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Jeff Oliver -The JR The Handler Show · Tigs Bits Podcast

• 0:07
  Hey, hey, check 1-2. Welcome back, everybody, to this
• 0:12
  week's episode of the Junior the Handler Show, where we go behind
• 0:17
  the curtain and meet some of the people who make the world of
• 0:19
  country music work today I've got on a great guest.
• 0:23
  He's going to jump on the Zoom machine with us here in just a
• 0:25
  minute. I have been working with this
• 0:28
  guy hand in hand for the last 12 years.
• 0:31
  He's as knowledgeable and as efficient and is just all around
• 0:36
  badass in the world of production as you're ever going
• 0:39
  to meet. He's got one of the best ears in
• 0:40
  the business and just a a, a, a good guy, solid worker.
• 0:46
  We'll go into all that. I'm glad to call him friend and
• 0:49
  Co worker so we'll bring him on soon before then.
• 0:55
  Want to give a shout out to the shows we've done lately.
• 1:00
  Had a blast this past week up at Beacons Gift in Lafayette, NY.
• 1:06
  Great venue there. We did our normal run in Dewey
• 1:09
  Beach. Our yearly 2 night stand in
• 1:11
  Dewey Beach this past weekend as well.
• 1:15
  That was a lot of fun. Always is Good food, good
• 1:18
  weather. Had a little rain on one of the
• 1:19
  nights but not enough to shut us down.
• 1:23
  The prior week we had a great run up to Michigan.
• 1:25
  Played a private show in Ohio, Wisconsin coming up soon.
• 1:31
  We've got to go. Well, I don't know if this
• 1:33
  episode will make it out by the end, but we've got shows this
• 1:38
  weekend in Brownstown IN Tunica, Ms. and Albertville, AL Played
• 1:44
  in the Sand Mountain Amphitheater in Albertville, AL,
• 1:46
  which that I'm sure I'll have some some friends from back in
• 1:50
  the day show up to that. Look forward to seeing all of
• 1:53
  them. Then the following week we got
• 1:55
  to go up to Canada doing Boots and Hearts Festival, which Jeff
• 1:59
  and I'll actually talk about a little bit on this episode today
• 2:01
  because we've got to advance that and thought we'd do some of
• 2:04
  that while we were on the air. No, no offseason sports up in
• 2:08
  Russellton, Pennsylvania. Last time we played there was
• 2:10
  the same day when the attempted assassination on President Trump
• 2:14
  went down. Hopefully we won't have any
• 2:16
  incidents this time. And that's not far from where it
• 2:18
  all went down. Butler, PA and Russellton are
• 2:21
  not that far. It's western Pennsylvania, then
• 2:25
  Belvidere, IL, then on in the middle of August Crown Point IN
• 2:31
  Escambia, Michigan. Corcoran, MN.
• 2:34
  So y'all be sure to check justinmooremusic.com and check
• 2:39
  our tour dates. Come see us at a show soon.
• 2:41
  It's been a lot of fun out on the road this past week.
• 2:45
  The boys put together a throwback set where because we
• 2:48
  did two night standing Dewey Beach.
• 2:49
  So instead of doing our normal set where we change out a song
• 2:52
  or two here and there, they mixed it up.
• 2:54
  Did a whole new set of a bunch of older songs that we don't
• 2:57
  play much anymore. Thought that was very cool.
• 2:59
  Sure the fans enjoyed that. As far as the podcast goes, had
• 3:03
  a great time last week with my brother Justin David.
• 3:09
  Currently on the road with Rodney Atkins.
• 3:10
  I mean, what some great stories you could tell and just us
• 3:14
  conversating. He's got a bunch of stories.
• 3:16
  I mean, being on the road with Roy Clark for 16 years and all
• 3:19
  the people he met doing that. Are you kidding me?
• 3:21
  Then Colt Ford for a decade. I mean, you're bound to have
• 3:24
  some good stories there. Excuse me, but it was great
• 3:29
  catching up with Justin. I hope you guys and gals out
• 3:31
  there in podcast land enjoyed that episode, listening to that
• 3:35
  episode or watching that episode as much as I did making the
• 3:39
  episode. Everybody make sure to spread
• 3:42
  the love. If you don't mind, let your
• 3:43
  friends, family, anybody in the music world know that you think
• 3:47
  Mike would like this show. Let them know how to find it.
• 3:49
  You can subscribe, like hit the notification button.
• 3:53
  That really helps the show. It's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple
• 3:58
  Music, anywhere you can find podcast.
• 4:01
  So go check it out. Spread the love, give a comment.
• 4:04
  Don't forget about 424 Handler, the call line.
• 4:07
  You can text or call. Leave me a voicemail on there.
• 4:09
  I've got a couple of those piled up.
• 4:11
  We're going to play. I'm probably just going to do an
• 4:12
  episode one day where I just go through those and and banter on
• 4:16
  voicemails that have been left on the 424 handler line.
• 4:19
  That's been a lot of fun. Want to keep that going.
• 4:21
  So y'all make sure to hit me up on there got tomorrow.
• 4:25
  I just noticed and we're I'm going to recording this on
• 4:28
  Monday the 28th. For all transparency, tomorrow
• 4:34
  is my little nephew Aiden's birthday.
• 4:37
  He turns 6 So so excited that it's his little birthday.
• 4:44
  I hate I don't get to spend it with him.
• 4:46
  He's down in the Tampa area and I'm just not going to be able to
• 4:49
  make it down there this year. But we're going to catch up
• 4:53
  soon. We had a great time during 4th
• 4:55
  of July. He is just precious.
• 4:56
  I love him so much. Happy birthday Aiden.
• 4:59
  Also, I didn't realize sharing a birthday with my nephew Aiden's
• 5:02
  one of my other Rd. buddies who I hadn't seen in A little while.
• 5:06
  But we've texted recently as my buddy Jody, a guitar fiddle
• 5:10
  Slinger for Cody Johnson's band Kojo Fiddle Player Stage left,
• 5:16
  house right, Jody. He's had a kick ass mullet last
• 5:19
  time I saw him. I don't know if he still does,
• 5:21
  but he's a bro of the road for sure.
• 5:25
  I want to wish him a happy birthday.
• 5:26
  I think he's turning 35, which it happens.
• 5:31
  Boom, boom, boom, it happens. I met him in his 20s and now
• 5:35
  he's mid 30s. Crazy how that works.
• 5:38
  Crazy to think I started this when I was 20, that first year,
• 5:43
  first really getting in the business.
• 5:44
  A little fuzzy for me. It really is.
• 5:46
  I remember kind of think it was the end of O2 going into the
• 5:49
  beginning of O3, or it was the end of O1 going in the beginning
• 5:53
  of O2. I don't know.
• 5:56
  It's fuzzy. I, I need to go back and really
• 5:58
  trace that down. But I was 2122.
• 6:02
  I was 21 or 22 when I first met Wayne.
• 6:04
  And then literally the following week I went to Tuscaloosa to
• 6:08
  Harry's Bar and for an acoustic show, and it all began there.
• 6:11
  I didn't start out right then on the road every weekend, but it
• 6:14
  was I, I was working my schedule out and I started being and you
• 6:19
  know, I was there that one show the next weekend in Montgomery
• 6:21
  and then the next week this and then the next week I went on the
• 6:24
  full run. And then me and Wayne were in
• 6:25
  the truck coming to the floor. But I'm going to do our first
• 6:27
  shows. And it was on like a chicken
• 6:29
  bone after that, but it was somewhere around there.
• 6:31
  So early 20s now here I'm in mid 40s.
• 6:35
  Been a great ride, done all kinds of cool stuff, met all
• 6:37
  kinds of cool people, memories and just a neat experience.
• 6:44
  You know, that's why part of this is to share that experience
• 6:47
  and and clue people in on how things work and what's went down
• 6:52
  in the last 20 something years of my illustrious touring
• 6:56
  career. You know, and there's
• 6:59
  everybody's got a story. I can't wait to have more and
• 7:02
  more of tour managers and backstage people and the people
• 7:07
  who really make country music work come on the show and tell
• 7:10
  their story with us as well. I know we've had some sad news
• 7:14
  last week. They say things comes in three
• 7:17
  things come in threes. So I guess that held true last
• 7:20
  week as well with unfortunately losing Ozzy Osbourne, who icon
• 7:27
  of music, I mean Black Sabbath all the way to his solo stuff.
• 7:30
  Then I mean, basically between he and this next one created
• 7:35
  Modern Family driven reality television and went on to do all
• 7:41
  that. Then the next one was Theo,
• 7:44
  Malcolm, Jamal Warner, Theo from the Huxtables, Cosby Show.
• 7:48
  I mean, if you're a kid like me and grew up in mostly in the
• 7:51
  80s, I mean, Cosby Show was your jam.
• 7:54
  I mean, I watched it every time. It was great.
• 7:56
  Love the Cosby Show. Sad, unfortunate accident with
• 8:00
  him on vacation drowning Riptide I believe is what they said.
• 8:06
  That's just awful. Young man, 50 something years
• 8:08
  old, very sad, tragic. Love and prayers out to his
• 8:11
  family. And then the last one was the
• 8:15
  Hulkster, Hulk Hogan, Terry Bollea.
• 8:18
  I mean, Hulk Hogan, if you said Hulk Hogan, if you say Hulk
• 8:21
  Hogan, everybody knows who you're talking about.
• 8:22
  Always have. He was so big when I was growing
• 8:27
  up. It changed the game.
• 8:28
  You got to think 84 when he went on his run, his first run as the
• 8:31
  champion in WWF. I was 5.
• 8:35
  I mean, that's prime. That's right when you start
• 8:37
  picking up what you like. So my aunt was a wrestling fan.
• 8:40
  I started watching wrestling. I probably went to my first
• 8:42
  match, I think it was 86 or 87 in Jackson, Ms. My granddad took
• 8:48
  me and my cousin Scott shout out Doctor Scott Martin, Jackson,
• 8:50
  Ms. Love you, granddad. Thank you for always being there
• 8:55
  for us. But he took us down to the
• 8:58
  Coliseum and we watched WWF. Wrestling was coming through
• 9:02
  town. And I was hooked from then on.
• 9:04
  I mean, I watched they had the morning show, the cartoon,
• 9:07
  Saturday night main event. I mean, wrestling was just
• 9:10
  absolutely exploding in the 80s. And the biggest catalyst to
• 9:14
  this, no matter what anyone says, maybe outside events,
• 9:17
  obviously Vince was the mastermind, but he had to have a
• 9:18
  dance partner and that was Hulk Hogan.
• 9:20
  You know, Andre the Giant was a worldwide attraction before
• 9:23
  that. But the age of television and
• 9:25
  national exposure, the way things were transforming into
• 9:29
  the rock'n'roll rocking wrestling era, Hulk Hogan was
• 9:33
  the guy. And if it there was no one else
• 9:35
  that could carry the flag like he did.
• 9:36
  He had the look, he had the the jive.
• 9:39
  He had, you know, picked up what he picked up from his heroes
• 9:43
  when he was coming up. Like musicians do, like anybody
• 9:46
  does, you take the best parts from your influences to create
• 9:48
  your jam. You know, he got a lot of his
• 9:50
  stuff from Superstar Billy Graham and different characters
• 9:55
  like that throughout the years. You know, so did Ric Flair,
• 9:57
  Nature boy, nature boy. So nothing wrong with that at
• 10:00
  all. I have no knock for taking
• 10:02
  stuff, you know, as long as you give a little credit here and
• 10:04
  there, which I don't think he would ever had a problem doing
• 10:06
  that. But Hogan and Vince with WWE
• 10:10
  took over in the 80s and it's now where it is now that it
• 10:15
  WrestleMania is as big as the Super Bowl every year.
• 10:18
  I mean, it takes over a city for a week like the Super Bowl does
• 10:21
  and others have came and gone. Things have happened, but WWE,
• 10:26
  Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon started something there that has
• 10:28
  gone on to last way longer than anyone thought and be bigger
• 10:32
  than anyone thought, brought it to the heights like no other.
• 10:34
  Obviously it needed help from, you know, the next generation,
• 10:39
  Stone Cold, The Rock, Undertaker, Mick Foley, and then
• 10:42
  even on to today's world with the other than John Cena and
• 10:46
  then today's world with Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes and that
• 10:49
  bunch. But it all started on a major,
• 10:52
  major level where everyone, not just wrestling fans, knew who
• 10:55
  people were. It all started right there with
• 10:57
  with Hulk Hogan in the WWF, putting them on TV.
• 11:00
  It was huge. So 71 years old, way too young
• 11:03
  to lose the Hulkster. I know he was in a lot of pain.
• 11:06
  He'd had a lot of surgeries. I mean, if you saw him on
• 11:08
  anything, it was tough. But you know, I mean, you abuse
• 11:11
  your body like that, that's what happens.
• 11:13
  People say it's fake. It didn't didn't look fake to
• 11:17
  me. You know, 26 surgeries.
• 11:19
  That ain't nothing faking about that.
• 11:22
  So if you want to hear some really cool words on that, go
• 11:24
  check out my buddy Diamond Dallas page Instagram account.
• 11:27
  He's got some cool things he's put up.
• 11:29
  I'm sure you guys have seen all those.
• 11:31
  So just want to get that. Give a shout out to Hulk and
• 11:35
  Ozzy and Theo. Rough week last week for us 80s
• 11:39
  babies. Actually, I was born in the 70s,
• 11:42
  but you know, grew up in the 80s, you know what I mean?
• 11:46
  Waiting on my guest today. No big rush.
• 11:49
  I'm always late so I can't get mad if someone's late on me.
• 11:53
  And I'm not saying he's late, I just sent him the link one
• 11:56
  second before I jumped on on this day, July 28th.
• 12:02
  I love this page here. This day in Country music, July
• 12:06
  28th, 1984. With his number one hit Angel in
• 12:09
  Disguise, Earl Thomas Conley became the first artist in any
• 12:13
  genre to have 4 chart chart topping songs from the same
• 12:17
  album. The album in question is Don't
• 12:20
  Make It Easy For Me and in addition to Angel in Disguise
• 12:25
  and the title track, Conley also hit with 1983's Your Loves On
• 12:30
  the Line and Holding Her and Loving You.
• 12:33
  The feat was part of Conley's impressive 1980 Street where he
• 12:37
  enjoyed 16 number one hits through 1989, ETC.
• 12:43
  Hit maker baby. Love that.
• 12:48
  There was something else I wanted to make sure I mentioned
• 12:51
  this week before we started recording with our guest, but
• 12:54
  I'm having a tough time recalling it.
• 12:58
  Let's shout out some people I saw this past week or just some
• 13:01
  things I've noticed. Let me just go to my phone here.
• 13:03
  This might be something to do my boy.
• 13:08
  Shout out to my boy Eason, Chad Jones, Bone Jones, you'll be
• 13:11
  listening to this. How about that video Eason sent
• 13:13
  us? My, my best friend from high
• 13:14
  school sends me a video yesterday and says, hey, I'm
• 13:16
  down in Miami golfing with some friends from Nashville and watch
• 13:20
  me stroke this shot. I still got it.
• 13:22
  I may post this. I'm going to try to get to post
• 13:25
  this, hopefully insert this video here.
• 13:28
  But he sends me a video of him. He's saying he's he's, he's
• 13:30
  still got it. And I watch the video and he
• 13:32
  absolutely gets up there and it looks like 1,000,000 bucks.
• 13:34
  Beautiful day on a golf course. And he just whiffs that sucker
• 13:38
  and it didn't make no balls about just got right back up
• 13:41
  there about to address the ball again, but just gets up there
• 13:43
  and whiffs at it. Great looking stroke, you know,
• 13:46
  follow through all that. Just absolutely whiffed it.
• 13:48
  And me and my buddy Worm or excuse me, Mater and Bones
• 13:53
  Jones, we laughed at that yesterday on that text.
• 13:56
  So I'm going to try to insert that.
• 13:57
  Tell me if any of y'all ever pulled this move.
• 14:02
  Also want to give a shout out to my buddy Don Grisham.
• 14:04
  Saw him this past week in Dewey Beach.
• 14:06
  Love big Don, good to see he's doing well.
• 14:09
  We talked a little health and Wellness, you know, just part of
• 14:12
  it. You got to keep yourself up, you
• 14:13
  want to keep going. So we were talking about that.
• 14:14
  He's doing great. He looked great.
• 14:17
  He is man. He is helping out Tyler Kinch
• 14:21
  which they opened the shows for us this weekend.
• 14:24
  Tyler is a fantastic country artist out of Arkansas at Little
• 14:27
  Rock area and Don helps him with some stuff.
• 14:30
  They were with us and so it was great to see them.
• 14:32
  My boy Joey G, it's great to see him and Bethany this weekend as
• 14:35
  well. Austin Michael opened the show
• 14:41
  for Saturday night in New York and Austin's a good kid.
• 14:47
  He's young, but man, he's a good kid and he's got good stuff
• 14:49
  going on. Y'all lookout for Austin
• 14:50
  Michael? Y'all go check him out on
• 14:52
  Instagram or Twitter or something like that.
• 14:55
  Austin Michael, he's got some good tunes.
• 14:57
  He's a Texas kid. He's young, but he's, he's good.
• 14:59
  He's going, he's going to make it happen, I think.
• 15:01
  I think he's got a chance for sure.
• 15:06
  Some friends of my wife and I has hit us up about going to a
• 15:09
  Jamie Johnson concert in October in Louisiana.
• 15:11
  And of course it's on a day I've got a show.
• 15:13
  That's how it always happens. Love to go though.
• 15:16
  You'll get a chance to go to a Jamie Johnson concert.
• 15:17
  He's on fire right now. Shout out to my boy Mike
• 15:20
  Diamond. I'll go to the floor, bam and
• 15:21
  see Mike Diamond play on Monday afternoons.
• 15:23
  So good. He plays all a lot of places a
• 15:26
  lot of times, but that's the Monday main rooms, his staple
• 15:29
  gig every week. If you're in the floor, if
• 15:31
  you're at the coast, down here at the beach, you know, need
• 15:34
  something to do on a Monday, go watch Mike Diamond and have you
• 15:36
  a bushwhacker. You won't.
• 15:37
  And, and if you like country music, especially classic
• 15:39
  country music done the right way, played and sang properly,
• 15:44
  go check out my boy Mike Diamond.
• 15:48
  Shout out to my boy Tiggy Brantley Tiggs bits.
• 15:51
  We're going to try to cut an episode sometime soon.
• 15:55
  Tiggy and the Handler. We talked about the Hogan stuff
• 15:57
  the last time we did a podcast together and didn't know this
• 16:02
  was going to go down. Unfortunately it did.
• 16:03
  But Bubba the Love Sponge was right.
• 16:06
  Something was going on and no one was giving us the full
• 16:08
  details. Not sure if we'll ever get all
• 16:11
  the info but I'm sure some will keep rolling out as it goes.
• 16:14
  Sad all the way around. Saw my boy Kurt Berdella from
• 16:17
  the Morning Hangover this weekend.
• 16:19
  Shout out to Kurt and John Ready.
• 16:21
  It's good to see those guys. Was going to try to do a podcast
• 16:25
  while I was on the road this weekend but couldn't get it
• 16:28
  done. I didn't have the right
• 16:31
  equipment. I mean, I had the equipment, I
• 16:32
  just didn't have the, I basically just didn't have my
• 16:35
  tripods and stuff I needed for the cameras, which was a bummer
• 16:38
  because I had our whole band and crew there on a day off.
• 16:43
  I could have just easily went and set up in a hotel room and
• 16:45
  cut a pod, cut a couple podcast, but unfortunately wasn't able to
• 16:50
  do that because I didn't have everything I needed.
• 16:54
  But we'll get him on here. Like we're going to have Jeff on
• 16:56
  today. Jeff Oliver's going to be our
• 16:57
  guest today. And if I mentioned that all the
• 16:59
  way through, I know I teased it a little bit early, but Jeff
• 17:01
  Oliver is our production manager and front of house mixer
• 17:06
  engineer and he knows way more about the technical production
• 17:12
  side of this business than I will ever know.
• 17:15
  I'm not, I don't even try when it comes up to a technical
• 17:17
  question, I just say you have to advance that with Jeff or let me
• 17:20
  get with Jeff and I'll get back to you because I'll mess it up.
• 17:23
  I just I know he knows what we got to have to get what done.
• 17:27
  So it's going to be fun catching up with him.
• 17:30
  Maybe some insider stuff well behind the behind the curtain,
• 17:34
  well inside baseball as they say.
• 17:37
  But y'all hang tight. We'll be right back here on the
• 17:41
  Jr. The Handler Show.
• 17:44
  Welcome back to the Jr. the Handler Show.
• 17:47
  Without any further ado, my guest today is my brother from
• 17:52
  the road who I've been working with hand in hand for the last
• 17:55
  12 years. The best ear in the business, my
• 17:59
  brother Jeff Oliver. How are you, brother?
• 18:02
  Hey Jr. good to good to be here. I'm I'm doing good.
• 18:04
  It's been a busy day already. Other hot one in the South?
• 18:09
  No doubt. Yeah, I was.
• 18:11
  I was actually. Yeah.
• 18:12
  You, you were running a little behind.
• 18:13
  You had some stuff come up. I get it.
• 18:15
  And I was just making the best of my time.
• 18:17
  I've been doing that all morning.
• 18:18
  Got my road report done, going through some advanced stuff,
• 18:22
  answering emails from Joey and Cody.
• 18:24
  You know, just a normal Monday. It doesn't end when the show's
• 18:26
  over for either one of us. Oh, no.
• 18:29
  Production managers, tour managers.
• 18:30
  We're behind the scenes, always on our computers, advancing
• 18:33
  stuff, making sure logistics are in place for the following weeks
• 18:37
  ahead. We got international travel, all
• 18:40
  that kind of stuff, making sure that everything runs smoothly on
• 18:43
  the road when we're off the road.
• 18:45
  Yeah, and it because any and literally you couldn't unless
• 18:48
  you make yourself stop, you could just keep going.
• 18:52
  Yeah, and I've had to do that before.
• 18:53
  Like I've my girlfriend Corey and I, we've talked about that
• 18:58
  before. It's like I could sit and do
• 18:59
  this job 24 hours a day, seven days a week and not think back,
• 19:03
  like not, not not even stop and go, hey, wait, hold on.
• 19:06
  There's a family here. Like we have other priorities.
• 19:08
  So it's, it's, it's a balance, careful balance for sure.
• 19:11
  It is because there's just, there's always another show to
• 19:14
  advance. I mean, and there's always
• 19:15
  something else you could check on and double check on and make
• 19:17
  sure. And I mean, you just, you know,
• 19:20
  and I've done that before where I would just have to, I'm like,
• 19:23
  I'm booking hotel rooms for next year and I'm like, it's March,
• 19:26
  you know, I'm like, stop, just stop.
• 19:28
  Things will change. And you know, used to prior and
• 19:32
  I feel like this, I don't know, I'll let you comment on it.
• 19:34
  Before the pandemic, there was kind of a system where you
• 19:38
  either book you either it started advancing the show after
• 19:41
  it was confirmed and booked right after the show, someone
• 19:45
  may reach a right after you booked the show.
• 19:46
  It's confirmed contract signed, all that.
• 19:48
  You might get someone reach out to you real quick.
• 19:50
  That's one option. Option 2, it's usually, you
• 19:54
  know, months out, someone may reach out to you and you're
• 19:56
  like, well, this is way too early.
• 19:57
  I'm not even going to deal with this yet.
• 19:58
  We'll get back to you. But the normal sweet spot used
• 20:01
  to be the two or three months out.
• 20:02
  You know, you absolutely, you get everything ironed out two to
• 20:05
  three months out normally. And that was if you didn't talk
• 20:08
  to somebody within a month out, you were a little concerned.
• 20:11
  You're like, what's up? Are they something wrong with
• 20:13
  this? But then after the pandemic
• 20:16
  happened, it got so wonky with shows going to happen, not going
• 20:21
  to happen. How are we, how is the show
• 20:24
  going to what kind of show are we going to put on?
• 20:26
  You know, what are, what is, you know, everything got scrambled.
• 20:29
  So we were booking advancing things a couple of weeks out at
• 20:34
  best sometimes. And I feel like now it's, it's
• 20:37
  gotten more back to normal, but not all the way.
• 20:41
  I still feel like most of the time it's a it's between a month
• 20:44
  and two months now at is the average and it could be even 2,
• 20:47
  two or three weeks out. And that's not even that
• 20:49
  uncommon anymore. Yeah, I'm having to chase down
• 20:52
  contacts now more than ever, chase down vendors and people.
• 20:56
  And you know, COVID took out a lot of industry veterans.
• 21:01
  There was a lot of guys that were, whether it was companies
• 21:04
  or, or even just staff members and things like that are about
• 21:08
  to retire and they're like, you know, maybe this is the time to
• 21:10
  go. And, and we lost a lot of pros
• 21:12
  during COVID And now the people that are left, there's a lot of
• 21:15
  new faces, which is great, But there's a there's a lot of guys
• 21:20
  are just their, their books are 100% full and they are
• 21:23
  scrambling to keep up. So like you see, I used to have
• 21:27
  people reach out to you. Our contact info and stuff like
• 21:29
  that are in writers. Like it's all right there.
• 21:31
  You just send us an e-mail and this phone call and it's the
• 21:34
  other way around now. We're chasing, we're chasing
• 21:36
  down contacts, trying to get people.
• 21:38
  Yeah, usually a less than a month out.
• 21:40
  And it's nice to have everything done 2 to 3, two months in
• 21:43
  advance, especially when you're, you got to book hotels.
• 21:46
  You know, these shows have been announced.
• 21:47
  Their fans are booking hotels in the area.
• 21:50
  We want to know about that beforehand so we can get, you
• 21:52
  know, make sure our drivers and our people have our rooms,
• 21:55
  things like that. So it's, it makes it a bit of a
• 21:57
  challenge for sure. It's getting better.
• 22:00
  It, I think it is getting better.
• 22:03
  This year has felt the most normal so far with at least in
• 22:08
  my world of, of advancing things and whatnot.
• 22:11
  But it definitely is has changed since since the pandemic.
• 22:15
  Yeah, I agree with that. I think this year is is probably
• 22:18
  the more normal because other things involved in that, that we
• 22:24
  lost people and and change of staffing in certain areas.
• 22:28
  The venue people, a lot of these people I'm dealing with now,
• 22:31
  it's not the venue person. It used to be that it would be
• 22:34
  someone who was in charge of hospitality and now they moved
• 22:37
  them up to there because the person that was in that spot
• 22:40
  retired or moved on or is doing something else.
• 22:43
  For the longest time there we were having problems with
• 22:46
  catering. A lot of the catering companies
• 22:49
  had shuttered and we're not doing this or couldn't afford to
• 22:53
  do it and things like that or wasn't showing up.
• 22:55
  It's hard to get catering that's kind of gotten better.
• 22:57
  Back to normal hotel rooms is still a weird thing.
• 23:02
  The pre pandemic you could get in your room if there are rooms
• 23:04
  available, you know, around lunchtime.
• 23:07
  Nowadays it doesn't matter. It's going to be after, it's
• 23:09
  going to be when they tell you 3 or 4:00 in the afternoon before
• 23:12
  you can get a hotel room. It's so.
• 23:13
  Crazy. That's a pet peeve of mine.
• 23:15
  I don't understand that. Like, I know you start cleaning
• 23:18
  rooms at 678 in the morning. Like how we have better
• 23:22
  communication with hospitality staff and managers to be like,
• 23:25
  hey, this block is now open. Like can we?
• 23:28
  We could release a few of these rooms to our drivers and.
• 23:31
  I'm like, I'm wondering if it's and they say they're always
• 23:34
  either, they'll always either tell you they're sold out the
• 23:36
  night before, which a lot of times I bust them on that
• 23:38
  because I fly in the night before.
• 23:39
  I'm staying at that same hotel and I knew the parking lot was
• 23:42
  half full when I was there the night before.
• 23:43
  It was not. Sold out.
• 23:45
  Or it's staffing on their end. A lot of change over there too.
• 23:49
  They don't. They don't have the hospitality
• 23:51
  staff to cleanings crews and things like that like they did.
• 23:54
  Maybe it's new people and they just can't get it done as
• 23:57
  efficiently or just can't get people to work.
• 24:01
  You know, that's the biggest thing we, you know, we'd have
• 24:03
  places where we'd go and I would talk to the promoter and they
• 24:06
  had runners set up for the show, interviewed them, got them set
• 24:10
  up with everything they needed. And then just morning of the
• 24:13
  show, they just no show and used to it just didn't happen.
• 24:16
  You just did not show up to your gig hands, you know, helpers on
• 24:21
  that end. Same thing.
• 24:22
  It seems like more people and they get and it pays more than
• 24:24
  it did when we started, when we had to do that kind of stuff.
• 24:26
  I mean, I could. Yeah, I've seen the labor bills
• 24:28
  these they're they're there's some decent rates out there
• 24:31
  these days. I used to, I used to do security
• 24:33
  for, I think it was 760 and maybe I got a $0.50 bump because
• 24:39
  I had my unarmed security license.
• 24:40
  So I got like 815. Was doing security for SCSC in
• 24:44
  Nashville back in the mid 2000s They've all went up to attract
• 24:49
  people to come take these jobs because that was a big one too.
• 24:52
  Security. I remember right coming out of
• 24:54
  the pandemic, we're we're somewhere West Virginia or West
• 24:58
  Virginia somewhere like that. I'm bringing Justin to the stage
• 25:00
  and part of our barricade security that's supposed to be
• 25:04
  watching the backstage area is filming Justin walking to the
• 25:08
  stage and it's and I'm like, you got to make so who's watching
• 25:13
  the crowd in the pinch point here where people could come
• 25:15
  through if you're filming us, you know, but it they had a
• 25:19
  complete turnover. All, you know, a few of the
• 25:21
  managers were the only ones that were original.
• 25:23
  They were trying to get everybody up to speed.
• 25:25
  And I think a lot of that everything is getting back up to
• 25:28
  speed. Everything's kind of balancing
• 25:30
  out. It's still a little wonky, but
• 25:33
  it's coming back and you know, it was such a big deal.
• 25:36
  Drivers, there's another one, bus drivers, truck drivers, that
• 25:39
  stuff. I mean, the big turnover on that
• 25:43
  we used to have, there used to be tons of bus drivers and now
• 25:45
  and buses and now they're all in short supply.
• 25:50
  Yep, got a couple, couple of acquisitions over the past
• 25:56
  couple years where it's it's turned into just a a few major
• 26:00
  players now as opposed to having a having a few more competition
• 26:05
  wise. But yeah, I mean that's yeah
• 26:08
  finding drivers. Why I picked up my CDL years
• 26:11
  ago. It's like, well, if I'm already
• 26:12
  on this bus, I might as well just drive it, Co drive it as
• 26:15
  well. Do Co driving with our with our
• 26:17
  main bus driver. It's just just easier on my end
• 26:20
  not having to search for as many drivers too.
• 26:23
  Yeah. And we were getting some real
• 26:24
  interesting ones, you know, here and there.
• 26:27
  So it's like if my main driver can't get any sleep at night,
• 26:30
  the purpose of this Co driver is almost useless.
• 26:32
  Exactly so. And usually Robbie's like, get
• 26:35
  it? Yeah, I mean, it made sense
• 26:38
  because and usually you're not having to drive a long haul
• 26:40
  either. It's usually a couple 100 miles
• 26:42
  at best, just about the main driver.
• 26:43
  Just to get where we're going. Yeah, routing ski these days.
• 26:47
  But we, we bounce all over the place sometimes.
• 26:49
  And yeah, you need, you need our code.
• 26:51
  I mean, Justin's bus alone. Justin's all over the place.
• 26:54
  He's yeah, he's got a team with them every time just to get him
• 26:57
  where he needs to go. Yeah, 2 drivers at all times and
• 27:00
  yeah, just have to because you just never know.
• 27:02
  And he's coming from Arkansas and not Nashville.
• 27:04
  Nashville, like you said, the consolidation and the
• 27:07
  acquisitions there in Nashville, that was across the board big
• 27:10
  money moving into Nashville. You're still there.
• 27:12
  You're on the you're on the east side of Nashville, aren't you?
• 27:14
  I'm, I'm tucked away. I'm out by the I'm, I live right
• 27:17
  next to a Boy Scout reservation, which is 1000 acres of land
• 27:22
  that's leased from the state. Like a dollar or something, but
• 27:25
  nice. Yeah, it's it's all wooden.
• 27:27
  It's nice. It's it's out on the it's
• 27:29
  outside of the city and it's quiet and yeah, no, no riff raff
• 27:33
  comes out here. You're.
• 27:35
  Fairly isolated out there and, and, and yeah, it's beautiful.
• 27:39
  I've been to your house before. You got a great place, great
• 27:41
  yard. You got a nice compound.
• 27:42
  Jeff's got a compound. He's one of those, one of
• 27:44
  everything, too. Jeff's got everything he needs
• 27:46
  at his house to do anything he needs to do.
• 27:49
  Yeah, we got some good redneck neighbors.
• 27:51
  We'll we'll shoot first, ask questions later and that kind of
• 27:54
  thing. It's safe out here.
• 27:55
  It's wonderful. But yeah, the city's blown up.
• 27:59
  It's Nashville is a whole new animal and I've been here for 15
• 28:04
  years now. So seen it when I first moved
• 28:06
  in. It was, it was right when that
• 28:08
  TV show Nashville was the was, was, was getting hot and
• 28:12
  Nashville still had that small town feel, even though it was a
• 28:15
  major, you know, major city. And nowadays it's like, it feels
• 28:18
  like, it feels like Atlanta or LA, especially with the traffic.
• 28:23
  And it's, it's wild the amount of skyscrapers we have downtown,
• 28:28
  the new Titan Stadium going up, big land acquisitions around
• 28:32
  there for corporate players. They're building campuses and it
• 28:38
  has benefits. There's good food there's
• 28:39
  there's amazing restaurants there's.
• 28:43
  Plenty of activities. Anything you could think of to
• 28:45
  do. Anything you could think to do?
• 28:48
  Yeah, and who doesn't want to? I don't.
• 28:51
  But who doesn't want to come into town and see Broadway and
• 28:53
  all that stuff? And you know, we always do that.
• 28:55
  It's when the family comes in, you always, they're your
• 28:57
  friends. They're like, well, go to down
• 28:59
  to Broadway. All right?
• 29:00
  I'll do that once or twice a year.
• 29:02
  But there's plenty of music down there.
• 29:04
  And, you know, all the food and all that, too.
• 29:05
  It's, it's a, it's a bustling city.
• 29:07
  You got Top Golf now too, right? Yeah, there's Top Golf right
• 29:10
  over by Sound Check. Sound check.
• 29:12
  That's right. Yeah.
• 29:13
  There used to be nothing over there that was all just like
• 29:16
  ratty little storage industrial area.
• 29:18
  Yeah. And then yeah, I mean, always
• 29:20
  had good bowling alleys, like you said.
• 29:22
  Food. Nashville has always had good
• 29:24
  food. It's got a wide variety of
• 29:26
  people from all over the world that live there.
• 29:28
  So you got some really nice pockets of good food.
• 29:30
  And I'm sure a lot of that's still there on the outskirts,
• 29:33
  but downtown is like Vegas. It's all.
• 29:36
  I mean, it's super expensive and just, I mean, that's a whole
• 29:40
  another thing. And people now probably couldn't
• 29:42
  imagine, like when we first, when we were in Nashville early
• 29:45
  on, that you could just park in front of the bars on Broadway.
• 29:48
  Park on Broadway. And it may not even be that busy
• 29:51
  of a night. Some nights were just kind of
• 29:52
  dead. I mean, there were people
• 29:53
  partying and drinking, but it wasn't like crazy.
• 29:56
  I mean regularly. Oh, you thought you were VIP
• 29:58
  when you could park on Broadway and walk, walk right into
• 30:00
  Tootsie's. You're like, look at me, I got
• 30:01
  to park outside. This is awesome.
• 30:03
  Now you don't. You could barely drive down
• 30:05
  Broadway anymore. I heard a lot of the musicians
• 30:07
  too, because they used to park around there for cheaper next to
• 30:10
  free, you know, and lug their gear and now they can't even do
• 30:13
  that anymore. There's no free parking downtown
• 30:16
  anywhere. Even the street parking is paid.
• 30:18
  I know, I remember the first time I got a ticket for a van
• 30:20
  and trailer down there doing a gig and I'm like, we're playing
• 30:23
  the gig and they're like, those are you got to put the thing And
• 30:26
  I'm like, we have never, I've played gigs here forever, never
• 30:29
  had to deal with this. I was like, you know, it's the
• 30:30
  musician, it's fine. But and I knew then it was
• 30:33
  downhill and that was right after like 08/09 10 someone
• 30:39
  there because O 8 when the market crashed, everything they
• 30:41
  were building, they were starting to do some stuff before
• 30:43
  that and it all halted. So they had a lot of they had
• 30:46
  they had plenty of cheap places to live.
• 30:49
  And then when that, like you said, when that show came out
• 30:52
  and people started talking, few celebrities were in town and you
• 30:54
  know, people talk about living down in Franklin and this and
• 30:57
  that. It made it a couple of shows and
• 30:58
  a couple of different. Then they had the, you know,
• 31:00
  some renovation shows or some stuff.
• 31:02
  You had a few things. Then you had American Pickers
• 31:04
  show up and then it was over. It was over.
• 31:06
  It blew. My first place.
• 31:07
  I moved to Nashville. I rented a guest house on the
• 31:09
  West side of town. It was like in the bottom part
• 31:12
  of like a converted barn on this beautiful piece of property and
• 31:15
  it was like 500 bucks a month rent.
• 31:17
  It was nice. It was like a single bedroom
• 31:18
  with a living room and all that kitchen, bathroom.
• 31:21
  It was nice little guest house, 500 bucks, great.
• 31:23
  You could not. You could barely find a place to
• 31:25
  be even a roommate these days for 500 bucks.
• 31:28
  You're talking that same property would rent for $1500
• 31:32
  nowadays at least. That house I had in Whites Creek
• 31:35
  was 600 bucks a month. Yeah, it's on an acre in a in a
• 31:38
  turn of the century farmhouse. Yeah, if someone rent that house
• 31:42
  now, it'd be it'd be $2000 a month.
• 31:44
  I remember a, a, a girl that I knew was been pharmaceuticals or
• 31:50
  something and she a friend of a friend.
• 31:53
  And she, I remember her, she had moved to town and was renting a
• 31:55
  place like above Printer's Alley.
• 31:58
  And I want to say she said she was paying like 1200 bucks a
• 32:01
  month or something. And we thought, good Lord,
• 32:03
  that's so much money. I mean, how nice does that have
• 32:06
  to be to cost $1200 or $1400, whatever it was you think.
• 32:10
  And that's now that's nothing that will get you maybe a single
• 32:14
  bedroom apartment and not so good part of town.
• 32:16
  Outside of town, yeah. Like maybe like in an old
• 32:19
  apartment building or something like that maybe.
• 32:21
  Yeah, it's wild. It's wild, but it moves on.
• 32:25
  Nothing we can do about it. They call it progress, but I
• 32:27
  just don't know. Well, man, I'm glad you came on
• 32:30
  the show today. Jeff.
• 32:32
  I want, you know, I don't know if you've heard any of the ones
• 32:34
  we've had lately. We've had a lot of our friends
• 32:35
  that, you know, on the show. I had Justin David last week,
• 32:39
  who's fiddle player for Colt all those years, you know, and I've
• 32:42
  had on and Gallagher, yeah, legend, other legends, legend
• 32:48
  I've had on Chris Tate, I've had on, you know, some of our
• 32:51
  friends. It's it's been, it's been a lot
• 32:53
  of fun. This is episode 13 and I wanted
• 32:55
  to have some different, I've had a lot of tour managers on, but I
• 32:58
  wanted to have some different perspectives.
• 33:00
  You know, I want, I've been wanting to get you and Alyssa
• 33:03
  both to come home, tell y'all story because of y'all's roles
• 33:06
  in our organization. We'll get everybody in our team
• 33:07
  for sure. And, and some different things
• 33:09
  like that. So I want to get, I want to talk
• 33:12
  about some of that in a while about, you know, the actual nuts
• 33:17
  and bolts of what you do as a job.
• 33:18
  But before we get there, let's go back to how you got to where
• 33:22
  you're at. And I told you before, right
• 33:23
  when we popped up, I was about to place, I was playing some Rat
• 33:26
  Pack music to get warmed up because you and I both love some
• 33:28
  Rat Pack music. And you've actually worked with
• 33:30
  the touring troupe, the Rat Pack.
• 33:33
  And but you know, you grew up in Ohio.
• 33:37
  And how did you go from a little boy in Ohio to becoming a
• 33:42
  veteran production manager in country music based out of
• 33:45
  Nashville, TN? And when I said the best ear in
• 33:48
  the business, I wasn't lying, brother.
• 33:49
  I'm not just Tooting your horn because we're on the show, but
• 33:52
  I, I've told you multiple times, I go to a concert of somebody
• 33:55
  else's and I'll listen for a minute.
• 33:56
  I'm like, I wish Jeff was mixing because I know whatever the
• 34:00
  issue was, you wouldn't have that issue.
• 34:02
  You would fix that issue. So I, I hold you in very high
• 34:04
  regard. I do think you do have the best
• 34:06
  ear in the business, but how did, how did it all come to be?
• 34:09
  I mean, how did this, how did this, how did this happen?
• 34:11
  Did your did you play music? Did your folks play music?
• 34:13
  Did you just love the radio? My grandma dabbled a little bit,
• 34:18
  she had Now this doesn't really I don't know if this it piqued
• 34:22
  my interest in music or not, but definitely got me interested.
• 34:24
  My grandma and grandpa, they had a, a single story house up in,
• 34:30
  in Toledo, OH and Aaron mommy technically where we grew up and
• 34:34
  like there, so back in the old days and the 50s and whatnot,
• 34:37
  they had like a basement where they'd have parties.
• 34:40
  And she had a, a, a upright piano down there that I used to
• 34:44
  play on and I always took interest in as a kid.
• 34:48
  My mom put me through some piano lessons and it was, it was
• 34:50
  classical piano and reading sheet music.
• 34:53
  And I'm like, oh man. Like I could never keep up on
• 34:55
  the sheet music, but I could figure stuff out by my hands.
• 34:58
  I could, I could hear a song and try to work it out.
• 35:01
  So I got into music then and I never pursued the piano career
• 35:05
  much. I should get a, a piano for the
• 35:06
  OR a keyboard, at least for the house to dabble.
• 35:09
  And maybe, maybe, maybe we'll have one for sale and I'll pick
• 35:12
  one up because it is fun. But I enjoyed music back then.
• 35:17
  I've always enjoyed listening to music.
• 35:18
  My grandma used to put on like she had her little RCA Victor.
• 35:23
  It was an automatic 45 record player.
• 35:26
  So she had all these racks of 40 fives and that and they had this
• 35:30
  record player downstairs and you'd load them up up top and it
• 35:32
  would drop them one by one and automatically play it and drop
• 35:34
  another one. So all the Elvis records, you
• 35:36
  know, if she, if you ever asked her like her family, where are
• 35:39
  you, Elvis or The Beatles, she was definitely Elvis.
• 35:42
  So she had a lot of Elvis stuff and some big band and jazz.
• 35:46
  And my mom had some really good records and stuff too growing
• 35:48
  up. She she's slides, she still has
• 35:50
  them to this day. That's.
• 35:52
  Neat people, people. I mean imagine that guys that
• 35:55
  you know, our era had CD changers.
• 35:58
  You know we, we were the first generation to have CD changers
• 36:00
  and now you've got everything on shuffle.
• 36:02
  But back then, y'all, it's a record player with 40 fives.
• 36:05
  I've got a stack up over there 40 fives on an automatic thing
• 36:08
  where it would drop them and play them.
• 36:09
  And that was your. That was.
• 36:10
  Your singles, there's one on each side that.
• 36:13
  Was one-on-one song on each side of this record.
• 36:15
  Y'all that's that's how for the young audience out there, that's
• 36:17
  how that was your playlist. That's how you play had a party,
• 36:20
  you drop, you picked out what records you wanted in these
• 36:23
  slots and then let it go. And that was top of the line
• 36:25
  because if you didn't have that, you just got a one song change,
• 36:28
  one song, 1 by 1. Yeah, like I thought that was
• 36:31
  the most coolest thing was the mechanical drive record player.
• 36:34
  They had these little teeth that would drop a record on it.
• 36:37
  Like it worked really good. So yeah, it they used to throw
• 36:41
  parties in the basement and stuff like that.
• 36:42
  And they had a, you know, a wet bar down there and a pool table.
• 36:46
  And that's what people did back in the day.
• 36:48
  So I was playing the piano when I was a kid and I really owe it
• 36:52
  to my high school guidance counselor though, because I went
• 36:55
  to St. John's Jesuit, Jesuit High
• 36:57
  School and a shirt and tie every day, Chapel on Fridays kind of
• 37:01
  thing. And we had, you know, they had
• 37:04
  good guidance counselors and counselors there.
• 37:06
  And I remember having a meeting one day, like, what do you like
• 37:08
  to do? And our, our high school had ATV
• 37:10
  station in it. We did like a little morning
• 37:13
  show every day for everybody in all the classes.
• 37:16
  And we used to DJ music in the morning as people were coming.
• 37:18
  It was kind of a cool vibe. So I took interest in helping
• 37:22
  those guys out in the electronics aspect of that.
• 37:24
  I've always been deep into electronics and music.
• 37:28
  And so she took these things I said I like to do and she's like
• 37:33
  theater. Our theater program in the high
• 37:35
  school needs some help. Like technically she's like,
• 37:38
  they need help with lights and sound, like building the sets
• 37:40
  and stuff. I'm like, huh, I never thought
• 37:42
  about that. The only thing I really knew of
• 37:43
  theater was my mom used to take me to shows in Toledo, or we
• 37:47
  used to do Music under the Stars at the Toledo Zoo.
• 37:50
  Actually, that show we did the amphitheater, Yep, it was the
• 37:53
  last fall, that old amphitheater, we used to go
• 37:56
  there, my mom and I, and watch the Toledo Symphony play
• 38:00
  different themed nights. Like they might do a John
• 38:02
  Williams theme night or maybe like a Count Basie night or
• 38:05
  something like that in that old orchestra shell there.
• 38:08
  And it was really, really cool at night.
• 38:10
  Stars out and some light sounds super cool.
• 38:12
  So the guidance counselor, like why don't you help?
• 38:14
  They need some help with people building sets and stuff.
• 38:17
  I'm like, all right, cool, I'll try that out.
• 38:18
  Introduced me to the people. We had a Little Theatre in our
• 38:21
  high school. It was, this is a high school
• 38:23
  auditorium. Nothing fancy by any means, but
• 38:28
  our high school had some good donors.
• 38:30
  And so once a year we did, they did a couple shows, I think they
• 38:33
  did like a straight play and then they would do a musical
• 38:35
  every year. Well, for the musical, they
• 38:37
  would rent out a theater in town and it was called the
• 38:40
  Valentine's Little 900 seat Theater downtown Toledo.
• 38:43
  Beautiful like ornate, bold and red velvet, this little theater.
• 38:48
  And they put the money towards that.
• 38:50
  So I quickly learned by helping out in our theater program,
• 38:55
  building sets of things that hey, we're not actually doing
• 38:57
  shows here. We'll do a straight play here,
• 38:58
  but the musicals going to be downtown.
• 38:59
  So I fell in love with it and carpentry skills and all that.
• 39:04
  Kind of like normal guy stuff, like, Oh yeah, I could build
• 39:06
  things. I could build these boxes and
• 39:07
  stuff like that and give me a screw gun, a staple gun and all
• 39:10
  that. So did it through high school.
• 39:12
  Got to get out of class sometimes for it and go downtown
• 39:15
  and work in the theater. I'm like, oh, this is great.
• 39:16
  And then the union guys at that theater were like, we were, I
• 39:20
  forget what show we were doing. I can't remember what musical it
• 39:23
  was. But you know, we're, I'm still
• 39:25
  really young, so I'm like, I'm not really mixing the show yet.
• 39:28
  And but the union sound guy there.
• 39:30
  What year is this? How would you have?
• 39:32
  Been at this point this was what like 2001, 2002?
• 39:35
  So I'm like 17 years old, 18 years old.
• 39:38
  Junior in high school. Junior senior in high school, I
• 39:40
  think it's probably my senior year, probably 18, so 2002.
• 39:46
  And the sound guy, there's like, hey man, if you want to mix this
• 39:48
  show, like I'm just going to sit back here and, you know, take a
• 39:51
  nap or something. He's like, you look like you
• 39:52
  know what you're doing. I'm like, I'll figure it out.
• 39:55
  He had it mostly set up, but it was an old, it was still analog
• 39:58
  desk days. We had, you know, some wireless
• 40:00
  mics on the actors and had some CD player.
• 40:04
  They had queuing capabilities to queue up sound effects and stuff
• 40:07
  for the show. I wish I could remember what
• 40:08
  show it was, but you just let me have it.
• 40:12
  And so we did. I think we did maybe like four
• 40:14
  or five performances. After rehearsals and all that
• 40:18
  and I don't know if I, I fell in love with them.
• 40:20
  Like this is great. So our guidance counselors like
• 40:23
  I seem like you enjoy this and we would have regular meetings
• 40:27
  with our guidance counselors, which was a, a really cool
• 40:30
  hearing what kids don't get these days and stuff.
• 40:33
  Like that I had zero with that. I had, I mean, bless our
• 40:37
  guidance because she was a sweet lady, but absolutely no help at
• 40:41
  all in any guidance for anything I did.
• 40:43
  And maybe I wasn't receptive to it and I probably wouldn't, but
• 40:45
  I can remember I I went and got a book off of the shelf in her
• 40:48
  office that had the unit colleges and found just went to
• 40:51
  Troy because of, you know, I mean, just randomly basically,
• 40:56
  but no, not that. So that would have been a great
• 40:58
  advantage to have for anybody. And I don't think I doubt kids
• 41:02
  are getting it now. Yeah, I don't think they are
• 41:05
  now. And I didn't see the value of it
• 41:07
  in the time at all. But looking back now, you know,
• 41:10
  20 some years later, I'm like, wow, she really did push me into
• 41:14
  the career I liked. Like, I mean, obviously it's
• 41:17
  developed over the years too of like not just the theater side
• 41:19
  of things, a little bit into like in more into music, but
• 41:22
  like see, figured out the spark and, and pushed me in that right
• 41:25
  direction. So we looked into colleges.
• 41:28
  She's like, where do you want to go to college?
• 41:30
  I'm like, I haven't really thought, but she's like, all
• 41:31
  right, here's your options. These are the there's North
• 41:33
  Carolina School of the Arts, which was outside of Ohio, which
• 41:37
  is very expensive as out of state because like you get no
• 41:39
  assistance at all at that point, right?
• 41:41
  We were not rich by any means. Or there was a College in Ohio
• 41:46
  called Wright State University down in Dayton, OH, which was in
• 41:50
  state, which was great. Get all the tuition's way
• 41:52
  cheaper. And they were still at the time,
• 41:55
  I think the number three like theatrical College in the
• 41:58
  nation. And they had a really good tech
• 42:01
  theatre program. Not just a, not just a, an
• 42:04
  acting side or a dance side, but the technical theatre was top
• 42:07
  notch. Perfect.
• 42:09
  So yeah, went down, toured it. We pretty much my mom and I
• 42:13
  decided, Oh yeah, that's where I'm gonna go.
• 42:14
  Went to college there. Did the college thing.
• 42:18
  Learn all the things about life on your own down there, which is
• 42:20
  wonderful. You know, lived in the dorms for
• 42:22
  a couple years, had some had some wild roommates.
• 42:25
  And I think by, I think it was by junior year we took over our
• 42:31
  theatre program. Had a house in the, in a
• 42:34
  trashier side of town. There was a cheap rent even then
• 42:37
  that rent for that house I think was like 500 bucks for this huge
• 42:40
  house. It was an old vacuum store in
• 42:43
  like downtown Dayton that like tall ceilings, like the bottom
• 42:47
  used to be like the, the, the storefront and the workspace and
• 42:51
  all that. The upstairs was the living
• 42:53
  quarters. Well, eventually they converted
• 42:55
  into both upstairs and downstairs being living
• 42:57
  quarters. So people in the tech theatre
• 42:59
  program always rented this house for years and years from this
• 43:01
  old lady and she was super sweet, wasn't anything fancy,
• 43:04
  but ton of room, you know, kegerator in the kitchen,
• 43:07
  multiple fridges, like big rooms.
• 43:09
  We had a trampoline in the one room in the front.
• 43:12
  Like it was the ceilings were that tall.
• 43:14
  We literally built a trampoline in the room.
• 43:18
  It was wild. It was a good time.
• 43:20
  So I lived in that house for a couple years, went to college
• 43:22
  learning about theater, fell in love with theatre.
• 43:25
  Theatre was great. The straight plays didn't
• 43:26
  interest me as much because being a sound engineer, I really
• 43:29
  enjoyed the music aspect of it, mixing the, you know, an
• 43:33
  orchestra together, things like that.
• 43:35
  So the, and, and the energy that comes with from musicals, the,
• 43:38
  the, the emotional, you know, changes that you have as you
• 43:41
  watch a show and fall in love with the characters or, and, or
• 43:44
  there's a conflict and the music changes and all this kind of
• 43:47
  stuff. So I really enjoyed that living
• 43:51
  in Dayton, got in with the union there.
• 43:55
  Local 66 out of Dayton, OH, paid for a lot of my college by
• 44:00
  working as a stagehand. Our university arena there, the
• 44:05
  Nutter Center was host multiple times of the year to Monday
• 44:08
  Night Raw or some of the other WWE or at the time WWF events.
• 44:15
  And I could always get a show call out of it.
• 44:17
  So it'd be a load in and a show call and a load out.
• 44:19
  You can make a few four, $500 a day working these working these
• 44:25
  shows and concerts too. We had a lot of concerts that
• 44:27
  came through town. Dayton was a is a very like
• 44:30
  artsy city. There's a lot of art there,
• 44:33
  whether it's theater, music, all kinds of stuff comes through
• 44:36
  there and it's it's kind of nice to see versus Nashville doesn't
• 44:38
  have as much of that theater community.
• 44:40
  But let's tell I since we both were growing up on wrestling,
• 44:45
  I'll, I'll never forget this. And you guys remember the guy's
• 44:47
  name, who was that really big wrestler?
• 44:50
  He was huge. He's like 4 or £500.
• 44:55
  Let me see if I can look his name.
• 44:57
  Up real quick. It wasn't Humphrey.
• 45:03
  No. Was he what?
• 45:06
  What? No.
• 45:07
  That would have been earlier than that.
• 45:10
  Not Bam Bam Bigelow, not King Kong Bundy.
• 45:13
  No. What?
• 45:14
  Oh, hold on, hold on, hold. On Yo Kazuno Oh.
• 45:18
  Trying to. Think so That would be.
• 45:21
  Henry, Sean Henry. Was it Sean Henry?
• 45:23
  John Henry. Was it John?
• 45:25
  Henry. I mean Mark Henry.
• 45:28
  Mark Henry. Yes, the world's strongest man.
• 45:30
  Oh yeah, yes, he was. He was on one of the nights.
• 45:34
  I remember. I'll never forget this because I
• 45:36
  thought it was my life was going to end that night.
• 45:38
  So I think it was like a Monday Night Raw or something like
• 45:41
  that. I had it was the first time I
• 45:42
  ever do it. And when your steward comes up
• 45:45
  to you and wants to give you a new job, like I've done
• 45:46
  spotlights and stuff. I used to love running
• 45:48
  spotlights for concerts, but he's like, hey, I need you to do
• 45:50
  cable paging tonight. I'm like, what does that
• 45:52
  involve? He's like, well, you're gonna
• 45:54
  you got you're got page cable in back and forth for the the
• 45:57
  ringside cameras and you're going to be tucked in around the
• 46:00
  ring. I'm like, ooh, that sounds like
• 46:01
  fun. Like alright, like I'll do it,
• 46:02
  whatever, like. That's those guys you see.
• 46:04
  Somebody got to do that job. When you're watching wrestling,
• 46:06
  you see the guy behind the camera.
• 46:09
  Yeah, page and cable like if they're still doing a lot of
• 46:11
  it's wireless I think now back then it was all you to page that
• 46:14
  cable. So that camera man takes off.
• 46:16
  You got to be able to. Yeah, to feed him.
• 46:18
  And then when he's backing up, you got to, you don't have need
• 46:20
  just random cables wrapped around everybody's feet.
• 46:23
  That's that's like, if you ever watch the the documentary of the
• 46:26
  Festival Express, the big rock concert after Woodstock that
• 46:30
  goes across Canada, Buddy Guy is on that.
• 46:33
  And when Buddy Guy's playing his set, he has a cable page.
• 46:37
  Basically he's got his instrument cable because he, he
• 46:39
  must have a 300 foot instrument cable.
• 46:41
  And he's following and he, he goes out in the crowd off this
• 46:43
  big stage and all this stuff. And there's his buddy behind him
• 46:46
  just keeping that cable going. And, and every now and then when
• 46:48
  they stop, he's got a bottle of brown, He's got a brown paper
• 46:51
  bag. And he gets him a little, gets
• 46:52
  him a little NILP puts it back, goes back out with the cable,
• 46:55
  but he's following around. You got to have somebody to do
• 46:57
  that if it's not wireless. And Buddy Guy and a lot of those
• 47:00
  old rockers, they didn't trust wireless.
• 47:02
  So they, they wanted a cable, they wanted to be connected.
• 47:05
  Yeah, you know, But so anyway, so you're so you're running as a
• 47:08
  page cable, a cable page. Sitting in a corner of, of
• 47:11
  outside the ring, like you know where the announcers are.
• 47:13
  So there's, there's corners where we usually stay out of
• 47:16
  shots and you just have a spool of cable and you're spooling it
• 47:18
  out. And so I'm like trying to watch
• 47:20
  what's going on. Most of the time.
• 47:21
  I got my eye on the on the cameraman because I want to see
• 47:23
  how much he needs. If he's got too much, I got I
• 47:25
  got quickly coil that back up and bring it back in.
• 47:29
  And I I wasn't watching what was going on in the ring.
• 47:31
  I'm trying to remember who was wrestling in that night.
• 47:34
  But anyway, Henry ends up coming over the ropes at me, like right
• 47:38
  into the corner as a as a as a as a look to kind of kind of
• 47:42
  bounce off or like probably smash into these walls right
• 47:44
  here. And I have no idea it's coming
• 47:46
  at me until I already see him like coming over the air And I
• 47:49
  like I grabbed the cable and like I just I hugged the cable
• 47:52
  and I had rolled out of the way and he comes crashing in above
• 47:56
  me somewhere. There might be, I don't know if
• 47:58
  it ever got caught on camera. We.
• 47:59
  Tried. I wish we could find that on
• 48:01
  camera. We didn't have the technology at
• 48:02
  the time to like dig through that stuff, but I would love to
• 48:05
  find that of this, of this guy in blacks paging cable like
• 48:08
  rolling out of the way so he doesn't get crushed by this guy.
• 48:11
  I mean, Henry had to weigh what he he had to be 400 lbs.
• 48:13
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 48:14
  I was saying he's huge, Huge. He's a bulldozer.
• 48:17
  I mean, he's the world. He was the world's strongest
• 48:18
  man. Yeah.
• 48:19
  Yeah. Oh man, it's all Yeah, I wonder.
• 48:22
  If we could find we need to go one night when we're on the bus
• 48:24
  on a long run, we need to get the WWE Network pulled up, I
• 48:27
  think it's on Peacock now, and go through there and find that
• 48:30
  archive. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
• 48:31
  If we can figure out what the date was, we could probably get
• 48:33
  close to it. Maybe locations?
• 48:35
  So. We know and we know what we know
• 48:37
  what match we're looking for. Something with John or Mark
• 48:39
  Henry in it. Yes, I would love to find that.
• 48:42
  Was That would be hilarious. One more funny story at the
• 48:46
  Nutter Center running Spotlight there doing Green Day.
• 48:51
  This is probably like 2004, 2005.
• 48:55
  Lead singer gets laryngitis. We cancel the show after we
• 48:58
  loaded the whole thing in. They come back at the end of the
• 49:01
  tour to redo the show. We get the call again.
• 49:05
  I'm on spotlight for the show. I can't remember the L DS name.
• 49:08
  He's a British guy. He warns us.
• 49:11
  He's like, he's like gents, like tonight we're gonna, we're gonna
• 49:14
  blast off all the extra pirates tonight.
• 49:16
  So he's like, I'm gonna tell you about the the shots I know
• 49:18
  about, but there's gonna be a bunch more that I don't know
• 49:21
  about. And they were, we had to kick on
• 49:23
  the exhaust fans in this place because I couldn't we our
• 49:27
  spotlights. We could not see our players
• 49:29
  anymore. And we had, we had Telrads,
• 49:30
  which are basically like I had a scope that was kind of custom
• 49:33
  made as like old gun scope that you could clamp on the side of
• 49:36
  the spotlight and had crosshairs in it.
• 49:39
  You could look in like, because we had you just snap on to
• 49:42
  people. Like you couldn't spotlight
• 49:44
  operators these days like we see in our shows, they're all over
• 49:46
  the place. Like they don't rarely do you
• 49:48
  see you guys carrying around teleradroscopes anymore.
• 49:50
  Like it's a lost art. It's really sad.
• 49:52
  Yeah, because we had to hit guys in the dark.
• 49:54
  You had to be ready to like if the LD called for a snap on you
• 49:57
  had to be on your player and boom white light on them like
• 49:59
  immediately in the dark. I know, I know.
• 50:01
  Fishing around fine. No, no.
• 50:04
  So we prided ourselves in that and I mean, we took our jobs
• 50:07
  really seriously doing that stuff.
• 50:08
  But you're shooting like 300 feet from the back and arena in
• 50:11
  a, in a, in a post somewhere. And it was so smoky in this
• 50:15
  place. But I remember I, I think I was
• 50:16
  on either the lead singer or the bass player.
• 50:18
  The only way I could keep tabs on them through the smoke was he
• 50:20
  had white shoes on. He had white trainers.
• 50:23
  And as long as I remember that I could in my scope that I could
• 50:26
  barely see through with all the smoke I could keep.
• 50:28
  If I saw the white feet in the bottom of it, I knew if I opened
• 50:32
  up on him and I could, I could hit him for the cues.
• 50:35
  It was ridiculous. That's amazing.
• 50:37
  Yeah. Billy Joe Armstrong, the front
• 50:38
  man for Green Day, I bet that was him.
• 50:41
  I did security at Bridgestone for them around the same era,
• 50:45
  probably O six O 7 right after that, somewhere in there and
• 50:51
  another shoe incident with them. So before the show, they got the
• 50:53
  lights on. During intermission, they hit
• 50:55
  the lights on and everybody's filling in after the opener and
• 51:00
  they had there's this big Bunny, somebody in a big Bunny suit, a
• 51:02
  big, big pink Bunny suit comes out with like crosses over its
• 51:05
  eyes. And he's just kind of acting
• 51:07
  like a drunk Bunny basically. And he's kind of waving at the
• 51:10
  crowd just standing on the stage and just doing this little
• 51:12
  antics. Well, he same thing.
• 51:15
  He had white shoes on. And then he goes away a couple
• 51:18
  minutes later. Music hits intro.
• 51:20
  Here comes Green Day, same shoes on Billy Joe Armstrong, the
• 51:24
  front as the rabbit had on. He went out there as the rabbit
• 51:27
  earlier, having a beer and checking on the crowd.
• 51:29
  The audience. Yeah.
• 51:31
  And then came back. But it was the shoes that gave
• 51:32
  away, just like you used the shoes to pinpoint him, to hit
• 51:35
  him with the spot. Was the only way I could keep an
• 51:37
  eye on him, man. It was that was a yeah.
• 51:39
  And like then of course, like you're getting when you know
• 51:41
  about a pyro hit, whether it's a concussion or something like
• 51:44
  that, you can anticipate it and you know.
• 51:46
  Small movement gets you a little bit.
• 51:49
  Yeah, but but the ones you don't know and then you're on, you're
• 51:52
  these small movements in a spotlight really far away.
• 51:54
  Like you move an inch that moves the spotlight 5 feet on stage.
• 51:58
  Yeah, like all of a sudden getting jolted by these ones
• 52:00
  that you don't know about and their lights are all over the
• 52:02
  place. It was ridiculous.
• 52:03
  There was so much pyro shot off that night.
• 52:05
  I don't even know how they, I don't know how they got signed
• 52:07
  off and. You're up in the rafters at a
• 52:09
  post, so it's the smoke's all accumulating up there by you
• 52:12
  guys or? Here's a fun one too, since we
• 52:15
  both like wrestling. Truss spots on wrestling is the
• 52:18
  most wild job today. With pyro and stuff on.
• 52:22
  These guys go up before they open doors.
• 52:24
  They're climbing up into the trusses above the stage in fire
• 52:27
  suits, sitting in a basically a race car seat that's strapped to
• 52:31
  the trusses with a light on them.
• 52:33
  And they're up there the entire show.
• 52:35
  There's I remember running trust spots for wrestling.
• 52:38
  There'd be like flames coming up right underneath.
• 52:40
  You just feel this heat come past you and you're like, this
• 52:43
  is this is wild. It's insane, yeah, and and pyro
• 52:47
  and things. Concussion.
• 52:49
  Stuff around you and you're like, I trust these guys, right?
• 52:52
  I do. They.
• 52:52
  They're all certified. Yeah.
• 52:54
  Not to mention you're up there in a fire suit.
• 52:56
  It's hot. You got to pee, I mean.
• 52:59
  Yeah, you got to go to the bathroom right before you go up.
• 53:01
  Like you can only drink so much water while you're up there.
• 53:04
  Like know your limits. It's.
• 53:06
  Yeah, trying to sneak in, Trying to sneak in a sig when you can.
• 53:10
  At least you could get away with that up there.
• 53:12
  I could like burn one while I was there maybe.
• 53:14
  Pre vape days for sure. Yeah.
• 53:15
  None of that existed. That was, those are wild times.
• 53:18
  I've worked a lot of wrestling during college.
• 53:21
  That was what that was a staple in in Dayton.
• 53:24
  Yeah. And concerts too.
• 53:25
  We did all the concerts we had. Remember the phrase pavilion we
• 53:28
  played at? That was my we call that summer
• 53:30
  camp. The lighting company I worked
• 53:32
  for in town there brought a lot of its staff there for the whole
• 53:36
  summer season. So got a lot of practice running
• 53:39
  spotlights out there. That's where I got first got my
• 53:41
  first run at like concert sound like, you know, normal band
• 53:46
  sound versus like orchestras and theatre was was working out
• 53:48
  there at the phrase with with James and Todd and these guys,
• 53:53
  you know, other other legends in the business locally up there.
• 53:56
  You know, James now teaches at my college that I went to
• 53:58
  college at and Todd's running another Todd's running that
• 54:02
  production sound company up there now too.
• 54:05
  So yeah, I got a lot of practice cutting my teeth in those veins.
• 54:08
  But we had great shows. All the classic rock acts came
• 54:11
  through the the journey foreigner foreigner had six
• 54:15
  spotlights, all synchronized. We had the LD was amazing.
• 54:18
  It was all par cans and stuff and all ink like conventional
• 54:21
  lights. No moving lights, not show, but
• 54:24
  a lot of the art was done with spotlights in that show.
• 54:26
  So the LD would be like spot one and six.
• 54:28
  You're going to snap to blue out my like hall, stand by and go
• 54:32
  those spots. Snap to blue on this, you know,
• 54:34
  on this downbeat of this song or this thing.
• 54:36
  Those two guitar players go to blue light like really cool
• 54:39
  stuff all called by like legend LDS that just a whole different
• 54:45
  world compared to what we're in now with like intelligent
• 54:47
  lighting and really program shows.
• 54:49
  But fun like these these classic rock bands and all this stuff
• 54:52
  were just amazing to to see and experience I bet.
• 54:57
  That gives, that gives you a baseline.
• 55:00
  Mention this before we go on. That gives you a baseline to
• 55:04
  everything that you do as a production manager.
• 55:06
  That makes makes you a great production manager.
• 55:07
  You've done multiple jobs, not just one role.
• 55:11
  That's a great point. Yep.
• 55:12
  If you want to be a production manager in this business, you
• 55:14
  need to, you don't need to be an expert in in all the
• 55:17
  departments, but you need to know how all the departments
• 55:19
  work, what they require, the timing they require, how the
• 55:23
  gear works. You know what kind of hang ups
• 55:26
  you're going to have when it comes to rigging and things like
• 55:29
  that. When we did our last set in 2020
• 55:30
  and we shut down like very complicated set, a lot of
• 55:33
  rigging that had to happen. A lot of scenic components need
• 55:35
  to go in place before we could set band gear and stuff like
• 55:39
  that up. Yeah, being a production manager
• 55:41
  that's well versed in all the departments will make you
• 55:44
  excellent at your job. I say that, I say that about, I
• 55:48
  say that about being a tour manager as well.
• 55:49
  You can start in any different place the same being a
• 55:52
  production manager, you can start at any different position
• 55:54
  under that umbrella. But it's best to know a little
• 55:57
  about all of it's like me, I mean, I started with merch, but
• 56:00
  I've worked with management and I've, I've, I've know just a
• 56:03
  little about production. I can hack away a little of
• 56:06
  that, you know, and a little of all of it.
• 56:09
  Being able to know what the other jobs do gives you a better
• 56:12
  understanding and you can have compassion or know when to
• 56:15
  hammer down when someone's not doing something.
• 56:16
  You're like, well, this is, you know, you know, that's not how
• 56:18
  it's done or this need, this is the way we need it done.
• 56:23
  Absolutely. And yeah, it makes you more
• 56:25
  well-rounded. I say that like it's same thing,
• 56:26
  like being an athlete. It's good to be, you know,
• 56:28
  growing up you need to play all the sports and then pick the one
• 56:30
  later on that you want to really succeed at.
• 56:32
  Yeah, look at Jordan. Yeah, right.
• 56:34
  I mean, it's good to most, most all great ball players played
• 56:37
  multiple sports and then you it keeps you well-rounded.
• 56:40
  It's just good to be well-rounded and it and it you
• 56:42
  can excel that way. So well, how did that go from
• 56:47
  multiple jobs and to start honing it down to running front
• 56:51
  of house, which is your Forte outside of being a production
• 56:54
  manager or did you go to monitors?
• 56:56
  How did? How did that path go?
• 56:58
  Kind of. So the lighting company I worked
• 57:00
  at, the Life Fantastic in Dayton, OH would get some tours
• 57:04
  and one of their one of their bread and butters was Stomp for
• 57:09
  years and years out. I guarantee there's listeners
• 57:11
  out there, viewers out there that have seen Stomp, whether
• 57:14
  you went and saw him in grade school at one point in time, but
• 57:16
  the guys that bang on all the trash cans and everything, that
• 57:19
  show and that show still exists to this day, was probably one of
• 57:22
  the most long. It has to be one of the longest
• 57:24
  running tours, maybe outside of cats.
• 57:27
  So got to do some work with them filling in when one of the other
• 57:31
  guys country, God rest his soul, couldn't make something.
• 57:33
  Or we would leapfrog rigs. A lot of the time around we
• 57:36
  would have straight trucks. We would leapfrog rigs across
• 57:39
  the country because we're doing theater shows them and Stomp did
• 57:41
  not have room in their truck for the lighting rig.
• 57:44
  Did some work with Stomp and then they got a tour in called
• 57:47
  the Rat Pack live at the Sands. Like that sounds cool.
• 57:51
  They needed a intelligent light program or someone that knew hog
• 57:55
  to the one of the moving light consoles at the time.
• 57:58
  They needed someone on that tour they could handle hanging the
• 58:00
  lighting rig and then also knew that console in case there were
• 58:03
  anything ever to happen. Because at that time, that
• 58:06
  international tour that came over from the show came from
• 58:09
  from England, from London, the West, the West End.
• 58:13
  It was a impersonators, so Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Junior,
• 58:18
  Dean Martin impersonators and then they carried a couple
• 58:21
  principal guys for the band and they would hire in the rest of
• 58:24
  the union, big band, union players, whatever town we were
• 58:27
  in. So if if if you're if anybody
• 58:30
  listens to it, if you listen to the Rat Pack Live at the Sands
• 58:34
  and some Spotify and everywhere else, there's also that.
• 58:37
  That's the album. Live at the Sands with Sinatra,
• 58:41
  with the Count Basie Orchestra is what a lot of the show is
• 58:43
  based off of. It's phenomenal stuff.
• 58:47
  But they needed a yeah, there it is.
• 58:50
  Get that album. You, you, you can't go wrong
• 58:53
  with that stuff. But Count Basie and those guys
• 58:55
  are just on. It's unreal big band music.
• 59:00
  So you need a guy that had those skills.
• 59:01
  No one in the lighting shop at the time knew Hog 2 except me.
• 59:06
  Meanwhile, I'm I'm still like finishing up some college.
• 59:09
  But the timing worked out great. So they took the tour.
• 59:13
  They said, hey, you're going this is going to be your first
• 59:14
  tour ever. Like, all right, great.
• 59:16
  So I love it, love the sound of it.
• 59:18
  We started in San Antonio, Test, Texas at the Majestic, Pretty
• 59:22
  basic, a few trusses of moving lights, a lot of conventionals
• 59:24
  too, a lot of plexiglass, big band stage with, with some up
• 59:29
  lighting and very classy kind of thing.
• 59:31
  Big band on deck, you know, grand piano there as well.
• 59:36
  Yeah. And it's a couple scenic
• 59:37
  components, things like that. Most of the people on the tour
• 59:41
  were from England. End up meeting some great, great
• 59:44
  guys there. The the the dark dry humor from
• 59:46
  those individuals. I'll never forget.
• 59:49
  Dave Burroughs was the front house guy at the time.
• 59:52
  David Lamb was one of the LDS over over the course of the time
• 59:55
  of the bomb Lambeau who's phenomenal.
• 59:58
  Just great English guys. Eventually they need some fill
• 1:00:03
  in for audio when Dave couldn't make it.
• 1:00:06
  So I got to jump into the hot seat on that tour.
• 1:00:08
  Midas Heritage 3K, all analog gear, so great microphones,
• 1:00:14
  great players on stage, analog consoles.
• 1:00:16
  We're carrying Meyer, PA. Just just sounded amazing about
• 1:00:21
  godly good sound like it in all these songs these with these
• 1:00:26
  players that can hit these solos and stuff and they carry like I
• 1:00:28
  said, they carried a few key roles like your lead horn
• 1:00:31
  player, lead trumpet player those guys that can stab those
• 1:00:34
  like triple octaves and stuff like that for these endings of
• 1:00:37
  these saw it was it was really really well done.
• 1:00:40
  This is not my grandma came and saw this this the show before
• 1:00:43
  she passed and said that the are Sinatra.
• 1:00:47
  She's I would never be able to tell the difference.
• 1:00:49
  I've seen the real show in Vegas when I was younger.
• 1:00:51
  She's like this guy's spot on. His name's Steven Triffid.
• 1:00:53
  He still does some Sinatra work these days.
• 1:00:57
  Just great guys. So yeah, did Rat Pack that tour
• 1:01:01
  with that for We did it for years in the fall and winter.
• 1:01:05
  That was when theater tours fall, winter and then in the
• 1:01:07
  spring a little bit. Then did the summertime stuff at
• 1:01:10
  the frays. That was my cycle of a year for
• 1:01:13
  a few years there until eventually I was like, I
• 1:01:16
  remember one of my professors, Matt Benjamin at college said
• 1:01:19
  get out of Dayton. He's like, you can, you can go
• 1:01:21
  to school here. You can work it for a little
• 1:01:23
  bit, but don't live here. Like don't stay here.
• 1:01:24
  You got to get out. I'm like, all right, I got to
• 1:01:26
  get out of this town because Dayton's, I mean, it is what it
• 1:01:28
  is, but it's Ohio. It's it's all right.
• 1:01:30
  But it's, well, you just need to do the.
• 1:01:32
  Experience. Stuff, yeah, because I'm touring
• 1:01:34
  around now, I'm seeing these other cities.
• 1:01:35
  I'm like, wow, like I, I need to like where's my next move going
• 1:01:39
  to be? And I'm like, alright, where am
• 1:01:40
  I going to tour music out? So I really want to get to
• 1:01:42
  music. After working at the Phrase and
• 1:01:44
  seeing a lot of these bands, some of these legend bands I
• 1:01:46
  loved over the years, I'm like, alright, well, it's either going
• 1:01:48
  to be like New York, LA, Atlanta or Nashville.
• 1:01:52
  I'm like, I won't get into the politics of why I don't want to
• 1:01:55
  be in some of those cities. I don't want to live once around
• 1:01:57
  a bunch of concrete anyway. I like nature.
• 1:01:59
  I want some trees around. I have a motorcycle.
• 1:02:01
  I like riding, I like the mountains.
• 1:02:03
  I like camping. Yeah, fishing.
• 1:02:06
  So that leaves out. Yeah, that yeah.
• 1:02:09
  New York's just way too much Kelly.
• 1:02:11
  Kelly's just way too far out there, and it's too much, too.
• 1:02:14
  And then Atlanta and this, I'm just, this is was my
• 1:02:17
  observation. Atlanta's a lot like Nashville.
• 1:02:19
  And when I was thinking about this kind of the same thing,
• 1:02:21
  looking at both cities, Nashville was just a smaller
• 1:02:24
  version of Atlanta where it didn't have the traffic.
• 1:02:26
  Like you still had all the fun things you could get in Atlanta
• 1:02:29
  except for, you know, 7 lanes of traffic.
• 1:02:31
  So because it's lately. We got 7 lanes of traffic.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, but now it caught up. I know I've been telling that
• 1:02:37
  story a lot lately because I used to tell people when I first
• 1:02:39
  moved there, people back home and say, how's Nashville?
• 1:02:41
  My, it's kind of like Atlanta, except without the traffic.
• 1:02:44
  I'm like, you get sushi at midnight, you go to a concert
• 1:02:46
  every night of the week. You, I mean, anything you could
• 1:02:48
  want, any kind of food you want, but you know, not too bad. 30
• 1:02:52
  minutes you get from one side of town to the other without a
• 1:02:54
  problem. And now that's over.
• 1:02:56
  Yeah, yeah. So I just, I chose Nashville.
• 1:02:59
  I started putting my resume out of places and one of the guys
• 1:03:03
  that immediately picked me up with sound image out of
• 1:03:05
  Nashville, Everett Leiboldt, gave me a call back pretty quick
• 1:03:09
  and he's like, you want to come down here and have an interview
• 1:03:13
  with us? I'm like, wow, I'm like, all
• 1:03:14
  right, major sound company wants to interview me.
• 1:03:16
  Like I will be there tomorrow. Like sounds great.
• 1:03:19
  Drove down to Nashville from Dayton, which was probably like,
• 1:03:21
  I don't, I think it's like a 5 hour drive.
• 1:03:24
  Not terrible, but so come down there, meet him, Everett and
• 1:03:27
  another legend of the business, Mike Adams.
• 1:03:29
  Also, God rest his soul, Mike's, we've lost Mike.
• 1:03:34
  Those two interviewed me and just gave me a rundown of what I
• 1:03:37
  knew as far as sound and whatnot.
• 1:03:38
  They're like, all right, we're going to put you out as we need
• 1:03:40
  a monitor engineer for this band called The Band Perry.
• 1:03:42
  I'm like, OK, cool. Like I'm like, when does it
• 1:03:45
  start? And I think it started probably
• 1:03:46
  in like a week or two after that.
• 1:03:48
  I'm like, cool. I'm like, I don't even live down
• 1:03:49
  here. I'm like, I'll they're like, you
• 1:03:51
  can meet bus call. You can just drive down the bus
• 1:03:54
  call and, and go from there. And you're going to take.
• 1:03:56
  I don't know if they remember if we built stuff.
• 1:03:58
  We didn't quite have much of a tour built yet.
• 1:04:00
  So I came down to the shop and built.
• 1:04:02
  I mean, we're carrying small stuff.
• 1:04:03
  We were in a bus trailer, so it's just the microphones.
• 1:04:06
  And I think I had a small analog Allen and Heath console and some
• 1:04:09
  Sennheiser years. Nothing fancy at all.
• 1:04:11
  Small stuff built the show like I used to drive down from Dayton
• 1:04:16
  to Nashville for the first month or two of that tour, meet the
• 1:04:21
  bus. We used to meet at the Kroger
• 1:04:22
  and Hermitage and I would get down there early and like I
• 1:04:25
  remember there's a couple times I and he would never do this
• 1:04:27
  this day, but I used to sit in that parking lot.
• 1:04:30
  I would string my hammock up between like my trailer hitch
• 1:04:32
  and my truck to a light pole and like take a nap out in that
• 1:04:35
  parking lot if the bus wasn't there yet.
• 1:04:37
  But I did that for for a couple months.
• 1:04:40
  How far is that drive? About 5 hours from from Dayton
• 1:04:45
  to Nashville. So I used to do that back and
• 1:04:47
  forth. Which one of our, you know, our
• 1:04:48
  lighting tech chase right now is doing the same thing from North
• 1:04:51
  Carolina. I did that until I found that
• 1:04:53
  guest house out on the West side of town for 500 bucks.
• 1:04:56
  I was like, all right, it's time to make the move and get out.
• 1:04:57
  What year was that? That.
• 1:04:59
  That was 2010, 2002 thousand. It was right after the flood.
• 1:05:05
  Was that the year of the flood? Was it 10 or 11?
• 1:05:08
  It was 2010. Yeah.
• 1:05:10
  So this was like August 2010. Yep.
• 1:05:14
  And then moved on here and have a look back.
• 1:05:16
  We did a show with Justin one day on The Band Perry was
• 1:05:19
  opening up for Justin and I met Pete, Justin's manager that day
• 1:05:23
  and we we hit it off and exchanged numbers.
• 1:05:25
  They they were looking for a front of house guy.
• 1:05:27
  That's why I transitioned back from monitor.
• 1:05:30
  I'm not a monitor guy. Monitors is a it's own beast.
• 1:05:32
  You get a list on the show, she'll tell you all about it.
• 1:05:34
  Because when you're doing monitors, you are, you are not
• 1:05:37
  mixing for yourself. You are mixing for whatever that
• 1:05:39
  other person wants to hear. And some people want to hear
• 1:05:41
  some wildly different kinds of mixes, depending on what
• 1:05:45
  instrument they're playing or what they want to hear into
• 1:05:47
  conjunction. Sometimes guitar players want to
• 1:05:49
  hear the other guitar player as well, and some so.
• 1:05:52
  And then there's their interpretation of it, of what
• 1:05:56
  they're hearing or not hearing. I hear.
• 1:05:58
  I hear it on my ears at night. I'm like.
• 1:06:00
  Yeah, you wear a mix too. You know what it's like.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah, just just to look at Alyssa and to talk back and say
• 1:06:06
  it kind of feels like I'm. I'm riding a tractor down a dirt
• 1:06:09
  road and the sun's not shining too bright, you know what I
• 1:06:12
  mean? Does that make any?
• 1:06:12
  And she'll go, Yep, I know exactly what you mean and I'm
• 1:06:15
  like, that didn't make sense to nobody but her and him.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, she has learned over the course of time, you know an
• 1:06:21
  artist, she knows what he's looking for and can interpret or
• 1:06:23
  their description. And he's pretty good.
• 1:06:25
  He's pretty good at saying what he's hearing in a way.
• 1:06:28
  Like I've heard some other interpretations and stuff over
• 1:06:31
  the years. I'm like Justin knows and like
• 1:06:32
  he can. And he's also forgiving too.
• 1:06:34
  If she if she needs a song or two to figure out exactly what
• 1:06:37
  it is he's gonna dialed in. Yeah, he's he's pretty good at
• 1:06:40
  that, though. I'm.
• 1:06:40
  I've been impressed with what he hears and I'm.
• 1:06:43
  Glad he's not one of those artists that'll scream a number
• 1:06:46
  out. Yeah, pull out a little 900,
• 1:06:48
  push the 4K. Sounds too purple today like.
• 1:06:52
  Yeah, and you're just like, you don't.
• 1:06:54
  I used to always know, oh Lord, I'm going to do what I think
• 1:06:57
  needs to happen here because I know that frequency he's talking
• 1:07:00
  about is my few little times I've ever done monitors.
• 1:07:03
  I'm like that doesn't make any sense what you're saying.
• 1:07:06
  So let me pull this out because I know that's where it's coming
• 1:07:08
  from. But so then so you talk you meet
• 1:07:12
  the great Pete Hartung he's from New Jersey, you're from Ohio.
• 1:07:15
  Y'all both love the rat pack. I'm sure that didn't hurt the
• 1:07:17
  whole conversation there because both good dancers and so you
• 1:07:24
  meet Pete, you're you're doing the monitors.
• 1:07:26
  It's great it's an upgrade. I mean no knock on that band and
• 1:07:28
  that happens in our business. We've talked about that with
• 1:07:30
  other guests on the show. It's, it's not, it's just, it's
• 1:07:33
  just work. That's how it, that's how this
• 1:07:34
  business works. You move, you transfer, you
• 1:07:36
  know, just things happen. So you go from running monitors
• 1:07:38
  with Band Perry, then you're going to go out on the road with
• 1:07:40
  Justin Moore and do front of house, who at the time was due
• 1:07:43
  in front of House. Was it art?
• 1:07:45
  No, I cannot remember his name. But he had a front of house guy.
• 1:07:49
  Was he was he what they were going to let him go and you were
• 1:07:52
  coming in? Or was he already gone and they
• 1:07:54
  needed? I think they were transitioning
• 1:07:55
  in front of house guys because they had lost their front of
• 1:07:58
  house guy the summer before. I want to say he passed away in
• 1:08:03
  a in a very unfortunate some kind of something happened.
• 1:08:07
  So they had like fill in guys, which I think whoever was at the
• 1:08:11
  time when I met Justin that night or met Pete that night, it
• 1:08:14
  was just a fill in guy and he was, I think they were, they
• 1:08:16
  were struggling so. I dropped out for a second to
• 1:08:21
  make sure. Oh, you're back.
• 1:08:23
  Yep, you got me. Yep, I got you.
• 1:08:26
  Off topic here though, I just found out last night I get home
• 1:08:28
  my internet's not working so I do my normal unplug, reset my
• 1:08:32
  router. We have, we have broad, we have
• 1:08:36
  point broadbands fiber here now which has been.
• 1:08:40
  Great fiber down there. Yep so we so I'm talking I want
• 1:08:43
  to talk to the tech anyway let's just run it now I'm doing my
• 1:08:46
  thing. I'm sure this will work, but
• 1:08:47
  let's just run it anything you see on your end.
• 1:08:49
  Let's just check everything while I got you on the horn
• 1:08:51
  seemed like a good guy. You know once I finally got
• 1:08:53
  through the press 1 for this 2 for that give us your code for
• 1:08:57
  this that. You know.
• 1:08:58
  I finally get somebody on the phone that I can understand, he
• 1:09:01
  can understand me. So we just convo and he looks it
• 1:09:03
  up and I'm not getting I'm getting like at Max 100 gigs.
• 1:09:07
  I'm supposed to get 1000 gigs. So or yeah, megabits, probably.
• 1:09:11
  You're supposed to be getting a gig.
• 1:09:12
  Yeah, you get like 10. Percent, 10% of what I'm
• 1:09:14
  supposed to be getting, he's like something's wrong.
• 1:09:17
  So I look at this, we do a couple troubleshoots.
• 1:09:19
  Can't get that figured out. I got a tech coming next
• 1:09:21
  Tuesday. Think there's something with
• 1:09:23
  the? The line coming in somewhere.
• 1:09:28
  Yeah, somewhere in there or the not HDMI, whatever the cable is
• 1:09:32
  that goes from the wall to the router itself that, that not
• 1:09:35
  CAT5 or CAT7, whatever it is. And there's something somewhere
• 1:09:39
  is not connecting because I'm getting some but not near what I
• 1:09:41
  should get. And the mine comes from the wall
• 1:09:44
  or comes out of the wall goes into Adosi think he called it,
• 1:09:50
  which it goes into that and back out of that to the router and
• 1:09:53
  that's plugged into a plug. Yeah, that's the fiber pride
• 1:09:57
  comes into the house and then gets converted over to Ethernet
• 1:10:01
  in that box. Yeah, but then you have an
• 1:10:03
  access point outside too, right? You have a cable run outside
• 1:10:06
  over to your building, don't you?
• 1:10:08
  No. Or are you doing it all
• 1:10:09
  wireless? Now we're doing it all wires.
• 1:10:11
  I've got 3 jump spots you know, that go around.
• 1:10:16
  So it actually got one in my garage now in the shop back here
• 1:10:20
  and then there's one like in the living room and then one in the
• 1:10:23
  back of the house and it it does pretty well.
• 1:10:25
  It struggles out in Charisse she shed, but it's pretty good.
• 1:10:29
  I might add another one, but it's been great.
• 1:10:32
  But I may have just been getting this the whole time, not getting
• 1:10:35
  what I'm paid. You know what I've been paying
• 1:10:36
  for? Oh yeah, cuz I have Gigabit
• 1:10:38
  fiber at the house now, which they installed I think is last
• 1:10:41
  year maybe or maybe the year before and before that, you
• 1:10:44
  know, when you live out in the country and sometimes it's you
• 1:10:46
  get what you get. We had cable, but like it would
• 1:10:48
  drop out all the time, all the time.
• 1:10:50
  It would and if you needed to upload anything if you're if
• 1:10:52
  you're editing music and stuff like it and sending big files
• 1:10:56
  that would take forever. And now they dropped and this is
• 1:10:58
  all fresh fiber install out here like so it is lawless and it is
• 1:11:03
  phenomenal and it is $50.00 a month for a Gigabit, which is
• 1:11:06
  cheap. See.
• 1:11:07
  Ours is like 110. We're not not even getting it.
• 1:11:11
  And same, ours was OK. Ours was spotty at best.
• 1:11:14
  And when Justin and I were doing his podcast, I'm trying to
• 1:11:17
  upload these big files and it was taking.
• 1:11:19
  Hours forever and so I. Ordered Starlink.
• 1:11:22
  I was, I had to be one of the first thousand 2000 people in
• 1:11:25
  Alabama to order Starlink, but they didn't have it in our area
• 1:11:28
  yet. So I was waiting for my
• 1:11:30
  equipment, Waiting for my equipment.
• 1:11:31
  Literally my equipment comes like the week after they install
• 1:11:34
  fiber. So you're like.
• 1:11:37
  So, yeah, so I take the Starling.
• 1:11:40
  We go to Louisiana. We don't have Internet there.
• 1:11:42
  I run it, you know, I run it there and use it and have it if
• 1:11:45
  we go on vacation or anywhere we think we might need it.
• 1:11:47
  I just take it with us because all needs a power cord and I've
• 1:11:50
  got Internet, you know, if you need.
• 1:11:52
  Yeah, and I'm not. Very clever stuff.
• 1:11:54
  Even if I'm not doing big stuff, you know, Charisse and I both
• 1:11:57
  have little stuff we need to be doing on our computer or, you
• 1:11:59
  know, call things like that. So you just need it sometimes.
• 1:12:02
  But. Yeah, I take it with me if we're
• 1:12:04
  going camping or something like that or like, and our crew bus
• 1:12:06
  was the first, our crew bus, I'm proud to say I'm talking to
• 1:12:09
  Michael Brammer. As soon as the FCC allowed the
• 1:12:11
  license for Starlink to be mounted and be mobile in
• 1:12:15
  operation, we our crew bus was the first one to get it mounted
• 1:12:18
  on. I think it's probably the first
• 1:12:19
  tour bus in the United States to have it.
• 1:12:23
  And boy, was that a game changer to have high speed Internet
• 1:12:26
  rolling down the road. Or when you're at a festival
• 1:12:28
  site when all the cell towers are blocked up and you can't
• 1:12:31
  even get a phone call out, boom, we have high speed Internet and
• 1:12:34
  the bus you can make, you can do video calls or make a, you know,
• 1:12:37
  calls over Wi-Fi. Impressive stuff.
• 1:12:40
  It really is and I've I've said that to a lot of people in our
• 1:12:43
  industry and when people ask about different things on my
• 1:12:46
  tour manager chat group, I actually, you know, cut and
• 1:12:49
  paste some of the stuff you the information you've dug up on
• 1:12:51
  different things and the new stuff that's coming now and told
• 1:12:54
  everyone who's asked. What does anybody think about
• 1:12:56
  Starlink? I'm like game changer.
• 1:12:58
  We couldn't do without it if. You tell them to stay tuned.
• 1:13:00
  This new this new install will do on Justin's bus is going to
• 1:13:03
  be another game changer too because everything streams on
• 1:13:06
  that bus. So goodbye DIRECTV.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah, Jeff, not just a production manager, he's also a
• 1:13:11
  consultant on these things. So you for a small fee you can
• 1:13:14
  have Jeff consultant make sure you've got all these things on
• 1:13:16
  your bus as well. So y'all stay tuned for that.
• 1:13:19
  We'll get you back, dude. We did that to Hauser's bus.
• 1:13:21
  Yeah. Yeah, got him set.
• 1:13:23
  Him. What's up with Starlink?
• 1:13:23
  Yeah. I think Tracy Lawrence too, I
• 1:13:25
  think they reach out they were they want to get hooked up to
• 1:13:27
  which miss both those guys. But anyway, so we'll get back to
• 1:13:32
  we'll get back on our chronological order here.
• 1:13:34
  So so Pete comes to you, they're in transitional period, need a
• 1:13:38
  full time front of house guy. So you come on.
• 1:13:40
  So this would have been a 20. January. 2011 January of 2011.
• 1:13:47
  Yep, sound check. Nashville supposed to.
• 1:13:49
  There's supposed to be a couple people trying out where I met
• 1:13:51
  Art and the band for the first time.
• 1:13:53
  We're in one of the actually the decent size rehearsal room in
• 1:13:56
  there, you know, had some, some speakers stacked up in the
• 1:13:59
  console and it's like, all right.
• 1:14:01
  Who got art? Art at the point at this point
• 1:14:03
  was working for them already. Yeah, Art was doing monitors and
• 1:14:08
  and production manager Art. Art was approachmented for a
• 1:14:11
  long time until I took over. So he had those two roles and to
• 1:14:15
  start out it was just Art and I, there was nobody else.
• 1:14:19
  A few weeks after I came on when they're like, yeah, we like this
• 1:14:22
  guy, bring him on. After that we had intern.
• 1:14:25
  That's when Aaron Marosa came with us as an intern that way.
• 1:14:29
  He was like our like our first, like third person.
• 1:14:31
  Like he was the he was the catch all guy, the back line guy.
• 1:14:35
  The the I remember Art and I talked about because we like we
• 1:14:38
  fell in love with intern and Dave when I were talking about
• 1:14:41
  too, like they were down in Florida somewhere and like
• 1:14:44
  interim grab roll gaff tape was like taping tables down the
• 1:14:48
  stage. Like any cables we had like
• 1:14:49
  guitar a loose or something those crossing there so no one
• 1:14:51
  tripped on. We're like, wow, look at this
• 1:14:52
  guy go. We didn't even have to tell him
• 1:14:54
  to do that. Like and Dave like he's a total
• 1:14:56
  keeper. Like got to keep this guy
• 1:14:57
  around. That was how intern came out.
• 1:14:59
  Yeah, it wasn't only a few weeks after I started is when he came
• 1:15:03
  came on board. So it was the three of us for
• 1:15:05
  that first year and then all the band on one bus and a trailer,
• 1:15:10
  an over heavily, heavily overloaded trailer full of gear.
• 1:15:14
  When we hit the road. That was right after Small Town
• 1:15:16
  USA hit, I think it hit the year before.
• 1:15:19
  If I'm if I remember right, that was Justin's first number one.
• 1:15:24
  That was his first number. That sounds about right because
• 1:15:26
  they put back that thing up. I want to say in out in like O8
• 1:15:31
  or O9 and then small town was 210 and then third was how I got
• 1:15:39
  to be this way and so you would have been around for how I got
• 1:15:44
  to be this way. Once it it was a single.
• 1:15:46
  Watched it go yeah #1. Yeah, we, we did.
• 1:15:49
  I try to remember exactly what our first year looked like, but
• 1:15:52
  I mean, it was all the honky tonks, all the, all the good
• 1:15:54
  honky tonks across the country. We've, we've, we've played
• 1:15:57
  pretty much all of them, I would argue.
• 1:16:00
  And then our first, I think our first tour that I was with them
• 1:16:03
  on was probably Rascal Flatts. That was our first big tour
• 1:16:06
  where we were like, we flip-flopped with I think it was
• 1:16:10
  Sarah Evans. We'd flip flop with each night
• 1:16:12
  for the direct support role on the flats tour.
• 1:16:16
  And that was then the year after that was the Eric Church tour,
• 1:16:19
  Eric's first arena tour. We were direct support with him
• 1:16:22
  and then and Kit Moore and then Art and I used to mix Kit Moore
• 1:16:27
  and just. Moore And we flipped some of
• 1:16:29
  those shows with you when I was with John Party on that same
• 1:16:32
  Eric Church tour because sometimes Brantley would be
• 1:16:34
  direct support and we would open for Brantley and then on some of
• 1:16:38
  the shows you guys didn't do on that same.
• 1:16:41
  What was that tour called? It was I got my laminate
• 1:16:44
  somewhere. Blood, sweat and beers.
• 1:16:46
  Blood sweat and beers. Yeah.
• 1:16:47
  Blood, sweat and beers. That was it.
• 1:16:48
  Yep. So around the same time.
• 1:16:50
  Yeah. The Great tour, Todd.
• 1:16:51
  That was one of the best tours ever.
• 1:16:53
  Like those guys. Yeah, Sambo and and Herbie, God
• 1:16:57
  rest his soul. All those guys like Legends Now
• 1:17:02
  and now and Ben, Ben Rigby, who was a tech out there.
• 1:17:04
  And now he's front of house for Eric Church, killing it.
• 1:17:09
  Yeah, shout out Ben Rigby. Shout out Team Eric Church
• 1:17:11
  chief, all your boss. Great.
• 1:17:13
  I. Miss you guys.
• 1:17:14
  Yeah, man, that's one of our favorites.
• 1:17:16
  That's I look, I mentioned Todd bunch.
• 1:17:18
  I'm here all the time. He was really helpful to me in
• 1:17:20
  those early days because at the same time, I had just come from
• 1:17:23
  club honky tonk scene regionally to the big leagues and here I am
• 1:17:27
  at, you know, we're opening for Brantley, opening for Eric
• 1:17:30
  Church at Red Rocks and I'm like, I I can't how did I get
• 1:17:33
  here? You know, I'm and I'm and I'm a
• 1:17:35
  one man band. I don't even have any production
• 1:17:37
  help. I'm I'm taping cables down.
• 1:17:40
  I'm setting up guitar pedal boards.
• 1:17:42
  Yeah, we're party at the time. Yeah, and trying to do the best
• 1:17:45
  I could with using whatever help tipping out or whatever we could
• 1:17:48
  do. And you know, we play clubs
• 1:17:49
  sometimes show up and the sound man's drunk.
• 1:17:51
  I would run sound at the club because and I barely the only
• 1:17:54
  reason I knew what I what I did know was from trial and error
• 1:17:57
  with Wayne and then Southern Hauler with I mean, just it's
• 1:18:00
  crazy, but just enough to get by.
• 1:18:02
  Hey, whatever you got to do to get the show.
• 1:18:03
  Whatever you got to do to get. By you do whatever you got to do
• 1:18:06
  to get a show going, yeah. You get you get it done.
• 1:18:08
  So, so then you're on. So you're on tour with Justin.
• 1:18:11
  Y'all are y'all are rock'n'roll by this point.
• 1:18:12
  You're rocking and rolling. Y'all are out opening for
• 1:18:14
  church. I mean Justin's got a couple of
• 1:18:16
  number ones under his belt. Things are going good.
• 1:18:18
  So then I guess that would be the next year when I met you
• 1:18:22
  guys. Y'all did your?
• 1:18:23
  Own tour. That was our first headline
• 1:18:25
  tour. When Party was opening up for
• 1:18:27
  us, it was. Outlaws like me.
• 1:18:29
  Yep. And who's our Dustin Lynch?
• 1:18:31
  John Pardy and Dustin Lynch and Justin Moore?
• 1:18:34
  Yeah, and you're at the Time Bandwidth Party.
• 1:18:36
  Yep, I was and at the time Dustin Lynch was on was still
• 1:18:40
  was managed by Pete. Justin, the manager.
• 1:18:41
  They're both managed by Pete. Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  Great way to double dip there, Pete.
• 1:18:45
  I hear you. That's what a lot of that's what
• 1:18:47
  a lot of people do now. They still do that.
• 1:18:48
  Yeah. Or a label.
• 1:18:50
  The label puts 2 together because it easy.
• 1:18:51
  Tour might have a bunch of the same artists from the same YEAH
• 1:18:54
  management or label out Yeah. That happens regularly, but
• 1:18:57
  yeah, the Outlaws Like Me tour. We come out open for you guys.
• 1:18:59
  Guys, that was just, that was the first time we got a whole
• 1:19:03
  tour to go open for somebody. Before that, we were just fill
• 1:19:06
  in weekends here and there on tours, whether it be Luke Bryan
• 1:19:09
  or Church or somebody like that. Then then we go out, we're going
• 1:19:13
  to play, I don't know, 30-40 dates with you guys.
• 1:19:15
  This was a tour. We were pumped and we just
• 1:19:17
  started riding the bus regularly and yeah, we get out there and
• 1:19:21
  at this point it's you, Art Intern Warhawk, Aaron Luke.
• 1:19:30
  And Aaron Luke. That was it.
• 1:19:32
  We didn't have AI guess it get intern was our guitar tech and
• 1:19:36
  stage manager and all of that. So we had a 55 crew.
• 1:19:39
  We had a five piece band. Then when I kept when I got
• 1:19:42
  there, it was Rodger, Dave, Corey, Josh Cross and Nathan
• 1:19:49
  Sexton. Nasty Dane.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah, God bless him. I love Nate, my buddy.
• 1:19:54
  We had John Kaler out for systems engineer and we had a
• 1:19:58
  couple of. Andrew, Andrew Oaks, Andrew Oaks
• 1:20:02
  Swag Swaggy. Keith Dixon, Swaggy, Swaggy.
• 1:20:06
  Swaggy was kind of my first friend, him and then Josh, which
• 1:20:09
  obviously I love. Josh Cross.
• 1:20:10
  That's my brother. He's doing great these days.
• 1:20:12
  Shout out to him. Love you, brother.
• 1:20:14
  I know you had some tough stuff family recently.
• 1:20:16
  I was thinking about you on that.
• 1:20:18
  But great bunch. And yeah, Swaggy was the first
• 1:20:20
  one that because I had to, I was going to tip him out to sell our
• 1:20:23
  merch because I was a one man band.
• 1:20:24
  I couldn't sell merch. Yeah, you couldn't do it.
• 1:20:25
  Do everything. So we got to be buddies and then
• 1:20:29
  Brian are then the bus driver at that point because at that time
• 1:20:33
  Robbie was driving the semi truck.
• 1:20:35
  That's why Robbie came on driving the truck.
• 1:20:37
  So Brian and I both being from the same part of Mississippi,
• 1:20:41
  we, we hit it off real quick. And then really everybody, you
• 1:20:45
  guys were so nice to us and so cool.
• 1:20:47
  I guess as it makes sense. It was y'all's first big one.
• 1:20:49
  Y'all were happy to be there too, you know.
• 1:20:51
  I remember you coming up to us going, hey, what can I do to
• 1:20:53
  help? Like I, I'm only one man, but
• 1:20:55
  like I can, I can do some stuff where I hate.
• 1:20:56
  Can you help us get your back dropped on every?
• 1:20:58
  Night. Yeah, well, I wanted.
• 1:20:59
  That would be great. Yeah, I didn't want to be.
• 1:21:01
  I didn't want to be like, you know, I was like, I want to
• 1:21:03
  help. I want to do stuff and I want
• 1:21:05
  and for me, I wanted to see what was going on because I knew
• 1:21:07
  where this thing was going. I needed to learn what I needed
• 1:21:10
  to, you know, anything I could learn because I hadn't been on
• 1:21:12
  that big level like that. I would I done I could tell you
• 1:21:15
  how to negotiate with some club owner in the Deep South, you
• 1:21:18
  know, and and this and that, but but not but not some of that
• 1:21:22
  stuff. So yeah, I was glad to be there
• 1:21:24
  and, and and it was and then eventually I brought dude man
• 1:21:26
  Davey out to help some, which is still I was still a.
• 1:21:28
  One man he. Was absolutely no help.
• 1:21:31
  He he can watch the dog some he was good at that.
• 1:21:33
  He knows that we still vacation together and party together.
• 1:21:36
  He he he's he's listening to this and he's laughing because
• 1:21:38
  he knows it. I, I looked at it one time I was
• 1:21:40
  like, damn Davey, I can't do it all I said I, I gave you one
• 1:21:43
  thing to do. That's the only thing I needed
• 1:21:44
  you to do and you couldn't even do that.
• 1:21:46
  Just get out of here. But but yeah, so, so and you
• 1:21:50
  guys were just super nice to us and accommodating him.
• 1:21:52
  Joey was super cool, even though I thought he was a like a
• 1:21:55
  undercover cop or something for the first couple of months.
• 1:21:57
  So I really got his. Got a great poker face.
• 1:22:00
  Great poker face, Joey G Great poker face.
• 1:22:02
  And we were doing shows with Brad, Denise Garrett, who are
• 1:22:05
  great hosts. They do.
• 1:22:06
  They put on great shows. They've done these big Cody
• 1:22:08
  Johnson tours last few years for us.
• 1:22:10
  They were. Doing Blake Shelton over the
• 1:22:12
  years, Miranda. Yeah, they.
• 1:22:13
  Just do a great job. Shout out Police Productions.
• 1:22:16
  Great bunch there. Todd Bunch was out with them.
• 1:22:18
  Then Walt, our good buddy Walt in Saint Louis.
• 1:22:23
  Just a, just a nick, I mean just a great bunch to work with.
• 1:22:27
  So it was a great experience for us and that's how I first met
• 1:22:31
  you guys. And then we, I guess we used to
• 1:22:34
  drink a lot, but I guess we all partied together some and we got
• 1:22:36
  to hanging out some during. She might have been a little bit
• 1:22:39
  of that over over the course of the years, maybe a little over
• 1:22:41
  the course of 1000 shows, you know.
• 1:22:43
  Yeah. But then and then during that
• 1:22:45
  year some when we were, we would be at a show, not with you guys
• 1:22:48
  on tour. We would be at a fair festival
• 1:22:51
  together or something like that. We would all start hanging out
• 1:22:53
  some and that's kind of where I got to be budded up with Justin.
• 1:22:55
  We just got to talk and then about normal old country folk
• 1:22:58
  stuff, Arkansas, Alabama. And then by the end of that year
• 1:23:03
  is when they asked me to come on and be Joey's assistant.
• 1:23:07
  How do you remember anything about that?
• 1:23:09
  Did you remember them mentioning?
• 1:23:10
  Anything. Yeah.
• 1:23:10
  I was just going through that in my head.
• 1:23:11
  I don't. All I remember is just at one
• 1:23:14
  point we're like Jaris coming out with us, like cool, that'll
• 1:23:18
  be good. We can use some help over in
• 1:23:20
  that side of things, organizing runners later at night or
• 1:23:23
  whatever it may be. There's always, we've always
• 1:23:28
  been such a slim crew, a small crew with taking on multiple
• 1:23:32
  roles that anytime we could get more help.
• 1:23:36
  Absolutely still now, but I don't remember how it happened.
• 1:23:39
  I don't remember where. Like what were your first date
• 1:23:41
  was? I can't remember.
• 1:23:43
  I just, I think I remember telling Justin that that John
• 1:23:47
  was going to take a month off to go hunting in like South Africa
• 1:23:50
  with his dad and he's like, what are you going to do?
• 1:23:52
  I was like, I don't know, I ain't got nothing.
• 1:23:53
  He said. Why don't you come work for us?
• 1:23:54
  We need, Joey needs an assistant because he's got to go with me
• 1:23:57
  everywhere and he needs somebody on site to set the things up and
• 1:24:01
  talk to people and get dressed. Bus stock, hotels and runners
• 1:24:04
  handled and you know, we'll pay you a couple 100, you know,
• 1:24:09
  whatever a week and our show pay until, you know, throughout the
• 1:24:13
  end of the year, you know, and it was cool by the end of that
• 1:24:15
  he offered me to come stay on full time.
• 1:24:19
  But the first shows we did were in, I want to say early November
• 1:24:24
  or late October. And I know for a fact the first
• 1:24:27
  two shows we did was at outside show at Coyote Joe's and an
• 1:24:32
  inside show at the Music Farm in Greenville.
• 1:24:36
  And our opening act both night was Chris Stapleton.
• 1:24:40
  Yep, I'll never forget that outside show with Stapleton that
• 1:24:42
  night. Open it up for us cuz I just I
• 1:24:44
  just remember I got the opportunity to pass around a
• 1:24:47
  bottle of Jack that night with Chris Stapleton.
• 1:24:49
  Have him tell some stories just as like one of the guys, another
• 1:24:56
  legend, like, yeah, he's ascending through those.
• 1:25:00
  Ranks. But he was yeah, he was just.
• 1:25:01
  He and he and Roger went to school together.
• 1:25:03
  They grew up together. So it was just like it was just
• 1:25:05
  so cool. And I knew then, you know, we
• 1:25:08
  all knew then because of what he'd been doing in town, that he
• 1:25:10
  was a force to be reckoned with. So we were all.
• 1:25:12
  Oh yeah, sitting. If you knew his music at all,
• 1:25:14
  you're like, it's, it's just a matter of time.
• 1:25:16
  Yeah, from Steel Driver, Johnson brothers, his, his demos, he was
• 1:25:19
  saying, I mean, everybody just knew how how much of A monster
• 1:25:21
  he was. So we would all watch his set
• 1:25:23
  every night. And at the end of that first one
• 1:25:25
  at County Joe's, when I fell off the back of the stage and.
• 1:25:29
  Almost. Yeah, off the back of the stage.
• 1:25:32
  Well, and, and I and I had a few drinks, but it was more of
• 1:25:34
  anything. It was dark back there.
• 1:25:37
  There's dark. All, all day had been light, you
• 1:25:40
  know, because we're outside, there'd been light.
• 1:25:41
  I could see everything. Well, at this time of night,
• 1:25:43
  man, it was dark. There was no hand rails.
• 1:25:46
  I got a flashlight. I don't really know Justin's
• 1:25:48
  routine yet. I don't know.
• 1:25:48
  We had this big set at the time and I didn't know which side of
• 1:25:51
  the set he was going to walk around.
• 1:25:53
  So I'm trying to look and I'm trying to see where he went.
• 1:25:56
  I can't see him. And then whoa, boom, I hit the
• 1:26:00
  earth. Didn't spill my drink, but look
• 1:26:02
  over. About two or three feet from me
• 1:26:04
  was a a spike in the ground that was holding part of the staging
• 1:26:07
  down. I was like, oh, that could have
• 1:26:08
  been real bad. Here comes Joey and Justin
• 1:26:09
  walking by. Joey just looks at me.
• 1:26:11
  You OK? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine.
• 1:26:13
  Be there in a minute. You know, just that was great
• 1:26:17
  start, you know, but but Stapleton with us.
• 1:26:20
  And then the next night we played in in Greenville at the
• 1:26:24
  Music Farm, which I had been to that I had played that venue
• 1:26:26
  before when I helped with the DEXA Teens, the team, the DEXA
• 1:26:31
  Teens, a few shows and we were out with the Drive by Truckers.
• 1:26:33
  And it played that several couple years before that.
• 1:26:37
  But yeah, so then I'm on the road with you guys.
• 1:26:39
  This is the this is the end of 13 going into 14 and we pretty
• 1:26:46
  much rocking and rolling there for a while when they see him
• 1:26:48
  new artist of the year. I mean, what we're doing our own
• 1:26:50
  big tours, we're doing all kinds of cool festivals and stuff.
• 1:26:53
  It's rocking and rolling. And selling good arenas and all
• 1:26:57
  that and. Yeah, it's been great ever
• 1:26:59
  since, really. And then it was, but that was
• 1:27:00
  about the time, you know, it wasn't anything major, but some
• 1:27:07
  people were kind of tiffy with each other from time to time.
• 1:27:11
  And it it wasn't anything major. Like I said, everybody been
• 1:27:14
  together for a long time. And then we started to have some
• 1:27:17
  some exits from the original crew.
• 1:27:19
  Who was The Who was the 1st of bunch?
• 1:27:21
  Did Aaron Luke go first? Trying to remember if it was I
• 1:27:25
  think it. Was because I think Aaron Luke,
• 1:27:28
  I think. It was Aaron Luke first.
• 1:27:29
  And then because he would still come back and most of the crew
• 1:27:32
  was still together when he would come back and help some.
• 1:27:35
  We had him fill in a few times. Yeah, I.
• 1:27:36
  Think and it wasn't anything bad.
• 1:27:38
  He wasn't. Moving out with his career.
• 1:27:41
  Yeah, just do you want to do other things?
• 1:27:43
  Some people, yeah. Some people want to stay with
• 1:27:45
  somebody forever. Then some people want to go.
• 1:27:47
  I want to do rock for a while. I want to do jazz for a while.
• 1:27:49
  Like even like the lighting sound.
• 1:27:50
  Things like they're, they're he's a he became a a a a a
• 1:27:55
  massive programmer like it's a programming other shows was
• 1:27:58
  sooner who's our lighting designer?
• 1:28:01
  It's been for for years. So he worked with her and they
• 1:28:05
  worked side by side for a while as a team, you know, programming
• 1:28:08
  other shows and and now then Aaron Luke now works for not
• 1:28:14
  main light shoot. It's the, it's the company that
• 1:28:16
  owns or owns distributes MA consoles in the the United
• 1:28:20
  States. He's at home now, so and and.
• 1:28:25
  And that's a lot of it, too. A lot of people just want to be
• 1:28:27
  home more, you know, and. You some get the same with same
• 1:28:29
  with interns, same with Aaron Merozik.
• 1:28:31
  He's he's had an uprigging now and now being at home with his
• 1:28:35
  kids and. Yep, and his and his wife had
• 1:28:37
  that business in town, you know that.
• 1:28:39
  He wanted to help. Shout out to Alicia, BA and Yeah
• 1:28:41
  1. Dropping.
• 1:28:42
  Absolutely. Phenomenal tattoo artist.
• 1:28:45
  Absolutely. I've, I mean they, I'm going to
• 1:28:47
  hold her too. They still owe me tattoo from
• 1:28:50
  the time I loaned in my van to go to Florida one time, and they
• 1:28:54
  probably neither one of them gonna remember it, but I'm
• 1:28:55
  holding y'all to that one day when I still hadn't gotten any.
• 1:28:58
  So it's not like I've been cheating on y'all and you ain't
• 1:29:00
  been cheating on me. Because you have to get an
• 1:29:02
  intern on and have him tell him about his tattoo stories.
• 1:29:05
  Because there's. I'd love to have an intern on.
• 1:29:07
  I got yeah. You can't tease that too much
• 1:29:09
  till you show it off. But yeah, there's some.
• 1:29:11
  That's a that's a good Rd. story right there.
• 1:29:13
  But I'm still going to do 1. But yeah, that was that.
• 1:29:16
  That's that. That's classic.
• 1:29:18
  We got to have them on together. We need to have.
• 1:29:19
  That'd be good, yeah. Yeah, we did.
• 1:29:22
  We did. We're going to do a, we're going
• 1:29:23
  to do A at some point, I don't know when, when I'm in Nashville
• 1:29:26
  and I come stay with you sometime when we get some off
• 1:29:28
  day or something. We're going to get everybody
• 1:29:30
  together and do a big. Round table, yes, that would be
• 1:29:33
  great. That would be good.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah, where we had enough stuff and we'll get Cody to help.
• 1:29:36
  So we got plenty of cameras and all that fun stuff and.
• 1:29:38
  And do a great idea. Yeah, that could be really fun
• 1:29:41
  telling those stories. And it'd be good, good content
• 1:29:43
  for Justin's stuff too, you know, It's just some behind the
• 1:29:46
  scenes on us, you know? I got Mike Jones on there from
• 1:29:48
  back in the day guy have him tell some of his Rd. stories.
• 1:29:52
  Eddie, what about Justice Buck? Have you got the two of them
• 1:29:56
  together back and forth like talents?
• 1:29:59
  It'd be. It'd be amazed.
• 1:30:00
  I still think that'd be. Yeah, it'd be incredible.
• 1:30:03
  I'd get Shaggy on, but we wouldn't be able to play 90% of
• 1:30:06
  it. It'd have to be bleeped out.
• 1:30:08
  I think Eddie's stories prior past the statute of limitations
• 1:30:10
  now, so I think it'd be safe. Right.
• 1:30:12
  It didn't matter anymore. But so then so we lose in turn
• 1:30:19
  who, who, who was well, we, we won't go through all the people
• 1:30:21
  we've had to get to where we're at, but to lose in turn then
• 1:30:24
  right around before the pandemic, and it wasn't even
• 1:30:26
  because of the pandemic necessarily.
• 1:30:27
  It was just a change of the guard.
• 1:30:29
  Art was leaving and Joey was leaving and me and you were
• 1:30:31
  going to take over as tour manager and production manager,
• 1:30:34
  which was an easy transition because you'd been there forever
• 1:30:37
  at this point. I'd been there and originally I
• 1:30:39
  was, I was only supposed to be assistant for a couple of years
• 1:30:42
  and Joey's coming off the road, but he stretched that on out
• 1:30:44
  several more years. So at this point I'd been there,
• 1:30:47
  you know, seven years or whatever.
• 1:30:48
  And so we we both knew those jobs inside and out was an easy
• 1:30:52
  transition. Wasn't it like 2017 maybe?
• 1:30:56
  Is that all right? I know my first gigs were end of
• 1:30:59
  19 with Joey. 2018 I remember where where Art said he's he was
• 1:31:05
  leaving and so we were in a casino in Canada and I was like,
• 1:31:07
  oh boy, you know, go through the whole rounds of like, hey, go
• 1:31:11
  talk to Justin, see if you want the roll, yada yada yada.
• 1:31:13
  Yeah, yeah, he was just ready to go do something else.
• 1:31:16
  And then not long after that, he went and worked for Greta Van
• 1:31:18
  Fleet and did the Rock'n'roll stuff for a while.
• 1:31:21
  Yeah, tour with Greta Van Art tour with Greta Van Fleet for a
• 1:31:24
  little while. Did a, did a stint with Laney
• 1:31:26
  Wilson when she was putting out her first big tour.
• 1:31:30
  Now works. Now he works for the TVA.
• 1:31:32
  He's up in Paducah, KY, going to get married and bought a house.
• 1:31:36
  And yeah, we're in Paducah, KY. He's a yeah, he's working,
• 1:31:40
  working on their major projects up there, so.
• 1:31:42
  That's awesome. So then takes over.
• 1:31:44
  So then we go into the pandemic and it's me and you and our
• 1:31:48
  first weekend out, I've told this on here, we get shut down
• 1:31:51
  ice storms of the north or in in up north in the northwest.
• 1:31:56
  Think we're going from Nebraska to.
• 1:31:58
  Pretty sure we all got COVID that weekend too.
• 1:32:01
  Like before we even knew what COVID was because we all, we all
• 1:32:04
  got sick. We're like, Yep.
• 1:32:05
  Like I thought it was like it hurt our one truck driver pretty
• 1:32:08
  bad. He had to go to once we got home
• 1:32:11
  from that weekend, he had to go to urgent care and they were
• 1:32:13
  trying to figure out they're like, well, it's not the flu,
• 1:32:15
  etcetera, etcetera. Same we all got.
• 1:32:17
  I went they told me it was upper respiratory infection and I got
• 1:32:20
  like us but I was sick. I didn't lose taste and smell
• 1:32:23
  thing I did the next time I got it, but yeah, we all came back
• 1:32:26
  sick after that. January of 2020 in Dodge City,
• 1:32:30
  KS. We were rehearsing for like a
• 1:32:32
  week, programming and stuff. We rented the arena out and we
• 1:32:36
  had set up production and Sooner was out there and programming
• 1:32:40
  and and sooner and then we had that was Charles at the time
• 1:32:43
  running lights Charles out with Stapleton.
• 1:32:46
  Now he's he was doing he's pit Cam on Stapleton and maybe crew
• 1:32:52
  chiefing as well, I think or with the Moo TV guys.
• 1:32:56
  I always like Charles. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:59
  Shout out to Charles. Yep shout out great humans yeah
• 1:33:03
  that was that was COVID. That was that was when COVID
• 1:33:06
  hit. I think we ended up getting
• 1:33:07
  maybe a dozen shows in that year before we got shut down about
• 1:33:11
  that just built a brand new set big beautiful set and spent all
• 1:33:15
  that money on new set and got to use it.
• 1:33:18
  What yeah 1012 times or just getting going.
• 1:33:21
  That was with Tracy Lawrence and and then Laney was our opening
• 1:33:27
  act, wasn't she? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:30
  From I. Had I forgot I had these and I
• 1:33:35
  just saw them in my drawer today.
• 1:33:36
  I thought these will be fun to bring out.
• 1:33:38
  Yeah, we had Laney, Tracy and Justin.
• 1:33:42
  There you go. That's from that tour.
• 1:33:44
  Let me see. I think I've got her.
• 1:33:46
  Of our old tour signs. Yeah, out.
• 1:33:49
  Outback. Oh.
• 1:33:51
  Yeah, yeah. Outback Productions that.
• 1:33:53
  Was who was our promoter for the run?
• 1:33:56
  Oh yeah. There it is.
• 1:33:59
  Laney Wilson band dressing room. Doesn't seem like that long ago,
• 1:34:04
  but no. But it is.
• 1:34:06
  And I've got so much of this junk.
• 1:34:07
  I've saved those years because I thought when my career finally
• 1:34:09
  ends, I'm going to Hock all this stuff for $5 a piece on eBay or
• 1:34:14
  something. And hopefully I can make, if
• 1:34:17
  I've got it by bulk, none of it's worth that much
• 1:34:19
  individually, but if I sell it all, I might get if I help my
• 1:34:23
  retirement in some form. But yeah, that was that tour.
• 1:34:26
  And man, had a couple of great shows, big houses, full arenas,
• 1:34:31
  Yeah. And then just got.
• 1:34:32
  We're off to a great start. I mean, we're just getting into
• 1:34:35
  our groove of that tour, you know, carrying video.
• 1:34:39
  Just a beautiful design by Sooner, this whole wooden honky
• 1:34:42
  tonk look on stage, antlers on chandeliers and all this stuff.
• 1:34:46
  Really neat. And yeah, we were in.
• 1:34:49
  Well, we just played it recently.
• 1:34:50
  We were down in Louisiana at that.
• 1:34:53
  Is it the horseshoe? The horseshoe.
• 1:34:57
  And like we got the, that's when we were starting to hear
• 1:34:59
  grumblings across the country of like this virus and all that
• 1:35:02
  stuff and like what they might do.
• 1:35:03
  And that was the day they, they pulled the plug on live events.
• 1:35:06
  And I remember us, we loaded in that day.
• 1:35:09
  We're like, what's going on? What's going on?
• 1:35:12
  And they, they pulled the plug on live events.
• 1:35:14
  They're like, was there going to be a state by state thing?
• 1:35:16
  We're like, well, we're supposed to go to Billy Bob's the next
• 1:35:18
  night. Like what's Texas going to do?
• 1:35:20
  And I'm on the phone with them and they're telling us, no,
• 1:35:23
  we're going to have a show. This is Texas, baby, we're going
• 1:35:25
  to play. And I knew before then because I
• 1:35:27
  I was listening to Joe Rogan already.
• 1:35:28
  And I knew leading up to that I was like, this thing's getting
• 1:35:31
  around people. I don't know, but it's going.
• 1:35:33
  I was like, they're going to make something out of this.
• 1:35:34
  This is going to be a big deal. And yeah, we're in Shreveport.
• 1:35:38
  We're on, we're on the fence calling Billy Bobs.
• 1:35:40
  They're saying Nope, we're going to have the show.
• 1:35:43
  The governor's supposed to make an announcement at 4:00.
• 1:35:45
  I'll call you back after that. What 4 O3?
• 1:35:47
  He calls me back, says we ain't having no show.
• 1:35:50
  So I go get a rental car and I grab a bottle of vodka and a
• 1:35:55
  bottle of like hand sanitizer and a few snacks off the bus and
• 1:35:58
  I take off buddies for I take off.
• 1:36:01
  I thought we were in Louisiana as I'm going back to Louisiana,
• 1:36:03
  so I got on. Yeah, we're like, all right,
• 1:36:04
  we'll see you guys in like 2 weeks.
• 1:36:06
  We'll let this thing calm down. And yeah, yeah, we loaded out,
• 1:36:09
  didn't do a show. He's loaded in a couple hours
• 1:36:11
  later, loaded it back in the trucks and.
• 1:36:14
  I had just, I had just got a package of some more of our
• 1:36:17
  credentials for that. We had some, but I guess I'd
• 1:36:18
  ordered more passes like meet and greets or, you know, just
• 1:36:21
  crew stickers and stuff. So I had like $2000 worth of box
• 1:36:25
  worth of stickers that we would never go get to use.
• 1:36:27
  We, you know, but I remember putting them back up that day
• 1:36:30
  and I was thinking, wow. And I remember Justin and Kate
• 1:36:33
  was there because they were going to go somewhere not long
• 1:36:36
  after that. They were going on a, on a
• 1:36:37
  vacation somewhere and they were like, well, surely that'll still
• 1:36:40
  happen. I was like I don't know, I doubt
• 1:36:43
  y'all gonna be going on any vacation.
• 1:36:45
  I'm just tell well it's already it surely be fine.
• 1:36:46
  Like I know y'all never shut. Things down like.
• 1:36:50
  This before I know and they didn't and this was not they
• 1:36:52
  hadn't officially done it everywhere and all that but I
• 1:36:54
  was like I knew how they didn't. Most people didn't have a clue
• 1:36:58
  that you heard a little bit about this thing, you know, but
• 1:37:00
  you don't really know. And I'm like I'm hearing some
• 1:37:02
  detailed stuff on Rogan, some experts talking about it on all
• 1:37:06
  sides. I'm like, I can tell you this is
• 1:37:07
  going to be a big deal. This isn't just a little
• 1:37:09
  something here and. And then yeah.
• 1:37:11
  And Justin has that he tells the story he commented to our bus
• 1:37:14
  driver. All right well, I'm sure this
• 1:37:16
  we'll see you in just a few weeks.
• 1:37:18
  You know y'all be safe and. Then enjoy your vacation, yeah?
• 1:37:21
  And then it was, I mean, I don't even remember how we started
• 1:37:25
  getting back to doing shows. Months later, we finally did a
• 1:37:27
  couple outlaw shows. I want to.
• 1:37:30
  I'm going to pull up while I talk to you.
• 1:37:31
  I'm going to grab my master tour from the that year.
• 1:37:34
  Yeah, because I, yeah, we did. We did a couple of outlaw shows
• 1:37:37
  where I mean we literally just went and drove and played
• 1:37:39
  places, you know, acoustic and you know, this and that or go
• 1:37:43
  find somewhere that was outside of some jurisdictions.
• 1:37:45
  Go play down in Florida, few things but.
• 1:37:49
  What a whole is. Yeah.
• 1:37:51
  We cancelled all those in March. We did the Mission Ballroom,
• 1:37:56
  Yep. And then we came out Kansas
• 1:37:58
  City, MO. We did that one, the Uptown
• 1:37:59
  Theater. And then after that, the last
• 1:38:02
  one I have on note there was March 21st, which we cancelled.
• 1:38:05
  That was Clueless and Sugar Festival.
• 1:38:08
  And then it was the next thing we did.
• 1:38:14
  We did a gear prep in October. Lynchburg Music Festival in
• 1:38:18
  Mulberry, TN Down by Jack Daniels.
• 1:38:20
  That was one of the first shows we did bad.
• 1:38:22
  That was weird because we're like, what do we do?
• 1:38:24
  Do we wear masks? Do we distance like it?
• 1:38:27
  Was it was it was wild show on multiple levels too, because we
• 1:38:31
  unfortunately, well, Laney was on that show with us.
• 1:38:34
  I remember that that was Stefan's first gig.
• 1:38:36
  Our new guitar player that was his.
• 1:38:37
  First, Oh yeah, because Josh had left us in between then, yeah.
• 1:38:41
  And we unfortunately had a crew member at the time who was in a
• 1:38:44
  bad way during that run, who unfortunately has passed since
• 1:38:50
  then. You know, we had, we were
• 1:38:52
  dealing with that that day. And just like you said, the
• 1:38:55
  uncertainty of not knowing her, like people going to show up, is
• 1:38:57
  this going to happen? What's up?
• 1:38:58
  And then they did, they everybody showed up, no mask.
• 1:39:00
  Everything was rock'n'roll was good, good times.
• 1:39:02
  Catering, again was good. Riley Green opened up for us
• 1:39:05
  that night. Was it Riley and Laney?
• 1:39:07
  Yeah, Riley and Daniel Bradbury. Daniel Bradbury, Okay.
• 1:39:12
  And that was that was our first show back was that was October
• 1:39:15
  3rd of 2020. And we did only did a few
• 1:39:20
  because we were doing distance shows.
• 1:39:21
  We went to Charlotte Motor Speedway and we did the thing
• 1:39:24
  where like it was a drive in so everyone could TuneIn to.
• 1:39:27
  We put our band on stage, the big video wall at Charlotte
• 1:39:30
  Motor Speedway. And then I was in a truck
• 1:39:32
  Outback that SES brought and I had a console back there and I
• 1:39:35
  was mixing like a broadcast version dial into the FM.
• 1:39:40
  We had an FM transmitter and everyone could dial like they
• 1:39:43
  were going to a drive in movie theater and watch.
• 1:39:44
  And it was. So weird because there was no
• 1:39:46
  sound coming from the stage. No, see the bands playing like
• 1:39:50
  you're out. You walked out with the cars and
• 1:39:52
  you could hear a show, but it was such a concophony of sound
• 1:39:56
  coming from so many different places.
• 1:39:59
  It was. It was.
• 1:40:00
  It was. It was.
• 1:40:00
  Very strange. We were trying to make up
• 1:40:02
  freight, fake crowd noise. So just to have.
• 1:40:04
  Them, Yeah. So just felt like something
• 1:40:07
  yeah. Warhawk had some.
• 1:40:08
  Zach had some crowds queued up on a playback system that you
• 1:40:12
  could fade in at the end of songs and people cheer and stuff
• 1:40:15
  to make it feel kind. Of it was wild.
• 1:40:17
  And then we went up to Arkansas and did a couple things like out
• 1:40:20
  in the, you know, little shows out in the sticks.
• 1:40:23
  Just a few things in October North Texas State Fair in
• 1:40:26
  Denton, TX and we did Billy Bob's in December that.
• 1:40:29
  Year. I know we did an acoustic thing
• 1:40:31
  before that because that was Josh.
• 1:40:33
  At one of Josh's last shows, he came down with him and Rodger
• 1:40:36
  and Justin. We met.
• 1:40:37
  We played the floor of Bama at the tent.
• 1:40:39
  Yes, that's right. And we went down to the barn in
• 1:40:42
  Sanford, FL and played an acoustic show.
• 1:40:44
  We did one in Mountain Home AR, too.
• 1:40:46
  Yeah. Acoustic.
• 1:40:48
  Yeah. With Ricky.
• 1:40:49
  Yeah, that's what that cuz that was like us, that was all of us
• 1:40:52
  on Justin's bus. It felt like, like we're gonna
• 1:40:54
  make some. We're some of us are gonna make
• 1:40:55
  some kind of money somewhere. We're gonna go and do acoustic
• 1:40:57
  shows, whoever might want to have us out.
• 1:41:00
  Yeah, Anything we could do to to work, we were ready to go to
• 1:41:02
  work. That was 2020.
• 1:41:04
  And Justin and I drove his truck.
• 1:41:06
  I remember I drove Justin's truck.
• 1:41:07
  We drove his white truck from, I drove all the way to those gigs.
• 1:41:10
  And then there was another one up there somewhere. the IT was a
• 1:41:12
  fundraiser thing out in the, I thought it was in Missouri, but
• 1:41:17
  we've done it again since then. It was a Gigi's thing.
• 1:41:20
  We, we did this place twice, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:41:22
  But anyway, yeah, they were just trickling back and then.
• 1:41:27
  We did. We did that live stream event in
• 1:41:29
  2021 where we started the year off time, did the live.
• 1:41:32
  Stream yeah, Justin was half sick to start with and it just
• 1:41:35
  took us and it was just was weird all together Everybody was
• 1:41:38
  trying to do a couple of. Times yeah, that was different.
• 1:41:41
  Like, oh, people are going to stream this stuff from their
• 1:41:43
  houses, like they want to see a show and we're like, maybe.
• 1:41:48
  But like, I think people want to be at live events.
• 1:41:50
  They want that feeling, that escape.
• 1:41:53
  Yeah, you know, they might watch stuff on TV, but it.
• 1:41:55
  Isn't saying, well you do you watch YouTube stuff, but you're
• 1:41:58
  not going to necessarily watch it like you would a concert.
• 1:42:00
  I'm not going to watch. Yeah, it's not going to give me
• 1:42:02
  the same effect. Like I'm not going to wait and
• 1:42:04
  sit with my popcorn ready to watch this.
• 1:42:06
  I'll watch it on YouTube whenever and YouTube's even
• 1:42:08
  gotten more since then. But it was like, it wasn't like
• 1:42:11
  on demand type stuff. It was tough.
• 1:42:15
  And then we started, yeah, yeah. And after that?
• 1:42:17
  The flora Bam and all that was in 2021, Yeah.
• 1:42:20
  We did the plant in Dothan, AL Yeah.
• 1:42:24
  Then we did Billy Bob's again. That was in March of 21.
• 1:42:28
  Yeah. Even 21 was slow going.
• 1:42:30
  Like it was a few things here and there.
• 1:42:34
  Yeah. A bunch of acoustics, A bunch
• 1:42:37
  of. Acoustic shows just wherever,
• 1:42:39
  whenever, type stuff. Weird times.
• 1:42:42
  I can barely remember it. Weird times.
• 1:42:45
  It's funny, Kyle, some some things stand out as they were,
• 1:42:47
  as they were very recent and other and other, but other
• 1:42:51
  aspects of it, you know, that was five years ago.
• 1:42:55
  It feels like it's messed with our clocks and our and our our
• 1:42:58
  minds the way that happens. Yeah.
• 1:43:01
  And it messed with everything like we were saying earlier, it
• 1:43:03
  messed with every aspect of our business with.
• 1:43:05
  Yeah. And what did you do during the
• 1:43:07
  pandemic? Like, how did you make?
• 1:43:08
  What did you do to make a living?
• 1:43:09
  I went and drove the lumber truck at the builder supply that
• 1:43:13
  went and worked ran sound at the floor of Bama.
• 1:43:17
  I drove Uber for a cup for like a couple of days before they
• 1:43:21
  shut Alabama down too but luckily.
• 1:43:23
  The tourism side of it, yeah. Yeah, the tourist side they
• 1:43:25
  weren't you couldn't rent condos, no tourist could come.
• 1:43:28
  So but the floor of Bama was on was is registered in Florida.
• 1:43:30
  It's on the Alabama, Florida State line.
• 1:43:32
  The actual property is more on Florida.
• 1:43:34
  So the business licenses in Florida.
• 1:43:35
  So it was open for business, but it was there were we had to
• 1:43:39
  morph. Likely at one point they had to
• 1:43:41
  put picnic tables all throughout the whole bar and had to have
• 1:43:44
  waited service and nobody could dance.
• 1:43:46
  They could have bands, but nobody could get up and dance
• 1:43:48
  and some weird things. Isn't that wild to think about
• 1:43:51
  nowadays? It's so strange.
• 1:43:53
  And the mask thing, it's like, what a joke.
• 1:43:57
  That's only if you're if you're sick, you probably should wear a
• 1:44:00
  mask and not try not to get everybody else to see, but still
• 1:44:02
  ain't gonna work. But you should try and like
• 1:44:04
  restrictions. That I'm saying that like
• 1:44:05
  someone controlling like, hey, you can't.
• 1:44:07
  Dance, you can't get too close. You know you're too close to
• 1:44:10
  dancing too close. I'm like, come on now.
• 1:44:12
  But but so I did that. I, I drove the lumber truck a
• 1:44:15
  lot, which was cool because at the time, Justin, I just started
• 1:44:17
  the podcast, so I had time to do the Justin podcast.
• 1:44:20
  I was listening to a lot of podcasts.
• 1:44:22
  I was learning the new place. I had just moved back to Alabama
• 1:44:25
  from Louisiana full time, so I was getting to learn the lay of
• 1:44:28
  this county. I was driving the truck around,
• 1:44:30
  learning all the roads in different places.
• 1:44:32
  That was cool. And then relearning a lot of the
• 1:44:35
  stuff at the floor of Bama. That was probably good for me to
• 1:44:37
  brush up on mid career as far as, you know, remembering how
• 1:44:41
  some sound stuff works, some just aspects of working in a bar
• 1:44:44
  and, you know, loading in bands. I was still getting a load in
• 1:44:47
  and out bands and and talk to people because the radio station
• 1:44:50
  would have special events for Saint Jude where national
• 1:44:53
  artists would come in. So I'd still get to see a couple
• 1:44:55
  of friends and feel somewhat like what we were used to doing.
• 1:44:59
  So I was just doing all that. And then I started doing
• 1:45:01
  remodeling on the side too, which turned into the remodeling
• 1:45:04
  company I own now. But just stay busy.
• 1:45:07
  My, my thought on that was not a lot of people did did whatever.
• 1:45:10
  I, I eased back on the drinking because I was just trying to
• 1:45:14
  keep my immune system up and try to do the best I could with the
• 1:45:17
  what I had dealt to me. And I said, I'm going to be as
• 1:45:20
  strategic as I can with this. And I just stayed busy.
• 1:45:23
  And I thought as long as I'm busy, that's all I can do.
• 1:45:26
  If I can earn, it ain't what I need.
• 1:45:27
  But as long as I've got something coming in and I can
• 1:45:29
  stay busy, that's all I can do to control my, my personal
• 1:45:33
  space. I can't go fix the country or
• 1:45:34
  the world, but I can just do the best I can right here.
• 1:45:37
  So got projects done at home, just stayed, you know, and then
• 1:45:40
  just the podcast kept us involved with a lot because
• 1:45:44
  Justin and I both got to talk to a lot of different artists and
• 1:45:47
  and friends. And then we were doing that on
• 1:45:49
  into the point where we started really rolling and doing shows
• 1:45:52
  again. So that kind of kept it a little
• 1:45:54
  relevant, but we were free, more free down here.
• 1:45:57
  How about you guys? How was Nashville?
• 1:45:59
  Nashville was pretty much locked down, wasn't it?
• 1:46:02
  Yeah, it, it was pretty well locked down.
• 1:46:05
  I mean, it, it without, without going into too many politics,
• 1:46:08
  Nashville is a very blue city in a red state.
• 1:46:10
  So Nashville took a lot of precautions on things.
• 1:46:14
  I, I don't remember how I decided I was going to do it or
• 1:46:18
  how I was looking for jobs because we were trying to find
• 1:46:20
  out how we can make some money. And like, none of the PPP money
• 1:46:23
  ever worked for me at least. Like I never could fit into that
• 1:46:26
  applying for it. So I ended up finding a Courier
• 1:46:28
  company which was in relation to the the pandemic was really
• 1:46:33
  funny. So there's a Courier company
• 1:46:35
  that needed drivers for different things.
• 1:46:37
  They need your own vehicle. So I went and bought Tucker.
• 1:46:42
  Our drummer had his friend Al is is a used to be a certified
• 1:46:47
  Toyota mechanic. I bought a he had an old Toyota
• 1:46:49
  Avalon for sale, like a 2000 Toyota Avalon gold.
• 1:46:53
  Just grandpa car but super comfortable.
• 1:46:56
  Bought for a few grand or a couple grand from him and
• 1:47:00
  started working for this touring company or this Courier company
• 1:47:04
  and our one of we had a few different places that we did
• 1:47:07
  contracts with. One of my jobs was a route I
• 1:47:09
  would do everyday. I would go pick up COVID tests
• 1:47:12
  from rural health departments in Tennessee and I would bring them
• 1:47:15
  back in to a lab in Nashville so they could get processed.
• 1:47:19
  So every day I would go out on my route, I would drive like 2
• 1:47:21
  to 300 miles a day, go out into east or like mid to East
• 1:47:26
  Tennessee, like over towards Cookeville and stuff.
• 1:47:29
  And I did this route through all the hills and stuff.
• 1:47:31
  And I stopped by these rural health departments, had a cooler
• 1:47:33
  in the trunk. And I'd back up all these Covic
• 1:47:35
  tests and take them back in the lab and listen to podcasts every
• 1:47:39
  day and didn't have to talk to anybody hardly.
• 1:47:42
  I just drove around, drove this car.
• 1:47:44
  It was wonderful. I mean, it wasn't a great paying
• 1:47:47
  job, but it was at the time we didn't know what really what
• 1:47:50
  we're like. I'm not, I'm not around anybody.
• 1:47:51
  I want to be around people. It's crazy the way you look at
• 1:47:55
  things because anyone else would think what we did and we're
• 1:47:58
  like, oh boy, this was a great. But if you've done something for
• 1:48:00
  a long time, I was like, well, this is a nice change of pace
• 1:48:02
  here. I have to ride around by myself.
• 1:48:05
  If the money was good at doing that, you know, might be an
• 1:48:07
  argument for just doing that, but.
• 1:48:10
  The other side of it was at night was like we continue
• 1:48:12
  working and there was a pharmacy, there was a, what do
• 1:48:15
  you call it where they mix drugs.
• 1:48:18
  They, there's a major pharmacy in Murfreesboro that compounds
• 1:48:24
  drugs as well. But they have, they do
• 1:48:26
  deliveries especially like Hospice patients, cancer
• 1:48:29
  patients, some hospitals that need certain drugs immediately.
• 1:48:34
  So we were, I guess bonded and, and background checked for that,
• 1:48:39
  but I would go do I, I was AI was a legal narcotics dealer for
• 1:48:43
  the most part in delivery all around Nashville and all around
• 1:48:47
  the area. We would get routes from these
• 1:48:48
  guys and like go, you know, someone may need, I mean, we're
• 1:48:51
  delivering fentanyl to cancer patients or like, you know, some
• 1:48:54
  crazy stuff that was very controlled.
• 1:48:58
  But yeah, we delivered at night time.
• 1:49:00
  I was delivering legal drugs to patients and things and daytime
• 1:49:04
  doing Courier routes of picking up COVID tests and I drove.
• 1:49:08
  I would change the oil in this car like every two weeks because
• 1:49:11
  like 300 miles a day because like in a couple weeks it was
• 1:49:14
  3000 miles. So I had big drugs so I could
• 1:49:17
  change the oil in that car in like 10 minutes.
• 1:49:19
  It was great. That car was the chance.
• 1:49:21
  If any people out there, you've got to buy a car, you buy a
• 1:49:23
  Toyota. Like that car I sold it with, I
• 1:49:26
  finally sold it had 340,000 miles on it.
• 1:49:29
  I think I bought it was like 200.
• 1:49:31
  Yeah, great. Oh, grandpa car.
• 1:49:33
  Super comfortable though. Like great car.
• 1:49:35
  Put a stereo in it. I was like that.
• 1:49:37
  That was me during the pandemic mostly, unless we try to do a
• 1:49:41
  show or something, like an acoustic or something.
• 1:49:43
  Right. And then now we're now we're
• 1:49:46
  back-to-back to back like we got, we were talking earlier,
• 1:49:48
  now we're basically back to normal full touring seasons and
• 1:49:51
  I got two of those under our belt.
• 1:49:53
  Things are getting back more normal and hopefully have
• 1:49:55
  another good one next year. Yeah, we're blessed with an
• 1:49:59
  artist too that keeps them, that tours not all the year, but most
• 1:50:03
  of the year consistently. Yeah.
• 1:50:05
  Like as opposed to some guys that may do, you know, three
• 1:50:08
  months on six months. There's a lot of guys in our
• 1:50:10
  business or especially in the rock side of things or in other
• 1:50:13
  parts where like people bounce between tours all the time.
• 1:50:16
  I have friends that are trying to manage jumping between tours
• 1:50:19
  and lining up schedules and maybe trying to find a fill in
• 1:50:22
  here because this tour starts here and it's like, right?
• 1:50:24
  And we're really blessed we don't have to worry about that.
• 1:50:27
  Yeah, Yeah. We just stay busy.
• 1:50:29
  We spread our 7580 shows out throughout the year and get them
• 1:50:32
  done. And you and IA lot of times
• 1:50:34
  that's you and I is one of our jobs is after it's it's thought
• 1:50:39
  thought that these proposed dates may happen from the agent.
• 1:50:42
  They sent it to us to look over what are our pro and cons?
• 1:50:44
  What do we think it should we take it or not?
• 1:50:46
  What do we think on it in between you and I, we'll get
• 1:50:48
  together and come usually come up with a uniform front on what
• 1:50:52
  we're going to present to Justin and Joey and and whoever you
• 1:50:55
  know the lane our agent about what we think about the gig.
• 1:51:00
  And, you know, there's a lot of reasons that could, you know, be
• 1:51:04
  problems with stuff, you know, production side, hospitality
• 1:51:07
  side, just just anything. Logistics routing is a big one a
• 1:51:10
  lot of times. Can we actually get there in
• 1:51:12
  time? Can we get there in time?
• 1:51:13
  They love, I mean no offense to anyone that works in offices,
• 1:51:16
  but they love just Google mapping stuff.
• 1:51:18
  It's like, well, it says they can get there in 7 hours.
• 1:51:20
  I'm like or 8 hours. Like that's 8 hours through the
• 1:51:23
  mountains on back roads. Like no, we can't do this.
• 1:51:26
  You might. Can't hit your car by yourself?
• 1:51:29
  But not tour buses, pulling trailers, going a speed limit
• 1:51:34
  where everybody can possibly sleep, and everything else.
• 1:51:36
  Absolutely. We don't go 70 miles an hour.
• 1:51:39
  We take curves easy and stuff like that.
• 1:51:42
  I always average and I'm giving away my secrets on the Internet.
• 1:51:45
  When I average time out for buses, when I do my routing and
• 1:51:48
  stuff, like I say, I average 55 miles an hour and that will get
• 1:51:52
  you that will almost always guarantee you will get someplace
• 1:51:55
  earlier than what you expected and it'll everybody will be
• 1:51:57
  happy about it. And give you time for a fuel
• 1:52:00
  stop and things like that if. You need to exactly give you a
• 1:52:02
  little bit of wiggle room in case you break a belt or who
• 1:52:05
  knows that anything can happen. Yeah, it really can.
• 1:52:09
  And it's, and then sometimes, you know, if the gigs line up, I
• 1:52:12
  know a couple years ago we had to go.
• 1:52:13
  We had a Fort Lauderdale and a Houston, TX the next day and
• 1:52:17
  there's absolutely no way. So we had to rent a private jet
• 1:52:19
  to take us all in the middle of the night.
• 1:52:22
  Everybody like, oh, that must be cool.
• 1:52:23
  The private jet. Yeah, a PJ is nice if you're
• 1:52:25
  going something you want to do and it's in the right time.
• 1:52:28
  But at three, I mean, it's still better than than.
• 1:52:31
  That's the only option we had on.
• 1:52:32
  You did it still. You're loading up and leaving at
• 1:52:34
  3:00 AM You're landing. Somewhere going to get any
• 1:52:36
  sleep. 5:00 AM you got to unload and then you got to be loading
• 1:52:38
  in at 9:00 AM. I mean, it's, yeah, it was, it
• 1:52:41
  was just, it wasn't a luxury ride.
• 1:52:43
  I mean, we made the best of it. And that's what normally what we
• 1:52:45
  do on the road is it's we just make the best of it.
• 1:52:47
  Everybody thinks it's a big party and everybody's just
• 1:52:49
  having so much fun. And it is a very rewarding job.
• 1:52:52
  But for the most part, we're all just trying to make the best of
• 1:52:54
  it and get our jobs done. You know, it it.
• 1:52:56
  And the part of it is US acting like it's fun.
• 1:52:59
  You know, that's part of the thing.
• 1:53:00
  We can't. You can't walk around in grumpy,
• 1:53:02
  you know, bad mood and things like that.
• 1:53:04
  No, you want, people need to like you.
• 1:53:06
  You want to, you want to, it's a family on the road, like, and,
• 1:53:09
  and that goes with your local people that you're working with
• 1:53:11
  too. It's like there's a, there's a
• 1:53:13
  time and a place to be an asshole if it, if it ever is
• 1:53:17
  warranted. But for the most part, people
• 1:53:18
  need to like you. They want, they want to work
• 1:53:20
  with you guys. I mean, we're not the biggest
• 1:53:22
  artists out there. We want people to like us and
• 1:53:24
  have us back. I mean that that's, that's part
• 1:53:27
  of we have that repertoire of love.
• 1:53:28
  Like, yeah, people want. People want to like, want to
• 1:53:31
  like. Yeah, and we get good reports
• 1:53:33
  back. You know, we don't ever get, we
• 1:53:34
  don't ever get Gavin Adcock cussing us out because we made
• 1:53:36
  his parents get off his console or anything like that.
• 1:53:39
  I mean, we just don't have those answers.
• 1:53:40
  Oh, wait a minute, That what? I forgot that happened.
• 1:53:43
  Yeah, that just happened. That just happened.
• 1:53:45
  I've been seeing the back and forth banter on that and I don't
• 1:53:47
  want to make my comment on it because I don't know all the
• 1:53:50
  parameters, but it's always something it seems like.
• 1:53:52
  But I've met Gavin at the softball tournament we did a few
• 1:53:55
  months ago or a month or so back at CMA week, and he was great.
• 1:53:58
  We hung out his fiance and say we all met he's super cool, nice
• 1:54:01
  guy, pretty good athlete too but.
• 1:54:05
  Yeah, he should be ex ex football player.
• 1:54:08
  Did he get injured or something like that?
• 1:54:09
  Right. Oh, did he play college ball?
• 1:54:11
  Was he college ball? I think I.
• 1:54:13
  Think so maybe so or maybe in a high school stud, but he looks
• 1:54:15
  like he's he's he's he's, you know, he's a good sized fella.
• 1:54:21
  But so I don't want to comment on that, but I just thought it
• 1:54:23
  was something in the news, you know, I guess everybody saw they
• 1:54:26
  were doing rock this, you know, one of those.
• 1:54:29
  Rock the South in South Carolina, or.
• 1:54:31
  Something Yeah. Rock the.
• 1:54:31
  Country in South Carolina, yeah. So it was he was playing and
• 1:54:35
  then I guess Nickelback was going on later that night and I
• 1:54:38
  guess he saw from the stage that his parents were getting into
• 1:54:40
  some kind of. Discussion tumble with Yeah,
• 1:54:44
  with the. With the the some.
• 1:54:47
  Nickelbacks front house engineer.
• 1:54:48
  Yeah. Front of house guy and
• 1:54:49
  apparently it's it escalated he'd come off the stage was a
• 1:54:52
  big tussle somebody got arrested this and that so there's.
• 1:54:56
  Some cussing going on. That's what I heard I'd love.
• 1:55:00
  To. We'll see and then some and then
• 1:55:02
  hit then I just noticed today he had put a comment out on a, on
• 1:55:06
  a, a video he had posted on socials, kind of explained the
• 1:55:10
  situation. I didn't watch the video.
• 1:55:11
  I just looked down in the comments, see what everybody's
• 1:55:13
  vibe was and basically said to me like apparently somebody put
• 1:55:17
  some stuff on the console or mess with the console.
• 1:55:20
  And then once there was some smart mouth back and forth, I'm
• 1:55:23
  sure everybody could have handled the situation better,
• 1:55:27
  but. Folks don't put drinks on
• 1:55:29
  consoles and road cases don't do that.
• 1:55:31
  I. Literally at my security
• 1:55:32
  meeting. Every day I tell them.
• 1:55:33
  I tell them can I please have an extra security person or two at
• 1:55:37
  front of house to make sure no one puts drinks on any of our
• 1:55:39
  equipment or impedes on our engineer's space?
• 1:55:42
  I say because that's hundreds of $1000 worth of gear and.
• 1:55:45
  We wrecked the console at Coyote Joe's years ago because of a
• 1:55:48
  fight. Broke out right in front in
• 1:55:50
  front of house and one guy had a pitcher of beer and sure enough
• 1:55:53
  it just came all over the console and sorted out half the
• 1:55:57
  desk. And I love one at that point.
• 1:56:00
  Yeah. And I love when somebody says,
• 1:56:02
  well, we'll, we'll pay for it, we'll fix it.
• 1:56:03
  Well, we need it tomorrow night and the night after that.
• 1:56:06
  We have shows tomorrow. We.
• 1:56:07
  Can't get it? It's not just tonight.
• 1:56:09
  We need it tomorrow. We can't.
• 1:56:10
  It can't. It can't sit a day out and wait
• 1:56:12
  for one to show up. There is no, you know, none of
• 1:56:15
  that. So I hope they get it resolved
• 1:56:17
  and everyone. Plays.
• 1:56:19
  You should talk to Nathan. You know Nathan was there,
• 1:56:22
  right, Hank? Oh yeah, I, I, I might can get
• 1:56:24
  AI might can get a drop from that.
• 1:56:25
  Our our assistant to a man is Nathan, who also works for Nate
• 1:56:27
  Junior. He was there.
• 1:56:28
  I should, I should get AI should get a road report from Nate on
• 1:56:31
  that and see, But my only comment on that is, and this is
• 1:56:35
  not a negative to anyone in in the thing.
• 1:56:37
  I have nothing to do with this. Don't have a dog in a fight.
• 1:56:39
  But I've said this to friends locally, regionally, and
• 1:56:42
  nationally. Some stuff you just don't put
• 1:56:45
  out on social. Some stuff you just let it go,
• 1:56:47
  let it die. I think people airing out
• 1:56:49
  grievances on social media is never going to work out in
• 1:56:53
  anyone's favor. Even if it's a short hop here or
• 1:56:55
  a short dig there. In the long run, you're probably
• 1:56:58
  best just to handle it on your own and not put it out there.
• 1:57:01
  And if you're looking for press on things like that, don't tell
• 1:57:05
  them about it. That's going to make them want
• 1:57:06
  to know about it more and you'll get more press out of the deal.
• 1:57:08
  So you know, so, but I hate it. I hate it happened, but I just
• 1:57:12
  thought I'd throw that out there since it was topical of the day
• 1:57:16
  well before before I get into my questions that I do with all of
• 1:57:19
  my guests real quick, Jeff, what would you say some of the main
• 1:57:24
  duties of a production manager or if you had to give a quick
• 1:57:27
  synopsis of a production manager and what would your advice be to
• 1:57:30
  someone wanting get it, wanting to get into the production side
• 1:57:34
  of the touring world? What would be a first step for
• 1:57:36
  for someone? As a production manager, I think
• 1:57:41
  we touched on it earlier. I think the best advice I could
• 1:57:44
  ever probably, well, the two we just talked about to be likable,
• 1:57:49
  give everybody the time of day they need.
• 1:57:50
  Listen to them. Don't be the smartest person in
• 1:57:52
  the room. If you think you're the smartest
• 1:57:54
  person in the room, I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:57:58
  Leave. Find another room.
• 1:58:01
  Listen, which I like to think I'm decent enough at.
• 1:58:05
  Use your ears. Don't always be talking, listen
• 1:58:08
  to what people have to say. I could be better.
• 1:58:10
  Experienced we, we all always could even in our personal lives
• 1:58:19
  be well versed like that whole the whole concept of like
• 1:58:22
  learning other departments like I talked about earlier, like if
• 1:58:25
  you can know how as a production manager you're, you got multiple
• 1:58:29
  different trades and fields coming together.
• 1:58:32
  Like you know how all those guys work and what they need and all
• 1:58:34
  that stuff. Being well versed in all those
• 1:58:36
  areas is huge. Knowing the lingo is half the
• 1:58:40
  battle in some jobs. Knowing what?
• 1:58:41
  What, what verb did you use? What stuff's called, you know?
• 1:58:45
  Yes, we got a lot of weird names for things in our business, you
• 1:58:47
  know. And a lot of it transitions, and
• 1:58:49
  I've said this on other podcasts, a lot of the stuff
• 1:58:51
  that we use in touring world now, Transit, it came from stage
• 1:58:55
  stuff, from theatrical stage stuff, upstage, downstage.
• 1:58:59
  You know the reason that is. Because all theater.
• 1:59:01
  That they would put it on the slope so they could use water
• 1:59:03
  features and things and, and you know, just all the different
• 1:59:06
  terminology there came from theater.
• 1:59:08
  And then the early stages of touring what we do all started
• 1:59:12
  with equipment used from Broadway theater stuff because
• 1:59:15
  they were the only ones that had the trucks equipment, things
• 1:59:17
  that could possibly be used to do touring acts in the early 70s
• 1:59:20
  when they first started carrying their own production.
• 1:59:24
  That's where it all came from. Yeah, and I've said that, too.
• 1:59:28
  I've said that about a good place to start is just start
• 1:59:31
  local. Find your favorite like you did
• 1:59:32
  find your favorite local venue. Yeah, go go work.
• 1:59:36
  Go start at the stagehand if you want.
• 1:59:38
  Asking for your runners, ask to need some help, whatever.
• 1:59:41
  What can you be? Helping with they might need a
• 1:59:43
  runner to go get stuff they might need a production
• 1:59:45
  assistant just to help buy bus stock and or like deliver some
• 1:59:49
  things on site organize. You know, you might I big tours
• 1:59:53
  need help organizing like all the meet and greets and and
• 1:59:56
  maybe all the passes they got stuff in envelopes and there's.
• 1:59:59
  Security. That's why I went and did
• 2:00:00
  security with CSC because I knew I couldn't learn technical
• 2:00:03
  stuff. But I need to know security
• 2:00:04
  because that's going to be a. A big part of my job going
• 2:00:06
  forward, if I'm going to be a big time tour manager.
• 2:00:08
  So I went and worked for a security company for a couple
• 2:00:10
  years. So that's another way in.
• 2:00:13
  I mean, even concessions and stuff.
• 2:00:14
  Joey, our tour, our old tour manager, I took over.
• 2:00:16
  He was a Budweiser guy. He was a Budweiser Rep Chris
• 2:00:19
  Tate, He was working for CMT. Just because he asked the guy
• 2:00:23
  had where does this truck, how does this truck thing work with
• 2:00:25
  CMT remotes? Next?
• 2:00:26
  He's working for CMT next. You know, he's a tour manager.
• 2:00:29
  You know, just, I think starting low.
• 2:00:31
  I don't think you should just run to Nashville.
• 2:00:33
  Do it. But that's an option too.
• 2:00:34
  Jeff Gossett just drove to Nashville and they happen to
• 2:00:37
  know somebody that worked for Red Akins and then they needed a
• 2:00:39
  merch guy, you know? I started with sound image here
• 2:00:43
  in Nashville when I made that transition.
• 2:00:45
  So I said I didn't even live here.
• 2:00:47
  I used to drive to bus call. Yeah.
• 2:00:51
  Find your groove in with someone.
• 2:00:53
  I mean, there's there's there's opportunities out there for
• 2:00:55
  sure. You're going to work your way up
• 2:00:57
  the chain. You're not just going to go and
• 2:00:59
  become a production manager for a national touring act out that
• 2:01:02
  you're going to have to to someone that you're, you know,
• 2:01:05
  you got all the skill sets and learn the skill sets if you
• 2:01:07
  don't know them yet, But if you learn them and and this is a
• 2:01:10
  very social business, you know, we do look at resumes, but if
• 2:01:14
  I'm going to hire someone, I'm probably going to ask who
• 2:01:17
  they've worked with in the past and do they recommend them?
• 2:01:19
  Do they like them? What's the hang like?
• 2:01:20
  That's another one. For the hang, half for the
• 2:01:22
  chops. For the hang half, for the chops
• 2:01:24
  like you need to be, you know it's a road family.
• 2:01:26
  On the road, it's a family you need to be liked, you know you
• 2:01:29
  want, you want those people to you're living with those people
• 2:01:33
  for days on end like. Yeah, it's a family and you want
• 2:01:37
  to bring any anybody else down because everybody's got to come
• 2:01:40
  up to get the. Thing I've heard so many stories
• 2:01:42
  of that over the years and it's like I hear these stories from
• 2:01:45
  these other people that tour in these camps.
• 2:01:47
  I'm like, that's horrible. Like I would not want to be in
• 2:01:50
  that situation like. I couldn't imagine it happen
• 2:01:53
  around our egg. Shells.
• 2:01:55
  No. No, I wouldn't.
• 2:01:56
  I wouldn't allow it. No, no way.
• 2:01:58
  And that's awesome on our artist because he lets us run our own
• 2:02:01
  camps. You know, he lets us, you know,
• 2:02:03
  he doesn't micromanage. He lets us run it.
• 2:02:05
  Yeah, well, we'll get to some of my questions here that I ask
• 2:02:08
  each of my guests every week because I know you got other
• 2:02:10
  stuff to get going today. And I'm going to.
• 2:02:12
  I got to get to the bank before 4 to get this road report in or
• 2:02:15
  Katie's not going to be happy with me.
• 2:02:16
  I may not make it. So maybe a day late, but I'm
• 2:02:18
  going to try, Katie. But this is all for good.
• 2:02:20
  Good calls today. Is this the first cast, first
• 2:02:24
  podcast you've ever been on? And it is the first podcast
• 2:02:28
  you've been on. Yes.
• 2:02:29
  That's the reason I'm glad. That's the reason I started
• 2:02:31
  this, because people like you need to be heard.
• 2:02:33
  And we'll have this forever. This will live forever.
• 2:02:36
  What are some podcasts that you're listening to right now?
• 2:02:38
  Just a couple off top of your head.
• 2:02:39
  Oh, the 5th column podcasts. I lean libertarian on things.
• 2:02:45
  I'm a conservative libertarian on stuff.
• 2:02:47
  So those guys really dive into the news and the current events.
• 2:02:51
  A bunch of the, they're good writers and journalists.
• 2:02:55
  Camille Foster and Michael Moynihan.
• 2:02:58
  What's that out there? The 5th column.
• 2:03:02
  Got. You.
• 2:03:04
  Yeah, It's one of my favorites. It's one of my go TOS.
• 2:03:10
  We taught we you mentioned several through there.
• 2:03:12
  Who are some of your favorite people to tour with or mentors
• 2:03:15
  that you really want to make sure you mention before we get
• 2:03:18
  out of here? And the guys I've learned so
• 2:03:21
  much, Dave Burroughs was was the audio guy on the front of house
• 2:03:25
  for the Rat Pack back in the day.
• 2:03:27
  English guy taught me a lot about audio, a lot of a lot of
• 2:03:32
  the fundamentals. We learned a lot of fundamentals
• 2:03:34
  in college, but he taught some of the other fundamentals in
• 2:03:36
  music. Burroughs was great.
• 2:03:40
  Mike D Mike De La Hoya, Rest in peace.
• 2:03:43
  He was my boss at at the light fantastic when I toured out of
• 2:03:49
  there with the Rat Pack and stuff like that.
• 2:03:51
  Mike had a lot of like he also was high up in the local union
• 2:03:56
  in 66 and Dayton too. So he taught me a lot of the
• 2:03:59
  business of how the unions work, how the stagehands work, how
• 2:04:02
  some big shows function and operate too.
• 2:04:04
  So he was, he taught me a lot of other and other legends.
• 2:04:10
  Oh, there's many. Those are the those are my 2
• 2:04:13
  ones that come to mind right away though, Yeah.
• 2:04:17
  Where? What's some What's one of your
• 2:04:19
  favorite venues that you've ever played?
• 2:04:22
  Do red rocks and the legend. I feel like it's probably been
• 2:04:27
  mentioned a bunch. I I love playing there.
• 2:04:31
  I threw. Out the gorge.
• 2:04:32
  I threw out the gorge just because of the beauty of the
• 2:04:34
  gorge. Gorge is cool.
• 2:04:35
  I love the, I mean, doing our shows at the Ryman, I mean less,
• 2:04:39
  less to get an e-mail from Les there saying like, we had one of
• 2:04:42
  the best shows he sounds he's ever heard in that place.
• 2:04:46
  That just meant so much to me. The Ryman Special.
• 2:04:49
  It's all. Yeah, the live album that we
• 2:04:51
  taped at the Ryman, yeah, that's an amazing spot.
• 2:04:54
  Very. Like it's just a revered or
• 2:04:56
  revered place with the amount of the people that walked there and
• 2:05:00
  played there. So I'd say those two.
• 2:05:02
  I do love theaters, though. All the Foxes, the Fox theaters,
• 2:05:07
  I'd probably be one of the few people that will ever say that.
• 2:05:09
  But all the all the Foxes across the country like Saint Louis,
• 2:05:12
  Fox Theater, Atlanta, Detroit, those are those are.
• 2:05:15
  Great. I love the theaters too.
• 2:05:17
  I love going to theaters to see acts.
• 2:05:18
  I love work in theaters. I love theaters.
• 2:05:20
  It's just cozy. It's made for music.
• 2:05:23
  It's not a basketball arena we turn into a Music Hall.
• 2:05:26
  It's not a hockey arena, we turn into a Music Hall.
• 2:05:28
  It's not a a park or a field that we make into a concert
• 2:05:31
  place. It's a theater designed to look
• 2:05:33
  and watch and hear really dialed in stuff, and I was my favorite,
• 2:05:38
  yeah. I will always have a soft spot
• 2:05:40
  in my heart for any theater. Yeah, what's this is a random
• 2:05:45
  when I do what's big number in your phone of all the people
• 2:05:48
  you've met over the years and you've met some random people
• 2:05:51
  who's someone that you think every now and then and you have
• 2:05:53
  their number in your phone. Like that's crazy.
• 2:05:55
  How do I have so and so's number?
• 2:05:59
  Artist numbers, I mean from, from like Justin's or Randy
• 2:06:05
  Houser's or I'm just thinking or Tracy's numbers.
• 2:06:08
  I'm thinking of the guys I've Priscilla's at some point or
• 2:06:12
  another I'm texting or call them questions or things like that.
• 2:06:14
  I'm like, I have a bunch of numbers in our phones.
• 2:06:18
  And now I think back in the time when like, yeah, that's funny to
• 2:06:22
  think about. Yeah.
• 2:06:23
  But they're there. That's we keep our passwords
• 2:06:26
  tight on our computers for that. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:06:28
  I think, yeah, the same thing. I have people, people on I'm
• 2:06:30
  like, whose number? And they'll say somebody random.
• 2:06:32
  I'm like how you got Clint Eastwood's number?
• 2:06:34
  I mean, how do you have that, You know, or you know, the Rock
• 2:06:37
  or Stone Cold or, you know, like I'm like I got a governor or
• 2:06:41
  twos, you know, and all these artists and ball players or, you
• 2:06:46
  know, golfers, just random, you know, and then that's not even
• 2:06:49
  mentioned like these ex Navy seals and special forces people
• 2:06:53
  that we meet and we befriend and do things with, you know, it's
• 2:06:56
  like. Yeah, we have some contacts we
• 2:06:58
  ever need certain things to get done.
• 2:07:01
  Yeah. Right you.
• 2:07:02
  Probably have quite the list compared to me.
• 2:07:05
  Yeah. Well, yeah, because that's
• 2:07:06
  always kind of been my thing is the networking thing, you know?
• 2:07:09
  You're always on that side of things too, you know, you're a
• 2:07:12
  blessing and a curse. You get to make those
• 2:07:14
  connections, but you have to spend those time with those
• 2:07:17
  people during the day too. If they're coming about visiting
• 2:07:19
  his guests for a show or I don't usually get, I don't usually
• 2:07:22
  don't see those folks too much. Right well, like the other day
• 2:07:25
  we were doing that show in Michigan and Gary Levox is there
• 2:07:30
  from Rascal Flatts and he and Justin are talking.
• 2:07:32
  Well, he, they realize they don't have each other's numbers
• 2:07:34
  anymore. Gary got a new phone.
• 2:07:35
  That's why they hadn't talked for a couple years because we'll
• 2:07:38
  give get J Rs number and give me give him your number.
• 2:07:41
  He'll put us together. So I have to give Gary my card.
• 2:07:43
  So I'm waiting on a text or call from to make sure I get his
• 2:07:50
  number and give him Justin to give Justin his.
• 2:07:52
  So they are connected, but I'm the connector there, you know,
• 2:07:54
  And it's just so random, you know, that'll be another one.
• 2:07:58
  Yeah, that's random in there. But that's so funny.
• 2:08:00
  He came up to me as he was walking out that day past our
• 2:08:03
  past our console, and I probably had the same Buckeyes hat on or
• 2:08:06
  something. Gary's a big Ohio State fan from
• 2:08:08
  Ohio. And he, yeah, we're doing this
• 2:08:10
  show up in Michigan. You know, we're 20 miles north
• 2:08:12
  of Ann Arbor. And he goes, man, he's like,
• 2:08:15
  that takes balls to wear that hat up here.
• 2:08:17
  I'm like, I'm gonna. That's great.
• 2:08:21
  Yeah, he came and hung out on the band bus for a while and
• 2:08:23
  chopped it up with those guys for a while.
• 2:08:25
  Good, good. Yeah, he did.
• 2:08:26
  He did. He was looking for Justin, but
• 2:08:27
  hit Justin and South had gone to the zoo while we were there that
• 2:08:29
  day. And band guy said he hung up 10
• 2:08:32
  or 15 minutes just BS with him. And then when I saw him and
• 2:08:34
  talked to him for me, and I asked him about Will, our old
• 2:08:37
  piano player who's playing out on the road with flats now, and
• 2:08:39
  we talked about his, how good of a fisherman he was.
• 2:08:42
  You know, he's too good at being a Fisher.
• 2:08:43
  Can't be good at everything. Well, you're already phenomenal
• 2:08:45
  piano player there, and you're also the best fisherman I've
• 2:08:47
  ever met. And cornhole, What else like.
• 2:08:50
  Yeah, cornhole he mastered. We watched him master Cornhole
• 2:08:52
  in like 4 months. I think Will will master
• 2:08:55
  anything he gets his hands on. Yeah, I really do.
• 2:08:58
  Yeah, he's that kind of guy. The next one I got here is
• 2:09:02
  birthday number one. This is the number one song in
• 2:09:06
  country music on the day you were born.
• 2:09:09
  So yes, mom finally gets you home.
• 2:09:12
  You've you're in, you're in Ohio.
• 2:09:13
  It's it's a cool night in Ohio. It's not too crazy this night.
• 2:09:16
  Little baby Jeffrey's born in this world.
• 2:09:18
  Mom's getting you at home. She gets you settled in.
• 2:09:20
  She turns on the country radio channel.
• 2:09:22
  She's thought, oh, we'll just listen country today.
• 2:09:25
  And the announcer comes on and says the number one song in
• 2:09:28
  country music today is this is November 11th, 1983.
• 2:09:33
  What? What do you think the number one
• 2:09:35
  song that day was? Oh I have no idea.
• 2:09:39
  I would think it'd be like in 83.
• 2:09:43
  Oh my God, one of the biggest. Oh, this is so crazy how this
• 2:09:47
  works. Sometimes it's a song, you know
• 2:09:49
  the artists or you know it's more more.
• 2:09:51
  Of a Wichita lineman or something like that, I don't
• 2:09:53
  know. I think that's a little before
• 2:09:55
  this. But that's the 70s, wasn't it?
• 2:09:57
  Yeah, that was that was, yeah, that was 70s.
• 2:09:59
  But this has to be one of the biggest.
• 2:10:01
  I'll give you a couple of hints, and I think even I think anyone
• 2:10:04
  would be able to get this one. This is one of the biggest duets
• 2:10:07
  in country music history, done by two of the biggest artists in
• 2:10:09
  country music history, and is sang at karaoke and any kind of
• 2:10:15
  event when people sing along, probably as much as any song
• 2:10:19
  there's ever been. Male and female artists do that.
• 2:10:23
  Huge song. It's like it's like Reba or
• 2:10:25
  something like that in it. What is this?
• 2:10:27
  And our artist JM and our West Coast regional Amy tend to sing
• 2:10:33
  this song anytime they're together on the bus.
• 2:10:35
  It wasn't the one that Justin and Laney did together.
• 2:10:37
  Was it? On stage that was was that some?
• 2:10:42
  Oh, shoot. That's it.
• 2:10:44
  Oh, oh, is it really? No way.
• 2:10:47
  Kenny, Kenny and Dolly Kenny Rogers.
• 2:10:51
  Yeah, and Dolly Parton was that call A song is called something
• 2:10:55
  The Sunsets or the Beach. What is that song?
• 2:10:58
  Go for it. Islands in the stream.
• 2:11:00
  Islands in the stream. Islands in the streams, that is
• 2:11:03
  that. Was the number one song.
• 2:11:04
  That was the number one song the day you were born.
• 2:11:06
  Wow. You know you got that circle.
• 2:11:09
  Yeah, now you got that. Never forget that.
• 2:11:11
  Now that's funny. That's the number one song in
• 2:11:13
  country music Day You born was Kenny and.
• 2:11:15
  Yeah, Justin Laney did that when we before we shut down on that
• 2:11:18
  tour that one time. I forgot about that.
• 2:11:21
  Yeah, we put on there's, it should be on it's Instagram
• 2:11:24
  somewhere there. There's a cut of X.
• 2:11:26
  We took my board tape from it and chopped it up and yeah,
• 2:11:29
  polished it up a little bit and shot the video for it.
• 2:11:32
  Yeah, islands in the stream. I mean, one of the biggest songs
• 2:11:36
  of all time, definitely one of the most song and recreated and
• 2:11:41
  and loved songs. I mean, great tune, great tune
• 2:11:43
  by by definitely the queen of country music.
• 2:11:46
  In my opinion. Dolly Parton's done as much as
• 2:11:48
  more than anyone and she deserved to be on any Mount
• 2:11:51
  Rushmore of any music, probably definitely country music for her
• 2:11:54
  contributions. And then Kenny Rogers, a
• 2:11:58
  crossover went, came from the rock world, kind of psychedelic
• 2:12:01
  Americana rock world, into country music.
• 2:12:05
  And no one ever gives him a hard time.
• 2:12:07
  But he was, he was a crossover. He came from the rock world.
• 2:12:09
  So did Conway Twitty. But Kenny Rogers.
• 2:12:12
  Did you ever have his chicken back in the day?
• 2:12:14
  I did. We had Kenny Rogers Roasters in
• 2:12:16
  Montgomery. Yeah.
• 2:12:17
  Yeah, we had one in Montgomery. Favorite spot at home when they
• 2:12:20
  were, It was good, yeah. Yeah, we had.
• 2:12:22
  It was probably, you know, it was 30 minutes from my house,
• 2:12:24
  but we'd go into town in Montgomery.
• 2:12:25
  We would go to Kenny Rogers Roasters sometimes and get
• 2:12:28
  chicken. That was good.
• 2:12:29
  Last one I got before we get out of here is Mount Rushmore, and
• 2:12:33
  it doesn't have to be country, but of music in general.
• 2:12:36
  What is your Mount Rushmore of music?
• 2:12:38
  Oh oh. Can we just, can we just put all
• 2:12:41
  the guys of Led Zeppelin up there like I would be?
• 2:12:44
  OK, with that. A group, yeah, a group is 1, one
• 2:12:46
  person. So Zepp.
• 2:12:47
  Zeppelin's up there, Eric Clapton.
• 2:12:56
  Going from there, though, it gets complicated.
• 2:13:01
  That's tough, I know. Wow, we need what we got up on
• 2:13:06
  Rushmore. Sir, 2:00 you got two, you got
• 2:13:08
  two more. It's 4.
• 2:13:09
  Two more, Two more. And an honorable mention if
• 2:13:12
  there's one that's. Close.
• 2:13:13
  I'll put Sinatra up there from. The Rat Pack.
• 2:13:17
  Yeah, We'll put Sinatra up there.
• 2:13:19
  Or maybe we, if we can put a group, we'll just put all three
• 2:13:21
  of them on a chunk of there. Yeah.
• 2:13:23
  Yeah. Frank, Sammy Dean.
• 2:13:25
  I mean, because it's oh, blue eyes, man, so good.
• 2:13:28
  So that's something I wouldn't learn.
• 2:13:30
  It's incredible. I never got into that type of
• 2:13:32
  music. I knew I was aware of it when I
• 2:13:33
  was younger until I was, you know, on up in college and
• 2:13:35
  stuff, but just. Bluegrass until I went to
• 2:13:38
  college and one, one of the guys from the country was in our
• 2:13:40
  program introduced me to like, Baylor Fleck and like those
• 2:13:43
  bluegrass, the blue Tales of the acoustic planet, the Bluegrass
• 2:13:46
  sessions, incredible double disc album.
• 2:13:50
  Like I was like, wow, what is this stuff?
• 2:13:52
  Yeah. Meanwhile, Rodger Coleman's
• 2:13:53
  growing up with it in Kentucky. And like, I had no idea.
• 2:13:56
  Right. I know it's weird.
• 2:13:57
  You know, you, you, you do what you're exposed to and when
• 2:14:00
  you're exposed to it, when you pick it up and things.
• 2:14:03
  The other group I'd probably put on there, Zeppelin, Clapton, Rat
• 2:14:07
  Pack guys. I just don't know who that 4th 1
• 2:14:13
  would be. Is there a coaster guy?
• 2:14:19
  See, I I didn't grow up listening to a much country.
• 2:14:21
  We were, we were kind of a rock family.
• 2:14:23
  Like even grandma had the Elvis and stuff like that.
• 2:14:25
  Mom listened to some more. Like I kind of grew up on the
• 2:14:28
  classic rock stuff. Yeah.
• 2:14:30
  Me too. I mean, I had a little of all of
• 2:14:32
  it, but but definitely Elvis was Elvis was there.
• 2:14:35
  For sure. Yeah.
• 2:14:37
  I mean, probably the 4th if I would pick a country guy in
• 2:14:39
  there would be Johnny Cash. Cash.
• 2:14:42
  Yeah. Cash.
• 2:14:43
  Yeah, the Man in Black. That's hard to beat and see my
• 2:14:45
  mom was saying. My mom was to like a lot of
• 2:14:47
  Motown, RBR and B stuff. So we had a lot of that too,
• 2:14:50
  because we were up by Detroit, so that was a big influence in
• 2:14:52
  Toledo as well. So my mom had some R&B stuff
• 2:14:55
  too. And my dad, they both grew up in
• 2:14:57
  the, you know, mid late 70s. So dad loved like Elton John and
• 2:15:04
  you know, Credence and all that, that classic rock from that era
• 2:15:08
  and then some and you know, the Zeppelin and the ZZ Top and I
• 2:15:11
  mean a lot of that. And but he's, he liked a little
• 2:15:14
  country, like he's like like Little Texas and some of those
• 2:15:16
  bands in the 90s, early 90s. But my grandparents from
• 2:15:20
  Mississippi, my grandmother really didn't listen to a lot of
• 2:15:22
  music. But the radio came on the clock
• 2:15:23
  radio came on every morning for the country channel, Miss 103.
• 2:15:27
  And then my granddad just had the radio on country channel all
• 2:15:30
  the time. So I Randy, Randy Travis and
• 2:15:33
  Alabama and all that stuff was, was, was real big when I was
• 2:15:37
  growing up. So I got a little bit and then
• 2:15:38
  my grandparents on my dad's side listen to NPR and their favorite
• 2:15:42
  were like Benny Goodman and you know, all that type stuff.
• 2:15:45
  A lot of oh, I just lost his. Name Jazz.
• 2:15:49
  Yeah, a lot of big band stuff. What was his name?
• 2:15:51
  Who got killed over the English Channel?
• 2:15:53
  Glenn Miller, a lot of that stuff.
• 2:15:55
  Oh yeah. My granddad was Miller.
• 2:15:56
  Orchestra. Yeah.
• 2:15:57
  My granddad was a Bombardier in World War 2.
• 2:16:00
  Quit college to go be a Bombardier.
• 2:16:02
  So they they like that kind of music.
• 2:16:03
  So they were always listening to NPR and classical and stuff.
• 2:16:05
  And I used to hate it when I was a kid.
• 2:16:07
  Now I listen to more of that than anything.
• 2:16:08
  That's what I listen to more. Than I did I hated it when I was
• 2:16:10
  a kid too, especially because my piano teacher was trying to get
• 2:16:13
  me to play a lot of the classical music and I'm like, I
• 2:16:15
  don't want to play this. I want something with a beat to
• 2:16:18
  it I want a groove or something yeah.
• 2:16:19
  And I remember having to sit through those Mozart and
• 2:16:22
  Beethoven or different other classical lessons and figuring
• 2:16:24
  this stuff out on Ghana. Like, no, yeah, I wanted to play
• 2:16:29
  the jazz, if anything. Yeah, I want to hear some
• 2:16:32
  rock'n'roll. And then the first tape I ever
• 2:16:34
  got on my own was like Bon Jovi, you know, was that was the 80s,
• 2:16:37
  you know? My first tape I ever bought was
• 2:16:40
  Green Day. It was a dookie.
• 2:16:42
  I think it was a blue cassette tape.
• 2:16:43
  Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Yeah, and then now we're the
• 2:16:48
  same thing. Now our our taste of music has
• 2:16:50
  just grown even more rich, you know, now we know about all
• 2:16:52
  kinds of cool stuff. I mean, from no doubt.
• 2:16:55
  I mean, they're from Snarky Puppy to.
• 2:16:57
  Love snarky guys. OK, that would.
• 2:17:00
  It's good. That's a rotating cast, but we
• 2:17:02
  can't quite put them on Rushmore.
• 2:17:03
  They take. There's so many people in it.
• 2:17:05
  And see, I love, I've been wanting to go see.
• 2:17:07
  It just doesn't work out with dates.
• 2:17:08
  The Postmodern Jukebox Troupe, I want to go see that they're
• 2:17:12
  doing the Pensacola this year. But of course, we've got to be
• 2:17:14
  on the road. I just love all that stuff.
• 2:17:17
  I love when we used to go to Chicago and go to the jazz bars
• 2:17:20
  and listen to that. You know, I still love going to
• 2:17:22
  New Orleans. I go to Frenchman Street and
• 2:17:24
  hear jazz. I love jazz more than anything
• 2:17:26
  these days. And jazz fusion, That was always
• 2:17:28
  usually the common ground for me and musicians was always like,
• 2:17:33
  we could, you know, they might like heavier this, but we could
• 2:17:35
  always usually jam on some jazz fusion type stuff.
• 2:17:38
  Complicated music. Yeah.
• 2:17:40
  So from Steely Dan to anything deriving you left or right of
• 2:17:44
  that or, you know, it was always there.
• 2:17:47
  Well, man, I can't thank you enough.
• 2:17:48
  Jeff. It was a pleasure to have you on
• 2:17:50
  the show. I got to know a few things that
• 2:17:52
  even after 12 years I didn't know, and I think all of our
• 2:17:56
  audience out there will really enjoy hearing some of this
• 2:17:58
  insightful stuff and maybe encourage someone to go be the
• 2:18:01
  next great year in Nashville one day.
• 2:18:05
  I was going to need some. Yeah, we're going to need some.
• 2:18:07
  We can't do it forever. These are limited lifespan, so
• 2:18:11
  they only work for so long. Yeah, and you got to protect
• 2:18:13
  another thing. Young people out there, if you
• 2:18:15
  want to do this business for a long time, protect your hearing,
• 2:18:17
  protect your ears. I mean, I wish I'd have done
• 2:18:19
  more anything. Take a napkin, a bar napkin.
• 2:18:23
  Water it up. Put it.
• 2:18:24
  If anything, is better than. Anything.
• 2:18:25
  Yeah. It really is because you want to
• 2:18:27
  do it for a long time. You got to be able to hear
• 2:18:29
  whether you're singing, writing, recording.
• 2:18:31
  You got to hear what's going on. You know, it's tough without it.
• 2:18:35
  Well, man. Well, thank you very much.
• 2:18:36
  I know we've got some some work stuff.
• 2:18:38
  Only thing I was going to get with you on that was the Boots
• 2:18:40
  and Hearts advance they wanted us to fill out and send to him.
• 2:18:44
  I started doing it, but it's got some technical things in there
• 2:18:46
  you should probably answer. I sent that one over to him.
• 2:18:49
  If you send over what you need, what you got out of there, and
• 2:18:52
  they should have all the technical stuff.
• 2:18:54
  I have the. I've advanced with their team
• 2:18:56
  already so they should be all right.
• 2:18:59
  OK, yeah, I'll make sure to make sure they got all our head
• 2:19:02
  counts and all that stuff. Well man, thanks again.
• 2:19:05
  I'll see you in a few days. You got anything?
• 2:19:06
  Text me. How can everybody find you on
• 2:19:08
  social media? You can find me on Instagram, my
• 2:19:12
  handles rack rocker just like it sounds, RACKROCKER, rack rocker
• 2:19:19
  on Instagram, Facebook, Jeff Oliver.
• 2:19:23
  Those are my 2 main channels. I don't really dabble too much
• 2:19:26
  in in social media besides that so.
• 2:19:28
  But either way, feel free to reach out, I'm always around.
• 2:19:32
  Yeah, if you got anything, got any questions, anything like
• 2:19:34
  that, need something, Hit Jeff up at Rack Rock, Rack Rocker on
• 2:19:37
  Instagram and come see us at the show.
• 2:19:40
  Me and Jeff will both be there. Tell us.
• 2:19:41
  You heard us on the podcast. Hell, we'll take a picture with
• 2:19:43
  you. There you go.
• 2:19:45
  Just don't bother Jeff in front of housewives trying to mix the
• 2:19:47
  damn show. And whatever you do, don't put a
• 2:19:49
  drink on the console until until, until next week,
• 2:19:53
  everybody. I'm Jr. the handler.
• 2:19:55
  That was my brother Jeff Oliver on this week's episode.
• 2:19:58
  We'll see y'all down that old road.
• 2:20:00
  Well, man, how much fun was that?
• 2:20:02
  Did you learn something? I sure did.
• 2:20:04
  I learned I don't know as much about production as I should.
• 2:20:06
  When he starts throwing out them numbers and names and and and
• 2:20:09
  things, I am just about lost, but I kind of know what he's
• 2:20:11
  talking about. Sure, a lot of you audio files
• 2:20:14
  will definitely know. I'm going to read a passage out
• 2:20:17
  of my book and get out of here for this week.
• 2:20:21
  Trying to think which which one I did last week.
• 2:20:24
  I'm going to do this one. Makes sense.
• 2:20:26
  I read this back in season 3 of the Justin Moore podcast, but
• 2:20:29
  probably time to read here again.
• 2:20:31
  Number 85. Cooler heads and common sense.
• 2:20:35
  Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides
• 2:20:38
  in the lap of fools. Ecclesiastes 79.
• 2:20:42
  I have never had a hot temper. I've never been quick to anger
• 2:20:45
  or fast to react in an assertive fashion.
• 2:20:48
  But I've been around some people who listen to their baser
• 2:20:51
  instincts and just have to respond to a disagreeable
• 2:20:54
  situation in an aggressive way. I remember an incident back
• 2:20:57
  around 1950 when I was playing junior high football for Tilston
• 2:21:01
  in Wilmington, NC. The main high school in
• 2:21:04
  Wilmington, New Hanover High, was the home of the Wildcats,
• 2:21:08
  and they were one of the top football teams in the state that
• 2:21:11
  year, knocking over opponents like bowling pins.
• 2:21:14
  One night, our janitor, excuse me, One night, our junior high
• 2:21:18
  school took several of us players to Durham to watch the
• 2:21:22
  mighty Wildcats take on the Durham Bulldogs.
• 2:21:25
  We couldn't believe it. The Wildcats lost and we walked
• 2:21:28
  back to the car, disappointed to say the least.
• 2:21:31
  The coach hadn't arrived yet and as we stood beside his car on
• 2:21:34
  the street, one of the guys with us started making loud and
• 2:21:38
  disparaging remarks about Durham and their football team.
• 2:21:41
  A small crowd started gathering and even though we tried to hush
• 2:21:45
  up our loudmouth buddy he keep he kept on dishing out the
• 2:21:49
  insults. The boys in Durham crowd started
• 2:21:51
  answering back, worked up the nerve to do something more
• 2:21:54
  physical, and had thrown one of our guys to the ground.
• 2:21:57
  Our coach finally walked up and cooled out the situation.
• 2:22:01
  The point I'm getting at here is that uncontrolled bad tempers
• 2:22:05
  and giving in to foolish impulses can create a bad
• 2:22:08
  situation, not just for the hot headed, but for those who could
• 2:22:12
  become collateral damage in the crossfire.
• 2:22:15
  I don't know what would have happened if our coach hadn't
• 2:22:17
  showed up when he did, but thank God he did.
• 2:22:20
  Approaching A heated situation with a cool head, respect and a
• 2:22:24
  soothing word can save a lot of headaches.
• 2:22:27
  Let's all make the day count.