Latest / The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine / Mike Almquist: mewithoutYou

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Mike Almquist: mewithoutYou · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:30
  Today we've got Mike Almquist from me without you, And you might be wondering,
• 0:33
  like wait, wait, wait me without you, Mike Quist. I
• 0:36
  like, there's only one mic in the band and it's not Mike Olmquist.
• 0:40
  No, Mike Almquist might be the me with like the you might not know
• 0:44
  him as the face of me without you, but like the person behind me
• 0:47
  without you that made all things happen. I think he plays. He plays
• 0:50
  the cash register right here, that's right, the the all important cash register.
• 0:55
  Mike. Uh. For those that don't know, you were the manager
• 0:59
  for me without you for many many years. Uh and in a lot of
• 1:02
  ways, you know, I don't know exactly like every band's relationship with their
• 1:06
  manager, but it also did feel like for you in particular, like you
• 1:10
  were truly a part of the band, obviously not as a musician, but
• 1:12
  really truly a part of the band. So obviously we want to talk about
• 1:15
  just your whole story of being a manager being to me without you, and
• 1:19
  obviously like where me with me with that you is at now with like breakup
• 1:23
  stuff. But with all of that said, we'll get into all that.
• 1:26
  But before all that are you doing today? I'm doing great? It was
• 1:32
  a really really busy day, and so and I don't have to I don't
• 1:36
  know whut my kids to bed. And so my wife is like, I
• 1:38
  got to do an interview on a podcast, So can you play the kids
• 1:41
  to bed? Jesus sounds like you need to need to do more podcast interviews.
• 1:44
  Yeah, I do. I mean to get out of that, man.
• 1:48
  Yeah, can we do this five times a week? Did you tell
• 1:51
  her that? Did you tell her that the podcast started an hour ago?
• 1:53
  Yeah? I've just been down here in my basement by myself, just staring
• 1:57
  at a wall. You know, you do seem very chipper considering the fact
• 2:02
  that a week ago or a couple of weeks ago, the Eagles had a
• 2:07
  devastating loss. Just over a week ago, week and a half ago now
• 2:10
  had a very devastating loss. In fact, we were supposed to have heard
• 2:15
  that night, and then you realized, wait, the Eagles are actually playing,
• 2:17
  and so we had to reschedule. And I was like, you know,
• 2:21
  they're gonna lose, Like, do you really want to watch your team
• 2:24
  being embarrassed on national television? No, you really wanted to see it,
• 2:30
  and here you are now. Well listen, we technically amazing. Are not
• 2:32
  allowed to discuss or disseminate any of the game without the express written consents of
• 2:38
  the National Football League. So well, the good thing was basically a high
• 2:44
  school team. But the team from Philadelphia, see how I'm working around this.
• 2:49
  The team from Philadelphia was an epic disappointment in the back half of this
• 2:53
  season, and I just I have to watch every miserable snap. I just
• 2:58
  have to guess. It's my team. It's like a part of my soul,
• 3:02
  and so like win or lose, and like an epic defeat crumbling before
• 3:07
  my very eyes on you know, primetime television. There's like eight Monday night
• 3:14
  games. I was like, I gotta watch them all. You know,
• 3:15
  you're you're talking to the crowd here. I am the choir in this situation.
• 3:19
  I was liking, man, oh God, like, oh yeah,
• 3:23
  Like it's pretty much our entire history. H Mason over here is a bandwagoner.
• 3:28
  He loves the forty nine ers. So I believe me, and we
• 3:30
  talked about it, and that's my life. Jersey in two thousand and one,
• 3:35
  to be considered a band wagon forty nine ers, Yeah, yeah,
• 3:40
  I didn't go through all those early Alex Smith years. To be called a
• 3:45
  band wager. So let's talk about how you got just involved in music in
• 3:53
  general? Uh so before like me without you stuff I'd love to hear just
• 3:58
  kind of like what that story around you getting involved in music? Well?
• 4:02
  Now, yeah free ingew that you that was im? I just like music.
