Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Andy Atkins: A Plea for Purging | Furnace Fest 2023 Series

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Andy Atkins: A Plea for Purging | Furnace Fest 2023 Series · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:30
  All right, it's been a long time coming, but we have back Andy
• 0:35
  Atkins from a plea for Pergian, one of Cullen and I's favorite bands ever.
• 0:40
  And you know, it's been a few years now, Andy that we
• 0:43
  last chatted, and I am just so stoked for all the cool things that
• 0:47
  you guys are gonna be doing again. But before we get into all of
• 0:50
  that, how are you doing today? How's Nashville, Dude? Nashville is
• 0:54
  fantastic. I'm doing great. I can't think of anything too bad to say
• 1:00
  present life. I actually tried to like go back and listen to the podcast
• 1:04
  I was on with you guys before this, and just like never had the
• 1:10
  time. I really want to go back and see where I was like three
• 1:14
  years ago and see if I'm excited when this comes out to be able to
• 1:19
  listen to A and B and see how my life differs in those two or
• 1:25
  three years. Well, I know we're not we're not recording video, but
• 1:30
  we didn't back then. But I will say I think one of the things
• 1:32
  that has changed is that your hair continues to migrate farther south on your face.
• 1:37
  There's a little less up top, and there's a little bit more on
• 1:40
  the bottom, and so that has been one change that I've noticed. Yeah,
• 1:44
  dude, gravity has not been my friend. I do like how you're
• 1:49
  using our podcast like a like a personal scrapbook for your life. Yeah,
• 1:53
  dude, we need to do this like every few years. Yeah, and
• 1:57
  just see see where our at, what I got going on, what attitude
• 2:01
  I have? Yeah, Andy Atkins, Class of twenty twenty three. Yeah,
• 2:07
  dude, it's a good year right now. Yeah. Yeah, I
• 2:12
  mean there's not too many days to ruin it yet, but you know,
• 2:14
  who knows what will happen in the in the future of this year, Andy,
• 2:17
  are you still motorcycling all around the world or at least across the country?
• 2:23
  Dude, Way, way, way less motorcycling in my life right now
• 2:27
  compared to the past like decade, I guess really, Yeah, dude,
• 2:32
  I mean it's I don't want to I definitely don't feel like it was a
• 2:37
  fad in my life. But it's also like taking maybe a back seat to
• 2:40
  what's important right now, which is when I was did this with you guys
• 2:46
  last time. I can't remember really exactly where it was. I think I
• 2:49
  was probably still working in music production and live like live concerts and all that,
• 2:53
  and so that left a lot of spare time outside of that world for
• 3:00
  motorcycles. And then over COVID and the pandemic and all kinds of crazy stuff,
• 3:07
  like I left that world and now I have a new career and job,
• 3:10
  and I like am building a business. So like ninety five percent of
• 3:16
  my life is spent spent building this business and the other five percent is hanging
• 3:23
  out with Rachel, my wife, and my dog Moose, and I need
• 3:27
  to work on that life balance because that five percent to them is not enough.
• 3:32
  But yeah, dude, so there's very little time for motorcycles right now,
• 3:38
  which is sad because I love them and every I just told Rachel like
• 3:42
  the other day, as like twenty twenty three, I'm going to build another
• 3:46
  motorcycle, and who knows if that really happens because I'm so busy doing other
• 3:52
  things. So tell us about your business, dude. Um. I started
• 3:58
  making cheeseburgers during the panic at home, just like bought a flat top griddle
• 4:04
  and was bored and started making smash burgers, and then like started having friends
• 4:12
  asked for the smash burgers and started having like a little small parties during the
• 4:15
  pandemic with like ten people you know you couldn't like really be having with a
• 4:20
  lot of the best COVID parties. And next thing, you know, me
• 4:26
  and my buddy Cody who Cody Driggers. He plays bass in the band The
• 4:30
  Wedding and he also plays in Projege eighty six some um me and him started
• 4:36
  making cheeseburgers together. And fast forward like a year and a half to two
• 4:42
  years later, like, we own a food business called bad Luck Burger Club.
• 4:47
  It's smash Burger food truck, one of the like fastest growing food businesses
• 4:54
  in Nashville. And yeah, this whole thing that just started as like a
• 4:58
  I don't want to say a joe. It started as a hobby. And
• 5:01
  now it's like Cody quit his job and I quit everything else I'm doing and
• 5:06
  we uh make cheeseburgers full time every day. At what point did you get
• 5:12
  to somebody saying, hey, like, have you actually thought about making money
• 5:15
  doing this? Right? Because you started out just doing this as like a
• 5:18
  fun thing to hang out with friends, And at some point somebody must have
• 5:21
  been like, this should be something you make money from. Yeah, man,
• 5:27
  I think I think, like maybe it might have been in my brain
• 5:30
  before it came to anybody else's, but like just because like I you know,
• 5:35
  there's more to the story, like I was. I do remember when
• 5:40
  we first talked. It was at the very first of the pandemic, and
• 5:44
  like I think my job was in this weird limbo where we're all on break
• 5:48
  but we were about to go back to back to work or something, and
• 5:53
  that never really happened. I never really went back to work. I did
• 5:56
  it a little bit, and then like we laid off, like pretty much
• 6:00
  the whole company got laid off. So like at that time, the way
• 6:03
  the Burger thing came about is I was like building bikes and like working on
• 6:08
  bikes and building fences and building decks and just anything I could like make money
• 6:14
  and weather the storm. And then yeah, choring, dude. And the
• 6:20
  burger thing was like, oh man, if I'm making enough burgers and all
• 6:24
  my friends want to eat these burgers for free, maybe my all my friends
• 6:27
  want to give me some money for these burgers, you know. But like
• 6:30
  Blake from Plee was like one of the biggest supporters, like for sure,
• 6:34
  like you know, in the very beginning, like I was, I remember
• 6:39
  us having a party at his house and him asking me to come over and
• 6:42
  make cheeseburgers for everybody, and he was kind of the dude I got the
• 6:46
  idea for him because him and Lyle, our original guitar player, We're making
• 6:49
  burgers at his house one day and I was over there and I was like,
• 6:53
  I think I could do this better than these these dudes, you know,
• 6:56
  And I went and I bought a flattop and I did I do it
• 7:00
  better than them? Did you use like a blackstone kind of flat top when
• 7:03
  you got it or was it just like your electric griddle kind of flat top?
• 7:06
  Dude? In the very beginning, it was like electric griddle, like
• 7:10
  the pancake you know, like you can get them for like twenty dollars at
• 7:14
  Walmart. It's like a pancake griddle, that's for real. How it started.
• 7:18
  I just saw a video the other day of one of the first that
• 7:21
  party I'm talking about at Blake's house. I'm making burgers for probably like fifteen
• 7:28
  dudes on a little pancake griddle. And then I was like, this is
• 7:32
  crazy and stupid. So I bought like a full, like thirty six inch
• 7:38
  three foot griddle. It wasn't a Cody, my partner, he's got a
• 7:43
  black Stone. I bought a pit Boss because, like you know, I'm
• 7:47
  always thinking about like stupid fucking influencer stuff and the Internet and everything, and
• 7:54
  I was like, oh, pit Boss is like a smaller company and they're
• 7:57
  like giving away gear to people, So I'm gonna buy one of theirs and
• 8:01
  post about them all the time in hopes that, like I'll generate some sort
• 8:05
  of relationship with them and get free shit. It never worked. I never
• 8:09
  got any Like actually, when I got the griddle from them the very first,
• 8:15
  like the day I got it, it was damaged and I sent them
• 8:18
  a message saying, hey, like this this and this is broke on it,
• 8:22
  and they said, okay, we'll just send you the parts. And
• 8:24
  I was like, okay, cool, fine, Like I'm not I don't
• 8:28
  want my money bag to send me the stuff and I'll fix it. And
• 8:31
  they never sent it to me, so I'm not repping Pit Boss. I
• 8:35
  took all their emblems off and like scrubbed off all the all the texts and
• 8:41
  stuff. So it's just like a plane no Name griddle that is very punk
• 8:46
  rock if you dig that. I've I've got a pit boss as well.
• 8:48
  Is that the one that I fucked up that one time? No, that
• 8:52
  was just my my my regular griddle that you my stovetop griddle. You messed
• 8:56
  up. It's still messed up. In fact, you broke my burner on
• 8:58
  that too. I'm just I'm just I'm still kind of upset about it.
• 9:01
  But it's okay. Friends are friends forever, right Mason? Well, right,
• 9:07
  Andy, if you fuck up your oven, maybe not Andy, I've
• 9:15
  got a I've got a question for you. Since you're like becoming this you
• 9:18
  know, restaurant tour or um, you know, restaurant mogul in the Nashville
• 9:22
  area. Yeah, would you, uh, you know, once you make
• 9:26
  all your millions from bad luck burgers? Do you want to help me out
• 9:30
  with my business idea? Let's go? Can I can I give you?
• 9:33
  Can I give you my elevator pitch? Give it to me. Let's see
• 9:37
  what happens. Here's my elevator pitch. As quick as I can do it.
• 9:41
  It's called kegs and bacon, all right, all right and bacon.
