Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Marcus King

Transcript

Marcus King · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is singer, songwriter guitarist Marcus King. Marcus
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: good to be doing the podcast with you. Good to
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: be here, brother. Okay, you're going on the road like tomorrow.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: How much do you work in a year? We play
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: about a hundred two in between as a year. Then
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: how do you decide how many? Uh, well, the agents
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: kind of pitch us a couple of tours and you know,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: they all look good to me, and I like to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: keep pretty busy. I think keeps the band really fresh,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: really tight. But you know, going on the road, you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you play for an hour or two and
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you get all this adulation, then you go back with
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the same old guys. You can't calm down for hours
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: after giving on all that energy. How do you cope
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: with the cycle? It gets kind of tough, you know.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Um can be hard, like you said, to calm down
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: after a show like that, So you really gotta I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: don't know, you gotta be mindful of that because you
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: could wear your body out, you know, pretty quickly. And
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: we do like six weeks at a time like this
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: run is two months straight. So you gotta kind of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: pick and choose when you want a party and try
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: to get to bed. You know a reasonable hour. Rock
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and roll starts at nine I am now days, well
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: tell me about it starting at nine am. Try to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: get up early, get to work out in, get some
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: some daylight, get some fresh air. Um, you know, like today,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: it's a poor example of that is, Uh, we're at
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a hotel and somewhere in Virginia just for our drivers
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to sleep, and then we'll leave tonight at midnight and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: go to Philly. So we've kind of been turning our
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: our Bara metric like system around because we left last
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: night at midnight. So that's kind of like where everything starts.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And today we're all sleeping in all day in a hotel.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: But you gotta kind of force yourself to get into
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: this cycle of getting some fresh air, getting exercise, and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: you know, drinking two or three times a week a
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: week rather than every day. Um. But that's tough to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: do because it's a lot easier to do it either way. Okay,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: you say you left it midnight last night from where
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: from Nashville? And why at midnight? Uh, everything's kind of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: based around the bus drivers sleep schedules, you know, so
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: we drive I think eight to ten hours at a time. Uh.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: The buses took us here to Christianburg, Virginia, which I'm
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: not really sure where that he is. And then well
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: we're at least within eight to ten hours from Philadelphia.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I know that one because then it will take us there.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And we leave at midnight again tonight, so we're there
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: on lowdown tomorrow. And you know you're in a hotel room. Now,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: hal walten? Are you in the hotel room? Was supposed
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: to sleeping on the bus? Uh? I'd say probably sixty.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: We we end up spending a lot of nights on
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the bus um, which is fine. You know that you
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: kind of get in a little more routine that way.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You know. Okay, you talk about drinking and which leads
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: to drugging. You know, how do you only keep it
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to a couple of nights a week? Well, um, my
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: wife to be keeps my keeps me in line. Uh huh,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: that's the short answer. Well, can make it make it
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a little longer, how I'm happy to. I mean, you know,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I'm at the point now where I can I can
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: have a couple of glasses of wine and enjoy myself.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't really the case for a while. Um,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and I think it was really just accompanied with depression
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and alcohol and drugs stimulants to be exact, uh a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: kind of short term solutions to h depression. In the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: long run there really just making it much worse. But
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not really as depressed now. I mean,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: depression something you always struggle with even when you're at
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: your happiest, which is a sad truth. But you know
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I'm in a much better place now. Being in love
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: is helpful of that. Okay, So are you treating your
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: depression with any medication? Yeah? I am takes in Balton
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: ninety million grans and Balta that day. And you know
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: that's another reason why you don't really want to mix
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: alcohol with that stuff. I mean, that can be pretty
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: detrimental to your physical health and your mental health on
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the same. But my goal, my hope is the next
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: time we get a little bit of time off, I
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: think I'm gonna try to go completely holistic, maybe try
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: my hand in microdescence and psilocybin or something from the earth.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Try to get off these pharmaceuticals. Okay, so you're on
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: some ball to you on anything else. Yeah, I take
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: medication for anxiety as well, which one, Um, okay, how
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: often do you take an up? Uh? Just really as needed.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Chronic anxiety years old and music is the most helping
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: thing for it, but sometimes it doesn't quite get it.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: What do you have panic attacks? You? Oh? Yeah, really bad?
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Since I was a kid. Yeah, you know, I used
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to do the problem with killin up. And if you're
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: not taking it every night, it's great, but I used
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to take it every well, it was actually out of them.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And then I used klonip In to get off the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: auta van, but it was really hard. And you know,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: there's uh do types of therapy. I used to have
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: panic attacks, so I used to run around with a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: little bit of out of van And then I read
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: this book by this you know, big psychiatrist, and it
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: cured me of the panic decks. I don't have panic
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: attacks anymore. It was very interesting. You read the book
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and they say, well, okay, you're here with the doctor.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Have a panic, I'm here right with you. And then
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: they talked about a guy who was hit by a
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: train and survived. So the key is, once you realize
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you'll hold on the panic will pass. That was a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: great liberator for me. But uh, is the symbalta and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the klonopin a recent thing. The SYMBALTI more recent than
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the convent I got. Uh. Yeah, I've been either misdiagnosed
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: or diagnosed, you know, on multiple occasions. Uh. I've been
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: diagnosed by polar um and also with depression. So I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: mean when you're bouncing around from psychiatrists, psychiatrist um, and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: from therapist and therapist, I mean, everybody has a different
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: opinion of view about what you're going through. So um um.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: The symbalta I think started because I don't remember what
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I was on before that, but I was on something
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that just made everything kind of numb, which I didn't like.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I remember being at my grandmother's funeral. Um, I didn't
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: feel anything. And when I got off of that stuff,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: it was like a week after that. There was this, uh,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: this tune that Wayne Shorter did called at Day Area
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: another one Actually I don't it's just like Brazilian tune.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It's really beautiful. And then I just wept for days.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So I finally got something that it seems to work
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: for me, keeps me kind of balanced, Okay, and when
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: were you first treated for anxiety and depressions A recent
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: thing or you had it all growing up? Uh, Well,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: something I struggled with all the time since I was
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: a kid. But it wasn't until I kind of went
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: out and I was on my own healthcare that I
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: started really delving into it. So I could say like
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the least three to five years, I started kind of
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: taking it into my own hands, and um, therapy was
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: over huge help. Um it didn't say the last relationship,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: but I think that was on track for you know,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the rocks anyway. But I'd recommend therapy and anybody that's
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: thinking about well, in today's world, many psychiatrists actually don't
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: do therapy. They just provide mids and you see somebody
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: else with the therapy. Is that the way it was
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is in your case? Or you seeing the same? YEA,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: That's how it is. For me. My psychiatrist checks in,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you know, every six months or so, and the therapies
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: more of a weekly thing. And for me, therapies more
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of an opportunity for me to uh speak out loud
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: things that I maybe was harboring because I'm not very
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: good at keeping a journalf tried to keep a journal,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and I just can't keep up with it. So between
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: music and actual talk therapy, it's really helpful because you
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: you end up saying a lot of things and you
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: realize that some of the things you're saying it is
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: just um, to use a phrase, kind of crazy. You know. Well,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: you know many musicians speak through their music and are
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: not that verbal. Do you find other than the therapist,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: anybody who understands you, you can talk to other than
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: your wife to be wells? My dad and I have
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: always really connected, just like he and his dad before. UM.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: We've always had a really tight relationship, and I think
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: it was in part due to the fact that we're
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: both musicians, so we had that um, that medium to
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: become really was and we've always been more like the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: best pals. He's gonna be the best man at my
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: wedding actually, and everything you say to him he accepts
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: or does he pushed back? My father was pretty accepting,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: uh with everything I say. I mean, uh, because he's
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: a he's a real uh. I mean he's obviously always
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: supported my career, but he's really supportive as a friend too.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It's just in his nature, which is uh, that's a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: good friend to have around, but he'll call you and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: your bullshit too, which is also another good trait and
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a friend. Okay, your parents still together? Now. My mom
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: scaped out when I was about four, and that was
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: actually point of contention. Recently. I did an interview with
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the magazine, and uh, some some of the family on
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: my mother's side were pretty upset with what I had
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: to say. I was really just telling the truth. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: my mother and I have kind of passed the relationship
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: back together in the last you know, five or six years,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and she felt really ill and she's on hospice and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: all this, so it's not it's not good to leave
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: things unsaid. And uh yeah, in a long, long way
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: answering your questions, now they're not together that they happened
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: since I was Okay, so you were four when she left.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: How many kids were in the family. Uh so it
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: was me and my sister, my older sister about two
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: years Holly. And so what were the circumstances. You just
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: came home one day, she wasn't there your face, sat
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you down and said she's going or you don't even
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: remember parts a little fuzzy, I mean, you know, um,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: she just kind of blip, and I remember that like
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: early on, there wasn't a lot of uh, the reason
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know, you know, the half of it,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: because you know a lot of it, you don't. You
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have even understood at four years old to try
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: to explain why the relationship fell apart. But you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I think a four year old just I was wondering
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: where his mother is, you know, And that was my situation.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: My earliest memories of life are crying so hard in
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: kindergarten that I would throw up like every day and
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: get sent home because you cry so hard because you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: don't know where your mother is. And my father couldn't
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: know how to tell me where she was, you know.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And then later on she just really never showed her
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: any more sports. So we've always had kind of a ah,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a rough relationship. And you know, she's always made really
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: interesting decisions with the partners she chose to keep. So
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: did she ever get married again? Do you have any kids?
