Latest / The Chris and Mike Show / #170 - Mark Winters - Musician

Transcript

#170 - Mark Winters - Musician · The Chris and Mike Show

0:06
I'm going to let you young. Welcome you to the Twitchers.
0:23
Hey, guys. I got no picture.
0:30
I think he's coming on. Yeah, well, Mark's here, kind of
0:41
sort of. We can't see him.
0:42
I heard Mark but I can't see him.
0:44
Right. So this is Chris.
0:45
I'm actually I'm Chris. He's my that's Mark.
0:47
Oh, oh, in a car, in a car in a car might might not work.
0:52
Mark, you got to be on a dedicated you got to be on a
0:55
dedicated Wi-Fi type thing. We've we've are.
0:59
You headed home. I'm in Alaska and so my wife and
1:04
I out here visiting and I thought for sure Alaska's
1:07
theater time was one hour behind you guys, but apparently it's
1:13
it's two hours. It's really bizarre.
1:16
OK, well, it's. 2:00 here, yeah. It's 4:00 here.
1:20
Yeah, it's 4:00 here. Yeah, yeah.
1:22
So I thought it would be 3:00 Alaska time because it that's
1:25
what anyway, yeah, it's all good.
1:28
I'll be home in about I'll be I'll be there at the hotel in
1:31
like 5 minutes so. Actually, he's good.
1:36
He's good right now. He's at 93%, Chris.
1:38
OK, it's up to you. I just don't want to, you know,
1:42
if you want to wait till he get we can talk until he gets to the
1:44
hotel, then he's not. We're not going to watch him
1:46
leave the car and go to the hotel room.
1:47
OK, that's fine. Yeah, just walk back on when you
1:49
get there, Mark. Yeah, yeah.
1:51
Just do that. That'll.
1:52
Work. Yeah, that work.
1:53
Alright, we'll see you then. Brother, we'll see.
1:55
We'll see. Drive safe.
1:58
OK. All right.
1:59
I'll be, I'll see you guys shortly.
2:00
Thanks guys all. Right.
2:02
No problem. Thank you.
2:03
Bye. Bye.
2:07
So that's fun anyway. So what were you talking about
2:12
before Mark joined in football? Football.
2:16
Specifically, John Harbaugh. John Harbaugh John Harbaugh was
2:19
introduced to New York Giants today.
2:20
I saw a little spiel on the Instagram that a lot of players
2:24
showed up. Congratulations by the way, I
2:26
think that's a great hire. My personal opinion?
2:28
I, I, I would now the more that I read about him and the more
2:31
that I read about about. It's a dynasty family.
2:34
Yeah, football. It's like the Mannings man.
2:36
The hard balls, they eat, breathe, sleep.
2:38
Football. I just could there have been
2:42
maybe a a better choice if we really sat down and, you know,
2:46
thought about it maybe, but. Yeah.
2:49
But if you look at the ones that if you look like sell this
2:53
Robert Sella. Yeah.
2:54
So Robert Shelly got hired for Tennessee, which is interesting.
2:57
I did not know, I didn't see that.
2:59
Yeah, that's that was dropping last night and then today, OK,
3:03
Sean McDermott, I knew he was going to get fired and I
3:05
actually posted something. I kind of knew he was, but I
3:08
still find that surprising dude. I mean, I know he couldn't get
3:12
over the hump, but. The hump is everything though.
3:15
You got to get over the hump. It is I.
3:17
Don't care if you get if you get to the first round.
3:19
Playoffs every year, 10 straight years, but you don't get past
3:22
the first round. There's there's a glitch in the
3:24
matrix. Look at look at remember Jon
3:26
Gruden and and Tony Dungy, right, Dungy left the the the
3:29
Buccaneers because he couldn't get him over that hump goes
3:32
Indianapolis wins the Super Bowl.
3:34
Gruden gets that close to the Raiders can't get over the hump,
3:37
He goes to Tampa Bay, wins the Super Bowl.
3:39
Some people just need to go somewhere else and get over the
3:42
hump. Now granted, right, Gruden made
3:46
won a Super Bowl with Dungy's team and I don't know who, I
3:51
don't know who was coaching the Colts before Dungy, but he won,
3:55
he won the Super Bowl with that previous coaches team, right?
4:00
So. Who knows?
4:02
I'm listening to you. I'm going to look up those
4:04
contracts. Oh, I know you.
4:05
I figured you're, I figured you're looking up research and
4:07
doing some research. So, yeah.
4:10
So the more I the more I've read about Powerball from people that
4:14
are like, I have a really good friend, Steve Binger.
4:16
What's up Steve, who lives in New York and he has his he has a
4:20
giants page that that's How I Met him.
4:22
Really good guy. Love smoking cigars every time
4:25
the giants when he smokes a cigar.
4:27
I've tried to get him on the show, but such a weird dynamic
4:29
of time difference and and and and he works and stuff.
4:34
But so I asked him flat out like, is this a good thing for
4:37
New York? I'm like, what's, you know,
4:38
you're there and you hear all the speculation and rumors and
4:42
stuff about the deal going South, that kind of jazz.
4:44
And he's like, no, dude, this straight up the whole the whole
4:46
hang up was the fact that Harbaugh Harbaugh's Harbaugh's
4:55
deal was was he wanted to control, he wanted to be the GM.
4:58
Well, obviously the Giants weren't going to give him the GM
5:00
position because they like Joel shown for God knows why.
5:03
I can't imagine why. I don't I, I, I, I me either,
5:07
man he's. I mean, talk about a failure.
5:09
Well, and then his kids told him who the draft and he didn't
5:12
draft, and those people that his kids told the draft went on to
5:14
do. That's your point a second ago.
5:16
And I agree with you. You know, sometimes I have a
5:18
little too much heart. Yeah.
5:20
It all starts at the top. So yeah, what have the Giants
5:23
done for you as a fan lately? Nothing.
5:26
Nothing since Coughlin was fired, which he shouldn't have
5:30
been fired. I mean, you know, it's you went
5:34
to Super Bowls with the team and you get fired.
5:35
That was, that was an unclassy move from an organization that
5:38
has a storage franchise. They should have dealt with that
5:41
a little bit more graciously. You know, they should have just
5:45
had him. I don't know.
5:47
I didn't like Kaufman though when he first started either.
5:49
But with that being said, I'm not a huge football historian,
5:53
as we've all established, but can you think of a person who's
5:58
been a coach in the GM at the same time who's been super
6:01
successful? No, no one.
6:03
So I'm not sure. I think that's a lot to bite
6:07
off, man. I agree that's too.
6:09
That's too many hats. And I think if I were him when
6:13
they said no, I would have just said what he wants anyway.
6:16
Then can can I be involved in the draft procedure?
6:19
That's what he wants, right? He wants to be involved in who
6:21
are we going to put on the team that I'm going to coach?
6:25
Well, and what it is is Harbaugh doesn't have to answer to shown
6:29
he answers to the meritus. That was how they got around
6:32
that. OK, which which you OK, good,
6:36
because I wouldn't want to answer Joel Schoen either
6:38
because I mean, it's on record. It's on film.
6:41
The the the stuff the people he didn't pick and his kids are
6:44
telling him in behind in the NFL Hard Knocks.
6:48
You should draft these guys, just guys, these guys.
6:50
And he doesn't draft any of those.
6:51
And his drafts are a bust. And he's on record saying that
6:54
Saquon Barkley's done. He will not rush for 2000 yards.
6:57
He'll never be the MVP. And what did Saquon Barkley do
6:59
the year after he left the Giants?
7:01
Both. Those things.
7:02
Both those things. Now what did Saquon do this?
7:05
Year, both of them, right? And what did he do this year?
7:07
Nothing. He went back to his giant style
7:09
of playing because he clearly stated on the Saquon
7:12
documentary, I can't run like that anymore.
7:15
It's not healthy. I can't run angry.
7:18
And when you don't run angry, you don't have the success that
7:21
he had that one year in Philly. Now, you can argue with me all
7:23
you want. Look at the stats.
7:25
He cannot run out of this runner.
7:27
So no, he's not. It's like Cam Scataboo.
7:30
Cam Scataboo is not going to run like Barry Sanders.