• 9:45
  Love it all day long. It is an all you can eat breakfast buffet,
• 9:52
  right all right. Around seven pm, it becomes like a full fledged
• 9:58
  bar. Now you where you where you would put this is like college towns
• 10:01
  right, college towns, um, because obviously college kids are gonna go to
• 10:05
  bars, so on and so forth. But the kicker, the reason that
• 10:11
  this will work more than any other idea I think, is right at two
• 10:15
  am, when most bars close in most parts of the country. Um,
• 10:20
  the bars closed, So Kegs and Bacon will close its bar. But what's
• 10:26
  right there for everyone to enjoy all you can eat breakfast? Roman, let's
• 10:33
  go. I think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's a million dollar
• 10:37
  idea, and I think it can go to the next level. And I
• 10:39
  want you to be my shark on Shark Tank to say, all right,
• 10:43
  try to pitching this to Mark Cuban right now. Let me let me get
• 10:48
  a couple of gez under my belt, you know, from from this first
• 10:52
  venture, and then we'll branch out. Dude, I'm trying to become a
• 10:54
  mogul. Heck, yeah, let's do it. Just you look like I'm
• 11:00
  goal. I mean, yeah, you just got the vibe. Andy,
• 11:03
  What is this? What are the similarities and differences between starting a band and
• 11:07
  starting your own restaurant business or food business, dude, it's super. It's
• 11:13
  super the same. Me and Cody talked about it all the time because we're
• 11:16
  like, you know, we both did the thing where you're like, you're
• 11:20
  an independent band and like you don't have any money and you're trying to like
• 11:24
  make it to the next level. So like I mean, in the beginning
• 11:28
  of the band, you like every single dollar that's brought in from playing a
• 11:33
  live gig and selling t shirts and selling CDs, all that money goes right
• 11:37
  back into the band as opposed to going into your pocket. So that way
• 11:43
  you can you know, in a band, you're trying to be able to
• 11:45
  buy merch and then you're trying to be able to buy gear, and you're
• 11:48
  trying to be able to buy drums and blah blah blah, and like those
• 11:52
  same things true with the food business. Is like we started out with a
• 11:56
  couple of griddles and a tent, and every dollar we made went to buying
• 12:01
  better griddles, and then went to buying a truck and then buying the stuff
• 12:03
  to put in the truck, and so it's it's very much like that whole
• 12:09
  like grass built punk rock thing where you're just trying to like truly do it
• 12:15
  yourself and not take any handouts from anybody else. So, like everything that
• 12:20
  Cody and I know about business is through like the small businesses of being in
• 12:24
  bands, and you know, like you're just all of your decisions on being
• 12:31
  frugal with money are based out of those years where all you could afford to
• 12:37
  eat was like Taco bell and you know, sleeping band and stuff and jibol.
• 12:41
  Yeah. You know, so when when I very first started touring,
• 12:45
  CHIPOTLEA wasn't even doing the free fucking burrito thing yet, So you were just
• 12:50
  like getting one dollar cheesy beating and rice burritos for like an entire day.
• 12:56
  I don't know how I've continued to be like as fat as I am in
• 13:00
  those years. Literally we're eating like one to two like one dollar burritos a
• 13:05
  day, and shows like actually take out a lot of you know, calories
• 13:09
  out of you. It's I can't imagine like, yeah, gaining. Yeah,
• 13:16
  you're eating one meal a day and then you're probably burning two thousand calories
• 13:20
  during a show. It's crazy. You know, I'm a supernatural being,
• 13:24
  dude. Yeah, yeah, it's a thyroid issue. Yeah, dude,
• 13:28
  Andy, I am curious about you know, you're doing smash burgers. Have
• 13:33
  you ever done an Oklahoma burger? You know what that is? Yeah,
• 13:37
  for sure, I've done one at home on my own, like playing around
• 13:41
  with a bunch of different burgers, so you know, sort of a variation
• 13:43
  of a smash burger because yeah, but you're just riding all those onions on
• 13:46
  it. Yeah, um, I love it. I think it's great.
• 13:48
  We don't do it as a company or as the Burger club or whatever,
• 13:54
  because there is another burger spot in town that that's kind of what they're known
• 13:58
  for. So I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes um, but yeah,
• 14:03
  I like the Oklahoma Burger. I mean, we we have a similar
• 14:07
  thing. We do, like grilled onions on our burgers. We just don't
• 14:11
  do the thing where you like smash it into the into the patty. So
• 14:16
  my question that would be with your Minneapolis roots, have you thought about,
• 14:22
  you know, pulling off a Juicy Lucy or something like that. I can't
• 14:24
  imagine there's a lot of Juicy Lucy's down there in Nashville. Yeah, I
• 14:28
  mean I think there's a couple of spots that have, you know, their
• 14:31
  version of it, and it's not that great. Um. I've tried to
• 14:33
  make one a couple of times at home and it wasn't that great. Like
• 14:39
  I didn't do you know. It's one of those things I think you have
• 14:41
  to perfect. It's tough, but uh yeah, I mean I love a
• 14:46
  juicy Lucy. I just we're we're very focused on like doing that. That
• 14:52
  that the thing that we do. But I love juicy Lucy's. We're going
• 14:56
  to Minnesota in two weeks. We can half u man, We're going to
• 15:01
  Matt's Bar to get some juice. Is that your place? It's it's either
• 15:05
  five eight Club or Matt's Bar. I mean that's like those are the two
• 15:07
  spots. I think. I'm a Mats guy. Yeah, Um, I
• 15:11
  think I like Matts because Matts is like you know, and there's back and
• 15:16
  forth over who did it first, like I saw it on the Mats bar
• 15:20
  just because whatever. But um, I will say that like Matts does one
• 15:26
  thing they do like the juice Lucy with American cheese and you can get it
• 15:30
  with with onions or without onions. I think something like that, right,
• 15:33
  But then you go to you go to five eight and they have like pepper
• 15:37
  Jack cheese or cheddar cheese or American cheese. Like to me, I like
• 15:43
  that, like you go to one you go to a spot, they do
• 15:45
  one thing and they do it perfect. Don't don't give me all this variety.
• 15:50
  You know, totally we could. We could talk burgers all day.
• 15:52
  I mean, who cares about plea for purging anymore burgers? Yeah, I'm
• 15:56
  surprised that anybody cares about that shit, But cool that they do. Well,
• 16:02
  that's kind of interesting, right, Like there's so many artists that are
• 16:04
  kind of you know, a same boat, you know, where you tour
• 16:07
  for ten fifteen years and now we're doing other things in the world, and
• 16:11
  you may or may not do a few band things anymore. But it's so
• 16:15
  interesting, Like I would imagine that like most of the people that probably you
• 16:19
  know, either go to your restaurant or whatever, that maybe you've met in
• 16:22
  Nashville, a lot of them probably don't know that you were in this band
• 16:26
  for fifteen years and that you know, idiots like me and Colin love that
• 16:30
  band. I mean, it's not like you were just some like little local
• 16:33
  band that you maybe made an EP here there, Like you guys were signed
• 16:36
  and you guys were touring and like it was a big deal for a lot
• 16:38
  of people. And I bet a lot of people maybe in your life don't
• 16:41
  know that about you, or maybe like that's like a very like not a
• 16:47
  part of the way that they relate to you kind of thing that they know
• 16:49
  about you or whatever. For sure, I mean, like in the very
• 16:55
  beginning, the Burger thing started with you know, just friends and friends of
• 16:59
  friends, like you know, the scene. Like the way we started was
• 17:03
  we like through a big free thing and all of our friends came and took
• 17:06
  pictures and like when all you're really cool seeing tattooed friends who look cool and
• 17:11
  shit like post stuff on the internet, all the normies want to go do
• 17:15
  it because the cool friends did it, you know. So that's how we
• 17:19
  started. But then like you know, once like middle aged men and women
• 17:26
  came and like brought their families and like you know, parents and grandparents and
• 17:32
  babies. Like once you start getting families like that, they come out they
• 17:36
  like you know that you've reached a whole new audience that truly transcends like your
• 17:42
  niche group or whatever. So yeah, I mean there's probably at this point
• 17:48
  way more people that come eat eat our food that only know me from cheeseburgers
• 17:53
  than the people that know me from plea what's weird? A weird thing in
• 18:00
  my life which I don't you know, I have zero fame and I have
• 18:04
  zero big head about what what I've done in my life. But like I've
• 18:10
  been moderately popular at a few different things in my life, like YouTube doing
• 18:17
  some shit and then the Zamboo band and Zambooie and like the motorcycle stuff and
• 18:23
  burgers, and at this point in my life it sounds really goofy, and
• 18:29
  I like admit that before saying it, but like people will be like,
• 18:33
  yo, dude, you're andy, And I don't know at this point,
• 18:37
  like which of those few little things. And you kind of have to like
• 18:44
  almost stereotypes somebody when you look at them and try to decide, like do
• 18:48
  they know me from cheeseburgers or music or motorcycles or what? You know.
• 18:52
  But it's a funny, cool thing, you know, Like I it's it's
• 18:57
  neat that there's like a few people in the world outside of my initial family
• 19:03
  and group of friends that give a shit about what I do in my life.
• 19:07
  You know. That's ah, it's encouraging every day for sure. I
• 19:11
  gotta imagine it's especially weird and Nashville because I mean, you throw a stone
• 19:15
  and there's someone who who's you know, you know, a Grammy Award winning
• 19:18
  artist or played for a Grammy Award winning artist, right, and it's like,
• 19:22
  you know, if you were to tell people like, yeah, I
• 19:23
  was in this band and we were like, you know, moderately successful and
• 19:26
  everything, they'd be like, okay, tell us about your burgers. Yeah,
• 19:30
  right, for sure, dude. You know, like everything like this
• 19:34
  metalcore like Christian metal core thing, there's such a like a tiny world that
• 19:42
  that really exists. And you know, like I don't consider myself a professional
• 19:48
  musician in the in the city I live in, because like it'd be different
• 19:52
  like the town I grew up in, Paris, Tennessee. Yeah, I
• 19:56
  might be like one of the like most quote unquote famous or professional artist that
• 20:03
  ever came out of that town. But I am a like not even a
• 20:07
  speck of dust on the map of professional musicians in Nashville. You know.
• 20:14
  A funny story about that. There's a person I knew a number of years
• 20:18
  ago who I don't know if she still lives in Nashville, but she was
• 20:21
  kind of one of these artists that you know, was trying to get her
• 20:22
  jump start in Nashville and to you know, make some money. She was
• 20:27
  babysitting and it was like this weird like app thing where you get connected with
• 20:30
  a family and then you'd go you know, once you got connected, then
• 20:33
  you would go babysit for that family. So one day she goes to this
• 20:37
  house, meets the person, you know, gets a little lowdown, parents
• 20:41
  leave, she's hanging out with the kids, puts the kids in bed,
• 20:42
  and she starts kind of walking around the house because she was like, this
• 20:45
  is a kind of a big house. It's kind of interesting. She walks
• 20:48
  into this desk or this office space, and all of a sudden she sees
• 20:53
  some of these Grammys and she quickly realizes that she's in Dan Hazeltine's house from
• 20:59
  Jars of Play. Oh wow. Yeah, And like it's just one of
• 21:03
  those like things about Nashville of you know, you just you never know who
• 21:06
  you're just going to run into, because it's that kind of city where you're
• 21:08
  just walking, you know, walk into any building and all of a sudden,
• 21:11
  some famous musician could be there. Dude, I got a caveat to
• 21:15
  your story. But my wife, Rachel works for a health healthcare tech company
• 21:22
  that's in like does software for healthcare. And one of the women she works
• 21:27
  with her husband is Matt from Jars of Jars of Clay, the guitar player.
