Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Josh Porter from Showbread on the Legacy of Age of Reptiles

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Josh Porter from Showbread on the Legacy of Age of Reptiles · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Today, I've got Josh from Show Bred excited to chat
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: with you for the second time. Last time we just
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: kind of chatted more about the general history of show
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Brad and then I think around that time too, you
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: had recently released Death of Deconstructions. We talked a little
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: bit about that. That was just an amazing conversation. Honestly,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: sometimes when I think back to like some of my
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: favorite conversations on this podcast, that's that's definitely one of
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: them that I think a lot about. So definitely excited
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to chat with you again, Josh. This time we're gonna
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: chat about uh, Age Reptiles because it is the twentieth
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: anniversary the day that we're so we're recording right now
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: on July twenty second. I think August first of two
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: thousand and six was when Age of Reptiles came out,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: so almost exactly twenty years ago. But yeah, I'm wanting
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to do some sort of celebration of some of these
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: amazing tooth and nel albums that came out in two
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: thousand and six, and so Age of Reptiles was one
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of them that I wanted to chat with you about.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So we'll talk all things Age of reptiles here in
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a second. But before we dive into that, how are
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you doing today, Josh, I'm great.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, jeez, the bar is now. Sid you describing
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: the last conversation we had as going so well, Now,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I feel a lot of overwhelming pressure.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: You know, you can you can always underperform if you want.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: That's true, that's my motto.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, that is that is the I mean, this
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: podcast is basically, you know, for the underachievers.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: So that's right, that is yeah. But I'm ready. So
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: you were here feeling.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: You're perfectly yeah, you're perfectly suited for that. So well,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: let's yeah, it sounds like you're doing well.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Let's uh, let's chat about age of reptiles.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So don't really know exactly where to begin, but you know,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: knowing the success of No Sir, I would imagine like
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, like did you feel like there
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: was a sense of like even the after coming off
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of No Sir that you were like, okay, like new
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to be writing soon. Did you have any
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: sense of like pressure around that, especially since because Noser
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: did really well?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Uh, pressure is maybe not the best word, but I
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: did feel a sense of urgency in that I mean,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the the no Sernihilism is not practical record had done well.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think I realized at the time, because I
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: had no rubric. We had been a very functional indie band,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: you know, with no record label, that toured and released
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: records for years and and our our goal, our dream
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: was to sign with Toosannail Records, and then we did
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: right right, And I think because of you know, a
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: certain sense of maybe insecurity or immaturity, the success of
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: the record felt to me as if it was never enough,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: or you know, I just was comparing that like, oh,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: these other bands have gotten on bigger tours or they've
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: sold more record. It wasn't by any means crippling or
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the only thing I thought about it just meant that
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I was sort of blinded to the fact that by
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: today's standards, I don't think I could ever make a
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: record that would sell you know, thirty thousand copies physical
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: copies in you know, stores across the world or whatever.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: So I didn't feel any sense of like, oh my god,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: it went so well, and now we have to follow
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: that record. The only thing that I felt creatively is
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: that I was very tired of that approach to songwriting.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Not that I didn't like the record. I loved it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Then I loved I'd never stopped really loving that record.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: But you know, as a as a songwriter, you've start
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: to feel as if you want to do something at
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: least I've start to feel like I want to do
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: something really different, especially since we toured almost non stop
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: leading up to the year leading up to the release
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: of Nihilism and then throughout two thousand and four. In
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: two thousand and five, we took like four weeks off
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: or something like that, and toward the rest of it,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: and so every single night we were playing the songs
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: from those who are Nihilism is not Practical. And there
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: was a point during that touring cycle where I was
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: writing really experience because I felt as if maybe the
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: right approach was to move further in that direction, which
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: would mean something more experimental and even more frenetic and chaotic.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: And so the things that I was writing were, I mean,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: maybe more akin to something like mister Bungle or something
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: like really strange, like you know, piecemeal kind of songs.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: But then got I just got tired, not tired, I
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: felt less enthusiastic about writing those kinds of songs and
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: felt more like, well, what's at least within our wheelhouse
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: and what we like to do. What's the opposite of
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: something chaotic and frenetic and all over the place with
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: different time signatures and bpms and key changes. And that
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: to me was a pop a pop rock record, something
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: that had verse chorus, first chorus, bridge chorus, And so
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I was just reaching into a bag of different influences
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: and started writing those. So it was informed way more
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: by like a creative restlessness than any sort of awareness
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: of what the previous record had or hadn't done performatively,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Huh. So, I remember last time we were chatting. I
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: don't know why this always sticks out to me, but
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you mentioned that no Sir, or at least around the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: time that you all were writing No Sir, you almost
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: felt like you were trying to like whatever Refused was
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: doing at the time. You were like, we're gonna We're
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: gonna basically just rip that and and so. And I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: think the reason why I that that part of our
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: conversation stood out to me so much was like I
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: never had made that connection before that that No ser
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: sounds so much like Refused, and like there's so many
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: elements that you guys incorporated in that album. In that
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: album that especially sound like the the the shape of
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: is it like the shape of Punk to Come? I
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: just forget how to pronounce that one, but it definitely
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: it has that vibe, like totally it feels like that
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and and and that had never occurred to me until
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: you mentioned that. And then now like every time I
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: listen to No Sir, I'm just thinking about Refused, or
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes when I'm listening to Refuse, I think about No Sir.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm curious then, like going into this new album,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like you even sort of mentioned like you know, maybe
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: writing sort of like mister Bungle, like did you feel
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: like there was maybe certain artists that you were feeling
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: like super influenced by at that time that you maybe
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: wanted to make the new sound sound like in this
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: this you know, Age of Reptiles album going.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Into it, I think that being severely limited as a
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: songwriter or you know, not coming from a background of
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: music education and theory and just really diy approached me.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that as a brag, like you know,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: like that that enabled us to effectively mimic bands without