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: She never, She never had any more kids, but she
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: did remarry to my stepdad. And my stepdad was abusive
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, to her and physically, but he
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: was kind of verbally abusive to me, and particularly to
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: particularly to my sister. So that was that was a
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: hard environment. You know, once we met, we my sister
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and I and my mother, oh kind of Uh she
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: tried to you know, start fresh, you know what I mean,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: when we were like eight or nine, and then we
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: started going down to my stepdad's house, and um, not
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a great environment for kids. And you don't really know
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: how to relay that to your your other parents. Like
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: my dad, it wasn't really it's how It's difficult to explain,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: but he just he liked to drink a little too
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: much Jim Beam. You have a really big bottle of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Jim Beam every night drink. I know, I've seen those bottles.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: He'd have one right out of the kitchen sink every
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: night and he drink about half of it. And then
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: he'd sit there and just be verbally abusive and um,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: just not a good guy, will put it that way.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: And he uh, he passed away not too long ago,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: but before that he actually sobered up and then he
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: uh he started coming around again. And you know, he
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: was actually a good guy when he was sober. And
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you can say that about a lot of folks, but
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: he was a good decent man, and I think my
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: mother drove him to the break of insanity the way
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: she's done a lot of others. And my mother's sweeping
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: her own way too. I have to say that. But uh,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you know left me with some abandonment issues, that's for sure.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Do you know why she split? You know, there's a
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I think maybe she just wasn't ready to be completely
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: settled down. My father at that time had become religious
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: and she wasn't religious. Or she would dabble. My mother
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was raised Catholic and she would dabbled into like the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: occult or whatever. Um, she just was curious about you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: she had a real thirst for knowledge. She still does.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: You know, she's a reader. So I think maybe I
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: get that inquisitive side of me from my mother. Um
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: my looks I get from my mother. Uh not my
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: good looks. I just mean that we look like each other.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, but I think I get there from her.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe she just wasn't ready to settle down. And there's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I can spend I can speculate on some
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: other reasons why she may have left, but um, you know,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: in the in the interest of her and I kind
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: of rekindling our relationship. I don't want to, you know,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: to fame anyone's character or mismadge anyone's name or anything
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like that, uh, because we are in kind of a
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: reconciling reconciling uh, part of our relationship. Again. So if
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: you were four when she left, and you leave home
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of eighteen, how much contact did you
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: have with her in that period? Well, it was always
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: kind of off and on, you know, like I think
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: when she tried to she set up camp with Chuck,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: my stepdad. When that happened, Um, she was kind of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: playing house there for a while, and she had she
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: went and she got her nursing degree, and I just
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: thought she'd really kind of turned around. And then and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: then that relationship fell apart and they got separated, and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: then she kinda went out on her own with my sister,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and that around that was around the time that I
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: started digging. You know, I started digging quite a bit,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and I try to bring her money to help with
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: bills and stuff, but uh, she wouldn't use the money
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: for the bills. And then that's when I was like,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm just gonna hit the road and not
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: really play on turning back around. But I would come
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: home to see my grandmother because my grandmother, it was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: really more of a mother figure in my life when
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I was coming up. Was that your father's mother, Yeah,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: my father's Okay. So you mentioned that your father became religious.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: How religious for you if at all? You know? Man,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I was raised in a Pentecostal church, So I think
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: it's important to have something bigger than you and remember
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: how small we really are and how insignificant we can be,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: you know, at a moment's notice. So uh, for me,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I'm really thankful for my religious upbringing and and just
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: if anything, the lessons and morality that it gave me
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: on how to be a good person, which I think
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: deep down you figure those out anyway, but I kind
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: of had a a rush course on this morality, I
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: think with the stories of the Bible, and I had
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: a very good preacher. Someone with that amount of conviction
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: can really I don't know it, just having that presence
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: in your life is very important. I think. Um, I'm
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: not very religious now, um as Cli said, it sounds
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: a little more spiritual than I am. Religiou, but um,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: when I had in my heart is good Okay. So
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: before you leave the house gigging. Does your father ever
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: get remarried? Is there another female presence in the house
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: other than your sister. Yeah, So my father remarried when
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I was eleven, and we moved to UM, one of
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the outside uh areas around Greenville, South Carolina. It was
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Piedmont's Ath Carolina Powdersville to be exact, And I called
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it Powdersville because they used to store a lot of
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: gunpowder there during the Civil War. On fact, and I
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: went to Pattersville Middle School. Didn't fit in with anybody UM.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And he remarried to a woman named Leander. It was
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: still my stepmother, and she had two older boys at
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: the time, who were I think at the time seventeen.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Cliff was and Hunter was probably like twenty three or something.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And one had a, you know, a really nasty addiction
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to heroin and the other one had a really nasty
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: addiction to math and fetamines. So she had her hands full. Man,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and my sister comes My sister and I come down
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: as eleven year old and a thirteen year old, and uh,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: she I think I really wanted to be a MoMA,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a good mom to us, but she just was overwhelmed
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: with her own boys. And I don't falter for that.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, later we became much closer, but at
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the time, it was really difficult to try to establish
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a you know, a motherly relationship with new kids when
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: your own kids are off the rails. And Mapody said
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: that they're both you know, recovered now and they're good,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and uh, there I see him at family unions and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: all that. But um, and my stepmother and I have
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: become really close in recent years. Okay, prior to moving. Uh,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: you're a good student, bad student, have friends, don't have friends. Um,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a very good student. Uh. And I don't
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: think it was because I lacked the ability to learn.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's just I lacked the interest. The interest
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: level wasn't there. Whenever whenever something becomes I have to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: do it because you told me to do it, or
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: if I just see something it's just asinine, or just like,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: you know, why are you making us do this because
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: it it doesn't like remember we'd have to like copy
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: down like information, you know, Um, like when I was
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: in school, suspension like this isn't this is just giving
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: us writers cramp. We're not retaining any knowledge after the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: first two times we write it down. You know, I
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: don't know. I just didn't like ass and and things
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: like that, and uh, the authority really got to me
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: when I was in school. So I was not a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: good student. To answer your question, I didn't have very
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: many friends. I was always a little bit out there.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But the friends that I did have, we're all in
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: different circles of school. You know. I hang out with jock's,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I hang out with the geeks, hang out with the freaks.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I was more of a freak than anything. I reckon, right,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: what's your sister up to today? My sister is busy
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: raising two young UN's, my nephews, just I and Malachi.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I love those boys. Were just good redneck boys, you know.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Uh you show up and they're fighting in the front
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: yard with their shirts off. Um they're good kids, man.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And uh, after my grandmother passed, I was able to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: buy her house, and my sister wrenched that place from me,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and uh, her two little boys there and her man Richard.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And you know, my sister works. She's a beautiful young woman,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: but she she's got a CDL CDL and she's working
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: for like the South Carolina Department of Transportation. So pretty
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: funny to think about my sister out there replacing manhole
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: covers and whatnot street signs. Okay, so you're talking about
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: middle school not fit again. What happened in high school? Well,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: middle school, you know, I think I I was kind
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of flirting with the idea of being a good student,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: but I always just wanted to play music, and I
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: just always had no other doubt in my mind of
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. So it was hard for
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: me to pay attention. And it's spent all my time
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: really trying to, uh just make this one girl laugh.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: This girl named Halle and sat next to me in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: home room, and I was just over the moon, man
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: about the squirrel, really smitten. And she was neighbors with
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: my middle school band drummer Caleb, So they were neighbors.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So I spent a lot of time at Caleb's house,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: no doubt, and uh, hang out with her, and you know,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I was a church going boys, so I even did
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: like a funeral for her dog at one point, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: we'd run around the woods barefoot. Just really great memories.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But you know, Halloween, when we were thirteen, she got
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in the car with some crazy woman and they wrecked
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: and she died. So that really fucked me up. It's
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: like the first real heartbreak I experienced. UM, So that
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: really really got me in. I went into high school
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: with that that weight, and that's when I really started
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: putting my full effort into music and realizing the therapy,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the therapeutic side to music. Okay, you talk about your
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: mother leaving closing a bandoment issue, So how has that
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: affected you in relationships love relationships? UM, it makes me
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: struggle really badly with possessiveness or you know, being controlling. Um.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I in no way ever want to feel
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like I'm an overbearing partner or or anything like that.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But I just always so damn afraid of people leaving.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's either at or I'm having nightmares
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: about going to the Map in Philadelphia and nobody's showing up.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm constantly afraid that, um, something that
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: will come out in my audience will will abandon me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: You know. It's such a deep fear of mine for
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: people to leave. You know. Even if I go out
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to dinner with my boys here, you know, and everybody
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: finishes eating a little before me and they stand up.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: You know, my heart starts to race. I get a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: little aunty or if for all walking somewhere and I
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: got tie my shoes and people don't wait on me.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I'll get physically just I rate, you know. Uh. But
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: so what happened with the woman and where you went
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: to therapy whatever and it didn't work out. I mean
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I was really fucked up at the time, you know,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I was. I just um at that time. One of
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the first things that really started to pull that relationship apart.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, aside from the fact that uh, and this
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: is my last relationship on my front too, designed from
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: the fact that I needed to move to Nashville for
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: my career and I needed to um. You know, I
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: got sober at that time. That's the first time I
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: got sober, got sober, lost a lot of weight, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I was trying to do right by me,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and uh, she just she tried to be supportive partner,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and you know, believe in my dreams as much as
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I did, but her dream was just too surf in
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: places like Australia and Hawaii and Indonesia, and she was
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: always really frustrated that I wouldn't support her dreams. I
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: was like, well, I can't. You know, I'm financially supporting
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: us in every other way. I can't support your dreams.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I don't have time because in order to continue to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: financially support us, I have to focus on my dream
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: which also happens to be our income and are in
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: my job. You know. It's it's what I love, it's
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: my passion, and I'm really thankful I get to do it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: But I can't just support your dreams because a lot
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of people will just call that a fucking vacation, you
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it was really frustrating back
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and forth. Um, and obviously, you know, if you're passion
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: is to live by the beach and surf, it's great.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not knocking that. But within the you know, within
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: the confines of our relationship, it was really frustrating and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: I could never really catch a break. So aside from that,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I was also struggling with, for the first time, women
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: actually taking an interest in me without me, uh initiating.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So I wasn't I wasn't being unfaithful physically, but like
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I would certainly entertain you know, uh, flirty texts or
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: flirty messages or whatever, and that's so just not okay
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: in a relationship. And you know, I feel really bad
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: for how I behaved in that relationship, but you know,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: she was the one that told me, like, you need
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: to get into the happy or I'm sucking leaving it.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I was like, all right, So that's I'm really thankful
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: for that aspect of the relationship because I did get
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: in therapy and now I don't. I don't crave or
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: seek the attention of just random females. I mean, in therapy,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I realized a lot of that had to do with
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the abandonment from my mother and you know, losing my
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: first love and all that, and um, craving and seeking
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: that attention was just uh, just another cry for help