• 21:33
  And when when we go to like you know, the Christmas party and
• 21:37
  the anniversary party and all the work events, I hang out with Matt from
• 21:42
  Jars of Clay, which is funny because, like, you know, he's
• 21:47
  probably ten years older than me or something. And when I was like thirteen
• 21:51
  or whatever, you know, I was listening to Crazy Times. Yeah,
• 21:55
  you know, but it's so funny. You know, it's a weird world
• 21:59
  we live in where like you know, like I had, I heard somebody
• 22:03
  say this the other day that's not from Nashville, that's been living here for
• 22:07
  two or three years, and they just put it in a way I never
• 22:14
  thought about where like, you know, all these people, they're just famous
• 22:18
  people all over the world, all over America whatever. Like if you live
• 22:22
  in Iowa and you know, I don't know, Garth Brooks is Garth Brooks
• 22:27
  and he's like, oh my gosh. But literally Garth Brooks lives about half
• 22:32
  a mile from me, in this house that I'm sitting in right now.
• 22:34
  He's my neighbor. Wait is that is that Garth Brooks Or is that Chris
• 22:38
  Gaines? Right, Yeah, we don't know. We didn't figured that out
• 22:42
  yet, but yeah, man, like you know, Nashville is just the
• 22:48
  place where all these famous people are just like normal people, you know,
• 22:52
  or like I got friends that live in la and see famous people, you
• 22:56
  know, like superstars like every day, and it's just you know, they
• 23:00
  those people have to like live normal, regular lives too, you know,
• 23:06
  yeah, as they go to the French laundry to eat every Yeah, right,
• 23:10
  right, And I don't know what it is, but like something about
• 23:12
  where Cullen and I grew up in South Dakota, there's just something about where
• 23:17
  that just doesn't compute. That you could live a half mile away from Garth
• 23:21
  Brooks or you could even get a burger from Andy from Plea for Pergie,
• 23:23
  like that just like doesn't compute because we grew up in this tiny ass town
• 23:27
  in tiny ass South Dakota where that never exists, that nothing like that happens,
• 23:33
  right, I mean that's same like I grew up in a small little
• 23:37
  town super you know, like poverty trailer park kid. So that the thought
• 23:44
  that I'll live down the road from one of the biggest musicians of all time
• 23:48
  is crazy. And I don't even live in like a super nice you know,
• 23:52
  like I live in like just like you know, low middle class house.
• 23:56
  He just happens to have a really cool house on a hill down the
• 23:59
  road from How's sick as Yeah, I love Yeah, dude, that's just
• 24:03
  too so cool. Well, uh andy, the big news is out.
• 24:10
  You guys are going to furnace fess this year with police for purging. I
• 24:12
  don't want to take too much credit for this, but I definitely talked to
• 24:19
  all of the organizers and I was like, the bands I want to see
• 24:25
  plea for purging X Toll, and then I said a couple others. There's
• 24:30
  some more to be announced. I might I might get the other ones on
• 24:33
  the list too. I don't know. We might get like my dream team
• 24:36
  of bands as well. In the year before, we said Blindside, and
• 24:38
  sure enough Blindside played last year too. Nice dude, Yeah, I could
• 24:42
  have been there for that. That was you would have had a blast.
• 24:45
  You would have had a blast. Um, so tell us about it,
• 24:48
  Like, I'm really curious because, um, you know, in twenty twenty,
• 24:52
  you guys like hopped on social media and kind of we're like teasing some
• 24:56
  random junk and you know, making everyone feel like, oh, this plea
• 25:00
  for purjaging getting back together and you know, getting everyone's hopes up. But
• 25:04
  now you actually are getting back together at least for this one shows what is
• 25:10
  the process looking like for you to prepare for this? All right, I'm
• 25:15
  not you, Yeah, I'm not you touched on a few different things,
• 25:17
  so I'm just gonna start talking. M. In twenty twenty, we actually
• 25:22
  really did have two shows booked. M. We got asked to play audio
• 25:30
  feed and you know, like just speaking bluntly, like it takes a lot
• 25:37
  of effort and a lot of actual dollars to make all of this work.
• 25:41
  Because Aaron lives in California, and Tyler who would want to play guitar for
• 25:48
  us, lives in Indiana. John lives in Knoxville, and then me and
• 25:53
  Blake cliff here, so like all of us are real adults who have real
• 25:57
  mortgages and real jobs and real fires to fight. Yeah, John's got real
• 26:03
  fires to fight. So like years ago, none of us, you know,
• 26:08
  when we broke up in twenty twelve. The idea was, like,
• 26:11
  we weren't gonna do this. We weren't gonna be a reunion band, you
• 26:17
  know, like there was we had a lot of like our lives and our
• 26:19
  identities and our emotions tied up into that band. So it just made sense
• 26:25
  to like hang it up for real. Um. We did that reunion show
• 26:30
  at Facedown Fast in twenty seventeen, and it was cool, but it wasn't
• 26:33
  like it wasn't what we wanted it to be. I think I probably told
• 26:37
  that story the last time I was on here, but like John didn't get
• 26:41
  to play with us, and he went and like you know, he had
• 26:45
  a pregnancy scare where his wife like thought she was gonna go and or she
• 26:49
  did go into labor premature, and there's you know, there's that whole story.
• 26:55
  I've talked about it in the past, but like so we didn't have
• 26:57
  like the bestest reunion and so anyway, in twenty twenty we started talking it
• 27:03
  over again because we started getting some some inquiries audio feed and actually furnish us
• 27:11
  talk to us too. And long store short is to take a good about
• 27:17
  the money to make it all happen to try to get all of us together
• 27:22
  in a room for a week to practice, and to rent a space to
• 27:26
  practice in, to rent gear and all that stuff. When you're not a
• 27:29
  band, you don't have all that stuff at your fingertips anymore. Yeah,
• 27:33
  we were talking to Seth from becoming the archetype recently. I don't know if
• 27:37
  you if that was a band that you ever listened to, but Seth is
• 27:40
  like, if we play a show right now, I'd have to figure out
• 27:42
  where to get an amp. I don't even have an amp anymore, Like
• 27:45
  where do I go? What do I do? Literally having conversations about that
• 27:49
  kind of stuff through text, like you know right now? So long store
• 27:56
  short is like audio Feed was going to pay us a pretty good amount of
• 27:59
  money to come play, and we had we might have had flights, books
• 28:04
  and everything like it was happening like we were playing audio Feed. And since
• 28:10
  we were playing audio Feed, we figured it all out to make sense where
• 28:14
  we could play a show in Nashville that same weekend. So we had two
• 28:18
  shows booked in twenty twenty one in Nashville and one in Illinois. And then
• 28:23
  the pandemic happened and COVID shut everything down and audio Feed like ended up having
• 28:30
  to cancel. You know. Yeah, so that didn't happen, So we
• 28:34
  didn't do the Nashville show, and like that was kind of the end of
• 28:37
  that. We didn't really think about it or talk about it. And oh,
• 28:41
  we had talked to furnace Fest a little bit that year two, and
• 28:45
  at the moment, like what we needed to make it happen financially was like
• 28:52
  above what made sense for furnace Fest to want to pay us, which is
• 28:56
  totally cool, like, you know, like it's a lot for small band,
• 29:00
  Like we're not really the you know, the biggest band in the world,
• 29:03
  but it still takes just as much money to logistically get us together as
• 29:08
  it would take to get some bigger band than us together, like just because
• 29:14
  of the logistics of it all. So anyway, it didn't work out for
• 29:18
  us to play furnace Fast the first year, and a couple of years later,
• 29:22
  you know, wrap up twenty twenty three, Chad hits me up,
• 29:26
  says, hey, are y'all still interested in having this conversation? And we
• 29:30
  say yeah. And at this point, I just think all the dudes and
• 29:33
  the band, our identities aren't tied to this band anymore, Like we're not
• 29:40
  like we don't need to make like a bunch of money off of it because
• 29:45
  we're all already paying our bills through the things we do. It's just we're
• 29:48
  all kind of coming at it with a way fresher mindset this time, to
• 29:53
  where it's really we're all of our expenses are getting paid for all of us
• 30:02
  to be friends and hang out in a room, you know what I mean.
• 30:04
  Like we're all getting like all expense paid trip to go hang out in
• 30:10
  a room together for a week and get to play music together and practice and
• 30:14
  then go to the festival and play. And I just think we're all at
• 30:18
  like such a different spot in our lives now where it's like, holy crap.
• 30:22
  If we can all like go get to hang out together for a little
• 30:27
  bit and not lose money over it, then let's do it, you know.
• 30:33
  And if we want to play good and we want to sound good,
• 30:37
  and we're going to practice and try to give everybody the best show they can
• 30:41
  get. But if we suck, I'm still gonna sell cheeseburgers the next week
• 30:48
  here in Nashville, you know what I mean, Like, right, it's
• 30:51
  not going to affect my livelihood if we don't do very well. So but
• 30:56
  I really hope to do well. I want everybody that pays money to see
• 30:59
  our and play get a good show. But you know, yeah, we
• 31:03
  don't have anything to prove. Like back in the day, if you do
• 31:07
  a shitty tour, then everybody in the industry knows that your tour wasn't very
• 31:11
  good, and like you know, you're you're you've dropped down to a lower
• 31:15
  rung on the next tour or whatever. There's none of that this time.
• 31:19
  It's just friends playing music. Yeah, it's got to take a little bit
• 31:25
  of the pressure off too, right, I mean, yeah, it's it's
• 31:26
  first time we played a long time. But also it's like, you know
• 31:29
  what, We're just gonna go out and have some fucking fun for sure.
• 31:32
  You know, I'm already like trying to figure out how do I scream again?
• 31:37
  You know, like that's the whole thing that I got like maybe eight
• 31:41
  or nine months to try to figure that out. But you know, we'll
• 31:45
  get it figured out between now and then. Is that is that something you
• 31:49
  feel like you have to condition your voice for? Is it? Is it?
