger, bigger nerds clusters.
1:16:17
Oh, no, it's not working.
1:16:18
Different flavors.
1:16:19
I know it doesn't work.
1:16:20
Oh my god.
1:16:21
You know somewhere, Somewhere there is a board meeting or a Zoom meeting happening
1:16:27
about how can we keep Nerds Gummy Cluster sales increasing quarter over quarter.
1:16:32
There's gonna be a cereal at some point, I'm sure.
1:16:34
Hell yeah.
1:16:35
I mean, I saw cheese at pizza.
1:16:36
Cereal?
1:16:37
Cheese at pizza at Giant Eagle the other day.
1:16:40
Stop, are you serious?
1:16:42
I did not buy it.
1:16:42
I was curious, but I mean they have mount, they have a hard mount and do now.
1:16:46
I'm googling this not because I don't believe you, but because
1:16:49
I have to see this with my eyes.
1:16:51
I don't know that it's Cheez Its on pizza.
1:16:54
I think it's a Cheez It branded pizza that has a Cheez It flavor to it.
1:16:57
That would be my guess.
1:17:00
Uh, and by the way, Cheez Its, if you would like to sponsor this
1:17:02
podcast, we are open to that.
1:17:04
We are not decrying your pizza idea.
1:17:07
We think it may be good.
1:17:08
We haven't tried it, but the look on Tim's face right now is not making
1:17:12
it seem like it's a good idea.
1:17:13
And frankly, let's just give up on the idea of getting Cheez Its
1:17:16
to be a sponsor of this podcast.
1:17:17
I got an idea.
1:17:18
How about a cheese pizza?
1:17:20
Instead of a thing that's based on a thing that's trying to taste like a thing,
1:17:24
we could just make it with that thing.
1:17:26
Tim, don't be stupid.
1:17:27
Don't be stupid.
1:17:28
I know.
1:17:28
I'll crash the entire economy.
1:17:30
That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life.
1:17:32
Is there any cheese even in Cheez Its?
1:17:34
I wonder.
1:17:34
God.
1:17:35
Yeah, that's the question.
1:17:36
There has to be shelf stable cheese.
1:17:37
That's the name of the podcast.
1:17:39
Is there any cheese in Cheez Its?
1:17:40
That'll be the name of the podcast.
1:17:42
Could be good.
1:17:43
All right, how do we know?
1:17:44
Close your eyes mentally, grab a little handful of Cheez Its, pop
1:17:47
them in your mouth, you can taste them and you can feel them, right?
1:17:49
Yep, they're good.
1:17:51
But it's a pizza.
1:17:52
Right, I mean, I don't know where they went with this.
1:17:55
I haven't had it, so I can't say where they went with Cheez It pizza.
1:17:58
I can't say how much it tastes like Cheez Its.
1:18:01
Maybe it's just a branding opportunity.
1:18:02
Who knows?
1:18:03
I'm just saying I saw it.
1:18:05
And it wouldn't be, I mean, you know, how many, you know, they
1:18:07
get a gummy nerds cluster cereal.
1:18:10
I could see that.
1:18:11
That would be gross.
1:18:12
It wouldn't be actual gummies, right?
1:18:14
It would be like Lucky Charms.
1:18:15
Can you imagine?
1:18:16
Have you had Lucky Charms lately?
1:18:18
I know we're No, I have not had Lucky Charms almost ever.
1:18:21
Not interested in that.
1:18:23
Joanna gets lucky charms.
1:18:24
You know, we, we, we got kids.
1:18:25
You still eat cereal?
1:18:27
Um, from time to time I'm lactose intolerant, so it's
1:18:29
not a good time afterwards.
1:18:31
You can get lactaid.
1:18:32
Um, I could.
1:18:34
Yeah.
1:18:35
Why?
1:18:35
It's like selling out.
1:18:36
Exactly.
1:18:37
You get it.
1:18:38
Like in a weird way.
1:18:39
Yeah, exactly that.
1:18:40
So there are two cereals that we get.
1:18:42
We get, um, Honey Bunches Votes almonds because it's amazing.
1:18:45
I can't eat nuts, so I don't experience that.
1:18:46
And we get lucky charms because that's unfortunate.
1:18:50
I mean, I've lived with my whole life.
1:18:51
We've talked about this, but you don't remember.
1:18:52
Nobody remembers.
1:18:53
Well, it's something that it's hard for people to remember that
1:18:57
I'm a little nuts, but it's fine.
1:18:59
It's, it's, it's my Auschwitz.
1:19:07
When, when I was a kid, we were told like to treat everyone the same.
1:19:13
And like, you know, like it was all the PBS, like kids in the wheelchair,
1:19:17
like you don't acknowledge the disability, you treat them as.
1:19:21
As a peer, right?
1:19:23
We're all the same, regardless of if we have legs, which
1:19:26
is 100 percent true, right?