7:32
Cam Scataboo is going to run downhill like Dead Puckus.
7:35
Those are two. Different styles of running for
7:37
sure, right? Yeah, right.
7:38
Right in your face, knock your ass over New York Giants
7:42
football. You know the first time Jeremy
7:44
Shockey got a ball, he he knocked over 3 or 4 guys on the
7:47
sideline. That's New York Giants football
7:49
smashed by the football, which is what I love.
7:52
Look. At so you.
7:53
Send me. Yeah, yeah.
7:55
Look at the two Kyle Tucker ones first because those numbers will
7:58
blow your fucking mind, man. Yeah, so, so with the luxury tax
8:03
in baseball, the Dodgers will be paying $126 million a season for
8:07
Tucker, assuming no deferrals. That's more than the 11 teams
8:11
entire payrolls. And then the other one is Kyle
8:15
Tucker will make $164,000 per day from the Dodgers on his new
8:21
contract. Think about that for a second.
8:26
Yeah, every day. Yeah, there's another almost 200
8:30
grand. Yeah.
8:31
OK, we'll round down $150,000 a day, every day.
8:35
Yeah, that's $5,000,000 per month.
8:39
That's just and you wonder why baseball tickets pricing is
8:42
absurd. What are the Rams?
8:45
When I got to pull up on my phone.
8:49
There was one that I saw. Oh OK, the tax thing, sorry.
8:55
So Matthew Stafford only makes 19,000,000, only makes $19
9:00
million after taxes despite signing a $44 million deal.
9:03
Federal takes 16.2 million jock tax.
9:06
Like the jock, he's going to wear the jock strap.
9:08
That's $220,000 a year. FICA $665,000 years.
9:14
Agency gets $1.32 million a year.
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And the California State tax is 5.85 million a year.
9:20
He's only making $19.7 million a year.
9:22
See this? Well, smallest violin.
9:25
Sorry, Matthew. So sorry, so sorry.
9:29
Crazy. I cried when I read that.
9:32
Crazy I I cried too. I'm weeping.
9:34
I explains how Odell blew through $100 million in five
9:37
years. No, it doesn't.
9:39
Live within your means, Odell. You can't build generational
9:42
wealth on that kind of money. Yeah, but you look at the
9:45
Mannings, there's your OK, you can because, you know, you can.
9:51
We talked about that a couple episodes ago.
9:53
The wealth, the wealth that's been built for the Mannings, not
9:55
from the dad. The dad didn't play football at
9:57
the time. You made bank.
9:59
No, but his. Son's dead and they are, and
10:02
then their nephew is making what we say, $6.78 million playing
10:06
college football. Yep, more than a coach by a
10:09
landslide, right? It's insane man.
10:12
And that was going to be the thing that I I saw somewhere.
10:16
And it might be Kyle Tucker now is worth more.
10:19
One of those guys on the Dodgers is worth more than the owner.
10:25
Think about that. Yeah, that's the first time
10:27
that's ever happened in sports. That's why it made the
10:29
headlines. That's because they got it.
10:31
They put they need to put a cap in baseball and.
10:34
That was the question. On top of that statistic was,
10:38
yeah, should there be a cap in baseball there?
10:39
Should be there should be a cap in all sports because nobody, I
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don't care who you are, you're not worth, you're not worth that
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kind of money. You're you're hitting a ball,
10:48
you're catching a ball and you're throwing a ball.
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That's it. Nothing else.
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Look Mark's back. Welcome back to Dudes.
10:58
Dudes. That's that, man.
10:59
Well, it's shaking. There we go.
11:01
I'm so sorry about all this, man.
11:03
It's all. Good brother, It's all good
11:05
you're. Good.
11:06
Take a breath. Relax.
11:07
It's all right. We're we're into.
11:09
It man, we're not those kind of people.
11:11
We're not. That's good.
11:12
We're relaxed. That's, that's cool.
11:15
I'm I'm appreciative. This is fun.
11:17
Man, yeah. We're just conversation, having
11:19
fun, man. That's why, that's why we that's
11:21
why we hit it off in the e-mail, because we're not assholes, man.
11:24
I'm in Illinois. Yeah, yeah, I'm in Illinois.
11:27
You're in Alaska and he's in Arizona, so we made this work.
11:31
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So.
11:34
So what are you doing in Alaska, man?
11:37
So we've been out here a few times and really love, we love
11:41
my wife and I love hiking, backpacking, camping, that kind
11:45
of thing. And we, we were out here.
11:49
I'm just making sure y'all are on Wi-Fi here.
11:52
Wi-Fi. Yeah.
11:52
OK, good. Yeah.
11:55
We, we love, we just love the culture.
11:58
It's very close to Texas in the way that the people are out
12:02
here. And I've been my wife's been
12:04
after me to buy a cabin in the mountains with for her
12:07
somewhere. I thought it was going to be in
12:09
in Colorado. That was my thought.
12:12
But then when we, when we set foot in Alaska, like after the
12:15
first night of camping out in the tent, she's like, right
12:19
here, baby, find me a spot. So we're back up here in
12:23
Fairbanks looking. We were in Anchorage a little,
12:26
you know, bit ago. Cool.
12:29
Yeah. And we wanted to come in the
12:30
dead of winter to see what it was actually like to be in the
12:34
dead of winter up here. So we're getting used to it.
12:38
It's it's pretty cool. Is is there the ability to go
12:40
house shopping in the dead of winter?
12:43
We wanted to know that and the answer is yes, yes we can.
12:47
We were out. We have this the most amazing
12:51
tour guide. She's a realtor, but she's
12:53
really a tour guide and she's been out with us driving in the
12:57
snow. She we got stranded yesterday.
12:59
She had to have one of her friends with a big 4 wheel drive
13:01
truck pull us out of the snow. And it's been, it's been an
13:05
experience. I mean, we, we went, you had to
13:08
think about this. We're on a like A5 acre parcel
13:11
and you're going to go up to the house and the house is sort of
13:14
set back halfway on the property.
13:16
And so you have a little driveway and then, you know, so
13:19
you kind of you make your way up the driveway and then from the
13:23
driveway to the house, you got to go snow surfing, dude.
13:27
You're like you're you're plowing through the snow to make
13:31
a lane for yourself to get to the door, right?
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On. So it's totally not the Texas
13:38
experience, which is where I'm originally from.
13:40
Yeah, yeah. So obviously you're going to
13:42
you're going to vacation in the warmer months as opposed to the
13:46
blizzardly winters, I would assume?
13:49
We we don't know that. We've been told by most of the
13:52
the locals that June is the time not to be here because the the
13:59
mosquitoes are insane in in June.
14:03
So come any other time besides June.
14:06
OK, we were there. We did a Norwegian cruise,
14:09
Alaskan cruise, and it was October.
14:13
So it was it was cold, but it wasn't, it wasn't.
14:16
Holy shit. Cold.
14:17
You know, it was it was bearable.
14:19
It was, Yeah. And we did the whole glacier,
14:22
all this stuff. We were Juno, Ketchikan, some
14:28
some other spot. I forget now which, but yeah, so
14:32
I don't. Not Fairbanks.
14:34
What's the other one? Anchorage.
14:35
No, not Anchorage. I don't know.
14:36
I. Think you fly, fly into
14:37
Anchorage, maybe the the cruises.
14:39
I think because we did a cruise, that's how we first got the
14:42
experience here where our cruise stopped in Seward and then you
14:46
got a chance to do a train ride up to Anchorage.
14:51
Or maybe it was vice versa. Maybe we flew into Anchorage and
14:54
took a train ride down to Seward and the then the the port of
14:57
call for the debarcation was Seward.
15:00
Yeah, we sell. That to Seattle.
15:01
We went from Seattle to Alaska, OK.
15:04
Well, that's cool, yeah. Yeah, it was fun you.
15:06
Guys stopped somewhere in Canada too if I remember we.
15:09
Did we stopped in in Victoria, Canada?
15:11
Yeah. Nice people.
15:12
Nice, yeah. Vancouver.
15:14
We stopped in Vancouver. I love Vancouver.
15:16
It's amazingly awesome. Yeah, yeah.
15:18
Nice people, nice people. So now that you're now that
15:21
you're here, you're settled, relaxed, chilled out.