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: creating a carbon copy of those bands, because I didn't
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: know how to create a car. If I did know
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: how to like really tap into exactly what Refused was doing,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: then the record may have sounded more like a copycat record.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: But I think for me, you know, it never even
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: occurred to me when I was drawing inspiration from the
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: shape of punk to com that, oh, most of these
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: songs are you know, in a different tuning. They're drop
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: D then they're they're using really gainy guitars, and our
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: guitars are twangy Fender guitars, and they're using eclectic jazz drums,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and we use like a three piece kit that's informed
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: more by like the Flaming Lips. And I wasn't doing
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: that to draw a distinction between us and Refuse. It's
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: just that I didn't I couldn't make the connect or
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: didn't make the connection that like, we have these aesthetic
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: pieces that are in our toolbox and that will keep
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: us from really sounding like Refused, you know, like there's
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: a common you know, aesthetic or some songs sound more
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: like Refused than other songs. But I think that it
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: because we had worked with really capable, a really capable
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: producer on Nihilism, she was, you know, we'd player the
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: shape of Punk to come, and she's like, but your
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: songs don't sound like this. And we were like, well,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: what do you mean they don't sound like this? And
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: she's like, well, their guitars are like this, Your guitars
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: are like this, your drums are like blah blah blah.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: And that made me realize, like, oh, when I try
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: to copy things, they often come out sounding nothing like
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the thing that I'm trying to copy. It's more just
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: like a you know, the refused record was my muse
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: in a sense, and it created a lot of stuff,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: and if it did sound like it, that didn't bother
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: me at all. So I more intentionally thought of like, okay,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: well I'm going to take a handful of influential records
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: to me that have never been on the table as
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: like direct show bread influences, and see what happens if
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I try to mimic what's happening on these records. So
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: for me, it was Vana's in Utero, we User's Pinkerton,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: which is always an influence on all the show read
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: records in some way, shape or form. The Everclear record,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Sparkle and Fade, and the Flaming Lips record Transmissions from
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the Satellite Heart, which we're all like kind of mid
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: to early nineties that would have gone into the junk
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: drawer of what we called at the time alternative rock,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: even though they're wildly you know, disparate expressions of that genre.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Stone Temple Pilots the Purple Album is another one of those,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And so I would listen, put on the Everclear record
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: and pay attention to what's happening, like, oh, there. They
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: use these power chords, and they kind of cop they
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: follow this common theme. The choruses tend to move like this.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: We you know, like we're really interested in doing something
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: that was sonically informed by something like Pinkerton or in Utero,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: which are way more aggressively live quote unquote live records
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: that feel as if the band is just in a
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: room hitting record. And then that began a profound internal
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: struggle with the band. Over half of us wanted to
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: approach it that way and the other half wanted to
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: do something that was going all the way in the
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: direction of a pop rock record. So like, well, if
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: we're writing these really hooky, really listenable songs. Then let's
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: do it up. Let's polish them, let's make it air tight,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: let's add harmonies. And so that was the tension that
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: kind of went into the recording process. But anyway, all
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: that to say, it was dusting off all these influential
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: early to mid nineties records that we might have called
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: like grunge or alternative or things that would play on
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: MTV when I was in middle school. Right, that really
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: informed the direction of the album.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I'm curious like your thought on I'm out to like
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: kind of mention, like what how I hear it? And
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I'm curious like your thought on this given all of
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: that to me, No, sir, Again, like when you mentioned
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that it you know you guys were kind of really
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: influenced by Refused at that point. I definitely hear that
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: kind of punk refuse type of punks, like especially in
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the guitar riffs. To me, and again I'm curious your
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: thoughts on this, it's to me age of reptiles, not
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: all of them, but like many of the guitar riffs
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: have more of I would say, maybe described as more
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: of a pop punk vibe than like Noser did, Like
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: did you hear that do you sense that did it
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: feel like that? Did you Was that intentional? Was it
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: not intentional? Like? But at least that's like my impression
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know that I ever intentionally thought. I mean,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: we have a background and a deep affection for pop
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: punk music. My first punk bands were bands like you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: No Effects and MxPx and Pennywise. Bands are that, you know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: kind of the skate punk revival of the nineties, that
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Offspring were a part of Green Day, all those I
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: liked those bands and was influenced by those bands long
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: before I heard bands like you know, Refused or you know,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the edgier or more experimental or kind of elevated punk
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: rock music. So I would I don't feel any that's
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: in there that's part of the core and Showbred's early
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: like late nineties music was pop punk music that sounds
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: a lot more like one of those bands than it
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: does you know where it went. But I think that
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of what I realized in copying, like I
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: would sit down and learn you know, every song on
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: in Utero, or learn every song on the Everclear record,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: and realize that a lot of these progressions are the
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: same kinds of progressions that you would put in a
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: pop punk song. There would just be some subtle thing
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: to differentiate what you expected to happen, which was really exciting.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And a Nirvana song, a lot of the songs I'll
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: never Mind follow those major chord progressions that are really
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: hooky and upbeat, and they if you sped it up
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and had someone with a less gravelly voicing it, it would
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: be a pop punk song. But on in Utero there's
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: the incorporation of you know, like a traditional major chord
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: hook that suddenly has something off. You know, there's an
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: off kilter, there's a miner in there, or there's a
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: dissonant chord in there, and that, to me was was
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: really interesting and like, oh, well, I got the subtle
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: inclusion of something that's just a little bit different, and
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: that let me reach for these other more experimental influences
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: like the Jesus Lizard that don't show up in a
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: presenting way on the Age of Reptiles record, but you know,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: like it was. It's exciting to feel like you have
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: a different toolbox and like, oh, this is cool. I
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: never thought about, you know, this kind of influence of
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the way this band writes a song. So it makes
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: sense that it sounds pop punkin and in a certain
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: sense it is even if I was reaching for something
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: different at the time, you know what I mean?