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: like everything else. But that relationship just kind of ended
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: up implode. And I say, my substance abuse contributed to it,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: for sure, but then the end of that relationship also
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: in turn contributed to my substance abuse getting much worse. Now,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: someone with an abandonment issues end of a relationship must
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: be very tough. Yeah, I mean it was tough. I
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: mean we we broke up, like anywhere in the neighborhood
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of Baker's doesn't you know, we break up all the time.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And then I beg her to come back. Ah, I
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: would give her. You know, an engagement ring is an
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: empty gesture because we both you know, it was such
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: just a toxic relationship. Passion was very high, the passion
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: was very heavy. But um, you know that's all we
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: had was passion. Um, there was no real roots to
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the relationship with still if wind would blow it over.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: So I beg her to come back from Hawaii, should
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: come back, and then you know, the passion would be
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: great for two or three days and then we'd be
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: right out of each other's throats again. Um. But the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: last time she left, she went to Indonesia to start
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: a bathing suit company. Yeah, I don't think it worked out,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: but she left and I just it really hurt. I
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: was like, I just don't come back, you know, I don't.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I can't do this anymore. And she stayed, and you know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: like I always did, a few days later, I beg
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: you to come back, and she said, nah, now we're
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: really through. So then you go through after you live
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: with somebody for four years, you know, it's not like
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: in the movies. It's not just like I'll see you later,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: you know, then you go through the process of trying
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: to get all of their ship out of your house,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: and then you put it on the storage unit. And
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: then after a while you're like, hey, and I don't
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: want to pay for your storage unit anymore. It's only
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: your stuff in there, and uh just gets really break
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: ups are ugly and bring out the worst in people,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: certainly her. So since that relationship ended, did you take
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: advantage of any of the perks on the road? H
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I think I was, you know, just just the fact
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: that it's suicide prevention month or awareness month rather. Um,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to say that I was. That
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: was a heartbroken and just so lonely and just so devastated.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: My grandmother had died at that point. She was gone,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And UM, I wrote a tune. It's actually gonna be
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: on my next rack. It's called Cadillac and all about
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: you know, my old Cadillac. And you know I bought
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: a house with a garage for the reason of, you know,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: killing myself that way. That was my whole plan, if
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: you want to call it a plan. Um. But then
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I had a tour I had to go do, so
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I figured why not go out doing what I love.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I can just I can drink and drug myself to
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: death out here while I'm playing music. It's a win win,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I achieve what I'm setting out to do.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: So I was too fucked up really to take advantage
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: of any of the parks on the road. Really, I
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: mean there was probably a a couple of drunk you know,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: uh escapades, but nothing really ever failed a void and
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I was just really oh, I mean put light on
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: the subject. There's this movie that John c Riley did
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: called Dewey Cox Walk Hard. It's just like, this is
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: such a dark fucking period. It's like that was mine. Um,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: but in that dark period, I met uh Briley while
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I was in Raleigh, North Carolina. I met Briley and uh,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: you know, she just seemed like this light at the
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: end of the tunnel and she's really sassy and she
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: calls me on all my bullshit and she was you
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: know that night too, just like yeah, because I invite
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: her backstage, and she's like, what do you expect is
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: gonna happen? You know, I'll bet you invite everybody backstage.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: It's no, you're special, You're special. And she is so
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: uh I'm glad she came along right, right, And but
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you're she doesn't come on the road with you, right,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: she does. Yeah, she comes on the road, so she's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: there with you. Now. Well she's actually she went home
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: to see uh, her mama and her parents and bring
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: our little dog so they can watch her because this
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: is kind of a long run. So she's went home
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and she's gonna meet us in Philadelphia tomorrow for the
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: first stop. Wow, that's cool. Okay, So when do you
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: first pick up the guitar? Man? I think that's about
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: three three or four, as soon as I could hold one.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: And what was the inspiration? My dad, my grandpa, my
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: uncle's just seeing how elated everyone was after you know,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the family reunion or maybe thanksgivings. We'd go up to
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: my great grandfather, Morris King's house and he had an
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: old moonshine and still he'd show us the moonshine and
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: still at the back of the cornfield, and then everybody
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: would pick on the front porch. And the joy that
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: you could see on everybody's faces, the spectators and the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: performers are all alike. Uh. I was like, I gotta
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: get in on that, you know, because even at a
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: young age, you you don't really understand a lot of
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: the pain, but you understand how to not feel it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: So music was something I really I really wanted to
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: grasp ahold of and then it grasped ahold of me.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: And never take any lessons just from my dad. I
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: didn't take any formal lessons that along at a young age. Um,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of my lessons. You know, my whole family
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: all learned how to play music, you know, by ear
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: no formal training of any kind. My grandfather was a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: really really uh you know, worldly educated man. You know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I think he probably only had up to an eighth
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: grade education if that. But he's a really smart guy.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: So he would he would write out you know, now
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I think you'd call it tablisher, but he was. He
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: was pretty much he would draw like a He would
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: trace my hand and then he'd draw the neck out,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and then he would draw circles where my fingers were
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: supposed to go. So it is tablisher actually. But he
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: was doing this in like the fifties when he was
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: teaching my my dad to play. So, um, seeing them
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: play really made me want to get into it. Okay,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: it's a kid, what music we're listening to other than
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the music you were playing with your family. So yeah,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I keep mentioning gospel music. And I was in a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Pentecostal church, so, uh, the Mark what Mark Ward the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: musical director there. They they would always do a lot
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: of Kirk Franklin and that kind of stuff, a lot
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: of contemporary gospel that was on the radio then. Um,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, whatever my sister was banging around on
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the radio wasn't really doing it for me. So that's
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: when my my dad's music collection came to play, and
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: he had just had all of his tapes and records
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: all digitally transferred to CDs. CDs were a big thing,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: so I was able to really rifle through those, a
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of Muddy Waters, Allman Brothers, Elmore,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: James um Early, Leonard skinnerd H. Marshall, Tucker Band, God,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: that was a big one. And I just sit and
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: listen to these records and try to learn everything I could,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: absorb everything I could from And when did you decide
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: music was something you wanted to do for a career.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: So I've answered this question before and I've always just
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: kind of said that I never thought otherwise, which is
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: really the truth. And you know, just to expand on that,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: when I was in sixth grade, I, um, we did
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: this test that was kind of like what are you
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: gonna be when you grow up kind of thing, and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: my test results came back and said I was going
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: to be a small set director, which is the guy
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: that you know organizes the mannequins in the mall, And uh,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: miss Austin, I don't think I want to do that.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I actually really like playing music. Well, you gotta be
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: good if you want to play music professionally, right, all right?
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And I also got denied being in the school choir
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: that same year, so I had a you know, a
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: lot of proof. I guess miss Adams and Miss Alston
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: if you're listening, but um, yeah, I just never thought
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: really otherwise after that point in my life. Sixth grade,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, music is it? And when did you
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: start playing in Ben's And when did you started playing
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: for money out? By the time I was eleven. First
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: time I played on stage, I was eight years old,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: played on stage with my dad and my grandfather. I
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: think that was the only time I got to really
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: play with my grandfather because he got really sick after
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: that and he passed when I was about fourteen, and
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: it was one of a few times I got to
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: play with my uncle on bass because he passed when
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I was about fifteen. So, uh, that is a really
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: good memory for me to have played with like all
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: the family. You know, those a couple of occasions. But
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: when I was about thirteen, or rather when I was eleven,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that's when I did my first record on my on
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: my dad's record. That's when I did my first studio session. Uh.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: And he did a record called Huge in Europe, which
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: is just meant to be a joke, like nobody knows
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: is here, but we're huge and Europe kind of um,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: which now it actually does get it does sell some
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: copies in Europe, which is ironic. Um. So that's the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: first time I was in the studio, and then I
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: started playing with his band for a few years, and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: when I was fourteen and a half, I was able
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: to get my license and or my learners permit. So
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: then my goal was, you know, with this learners permit,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I can drive with a license driver in the car,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and you know who's gonna turn down a gig where
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: you can drink as much as you want. I'll drive
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: you home. I've got the p a, your rig, my
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: rig all in the back of the car. Let's go.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: So I started working with a student of my dad's actually,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: who was taking bass lessons from my dad because my
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: dad gave basin like guitar lessons and Anthony house John
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: a band. So he was like eighteen and I was
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: about fourteen and a half fifteen, and my drummer. We
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: went through a handful of drummers at the time that
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: we're all like grown men with families. So I'd keep
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: us working like four or five nights a week, and
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: over the phone, you don't know you were talking to
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: a fourteen year old. So I'd call and and book
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: us in all the surrounding areas, or I'd send emails
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: under a fake name to make it seem like we
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: had representation and we didn't. And then we just tore
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: around him a minivan. We'd go no more than four
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: for four or five hours outside of Greenville so I
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: could get back in time to go to school next morning.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: And what kind of music were you playing? And what
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: kind of joints were these? They weren't particularly the kind
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: of joints you wanted. Fourteen or fifteen year old of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: your own go to Uh. My dad just had a
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: lot of confidence in me. And you know, I got
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: it in a little bit of trouble while I was
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: doing that, and but nothing really crazy. It was all
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: pretty harmless fun. But my dad trusted me. And you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I'd always bring a drummer along, like I said, to
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: be kind of a chaperone. Um. Tracy little John was
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: my last working drummer actually, uh before Jack joined a group.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: And Tracy was from Spartanburg or actually Tracy from Gaffney.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: So Tracy little John was not the type of dude
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you would want to suk with. And he's passed away
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: now and got rested soul. But he'd have a gun
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: and his stick bag at all times. And I give
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: the cous for behind us. He tell us all to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: put our put our little stash and his drum bag
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: because he's like I could take a pinch and um,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: you know, he wouldn't let anybody mess with men on
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: the road. Uh. I missed that guy a lot, think
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: about him often. But um, the top of music we
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: were playing, you know, we we try to. We had
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a throwback sound and when you're in the Carolinas. You
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: can get away with playing you know, like uh like
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Willie t anything that had a shuffle to it, because
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: people can shag anything that's kind of like beach music.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: And we get away with playing like some old country,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: some Little Feet, Almond Brothers, that kind of stuff. So
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: people just ate it up and we slipped original material
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: into the set, and then it just started to grow
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: and it started to expand. And when I was seventeen,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I said, I've had them bet enough of this town.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm leaving. So that's what we did. Okay, so
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you're playing these gigs, how many people were there? How
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: much money you did? You get paid? So you know,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was sixteen years old, UM, one
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: of the many runnings I had with a club owner.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: He's a friend of mine now, Ben Dixon owned Chakora Alley. Um,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: they said three dollars, you got a four piece group,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: play three hundred dollars. Don't play this Saturday, And they'd
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: be like two hundred people there because people would turn
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: out to watch the football game or to watch anything
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: else that was on. So I at a young age
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: realized people are coming to drink, and they're coming to
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: watch the game, and they're coming to hang out with
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: their friends and you are a lot of noise in
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: the background. So how do we engage them and make
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: them want to hear us and make them come back
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to where we're at the top of that priority list? Right?