• 31:55
  Like I know, there's like you know, there's like really like modern
• 31:56
  techniques where it like you mean, it doesn't do any like harmfulness to your
• 32:00
  voice whatsoever. But like I don't know how you saying, because it seems
• 32:06
  like your scream vocals are are way different than maybe most others are, Like
• 32:09
  yours has so much more of like a like I don't even know how to
• 32:14
  like describe it. It's kind of like a growley kind of yell more than
• 32:21
  anything. You know, I know zero about technique, Like you know,
• 32:25
  like when Melissa Cross and the Zena Scream like came out like in the early
• 32:31
  to mid two thousands, Like I bought that CD and DVD and like watched
• 32:37
  it a couple of times and maybe pretended to do some morm ups, But
• 32:40
  like I don't know anything about all that. Like you know, you got
• 32:45
  all these dudes like the guy from Laurena Shore and like all these really crazy
• 32:50
  like technical vocalists. Like all I know is that like I was a whiny
• 32:59
  bitch about bunch of stuff and I wanted to yell really loud about it,
• 33:01
  right, So like I don't know any technique. I just I'm gonna yell
• 33:07
  as loud as I can, and if you do that every single day,
• 33:10
  you develop like a muscle or something that like it just works and it's okay,
• 33:16
  and you can keep doing it. But if you don't do it for
• 33:20
  a decade and then you try to do it, you can't talk. That's
• 33:23
  what I'm wondering about, Like, because like we talked to Jason Wisdom from
• 33:27
  becoming an archetype and he's said kind of the same thing. He's like everyone
• 33:30
  else I can like do this thing where you know, they scream into a
• 33:32
  mic and they sound really good and hold it. Yeah, they hold it
• 33:36
  like this or something. But he's like, if you were in a room
• 33:37
  with them, like you'd barely hear the scream. But he's like when I
• 33:43
  scream, like, I mean, I don't need a mic really, It's
• 33:45
  like I can scream overtop all of it and it'll still sound like it usually
• 33:49
  sounds. So that's where I was curious, like, are you is it
• 33:52
  like a is it something that is definitely just hard to get back into because
• 33:57
  I mean it's taken a lot out of your out of your book. Of
• 33:59
  course, that muscle hasn't been exercised a long time. Yeah, for sure,
• 34:02
  Man, it's I don't even know how to go about even answering that
• 34:08
  because like I'm still trying to figure it out. Like you know, like
• 34:13
  the way I started screaming was like I played guitar in a band and like
• 34:20
  we were just like a few dudes that like play, you know, just
• 34:23
  jammed and we didn't have a vocalist, and like somebody's got to be the
• 34:29
  vocalist, and I play guitar, and I just started screaming, you know,
• 34:32
  like without a microphone, you know, like and then you like graduate
• 34:37
  to like being the guy that holds the microphone and you're not playing guitar anymore,
• 34:42
  and like there was zero like learning how to do it right, you
• 34:45
  just like you know, back in those days, like when I started screaming,
• 34:50
  it was like in the late nineties, there's not YouTube tutorials that teach
• 34:57
  you how to scream or whatever. So like I just yelled as loud as
• 35:00
  I could for as long as I could, and every record I blew out
• 35:05
  my vocals. So I mean this time around, what's hard is like when
• 35:09
  I was doing when I was screaming back in the day, you know,
• 35:14
  there's the dudes and maybe y'all have done this before. I don't know.
• 35:16
  I don't have what it takes to do this. Like it's some sort of
• 35:21
  guts like dudes that can just drive down the road and be listening to like
• 35:27
  Lamb of God or Hate Bread or whatever their favorite band is and they're screaming
• 35:31
  along to the music like loud like screaming in the car. Yeah, no
• 35:37
  way, I've never done that in my entire life. The only time I've
• 35:44
  ever screamed ever is practicing with the band, playing a show or recording in
• 35:52
  studio. I never screamed alone by myself ever until the two thousand in seventeen
• 36:00
  reunion show, and I like I turned on a stereo as loud as it
• 36:07
  would go, and I like hooked up my interface in between my computer and
• 36:10
  the stereo where the stereo would play music and my headphones would play music,
• 36:16
  and I would scream so that way I couldn't hear myself, Like it was
• 36:21
  like as loud as the music could possibly go. I made sure my wife
• 36:24
  was gone, not from the house, and that was like the most awkward,
• 36:30
  embarrassing, like week of my life trying to do that so I wouldn't
• 36:35
  blow my vocals out of that show, and I'm gonna have to do that
• 36:38
  again for this And so neighbor, your neighbors are gonna be very concerned because
• 36:44
  they probably don't know like the metalcore Andy Atkins. They're gonna be like,
• 36:47
  what is going on in the Atkins house today? It's awful, dude.
• 36:52
  I'm not stoked about it. And I will say to wrap around to like,
• 36:57
  I've never screamed in a vehicle before, just about out a week or
• 37:00
  two ago. It was the week that we announced playing I'm driving home in
• 37:06
  our food truck after a service, and ours food truck like it's got music
• 37:12
  that you can listen to when we're parked and making burgers, but when you're
• 37:15
  like driving down the road, it doesn't have like a radio in it that
• 37:19
  you can listen to. So I have my air pods in and I decide
• 37:24
  I'm gonna listen to Plea and I scream a song. I scream one song
• 37:30
  all the way through for like three minutes, and I could barely fucking talk
• 37:36
  when I got home, you know, And like I mean even right now,
• 37:42
  I'm like kind of horse. That's just because like I talk all day
• 37:45
  long every day, just yelling at people so I gotta figure out how to
• 37:50
  do that again. Maybe maybe you just start screaming people's orders, like maybe
• 37:53
  that's just like your way and you just don't Hey, sorry, I'm in
• 37:55
  a band. I gotta practice here, Like when when when I screamed that
• 38:01
  this smash Burger's up, you know, order's ready, Like sorry, that's
• 38:05
  just what's gonna happen because I gotta practice from my band. I don't know
• 38:09
  how much like heavy music you still listen to and if you go to those
• 38:13
  types of shows or not. You know, anytime I go to a like
• 38:15
  a festival like for ance Fess or even to any show, I just like
• 38:20
  get so jacked and just so like, oh I want to like all like
• 38:23
  constantly do this, Like if I could go like the next day and go
• 38:28
  to another show, like that's just exactly like how I am. And like
• 38:32
  I don't know for you guys, like when you do, if you do
• 38:36
  you guys go to shows anymore? And if you do go to a show,
• 38:38
  like do you kind of like, God, I really wish I could
• 38:40
  do that again, Like do you kind of get this like antiness around Like
• 38:44
  I would love to do that again. Man, not a whole lot like
• 38:51
  and maybe that's like what sets apart the lifers from you know, the trend
• 38:57
  hopping guys. I don't know, like I do think I think I was
• 39:00
  a lifer. Like if I wouldn't have met Rachel, I could see myself
• 39:06
  being in some low level metalcore band forever, you know, as long as
• 39:09
  it paid my like paid enough to get to the next city. I truly
• 39:14
  love it. I still love heavy music, and it speaks to me when
• 39:19
  I listened to it driving down the road. But with all that being said,
• 39:23
  now that I'm like very accustomed to like a normal life of going to
• 39:29
  bed at like ten o'clock at night, and like sleeping in my own bed,
• 39:34
  and like eating home cooked meals, like showering once a day. Yeah,
• 39:38
  yeah, you know, it's just like I've I've been accustomed to like
• 39:44
  such a normal life now that I don't know how well I would do in
• 39:50
  that world again, of like traveling down the road, you know, which
• 39:52
  touring has changed a lot since then. Then there's a lot more creature comforts
• 39:57
  now than when we toured. But I don't know, I don't I don't
• 40:00
  miss it a ton, What about just like the show itself, like when
• 40:06
  when you think of like furitness fast just the one off show, like if
• 40:08
  you go to other shows, you're like, God, if I could just
• 40:10
  do that one more time where I could tell a bunch of kids you better
• 40:14
  stage I have a hundred times in this song, Like do you just like
• 40:16
  even have the thought like that would be nice to do just one more time?
• 40:21
  Sure? I mean I do, like I you know, I don't
• 40:23
  have a problem with saying like I crave attention, Like I am kind of
• 40:29
  just like an attention horror in in like the most innocent way, like I
• 40:35
  don't think they like, um, I don't know. Like I love performing
• 40:43
  for people, and that can be many different ways. That can be like
• 40:46
  music or or just trying to make people laugh or whatever. Like I love
• 40:52
  the connection of doing something like whatever that is playing music, creating a cheeseburger
• 41:00
  and feeding it to you, or trying to be funny on the internet.
• 41:05
  And if that touches you in some emotional way, whether that be through a
• 41:12
  lyric that I poured my heart into or just me doing like a two second
• 41:19
  off the cuff joke, Like, if that touches you in some way,
• 41:22
  that major day better. That is what fills me up and fills my cup.
• 41:29
  So yes, Like I love being on stage and being in front of
• 41:32
  people. I'm like super excited to be able to just like be me again
• 41:38
  on stage and like hopefully like touch a room or a shed full of like
• 41:45
  a few thousand people. Yeah, like it's cool. I miss it for
• 41:47
  sure, But also like I don't have any delusions that like a whole bunch
• 41:54
  of people would give a shit if I got on stage and did that,
• 41:58
  you know what I mean, Like like if I went and saw Gideon and
• 42:00
  I got on stage and scream screamed with him in town or something like,
• 42:06
  I don't think the whole most of the room would probably be like, who's
• 42:08
  that old fat guy? It wouldn't be like, it wouldn't be like yo,
• 42:13
  that's ain't even from a belief for Persian. It'd be like who is
• 42:15
  that? I can guarantee you if you screamed with Gideon, everyone would be
• 42:21
  losing their ship and be like, oh my god, that's Andy Adkins.
• 42:23
  I don't know, man, I did do a show. I got enough
• 42:28
  circle, I got a I got on a stage and screamed. Not too
• 42:31
  long ago, two local Nashville bands did the reunion show. One of them
• 42:37
  is called Alcina and one of them is called Alert the Sky. UM and
• 42:40
  Our as Hell Retreats played too, and it actually was stacked. Orthodox played
• 42:46
  Um Modern Hell or not Modern Hell. They now they're called Cove. Cove
• 42:52
  got back together and played. It was cool. It's a really great show.