• 4:09
  I was like anybody else right, Like I liked fast, heavy music,
• 4:14
  energetic music, SKA and punk in particular. Oh yeah, And I
• 4:19
  think I just always had I also had sort of a little bit of an
• 4:24
  artistic stroke, Like I like to draw as a kid, and I like
• 4:29
  to sort of engineer and build stuff. And I went to art school in
• 4:32
  college. And I think in that time, like I had friends that were
• 4:35
  in bands, and I always kind of like inserted myself like creatively in terms
• 4:42
  of like what there's, what they're how their songs should sound or you know,
• 4:47
  what their album marks would look like and how they should dress or where
• 4:50
  they should play and who they should play, you know. And I wasn't
• 4:54
  like their manager, but I was like their like friends there and just like
• 4:58
  consulting but not being at it's unsolicited advice more or less. So I always
• 5:02
  had this like streak in me where I was like I wanted to like take
• 5:06
  a musician's work and just make it better or give it the context that I
• 5:13
  thought was like really interesting, and so I did that. My brother's a
• 5:15
  musician, and I would do that with his bands and his different projects,
• 5:19
  and I don't know, it just it was always something that I did.
• 5:23
  And then I found myself in this situation in two thousand and five or six,
• 5:30
  I can't remember exactly six where I became friends with the guys and you
• 5:34
  that you just threw like you know, mutual friends and acquaintances and whatever.
• 5:39
  It was Philly guy then too. Yeah. Yeah, I've lived in Philly
• 5:43
  since two thousand and two. August thirty first, two thousand and two.
• 5:46
  So yeah, well I was the day I moved the first day of college,
• 5:50
  you know, like that's that's how I know. Did you go to
• 5:54
  Eastern or or where did you go to? Now? I went to U
• 5:56
  Arts. I have a bachelors and Fine Arts from the University Arts in Yeah.
• 6:00
  And I also I kept giving unsolicit advice even to me with even my
• 6:04
  friends in Me Without You, who were my favorite band at the time,
• 6:09
  and unbeknownst to them, I kind of kept that a little closeted and they're
• 6:15
  my favorite band. I was giving unsolicit advice on on demos from brother's sister,
• 6:19
  and one of the ones was this the Spider Song, which was this
• 6:24
  big, like four minute song of just like Aaron on an acoustic and I
• 6:30
  had the idea to kind of it was like, hey, you should take
• 6:32
  these songs this song, and you should split each verse up and then like
• 6:36
  sprinkle it throughout the record as like little vignettes to kind of call back to
• 6:42
  keep like a little narrative. And they were into that idea, and they
• 6:47
  brought it to their producer, and their producer thought it was a really good
• 6:50
  idea. They brought to brad Wood. He thought it was a cool,
• 6:53
  cool idea, and then that's how the record came. So I feel like
• 6:55
  I just that was kind of like how I sort of ingratiated myself, like
• 7:00
  I had a good idea early on unsolicited and my opinion became valuable. I
• 7:08
  wasn't managing them at the time. I wasn't even working with them at the
• 7:10
  time. Would you suggest this for other people too, just to go like
• 7:14
  give un solicited advice to people that are like promising musicians that you think I'd
• 7:18
  got to go somewhere. I don't know that they could make a lot of
• 7:21
  money. I think that. I think earlier in my life, I thought
• 7:28
  that if I just gave, like if I had like a really big opinion,
• 7:33
  or I could find something that was critical of something or that was constructed
• 7:39
  constructively critical, that that would, again to use the word ingratiate myself to
• 7:43
  that person. They would think, Oh, this person is not just patting
• 7:46
  me on the back, but not just say yes, man, They actually
• 7:47
  care about the work. And I think, what's the guy from Amberlin was
• 7:54
  his name, Steve Steven thank you. I went up to him in a
• 7:59
  show and totally I thought his album was really good, the songs were awesome,
• 8:03
  but that it was overproduced. It's like that doesn't know me. What
• 8:07
  is this guy? Like? Why is that a valuable opinion from a stranger?
• 8:11
  Like and he kind of like shot me like a weird look, and
• 8:15
  you know, so there's like times like that when I'm just like, oh,
• 8:16
  this is what you do? You like you just you just you have
• 8:20
  something positive and you have something sort of negative or suggest a way that it
• 8:24
  can be better. And that's not the way to do things. It's a
• 8:28
  compliment sandwich, Yeah kind of. Yeah, it's almost like a backhand it's
• 8:31
  a backhanded compliment. It is what it is. He's like Gordon Ramsey of
• 8:35
  the Christian Music World. Yeah, I mean you know what, shu.