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: So having house gigs agreeable at that young age. It
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: was in Asheville. I'd have like three or four house
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: gigs a week where I got to really you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I had a firsthand lesson and like how to read
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: an audience and how to really engage them and how
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to keep them engaged, you know. So I'm really thankful
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: for those early years. But will you get paid like
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: three dollars? And one week I remember a keyboard player
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't make it. He was like, I'm not giving you
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the full three because I only pay seventy a man.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, it works out at seventy a man,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: but the deal was three d you know. Uh. So
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: they always try to get one over on me, And
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: one time they tried to do that in Spartanburg at
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: this place called Decades, kind of bar that you only
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: know it was there. If you knew it was there,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: it's like behind like you know, uh, like a place
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: where you give blood, like a lab corps or some ship.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: And on the other side of it was a police
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: uh uh, not a police station, but like the people
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that answered the phone, so like a dispatch station. So
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: they are all the people at the despatch station outside
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes and stuff. And I had this drummer we
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: meant at the time, who I later found out was
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: uh selling large amounts of weed, so his van was
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: weighed down. And I said all that to say, in
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: this particular evening, we were playing too maybe two people,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and they happened to be dating the members of the band,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: so there was nobody in the club, and the sign
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: said we played till one, but our agreement was we
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: played until twelve, so we got done at twelve, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: they said, well, we're not You know, we're not paying
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: you because sign says you played to one, So get
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: your aspect up there and finish your set er. We're
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: not paying you. So I took my grandfather's advice. On
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: this particular night, I had enough. Um, we gotta get paid.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: So what we're gonna do is take your p a
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and we'll pawn it and we'll get paid close to
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna pay us, and that's fair, and that's fine.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: We don't mind loading it out, so we'll just take
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it out this store. And uh, you know that's what
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: my grandfather told me to do. I was like, I
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: gotta pay my boys, so we're gonna sell your ship
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: because you were supposed to pay us. And then out
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, all these big dudes just started coming out
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: of the walls. It seemed like this barb brawl ensued
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: that was instigated by fifteen year old meat and just
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: this fight started happening, and they jumped on the back
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of Leo, and the people that were watching is the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: audience is the dispatch unit smoke break, so they're all
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: out there smoking. So all they gotta do is go
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: in and let somebody know what's happening. So all of
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: sudden there was six police cars all around us, and uh,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: my drummer at the time, they jumped in and rolled
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: his ankle and he's like, I don't want to press
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in each others. I'm good, I just want to get
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: out of here. And I never really really understood that
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: until later I found out he was, you know, moving
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: around a lot of weight. But that's the kind of shenanigans.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: We'd get into just trying to make a few dollars,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: not get not get fucked with. Okay, you drop out
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: of high school, music is your career? In retrospect, say
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I paid my dues ten thousand hours? What was going
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: through your head? You say, this is it where my
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: dream is X? Or what's gonna happen? Um? Man? I
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: just I just had like I've always kind of looked
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: at it like a like a pit bull mentality. You
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: know when the pit bull gets his jahas lot doing
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: something that's like it's not letting go, it's a death grip.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: And that's where I was just you know, I would
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: be so just astonished at the people that didn't believe
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: that this was gonna do something. Like my bass player's dad,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: for instance, back in those days, it was like, you know, Anthony,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: you need to go finish college and you know, become
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: a peuter computer programmer, and you need to you know,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: get married and settled down. And just like when he
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: told me he couldn't do it anymore, he's going back
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to school, I was just like, what, like, just I
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: was taking it back because there's no part of me
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: that thought this was gonna fail. And for me, that's
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that's how you make it is one no safety now,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you know, because I knew guys that would be on
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the scene playing three nights a week and then they'd
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: go to school to be a doctor or whatever the hell.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it's not gonna work. Is at a certain
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: point that's gonna pay a lot more in the short
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: run and the long run, I guess. But you gotta
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: have faith in yourself. So we just went after it
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and never turned back around. Yeah, okay, so you're doing it,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: you know, and especially in today's era, everything moves very slowly.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: What were you doing to move further down the board.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Did you feel like, oh, you just had to play
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: the right gig or you had to play more gigs.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: You're right, you had to write a right song, you
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: had to record a song, You have to meet the
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: right people. I realized very early on that I wasn't
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: going to get a song on the radio more than likely, um,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: because everything sounded to throwback what I was doing. And
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: you know, it's come around a little bit, you know,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: like people are putting out not these country songs and
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: gett a hit with it. Um. But at the time,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: throwback just wasn't really it. So we get a lot
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: of love from fraternities, um, and those were the money gigs,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: so roar, are excuse me a fraternity gigs? Those would
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: cover the bills for a little while, and then we
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: can get on down the road and we can play
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: more of our music and we can start to accumulate
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: a following on the road. Because I do two things
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: that weren't gonna get a song on the radio, and
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: my looks weren't gonna do it for me. So I said,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the only way to do this is to build a following.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: And if we just started circling this country and we
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: just started hitting him from every angle, and I ain't
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: gonna be able to say no, you know. I mean
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: they can say no, but we're here. So when you
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: plead a fraternity at that time, what songs did you play?
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: And how much money was that gig worth? I don't
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: remember the exact amount of money. I mean they passed
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: like two grand and we'd be like, we're rich. You know,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: we're finally going to get the van fixed, so we
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: don't have a worry it's gonna break down every few miles. Um,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And everything back in those days was very much so um,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: everybody all for one, one for all, that kind of feeling.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And it's still very much that way on the road. Um.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: The dynamics shifted a little sometimes, the one that kind
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of put a lot of the weight on my shoulders.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: But in those days, we go playing fraternity and we'd
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: play I mean, we would play obscure Ship, we played
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: really whatever we wanted as long as we were jamming.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: You know, they didn't care because they just they all
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: loved widespread panics. So we get away with playing like
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: compared to what by less McCann and we jam jammed
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: out for thirty minutes and cool. Okay. At that time,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: who was booking the band? And how far away from
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: your home base would you go? So I was booking
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the ban up until the time I was eighteen, and
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: we at that time, we're only going as far as
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: you know, we'd go to Georgia. We're touring the Southeast predominantly.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: That's about it. Uh. And when I was eighteen, a
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: buddy of ours, Bill Hahn, said he wanted to put
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a little money into us. So he said, he flies
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: out to California to maca record, and that's what we did,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and when we got back, Uh, he had set up
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: a meeting for us, because Bill went to the citadel
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: and those boys all look out for each other. And
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: as it would turn out, one of his Citadelle brothers
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: was a writer by the name of Jamison Clark. And
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Jameson Clark used to be a big writer in Nashville
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and had since retired and moved back to Greenville. And
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: he said, Marcus is gonna need an agent. I know
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: just the guy. So he put me in touch with
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Brandon round Tree at William Morris Entertainment in Dever. Excuse me,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: he used to just be wearing us. And my grandfather's
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: name is William Morris King. So I said, hot hot dog,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm supposed to be. And that's still my
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: agent now. So uh we went there very fresh faced,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and he gave us a meeting. I mean he met
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: with us in the the lobby where they sell coffee.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: He didn't take us up stairs, but he gave us
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the chance. And the first gig he booked for us
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: was Sea World, and uh, we had a gig at
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: sea World all day and then drove twelve hours back
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: to make it to a late night gig in Simpsonville,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: South Carolina. So um, from there, he just started booking
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: us and continuing on that pattern of just hitting every
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: market as hard as we could, I mean as far
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: as we could go in a van anyway, you know.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: And then a little more after that. So what were
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: you doing with the record? And was that a significant thing?