• 42:55
  But I got on stage twice. It was like two two nights to
• 43:00
  two shows in a row, two nights. But the second night I went
• 43:04
  and I got on stage and screamed twice, and it was really fun.
• 43:07
  It was just cool to like because it was like around all my best homies
• 43:10
  in the world, you know, like all those dudes that we all came
• 43:15
  up together playing shows. So I couldn't talk the next day, but it
• 43:20
  felt really great to just like be with some of my dudes on stage being
• 43:23
  ruthless for a minute. You know, I will say, Cullen and I
• 43:28
  at Furnace Fest, a hundred percent are going to be stage diving out a
• 43:31
  plea for Pergian And I don't know if you're gonna have the demand of one
• 43:35
  hundred stage dives in a song yet, you know, that's if that's still
• 43:38
  a thing that you're gonna do, but I can guarantee you're gonna at least
• 43:42
  get two of them, and that's gonna be culin and I, dude,
• 43:45
  let's go. I want it. I'm like, you know, the only
• 43:47
  words that I really remember from any of our set is stage dive, So
• 43:52
  I don't need to know the lyrics. I just need to yell stage dive
• 43:57
  a lot and see what happens. Andy, we gotta get you stage diving,
• 44:01
  dude. I've only I've staged up I think three times in my life,
• 44:06
  and I just don't want to subject anybody to that pain. I think
• 44:13
  we can plan it out. Well, let's let's get a group of dudes
• 44:15
  together. Mason for first. They're always like those beefcake dudes, those guys
• 44:21
  that like clearly are like powerlifters. And we'll let them know on this song
• 44:25
  and he's gonna stage dive and he's gonna dive right into us. We'll catch
• 44:29
  him and we'll make him feel like a god. Dude, my fai,
• 44:32
  I will say my one of my favorite moments in the world is there's a
• 44:37
  club or it doesn't exist anymore, but a club called The Vault in Buffalo,
• 44:44
  Minnesota, and we used to play there all the time. If I
• 44:47
  had to put a real solid guess, I bet the capacity legally is between
• 44:53
  seventy five to one hundred and twenty five people maybe, and we crammed four
• 45:00
  hundred and nineteen people and like tickets paid in this place. I don't know
• 45:07
  if they were all in there at one time, but it was like it
• 45:09
  was very illegal. And we used to carry around a clicker, one of
• 45:15
  those little metal clickers that counts. Yeah, And we had somebody stand at
• 45:22
  the state at the soundboard, and we got four hundred and twenty six stage
• 45:27
  dives and like a thirty five minute set, And at the very end of
• 45:31
  the night, I jumped off the stage and they carried me all the way
• 45:36
  out out and I didn't touch the ground until we were on the sidewalk outside.
• 45:42
  And that's one of my favorite moments in life. That is magical.
• 45:45
  Yeah, I like, you know, we've played some huge, huge shit
• 45:51
  and that show right there is one of my favorite memories ever. Did it
• 45:54
  feel like it was in slow motion and like there was like a camera panting
• 46:00
  back like you were in like a movie, and like you're just like there
• 46:04
  and it looks like you don't you remember that scene in like The Gladiator,
• 46:07
  um like when uh like when they're carrying Russell Crowe's body off. Oh yeah,
• 46:12
  yeah, yeah, after he's died and he's just like it's just like
• 46:15
  like slowly panning and it just seems like peaceful but also like it's like a
• 46:21
  super intense moment. I gotta imagine that. That's how I've envisioned it in
• 46:23
  my head right now. That's the way I would like to think it was.
• 46:28
  But it probably was just like probably like four or five dudes like really
• 46:32
  really committed to getting this fat guy all the way out the door. You
• 46:37
  know, like they were probably bummed about it, but like they they really
• 46:42
  struggled through, and uh, I love it now. I will live I'll
• 46:46
  live the rest of my life thinking about that night. Can I share a
• 46:52
  Police for Purging story that Colin and I have shared together? And so we
• 46:57
  saw you guys at the twenty twelve Sunshine Festival and it must have been like
• 47:02
  maybe on like that Farewell tour, right before the Farewell tour, but it
• 47:06
  was like, yeah, it was when Cullen and I were like, this
• 47:09
  is probably the last time we were ever gonna be able to see Plea.
• 47:13
  I'll just say it, Colin. I don't know how much we want to
• 47:15
  admit this on the podcast, but Colin and I basically got in a fight
• 47:20
  with a band right before you guys played because we were so like wanting to
• 47:23
  see you guys play and you know, just having to like wait through all
• 47:28
  these bands, and we basically got in fight in a fight with a band
• 47:31
  because we were just so annoyed by them and we just wanted to see Plea
• 47:37
  play so bad. So like they were on stage, they were on stage.
• 47:42
  Okay, tell me who it was. It was. It was these
• 47:45
  Hearts, Okay, all right, I remember they are, yeah, and
• 47:49
  we were not a fan of that type of music at all. We were
• 47:52
  very annoyed by it. But you know, they're playing and everybody's freaking out
• 47:54
  around us, and we're like front and center and they play right before for
• 48:00
  us like that or maybe a band for you. It was like it was
• 48:04
  like them, and then it was my children, my bride, I think,
• 48:06
  and then it was ya, that's sick. It's good to know that
• 48:08
  we were on top of my trips or my bride Russian. So I mean,
• 48:14
  it was very clear that Cullen and I were not a fan of These
• 48:17
  Hearts as they're playing, and you know, we were both like sixteen,
• 48:21
  seventeen, eighteen years old at the time, and so we were just being
• 48:23
  dicks. But yeah, it was very clear that we were not a fan
• 48:27
  of the band, and they were clearly not a fan of us not being
• 48:30
  a fan of the band, and uh, you know they play the set,
• 48:35
  you guys end up playing, we go, you know, we're freaking
• 48:37
  out. It's awesome. And then later that night, I guess during the
• 48:43
  These Hearts set, I tweeted something about like picking my nose something. Is
• 48:49
  that we we were, like you said, we were being dicks because we
• 48:52
  didn't. We we found the band to be like teenybop kind of like metal
• 48:58
  music, like where y'all would y'all just wanted to demash were just hard.
• 49:01
  You probably had shorts on, you're exactly you're exactly right or something like or
• 49:07
  something like very like complex like my epic or a Hope for Home or something
• 49:12
  like that. Right, So we're standing literally directly in the front just on
• 49:15
  our phones the entire time, and I had a flip phone at the time,
• 49:19
  still like I had nothing to do on my phone I was just looking
• 49:22
  at my phone and whatever. Probably, yeah, And the lead singer of
• 49:30
  These Hearts was like putting his crotch in our face on purpose because we were
• 49:35
  doing it, and stuffs too, so they kind of like, you know,
• 49:37
  they fed into it a little bit, you know. And then yeah,
• 49:40
  Mason tweeted picking my bookers at these Hearts, and then there was like
• 49:45
  a massive Twitter war that ended up coming out behind it was Chris, I
• 49:49
  love Twitter, like I hate all that shit now. But back in the
• 49:53
  day we were a part of some really great like Twitter wars and my Space
• 49:58
  wars, and that's stuff was falling back. It was like it was like
• 50:02
  gang warfare, you know, yeah, through through pros. Now now I
• 50:07
  try to steer clear of it all, especially when you're like sixteen years old
• 50:13
  and the only people that follow you are like people from your high school,
• 50:15
  and then all of a sudden, other people outside of that know about you
• 50:20
  because you said a thing like that was that was so invigorating as a sixteen
• 50:23
  year old. That was amazing, and it worked out for Mason so much
• 50:27
  that he makes a living off of it. Now. Yeah, it's fun
• 50:31
  time, all right. So you're playing you're playing furnace fast. I don't
• 50:37
  know, like at this point, like, what are you guys looking forward
• 50:40
  to with this? Like, I mean, obviously you're probably gonna be looking
• 50:44
  forward to the show, but like, what what else is there to to
• 50:46
  all of this that you're just like super stoked to. I mean, I
• 50:49
  know it's at this time of the recording, you know, nine ten months
• 50:52
  away, but yeah, what are you guys looking forward to with all of
• 50:55
  this? This has got to be a big moment for you, for you
• 50:59
  guys as a band man for sure. I mean I don't think any of
• 51:02
  us have any crazy outlandist expectations of it all. Like, like I said,
• 51:07
  like the plain and most simplest way to view it is we're getting all
• 51:15
  the expenses paid for all of us to get to play music in a room
• 51:19
  together again. So that's the purest way of looking at it. Um,
• 51:24
  there are like very like broad blurry conversations of like hey, it would be
• 51:34
  kind of cool to try to write a song sometime or something, but like
• 51:38
  you know, I don't like none of that is like anywhere, you know,
• 51:44
  like anywhere close to being real. It's just like everybody is open to
• 51:49
  the idea of it but you know, like, also, the two main
• 51:54
  songwriters in the band, which would be Aaron and Blake, live completely across
• 52:00
  the country from each other, and although you can pretty easily write music with
• 52:06
  each other through email and all of that these days, they are also two
• 52:10
  men who have jobs and families. So with all that being said, like,
• 52:17
  we all love the idea of trying to create music together again, but
• 52:22
  there's no expectation that it has to or will happen. If we find the
• 52:30
  time to pour into it, then that would be something cool. But I
• 52:35
  think we just like or one step at a time, you know what I
• 52:37
  mean. Like, I think all of us like have a pretty healthy view
• 52:43
  of what this could or could not be. You know, if we play
• 52:45
  this one show and that's it, all of us are super stoked. And
• 52:50
  if we play this one show and it sparks something to like write some songs
• 52:54
  or play another show, that would be sick too. But we're all really
• 53:01
  happy with our lives. So this is just like an additional like cherry on
• 53:07
  top to the lives that we already live. So we'll see, you know,
• 53:12
  Like, none of us have any real goals with it other than to
• 53:15
  just like it's what's really cool is just causing all of us to talk quite
• 53:21
  a bit more, which we've always the band ended like as best friends and
• 53:27
  there's never been any like weird chaos within the group. You know. It's
• 53:32
  just like once you move away to different states and stuff, like I moved
• 53:37
  to Minnesota for a few years, and when I lived in Minnesota, I
• 53:40
  never talked to any of them because I'm just like so far removed, you
• 53:45
  know what I mean. And then now that I'm back in Nashville for the
• 53:47
  past five or six years, like Blake and I see and talk to each
• 53:51
  other all the time, and we barely ever get to talk to the other
• 53:54
  guys. Tyler comes to town every once in a while. So it's just
• 53:58
  like once you get in the middle of your life, the outlier stuff is
• 54:02
  like not what you're focused on. So with that being said, we're all
• 54:07
  just texting all day long every day. Like the first week of us being
• 54:12
  announced at Furnace Fest, my phone was buzzing all day long from the Plea.