1:19:28
But I was told to not acknowledge the disability, so maybe work this
1:19:34
into a short film about the nut allergy and how I was just trying to
1:19:40
be polite by not acknowledging it.
1:19:43
And making it your identity or the way I saw you, so I disregarded it
1:19:49
out of consideration for you and that's how I accidentally murder.
1:19:54
Oh wow.
1:19:57
What do you think happens when we die?
1:19:59
God, I hope I get to see the people that I love again.
1:20:02
I know that's, sure.
1:20:03
That's a long shot.
1:20:04
Play fucking guitar with Jimi Hendrix.
1:20:05
It'd be fun if, if, if we died and we lived in heaven forever,
1:20:11
we'd have all the video games, but then that wouldn't be good.
1:20:14
As we've talked about, you don't want all the video games.
1:20:16
You only want a handful of them.
1:20:17
And you cherish the ones that you have.
1:20:19
So I guess in the end life, we don't want heaven to be Spotify of life, you know?
1:20:24
Right.
1:20:25
I like to think that when we die, our energy reintegrates into the universe
1:20:30
and the heaven or hell, I think that that is the residual energy of and memories
1:20:39
of you and ripples from your life that maintain momentum after you've passed
1:20:45
and hell is in a negative connotation.
1:20:48
You've left a bad mark.
1:20:50
You will soon be forgotten intentionally versus heaven is, you know, if Something
1:21:00
that we did, and I'm not talking about like, oh, I like paint, you know, I
1:21:06
carved a statue and it's still there.
1:21:07
Interesting that you're still using terms of the religion that you were born into to
1:21:11
describe the afterlife, heaven and hell, and all these things, which Absolutely.
1:21:15
Yeah, yeah.
1:21:16
Right?
1:21:16
Like, the jam can't read the label, right?
1:21:19
Or whatever that's saying.
1:21:20
No, you can't read the label when you're inside the jar.
1:21:22
You can't read the label when you're inside the jar.
1:21:23
I'm not sure that really applies to this.
1:21:25
Well, it is because that is the construct that I came into this world within.
1:21:30
Right.
1:21:31
In my mind, when you're inside the jar, it's like not being able to
1:21:33
see yourself for your wonderfulness.
1:21:36
In a way.
1:21:36
Oh, that's sweet.
1:21:37
Right, like you don't realize how much you're affecting other people because
1:21:41
you're inside of yourself So you can't yeah, see the thing that people are
1:21:45
seeing in you that you yeah are actually wonderful, you know Yeah, see I maybe
1:21:50
this is like a reflection of my myself but I took that phrase to me as to
1:21:56
mean like Yo, you're being an asshole.
1:21:58
Like, you don't see it.
1:21:59
It could be the dick with that too, though.
1:22:01
Right.
1:22:01
You can't be, you're, you're a fucking dickhead and you don't see,
1:22:03
you're inside of it so you don't realize you're being a dickhead.
1:22:05
Or it's, it's the quiet person who's really smart that never speaks
1:22:09
up and so the world thinks that they, they got rocks in their head.
1:22:13
Or the slightly different person that, you know, you don't see, you
1:22:18
don't get to see your own labels.
1:22:20
No, rarely.
1:22:22
Occasionally you do.
1:22:23
Anyway, do you have anything else to say about the, what happens when we die?
1:22:27
Are you, are you good with your answer there?
1:22:29
I'm good with my answer there.
1:22:31
You know, I, I would like to think.
1:22:35
So, you know, I'm getting to the point in my life where like,
1:22:39
people are starting to die.
1:22:40
Sure.
1:22:40
Almost middle age.
1:22:41
Yeah.
1:22:42
My friends.
1:22:43
People are always dying.
1:22:43
Accidents and all that.
1:22:45
And every funeral that I've attended, I've tried to hang on to one ripple
1:22:53
from that person a way that they positively like impacted my life and
1:22:59
however, they did that to try and like Rebroadcast that out into the world so
1:23:06
that they can continue to live Their good deeds go forward and it also
1:23:12
helps me feel connected to them, right?
1:23:14
So after I die, I just hope the world gets better Sorry.
1:23:20
Yeah, I do too.
1:23:21
We all do, I think, but yeah.
1:23:23
Well, Tim Waters, I love you dearly, my friend.
1:23:26
I love you, too.
1:23:26
I'm so glad we got to do this.
1:23:28
Uh, I'm glad I got to see you before I left, and I hope we keep
1:23:31
in touch, and I hope the next time I see you is in Mexico City.
1:23:34
I'll take you to a taco place, we'll make your head explode.
1:23:36
That'd be amazing.
1:23:36
Yeah, then we can get tongue tacos.
1:23:40
This was a vendor of tacos that just sold parts of the head of the cow.