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: So I self released that record. Um, but you was
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: at we put it out. Um. But for me as
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I was never really interested in, you know, putting out
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: a record. I mean I knew it was important. I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: know it's an important thing, but I was like, where
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: our money is coming from and where our following is
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: gonna come from is from the live shows. You know,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: we need something to sell. We need a record to sell. Um.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: And later the studio became more of my my friend
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and more of a place where I could express myself
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: differently than I could on the stage. So I have
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: much more, I put much more stock, much more value,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: appreciate it more now than I did then. So we
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: self released it. It's called Soul Insight, Uh, my clever
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: little name that I came out with. And then you know, well,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: to say what I'm about to say, I'll go back
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: a few years when I just had a demo in
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hand that just said Marcus King and Sharpie on the
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: front of it. And uh, I was trying to sneak
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: into the Orange pill in Asheville, North Carolina to get
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a copy of this to Warren Haynes from the Olman
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Brothers Man and uh, I made it in. I snuck
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: in with the caterers and they you know, I made
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: it in. I have my CD. I was ready, but
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't know the layout of the building.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: That was the only problem with my plans. So they
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: found me out, kicked me out. They tried to put
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: me in jail. Um, thank god they didn't. They just
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: called my dad and my dad said, don't lock him up.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: He's just trying to get his music with somebody. And
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: as fate would have. My buddy, Rocky Rocky Linsley, um
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: songwriter from Asheville. He just passed away not too long ago, unfortunately.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: But he sat waring down and his wife Stephanie and
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: his manager uh and said listen, sit down and listen.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: They kept telling him like, oh, we're gonna check it out.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: We're gona check it out. And this was so inside
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that they played him, so, um, they listened and they
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: heard me. So then we rereleased it on Evil Team
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Records and I started working with hard Head Management right then.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: And that was such a huge leap for me to
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: be able to have Warren Haynes's stamp of approval because
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: that you know, kind of grandfathered us in to that
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Allman Brothers family, that community, and that's a real thick community.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: So they really welcomed us with open arms. And you know,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: that relationship didn't last unfortunately, and that wasn't my you know,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: my choice, but I am really ain'tful to them. Why
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: did it not last? Well? Came in time to make
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: change in management, and uh, you know Warren's management manager
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: was my manager as well, but it also happened to
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: be his wife. So you know, when you mix business
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: and family, and I had to cut ties. Um, that
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: friendship that was there and I looked at stuff like
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: a mother figure. She looked out for me. But when
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: I cut that tie, they really really turned on me.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: And that really broke my heart into a million pieces.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Um destroyed me. But uh, it was time. I had
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: to make a change. And you gotta do what's right
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: for you business wise. But you know, I haven't talked
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: to one since then. And what were you looking for
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: from new management that you weren't getting? It? Needed somebody
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: to focus on me. I needed somebody that was you
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: gonna help me get out from under the heel of
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the southern rock thing, you know, because we're very much typecasted.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: I wor a cowboy hat everywhere I go, for God's sakes,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I am a I'm like a
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: cartoon depiction of like what a loud American is for
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the most part. And I wanted to be more than that.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to do whatever kind of record.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: And I didn't want to just be stuck in that
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: jam community because there's a ceiling there and you're never
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: gonna be bigger than fish or a grateful death, So
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: what's the point in trying. And I'm more concerned about
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: the songs and the lyrical content. And I love a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: jam band as much as the next guy, you know,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: but I want to be me and I wasn't getting
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the attention that I needed um and when I was,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: it was is placed. So I had to go and
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: I found a new manager that you know, heard me,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and it's been going pretty well, how did you how
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: did you find the new manager? Well, that word spread
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: pretty quick, uh that I was making a move, and
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: we had we kind of lit a fire for ourselves
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: at that point. So that word spread and I had
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: about five meetings. I did them all in person, and
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: those meetings varied from like taughting one guy who's actually
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: a good buddy of mine Nashville Fella spoke to him
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: next to our van in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And you know,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: another meeting was held in a King's suite in Las Vegas, Nevada,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: at the Flamingo Hotel and they had an easel and uh,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: you know, power point presentation and all this. Uh. But
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: my manager, Aaron, and I sat down and had coffee
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: in l A and I was like, I like your style, man,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: like the cut of your jib. Let's do this. And
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: you know we're still working together. Then what did he change? Well,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: that's a hard question to answer, really because there wasn't
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: much broke that needed to be fixed. It was more
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: a matter of expanding us into new markets and allowing
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: us to be you know, available to you know, a
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: younger crowd, more diverse crowd. Um, what's been really helpful
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: to me as an artist has been. If I do
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: what's completely me and what's true in my heart, I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: just need somebody to push it because I'm not good
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: at telling myself. You know what I mean. The only
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: thing I could say about myself and it still comes
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: across to me is eager to to go as that. Um,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: whatever I'm gonna tell you or whatever I might perform
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: is gonna be honest. If you don't like it, it's fine,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: but it's honest. It's true. Um, whether it's good or not,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But I can only assure you of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: what one thing is that I'm not gonna bullshit you.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: So how does it go from the Marcus King bend
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: to just Marcus King? So that was really just a
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: decision of marketing because Marcus King band is who's on
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: the road with us right now. That's my boys, Um,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: but work with the producer like our back. He's got
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: this well oiled machine where he's just he's just got
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of guys from the Memphis Boys, Bubby Would
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: and h h Gene, Bubba Christman, and he's got um
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Billy Sandford on guitar who wrote riff for pretty Woman
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: his second day in Nashville. So he's got a thing
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I guess it's just a
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: market King record because my band wasn't on it. It
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: was really that honest of a decision. And then the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: next one was the same situation, just with different guys.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: So I was like, well, when we're touring with a
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Marcus King band, but it's just Marcus King. But then
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: all the press start to say Marcus King's first solo record,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, no, well, I guess that's true,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't because of that or this, and you know,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: it was just a misunderstanding. Really. Uh, we still sell
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Marcus King band t shirts at this at the shows. Um,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of people ask big questions on Instagram and stuff.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: I'm like, just come to this show man. All your answers.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: All your answers you'll find at the show. So the
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: people you're working with, now, how long you've been working
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: with them? Uh? Shoot, when was that? I think since
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, so few years. Okay, there's a video of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: you with the Capital Theater earlier this year and you're
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: doing the Marshall Tucker band Ken You can't you see,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: and there's you know, just like old school uh double
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: drummer things. There's a percussionist, there's a drummer, there's a floutist,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: there's a woman who's playing guitar. Was that just a
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: one night or I mean, how many people do you
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: normally go out with? Mm? Hmm. So our man usually
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: we have uh so that yeah, that particular night, that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: was our friend Hannah Wickland sitting in with us, who
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: was opening for us at the time. Uh, And usually
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: we have it's a seven piece band, including myself, So
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: that's every night. Okay, needless to say, the Allman Brothers
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: were six. Let me put it in a different way,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: how do you split the money? Well, it's a fine question.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I put my boys uh salary because that's what they
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: wanted to do early on. Not to get too uh
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: too far into the business side of it, but um,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: around the time we were doing Carolina Confessions, UM, it
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: kind of came a time to put up or shut
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: up or get out. And you know, it was kind
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: of a decision of who's going to take the financial
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: risk here, who's gonna sign on the dotted line? When
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the label came to sign a deal, they asked me
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: for a signature. They didn't ask for six signatures, they
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: asked for one. So that record deal came to me. Um,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: I'm the one that put all the financial risk into
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: the band, and I gave everybody the opportunity to do so.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: And they decided that they wanted two play it safer
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: and and do more of a salaried employee more of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: a hired gun kind of situation. So we have an
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: employment agreement with each other as their employer. I pay
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: them fair wages and I take good care of my
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: boys because they are my boys. But what do you
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: do over COVID wouldn't goodn't work? Well? Luckily enough, we
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: had enough in that Randy Day fund to keep everybody
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: on salary for about six months. And once that ran out, Uh,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: we got a little bit of government cheese that let
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: us go a little bit further. And you know, once
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: the money went away, as like, I don't know what
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: we're gonna do. So we started, you know, trying to
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: work anyway. We could, started doing drive in shows, um,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: socially distanced concerts, uh. And we'd even do like live
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: stream shows, just anyway to try to create some revenue
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: and get the boys paid. Uh. And I always make
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: a real effort to take care of my guys because
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: you know how loyal is a hungry really you know,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: your dog will eat you if you're stuck in the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: house for over many days. Well for those who for
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: those have been in the business, you know for a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: long time, the more musicians you take, you know, the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: costs starts to spiral. There's not only salary, there's equipment,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: there's hotel rooms, there's busses, there's uh trucks. Are you
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: just saying you're investing in your career. Are you making
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: any money on the road? Yeah, man, I mean there's
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of overhead. So that was you know, kind
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: of that decision. Was that the financial risk that I
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: referred to as, like you said, there's seven office, there's
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: two buses out here. You know, we go and do
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: tours um in Europe where when in the red, we're
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: pretty deep in the red. And you know, the band
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: they don't see any of that hit. They get paid
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: no matter what. I don't get paid, no matter what,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I find it to be the best. When
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the leader eats last. I want to make sure that
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: my boys are fed first. So take care of the
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: crew and I take care of the band, and you know,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: we make decisions like just like back in the day
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: when we would do a fraternity party, you know now,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: I mean how I still do fraternity parties. I don't care.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: They're fun. Those are fun gigs. Those boys always take
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: carrying me down Tuscaloosa and uh wherever else. But now
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: we'll go and do a corporate function or something that
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: pays pretty well. And that money will, you know, make
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: up for the loss that we had on a West
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: coast tour that didn't you know. And it's not that
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: people aren't coming to these shows, it's that the travel
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: and all the other overhead is so much, you know,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: especially after COVID, ma'am, and cost of fuel. Everything is
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: such a such a pitch right now, and um, traveling
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: with seven people is not cheap. Okay. Now you will
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: talk about being pigeonholed in the gam bend circuit. How
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: did you get out of that? And to what to grieve?