• 54:20
  We call it the polee og text message or whatever, and like everybody's
• 54:25
  talking all day long. So it's just exciting to be able to talk to
• 54:30
  all your best friends all the time. Again, does it kind of feel
• 54:34
  like getting back together with like an like an ex girlfriend or something like that.
• 54:38
  Dude, I don't know because I've never done that, and I would
• 54:44
  have to think maybe no, just because like you probably broke off with your
• 54:47
  girlfriend for some negative reason or whatever. I don't like, at least in
• 54:53
  my heart, and being pretty honest and truthful, like we didn't really have
• 54:59
  that with any of us, Like nope, that we didn't break up because
• 55:02
  we were like tired of each other. We just broke up with each with
• 55:07
  the band because like we all wanted to like actually be able to pay our
• 55:10
  bills and be with our wives. Like at the time, I think only
• 55:15
  one of the guys was married. Aaron might have been married when we were
• 55:20
  still a band. I can't remember. But like, you know, like
• 55:22
  everybody's trying to build their lives and you're pouring way more time into these friendships,
• 55:30
  which are very important. But like the more time that I spend with
• 55:36
  Aaron, the less time I'm getting to spend with my soon to be wife
• 55:39
  one day, you know, So like it just ended because it just didn't
• 55:45
  make sense anymore. And so I don't know, like the friendships have always
• 55:50
  been really tight. The lesson of that is that girls break up all bands,
• 55:52
  is what you're saying, Yeah, you know, girls guys, here's
• 55:57
  like the Beatles and partners. Yeah, you know, and so just like
• 56:01
  what you know, there's some bands that've been going forever, you know,
• 56:05
  and like they figured out how to do it, and like, you know,
• 56:08
  like I said earlier, I might have been a lifer, but like
• 56:13
  I just you know, like I care more about building a life with Rachel
• 56:16
  now than I care about being on the road. So yeah, maybe maybe
• 56:22
  one day there's a life where both exists, but I super doubt that.
• 56:27
  One of the cool things about furnace Fest, at least this like recent iteration
• 56:30
  of it with the last three years, is that, like I think it's
• 56:35
  close to like something like a quarter of the bands are doing reunion shows.
• 56:39
  You know. These are bands that have not been around doing stuff for quite
• 56:43
  some time and then are getting back together just for this furnace Fest show.
• 56:47
  Obviously, pleas Being is one of those bands. One of the things I'm
• 56:52
  always really curious about for that for those types of bands that are playing furnace
• 56:55
  Fest, you know, probably the first time that they've played in maybe ten
• 56:59
  fifteen plus years. Is a lot of them have maybe like have have partners
• 57:06
  where the partner never saw them in the band, like maybe they they broke
• 57:09
  up and then eventually started dating and got married or whatever. And certainly a
• 57:14
  lot of them had kids after the band broke up, and so for a
• 57:19
  lot of them, like their partners and their base in their and their kids
• 57:22
  have never known them as the person on stage singing and playing guitar and playing
• 57:28
  drums and stuff. And a lot of those those partners and those kids show
• 57:31
  up to the festival and see their dad or their mom play for the very
• 57:37
  first time. And I'm like, I don't know who that all is for
• 57:39
  pleae, but I would imagine that's probably the case for a lot of people,
• 57:43
  you know, and plea for partners, and for certainly kids that might
• 57:47
  show up and see their dad play for the very first time. And I'm
• 57:51
  just curious, like, that's got to be something really special that you cherish.
• 57:54
  You know, not only are you playing for the first time in x
• 57:57
  amount of years, but also you get to play in front of a few
• 58:00
  new people that have never seen you play before, who are some of maybe
• 58:05
  the most important people in your life. That's gonna be pretty cool for sure,
• 58:08
  man. I mean, like all of the mates or partners of the
• 58:15
  band members were there and the beginning were there for the band, but they
• 58:19
  they're definitely like two kids now, Like Aaron's got a daughter and John's gotta
• 58:25
  selling and they're gonna come and see us for the first time, and they're
• 58:29
  gonna see their dad on stage rocking out and being crazy, and that's gotta
• 58:34
  be so cool. Yeah, I have to imagine for them, that's gonna
• 58:37
  be really cool and like a precious moment for them. You know, I
• 58:42
  remember watching Me Without You on some of those last tours before they broke up,
• 58:45
  and Aaron Weiss's kids came out on stage and you know, they had
• 58:50
  their big headphones around so they didn't you know, the music wasn't too loud
• 58:53
  for them, but they were dancing around with their dad, and it's like,
• 58:55
  that's gotta be a really great moment as a father, knowing that this
• 58:59
  is going to be some of the last shows that you play in this band
• 59:02
  and probably doing this for the very last time and your kids being a part
• 59:07
  of it, Like that's gonna be just something very very special. Yeah,
• 59:09
  dude, I was just listening to the Sailor Jerry podcast and Jay Weinberg was
• 59:17
  on there, you know, who plays drums for Slipknot. But he was
• 59:22
  talking about al as a kid, you know, his first like maybe however
• 59:28
  many ten years alive for something. His dad wasn't in a band because like
• 59:32
  Bruce Bruce Springsteen and the eas Street Band had already like broken up and what
• 59:37
  weren't a band and weren't playing for like the first and maybe ten years of
• 59:42
  his life or whatever. And then the East Street Band got back together and
• 59:46
  like he like walked into this world that he didn't even know existed about his
• 59:52
  dad, you know, and like saw his dad play like in arenas and
• 59:58
  stuff, you know, and that was a cool thing to listen to and
• 1:00:01
  think about. You know, like this is such a smaller scale than that,
• 1:00:07
  and the kids of the band members are quite a bit younger than that,
• 1:00:10
  but still, like yeah, for them to be able to, like
• 1:00:14
  for Patrick to be able to see John on stage like headbanging and being a
• 1:00:20
  you know, crazy fucking Viking metal guy that he is. You know,
• 1:00:23
  he's gonna take a shirt off, right, You're gonna make that a requirement,
• 1:00:27
  right, Yeah, probably probably has to. You know, you better
• 1:00:30
  play without that shirt and just those suspenders that you're wearing right now, dude.
• 1:00:35
  Maybe, Dude, I'm super into these things called swoveralls right now.
• 1:00:37
  I'm looking at trying to get myself a pair. I have a farm and
• 1:00:42
  I desperately want a pair of overalls, and I've been looking at these swoveralls.
• 1:00:45
  Dude. Swoveralls, dude. I mean they're not the most like you
• 1:00:50
  know, like if you're gonna be doing some nitty gritty work in them,
• 1:00:53
  you might want like some real overalls. But like these things are like so
• 1:00:58
  comfortable, they're cool. Um, I'm trying to like talk about him on
• 1:01:01
  the internet so much that they'll finally get me some. Because they're expensive,
• 1:01:06
  You're a little pricey, but um, you know, I would say they're
• 1:01:08
  worth the investment. I wear these things all the time. It'd be a
• 1:01:14
  massive sex appeal thing if you did that. I think you should. Actually,
• 1:01:15
  I think you all should wear overalls. John can wear his like fireman's
• 1:01:20
  overalls. Yeah, you can wear those. And you know, I think
• 1:01:23
  I think Aaron's got to wear like a train conductor overall because you know,
• 1:01:28
  you know, he plays drums and that's kind of the train of the band
• 1:01:30
  right track. And then yeah, I don't know. I don't know about
• 1:01:36
  Ryan, but he can he can play, he can do something else.
• 1:01:37
  I guess a've been doing something, dude. Yeah, we're all Mario Overalls.
• 1:01:42
  Yeah yeah, yeah, all right, man, it is time for
• 1:01:49
  the top five most guilty pleasure artists of Andy Adkins. Now, just to
• 1:01:57
  clarify, guilty pleasure would be something that you would be embarrassed, um to
• 1:02:01
  let other people know that you listen to. So for instance, for myself,
• 1:02:07
  um, like Enya or all Right or Creed like those are two bands,
• 1:02:14
  are two artists that I love listening to, but I would definitely be
• 1:02:17
  embarrassed by people hearing about it. You know, I'm not, I'm not.
• 1:02:22
  I'm not afraid of it anymore. But sure it is something that as
• 1:02:27
  a metal head, you know, it's not something that you would expect something
• 1:02:30
  like that to listen to. For sure, Andy, do you got one
• 1:02:34
  off the top of your head? Um, I have to preface with like,
• 1:02:37
  I I don't really believe in guilty pleasures. Andy's gonna be one of
• 1:02:45
  these. I mean, I'm gonna give you whatever, Like I'm gonna give
• 1:02:47
  you a stuff that maybe people would be surprised, but like, like I
• 1:02:52
  do believe that you should just be proud of what you like and like don't
• 1:02:55
  hide it. And like I grew up super poor and fast, so like
• 1:03:00
  I was made fun of enough as a kid that like in adult life,
• 1:03:04
  I know embarrassment zero. Like I can fall down in public, like and
• 1:03:09
  trip on a sidewalk in front of a hundred people and stand up and feels
• 1:03:15
  zero embarrassment. I don't know, you know what got me to that place,
• 1:03:20
  but that's where I'm at. So like I love I love that about
• 1:03:22
  myself, but I don't know, Like the newest Harry Styles record, off
• 1:03:30
  the top of my head is when I would think that people that's exactly what
• 1:03:34
  we're looking for. Yeah, people might not believe that I like that,
• 1:03:37
  Like I think it's great, super good songwriting and catchy. And I'm not
• 1:03:42
  a big dude that's like super into pop like really, but that one's great.