15:24
Give us a little bit about you and why you wanted to come on
15:26
the Chris and Mike show so we can kind of start our
15:28
conversation with you from there.
15:30
Yeah, so I oops, I am a career pivoter.
15:39
I was, I was in aerospace engineering.
15:43
I love applied math and physics. I studied it in school.
15:49
Computational fluid dynamics. I love doing calculus and
15:53
differential equations and studying, you know, physical
15:55
phenomenon as this part of things I know.
15:57
Nothing about this is. My head is like.
16:02
But. That's.
16:02
Cool. He's the smartest one in the
16:04
room today, Mark I. Don't know anything about that,
16:07
but I would tell you that. But I, I love, you know, I love
16:16
that part of, of life. But I've also been a poet my
16:20
whole life. My grandma taught me to write
16:22
poetry when I was 5. And so I have these sort of
16:26
competing facets to my mind always sort of trying to express
16:30
themselves. Can I?
16:31
Ask you a question that you may not be able to answer.
16:34
Sure, Mike. Shoot, man.
16:36
What? Is it about math?
16:38
Like, how does your brain work like that?
16:41
I mean, what makes math so interesting?
16:44
My brother's like that, like some people's brains, just
16:47
they're geared towards that side of life and I, I just don't get
16:51
it because I'm bad at even simple math.
16:54
Yeah, I, I think personally that I have AI have a curious mind
17:01
about a lot of things, but I have a curious mind when it
17:05
comes to the intuitively the way things function.
17:10
And so like I always just sort of get like how an engine works
17:14
or how thermodynamics works across the surface or how, you
17:18
know, fluid flows around an object.
17:20
It did to me, it makes sense. And, and so I think in the
17:26
mathematics side of things other than just the, I really just
17:29
enjoy more complex things to, to sort of sort through and figure
17:34
out. It's a way for me to explain to
17:38
myself and other people why something's happening.
17:41
Why, why is the water freezing or why is the air flowing in a
17:44
certain way? So I don't know.
17:47
I say it's like a, it's like a language.
17:49
Like my brother, he is a polyglot.
17:54
What's a? What's a Poly?
17:54
What's a polyglot? He he speaks lots of languages.
17:59
Oh, right on. More.
18:00
Yeah, more than something today. That's awesome.
18:02
Yeah, more than three or four. And he speaks them forwards and
18:06
backwards. So like the word really the,
18:08
the, the the English language he taught his twin to to speak
18:12
backwards English. They call the language straw
18:15
cab, which is the word backwards backwards.
18:18
Wicked. And so Mark is crammed right and
18:22
and Chris would be shirk right. He can speak like.
18:27
Full sentences like that, like. Fluent like we're talking right
18:30
now. Wow, that's.
18:31
Amazing. Insanely, insanely.
18:36
He learns French as his second language and he taught his
18:39
friend Steven to speak backwards French that.
18:42
Is so wow right? And so he's just got this gift
18:45
for language. And so when he's, as a matter of
18:48
fact, when he's talking to you, like when he starts speaking
18:51
French, his he gets very French. He's very, very, you know,
18:56
Francophile. Yeah, exactly.
19:02
And then he. Speaks.
19:03
When he speaks German, he becomes, yeah, that's.
19:07
Amazing. Man, right.
19:09
That's amazing. He gets he gets language and I
19:13
get math and science. Life it all.
19:15
Makes sense now, right? So it's just kind of two, I
19:18
guess there's two different ways that you sort of get the world
19:21
right real quick. What did your parents do?
19:22
I was. Just going to ask him that.
19:24
Thank you. They're.
19:26
All mixed up. So my, my, my, my dad has a PhD
19:32
in pharmacology, of course, and he's also an MD and he has a
19:36
also a undergrad degree in history And so, and he's a
19:43
dyslexic of all things, really. And so he had to, it took him
19:47
like forever to learn anything. Like he reads at 110th the speed
19:51
of a normal person, right? Wow.
19:54
And my mom, it's impressive that he did.
19:56
What he did, yeah. Yeah, they met in East Texas
20:02
going to school and she. Didn't finish university and so
20:09
she's been, she's had they, they were together for 16 years and
20:14
16 years and then they divorced. And so she has had a variety of
20:20
marketing and sales type thing. So she's a very outgoing, social
20:26
butterfly style personality, very salesy.
20:30
I would say my, you know, my, my grandparents probably had more
20:34
of an influence on me because of my parents were divorced and I
20:36
spent a lot of time with my grandparents kind of, you know,
20:39
teenage years and, and after, you know, so I would say my
20:45
grandma when I, I used to stay with her in the summertime with
20:49
my, my four brothers. And she taught me the arts.
20:54
So she taught me when I was 5 to write poetry.
20:57
She taught me to paint watercolors.
20:59
My grandpa taught me to do pen and ink.
21:02
My brain is mixed up. My dad's left-handed, my mom's
21:05
right-handed, and so I paint. I paint watercolors and do
21:09
creative work in calligraphy with my left hand.
21:11
And I do. I do engineering work, math, and
21:16
pen and ink drawing with my right hand.
21:18
Wow. That's.
21:19
Amazing It's it's Chris is terrible.
21:22
It's terrible because look OK, I got OK.
21:25
You think like a normal thing, like I played, I played
21:28
football, like I played tennis going in in school.
21:31
And so, you know, my dad and I go out that or baseball, I go,
21:35
we go out to throw the baseball and it's like, what hand am I
21:39
going to throw it with? I don't know.
21:41
And so I got to go, I got to go hard with the left hand and then
21:44
with the right hand and I'm like, which one am I feeling
21:47
better? OK, I'm going to do that thing.
21:49
So every single thing like I play ping pong left-handed, I
21:54
play tennis right-handed, I play racquetball left-handed.
21:57
It's like so it it takes you twice as long to figure out
22:00
whether you like a thing or how you do the thing with your body.
22:03
So you're. Like, extremely.
22:05
What is it? Ambidextrous.
22:06
Ambidextrous. Just right down the middle.
22:09
And be confused. Yeah, I'm like, wow.
22:10
I'm like, no. So do you?
22:11
Do you have kids? I do.
22:14
I do so so. Did any of this translate into
22:17
the kids? Yes.
22:17
Unfortunately, my daughter's like, what did you do to me,
22:20
Dad? So my daughter's trying to
22:23
figure out how to write when she's go in grade school, right?
22:27
And so she's like, and I did the same thing, like right-handed,
22:30
left-handed, right-handed, left-handed.
22:31
OK. And so she is trying to and
22:34
she's like, I don't know, maybe 6 or 7 and she still hasn't
22:39
quite decided yet. And So what she ends up with is
22:43
she, she holds the pencil like a left-handed person would hold,
22:49
which is different than a right-handed grip.
22:51
OK. She uses a left-handed grip in
22:53
her right hand to write with a right-handed slant, Right.
22:58
It's like the oddest thing ever to watch her, right.
23:01
It's like, OK, Megan, that's her name is Megan.
23:03
It's like, OK, that's odd. And she's like me.
23:06
She has to figure out what she's going to do when she's picking
23:10
up a thing. So she plays racket sports with
23:13
different hands. And.
23:14
Yeah. Yeah, my grandson is
23:16
left-handed. My oldest grandson who's 6, and
23:19
everybody else is right-handed. We don't know where that came
23:21
from. And then his little brother is
23:22
right-handed and we thought he was.
23:25
So I coached him in baseball, I coached him in football.
23:27
And we were always right hand, right hand, right hand.
23:28
And then we realized one day, oh shit, he's left-handed like
23:31
that. Explained everything.
23:33
Poor. Little man, everything yeah, my,
23:35
that's, that's really cool. My yeah.
23:39
My, my dad when he grew up, he, he, so he was left-handed, but
23:47
they had no left-handed gear and so he had to play with a
23:53
right-handed MIT. He was good at baseball.
23:55
He had to play with a right-handed MIT and he would
23:58
catch the ball and then he would take MIT off, drop the ball.
24:03
I saw him throw that. There was a baseball player, I
24:07
think his name was Jim Abbott, where he didn't have a hand.