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: You decided to only play headline dates. Well, I remember
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: seeing uh Crongben. They were playing on jam Cruise And
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: first time I saw Crongben was four or five years
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: ago at the Williamsburg Music Hall. Me and Chris Robinson
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: went to see him, and I was a fan of
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: theirs before that, and they have blown all the way up,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: which I love. But you know, they would only play
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: like one quote unquote jammy event a year because they
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: didn't want to get in that same position that we
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: were trying to crawl out of. So I said, well,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: work for them, maybe that's what we'll do. And I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: saw Jason is what kind of doing the same thing, uh,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: because he wanted to be considered more of a writer
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: m less of a jam band because he can from
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: the drive by truckers. So I'd only see him at
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: you know, Locking every year or something like that festival
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: that's more jam in nature. Um. So that was kind
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: of the attempt. And I also I felt a lot
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: of pressure as a jam band because sometimes I don't
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: feel like playing this song for thirty minutes, you know
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: what I mean. The energy comes from the crowd, it's
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: a it's a back and forth for me. So I'm
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: not that song is three minutes because that's what's written,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: that's how it is on the record. And I'm not
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: getting any reciprocation. I'm not feeling any love um, sometimes
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: just gonna be at a minute song. And I started
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: feeling pressured to have to extend and jam everything out,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: and also pressure to not repeat songs on a run,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you know. I was like, this is a great opener.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we open with it again tomorrow? I'm trying
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: to put on a show. I'm trying to put on
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: a show, and this is really tight, um. And I'd
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: catch a lot of flat from tapers or from you know,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: people that weren't even there. They're like, soe Ler's starting
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: to look kind of similar. I'm like, yeah, because it's tight.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: It's a tight set. So we're running the songs that
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: are on the record that we're promoting. I don't know
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: that part of it just always didn't make sense to me.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: So uh, a lovely jam community. However, so to what
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: degree will you open other than festivals? Or you would
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: just want to headline? Um? I mean I'd just like
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: to play. I'll play to anybody that will listen. You know,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I've I've drunkenly sang in many hotel lobbies. Anybody that
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: will listen, I'm happy to do it. So I love
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: opening for people, especially a crew like Chris Stepton's crew,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: who took such good care of us. Uh, Festival dates
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: are always fun. I mean headline shows, that's that's my
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: bread and butter, because there's complete freedom to do what
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: we want, you know. For example, I mean, we have
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a comedian with us on this run, and that's something
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I've I've always wanted to do because I watch reruns
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: of you know, Midnight Special with my grandfather and you'd
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: see Cosby or Prior or Carlin or Robert Klein going
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: on before Steely Dan or uh you know Red Bone
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: or somebody like that. Uh. I just you know, James
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Brown had a comedian that would travel with him and
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: MC that would kind of open the show. So we
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: have a comedian in on the road, we have uh
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: first of three, Ashland Craft, who's an incredible up and
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: coming artist in Nashville. When we have Neil Francis opening
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: for us, So it's kind of like a variety show
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: in a way that we're taken around and you really
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: only get that kind of freedom when it's your your
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: headlines show. Okay, how did you end up working with
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: DNA our back man? Um, I'm just I've been I say, yes,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I've always made a habit just to say yes.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, in this industry, you're gonna you're
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: gonna get fucked, And I think it's an inevitability. You're
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: gonna get fucked, you're gonna get your heart broken sometimes
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: at the same time, So just say yes. If somebody
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: wants to steal your publishing, um, well, let me rephrase that.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: You know, nobody's trying to steal your publish it. If
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: it's in their hands and they know what they're doing
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: with it and they have the incentive to use it
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: or do something with it, it's probably better than me
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: according it. And I don't know what the hell I'm
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: doing with it. I don't know. I don't know. That's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: a tangent for for another day maybe, But um, what
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: was I saying? Oh? Yeah, So I was playing a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: gig and we were in Phoenix, Arizona, playing a festival,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: and we had to go on right after White Denham,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: which is always and a pretty big undertaking. Um, because
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: we actually talked about taking White Denham on the road
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: with us once. I was like, they scared the ship
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: out of me, let's do it. That would be sense
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: of intimidating shell every night, but um, I digress. I
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: got a call that next day from my management at
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: the time that said Dan Albert wants to get together
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: and right, so I said, well, you know what to do?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: Change my flight, So I'm going to Nashville. I lived
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: in South Carolina at the time, and I was meant
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: to go home to Greenville for three days and then
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: fly to France. So I, uh, I said, I'm going
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: to Nashville. And I went there and wrote with Dan
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: for three days and we just instantly hit it off
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: and became friends. Um. Then what happened I think the
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: end of I ended up moving to Nashville and uh,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: the start of twenty nineteen, we recorded El Dorado. Okay,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: you mentioned Chris Robinson earlier. You know, you talked about
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: a relatively lonely upbringing. You know you've obviously met all
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: these people. Are you friends with these people or they're
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: just part of the scene, like you're part of the scene. Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: I mean Chris and I we we've always remained in touch. Um.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Being on the road with him was all was a
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: real roller coaster. Man. It was really cool because I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: think he's one of the most charismatic front men. Um.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: You know in the last thirty years for sure. So
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: I had just uh a boot camp of rock and
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: roll Royalty on stage with me oddly freed, you know,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: Andy Hess and uh, I'm really thankful for those moments
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: that we had. But I saw him at in front
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: of ours wedding not too long ago, and he seems
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: to be doing good. Right, Okay, So how long did
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: it take to do El Toronto? Three days? Were the
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: songs already written? Yeah, So the writing process um was
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: collectively like two weeks over like a three month period.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: UM would kind of be touch and go because Dan
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: and I were both pretty busy, um and we wead
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: a tune. You know. I think that Dan was attracted
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: to Nashville for the same reason I was, which was,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't feel rushed, but everything gets done
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: quickly because everybody's so good at what they do, and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: writers come in and you know, what are we talking about?
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: You know, and then you got verse, verse, chorus, lunch verse,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and then you go on. So the songs
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: just talking about me leaving home when I was seventeen,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: and we had a theme for the record and we
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: just chased it. And the band that I mentioned earlier.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: I mean they listened to the demo tape. Dave Row
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: who was Jerry Reid's based player and son in law.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: Uh would write out a chart. They'd make eight copies
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: or how many people are in the band had him
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: around and you know that was that would do one
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: maybe two takes something. Well, it's your record. They're getting
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: paid for doing the session. Were you just letting Dan steer?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Would you ever see? Man? I want to do that again. Man,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: whenever I'm in a studio with Dan, I've I've got
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: such confidence in him as a producer, and I always did,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: but um, it wasn't I really excuse me. I started
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: feeling even more that way when I realized that he
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: produced Luckdown by Dr John. When I realized that, I
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: was like, I'll never have to ask him another question, man,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: that record is perfect from talking about him. So we're
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: in the studio, there's a mutual respect for one another
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: that kind of allows for him to be in full
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: production mode and for me to be in full artist
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: mode at all times, and there's very little that we
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: have to tell one another or critique in one another
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: as artist or producer. And you know, he's such a
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: calm energy too. He's got a very nautical like Captain
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: Ahab kind of presence behind that that console, and you
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: see him and you just know everything's going the way
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: it should be going. Okay, you talk about Dan tracked
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: you down, does anybody else tracked you down to work? Yeah? So,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: um Rick Rubin actually uh towards the end of but
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: let's let's hold that for a second, because that couldn't
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: down later. From an external viewpoint, the breakthrough is El Dorado.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: Would that be accurate from the inside? I think so, man.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the most I ever pushed myself musically stylistically.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: So I just I want to because I love my band.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: They pushed me every night musically. But we know each other.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: We're almost two in each other's heads, you know, musically,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: so obviously like really great ideas or birth from that.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: But I wanted something different. I wanted something completely fresh.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: It wasn't gonna have any you know, it wasn't gonna
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: be derivative of anything I've ever done. So when Dan
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: and I first first collaborated, I was like, I think
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: this is it. So it was a breakthrough from me
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: personally as an artist, and you know, I mean, like
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: you said, it was the breakthrough record, you know externally
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: as well. Did you know it was going to have
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: the impact it did? Um? I was, you know, hopeful.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: I think any artist would be. Um, there wasn't much
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: about it that I felt like cringe e about, you know.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: And like I mentioned earlier, I was. I was completely
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: ruthful on the whole record, so um, and on anything
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: I do, I won't I won't say something that I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: think it's bullshit on record or sounds cheesy to me.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: And thankfully Dan didn't asked me to do anything like that.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: And UM, I just felt confident in the record. You know, Okay,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: that record comes out on Concord. Now you're with Rick
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: and Republic what went on there? So that was kind
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: of like a timing thing. So I was with Concorde
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: Fantasy Records actually and Margie Fantasy such a swell human being,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: just fantastic. And my good friend Joe McEwen, who was
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: my first day and r guy I ever had. He uh,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: he was there and he was the only reason I
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: was gonna stay at Fantasy. And Rick came up because
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: at the time I was on Bicycle Publishing and that
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: contract ran out and American Songs. You know, was interested
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: in my publishing to do a co publishing deal. So
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: Rick Rubin called me after he saw the Grand Old
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Opera performance and we just talked. You know, I gotta
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: feel for one another, um, which I which I really
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: admire because he owns American Publishing and American Records American Songs,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: excuse me, um. So I saw him publishing with him.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: And then I was thinking about maybe making a move
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: from my current label to something a little bigger, and
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: there were a lot of names on the table, and uh,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: I decided I was gonna stay just because Joe McEwen
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: was such a close friend of mine. And then I
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: found out through the grapevine that he was actually retiring.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: So I was like, all right, I think it's time
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: for a change. And Rick offered me the best deal
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: that anybody did. So I signed on paper in Malibu
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: and here we are. Okay, so you're dealing is done
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: with Fantasy Concord. Yeah, there was no you know, I
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: called Margie directly, I spoke to Tom Wally directly. I mean,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: there was no hard feelings on my on my part.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they were sad to see me go and
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: everyone I worked with there are still friends and no
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: hard feelings. It was just a timing thing. And she
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: was like, I get it. It's a step in the
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: right direction for your career, so we're happy for you.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: So I thought that's great. So did Rick have any
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: input into the new record, which certainly is hard ridged?