• 1:03:47
  I would have to concur that is a great album. Like I'm a
• 1:03:51
  little tired of it because my wife Rachel, like she she'll get honed in
• 1:03:54
  on a record and she'll listen to it NonStop. And that's one that she
• 1:03:59
  listened to all the time. But it's really good. You gotta do the
• 1:04:03
  favorite song from that new record? Is it like Sign of the Times or
• 1:04:05
  something? Man, I don't I don't know my favorite. I like,
• 1:04:13
  Uh, I don't know the names of all of them, dude, but
• 1:04:16
  the one that's talking about the bluebird and he did uh, he did a
• 1:04:20
  music video with h James Gordon. Um, that one's great. I'm bad
• 1:04:27
  with song song titles too, when it comes like pop music. I'm terrible
• 1:04:30
  at it. Yeah, I'm trying to think of another. Here's another one.
• 1:04:36
  That song, it's the Armageddon song from the Armageddon movie. Yeah,
• 1:04:45
  that's dream Man. That's er Smith, right, yeah, Aero Smith.
• 1:04:50
  That's uh, that's Rachel and eyes like song if we were to have a
• 1:04:58
  song, and it's just a cause somehow it's the most sweet thing. But
• 1:05:02
  somehow Rachel knows all the words just from hearing it as a kid in the
• 1:05:09
  car, you know, So that like she can sing every single lyric of
• 1:05:14
  it without the music going. So that's her karaoke song, is what you're
• 1:05:17
  saying. Yeah, what she never does karaoke. She's not someone that gets
• 1:05:21
  in front of people and acts a fool. She's like pretty reserved, but
• 1:05:27
  sometimes she'll sing me that song in bed, like just being goofy, and
• 1:05:31
  it's like it's a very special thing to me. I even made her agree
• 1:05:39
  to I made her swear to me that when I die, she would sing
• 1:05:44
  that song at my funeral. It's amazing. But it's such a funny,
• 1:05:51
  a funny song. You know, it's just a goofy fucking love song.
• 1:05:57
  Do you know what Cullen has told me and we've agreed for his song for
• 1:06:00
  his funeral is gonna be give Me Rest by Hands. The only reason why
• 1:06:04
  I mentioned that is you know, another face down band. So yeah,
• 1:06:06
  yeah, dude, I love Hands. I love that song. I love
• 1:06:11
  that record. Uh dude, I could talk all day about Hands and and
• 1:06:15
  my epic. Those bands are incredible, those guys and a Hope for Home.
• 1:06:18
  Oh yes, all those bands. They didn't those bands didn't get the
• 1:06:24
  respect they deserved because they're you know, did did you hear that new Hope
• 1:06:29
  for Home album? I haven't heard the whole thing. Oh my god,
• 1:06:35
  it's it's it's their best album. It's their best album. That's sick.
• 1:06:39
  I love those dudes. None of those bands got like I mean they and
• 1:06:45
  them, they probably got the least, like Hope for Home probably got the
• 1:06:46
  least amount of respect. But like, um, those those softer bands that
• 1:06:51
  were on the band on the label kind of got overshadowed by all of us
• 1:06:56
  like fucking breakdown bands. But I remember you used to say My Epic is
• 1:07:00
  the heaviest band on facedown, and I still think to this day you are
• 1:07:03
  absolutely correct, dude. The heaviest band that's they have, the heaviest shit
• 1:07:06
  that's ever come out on that label is My Epic for sure. When it's
• 1:07:12
  all about dynamics, dude. And when you're just playing, when you're playing
• 1:07:16
  one hundred miles an hour as loud as you can go all the time,
• 1:07:19
  that's not heavy, dude. But when you can, like when you can
• 1:07:24
  play like you know, a Jagmaster telecaster or whatever and like hit master you
• 1:07:30
  know whatever, all those guitars I don't jazz master, I don't know what
• 1:07:32
  they're called steak in standard tuning too, Yeah, dude, when you can
• 1:07:38
  just like be playing some pretty delay stuff and hit the distortion and play the
• 1:07:43
  heaviest thing you've ever heard in your life. Like, that's that's heavy,
• 1:07:47
  dude. So my epic is my greatest guilty pleasure. All right, So
• 1:07:57
  you got Harry Styles, you got Aerosmith. Who are some other real guilty
• 1:08:01
  pleasure artists? God dude, those aren't there aren't real enough? Oh no,
• 1:08:06
  those are? Those are? Those are perfect? We're saying my epics
• 1:08:10
  not a real one. Yeah, um, this is I'm super not guilty
• 1:08:14
  of this, but like the band's sigur Ross from um Iceland, I think
• 1:08:19
  they're guilty. I think it counts because it's so opposite of you know,
• 1:08:25
  Anthony's persona rights fans. Yeah, like I don't it to me, it's
• 1:08:30
  not a guilty thing, but like I'm just trying to think of somebody that
• 1:08:34
  knows me from being in some brutal metalcore bands. Yeah, that is some
• 1:08:39
  of the most beautiful music that I've ever heard in my life, and also
• 1:08:43
  some of the heaviest stuff you'll ever hear too. Yeah, it's super heavy,
• 1:08:45
  there's super great dynamics, and like, I you know, I don't
• 1:08:50
  know the like one of the records they put out is all gibberish, made
• 1:08:55
  up words, and then like you know, all the other ones are like
• 1:08:59
  in Icelandic and I don't know what any of that ship means, but it
• 1:09:03
  touches me in a emotional level. And that is crazy to not even and
• 1:09:11
  I'm a dude, that's pretty German by lyrics and to not know what any
• 1:09:15
  of their lyrics are about, and it like truly speaks to me as an
• 1:09:20
  emotional and spiritual person. Um, that's crazy. There was Ah, I
• 1:09:26
  remember what show we went to, Mason, Actually, I think I do
• 1:09:29
  remember. Um, we were at the Chariot's Farewell show, which is we
• 1:09:34
  actually saw you there. That's that's that's seventh century and um on the way
• 1:09:43
  home, uh, Mason and I basically just switched through all these different CDs
• 1:09:50
  that I had with me and it was Marriage of Heaven and hell uh it
• 1:09:56
  was long Live Valti Are from Cigarettes all listen to all the way on the
• 1:10:02
  on the way back. That is like a full circle kind of reference there,
• 1:10:05
  Man, that's perfect, great company I keep dude, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:10:11
  that's it. That was also the sweatiest I've ever been was after that
• 1:10:14
  show easily. Oh yeah, that was a high one. I had.
• 1:10:17
  I have a great Johnny Cash shirt and I've kind of ruined, like the
• 1:10:20
  threading of it, just like the minute threading of it, just because there
• 1:10:24
  was so much sweat. They're still probably sweating it even though I watched hundreds
• 1:10:28
  of times. Yeah, dude, sometimes you just like you sweat so much
• 1:10:31
  in something that like it's never the same. Yeah. Yeah, well this
• 1:10:35
  this Johnny cashirt is that exactly that I remember away all my all my clothes
• 1:10:41
  after touring where are like don't exist anymore. They just like have a smell
• 1:10:45
  baked into them that will never leave. You know. You have like a
• 1:10:48
  like a like a Viking funeral for him. Dude, No way, they
• 1:10:53
  just start They were in a fucking landfill somewhere, buried under some other bullshit.
• 1:11:00
  So one of your shirts with your faces are just all over in landfill's
• 1:11:03
  places. Yeah, that's a sad thing to think about. I actually just
• 1:11:06
  saw a super side note somebody sent me a picture. Is one of guys
• 1:11:14
  that owns Rachel's company saw a bad Luck Burger Club bag like littered on the
• 1:11:19
  side of the road a couple of days ago, and it hurt my heart.
• 1:11:26
  I'm a part of it now, I'm like a part of the whole
• 1:11:30
  problem. You know. I've always said that you you've never seen a craft
• 1:11:33
  a craft beer in the ditch. Uh, And so that's true. You
• 1:11:39
  know you you know you've made it to corporate when when you end up in
• 1:11:43
  the ditch. Yeah, it's heavy, all right, speaking about your face
• 1:11:48
  though you're The tour announce or the the show announcement of Furnace Fest was one
• 1:11:56
  of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. That's pot. That's
• 1:12:00
  an old doctored photo. I don't remember that photo when it came back out
• 1:12:03
  in like what twenty eleven, two twelve or something like that, with like
• 1:12:06
  the multiple multiple multiplication of your face on everyone else's face in the band.
• 1:12:12
  That was what we did, is that picture. So we'd done that same
• 1:12:15
  thing before on a different picture. And then that picture that's the Furnace fst
• 1:12:23
  one was some old picture, like a real promo, and they asked us
• 1:12:29
  for a picture and then and then Blake gave us that when you come out
• 1:12:33
  on stage, could you also wear uh gold teeth? That'd be great.
• 1:12:39
  Yeah, dude, maybe I might. I might wear the whole get up
• 1:12:42
  with the jersey and everything. I don't know. Yeah, I kind of
• 1:12:45
  want the preacher from Suver. Oh, sure, Aaron saved that costume.
• 1:12:49
  He might still have it, like day the day after, like the night
• 1:12:55
  of that that video shoot, I took off all that stuff, sweaty and
• 1:13:02
  threw it in a garbage bag, and Aaron kept it. And I don't
• 1:13:06
  know if he still has it now or not, but he kept it for
• 1:13:10
  a long time. I hope it's like one of those wedding dresses that you
• 1:13:13
  can still put on. Oh, I don't know. I think I'm I'm
• 1:13:16
  definitely fatter now than I was then, so I think it was hard.
• 1:13:20
  Man. I think I think it'd be a cool thing. And you gotta
• 1:13:24
  have like the fake comb over thing too. Yeah, dude, I don't
• 1:13:28
  know. We'll see, we'll see if he still has it. Maybe I'll
• 1:13:30
  lose a couple of pounds to get in there. Yeah, there we go,
• 1:13:32
  There we go. All right, we gotta go, we gotta have.
• 1:13:35
  What is it, one more guilty pleasure? I think two more?
• 1:13:39
  Two more? All right, two more. I'm trying to pull some out
• 1:13:42
  of my butt. Dude. Um. I like that song by Blind Ma
• 1:13:46
  Melan called No Rain where the little girls dancing around and like a b outfit.
• 1:13:54
  Yeah, yeah, I love that song. That song is great.