24:09
He lost his hand. He was a birth defect, so he did
24:12
that. He was a pitcher, so he would
24:15
throw the ball and as after he released the ball, he he'd have
24:18
the glove on and then when he catch something like super fast
24:22
man, he would just get rid of that glove ball.
24:25
It was crazy. So yeah, it can be, you know,
24:27
Rick Allen, 1 foot exam and you can do all kinds of shit.
24:29
You put your mind to it, right? Yeah.
24:31
Yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah.
24:34
So, OK, we we've spent 10 minutes here talking about the
24:36
ambidextrous of you. What?
24:39
What about this? Why are we really here, Mark?
24:43
Yeah, I'd say, you know, first of all, I checked out you guys
24:48
show I really enjoy, you know, your, your the vibe for your
24:52
show and you guys and your artists.
24:54
And I think so from from my point of view, you know, I have
24:58
a a music project and so I've done a career pivot.
25:01
So I went from being the the aerospace dude to doing some
25:06
life sciences for a little bit, and then I picked up a guitar to
25:10
play a song to my wife for our anniversary, right?
25:13
Handed or left-handed? See, you know I'm Chris like I'm
25:17
in the shop, right? And the shop had no left-handed
25:20
guitars. Very.
25:21
Rarely do that I. Was forced to do it with my
25:25
right hand, which is OK, but actually I'm OK with the
25:29
right-handed guitar playing. I wish I could turn my piano
25:34
inverted because I really want to play the melody with my left
25:39
hand and the rhythm or bass notes with my right hand when
25:42
I'm playing the melody. And you can transpose on a
25:45
keyboard but you can't flip it right anyway, so right-handed.
25:50
Why? Did why?
25:51
That's just just squirrel moment.
25:52
Why don't you just Jimi Hendrix that shit and turn the guitar
25:54
upside down? I I.
25:56
I, I would have, but I, it didn't register for me that that
26:01
was a thing to do because I like, I had done nothing
26:05
musical, no singing, no playing, no nothing.
26:08
And so 2011 I pick up a guitar to play a wife, my wife a song
26:11
for anniversary. And I'm like, OK.
26:14
And the guitar shop owner, I said, look, I'm going to buy
26:16
this acoustic guitar. I'll even buy like the little
26:18
bit nicer model from you, but you got to agree to teach me to
26:21
play a song and sing for my wife.
26:23
So he's like, OK, I'm in. He's like, I'm all about that
26:26
and being, you know, organic. And so, you know, that's a story
26:31
all to itself. But I'll tell you, sitting in
26:35
our favorite Italian restaurant singing a song to her was such
26:38
an emotional connection for me. I was like, Oh my God, where has
26:44
this been my whole life? Right?
26:46
It was just such a a connection. And so I've just became
26:51
obsessed. My wife would say I was obsessed
26:54
learning music. I put a little group together,
26:56
we play some cover songs, and I just wanted to play 1 gig.
27:01
And in doing that, I kept changing the lyrics to the songs
27:04
that I was singing because I didn't like the way or I just
27:07
wouldn't sing a song because I didn't like the vibe for the
27:10
song. And that kind of removes a lot
27:12
of material from your repertoire, right, that
27:16
everybody wants to hear if you're doing that.
27:18
And so I 2018, I decided, OK, I'm going to write my own stuff.
27:24
And I taught myself and, you know, bought a few courses
27:28
online to sort of self study. And so here I am, you know, my
27:34
first album went out in 2018 in May, unfortunately, because
27:39
COVID had a tour set up behind that and COVID sort of shut down
27:44
all of our tour dates. And then I sort of roll through
27:49
COVID. Well, the, the first month I was
27:53
sad because I put so much energy and so much of me into writing
27:56
the album, putting the band and the group together.
27:59
And then I ended up after three or four weeks of being sad, I, I
28:04
pivoted online and became singer-songwriter guy online as
28:07
opposed to a four piece, you know, soft rock band rewrote my
28:10
material, did a bunch of Zoom ticketed shows and raised money
28:15
for charities and went through, you know, the, the process of
28:22
teaching myself to be a solo performer And coming out of, of,
28:25
of COVID, I wrote more material and finally got some traction a
28:31
couple years ago. I, I, I was in a showcase at
28:34
South By and a Tour Company picked me up and had a, my first
28:39
big tour last year and then so spring and a fall tour last
28:44
year. And I'm doing the same thing
28:45
this year, putting new music out and sharing my rock with a
28:48
positive eye with a little nerdy twist in there.
28:51
That's my. That's my nothing.
28:53
Wrong with that. Weezer is one of my favorite
28:54
bands man. OK, yeah, they're they're and
28:57
that's what. They were, but, you know, back
28:59
in the 90s, they were the one of the first nerd rock bands,
29:02
right? But they were cool, you know?
29:04
Yeah. Yeah, so if you heard their
29:06
music. You would have never known it,
29:08
Yeah. For me, I play, you know, I, I
29:12
see the world with, you know, my own little rose colored colored
29:15
glasses. So I, I see lots of the
29:18
positives in the world. And so my music is typically
29:21
inspirational, has a positive element to it.
29:25
And you know, I've got my, my songwriting influences who sort
29:29
of shape the way I craft a song and I'm out, you know, talking
29:35
about usually like the juxtaposition of science and
29:38
philosophy. You have a song called Boundary
29:42
layer. It's about breaking through
29:43
boundaries in your life philosophically.
29:45
And it's also about computational fluid dynamics
29:48
theory and boundary layers of particles entering the
29:52
slipstream of another particle and approaching the boundary
29:55
layer there and slowing down and getting some new energy and
30:00
going in a new direction. So the physics and the
30:03
philosophy kind of overlap in in a thought.
30:07
That's really cool, man. That was really.
30:09
Graham rambling. Sorry, Chris, I didn't, no.
30:10
You're not rambling. Be long.
30:11
Winded there that that's what we.
30:13
Appreciation man. One of the things that I find
30:15
fascinating, Mark, is most people.
30:18
That's why I asked about your background, because it's super
30:20
important if people aren't good at putting two and two together.
30:24
Most mathematicians are not artistic, right?
30:28
So when Chris said you were coming on here as a musician, I
30:31
find that fascinating when all of a sudden you're like, yeah,
30:34
I'm into physics and aerospace and I really like doing calculus
30:39
for fun and all of a sudden you don't hear in the next breath
30:43
most of the time. Oh, and I love to play guitar.
30:46
Right, Right. So who were your influences as a
30:50
musician, being a new musician? What led you to, you know, you
30:55
said I write music as my influences were.
30:59
Who were they? I'm curious.
31:01
Yeah, so I learned to play the guitar playing John Mayer songs.
31:07
So I love John Mayer. I love his bluesy influences.
31:10
You know, he's obviously has a lot of influences himself from a
31:13
lot of the the Blues greats. And so I I also love the the
31:21
quirky positive energy and just the groove of Jason Mraz.
31:27
So a lot of songs. Yeah, I love some of that.
31:31
You know, dance joy. You know, dance joy is another
31:33
influence of mine, Ed Sheeran. And so, you know, as I'm
31:38
crafting a song, you know, I'm influenced by the the way in
31:45
which those writers, you know, might structure a song.
31:50
And then, yeah, I've always been moved by really powerful
31:55
vocalist. So Pavarotti, I like, I always
31:59
like listening to his music or, you know, some of the more, you
32:03
know, pop oriented vocalist like Adele, I like the way she
32:08
approaches some of her lines. So, you know, for me, I, I think
32:13
I've got an eclectic, you know, influence.
32:18
And so I think as you, as I'm, as I'm through thinking through
32:23
a piece and maybe as early as I'm writing, you know, my, my
32:29
music was probably lyric driven. And I would sort of wrap in, you
32:35
know, the instrumentation around the lyric and try to, you know,
32:37
push my melody around with my chords.
32:40
Because vocal, you know, I, I was, I wasn't trained as a
32:44
vocalist to start with. And so melody would come last.
32:48
And as as I've written more, Co written more and trained myself
32:52
more, now the vocal elements are more intuitive.
32:55
And so now I can sit down with my guitar or a piano and, and
33:00
sing a melody and, and sort of find the vibe of the lyric and,
33:05
and you know, sort of put it all together.
33:08
In my opinion, that makes a better vocalist when you start
33:11
out that way where, yeah, you're in the driver's seat, right, and
33:16
you're not real sure what to do yet.