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: And how did that come about? Um? So Dan, you know,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: and I really had the idea for this record. Um.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: And you know, again, I've been really lucky, really blessed
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: us too, have the confidence um, and everyone that I
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: work with, like for Rick for example, he's like, we
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: have confidence in you to do what you do and
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: we know it's gonna good. It's gonna sound good. So
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: thank God for that. And me and Dan decided we
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: wanted to do this great, big, arena rock sounding record.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: But when I say arena rock, a lot of people
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: think Rat Poison, Molly Crewe. But I go to you know,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Cream at Royal Albert Hall or Jethrowsull, you know that
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: kind of sound at late sixties arena style, like huge
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: custom cabinets, huge orange cabinets, you know, across the stage.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: That's what I want. A grand funk railroad. So me
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: and Dan were on the same page there, and the
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: breakup just happened to be just before we started writing,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: so I was able to say a lot. I had
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of lyrical content. Okay, this record is done,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: it's relatively new, and it's released cycle next time around.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: Would you just stick Dane or would you entertain other options?
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: So it's funny you mentioned that, because you know, I've
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: I've actually got like eleven tims in the can that
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: I've been working with, uh, someone else on UM for
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: about a year, just because it's kind of like my
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: pet project. I go back to it and uh, it's
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: it's more or less like a prequel to Young Blood.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: It's Uh, it's a collection of songs about mental health
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: primarily and you know, the suffers of a relationship with
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: someone in that state of mind. So, uh, I think
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: that might be my next work that comes out. UM.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: There's also another record I'm working on, and I'm really excited.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: This is actually gonna be the first place that I
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: announce it publicly UM, which I hope is not pretty
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: mature because everything is not you know, confirmed yet. But
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: Paul Riddle and I Paul Riddle, the original drummer from
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: the Marshall Tucker Band UM one and only original drummer. UM.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: We started working together, uh with Hotel Burbridge as well,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: and UH then Skills involved. It's a project that's pretty much,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: you know, our Southern response to Deaden Company. It's it's
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: our opportunity for us to get Marshall Tucker's music out
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: where it needs to be and appreciated once again. So
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I think the name we're going to potentially go for
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: his Tucker and Company if we can make it happen. Okay,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: how'd you end up working with Zach Brown? He called me?
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: He called me one day. It seems to be this
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: pattern in my life. I remember I was in Santa
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: Cruz on a day off. I was horrifically hungover, potentially
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: the most hungover ever been in my life. UM, I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: got a call from a Georgia number. I this is,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: but I'm not answering. I got a text message and
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: he sa, hey, man is Zach Brown called me back?
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: So I called him. I called him back and we
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: just shout the ship for a couple of hours, and UH,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: come to find out, I guess he was just feeling
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: me out because he was getting ready to write for
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: uh uh come back. So um he asked me to
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: come right with him and uh Ben Simon Eddie in
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Southern Ground in Nashville, and uh then we just we
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: just quickly became really good buddies. You know. Zack's just
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: the kind of guy. I was out in downtown Nashville
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: or midtown at the uh the Red Door saloon. I
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: met a bunch of college kids. Uh they recognized me,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: so we just started partying together and the bar closed.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: So I was like, man Zack, Stude, I only meant
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: Zack one time prior to this. I was like, man
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Zack studios around the corner. Let's just go over there.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: I know they're working. So we just went over there,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: and I told him. I was like, I got like
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: six college kids with me and from how to Study's
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: all right? He said, yeah, man, bring them all. So
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: we just went over there. That's just the kind of
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: guy he is. Man. He loves family, and he is
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: a sweet fella. And uh me and my wife to
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: be actually spent Easter with him and uh his wife
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: to be this year. UH really blessed to have that
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: man in my life. He's a good, good boy. Needless
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: to say, things were different in the hey day of
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: the Almond Brothers, skinnerd and Tucker, where you know, you
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: had an album every year or two years, where now
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: you can do whatever you want now. You said earlier
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: that originally you were less into the records. How into
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: the records are you now and to what degree do
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: you have to space out the records or you know, hey,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: one of these records that don't come out four months
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: from now. I think I like that question a lot, man.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: You know, for me, I'm I have a lot more
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: freedom in studio. You know, I'm allowed, I'm allowed to
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: play with more ideas. Um. And that's certainly the case
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: with a lot of stuff I've been doing very recently. Um,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: because I was actually putting some you know, final touches
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: on the next record on the day that Young Blood
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: came out. So I like that. I like to always
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: have something ready to go, ready to be released. Um.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: But this next record after young Blood, I think it's
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: gonna be a little different than what people are used
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: to hearing me do. So for that reason, I want
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: to have a live record in the chamber, ready to
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: ready to pop, or like the Marshall Tucker tribute record.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: I want to have that ready to go, because I
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: never want people to only have something new from me
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: and they don't like it. I want there to be
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: like I don't like this, but there's also another new
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: thing from him that I do like. I understand that.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Believe me, there's options. Who did you work with on
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: this new record? Uh? That's something Rick and I did, um,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: just the two of us. And I haven't told anybody
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: about that, so I don't I don't know. Uh, my,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: my publicists and all that are gonna you know, get
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: on to listen. In today's world where it's hard to
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: get any message out, it's like if you say it,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: the more people, it's hard to reach anybody. Yeah, okay,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: why do you use an orange amplifier? UM? I just
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: always thought they looked cool, man. I mean, that's that's
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: the shallow answer. But also they came to me, um,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: they they approached me about making an app. UM. Well up,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: here's some backstory. I used to use this bootique amplifier
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: UM by this fellow who made him in Hershey, Pennsylvania,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: and he would put wax in them and stuff so
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: you couldn't dissect the schematics in the amp. And they
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: would break all the time because they'd ride around in
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: a trailer and they're beautiful, just amazing sounding tube amplifiers.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: And I won't say any names just because the story
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: takes a dark turn, right. So he it was very
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: particular about who could work on his amps, and he
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: didn't want anybody to be able to open him up. Yeah,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: I'd be on the West coast. He'd be like, ship
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: it to me in Hershey, Pennsylvania, I'll fix it. And
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: they just always be broken. And I had no you know,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: no spare and no you know, no options really. So
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: when we'd go overseas, Orange gave us a deal where
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: they'd let us take out base cabs and guitar caves
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: and all that on the house, just because they wanted
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: us to look like Orange investadors. So when I came
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: back to the States, I was like, that's the move.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: Orange is really giving us a lot of free amplifiers.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: They've helped us out, let's scratch their backs. So I
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: switched to Orange Amps, and I'll never forget. We're playing
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: a crawfish festival in New Jersey, which sounds like a
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: weird fever dream that doesn't make any sense. A Crawfish
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Festival in New Jersey. But I remember the guy came
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: out and he just saw my Orange jamps up there
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: and was like, what the fund is that we had
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: a we had a handshack agreement. I was like, don't
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: ever approach me like that on my way to the
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: stage again. I'll knock you on your ass because that
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: is a meditative state when you're walking onto the stage.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: For a little ship to come up to me and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: start trying to get violent with me in that moment,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: that's you know, you know, not not good. So it
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: was at that time that I've been using Orange amps,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: and then they wanted to make a custom amplifier and
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: I said yes, and I was really honest with him
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: about what I didn't like, what I did like, and
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: MK Ultra is what was born from that. Okay, you
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: know all these cm sound different. Why you know, a
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: marshal of Fender, etcetera. You know, Orange has a sound,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: and they're making a special one with you or you
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: just not that particular. As long as it's got any
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: EmpId speakers, You're cool that. There's a lot of truth
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: in what you just said. Really, but I mean, I've
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: always been of the sound mind that if you play
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: it right, it's gonna sound right. You know, orange amp
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: looks cool, and I was like, just don't overthink it, boys.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: You know, for my money, the best to amplifier that
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: you can get is mid sixties black face Fender Amp.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: That's because it's simple, man, It's meat and potatoes. You
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: open up the back of that thing and I can
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: figure out how to fix it. And if I know
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: how to fix it, there's not a lot of thought
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: put into it. It's just it's simple. They didn't overthink
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: the process. It just sounds great. Um. So I was like,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: that's the approach we're gonna take. But I wanted to
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: have the power of a British amplifier. So we made
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: kind of hybrid of sorts of my favorite simple builds.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: And it's just got volume base trouble. And I'd have
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: even less on it if if if I could just
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: a volume now like an old Fender Champ. And what
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: about effects pedals? I love fuzz pedals man. And uh,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: this old boy in in Maine Teddy with truth I pedals.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: Um he I saw his pedals and I thought they
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: looked cool. They look like the old soapbox poss pedals.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: You'll notice a pattern with me and something looks cool,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try it and and wait for the results. So,
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: because I've never been a gear head, I like I
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: like the aesthetic of some gear. He had, uh, these
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: big orange soapbox fuzz pedals, so he sent me one
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: and then I started talking about him in all these magazines.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: And because I don't know anything about gear, I didn't
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: realize he was relatively new company, and I kind of
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: blew him up to the to the gear scene and
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: everybody started ordering. So now he sends me all of
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: his new products. I didn't realize that I did that,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: but I'm glad I did. Um. So I used the
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: fuzz pedals and I have like a like a Univibe
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: style pedal, so you can get that Robin Trauer kind
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: of Hendrix. Just I like space and I like fuzz um,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: but not much beyond that. Really, I like the amplifier
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: to really do the talking. And how did you end
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: up with your own gibbs in e yes? So that
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: was kind of a journey. Um Jim Lillard and Mike
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Volts at the Gibson Memphis factory when it was still
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: up and running and they had all the big green
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: machines from back in the day in Michigan. Kalamazoo Um.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: They took me on a tour there, and that's those
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: are the first guys that gave me a guitar to
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: use on the road because the way I was traveling,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: I had my grandfather's guitar with me. The three I
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: remember being on the subway with that massive road case,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: and you know, being in New York City with that guitar.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: And this was my first time up there, so I
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: didn't have much confidence in in the and in human kinds,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: especially with that guitar. So I take that guitar into
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: these little bathrooms with me, and you know, I just
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: never left my side. So that was the first thing
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: I asked Gipson about, was something I attack on the
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: road that didn't have the sentimental value. And then after
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: a couple of years, Uh Jim Lillard uh took my
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: original sixty two that belonged to my grandpa and he
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: just completely went through every nook and cranny on that guitar.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm convinced that he slept next to it now
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: because he presented to me the first prototype and it's
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: not very often that you're like, he did it in
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: one shot, that's it, you know, And there were some
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: little changes that had to be made, But the first
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: prototype he gave me is the one I play every night.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: You know, so Big Red lives again. And what about
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: you know you're oftentimes scene with less Paul. I like
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: heavy guitars. I guess I'm just really I want to
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: have bad problems when I get older, because that's what's
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: gonna happen. I like, I like to fill a chunk
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: of wood man like a tree limb as well. I
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: had to carry around on on stage because gifts and
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: has been on this pilgrimage for for years to make
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: a light less Paul. And I'm like, why would you
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: do such a foolish thing. I want to feel the guitar,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: you know. It's like, uh, it's like when you're trying
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: to replicate the sound of a Leslie right, it's physically
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: moving air. You're not gonna be able to replicate that
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: because it's moving air around the move around the room phial.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: So how many guitars do you have? Too many? As
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: my wife to be says, But that's in the neighborhood
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: of about forty or fifty and what how many less
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: palls do you have? And do you have any good ones?