• 8:39
  The people who are most interesting on those the people that are most interesting on
• 8:46
  those kinds of shows are the ones that like give it straight. Like Simon
• 8:48
  Cowell is the best part of was the best part of American Idol. That's
• 8:52
  right now is America Got America's Got Talent and American Idol America. No,
• 8:58
  but now he's on American's Oh yeah, he was American Idol and now he's
• 9:01
  on America's Got Talent. Anyway, the same thing with like Len Goodman on
• 9:05
  Dancing with the Stars, Like the guys who were just like h like everyone
• 9:11
  watched the performance and it was like it was great. It was really good,
• 9:15
  especially in Dancing with the Stars, like like only half the duet is
• 9:18
  like professional and uh so everyone's like giving a lot of grace, but then
• 9:24
  like the guy comes in who's like, no, I'm old school, like
• 9:26
  I'm trained in the fundamentals of this thing, like and like you didn't quite
• 9:31
  hit this, and what was that? And this that, and everyone booz
• 9:33
  him. But he's the guy who makes everyone like better, Like he holds
• 9:37
  everyone to a higher standard. And so I like those kinds of people,
• 9:41
  and I like pushing things to having a higher standard. But like, you
• 9:46
  have to have relationships first before you get come in at a merch table and
• 9:50
  think that you're gonna be the cool guy because you told a songwriter that you
• 9:54
  thought that there was too much production on his debut records. I remember when
• 10:01
  I say this story that I have to share. Yeah, I was.
• 10:03
  I was invited over to a friend's house, uh, through a mutual friend.
• 10:07
  So I'm hanging out with my with our with our mutual friend, and
• 10:09
  I know this guy kind of peripherally, not really never talked to him,
• 10:13
  but like I know of him right. He's he's a bassist in a in
• 10:18
  a very influential jazz band in the in our area. Uh. And I'm
• 10:24
  talking like, you know, you don't want to give the name. No,
• 10:28
  No, it's a suit Falls jazz band. I mean there they they
• 10:33
  had a number two ranking iTunes album though, uh and in the jazz charts,
• 10:37
  which is not easy to do. And uh and and I didn't know
• 10:43
  that this was like the record that they just cut. They just got done,
• 10:46
  they just got the masters back and everything like that, and we're listening
• 10:50
  to it and I was like, so this is you, guys, and
• 10:52
  he's like, yeah, yeah, this is us. I was like,
• 10:54
  this is really really good. The only thing I don't like is the drums.
• 10:58
  I think they're a little too oriented. And he's like, oh,
• 11:01
  okay, okay, that's just like done by the way, buddy. Like,
• 11:09
  but I will say this, their next album did not have drums on
• 11:13
  it, so there's interesting. Yeah, you turn the tides or should hire
• 11:18
  me? Pay me? Yeah? There we are. Yeah, but my
• 11:20
  plan is to say, like, I think that you need to have certain
• 11:22
  relationships first. It needs to be understand definitely. You can't just walk up
• 11:26
  and give us. Yeah, I'm curious, like what would make you feel
• 11:30
  like sort of qualified to be like in that way, like like had you
• 11:35
  been a musician before, so like such a cono sewer of music where you're
• 11:43
  like I really like that and I think other people should do that or whatever,
• 11:46
  Like did you have like that sense? I think that's interesting that like
• 11:52
  feel like you can go up to Stephen Christian and feel confident enough that you
• 11:54
  should be able to like say like, hey, this is what I think
• 11:58
  you should have done. It's silly, like it's you or to tell Aaron
• 12:03
  White, like, hey you should break up this song. Like there's gotta
• 12:05
  be some level of feeling like I I think I know what I'm talking about
• 12:09
  on that. Yeah, that's you got to have like something that would like
• 12:13
  maybe demonstrate to yourself that you could be able to do that, right.
• 12:16
  Yeah, I mean I was so young. I was so young. I
• 12:18
  was like you know what I mean, Like I'm twenty two, and so
• 12:24
  I think it was just it was just a little arrogant, you know,
• 12:28
  and I just had a little bravado. And yeah, I mean I do
• 12:31
  think I have good ideas and I think I have really good taste, but
• 12:35
  I'd probably be less apt to sort of do something like that, you know.
• 12:43
  But that's what I'm saying. It's just like you're young, You're stupid,
• 12:46
  and what have you got to lose? And you kind of want to
• 12:48
  play adult too. I want to play I wanted to like kind of like
• 12:52
  be more adult and like have some authority to my voice in terms of what
• 12:54
  I thought, what I consumed what I said. Yeah, so what's the
• 13:01
  what's the story of going from Hey, Aaron, you should do this with
• 13:05
  your song to hey, I'm managing me without you? Like there's gotta been
• 13:09
  There has to be a story there that would lead you into that, right,
• 13:11
  Well, there's probably about a there's a full like five years in between
• 13:16
  those five or six years in between those two two moments. Yeah, I
• 13:22
  mean the story of it is that me and that you was my favorite band
• 13:26
  catcherist the Foxes. When that came out, it would just like blew my
• 13:30
  mind and I wanted to listen to the album all of the time. And
• 13:39
  being from Philadelphia, being living in Philadelphia and then being from the area,
• 13:43
  and then also living close and then being a part of the same like church
• 13:46
  community. We were all kind of connected through this church called a Circle of
• 13:50
  Hope, which you know, you know, you've been interviewed, you guys,
• 13:54
  you guys have been interviewed Johnny Rashid, who was a part of that
• 13:56
  church, was he's he's a friend of mine as well. Anyway, That's
• 14:01
  my point is that like we all knew they were were in the same like
• 14:03
  circle of friends. Yeah, I just found myself and their company, you
• 14:09
  know, and became friends and then it just was like I don't know,
• 14:16
  I inserted myself in a way like I was like, this is my favorite
• 14:18
  band, Like I'm gonna go be friends with these guys and that's gonna be
• 14:20
  cool. And graduated college and then just said like, hey, can I
• 14:26
  come on tour? Came on tour. You know, they weren't able to
• 14:31
  pay me. It was early times. It was like two thousands, like
• 14:33
  June two thousand and six, and just kept coming on tour and eventually they
• 14:37
  paid me. And then I just kept taking on more and more responsibility and
• 14:43
  to the point where you know, they were done their contract with Tooth and
• 14:48
  Nail. Their manager at the time, Blaze James, he dropped the band
• 14:54
  for being for and it was it was totally right. The band was being
• 14:58
  totally uncooperative, wasn't doing what Blaze wanted them to do, and Blaze was
• 15:01
  trying to build this band and to be like this big thing and you that
• 15:05
  you was like, we just want to do it our own way. And
• 15:07
  that's kind of always been the ethos of that band. They're not ready to
• 15:11
  fall in line. And so when that vacancy of managers came into place.
• 15:16
  Josh Bender, who had been our tour manager, became there became the band's
• 15:20
  manager in this sort of like strange interim time between It's All Crazy and Ten
• 15:26
  Stories, and then Josh and I eventually got our heads together about doing a
• 15:31
  self release and we became like co managers essentially, So something that was around
• 15:37
  like twenty eleven, Josh and I sort of became like partners and managing that.
• 15:45
  Ten Stories came out in twenty twelve. Yeah, May fifteenth, twenty
• 15:50
  twelve, So you were you were the manager by that point, right,
• 15:54
  Yes, I was. That was I would say doing that self release and
• 15:58
  putting out that record was the impetus for me to sort of step up from
• 16:02
  my doing merch and doing tour managing to actually managing right and trying to facilitate
• 16:11
  distribution and album artwork and just all logistics of putting out a record essentially becoming
• 16:15
  our own like label, you know. So, yeah, it was part
• 16:19
  of it was part of Run for Cover, right, No, No,
• 16:22
  the first one was completely independent. We had we had label services through this
• 16:29
  a company called Red Eye Distribution at a Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they
• 16:33
  do lots of they did like Barsouk and you know all this stuff. They
• 16:36
  do lots of lots of stuff for a d and uh, yeah, I
• 16:40
  think Josh had made that connection, Josh Bender And yeah, so they did
• 16:45
  our distro. They gave us, like you know, advances on manufacturing for
• 16:48
  certain things, and you know, just we able to put all the records
• 16:52
  together with them and just ship it out through their merch store that they gave
• 16:59
  us and just kind of like all these things like germinated from there. And
• 17:03
  there was a lot of a lot of ups and downs, a lot of
• 17:06
  a lot of gosh, it feels crazy the way it's it's been sophisticated now,
• 17:11
  but then those early days were pretty pretty touch and go with the online
• 17:15
  sales and just learning how to do everything on the fly. I just everyone
• 17:19
  was trying to figure it out. I mean, the music industry was especially
• 17:22
  changing in that time around the twenty twelve, where really moving from like the
• 17:26
  iTunes stuff being really big to streaming and it's it's a really tumultuous time for
• 17:33
  a lot of artists. So yeah, I remember we had to choose between
• 17:36
  I remember we we had to choose between where where were this is like the
• 17:40
  first record that was going to stream for me that you know, and we
• 17:41
  were like, who do you want the exclusive stream to go through? And
• 17:45
  it was between like a new company called Spotify and another new company called Ardio.