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Right right, Like I remember, this might be getting ahead
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of ourselves, but I remember when it first came out
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: there was definitely a lot of reaction around the fact
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that certainly there was less screaming on Age of Reptiles,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and it did seem, you know, quite a bit like
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a departure from from No Sir,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and like going, like when you're starting to write Age
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: of Reptiles, knowing that there may be less screaming and
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: that there's going to have this kind of different sound
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: that it might be, you know that might happen from it.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I'm curious, like did you have any sense of like
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: how maybe fans would receive it, Like not to say
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: that you have to like write based on what fans
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: would want or whatever, but like did you have a
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: sense of, oh, like, this will be interesting to see
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: how fans might react to this difference in the sound.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was kind of twofold. We weren't
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: like completely oblivious to the fact that there would be
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: some reaction from the small constituency of people that really
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: cared about the band because it was so different, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: the affection for that first record, which again was my
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: only experience of releasing a record wide like that, but
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: it was really positive, maybe more positive than anything that
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I've made, like it everywhere we went. In fact, you know,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: of course, lots of people didn't care or didn't like it,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: but everywhere we went, people expressed a really profound appreciation
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: for that record and saw in it things that I
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: didn't even see because to me, it was just like
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: a collection of the songs we had written. We didn't
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: have the time or space to think of it as
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: an album the way that Age of Reptiles was envisioned
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: as an album. And so I mean, like, as I've
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: talked about this a ton, but the as a songwriter,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: the things that or a musician, someone in a band,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: the things that were always most exciting to me. The
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: artists that were always most exciting to me were artists
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: that were unpredictable and that you had no idea what
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: the next record would sound like, and sometimes it could
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: be an entirely different genre. They'd reinvent themselves from the
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: ground up, you know, for me. It was David Bowie
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: who actually reinvents himself as a character album cycle to
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: album cycle. Or Nine Inch Nails who consistently reinvent themselves
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: album to album, the Flaming Lips, who go from a
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you know, buzzy alternative band to and avant garde on
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: orchestral band from one band and then an electronic band
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: from one record to the other. But there's a thread,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: there's a thread of DNA that connects everything. That was
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: always the most exciting thing to me as a fan,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: and I just took for granted that that's what we
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: would do. We would always just make one kind of
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: record and then make the next one be totally different.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Esthetically it'd be different, we'd represent ourselves visually as a
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: different kind of band. Sonically it would be very different,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: and I like lots of bands that repeat their formula.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I just didn't want to do that personally, and I
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: think that we were aware of it. But we had
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: like two core rules in the studio. One was you're
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: never allowed to consider what the fans will think, and
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the other is that you're never were allowed to consider
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: whether or not we can do it live and so
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: that you know it came up where people are like, oh,
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: you know, people aren't gonna like this, and we'd be like,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. You're not allowed to talk about whether
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: or not someone will or won't like it. Do we
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: like it, then let's do it, you know. And so
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: that was part of the ethos. But I did honestly
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: take for granted that they would be a bigger group
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: of people who would find also find that exciting. That
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: would be like, oh cool, you know, like a certain
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: much more respected and known bands have developed an audience
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: that or I guess curated cultivated an audience that appreciates
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: that about there. But someone like, you know, the easiest,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: huge example, someone like Radiohead, where fans come to expect
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: something that's going to be one hundred and eighty degrees
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: different and they love it. And I had naively assumed
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: that we would have more of those people in our audience.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: So the reaction was it felt pretty hostile in the
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: in the very beginning, even when just like the first
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: couple of singles came out, it was kind of like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: what the heck is.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: This right right? Well? And it probably takes you know,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I would even imagine that there might have been like
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: some reaction against Radio a head from you know, from
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Pablo Honey to the Benz to Okay Computer. But as
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it just became more and more obvious that they're really
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: good at changing their sound, I think maybe more and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: more of those fans probably came around to that where
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: it probably takes some time, some a number of albums
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: before a band can really establish that ability to release
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: an entirely different sounding album without alienating a lot of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: their fans. For sure, it probably takes some time.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we did not you know that time.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Well that and you know, obviously technically, you know, Age
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of Reptiles I think is like the fifth album. But
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: like I mean, I think for the majority of fans
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: of Show Bred at that time, they had only ever
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: heard No Sir, Like I would imagine that there weren't
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: too many fans that had heard those first three albums.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, totally yeah, And you know that it's also
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: so profoundly different than the environment of writing and releasing
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: music today and not just sound like old Man Josh
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: or something. But the Age of Reptiles is our only
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: record that debuted on the Billboard Top two hundred, right,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: it was like number one, ninety eight or something like that.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: You just just snuck in there, just.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Barely got on there. And we you know, we made
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: like a couple of their other charts, and so by
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: standards of everything that I've released subsequently, I mean, it
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: was a lot of people to me, you know, for
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: our audience buying this record, and you know, time has
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: demonstrated that a lot of them really liked the record,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: or a lot of people only found us for the
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Age of Reptiles record, or whatever the case might be.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: But it just felt as if you know, voices are
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: much louder than positive voices, and we had these fans
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: that were so rabid or cult like that felt very
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: you know, betrayed by that album. That that colored our
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: experience and made us kind of hostile about it, where
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: we felt like, well, no, this is better and you'll
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: take it or get nothing, kind of you know, it
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: became a very Larry David attitude toward that record.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So again with like the writing process, so like going
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: into the album. You know, it's literally called Age of Reptiles.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: There is like a whole reptilian theme throughout the album.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: You even mentioned like the aesthetics have the reptilian theme,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: like I still remember that iconic photo of you, like
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: all holding like a python or whatever, and even like
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the music video with you know, just lot lots of
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: like reptiles. What what inspired you to have this reptilian theme.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Part of it was being a you know, a palaeontology
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: fanboy all my life and wanting to do something that
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: you know, I've made so much stuff that's dinosaur adjacent
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: at this point and was really interested in somehow that
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: was just what was on my mind at the time.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: There's also a comic book series called Age of Reptiles
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: that I was reading at the time, and just it's
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: not you know, unique to that series. It's a popular
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: shorthand for the Mesozoic era. And I liked the sound
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of it, and you know, I was, and everyone in
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: the band, I think, were like album people. We liked
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: the idea of a cohesive experience that's thoughtfully approached. Where
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: what do you like visualize when you hear the songs?
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: How does the cover art make you think about the
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: sonic presentation of the record, like what's inside the album?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: How does it begin? How does it end? And having
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: much more time to prepare for and write the album
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: and think of it as one cohesive unit, whereas Nihilism
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: was mostly written in like six days, because we'd signed
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: the contract based on Sylvia Massy's availability, which was like,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: if you can have an album ready in ten days,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we can fly you out to California to record it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: And we had like two or three songs written, wrote
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: the rest in a week, and then flew down there
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: and recorded it, and then after the fact tried to,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: you know, thoughtfully bring it together as a cohesive aesthetic statement.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: But before a note was written, like I knew what
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: the album was going to be called, and thought of like, oh,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: what thematically, how might we approach it? How would we
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: thread it together? At first it was a proper concept record,
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: and then it became more of a thematic kind of thing.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: But because you know, like our favorite albums are always
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: had always been those records that are like you think
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: of the cover when you hear the song, and you
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: think of the entire progression of the record and the
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: pacing of the record as one unified unit, not just
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: song one, song two, three. So that was the and
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: when that phrase age of Reptiles came to mind, everything
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: else was kind of cobbled together around that what would
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: that look like, what would that sound like? Idea?