33:18
That's where you develop you, right?
33:20
You can always learn how to hit that note.
33:22
You can't teach somebody attitude right?
33:26
Yeah, I think you're I'm 100% with you.
33:28
I think the just having, having the mastery or mastery enough of
33:35
your instrument, whether it's your voice or you're, you know,
33:38
the, you know, a piano or a guitar or whatever instrument
33:41
you're playing, having it so that it's natural for you to
33:47
express yourself. You know, I'm I can, I can write
33:50
lyrics all day, but taking a lyric and making something
33:54
powerful and moving and and emotionally connection
33:57
connecting with that, that's that requires such intuition,
34:01
you know, from all the elements of your musicality, right Well.
34:04
Here's a good example. I can teach somebody to become a
34:08
good beginner to intermediate guitarist, but past that, you're
34:12
on your own, right? Because I can do things on my
34:16
instrument that I can't explain to you.
34:18
I can't tell you the theory behind why it happened.
34:20
I can only let you hear it and say, you know, it either sounds
34:24
good or it doesn't. So if you say something sounds
34:27
amazing, I can't just talk you through how I just did that.
34:30
I just did it right. It came through the universe to
34:34
me, back to the universe. That I feel you exactly.
34:38
It's like one man's it's like, OK, so I'm like like I'll write
34:42
a I'll write a lick on my guitar and then like let's say I'm
34:47
cutting a track and my producer is is doing some of the guitar
34:53
parts and he cuts the lick that I created right, as opposed to
34:57
asking me to cut it for whatever reason, right.
34:59
And I'm listening to him like, that's not my lick.
35:05
It's it's his interpretation of my lick, right?
35:08
Which is like, OK, so two guys sort of fitting in the pocket of
35:13
the music in a different way, right?
35:16
Which is totally interesting to me because I was thinking like,
35:20
you know, if I sent my lick to Mike, Mike would play the same
35:23
way I would. And he wouldn't.
35:24
He would play it his way. Absolutely.
35:26
It's like, OK, that's really cool.
35:28
Here's. Another thing that'll make
35:29
people's heads turn is when you tell them that you had to go
35:32
back and learn something that you recorded right.
35:34
I'm like, I'm not sure I could play it quite that way again.
35:37
And they're like, didn't you write it?
35:38
Yeah. But you don't quite understand,
35:40
right? That was a moment in time that
35:42
happened that might never happen again.
35:45
That that yeah, like you have right now you have my song up.
35:48
What does it mean to be human? The cover of it right.
35:50
And I've got this really cool, you know, sort of Latin ish boss
35:54
ish beat that's cooking in the background and it's got these
35:57
licks. You know, even like when I go to
35:59
when, when I make the arrangement for that song where
36:02
it's just me playing, it's just solo me playing.
36:06
So I get only one guitar. And you have to carry the whole
36:08
song on it. Then you have to rearrange the
36:10
whole song anyway because how much of it is percussion
36:13
important? How much of it is the melody,
36:15
the back melody or the counter melody, right?
36:18
How are you doing all the pieces all at once on one instrument I.
36:24
I just have to interject too. Do you look like somebody that
36:26
would be fun just to freaking hang out with for a few months?
36:33
You know, it's just, I mean, it's just everything that I see
36:36
on your and this is I like doing this when we're talking to
36:38
somebody, you know, Mike loves talking more music and the
36:42
dynamics of music and like you guys are having.
36:44
So that gives me the, the kind of freedom just to kind of go
36:46
down journeys of the people we're talking to.
36:48
And I, I, there's not a single picture that I'm like, oh, that
36:52
looks like it was fun. I think it's the same thing in
36:55
my head as you've been scrolling through here.
36:57
It's like, yeah. It's a blast.
36:58
Man, yeah. I'm having so much fun.
37:01
It should be illegal. That's supposed to be life, man.
37:05
Yeah. Yeah, and my wife is so amazing.
37:08
She's like, she's watched me reinvent myself right over.
37:12
And over again. Yeah, and she's like, hello, I
37:15
did not marry a musician, you know, but she's been super
37:20
amazing and super supportive. And I can't be more thankful
37:23
for, you know, for her being wives.
37:26
Wives don't like musicians, man, Even though you tell them on the
37:29
very first date, this is what I'm going to do with the rest of
37:31
my life. They just, they don't, they
37:32
don't hear it. She.
37:33
Didn't have that one luxury though, because she was like,
37:35
see, but Mike? Is a bait.
37:38
It was a bait and switch. But.
37:40
You did the right thing, Mark. You wrote the first song ever
37:44
for her, yes. Bingo.
37:47
Yeah, genius. Yeah.
37:51
That's amazing. So you are Aeros aerospace
37:53
engineer. Obviously you fly planes because
37:55
I see your plane. Yeah, right.
37:58
Oh, I. Missed that part, no?
37:59
Yeah, Yeah. So it's because, of course, as a
38:01
pilot too. Yeah, he's a pilot.
38:03
He has because he was in the plane.
38:04
He was in the plane. And so it looks harder than it
38:06
looks. So being an aerospace engineer,
38:08
and this is totally off topic, but what do you think about
38:10
Artemis 2? Oh, you know, so Chris aerospace
38:19
has two segments to it. So there is the orbital
38:25
mechanics crowd and then there is the compressible fluids or
38:29
the atmospheric flight people, right.
38:32
And so So which one are? You I'm.
38:35
The atmospheric flight guy because I like, I like my hair
38:39
to be on fire. I used to race motorcycles.
38:42
I like that's not. Surprising.
38:44
Fast, right? Surprise.
38:46
You know, I'm like, OK, so and I like to feel those G's when I'm
38:50
when I'm flying or whatever can. You just give us a list of
38:53
things that you haven't done in your life.
38:55
Life resume times like like like you, you so far are beating
38:59
everybody that we've ever talked to as far as life resume is
39:01
concerned just in this fur volume. 35 minutes of
39:05
conversation it's it's oh, check that, oh, check that oh, I can
39:08
do that I can do that, I can do that.
39:09
I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that makes.
39:11
Me angry is he can do math at that level and he's so cool.
39:16
Right, right. It's, it's, it's like our own
39:20
version of goodwill hunting. And and there's no chalkboard
39:22
because he's already he created the chalkboard.
39:25
You're just solved. All the problems.
39:27
You know, there's, there's so much amazing gusto in life
39:33
everywhere you look. I think, I think there, you
39:36
know, you could live 1000 lifetimes and just not unlock
39:40
all the doors that are out there.
39:44
Your energy. Is infectious, man.
39:46
It is. Thank you.
39:47
I'm feeling it. You know, if you came to my
39:49
show. OK, so like I have this, this is
39:51
my signature merch. OK, It's think like a proton.
39:56
OK, I'm gonna let. That sink in OK.
39:59
It's it's, it's, it's, it's science.
40:02
OK, Proton is. Positive right proton is
40:03
positive. See, look at that, Chris.
40:05
Yes, you got it. Bingo.
40:07
Right. So there's there's there's
40:08
neutrons, which are neutral, and there's electrons and they're
40:11
negative, right. And so my job is to add a few
40:14
extra protons to your orbit. If you come to a show with me
40:18
and you leave with some of that positive infectious energy, and
40:22
I'll feel like I've done my job. And you got to have fun while
40:25
you're doing that, right? Yeah, absolutely.
40:27
We need to have what? The show's not over yet, but we
40:29
need to have you back on a Friday because Fridays we can
40:32
talk as long as we want because there's no time stamp, there's
40:35
no time gap limit. OK, so in February, we're
40:39
booking Fridays, 10:30 AM Pacific Standard Time.
40:42
So let's let's. Figure that out.
40:45
Let's figure. That out because I I because
40:47
really, an hour's not enough for you.
40:49
Put it in my sundial so I get it right this next time, right?
40:53
Well. No, it's all good man.
40:54
My. Ass with angle was off by 1°.
40:56
It's all. Good.
40:57
But really, an hour's not enough.
40:58
I mean, Michael agreed to that, but it's, it's, let me, let me
41:01
tell. You how much of A blessing that
41:03
is? Yeah, sometimes Chris will
41:07
decide that, you know, we've covered what we needed to cover.