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: Really old fifty nine or whatever. Man, I don't have
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: a fifty nine. I'll tell you a funny story though. Um,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: I've got a sixty nine, which is the same wood
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: and the same pickups. Basically, when they did all those
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: Black Beauties in the late sixties, it was kind of
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: leftover parts from all those uh bursts that are so
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: sought after. Uh kind of a trick of the trade there.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: And I love that guitar. His name, her name is Gizmo.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: So I was gonna buy nineteen fifty nine Gibson Last
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: Paul um from Carter because they had what is actually
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty reasonable deal for that guitar um And I
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: was thinking about it, thinking about it, and then I
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: get a message on my phone from one Dawn our back.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: It's just a photo of the guitar, and I was like, no, please, no.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: And then the next photo he was in his car,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: and then the next photo it was on the couch
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: in his studio. So I was like, all right, I
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: guess I'm gonna buy my first house instead. And who's
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: the best rock guitarist according to you, Oh, best rock
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: guitarist according to me, Man I go Clapton. I think
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty pretty Clapton all the way. Just he created
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: a sound, you know. But but then again, oh, that
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: comes from the amount of influence that they had on
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: all the players after them. You know. Jimi Hendrix is
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: gonna be one that everyone looked too because he changed
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: the whole game. But Clapton was kind of doing the
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: same thing as far as changing the game. I mean,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: between those two guys, you'll find everything you need the
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: rock guitar, that's for sure. And you said you were
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: like your mother, you were a reader. What do you read? So?
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: I like to listen to books when I'm out here
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: on the road. Right now, I'm reading this book called Chaos.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: It's about um, It's about the Manson murders and m
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: k Ultra and how it's all kind of tied together.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: Really interesting read to get up on my conspiracy theories.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: I'm a novice. I mean, you know, I'm not you know,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not on Info Wars every day or anything like that.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: I look at it kind of like Greek mythology. It's
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: interesting to me. So, uh, I read that, and I'll
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: read like, you know, the secrets of you know, uh wow,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: like relationship values. You know, I listen to relationship podcasts
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: or sometimes just something funny, something you know, lighthearted. Okay,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: you're from the South. You know, the South is, as
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: we say, politically read. So where do you fit in
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: on the political spectrum and what do you think about
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: the future of our country? Man? I love this country
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: so much. It's so beautiful. I just spent a couple
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: of weeks in Italy and on the Tuscan countryside and
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: it's so gorgeous. But then I came back home and
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: I went fishing with a good buddy of mine on
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: a lake by my house and the sun was setting
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: and you know, that's the view that's five minutes down
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: the road from my house. And just the views that
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, the Roaring Waters in Montana, you
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: know the Redwoods in California. I mean, it's all just
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: so overwhelming and astounding to me. And you know, whichever
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: way you lean, just take care of this beautiful country,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: because it really is beautiful and I would take it
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: over any other view in a heartbeat, you know, But
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: politically I ain't worried about all that mess. Man. I
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: just I just like to play music for anybody that
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: will listen. And if you if you love your fellow
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: man and you think peace is school and you can
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: come behind the show. We just don't like violence. Okay,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: we were talking earlier, like when you're remember you're bend
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: went back to school, putting your head down because you
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: knew we were gonna make it. Needless to say, you've
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: made headway. What's the dream now? Man? You know I
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: came from a broken family, So my dream is I
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: just want to have a great, big family, and I
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: just I'm really excited to be a husband and a
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: dad and have some kids running around. But comfortability is
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: really the primary goal for me, because you know, I've
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: been working and working to get to two buses so
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: we're not all crammed into one. And before that, we
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: were working and working to get onto a bus and
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: out of a van. So now the next step is
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: to have a bus just for me and my I'm like,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: and you know, in a plane or whatever. We just
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I don't want all this glitz and glamour or whatever.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: I just want comfortability to be able to do what
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: I love and do it well without having to overthink logistics,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and being able to have
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: the best crew because we have the money to pay
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: for the best crew, and having the best security because
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: we have the finances to be able to do it.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: So it's not about making a lot of money, but
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: you need money to have the quality that you you know, deserve.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: And if I'm gonna have my family out here, I'm
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: gonna have the best crew. So right now I do
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: have really good crew, but I just want to expand
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: on them. Okay, So what do you think of the
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: musical landscape today? You said earlier you said, well, you know,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna get on the radio, and you know,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: if you look at Spotify, it's mainly hip hop, some pop.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: There is the gym being in world, which is not
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: based on recordings. What do you think is going on
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: in the recording world and where you are in it?
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I think, uh, I think there's some really
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: great stuff, you know, and it's really Broadley that puts
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: me on newer music a lot of the times, because um,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: I forced myself to listen to new music. I mean, um,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: because I find a lot of things that I really
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: love and that I get inspiration from. I've been really
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: into Phoebe Bridgers recently and for me, like you listen
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: to Phoebe bridgers first record, Stranger in the Alps. There's
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: a lot on that record that just why is she
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: not Americana? Why is she not country? Because she says fuck?
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: Is that why? I mean, where are these lines? And
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: who creates these lines at the recording Academy or what?
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: Because I'm like, Phoebe Bridgers is uh like pop folk.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: But you know there's tunes on that record that also
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: sound you know, just the country as a man of
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: Shires and a man of Shires is in you know,
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: the Americana category with me and Phoebe Bridges on the
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: pop charts. So these just these lines are so fine. Uh.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: It's just you just gotta make your own sound and
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: let people call you whatever the hell you want they
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: want to call you as long as you're being you.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: But I've got a lot of hope for music because
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: there's new voices that come out all the time, and
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: you know, people like Megan the Stallion and Doja Cat.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: It was a really unique voices in hip hop and
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: really uh really big champions for you know, women's empowerment.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: So we've got a lot of hope for the music industry.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: I'm glad to be a part of it now. You
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: talked about growing up on your dad's records. When you
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: have kids. What are the two albums you're gonna give them?
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: Is it influence? Man? That's a great should. Uh let's
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: see uh Robin Trower's Bridgish Size. Wow. Yeah, that was
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: my first record I bought with my own money when
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: I was eleven, So it's the first one I put
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: on my turntable and I bought at the flea market
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: because I like the cover. It looks cool. I didn't
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: know Robin Trout was really because you know, I was
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: big fan of twice Removed from Yesterday. When Procol Harum
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: you know, went in his direction with Home and the
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: album after that Broken Barricade, I was into those much
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: more than the earlier sound. And you know then I
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: went into it, you know, even he went in seventies
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: six almost kind of uh disco in City Dreams. But
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: that's a great record, Yeah, that that one. And I'm
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: gonna have to throw pet sounds their way really just
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: so I can grow on them. Yeah, man, I mean,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: that is the musical mind of Brian Wilson at work.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: It's just so overwhelming. I mean, every time you listen
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: to it, ors something new that pops out at you,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, there's the hits on it wouldn't
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: it be nice? But I think God only knows. It's
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: probably just about as perfect as a song could be.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: Or I mean, hell, I could go on for hours
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: about that record. Its just any emotion I'm feeling, it
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: can amplify that emotion to where I needed to be.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: If I'm feeling sad, cheer me up or vice versa.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's damn near perfect album. And
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: why the cowboy hatted every gig? So when I was
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: a kid, I said, people might not remember me, but
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: they will remember these pneumatic devices that I'm putting out there.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: I used to wear red shoes, a big cowboy hat,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: I played big red guitar, and you know, to the
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: two of those still remain, the big hat and the
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: big red guitar, and people can take those things home
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: with him up here. Okay, Marcus, I've loved talking to you.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: You're very intelligent, very insightful, probably too smart for the game,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: which is leading to whatever psychological issues you might have
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: wrestled with. But I want to thank you for taking
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: the time to talk to me. Hey man, thank you
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: so much. It's been a real tree. Until next time.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex six