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Kevin and Mike of Great Danes · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about the transition, the creative rebirth, and what great things represents for them right now.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mike.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Caught on the Mic.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: And every once in a while, I gotta take the selfish course of action and do an episode all for myself.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: One of my most favorite bands from what I call the MySpace era was a band called Halifax.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: I loved their cover of Paula Abdul straight up.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: I loved the writer's reference EP.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I loved Inevitability of a Strange World.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: As a matter of fact, my year-in podcast that I recorded in December of 2025 was called Inevitability of a Strange World, where I kind of reflected upon my 2025 year as a podcaster.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Brand new band, a band called Great Danes, featuring two of the founding members of Halifax, Kevin and Mike.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Guys, welcome to the show.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having us.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having us.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is sweet.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: We're excited to talk.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Sweet, sweet, sweet.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So uh how does it feel to reflect back and see that the what I called the MySpace era is 20 plus years ago now?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's odd.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's more odd because of the fact that I don't think I ever thought it would come back in life in this big of a way, you know, like that was so it was so big to us back then, and we were in the middle of it, and we were having a lot of fun and making cool music and playing awesome shows, and then we went on with life for a while, a long while, you know, 20 years or so.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just like, all right, that's that's part of the past.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now we got back together and made some music.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, well, you know, it's actually not as much past anymore as it's kind of relevant again.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been bizarre, but it's it's cool at the same time.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's also fun to see a lot of the bands that we played with coming out again, making music again.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of like Punk Rack Sum Punk Rock Sunder Camp is back, you know.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Kevin, what is what has been the nostalgia trip for you over this whole thing?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for me, I think it's it's just crazy.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, the 20 years, I think a lot of a lot of acts are focusing on that 20-year gap that that's occurred, and it's just wild that it's been that long.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were about 20 years old um when when a writer's reference came out, right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like that's how old we were then, and now it's been that long since then.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, um, I was in Halifax just you know for a kind of a brief time in the time that a writer's reference came out, and um after I left, I kind of left and and didn't really look back for a long time.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: In the last couple years, I I have and and reconnected with those those songs kind of was was a cool experience for me too, because I I hadn't listened to him in 20 years either.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, I left the band and that was that.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And hearing them, it was like hearing them for the first time almost, and that that was cool, especially with with Sydney.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was it was fun.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: I do want to hit on that because I did listen to the the redo of Sydney several times this evening.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: Man, I'm gonna give you guys some props because this is what I hear when I listen to Great Danes.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: I listen to what the heart of Halifax would have become had natural time progression occurred.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: And the best example I can give is if you listen to Thrice's artist in the ambulance and you listen to the new music that Thrice is putting out now, you can tell that they're the same band, but that they've evolved over time and let other influences seep in and maybe weren't as held or beholden to the guardrails that conventional genre markers would have held them to.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, is that a fair assessment?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're touching on something like real, very real, right?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's funny you say thrice considering it's a band that I just absolutely love, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: But like if if at least for me, I'll speak to myself personally, if I had stayed in Halifax, we would have not ever progressed musically to where I think that you're describing, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying like, I don't know, I don't want to get any too too weird with that, but like we were, I think, trying to evolve in a direction that personally I just wasn't aligned to.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: And now that so much time has passed, I'm able to kind of like stretch out a little bit, get comfortable again, and be like, what is the type of music that really energizes me, that gets me going?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what the evolution of music for Halifax would have been.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: I just was starting to feel really constrained and really kind of like pressured in certain directions, and I'm sure there's a lot of artists that feel that, especially when it comes to the like the whole label stuff, and was just like, nah, this isn't it, this isn't it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then 20 years later, getting a beer with Kevin after not talking forever, we're like, let's make some music again.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it kind of just sparked the same feeling, if I'm being honest, that I had at least when a writer's reference was created.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm actually really it makes me really happy to hear the way you put it because that's that's really how I feel.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: I I love hearing that.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: Did either one of you, when you walked away from Halifax, Kevin in the early days, and then Mike later on after inevitability of Strange World, did either one of you walk away from it and say, you know what?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: Never again.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna do this band thing anymore.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just I'm done with it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Did either one of you have that feeling?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's both, probably.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, Kevin.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Did you?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I definitely did at that point.