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Right, just because of kind of the world you all
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: were in, I'm curious did you like end up having
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: like any because like I grew up in you know,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: pretty fundamentalist Christian circles. Did you have anyone that like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: sort of scoffed or whatever at the idea of like
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: because there was like two camps in the fundamentalist Christian
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: world about dinosaurs. One camp was that dinosaurs were fake
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: and like their bones were put in the ground to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: test your faith. And then there was like the fundamentalist
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: camp that thinks that humans lived with dinosaurs, that there
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: was a period of time where humans lived with dinosaurs.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Did you get any like weird fundamentalist Christian kind of
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: like interpretations or like stories around the fact that you
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: were like write this whole album sort of not about reptiles,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: but like have a reptile and yeah, to some degree
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: a dinosaur themed album, not.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Not as much about arguments about like the age of
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: the Earth and things like that. As you know, like people,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I think we're more why you know that the obvious
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: like why does what's going on with that album? What
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: are you or the cover? What are you suggesting by
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: this sort of like pregnant belly thing and what does
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: that mean? And you know it was it was born
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: into a time where there was a certain attentiveness too,
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: and maybe an uncharitable reading would be like a very
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: cynical and bad faith readiness from a contemporary Christian audience
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: to go like, oh, that doesn't seem Christian, that doesn't
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: seem Christian. And so we got we always got a
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: ton of that stuff. And and on that right, I
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: mean there's a recurring motif about like vomit, or there's
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: a song that's about you know, the films of Georgi
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: ra Merrow. So that kind of stuff followed us around.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I think, you know I was. I was, like you,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: raised in a very conservative and I would argue like
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: fundamentalist kind of Southern Baptist environment that would have that
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: not would have that embraced, you know, the whole like
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Adam and Eve wrote around on a t rex kind
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: of thing. But I was mercifully spared from that, like, uh,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: intellectual struggle as a kid, because I grew up as
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: a kid obsessed with dinosaurs and reading paleontology and my
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: parents were like, hey, that's cool, He's are the science,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and so I never saw those two ideas as in
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: any kind of conflict with one another. That you know,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the mess is that the Late Cretaceous period ended sixty
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: five million years ago and that God made the world.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: You know, to me, those were never conflicting ideas. I
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: didn't learn until later that someone else thought they were.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: And by that time I was.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Like, eh, you know what I mean, Yeah, you're like,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: oh things, Yeah, that that would have been awfully nice
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: if I would have experienced it in that way too. Well, yeah,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I was just I've just always been curious about, yeah,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the reptilian themes. So it's just interesting that really it's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: just like a personal interest and that's how it basically
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: just gets thrown in there. So yeah, I'm curious like
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: with just the more of that sort of reaction response
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to the album, like you said, like it is to
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: this day, I think the only album that ever charted
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: on the Billboard. Did you have like did you have
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: a sense that like that could be a possibility kind
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of with where you were at in that career again
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: sort of annoying the success that you were coming off
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of with No ser did you have like a sense
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: that like, oh, this could be like great for us,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Like we could be you know, selling maybe more albums,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: We could be getting bigger tours because of this album.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Did you have a sense of that, like maybe as
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: you're writing it, recording it, or even like maybe directly after.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I did, because it was effectively given to me. That
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can I can say with integrity that
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: I honestly had in mind the approach of the record
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: as more of a pop structured record before any consideration
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: whatsoever with whether or not it would be more marketably
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: or marketable or economically viable or anything like that. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: you know, I have never cared about I think part
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: of it is, you know, an awareness that I just
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: don't think that Showbread would ever have existed in a
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: world that would have been a huge, huge band. It
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: was always kind of destined to be a niche band.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: But I wrote three or four songs that we demoed
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: for the record, and it was oha metaphobia, your owls
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: are hooting sing me to Sleep, And maybe that was
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: those three songs. We had recorded a handful of demos
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: for the record that clearly showcased the departure from the
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: first record and given those to the label to as
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: a bargaining chip for going back to Sylvia Massey. They
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: had wanted us to try a different producer, not because
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Nihilism had not gone well, but we told them this
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: is the kind of record we're writing, Like, oh, if
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: you're writing that record, let us send you to one
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: of our other trusted producers that traffics in that kind
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: of sound. And we were like, no, no, we really
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: really want to go back to Sylvia. And so we
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: recorded this demo and we're like, we know what we're doing,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: will you let us go back to Sylvia? And I
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: had gone, I had flownd, we'd had a brief break.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: I flew from Georgia to Washington State to visit my
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: then girlfriend now wife, and I was going to write
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: the rest of the record there because I had time off.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: And I got a call from Brandon Ebel, the CEO
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: of Tooth and Nail Records, who at that time I
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: think I'd had like three conversations with him, and all
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: very like what you'd expect for like a peon band
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: to have with the CEO of the label, like great stuff,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: you know, and then you know, I mean, he was
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: always very delightful but we never talked at length, and
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: he called me and was like, these demos are incredible.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: We're going to sell a ton of records. You should
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: do more of this, like write more in this direction.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: We're really going to push this thing. And I'd never
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: we'd never gotten that kind of attention from the label,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: because even though Tooth and Nail and Nihilism had been
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: relatively successful, this is still at a time when Tooth
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: and Nail had bands that sold tens of thousands records,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: more than in some case one hundred thousand records, more
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: than Show Bread. They had MxPx and under Oath and
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: bands like that. So to have them pay this level
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: of attention to I was like, oh wow, that's actually
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: pretty awesome to have the support of the label. And
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: they weren't telling me to do anything I didn't want
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: to do already, so I was like, sure, yeah, I
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: will continue in this direction. Thanks very much for that
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: vote of confidence. But when I told the rest of
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: the band that I was thrilled, I got off the phone.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: I called the rest of the band and they were like,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: oh my god, this is incredible, and that created the
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: schism that followed us throughout the recording process where some
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: of them wanted to do a more like let's go
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: all in on the pop rock thing sonically, and the
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: rest everyone loved the songs. It was just about the
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: sonic presentation of the songs, and the other half of
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: the band was like, no, no, no, no, let's do it
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: more like in Utero, Let's do it more like Pinkerton
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: and the I think not. I think they would say
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: that one of their, if not their primary motivation and
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: wanting to present a more polished record. Part of it
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: was like aesthetically, they thought that'd be interesting, But another
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: part of it was like, if we play ball and
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: we give the record a really excess or we give
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the label a very accessible record, they're more likely to
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: put money into promoting it and to get behind it.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: So let's give them every reason to really promote our band.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And not because anyone was like then will be Hugh.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: It was just more like, because that will create the
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: possibility for more longevity for our band to all the time,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: and we want to like continue to do this, and
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the rest of us were like, I don't care whether
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: or not the label does or doesn't like it. Let's
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: do it the way that we want to do it
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: and they do like it, so you know, that became
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: like a back and forth. But all throughout that process,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: we gave the label recordings that were very enthusiastic. By
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: the time we finished the whole thing and it was mixed,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: they were like, dude, this record is amazing. Every single
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: song is a single. It's incredible. So we were like, well, dang.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And then our an r a guy who's still a
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: good friend of mine, was like, if this thing can
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: break five thousand copies in the first week, which is
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of records for an indie ban, then I'll
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: buy everyone in the band and Nintendo ds or no,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: it was the PlayStation thing. It was a PSP remember
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: those things. Oh yeah, yeah, And we because we had
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Nintendo ds is, but PSPs cost more money. He's like,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: I'll buy everyone in the band a PSP if you
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: can break five thousand records. So we were like, we
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: have got the cell. Fuck, we have got to get
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: those PSPs.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: We didn't.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: We were short by like a thousand records. But all
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: that to say like there was a certain sense that
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: was like, I don't know, like people seem to think
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: it could be quite big. Maybe it will be quite big,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: and so we were trying to curb our enthusiasm, as
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: it were. But it's hard. It's hard when the people
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: that make the big money decisions are telling you, like,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: this thing's gonna be huge, you know what I mean,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Like you start to feel like, well they would know,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: whatn't they and maybe it will be huge?