• 1:13:57
  I didn't really love the band as a whole though, Like on actually,
• 1:14:00
  like I really loved that band and used to listen to him when we were
• 1:14:03
  dropping on the road, and they're like they're pretty jam band. Totally.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah, they're like the they're the m They're the grateful Dead of grunge.
• 1:14:13
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a great analogy. Um, but that
• 1:14:16
  song is great. One more. What's what's the worst thing I can pull
• 1:14:19
  out, dude, I'm thinking like some like Christian contemporary music. Dude.
• 1:14:25
  Uh, okay, I'll tell you a song. Bye, We're gonna go
• 1:14:30
  straight back. We're gonna bring the conversation back around to Jars of Clay.
• 1:14:34
  Yeah, they have a song called let me See. It's in my library
• 1:14:42
  of Clay. It's called Oh God, where's I'm looking at my library?
• 1:14:48
  Sorry? The song is called work and it's on the record. Dude.
• 1:14:56
  That song that's literally the only Jars of Clay song that I have saved in
• 1:15:00
  my music library. Have you seen the music video for about this music video
• 1:15:05
  the other day about how they actually dude the record cover for Depravity where we're
• 1:15:17
  all standing in that pond and it's like a black water pond thing. Yeah.
• 1:15:24
  The original idea for that record cover was us being in an all white
• 1:15:30
  room with a like a swimming pool type tank that was full of black water.
• 1:15:40
  Yeah, and we like tried to find the place in the world to
• 1:15:45
  make that happen. You know, you're operating on such a low budget,
• 1:15:48
  you know at that time in our career, or you know, like no
• 1:15:53
  Facedown band's got the kind of money to like really pull off something like that
• 1:15:58
  to fill up a swimming pool full of black water. Um, But like
• 1:16:02
  that's what we were trying to find, was an all white room with a
• 1:16:05
  blackwater swimming pool to stand in and and then they didn't work out. So
• 1:16:11
  that's the cover we have. But it was all derived kind of from that
• 1:16:15
  music video. Oh I love that. That's a perfect video. Yeah,
• 1:16:18
  that's uh. That record in general is um. I think it's a it's
• 1:16:25
  like one of those records in my head that goes down as a perfect record.
• 1:16:28
  There's not a bad song on it, and um, a lot of
• 1:16:31
  really cool innovative stuff for you know, what you would consider like a Christian
• 1:16:35
  contemporary band. Right, I need to address I need to listen to that
• 1:16:39
  record more. I just literally have that one song. It's so good lyrically,
• 1:16:44
  like it's super heavy, like to think about those lyrics so like that
• 1:16:49
  it's the fear of breathing that's keeping me awake or whatever, like I don't
• 1:16:55
  know, Like I mean, I listen to that song later. I'm gonna
• 1:16:58
  go turn that right after this. I guarantee it. Those guys were so
• 1:17:01
  underrated. They get put in that like contemporary Christian world, but like their
• 1:17:06
  sound and like kind of what what what they were about and the edginess like
• 1:17:11
  didn't really fit super well. Right, Yeah, they were cool, man,
• 1:17:15
  They were good guys. Sweet. Um, all right, Andy,
• 1:17:18
  what would you like to plug? Um? Obviously got bad luck bad luck
• 1:17:21
  burgers? Do you guys would merch? By the way, is that something
• 1:17:24
  I could like buy and like you could like ship to me? Is that
• 1:17:27
  is that something? And then throwing a ditch someday yeah? And then one
• 1:17:30
  day being a ditch dude. Um, we do have merch bad luck Burger
• 1:17:34
  dot Club. We have all kinds of sick T shirts. You know,
• 1:17:39
  we kind of treat the the Burger Club just like a band. You gotta
• 1:17:43
  have merch, you gotta sell merch and be cool and all that. Um,
• 1:17:46
  so we do have multiple T shirts on there, man, you know,
• 1:17:50
  Like I mean, I don't know, like I'm always plugging everything in
• 1:17:55
  my life, you know, like I'm doing the Burgers thing. If you're
• 1:17:58
  in Nashville, coming to Cheeseburger. If you're not buy a T shirt but
• 1:18:01
  like or come see please or listen to please. But I don't know,
• 1:18:04
  man, My whole thing is just like trying to encourage people to be happy
• 1:18:11
  and be present and you know, live every day like you know, all
• 1:18:17
  the all the positive bullshit that you hear positive motivational speakers say. I'm truly
• 1:18:23
  trying to live that right now, like, you know, be present.
• 1:18:28
  Like the most important thing in the world to me right now is this conversation
• 1:18:30
  with the two of you guys. And as long as I always think that
• 1:18:34
  way and whatever I'm doing, then I'm going to be happy. And so
• 1:18:39
  I'm trying to encourage everybody else to kind of just be present and manage their
• 1:18:43
  expectations and be happy with what they have and if they're not happy, figure
• 1:18:48
  out solutions of how to get yourself to the next next spot where you want
• 1:18:53
  to be. You know, dude, I really dig that message. Also,
• 1:18:56
  I think one of the ways to get there is choring. Dude,
• 1:18:59
  you got a chore. Man, You gotta work at keeping your be a
• 1:19:03
  good steward of the life you have. I say that as a dude that's
• 1:19:06
  really fat and should probably some weight, but you know, like you know,
• 1:19:11
  work at living the best life you can live. Dude. Hell yeah,
• 1:19:15
  dude, I really appreciate that. That that that motive that you just
• 1:19:19
  exude. You really do exude that, man. You you you you put
• 1:19:23
  that out into the world so well. You've got you've got this knack of
• 1:19:28
  being relatable but also larger than life, but also entertaining, but also like
• 1:19:38
  really authentic. You know, that's not something that most people can say.
• 1:19:44
  And you you've you've dug your nails into a whole bunch of different projects and
• 1:19:47
  everything that you do well, you might not be like, you know,
• 1:19:51
  like god tier on all those things. You do it to the best your
• 1:19:55
  ability. And I think that that's like the number one thing that we could
• 1:19:59
  ask anyone to do, especially of ourselves, right sure, man, I
• 1:20:03
  mean like I had a rough go of it for a while, Like you
• 1:20:08
  know that there's a whole like period after Plea where I was trying to find
• 1:20:12
  myself and trying to find who I am and what my identity is and what
• 1:20:16
  makes me happy and the reason for waking up and all of that stuff,
• 1:20:20
  And so I went I went through like some heavy dark times, but like
• 1:20:26
  realized I was there and realized I need to figure out how to pull myself
• 1:20:29
  out of it, and like just reevaluate and like what you think your purposes
• 1:20:35
  and why you're round, and like I truly think that like my reason for
• 1:20:42
  breathing is just to try to impact other lives in some positive way, and
• 1:20:50
  like is little as like helping somebody push their grocery cart across the parking lot
• 1:20:59
  because they look a little older and maybe they need some help putting some groceries
• 1:21:01
  in their car, to like making a goofy video on the internet that hopefully
• 1:21:06
  you watch for ten seconds and laugh. You know, I don't know,
• 1:21:10
  like I've been I think about this all the time, and like I'm not
• 1:21:15
  gonna have kids, Rachel, and I was playing in life is to not
• 1:21:18
  have children, So like you know, it ends with me. What contribution
• 1:21:25
  am I giving to the world if I'm not like leaving. I'm not gonna
• 1:21:29
  leave some you know, heir to the throne or whatever, you know.
• 1:21:32
  Like so like I hopefully, dude, like when I'm gone, I've just
• 1:21:38
  put enough positive energy out into the world that like that ripple effect continues,
• 1:21:45
  you know, onto the next person and the next person. And I'm super
• 1:21:48
  long winded and talk a lot, and I hope that like in all the
• 1:21:53
  poolshit that comes out of my mouth, some minute little thing affects somebody in
• 1:21:59
  a way that changes even the smallest part of their day to actually the way
• 1:22:03
  they live their life. You know, it all matters, so totally.
• 1:22:09
  I don't know. I'm just here trying to trying to be good and trying
• 1:22:12
  to love people. Man. Love. We love you, Andy, and
• 1:22:15
  we love everything to stand for and we're we're just really happy to to be
• 1:22:21
  able to talk to you and for you to be at Furnace Fest this year
• 1:22:25
  and for you keep putting that positivity out in the world. And uh,
• 1:22:30
  you know, we really want to thank you for for everything that you've done
• 1:22:31
  thus far and everything you're going to do. Thanks coming on, man,
• 1:22:36
  we really do appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me. It's it
• 1:22:40
  like It's insane that anybody ever wants to hear my opinion or what I got
• 1:22:44
  to say about anything, you know. Um So I'm just lucky enough that
• 1:22:47
  my wife lets me talk to her on the couch. So the fact that
• 1:22:50
  you guys want me to be on your podcast is sick. You know.
• 1:22:56
  Well, we'll have to get together and hang at at Furnace Fest and I
• 1:23:00
  know we're counting down the days and there's probably only about the same amount of
• 1:23:03
  people who listen to us as your wife listening to you on the couch.
• 1:23:08
  So that's about it. Stick, dude. I would have to think at
• 1:23:11
  this rate in life, y'all have a bigger listener based on on this than
• 1:23:16
  Plead does on any of the streaming platforms right now. Like our monthly listeners
• 1:23:23
  are like nothing. It's like maybe a couple of thousand or something. It's
• 1:23:29
  Culling and Mason and that's it. Yeah. I'm like, if you guys
• 1:23:32
  are listening to our songs like maybe a thousand times a year, that's all
• 1:23:36
  we got. It's just the two of you guys. Yeah, well,
• 1:23:41
  you know we can we can put our our good out in the world by
• 1:23:44
  by giving you guys you know, forty five cents. Yeah, dude.
• 1:23:47
  I get a check from from Spotify like once every quarter for like, you
• 1:23:53
  know, thirty bucks or something. That's pretty sick. Hell yeah, yeah's
• 1:23:59
  a couple of burgers. Actually, Like, I had a really awesome royalty
• 1:24:03
  check not too long ago. It's like the most it's been in years and
• 1:24:06
  years, and I bought an Apple Watch and I was like, oh damn,
• 1:24:11
  here we go. World wonderful. Thank you so much, Andy,
• 1:24:16
  This has been great. Yeah, thank you guys. It's sick.