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I had been playing in bands um for what felt like a long time at that time, but uh what wasn't really that long, it was five or six years, trying to tour and and make it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um with Halifax, it really started to happen, and it was it was exciting, and you know, as as things progressed, um I I kind of didn't get along with some of the guys in the band, and and I ended up leaving, and it was right as we signed a drive-thru and um and the band was starting to take off.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And me personally at that point, I was just like, well, fuck this, dude.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing this again.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've I've had enough.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go back to to college and just like that.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was my shot.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's if I can make Halifax work, it's probably not in the cards for me.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, by the time I finished up, at least what what I felt like was the natural end for me, we were just making at the time a record I didn't believe in, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I could not wrap my head around continuing with something that I don't believe in.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just period, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so beyond that, I thought to myself, okay, well, like what if I did start over?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: What if I tried something different?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: And um I think my brain just wasn't in that space.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think I was just like too focused on figuring out what the heck am I gonna do with my life, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like so many things were put on pause so I could go do that.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so I was like, all right, I'm gonna get back into it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which is also kind of cool because now that I have done that, I'm like, okay, cool, I can go back and enjoy it the way I want to enjoy it again, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I do feel like it's a very liberating like experience getting back into it after kind of establishing life.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it's funny because you know, I I I said at the kickoff whenever you know we first started recording that this was a very selfish episode for me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason I asked that question is because I know when I personally walked away from it, and I've stuck to it for the most part.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, I can't do this anymore.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't so much the creative side of it as it was the social side of it.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was like being trapped in a junior high school girl's locker room, like whenever it came to playing with bandmates, other bands, and it was like socially, I felt so disconnected.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: But the last band I was in had a third album completely ready to go, minus my vocal parts, and I just couldn't write because I was stifled creatively, because as Mike had said, I wasn't aligned with what I was creating at the time.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I I asked that question very selfishly to say, hey guys, I think this happened to all of us to some degree or another.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, I definitely agree with that, and I think that like that's kind of the appropriate point, too, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you can kind of tell when an artist is into it or not, and you can kind of tell when they're like over the moon with what they've created.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll be honest with you, I just want to be over the moon with what I create, period, right?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be just okay with it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: So creatively, like, how did you fill that void, Kevin, whenever you left and you know the band was kind of starting to take off at the same time?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, creatively, um, I I'd say I just I got into other stuff um and kind of kind of redefined myself.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I really we were pretty young then, I I still had it in me to go back to college, so I I uh really dug into that um and got an engineering degree and and that took up a lot of headspace that music would have before, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then so you know, creatively though, I guess it was really kind of on on hold-ish.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just I did other things, got a lot into outdoor stuff, um backpacking, snowboarding, kind of just other other things that feed the soul, I guess you'd say, the what the same way that that music can is is how I I fed that part of my brain and um eventually really missed it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I always always played still played guitar, but um wasn't like writing music really at all for for a long, long time and yeah, found it calling back and eventually to to hear where we're talking now.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: So were you still in the band when the real world anomaly happened?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was like uh that was like weeks after I left.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I remember it was it was like so close to it's funny to laugh about it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely wasn't laughing about it then.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but but these these years, yeah, that was like I was like, oh, I can't believe I'm seeing this right now.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like these guys out there.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really when uh you know, like things were happening.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: We when I was in the band, we still played some big fun shows.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was it was awesome, but the stuff that happened after that, I'm sure was was even even more nuts.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I was as knee deep in some textbooks at that point.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, Mike, have you ever gone back and watched that season of the real world?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: So not only have I had to do that, I won't say willingly, but at a at an old job, someone found every clip that I appeared in and made a string out of every clip that I'm in.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Not only made the video, but in a big meeting in front of a lot of people said, Oh, I have something really important, I know how to present, and like played the clip, and it's just all these clips of me and the real world.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it was uh it was very interesting.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: But um it's hard to look at, man.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's real hard to look at.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's real hard.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Love it, I love it.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: So as time progressed, the real world thing happened, writer's reference EP came out.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: You had the straight up cover on the Papunko's piece album, which honestly that was my introduction to you guys was the straight-up cover, and then I found Sydney, and then so this is my other selfish moment.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: My last band that I was in, we used to always do a surprise cover, and we we've covered Don't Believe by Letter Kills.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm friends with those guys.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: I love letter kills.