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: What was what did you all do or like what
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: was your your reaction or what's the story around when
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: you found out that it charted like that? That has
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: to be like an exciting moment. Like I know again
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: knowing that you aren't like trying to just chase success,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: but like when something does happen to be successful that
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: you do, it is kind of cool, like I would imagine.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, big time. Well at first it was honestly,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: we all were crying tears of laughter just by because
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: we got the information it like one and two. It
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: was like you made the billboard top two hundred, and
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: we were like, are you kidding me? They're like one
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: ninety eight. And then we were in the van of
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: the time and everyone just started dying laughing. Uh, but
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: not because it robbed from it. It was just like, well,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: of course we did you know and and we did
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: think it was. And you know, my parents bought like
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: the trade that was published at the time that shows
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: like the Billboard top two hundred, and they're like, look
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: at our boys at the bottom. But it really didn't
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: occur to me until at that time. We were on
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: tour with a band called The Showdown that we were
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: great friends with and tour with over and over and
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: over again, just because we liked them and they liked us.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: And one of the guys in the Showdown was like, dude,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: you made the Billboard top two hundred. And I wasn't
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: being like a false like some false modesty or or
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: you know, self effacing. I was just like, yeah, it's
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: pretty cool, and he's like, are you kidding me? I
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: would be calling everyone I know and telling them like,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: we made the Billboard top two hundred. And in that conversation,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: standing behind a stage at like, you know, some festival
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania, it occurred to me like, oh, that really
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: is something that to us feels really noteworthy. We're a
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: nobody band that, you know, like the story of Avere.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: You come from like nowhere in Georgia too, Like you're
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: not even close to Atlanta, right, like you're like, how
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: many people where you grew up have like any sort
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: of sense of like that they have sort of made
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it outside of that like orbit of that world that
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: you grew up in, like like I call it, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I grew up in like small town South Dakota, and
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: like the fact that we even like talked to like
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: our is that we grew up listening to like blows
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: our minds because like that wasn't ever considered like a
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: possibility where we grew up. Like you just grow up.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: You graduate, you maybe like own a farm or you
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: like work at the gas station or whatever, and like
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that's your life and all those people are the only
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: people you know. So like if if there's anything outside
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of that that like you have that you've done or whatever,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: or you know of anybody that has done like that
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: always felt like a really big deal. So I would
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: imagine you guys felt that way. You know. Cracking into
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the top two hundred.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a minute. But then when I realized
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: really literally following that conversation, I was like, man, it
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: is actually kind of insane that I don't think there's
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: another band from Gotten Georgia, let alone a band that
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: has achieved even a monoicum of what you would call success,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and to us it felt like an insane level of
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: success to make, you know, to sell records and be
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: on the top Billboard top two hundred. So yeah, I mean,
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: like to this day, like you know, my publisher will
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: use it like press releases that it's like he was
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: in the band show Bred, which charted on the Billboard
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: top two hundred. So can't complain, can't complain it.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Just knuck in there. It's so funny. It is all
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: like I am, I'm still surprised that, like even like
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: anorexia nervosa, like never made it or fear of God,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: like always been like a little surprised by that. But
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: for did you, I'm curious, Like I'd have to look
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: at maybe Spotify numbers. But so while Age of Reptiles
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: charted the highest because it did chart, do you think
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: it has sold the most albums in the like lifetime
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: of show Bread or has maybe no, sir, sort of
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: overtaken that because I when I think of like the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: most the most popular show Bred albums, I would probably
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: put those one intwo. But like but maybe like sales wise,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: maybe Age of Reptiles does have more than no, sir.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I'm just maybe like the during the era of sound scan,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: it used to be something that was you know, quantify,
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: where anyone with access to sound scan that worked in
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: the industry could look type in, okay, this has sold
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: this many albums. And of course even back then piracy
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: via burning CDs was a thing, But Nihilism was released
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: into an era where even iPods were like a specialty item,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: so those record sales were much more trustworthy, and then
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: that kind of declined as time went on. Age or
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the Fear of God was a record that we realized
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: was online a week before it came out, and people
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: would That was during an era where people would just
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: come to our shows and say I downloaded it or
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: my friend sent me the files. So it's harder to
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: tell the last time I heard numbers, which was many, many,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: many years ago. Nihilism was the best selling of the
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: show Bread records, with Age of Reptiles close behind it.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: But I don't know how that those things are measured anymore.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: It seems like based on the you know, the reaction,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: even when Showbread would briefly reform to go play on
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: some certainly those songs from those two records generate the
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: most enthusiastic response, so I think that they're easily the
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: most well known and heard of the of the showbread discography.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would that that tracks That makes sense to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: me too. So kind of looking back now, you know,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: it's been twenty years since Adria Reptels came out, I'm
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: curious if, like you looking back at it, you know,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: for for twenty years, is there like a moment of
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: pride that you have on it, or like maybe there's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: a story of pride that you have about that album.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's something that you did, or or maybe there
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: was a decision that was made about the album that
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: you feel really proud of. But yeah, and I would
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: imagine like there's different reasons why you're pride, Like you
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: have pride about each album, and you know, there's quite
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: a few albums to choose from there. But but yeah, like,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: is there like something specifically about Age of Reptiles where
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: you're like, I feel really proud of that And maybe
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: maybe it is the charting, but maybe there's some other
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: things so you just you feel really proud that you
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: did that for the album.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, the charting thing is just a cool story
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: to me the you know, any satisfaction or pride that
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I feel about the records is in being able to
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: say we made the record that we wanted to make
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: and that I really loved the album. You know, I
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: still happily put on these records and listen to them
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: like I would a listener of any band, because I
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: wrote the songs that I wanted to hear and that
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: I felt were I wish there was an album like this,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I'll make that album, And you know, somehow I was
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: able to do that in a way that was faithful
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: to at least, you know, My and our vision for
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: those records and Asia Reptiles, to me, was in some
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: sense like a challenge that we posed for ourselves to
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: be like we had We had come from years and
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: years and years of writing this very very out there
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: flavor of post hardcore music and had gotten I think
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: good at doing our version of it. We could have
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: written another record of songs in the vein of no