1:23:46
So there was cheek, there was, you know, brain, there's eyeball, there's tongue.
1:23:51
And the problem that, I mean, this has been in the podcast, but I'll say it
1:23:53
again, the problem with the tongue for me is apparently it's a lot, in a lot
1:23:57
of places it's chopped up, you know, but in my situation they just, it was
1:24:01
a tortilla and then just like a piece of tongue just sitting right there.
1:24:05
So you close the tortilla so you can't see the tongue, for me anyway,
1:24:08
and then you just take a bite.
1:24:09
And it wasn't for me.
1:24:10
Some people love it though.
1:24:11
Some people really like it, and I admire them for You know, like French kissing?
1:24:14
Oh, I was, I was tongued it.
1:24:16
Yeah, it was like, yeah, yeah.
1:24:17
I don't want to taste something that can taste me back.
1:24:20
Well, the tongue is dead, so it can't taste you back.
1:24:23
Well, we don't know what the tongue's I'm gonna go ahead and say, I'm
1:24:25
no scientist, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that the tongue is
1:24:28
probably not gonna, but who knows?
1:24:29
I don't know.
1:24:30
If it is actually tasting me back, then I kind of actually like it more now.
1:24:34
Now I have to try it again, but anyway, I can't wait to try you again.
1:24:42
I gotta get to Mexico City quickly.
1:24:43
Muy rapido, muy rapido.
1:24:47
Yeah.
1:24:47
Thanks for coming on.
1:24:48
Thanks for doing the podcast.
1:24:49
Thanks for having me.
1:24:51
I feel like we've just been hanging out, having a conversation.
1:24:53
No, I mean, that's the whole point.
1:24:54
That's the whole thing.
1:24:54
That's the whole goal of the thing.
1:24:56
go too off the rails.
1:24:57
Well, I'm going to use the parts we did go off the rails and use
1:25:00
them as memes and loop them and make videos and be like, you know.
1:25:03
Hell yeah.
1:25:04
Can you do AI deep fakes of me as well?
1:25:07
Oh yeah, with all this voice time?
1:25:08
Absolutely we can.
1:25:09
Yeah.
1:25:11
That'd be awesome.
1:25:11
Anyway, thanks for coming on Tim.
1:25:13
Love you buddy.
1:25:14
Yeah, love you too.
1:25:21
And that was Tim Waters, the legendary Tim Waters.
1:25:26
Tim Waters of Gummy Nerds Clusters fame.
1:25:29
Tim Waters of power punk band fame.
1:25:35
Tim Waters of so many things.
1:25:36
You can and should follow Tim on Instagram, @radiocityrecords.
1:25:40
That's @radiocityrecords, one word.
1:25:44
You can also find him on SoundCloud, if you're into SoundCloud, or if
1:25:49
you're not, at SomeoneLikeTim.
1:25:51
That's again, one word, SomeoneLikeTim.
1:25:54
I'll put links to those and a few other things, music videos perhaps
1:25:58
and such, in the show notes.
1:26:01
The music you're hearing behind me right now is music that Tim
1:26:05
and I recorded immediately after recording the podcast in my living
1:26:09
room, in case you were wondering.
1:26:13
You can follow the podcast on Instagram @onefjefpod, that's @onefjefpod, and
1:26:20
you can call the podcast and leave a voicemail that I will play on the air.
1:26:25
At 1 669 241 5882.
1:26:29
That's 1 669 241 5882.
1:26:35
I, I've lost it.
1:26:36
I had the jingle for a couple of episodes and now I lost it.
1:26:40
Cause that's not catchy at all.
1:26:43
If only Tim was here now, he could write a song.
1:26:45
Oh, well.
1:26:48
So much to say, but this has already been a somewhat long episode.
1:26:51
So, so if you're still listening, thank you for sticking in there.
1:26:55
And I hope you're subscribed to the Patreon because you are sucking
1:26:58
the marrow out of this podcast.
1:27:01
And I appreciate it, but you know, marrow ain't cheap.
1:27:05
You know what I'm saying?
1:27:08
Marrow was expensive this time of year.
1:27:11
I'll leave you with a quote by Louise Edrick.
1:27:13
Thank you.
1:27:15
That I put into my quotations app on March 10th, 2021.
1:27:21
That will not be on the quiz.
1:27:22
I just thought, you know, details are interesting sometimes.
1:27:30
Life will break you.
1:27:32
Nobody can protect you from that.
1:27:34
And living alone won't either.
1:27:36
For solitude will also break you with its yearning.
1:27:40
You have to love.
1:27:42
You have to feel.
1:27:44
It is the reason you are here on earth.
1:27:46
You are here to risk your heart.
1:27:49
You are here to be swallowed up.
1:27:51
And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt,
1:27:56
or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to
1:28:00
the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.
1:28:06
Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
1:28:11
I'll see you next week.