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: I love letter kills.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: We we we did a couple of Finch songs, we pulled out Our Revolution by Halifax, and I tell you what, dude, that shit is hard to sing live.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was uh that was a rough one for sure, dude.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: So so what in the Motley crew brought that to the forefront for you, sir.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we were recording with an incredible, amazing producer for New Jersey um goes by machine.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I started getting a little sick, and like I normally don't have a lot of rasp in my voice, that's never been my thing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was feeling kind of sick, I started getting a little bit of rasp, and we were writing this like really crazy, you know, hair metal rock song.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: The decision was made lean in, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: It has definitely homage to the crew kind of thing, right?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and then there were these notes that were a little higher than I was comfortable going towards, and when I did it while I was sick, it started kind of breaking up my voice, and for whatever reason, it didn't faze me.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was almost like I could sing, I had enough air because of how my voice was breaking up when singing that song.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so they were like, You're gonna have struggles with this live.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Well, I'll practice, I'll get to it, let's do it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like everyone agreed, it sounded cool.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we just went and did it, and sure enough, it was a pain in the ass live.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, I guess I digress.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: I just did it, made it work, leaned on the crowd to help me out, you know.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, I went to a small club show at Knickerbocker's in Lincoln, Nebraska, and watched you guys do it and you killed it live.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean, take take uh comfort in that weird question that kind of falls in line with that is I mentioned my friends in Letter Kills, and I posed this question to them too, and it actually led into this whole philosophical discussion.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_03: Had inevitability of a strange world ropped a year later, have you ever asked the what if of like what could have happened because of where rock music kind of went?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because you guys were a little bit ahead of the curve as far as that sound, like the big guitar solo, guitar rock sound coming back into the forefront, you know, for all the nudging and joking, Molly Crew-esque stuff.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like you get you were definitely ahead of that a little bit, and so was Letter Kills, you know.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the guys in Letter Kills talk about how the the Guns N' Roses Appetite for Destruction, the first single dropped in the album didn't actually hit until a year later, until the second single.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: So have you have you ever lived in that what if?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's interesting.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I've ever lived in that what if.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, to be totally honest, I kind of felt like leaning into that song.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm being honest, it was a little bit of a mistake, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's a cool song, but it definitely didn't represent the whole album.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that was like my biggest thing is I would love for someone to see, like, hey, what's this song from this band that's their ticket in?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then they hear the other songs, they're like, what the heck?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is what the single was.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's weird, you know.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe I there's a little bit of what if on that side, but it was more so had it come earlier.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: I definitely more so think, like, had this come earlier, what would that have been like?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then I immediately shut it off and just start thinking about something different and be like, I can't do that to myself.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, yeah, like like Nightmare.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Nightmare is like a little bit more of an accurate representation of what you guys sounded like.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you well, uh Kevin was helping write that song, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that was the natural what we talked about earlier.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: That was the natural progression of Halifax.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you listen to Sydney to Nightmare, that's more of a natural progression.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's gotten more and more.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's when it's starting to kind of I think lose it a bit.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's bring it to the here.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Kevin.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just just real quick, it's like the the writer's reference, Nightmare that you said, and then the the final track on inevitability, murder I wrote.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of that's in my brain what how a facts has defined us.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Fair enough, fair enough.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let's bring this to the here and now.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about Great Danes because this is something worth getting excited about.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I listened to the whole album, Nomad Empire, like a couple of times today.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think it is very interesting that you guys reimagined Sydney and again making the Thrice reference, it did really remind me of how Thrice remade artist in the ambulance, and you could hear the gristle, you could hear the age, you could hear the maturity in taking one piece of art and like adding life experience to it and turning it into something new.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the whole album is very reflective of that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, Body in the Marsh, I absolutely love that one.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Atom Bomb, I loved that one.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you guys have a fantastic album.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what do you want the world to know about it?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think that for this album in particular, there's a little bit of a story that I think needs to be told for it because it helps answer that question, I think.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: Which is Kevin and I reconnected.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: We started talking about you know what back in the day was going on, where we left off.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, that conversation got to uh, so what are you doing now?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Are you making music?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And by the end of that, like it was we're talking about like an hour and a half of a conversation.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: By the end of it, we had agreed that we were gonna maybe make music together.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna go, we're gonna, we're gonna figure something out, we're gonna make some music.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I had sat on a lot of material, a lot of ideas and things that I've collected in my brain over the years, and sometimes I've even tried to like make them.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so Nomad Empire really was like, hey, this is it, this is the time to do it.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like, Kevin and I are gonna get together and make some really cool music.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: I get to like pull some of these things out that I've really wanted to pull out for a long time.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting because I would say about two-thirds of the album is stuff that's actually been in the hawker for a long time, just never actually recorded or never actually finished, you know.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like it took both of us to finish it, and then there's a couple songs on there, like one third of the album that is like just brand new.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm almost exercising the writing muscles again.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so the takeaway would be is almost going back to what you said earlier, is like if you wanted the natural progression to Halifax, like this is where it would have been going.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And this is in my mind the start, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like we've already we almost almost have a whole other album ready to go to, like that we're we're you know, working on more music and stuff.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: But like this is just like the intro, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: This is the four fans of Wetched Beak, get back into it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: This is how we're gonna be approaching this stuff.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I will some call out specifically the song Ocean is the oldest song, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: That is probably 15, maybe more year, like that's how old that idea was.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then the song Strange Bird was written like almost right before we finished the album, which is the last song of the album.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like a 20, almost 20-year gap between when the first song was written and the last song that's written, which is really cool.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like a weird story through time of this album that I think is really important, and it would never have been made if it weren't for Kevin and I reconnecting and deciding to start something up.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: What about through your preview, Kevin?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, for me, um as as we've said a few times, we've talked for 20 years, and and I uh I ran into a uh mutual friend of ours who who kind of this guy Taylor Boltz, he's awesome.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: He he pretty much caused this to happen.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: He threw out, he was like, hey, uh you and Mike should make some tunes together after we were talking about other other little side projects we were working on.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, huh, that's fucking crazy.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't talked to Mike in 20 years, you know.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think Mike probably had the same reaction when when uh uh Taylor hit him up about it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we both, I don't know, something kind of it seemed like the right thing to do for for me personally, like Strange World was was an album that like I never got to complete, really.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: We were we were just starting to work on it, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's always something that kind of like was like fuck, I hate that for me.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So this album is is uh is really literally picking up where we left off in 2004 and and is the spiritual successor of that era, I think.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and and like you said, I know we keep talking about thrice, but I think they're such a good example because that progression of thrice from artists in the ambulance to to now is like unbelievable.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think people who who only stick to that artist era are are doing themselves a disservice.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's so much, I think it's awesome that you you compared our progression to that.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's very flattering.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's to see it, you know, and I think that that comes from life experience almost more than musical experience, really.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: So leaning into the musical side of it, are what are your influences now in that 20 year span versus when you were writing some of the earlier material as Halifax?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like obviously, you've picked up some tools out.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Them to the toolbox.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I I've said this on probably 30 episodes of the podcast.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Streaming services have removed the guardrails to adhering to genres.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you're not so bound by, like, okay, well, you're the punk rock guy, so you gotta skip to the punk rock side lane, right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so musically, just one at a time, what kind of influences do you have now that you didn't have then?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: You want to take this one first, or do you want me to go?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: First, yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'll try many.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of touched on it, but like musical influences of like what we listen to is a whole other topic, and I'm happy to jump into that.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: But to for me, it's all technology.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is all technology, right?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's because like back in the day, for me at least, for writing songs, it's grabbing acoustic and strum until I come up with an idea, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: And now it's like make a beep boop sound or have a weird, like heavy, chuggy thought that you can't really accomplish the feeling on an acoustic, but you can just boot up logic and get it across and be like, okay, cool.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can I could see this actually working, right?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like technology is inspiring because you can actually hear the idea in real time as you're developing it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to me, that was the the biggest thing because I never had the patience for it back in the day.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like to learn those programs.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was always just like, I just want to say cool shit, you know, I just want to go.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so so once we got into that and we figured that out, you know, I'm I my history is way more poppy, pop punk, like, you know, wanting to do more heavy stuff, but I just never naturally had it.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, I think Kevin Kevin adds so much heaviness to the songs that it's like that's exactly what the the goal is, the dream is, you know, that we we be able we're able to take our influences and match it together and make it what it's supposed to be, which is cool.