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: ser nihilism is not Pridely we'd figured out how to
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: do that, and certainly by playing them hundreds of times
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: on tour, we'd refined our approach to that kind of
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: songwriting and performance and so to suddenly say, now let's
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: write a poppy alternative record, no one immediately felt like
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: I know exactly how to do that, you know what
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I mean. It felt as if like my first few
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: stabs at writing songs were like, no, this still sounds
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: like nihilism, and I have to try harder to not
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: get weird, you know what I mean, because I'm so
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: used to like and then here's where it'll change bpms
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: and the key will change and blah blah blah. And
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: so the first like I had, the first song that
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I wrote that I felt like, that's it was your
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Owls Are Hooting, which was on the demos that we'd
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: recording that we'd recorded, and forced myself to like it's.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: It's over the top simplistic approach to pop songwriting in
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: that you know, the verse is driven by a bass,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: synth and drums, the riffage is very simple. The hook
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: is what's presenting, not the chaos of it all. And
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: when I'd written that song and resisted the urge to
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: put something bizarre into it, I was like, oh, Okay,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I think I've figured out how we will do this
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: kind of record. And then songs like Naked Lunch followed
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: that were way more you know, like straightforward, and it
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: was it was very satisfying as a songwriter and as
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: a band challenging itself to go against the grain of
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: what they've created to in the end play the whole
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: record back and you know, like I could play that
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: record agean Reptiles in particular for my kids and they
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: like it. They like will sing the choruses, and it's
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: a very accessible record. That kind of surprises me that
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: we were able to pull off, you know, as a band,
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: as none of our musicians came from a background in
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: pop songwriting or theory or anything like that. We're the
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: most diy that you could possibly get, everyone learning to
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: play guitar from listening to punk records, and that was
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: our background in music. And so it's one of those
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: records where I play it now and I'm like, oh,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: it's actually kind of surprising that we were able to
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: pull this vision off in such a way that I
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: hear it now and I still think, like, I really
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: like it. I like the way that it came out.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: So being able to write records that you can come
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: back to and not hate or come back to and
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: really love, I really love that album. That's what's most
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: satisfying to me, and to be able to say, like
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: that's what we wanted to do, you know, and we
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: did it. We somehow did it right.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Well. One thing to know that I've been sort of
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: looking up here is I'm realizing that the Age of
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Reptiles was the last album that Ivory was in until
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I think he was in some of Showbred to Show Dead, right, yeah, So,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: but like up until Showbred to Show Dead, like I
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: think he wasn't in any other albums, like maybe maybe
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: in appearance here there, right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah he made He's like on one track on Anarexio
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: and Nervosa for fun.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Right, right. But like, yeah, so like he left, you know,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and I would imagine, like going into Age of Reptiles,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: like you probably had no sense that like he was
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: just gonna be leaving the band at that point, because
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I think it was like a year or two later
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: that he ended up leaving the band. But yeah, I'm curious, like,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: do you have thoughts on the fact that it's sort of,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: at least for Ivory's vocals, like it it's sort of
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: the last it's like the last that we get of
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: that part of Showbred that version of showbred, not to
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: say like obviously you scream and yell and other songs
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: in later albums, But but yeah, I don't know if
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: you have any thoughts around the fact that like it. Yeah,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: of like Ivory's it's sort of the the maybe you
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: would say the last at least up until twenty sixteen,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: was the last kind of the last appearance that we
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: really had of Ivory.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I mean, it's interesting that you bring it up.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: I never thought of the record along those lines and
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: that and that being something that makes it special to me.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: You know, Ivory is my oldest friend. He and I
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: have been best friend since third grade, and we stayed
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: friends after he left the band. We're still friends now.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: I was texting him yesterday and so, of course, the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: difference in having someone live with you in a van
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: and then not live with you in a van that
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: is markedly different. But he left in such a way
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: that was like, I don't really want to go, but
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's probably the right time for me
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: to do something else with my life. And we were like, oh,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: that's a bummer, it's heartbreaking, But no one was Matt.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: We you know, all bands have those other kinds of
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: departures that are painful or are marked by some kind
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: of discord, and his wasn't. But of course, you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: it felt as if we'd lost something a stead because
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: we went from you know, he was in Showbread in
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the nineties when it was like a church band, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: then we had to reinvent the band into like a
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: punk thing that would make sense for two vocalists like
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: he was in it before I was a vocalist, and
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: we found a rapport in the way that we would
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: write songs and that arranged lyrics together where it just
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: became part and parcel of the Showbread songwriting experience that
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: I would write these, you know, usually way too long
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: lyrics that look huge on a sheet of paper, and
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: then as the band's like kind of doing laps with
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: the song, figuring out like oh, I'll trade that, let's
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: do this part again. He and I would sit in
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: the garage together looking at the paper and be like,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: what if you did this while I did this, you know,
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: and map out the lyrics together, and he would say, well,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: what if this line was different, what if I said
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: this instead of that, or what if we put this
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: over here? And he became for me kind of like
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: what felt like a necessary component to the lyricism, even
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: though like I would write the lyrics, he and I
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: would complete the lyrics, and certainly the arrangement was contingent
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: on his input and what he brought to it performatively.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: So with Agia Reptiles, going from a band, it's a
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: lot easier when it's like you scream this, I scream this.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Do you scream this real loud? I'll scream this just
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: a little bit quieter, you know, And then let's scream
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: this together to going like these songs are all singing,
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: neither of us are gifted singers. How are we going
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: to figure out what we can do that's not dumb?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: And we found something on Agia Reptiles through Sylvia's help, honestly,
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: where Ivory, whose register is a lot deeper than mine,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: naturally was doing. We called it in the studio Scary White.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: It was like Barry White, but almost like a goth
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: like Bauhause kind of thing, where he would do Scary
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: White underneath these sing song vocals. And then he kind
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: of reinvented the scream as more of like an anthemic
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: yellie kind of thing, and we found something that I
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: think is like, really, we didn't want it to be like, well,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: now we have two vocalists for no reason. We want
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: it to be like, it's really cool that we have
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: too vocalists for this kind of approach, and I think
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: that we did, and the records infinitely better with him
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: on it. So yeah, when we listened back to it now,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I just the other day was playing the album in
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: our car and our kids were listening to it, and
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: they were like, which one's you and which one's Iron, Like,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: isn't it obvious? Isn't it obvious? We sound so different?
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: But I was taken with the fact that I was like,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: you know, what he does on that album is so
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: unique to his skill set and his like what he
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: brought to the band. So now, yeah, thanks a lot
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: for making it bittersweet in my mind now to listen
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: to the Yeah album as his last true contribution, you.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Know, right right exactly? Well, I mean, he just I
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: feel like, you know, obviously, like every showbred fan you
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: know is going to love him, and you know, even
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: like when you guys have done some of the reunion
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: kind of shows, it it does like feel like it
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: would be incomplete without him. Yeah, agree, because he's such
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: a especially if you're going to be playing those like
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: older songs that he was in, just he just feels
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: like such a core voice. His voice is such a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: core instrument to a lot of those songs.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: So I agreed.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just always yeah, I've always been curious, you know. Obviously,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: I think you guys still were able to do, uh,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: make music very well without him, But he does have
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: this kind of distinct voice where it, to me, it
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: becomes noticeable, like between like interact and Nervosa versus age reptiles,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you can hear that clearly, there's just gonna have to
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: be a different approach to maybe even the way you
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: write songs, but even the sound because you lose that
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: instrument that is his amazing cool scream.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: And arguably and honestly it became one of the contributing
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: factors to the genre shift between age reptiles and anirexi
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: or nervosa. Is like, how do we do something where
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: it won't feel as if there's this enormous, you know, absence,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: that palpable absence that is the fans are gonna feel
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: one way or the other. And so how do you
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: write songs differently for one vocalist rather than too.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: But right, right, yeah, agree, Yeah, I would imagine like
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: under Oath has you know, dealt with that when like
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: they had the one album without Aaron and it's like,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: how do you how do you replace Aaron's voice? Like
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Aaron has such a distinct voice in that band, and
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: so like how do you replace that? And you know,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: I think I think they still did an incredible job
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: with that, but but there is a way you just
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: have to approach it very differently when you lose some
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: something that's so core and distinct to your band.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Sound agreed, Yeah, totally so.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Cool. Well, thanks so much for chatting about age of Reptiles.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: You're ready to dive into guilty pleasure artists?
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, I am one hundred percent love.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It all right, So I don't know, you know, it
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: could be three bands, five bands, however many but like
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: you know, not even necessary bands, but maybe artists but yeah,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: love to hear. Yeah, not necessarily bands that you maybe
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: actually feel guilty for listening to, but maybe bands that,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: like you'd be made fun of. So I think we've
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: given the I mentioned the example of like I love Traine,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Like if Drops of Jupiter comes on, I am getting
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: down on the dance floor. I love that song. I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: love so many other like of those, like top Train
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: songs that you hear on the radio all the time.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm a big Train fan. So what are
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: some of your guilty pleasure artists?
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Josh, Well, I have to preface it with the pretentious
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: disclaimer that fundamentally and you already address this, but you know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: like I don't feel guilty about listening to anything. I don't,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't believe in guilty pleasures. I just
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: like the crap I like, right, but adhering to your
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: you know, like, what what do people make fun of?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: That's easy? I think that Amy Grant's Heart and Motion
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: record is arguably the greatest pop record of all time. Yeah,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: I think that Heart and Motion is one of the
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: rare examples of a contemporary Christian market record that's not
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: only not behind the times, but ahead of the curb.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: You know, if you listen to contemporary or the Christian
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: music industry, unfortunately, is has often been marked by a
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: tendency to be five to ten years behind what's happening
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: in the general market.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they gotta they gotta wait till the new They
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: gotta wait till the new Coldplay album comes out before
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: they decid what they're gonna sound like exactly.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: And that's that's true of has often been true of
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: like Christian rock music, less so in like independent music,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: because there's you know, for whatever reason, those bands are
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: kind of like side by side along the timeline of
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: what's happening, like punk and hardcore, but in pop music.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: The Heart and Motion record and a lot of Amy
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Grant's discography, it is very decidedly CCM. It's upfront, and
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: it's themes, and you know, there are songs that you
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: can play on the radio, but it sounds like a
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Phil Collins record. It sounds like Brenda Carlisle record or
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: you know that would have come out at around the
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: same time. I think Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: were two artists that were able to sincerely make music
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: that sounds like current pop music at the time. If
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: you put on a Michael W. Smith record, Change Your
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: World or one of those are it sounds like Genesis.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: It sounds it doesn't sound like someone aping those bands.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: It sounds like a and people think it's funny. Like
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: we often at the church where I work, will when
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: we're setting up on a Sunday and you know, like
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: we have to set our sound system up from the
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: ground up, and we'll put on a record to make
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: sure everything's plugged in correctly, and often put on Hard
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: in Motion, And often to this day people will be like,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: this is sick. What is this? It'll be it's Amy Grant.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Do you know what year it came out?
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Is it early nineties or was it one of those.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, let's look, let's look watch this.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Damn look at you. You're you're like you're the real deal,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Like you're not even messing around that you like this album,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: like you got.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: It nineteen ninety one, yeah, ninety one.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, I had I'm looking right now, I had
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: no idea her self titled, which was her first album.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Guess what year it came out? Like, just off the
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: top of your head, do you.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Know late seventies?