41:10
I'm trying to say this nicely. And yes, we're moving on, right?
41:15
This might be the first time other than people that we know
41:17
together personally, where I've heard him go, we're running out
41:21
of time. And I got a million questions
41:23
and I do too. So your energy, dude is so
41:27
infectious. And the amount of things that
41:30
you've done, I would like to unbox them.
41:33
More one by one, yes. Like maybe a month of Fridays.
41:37
I'm so down but you guys are cool to hang out with and talk
41:40
with. So show me what's what's the
41:42
story between y'all two? You you.
41:43
Can tell the story Mike you tell.
41:45
Them I do. When I was 19 years old, for
41:48
whatever reason, I had fulfilled my obligation with my parents.
41:52
I wanted to be a professional musician.
41:53
I knew what I wanted to do from the get go, right?
41:56
I didn't decide later, so I went and got a degree in graphic arts
41:59
to appease my mother, and I moved to Arizona in 1993 with a
42:04
mission to start a band, to see the world, to get paid to do it.
42:08
You know, that's what I wanted to do for a job, so I did.
42:12
The first incarnation didn't work out.
42:14
So Fast forward to Chris. I'm at a Candlebox show in
42:18
Tempe, AZ at the Electric Ballroom.
42:21
About 2000 people. It held on the big side and
42:25
there's this dude singing behind me the whole show and
42:29
unbeknownst to him, he thought I was, you know, pissed off or
42:33
whatever. Long story short, the power goes
42:36
out and he's still belting out the rest of the measure.
42:40
After Kevin Martin had stopped saying, and I didn't remember
42:44
this part, but apparently I turned around, did a 180 and was
42:47
like a, are you a singer? I play in a band.
42:49
And I handed him a business card.
42:51
I'm like, we need a singer like stat.
42:53
We got gigs booked or whatever. So we met him at a bar and had a
42:57
couple drinks, went to the practice space and, you know,
42:59
Chris showed up with like a suitcase of lyrics, I like to
43:02
call him, and APA System. So back in the 90s, if you had
43:07
APA System and you had written any amount of lyrics, you were
43:10
pretty much in the band, right? Boom.
43:13
Look at that. He's got, he's showing me.
43:14
That's sweet. And then I found last week in my
43:18
barn, I found a tote full of lyrics that were from a file
43:22
folder alphabetized. I haven't gotten in that yet,
43:25
but this was just this is just from the Nemesis days and and my
43:28
last band's days. That's not even by touching on
43:30
it so. Him and I went on to form a band
43:33
called Nemesis. We ended up with the development
43:35
deal with Metal Blade Records, played countless shows together,
43:38
opened up for everybody from the Marshall Tucker Band to Armored
43:41
St. to Sacred Right to LA Gun 7, Dust, Tony McAlpine, Enough's
43:47
enough. The list goes on.
43:48
I mean, we kind of found a pot of gold in those four guys.
43:52
It was the best, Chris describes it the best.
43:55
It was the best time of all of our lives.
43:57
And we, whether we knew it or not at the time, yeah, we
44:01
didn't. Realize it like we didn't live.
44:03
In large favorite like. Like the fact that you open up
44:06
for Marshall Tucker Band and you don't.
44:07
You don't. You're so naive that you don't
44:11
realize who the Marshall Tucker Band is yet.
44:13
Or the opportunity that were you were just afraid, right?
44:17
Like you just you just don't get it.
44:18
Then you look back up like we were written up in a magazine
44:20
that we did a cover with Mikes Guitar Hero buddy Ray Stone of
44:25
Roadhouse Blues. And I love Jim Morrison.
44:27
He's one of my gods. Morrison Morrison veteran Bono
44:29
where my 3 like vocalists the. Whole crowd while they were
44:33
playing us not to interrupt you, man, but no, you're good.
44:35
I just that he takes me back to these moments in time and I was
44:38
a spectator of this because the guitar that's sitting behind me
44:42
belonged to one of my best friends.
44:43
His name's Ray Stone. And Long story short, it ended
44:47
up going he sold it. He never knew where it ended up,
44:50
and one day he saw me with it and he's like, that's my guitar,
44:53
dude. And I was like, no, it's mine.
44:55
I just bought it, you know, it's like.
44:57
He said. You don't understand, is the
44:59
serial number, blah, blah, blah, blah.
45:01
And I said, yeah, how do you know that?
45:02
He said that's my guitar. So anyway, he wanted to come
45:07
play it. And I said, come down and jam
45:09
with us, man. I was like, all right, what are
45:11
we going to play? And I said, Chris loves
45:13
Roadhouse Blues. Everybody in that crowd, Mark,
45:17
all our jaws were hanging on the floor.
45:18
They did the best version outside the doors is what that
45:22
article said that that reporter had ever seen.
45:26
I can, I can, I can, I can channel Morrison.
45:29
At least I could, I could, I could do Morrison like like.
45:32
It was awesome. I.
45:33
Was Blues was the one of the first songs I learned so the the
45:37
group I played with. When I formed my my band,
45:41
everyone had been in music for 10 or 15 years besides me.
45:45
And so they didn't want to play anything normal.
45:48
They wanted to play some crazy B side cars songs and just like
45:54
complicated hard stuff. And Roadhouse Blues was one of
45:57
the ones that was not as complicated.
46:00
And so I actually played that one on the lead guitar.
46:01
It was my first lead guitar. The song that I ran ran the
46:05
whole the whole song with, which was really cool.
46:09
The other guy in the in the group sang as well.
46:11
And he loved Jim Morrison and he loved to sing his songs.
46:14
Yeah. Yeah, I used to.
46:16
Do almost. My dad introduced me to The
46:19
Doors when I was younger, but I didn't appreciate him until I
46:21
met Chris. Because when you meet somebody
46:23
that's so passionate about a group, then it starts to leak
46:27
into you, you know, like, I got to listen to them a little bit
46:30
more because this dude seems to really think they're all that,
46:32
you know? Yeah.
46:33
And see what, what, what, what lured me into the doors, which
46:36
you'll like this, Mark, was the poetry.
46:37
Because when I was in high school, my English teacher, one
46:40
year, we had to write a, a ballad for the, for the class.
46:44
So I wrote this ballad and I got an A and I'm like, what the
46:47
hell? And then all my friends like you
46:49
can write. I'm like, apparently.
46:50
So I started writing ballads for my classmates.
46:55
And then she convinces me to, to come to the literary magazine
46:58
called Dimensions for the high school.
47:00
And then I, I scribed a poem called Touch of Grey and it gets
47:03
published and everybody's like, all the girls like, oh, this
47:06
guy's got soul, you know. But so for me, the poetry was
47:11
cool because it opened a part of my brain I didn't know existed.
47:14
And then that throughout my life has helped me purge a lot of
47:17
darkness. But when I, when I stumbled
47:20
across the doors, it was from a poet aspect I was in, it was in
47:24
a bookstore, I think changing hand bookstore.
47:26
And I saw Jim Morrison's one of his poetry books.
47:28
And I'm like, what the hell is that?
47:29
And I bought it and I'm like, oh, the Lords and the creatures
47:32
or something. I remember now.
47:33
But that's what pulled me into the doors and that's what pulled
47:35
me into Pearl Jam. That's what pulled me into
47:37
YouTube because I'm that guy that when I would buy the
47:39
record, buy the album, buy the cassette tape, I open it up for
47:42
the lyrics. It was the lyrics that pulled me
47:45
in. So if you really I didn't give
47:46
a. Shit about lyrics to tell him,
47:48
right? Right.
47:49
Oh, he cared about what? He cared about the guitars.
47:51
He was a guitar player. But that's the dynamic.
47:53
My mother. Was Mark, this is a true story?
47:56
My mom was always worried that, you know, we went through the
47:59
Satanic panic of the 80s, right? So not that she was thinking.
48:03
And she was just like, are these bands any good or blah, blah.
48:06
I'm like, I don't even know what they're saying.
48:09
And I had, I had such an honest look on my face.
48:12
She believed me. I'm like, all I care about how
48:14
is the music? You know, I don't even, I didn't
48:16
know the lyrics to half of those songs until I met Chris and he
48:20
wrote lyrics that spoke to me. You know, like all of a sudden I
48:24
got it because I was on the inside looking out, you know,
48:28
that's. That's amazing, I find.
48:29
So I went to my first formal education as a songwriter 3
48:36
years ago in Austin. Andrea Stolpi has a.
48:41
She does a a songwriting retreat in in New York, in Nashville, in
48:46
Austin and at all LA. And she's a former, you know,
48:50
Berkeley professor and she does a lot of work with labels and
48:53
whatever. She's been a label writer.
48:55
She's got a great background and a great energy, and her retreats
48:59
are curated. So you have to submit your
49:01
portfolio to her and she curates everyone to figure out what 25
49:05
or 30 people she's going to invite to the retreat for that
49:08
that particular retreat. And so I went to my first one
49:11
not knowing what to expect. And it's 5 days and you show up
49:16
the first day, everybody sort of gets to know one another in a
49:20
round table. And everyone's very accomplished
49:22
that that I'm there with. I'm just feeling good to be
49:25
there. You know, like, all right, yeah,
49:27
I didn't get cut. Put me in coach.
49:30
And so then the next day we start.
49:32
So we do like a morning yoga, have breakfast.
49:37
Then we do a little bit of education about different, you
49:40
know, didactic aspects of, of starring writing.
49:44
And then by 3:00 she splits everyone up into three person
49:48
teams and she makes the three people write a song.
49:54
And then at 6:00, right after the late, the early dinner break
49:58
at 6:00, everybody has to perform it as a trio.
50:03
So each group, right. And so, you know, you're, you
50:07
know, eight or nine groups are, are, are doing this and you're
50:11
there with really good people. So there's a lot of pressure to
50:13
write a song, finish it and then perform it.
50:17
And I'd never done any of that before.
50:20
And so to me, like, what is, you know, as a poet, maybe I'd done
50:23
a little bit of free writing, but never to that level because
50:25
it was just sort of me, you know, learning from my grandma.
50:29
And so, you know, went through, you know, these free writing
50:32
sessions that we reduced down to, you know, lyric and made,
50:36
you know, music out of them. And each of my groups, I thought
50:40
it was, I thought I was just like, in the most amazing
50:43
moment, everybody's we wrote an amazing song.
50:46
We performed it that night. You're you swear that you've met
50:49
your new soul mates that that very day.
50:52
And then the next day she breaks you up into a different group
50:54
and makes you write with another group.
50:56
And five nights in a row you're doing that and you kind of get
50:59
the vibe. For one, she tells you, what are
51:03
you good at? So she's listening to she, she
51:07
spends time in each of the writing groups watching the
51:09
group interact. And then when you perform it,
51:13
she kind of knows who did what in the performance.
51:16
And then she gives you a breakdown after the first two
51:19
days and after the 2nd 2 days and then the last day.
51:21
So you get 3 professorial check insurance.
51:24
And she says, hey, hey, you know, Chris, you know, you've
51:27
got a great voice or Mike, you're a great guitar player,
51:29
whatever she's telling people. And so for me, she said, look,
51:32
you know, you're, you've got a, your, your superpower is
51:37
reaching into everyone and pulling the best out of them in
51:40
the group. So you you observe what
51:43
everyone's great at and you pull it out of them and make sure
51:45
that's part of the song that you're writing together.
51:48
You're great at me, she said. I'm great at lyrics, she said.
51:51
You're great at arrangement and structure and rhythm and, and
51:56
prosody and the collaboration and the harmonies.
52:00
But your melodies suck. So you need to work on your
52:05
melodies, right? And so for me, she's asked,
52:10
well, how do I fix that? Right?
52:11
I've never been to school for melody writing.
52:13
She said, hey, you need to find the very best melody writers
52:17
that you you can and Co write with them and listen to what
52:20
they do for the for 5 or 10 songs.
52:23
And then you need to do that in the next set of songs you write.
52:28
And so a a very long winning way for me to say like I, I, I Co
52:31
write with when I when I got back from my my retreat, I, I
52:35
started Co writing with everybody and I found you put me
52:39
with an intuitive vocal melodist and we can write a pretty Dang
52:47
good song in three hours and have and cut it if you.
52:52
If you give me that guy, we could write 10 songs in a day if
52:56
we were having a good day, right?
52:58
If they were just simple rock songs and we were just wanting
53:01
to bang out some tunes that we could easily write 10 songs and
53:06
two of them would be songs that we would probably play forever.
53:09
Yeah, and, and for me, that was a new, a new revelation.
53:13
And so I went through a period of writing with the very best
53:16
melody writers that I knew. And then I I flipped it and I
53:21
forced myself to be. Think about how terrifying this
53:24
will be. Mike, put your guitar down.
53:27
You can't pick it up. I've done.
53:29
It you. Can't pick it up and you're
53:31
going to just sit there and you're going to sing, right?
53:34
You're the singer in the writing group.
53:36
You're not going to do anything but sing right?
53:38
Terrifying. And to me it was great.
53:41
It was, it was like bonsai base jumping or something like, all
53:45
right, I'm there, man, I'm in. And so after you do it 5 or 10
53:49
times, you get over yourself and you know, you, you sort of
53:53
developed some, some approach to, you know, what key do you
53:56
write in or how do you sing a melody or how do you make a riff
53:58
or whatever. Well.
53:59
I'm sure even as an extrovert Chris could put himself in a
54:02
situation where he's going to be uncomfortable, right?
54:05
The guy could get in front of 60,000 people right now and sing
54:08
his ass off. I know it.
54:09
I've seen it with my own eyes. He's not afraid to go on stage,
54:12
but I'm sure he can think of a situation like you just
54:15
described for you and I. If you take my guitar away from
54:18
me, that's 60 to 80% of my voice, right?
54:22
My. Mine, mine's karaoke machines.
54:24
If you, if you want me to sing karaoke, I don't have any
54:27
confidence of karaoke because it's, it's there's nothing,
54:29
there's nothing there, right? Like I, I, I need the music, I
54:33
need the band, I need the energy.
54:34
I don't. I don't.
54:36
We weren't. A cover band either.
54:37
I mean, we played a few cover songs, but we didn't make it a
54:40
point to learn other people's music.
54:42
We were proud that we wrote our own music.
54:44
That was part of our stick, you know I.
54:46
Love that, right And. Part of the reason with karaoke
54:48
is you don't have monitors. You're not hearing.
54:51
I just, I just, I've never been a point.
54:53
I've never heard about that. But I tell you what, I one of
54:55
the things I do, Chris, one of the things I've been doing, so I
54:58
have a vocal coach and he's been teaching.
55:00
I had one. Yep, I had one.
55:01
Yep, Yep. And I had to put my 10,000 steps
55:03
in like everybody else. And so I, I spent time for a
55:06
couple years now with a great vocal coach.
55:08
And now like what you would if you were getting proper vocal
55:12
training, you would be able to start with the first note of the
55:16
song, right? And I know it.
55:17
I'm starting on the five of the song, you know, or wherever I'm
55:21
wherever I am. And then you could sing the
55:23
melody. That's where.
55:24
Drummers come in real handy, right?
55:27
And so for me, I've been training a lot to be able to
55:29
take a note and sing them, sing the full melody, acapella, sing
55:32
this dark standard banner, whatever, as a training exercise
55:35
for myself. Star single banner is a good
55:38
training song. Star single banner is a good
55:39
training song because that's 90 seconds of take you all over the
55:42
place. If you can pull that off, even
55:46
even in key the entire time, you know you can sing because that's
55:49
one of the things my vocal coach made me do.
55:51
He made me do that. It's like the first song we
55:52
learned was that and you here you go.
55:54
Because that is the most dynamic range song.
55:58
That's a standard, traditional song to sing.
56:00
If you can nail that, OK, you can.
56:02
And as a. Singer I so many singers never
56:05
concentrate on the beat, right? One thing that Chris was really
56:09
good at is understanding where that not just the one started
56:14
but where the accent of that measure started, right?
56:18
Do I, where's my power come from?
56:20
Is it got to be right on that one or can I wait just a second
56:23
and make him wait it out and then he would hold it out past
56:26
the measure, right? So now the key changes
56:30
instinctively. We didn't know what we were
56:32
doing, man, it just sounded mine was all instinct.
56:34
You. Know I had this had this tiny
56:37
because so Mike I was really that sort of drew me back into
56:40
my first studio session. So I'm recording my first album
56:43
and I really hadn't spent time playing on a click track much
56:48
Had some. And so I go in the studio and,
56:52
you know, I'm with session musicians there who are playing
56:55
the drums for me, for my track and bass and in the keyboard.
57:00
And so I'm, I'm playing, but I told my producer when I, when I
57:04
hired him, I'm playing every guitar part and I'm singing all
57:08
the lead vocals and the harmonies.
57:10
Why? Because I got to learn it,
57:12
right. And so I just got to, you know,
57:14
if I'm, if I suck, that's cool. I've got to do better so that I
57:18
don't suck. And so I'm sitting down just
57:20
doing the rhythm guitar part for my very first song, and I'm in
57:24
the studio and everything's new. The headphones are new, in the
57:29
booth is new, everything new. Everything's so new and you're
57:32
listening to the beat. And so I'm playing and it took
57:36
me 20 takes to do the rhythm part for my first song, which is
57:43
terrible. This is how long it took me.
57:46
I've heard a lot worse. And then I'm like, I finally
57:50
like on take 15, I was finally kind of getting it right.
57:52
It was sinking in, and the producers like, sit back in the
57:57
pocket a little bit, please, Mark.
57:58
And I'm like, what the heck does that mean?
58:02
He's like, wait for the. Back beat.
58:04
You're play, you're playing on the beat, right?
58:06
You need to sit back behind it. I'm like, well, my, and now my,
58:09
my science mind starts. Is that 2?
58:12
Is it 2 milliseconds? Is it 5 milliseconds?
58:15
Right. It's a feel.
58:16
Brother, it's a feel. How do I do?
58:18
I'm like, OK, finally I just turn all that off.
58:21
See I. Was going to say you got, you
58:22
can't get, you got it. You got to shut the analytics
58:24
off, man. Yeah, you got to feel it.
58:26
OK, I had the. Wave, baby, I'm on there.
58:28
I'm surfing the wave now. Here's.
58:29
A band that you probably, you didn't name them, I don't know
58:32
if you're a fan of them, but if you want a shining example of an
58:36
entire career of that, listen to ACDC.
58:39
That's their whole gig is they're always ever so slightly
58:43
behind the beat. That's what makes you want to
58:45
keep listening without you even knowing it.
58:48
Yeah, that's I, I, I've, I do enjoy some ACDC songs.
58:53
Probably my favorite male vocalist that I've learned the
58:56
most from is Chris Cornell. I don't know if you guys are
59:01
Chris Cornell. Ones best or not one of the best
59:04
vocalists. How?
59:05
Could you not be a Cornell fan dude?
59:08
It's just how he chooses to Cornell.
59:10
Everybody you know. Yeah, how he choose.
59:13
Like he does this. He does this acoustic version of
59:16
nothing compares to you. Oh, I know.
59:17
I've heard it. I've heard it.
59:18
Oh my. Goodness, yeah.
59:19
So here's. Here's a fun little story about
59:22
Cornell. When When before Seattle
59:24
exploded, you had Mother Love Bone, you had Pearl Jam without
59:28
Eddie Vedder, and you had Soundgarden.
59:31
OK, none of them were known yet. They were just local heroes,
59:34
that type of thing. Cornell and Andrew Wood, the
59:36
lead singer from Mother Love Bone, who heroin overdose, God
59:38
rest his soul socks. They were roommates, so they
59:44
would challenge each other to write songs, kind of like what
59:47
you're doing with that camp you did for five days.
59:50
So their entire lifetime as roommates where they're one
59:53
upping each other every day each other.
59:55
Yeah. They each had their own little 4
59:57
track recording things in their rooms.
59:58
They were jealous. Oh dude, Can you imagine being a
1:00:02
family on the wall? So I mean, just the growth that
1:00:06
they both just challenging each other every single day.
1:00:09
And again, nobody's just just garage band guys, but they were
1:00:12
roommates. They both had their own
1:00:14
trajectory. They're going down.
1:00:16
And they were just daily, just different songs, so real.
1:00:20
Quick, if you're a Chris Cornell fan, go listen to that Mother
1:00:23
love bone mother. Love bone or or the OR the OR
1:00:27
the. Nothing compares to you from
1:00:28
Cornell. Yeah, but mother love bone to
1:00:30
me. You'll give more ideas of where
1:00:34
that started because Andrew Wood did exactly what Cornell did in
1:00:39
the beginning. He took notes to a place where
1:00:42
you don't expect them to go, but they're just sheer beauty.
1:00:44
Beauty. Yeah.
1:00:46
And yeah, and Andrew Wood played every show like it was his last
1:00:49
show, like he and he didn't care if it was some five people or
1:00:52
5000. He treated like a arena rock
1:00:54
show. You can.
1:00:54
Feel it on the record. And that's real, yeah.
1:00:58
Come bite the apple. Come bite the apple by the
1:01:00
level. We have to wrap this up.
1:01:01
You have to come back. We're we're going to we're going
1:01:04
to get you back. I'll e-mail you and we'll we'll
1:01:06
set some dates in February and Fridays because again, Fridays
1:01:09
we can talk for as long as we want.
1:01:11
This is it's just you're amazing, man.
1:01:15
This is Mark Winters. I'm going to, I'm going to go to
1:01:16
your, I'm going to go to your share your website real quick
1:01:19
while we wrap this up. I remember boys and girls, we
1:01:22
are brought to you by Riverside FM, the only podcasting platform
1:01:25
you should be using because they're absolutely fantastic.
1:01:27
And if you're feeling sad, suicidal, depressed, well, go
1:01:31
listen to Mark Winter's music because it's upbeat and it's
1:01:33
positive and that's going to change your mindset.
1:01:35
And if it doesn't, then text 988.
1:01:38
And somebody's there to talk you off that Cliff because you are a
1:01:40
better person waking up tomorrow in our world because somebody
1:01:43
does love you and somebody will miss you.
1:01:45
Mark, thank you so much, so much.
1:01:48
I really, really. We could just do this for six
1:01:51
hours, but unfortunately can't. But definitely Fridays, we need
1:01:55
to have Fridays with you because then it's just game on.
1:01:57
We can just talk forever. Yeah.
1:01:59
Then we have time. I'm off all day and yeah.
1:02:01
That's sweet. Mike and Chris, you guys are
1:02:03
amazing. Thank you so much for you're
1:02:05
having me man. Maybe I'll.
1:02:07
See you out on tour. I'm I'm headed out on tour in
1:02:10
the spring, so maybe I'll. See you.
1:02:11
Guys out there? Yeah.
1:02:12
Don't leave yet till we when we hang out, we'll.
1:02:13
Actually talk to you before then, I promise you, yeah.
1:02:16
Yeah, So markwinters.com is where you find everything about
1:02:18
Mark Winters. He's the life resume.
1:02:20
We just barely touched on it. It's it's like this.
1:02:23
It's just we're going to have more conversation from Mark.
1:02:25
Love you guys both. It's great.
1:02:27
Great episode. I just literally stop us.
1:02:29
Mark, I'm Mike, you know, just mind boggling.
1:02:32
You're great, Mark. Thank you for for, for for
1:02:34
joining us today. We don't want to fly in this
1:02:39
door to you. Look the tablet.
1:02:42
You're insane. Feel the Jesus.
1:02:47
Focus your way all get your knees.
1:02:51
Listen to the place where you will go.
1:03:00
Feel the trail behind your eyes. Feel the Take a moment.
1:03:08
Look at you. See it?
1:03:11
Fight the battle. That's you fuck Wheel.
1:03:15
Fight the battle, but you fuck Wheel.
1:03:19
Who is this baby to your feet? Come down here we haven't found
1:04:44
solid in the sand from fighting. Wait for the dead or when it's
1:04:52
going to rob you. Hit for the wind.
1:04:54
You ain't no creature we're playing found you should you
1:05:00
quit on the almighty man. You got a dream.
1:05:06
Who in your life to keep a soul in every man?
1:05:13
Take the trail behind your eyes. Feel the soul evolution now.
1:05:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.