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know, Kevin, what you think.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: The technology was a game changer, like it made it um so that we were able to really do this pretty quickly without ever entering a studio, doing it from the spaces we're talking to you from right now is awesome.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you can get amazing guitar sounds, and they're the it's limitless.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: But as for as far as like influences, yeah, a lot of a lot of music since 2004 has shaped my my brain.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: As Mike indicated, I've always gravitated toward heavy stuff.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um like and a lot of the stuff that I loved in 2004 I still love because it's old, like old neurosis and tool and you know that kind of stuff.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: But newer bands like um Russian Circles is one of my favorite bands that kind of came to life in that last few decades.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like they're they're just an inspiration to me.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're so fucking heavy and and creative and um like the their guitar work is just they're you you know them.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're they're something special.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I like love that band, and I've listened to a lot of other random, you know, like the alt well, not no, not alt country, but some like like Jason Isbull and Sturgel Simpson.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I love like that style is something that I never would have listened to back in the day, but as as a more grown-up person, I feel it more.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, lots of random stuff.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, that is hilarious.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I tell everybody, like the last last band I was in kind of was in the a Treyu story of the year kind of vein.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I couldn't write new music because I spent the entire last year listening to either Jay-Z albums or Jason Isball albums, and like, how do you write like post-hardcore, you know, punk rock songs whenever you're like either in your feelings or you're listening to workout music, you know?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's crazy.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting you say that because there are times where like, because I I mean, I'll be honest, I blast like disco, you know, like I blast random stuff all the time on regular, and sometimes I'll find myself writing parts of songs that I'm like adding something.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all the other bands wouldn't do that.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's weird, don't do that.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, now at least mature enough and grown up enough to say, you know, fuck it, like I'm gonna do it.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like it, I like it, you know.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Don't let it.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's where and that's where some of the comfort I think comes in, is like now I'm just kind of more comfortable on my skin, I'm doing it for a different reason.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and yeah, I I I love that.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that like you should embrace, at least in your scenario that you were talking about, like if those are the influences, then it's like exciting to see what comes out.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's at least how I've been kind of thinking about it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: But that's more forgivable now than it even was like 14 years ago, because 14 years ago or or beyond, you had to stay in your lane, or else you're alienating the people that are following you and like subscribing to to your you're like like music isn't as much of a lifestyle now as it used to be then.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's something you just love and you enjoy.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: You can bounce between a pop song to a metal song, and nobody's gonna think anything of it now.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the really good metal core these days is pop music just with metal on top of it.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: At the end of the day, if you strip all these songs back to like pretty acoustic or pretty pop songs, they would work.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it's a better way to say it, you know.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um to your point, if you I love this band to death, but like if you took sleep token and put them 14 years ago, you know, people I don't I they would have not taken off.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're in the era where it works.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: Bring me the horizon is another one that I think of that has has like evolved so much.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now that they're to a point where every album they drop sounds completely different than the last album, except for Ollie's vocals, really.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've been really into Bad Owens lately, too.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm late on the train, but I I was late on Bring Me the Horizon, so we're on the same page, bro.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: So speaking of that, like what are you listening to now that really does excite you outside of your own music?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I am I am partially listening to the stuff that I'm discovering and like now, but I'm also doing it through the ears of my 10-year-old son, right?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because he has developed a taste for music, he's developed a taste for hard, screamy, you know, chug music.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so and he likes the theatrics, right?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like he loves slipknot, right?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: So we play a lot of slipknot in my house for him because he loves it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Sleep tope, I introduced him to, but like there's that band President, for example, and he likes President because it's got this cool thematic to it, it's got this mystery and whatnot.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so stuff along those lines I listen to a lot, like I said, uh, diomens, architects, things like that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Thrice and Mus are always on rotation, by the way.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thrice and Mus are just a gibbon.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've been listening, probably the like most played thing I've had recently is a band called Idle Airs, um, which is I don't know if you ever heard of a band called Cole S, which was an old yeah.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's uh the singer of Coeless with another guy, and it's it's uh it's very heavy, it's very different than Cole S.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like raw, emotional, dark.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's fucking awesome.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really like it.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've listened listened to that quite a bit since it came out.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um another band Mike and I have seen a couple times, Barbarians of California.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're a band out of this area that that is I think fresh and different and fun and like insanely heavy.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, going back to Great Danes, what's it like launching this project now versus if you would have launched it in 2005, 2006?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Is it more of a challenge now or is it less of a challenge?