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Is that right? Your seventy seven? I would have. I
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: would have never guessed that she really was releasing music
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: in the seventies.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: She has there's like a ton of records before Hard
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: in Motion, which is crazy.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: That is crazy. Yeah, for some reason I always associated
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: her with like late eighties, early nineties. I never once
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: thought of her as like she had already had like
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: a whole decade of a career by that point.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: That's crazy, It's nuts, right, yeah, but it's a and
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: to this day, like when people hear it for the
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: first time, especially if you listen to it with good headphones,
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: it sounds it still sounds like a vital record. So
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Amy Grant is one of them. The other big one
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: I think for me is Garth Brooks. I think Garth
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Brooks is not only the great country artist of all time,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: but is one of the greatest artists of all time.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: His his entire discography is is pretty awesome.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: It.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: You know, there's only maybe for me, the only artist
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: with a unbroken quality of excellence across the entire discography
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: is Nine Inch Nails. So Garth Brooks does have some
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: ups and downs, but there during the late eighties and
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: early nineties, he is like five or six records in
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: a row that are front to back amazing, like bangers
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: the whole through the whole record and will often put
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: those records on in mixed company and they're like, what
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: in the world are you playing? Right now, I'm like,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: this is rope in the wind man.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: I'm trying. I'm trying to look right now. This is crazy.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: The Billboard rings Brooks as the greatest male solo artist
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: on the Billboard chart like the Billboard two hundred charts
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: of all time. He is the best selling uh. He
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: is the best selling solo albums artists in the United States,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: with one hundred and sixty two million domestic units sold,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: ahead of Elvis Presley and second only to the Beatles
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: in total album sales. Like I think a lot of
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: times people like don't realize, like you know, if you
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: did not grow up in like Rule America, like you're
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: probably wondering, like how are these artists so successful? And
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: but you like don't realize like Rule America, if Garth
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Brooks or any of those types of artists are putting
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: albums out, they are buying those albums that, like, without
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: a doubt, those people love their country music.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Garth Brooks has several, not just one, several multi diamond albums.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: It's ten diamond is ten million. He's got several albums
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: that are multi diamonds Easy Records, and he's an artist
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: that's not even available to stream on traditional platforms. It's
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: really exciting. Yeah you can.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: He's not on like Spotify or anything. No.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: He like remember when bands like Tool and Taylor Swift
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: were trying to carve out niches for themselves and I'm
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: only going to be on this. He's still in that
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: kind of limbo. But if you're can listen to them
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: ethically and legally. The Garth Brooks records are are still
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: pretty awesome. Roping the Wind, in Pieces, the self titled debut,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: all those records are really excellent.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. You got one more for us, Josh, hmm,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Just Amy and Garth.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a funny one for me that
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: I think maybe surprise because you know, sometimes I'll put
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: this on in my house and my wife was like,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: what are you? What is this? And that's Pantera. Just
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: the other day I was listening to the Great Southern
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Trendkill and she was like, what is this freaking thing
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: that you're because I you know, like I honestly don't
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: listen to a ton of really heavy music, and uh,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: it's still you know, if you if you put on
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: vulgar display of power, the Great Southern Trendkill, they are
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: aggressively like metal a groove metal when that kind of
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: became a White Zombie Records for in White Zombie, I'm
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: a huge fan of white song, but they they brought
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: in the like electronic and industrial influence, which I've always
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: been huge on. And I was playing the Great Southern
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: Trendkill while I was cleaning the kitchen and my wife
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: was like, you actually really like this. I'm like, you
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: don't think this is awesome? Sore Immigrant, Garth Brooks, Pantera,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: White Panthera.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Like that is That's like a perfect perfect list, to
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: be honest. You know, I was just listening and Pantera
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: the other day as well, but I was watching Beavis
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and butt Head watch Pantera, like you know how they
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: would like watch music videos they were there was like
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: there's like several Pantera music videos that they like, you know,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: did the the Beavis and butt Head thing. I'm just
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: like I love their reactions to it. Also, like there
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: were so many moments where Pantero was like kind of
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: straight up punk at times, like they I mean, like
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously they're known for their metal, but like
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: they have like some like pretty punk type of albums
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: as well, So I.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I put the if you put on the
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: first track from which I it's not war Nerve anyway.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: The first track on Great Southern Trendkill opens with the
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: double time beat, which is really surprising when people are
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: used to their like no, no, you know that kind
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: of thing. It opens with a and his what's his name? Anselmo?
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Uh he had actually pretty dynamic range to his crazy voice. So, yeah, Pantera, Pantera, Garth.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: But if you could listen to all all three in
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: a day, you'd be having a good time, a good day.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Put on Amy Grant, Garth Brooks and then Panto.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: That's that's a great day. That's a great day. You
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: get your you get your Jesus in and then you
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: get to uh you know, Extra.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Jesus Middle America and then whatever they're.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: And whatever demonic stuff's going on with Pantera love that.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Uh well, Josh, what what do you want to plug?
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's like anything happening in the
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: world of showbread that you know is worthwhile to know
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: right now, or uh you know, maybe it's maybe it's
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: your church or any other things that you're up to.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, what do you want to plug?
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if anyone happens to care about stuff that I'm doing,
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: or is curious about stuff that I'm doing. I am,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: you know. I'm a pastor at a church now called
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Fan City Church, which is in Vancouver, Washington and has
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: a podcast and does stuff. I continue to write novels
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: and nonfiction. I had a book come out not too
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: long ago called How to Die, which is a book
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: about Christian discipleship, and a novel that came out just
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: a couple months ago called you Ready for This, Father?
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: I Am losing my footing in this Place Beside the Sea,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: which is a novel about a pastor who's assigned.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: A title or something.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's so long. It's a it's about
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: a pastor who is like a state appointed clergy to
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: a detainment camp of sex offenders, and it's it's a
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: very uncomfortable read. But so I do stuff like that
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: still and then show Bred is basically a text thread now,
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: and that's all it is. I'm, you know, working on
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: a record of solo stuff that's more influenced by like
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: a early Elvis Costello, and that just trying out what
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: it's like to do a like a new wave pop
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: pop record, just for fun. So you know, I'm continue
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: to dabble in all the things that I've always done,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: which is like Bible and theology at church, writing novels
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: and nonfiction, and then continuing to make music here and
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: there for anyone that cares.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: You always strike me as somebody who's just like always
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: doing something like that. You can't just like kind of
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: take a time period of your life where you're just
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: kind of like not doing much outside of work, like
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: you know, you like, you just seem like somebody who's
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: like got to be doing something. You got to be writing,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: You got to be making music, you gotta be, you
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: gotta be your hands got to be on some sort
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: of project.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, much to my own detriment and my wife's chagrin.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: And I've got, you know, three kids now, and they're
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: all getting older. So it's like I have at least
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: gotten better at like I do one project at a time,
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: which is you know, by by requests that she's like,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: you just do one thing and and finish it and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: then start your next thing, and so it's slower and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: you know, but still I still make stuff well.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And the thing is too, is like as the kids
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: get older, then it actually opens up even more time
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: for for for projects, and so you know, you might
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: find yourself out where you're gonna have a few more
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: irons in the fire.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: We'll see. Yeah. I always tell people it's like, none
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: of these things may be any good, but I make
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of crap, you know.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: So take your love it, love it well, Josh. Thank
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: you so much for chatting about Age of Reptiles again.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I look back at a lot of these
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: albums that came off of came from Tooth and Nail
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and six, and so many favorites, and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I just think, you know, obviously Age of Reptiles is
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: up there for me, and so yeah, I think it's
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: worth celebrating these albums. You know, twenty years later, it's
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: hard to believe it's spent twenty years. Yeah, but I
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: think each one of these albums deserves to be celebrated,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and certainly Age of Reptiles is one of them. So
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for chatting more about it.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Said
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: Great, Lemanis And so the CASA I'm going wrong