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: That is such a big question because like it would not have been launched in 2005 or six because we we, you know, the amount of hoops you have to jump through in order to get that to be a thing, right?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: To figure out who's gonna distribute it, find a label, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like when when when I exited, it was just starting to become a little bit easier to publish music, right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I mean, Kevin and I we did it from these runes, and it was you're able to release it, no problem.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Getting it out is not the problem.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now the problem is figuring out how to get it in front of people and stand out in a C, right?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think the biggest thing that we've learned, um, curious, Kevin, what you think, but like making the music and releasing it was like almost like the first first little like, I don't know, intro to what it's like to release music.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's the sustain, it's the social media presence, it's the you know, making sure you're optimizing all your platforms and things like that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yes, it's great, you have this freedom you can do yourself, but like there's a lot to it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think neither either one of us really anticipated or realized that.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's quite a hustle and just uh to have any presence and um and yeah, the social is like crucial, obviously.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Mike and I are not social media managers, but we're playing them right now the best we can.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, back in the day we had support from like a lot of people who were excited.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um this day it's it's just me and Mike doing this, just fucking punk rock DIY, you know, DMing you yourself and saying, let's do it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's we're we're treating it organic and and uh having fun, just kind of doing the DIY attitude.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that because there are so many different avenues of like social media and like ways to promote this product and the absence of what used to be monoculture?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like you used to get together on a Sunday night and watch the MTV video music awards.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: Now, like you find out the video music awards have happened like a week later and you're like, oh shit, that was on.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like, because there's so much now.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel that that barrier to entry to promoting new music is more of a challenge?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: I know what the obvious answer is, but that's a tough one.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, like you and we were just kind of talking about it a minute ago where I where I referenced like being late on the battle midstrain or whatever.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's like at the end of the day, who who who cares, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the point is that you get to discover it and it's exciting, and you like get to listen to it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think for us, we were so eager.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we had the record done before, well before it came out.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: We were just like, hey, we want to put this out.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: And friends were like, Don't, you gotta like figure out how to your release plan and you gotta do this stuff on social and blah blah blah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, wow.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on a second minute.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're like, we were we were like, Don't wouldn't it be cool if you could just listen to it?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like and they're like, No, you gotta do this whole thing.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, All right.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: So we waited, we tried to build up some buzz and we put it out, but now it's just like again, it's out there.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: So is there is there pressure for people to hear it now?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: No, you know, you discover it when you want to discover it, and but we just hope that some point you do, you know, like it it's it's definitely weird, and there's a lot more out there, so there's a lot of noise, but if you're enjoying we we Kevin and I aligned on this from almost day one, where we're like, it's well it the most important thing is that we really love what we're doing.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's fun.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just having fun making music, and if two people hear it, fucking whatever.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: That was that was our attitude starting this.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Love that.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: So have you guys fully fleshed out the band?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have a full band now, or is it still primarily just the two of you?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: And what are kind of the goals as far as translating this live?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: Do you plan on translating this live?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we started that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we have uh a guitar player, another guitar player, and uh and a drummer who are awesome people.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: We love them very much, and we get together as often as we can and have a set that's like the Nomad Empire set that we've been practicing and working on.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if the opportunity came up to play show, then we absolutely would.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've been exploring it, but we're doing everything backwards.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: We usually bands get together, rehearse, write, record, pay it out, then go promote it.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, no, we made the album first, and now we're figuring out if we can do a play live.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: But we absolutely have the setup now and we're ready to do it, we're excited for it.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just a matter of time, I'd say.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we got a couple shredders to join us.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and Mike's playing guitar.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: If that wasn't clear in this, Mike will also be playing guitar on stage, which is a departure from the Halifax days.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, it's fun.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that's like one of the things I I miss more than anything.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like making those songs and creating this record was really fulfilling and awesome.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: But um I haven't played a show in in a couple decades.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to do that shit again.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually it's funny, it's like a point of contention, not a point of contention.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Kevin's like, let's let's practice and go play a show.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, all right, if you could figure that out, great.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go make a bunch of other songs right now because I really just want to.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm like, oh, let's play a show, dude.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Your movie's like kind of torn on that at times, but it's just because there's so much, it's fun to do all of it.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: So adding these other two guys to the band, has it kind of influenced your writing process?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: You say you could almost record a second album already.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't know that the the group has really changed it because the writing process is effectively the same.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Kevin and I put down thoughts and send sessions back and forth and text each other about things we're excited about.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because it's still primarily created through the two of us.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, no, I don't think it's changed too much.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: If anything, like the day that we met back up again and I ultimately decided to do this, I had never opened logic before, right?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: And Kevin taught me logic, and then since then we've both been learning as we're making music, right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say the the advancement, the changing the process in terms of writing music, especially going from album one to album two, is actually just learning how to do it better, learning word technique and stuff like that.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like the writing itself is very similar to what it was before.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: And you guys, this is completely self-produced.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like Nomad Empire is completely done in home between the two of you.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, we had some help, right?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: We have drum drum help is something that both both of us don't know.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we have a friend who helps contribute the drums that execute the vision and then mixing.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: We have a friend who's a really good, really good friend of ours who who helps us mix it because we just we don't have that skill set.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, other than a lot of sells.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: The fidelity is outstanding.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like honestly, like like the production, the production layers and such that I heard.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: I like I I was just hearing that I'm beside myself, but I'm also beholden to the old process.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just like so like, well, we gotta find a studio with big ceilings so the drums sound right, blah blah blah blah blah, you know.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, we leaned into the new stuff for sure.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny because, like, you know, I I I had never recorded vocals by myself, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'd always ever been in a studio with someone saying, Okay, go, you know.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I bought a microphone and I put it literally right next to where I am.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I could I could like pull it under the frame.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I remember talking to a friend of ours who's like, Oh, well, you're gonna want to put this stuff on your walls, you're gonna want to like do this and get a shield and stuff like that.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I don't, I don't really want to do that.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: And she was like, Well, you gotta do that.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I don't think I'm gonna, and I just recorded the vocals here and we figured out a way to make it work, and it works.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So technology technology, right?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like it just kind of did its job.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, shout out to John Locks, though.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's the mixer master and engineer.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, my Mike and I kind of put the sandwich together of the tracks, and then he really fine-tuned it and added his own guitar sounds and stuff.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he, I think the fidelity of it is really his his baby cred credit to John.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: He fucking killed it, and he's he plays guitar a couple times on the album too, which his contributions are fucking awesome too.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: Phenomenal.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: So if you had to describe to audiences that checked out Nomad Empire where this project is going to evolve, how do you see it evolving over the next, let's just say, 18 months?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: I some personally on the on the cover art, like there's a character, right?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of feel like there's a theme, right?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like the whole concept of Nomad Empire was all about this area that we live in and how these are all these songs that were written in various stages over the years.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: Evan and I are from an area where we have all these friends and connections that have different different involvements in music.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we were kind of like joking around calling it the Nomad Empire, right?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so there's kind of like another character that's coming for the second album and the the next thing once uh releases.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that for fans of particularly on the album Evil Opera and Ocean, the more it's like theatrical songs, the songs that have a little bit more of like the big, big chorus, falsetto-like, like uh choir operatic background things, like that's my jam.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm really trying to like what do you want to call lean hard into that a bit more?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: But also to the point I made earlier about only a third of the album was written in the last year, or everything else was like material come over time.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is the first time a lot of material is being written under a completely different mindset of like understanding how it could be.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, where is this going in the next 18 months from a musical perspective?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's where it's going.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: From like the, you know, how it's digested, like Kevin and I are doing our social stuff.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna continue to make videos and have fun doing it and promoting it.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: But we are gonna, we've already talked about experimenting on release cadence and what that looks like.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: And does it need to be everything at once?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: Talking and I like completely word vomited all as the no, so yeah, that's that's your mindset, right?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you're the primary creative force here, so that's it's definitely an important lens.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, as we were just talking about trying to play shows, um, we're we're open to that.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone's listening, you know, hit us up.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're interested.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to, I think we'd both like to see the album out um in a physical format.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a vinyl nerd.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I'd really that would be really cool to do.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's an endeavor we can pursue this year.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's I think that's what it looks like.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're keeping up band practice and and uh you know trying to trying to just fulfill ourselves creatively and keep everything moving.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_03: So what's so funny is I was like scrolling your Instagram earlier today, and there's a you guys have this video where somebody does the Metallica fuel.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Give me fuel, give me five.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I'm like, holy shit, I don't know how many times I've done that at band practice, and of course the drummer just like I'm in, let's do it.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, you I don't know if you caught it, but like Trevor, our guitar player, like he the amount of excitement that just bursts out of him when that happens, and he just wants to like start with the rest.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you appreciated that because that is definitely one of those amazing times.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: We laughed pretty hard.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was just I don't know why we always talk about that song, but so you know, just kind of you know, making manifesting things and like looking at what's tangible.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a band from the early days back when you guys were playing with Halifax that you would love to reconnect with and play a show with as Great Danes?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'll let Mike go first.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, you go because I'm I'm stumped.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to think.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me, like I said, my time in the band was was fairly brief.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: So um I have some strong memories of specific few bands.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the strongest memories I have is is Armor for Sleep.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we toured with them pretty early on before it was before their full length that got really big came out.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was the uh I think it's called Dream to Make Believe, is that what it's called?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's so good.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love that album, and that band is still doing their thing.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to their new stuff the other day and was like pretty impressed with it.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that that would be a band for me that that I'd like to reconnect with.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, one of my favorite bands from that era that we we had toured together actually a few times probably would have been I in the Avalanche or Movie Life, one of those two.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: I always have such incredible, such fond memories tying with them, but also just their music I really I really really like.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: But also I'm gonna say because you mentioned it, I'm also a huge letter kills fan, so I you know, I wouldn't have given anything to be in the same room with that.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: We'll we'll we'll talk when the recording stops.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Seriously.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, guys, I have really enjoyed this conversation.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_03: My favorite question to ask at the wrap-up of every episode, and it's because everybody gives it such a unique answer, is one at a time.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and it's an off-the-wall question, but what's your advice we're making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today through your life experience?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: You point it at me, Mike.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can sure.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'll say what I share with my my four-year-old son is to just try try to leave everywhere you go a little bit better than than you found it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if everyone could keep that in mind, whether that means clean something up or or or you know being a friend to someone or whatever.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my that's my tip to make the world a better place.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: We only have so much time on this earth, and everyone only has so much time on this earth.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're able to spend some of, if not a lot, of that time making someone else's day better or treating someone else with respect that helps them throughout whatever hard time they're going through, then you're spending your time wisely, in my opinion.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the fact that we have the ability to treat other people the way we want to be treated, like actively set an example and we don't is is a disservice to humanity.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: So my thing would just be like treat people with respect, treat people the way you want to be treated.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if everyone starts to do that, then wouldn't the world be just a much better place to be in?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: Hell yes, hell yes.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: All right, guys, tell everybody that's either watching this or listening to this where they can find Great Danes music and you guys online.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great Dane's streaming everywhere, should be anywhere you streaming music, and uh we're currently on Instagram at Great Danes818.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's it for socials.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome, awesome, awesome.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, guys, Mike, Kevin, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: I hope we can talk again here in the near future once more music drops.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we'll talk whenever I stop recording about some some letter kill stuff.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: But thank you guys so much for doing the show.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: The world is a much better place for you and it.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having us.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: We're honored.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Once again, I'd like to thank my friends Evan and Mike of Great Games for joining me on the podcast today.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure you are following them on Instagram at great games818.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: Go check out their music on Spotify like we talked about in the podcast episode 5.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Reworked the Halifax tracks today.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: While you're on Dennis with the follows, make sure you're following Cod on the Microsoft Media platforms.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Always visit me at www.codonthemic.com.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: Choose me in email, cod on the mic, M I K D at Gmail.com.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, as Ben, Cod on the Mike.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: With Michael Flark, I'm Michael Flark at the next NIC.