• 17:48
  Do you remember Aardio? And it was like, what's it gonna be
• 17:52
  Ardio or Spotify? And it's like Ardio is not even a thing anymore,
• 17:56
  I don't think, But it's like it was like that it was so new
• 18:00
  and there was even question marks of like should we even be streaming a new
• 18:03
  record? People just gonna get it for free? Why did it have to
• 18:07
  be exclusive? Was that like just like a part of the deal or what.
• 18:10
  It's just like a marketing thing. It's just like if it's exclusive to
• 18:14
  or for a certain period of time, like Spotify or audio will promote it,
• 18:18
  they'll put it on playlists, al they'll put it up on the New
• 18:22
  Music or you know whatever it would be. So some exclusivity gives them incentive
• 18:26
  for their platform. Essentially, Oh god, those poor artists that went with
• 18:30
  Adio, Yeah, exactly, all their stuff officially just went to Spotify and
• 18:36
  then to Apple Music and then so so something I'm kind of curious on here
• 18:41
  is like you kind of alluded to it earlier in that, Yeah, the
• 18:44
  band doesn't really want to fall in line. They kind of want to do
• 18:47
  stuff their own way. But in that as well, I mean, the
• 18:49
  band's got to make some sort of of capital in order to continue to be
• 18:56
  a band. I mean, you have to be able to get from place
• 18:57
  to place. You have to be able to at some point, you know,
• 19:00
  take care of families and stuff like that. For sure, you gotta
• 19:03
  you gotta put dumpster food on the table exactly exactly. You gotta get grease
• 19:08
  for the get for the van, not for them, ye like that,
• 19:11
  but for the actual I know, for the end of So how how do
• 19:18
  you how do you have that conversation with them and be like, hey,
• 19:22
  we have to kind of transition here and be a little more serious about this
• 19:25
  or did you not do that? You just let them kind of be them
• 19:29
  and and kind of empower them or what what does this look like? Because
• 19:33
  I can't imagine trying to like wrangle in these these minds and these these let's
• 19:37
  say individuals that are Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to get twisted.
• 19:41
  Like they're very self motivated people. Yeah, for sure, Like every
• 19:45
  single like across like all was it eight or nine members of the band for
• 19:49
  the twenty one years? How many years? It's been like everyone is very
• 19:53
  self motivated. Everyone is like concerned about making a living. Right, So
• 20:00
  it wasn't that like you know, you brought up like money. It's like
• 20:03
  it's not that like money wasn't important. It's just it was just hard to
• 20:06
  come by, you know. And the band there's you're certainly going to be
• 20:10
  like, oh, choices that you make that are not going to be economically
• 20:14
  viable, and even if you're a self starter or not, like it might
• 20:18
  take an outside voice to say like, hey, this might not be the
• 20:21
  best route. You know what I mean, I would say that here are
• 20:22
  the things that like me and that you wouldn't want to do. In like
• 20:26
  those early times, it is like we wouldn't want to bring out a sound
• 20:27
  engineer because it's just like it's an extra cost. Everything was about like saving
• 20:32
  money. So it's like, yeah, you want to tour, you want
• 20:36
  tour comfortably. So that's a bus. Well the bus is like forty thousand
• 20:40
  dollars and it's like or it's x amount of However, money however the day
• 20:42
  rate is and the fuel and I'm paying the driver and all this sort of
• 20:48
  I mean, you have a crew and everything was like everything's like skeleton crew.
• 20:52
  So it's like we want to bus, well, we'll hold buy our
• 20:55
  own bus. Okay, great, well the fuel costs. It's like,
• 20:59
  oh well, you know, we'll hook it up. We'll hook up a
• 21:02
  grease engine to it, and the diesel engine will run off of food waste
• 21:06
  essentially, And it's like, well, we don't want to pay a driver.
• 21:08
  It's like, oh well, you know, we'll get it registered as
• 21:11
  an RV and we won't need to gel and it'll be under certain you know,
• 21:15
  we'll be able to actually drive it ourselves. And so it's these sort
• 21:18
  of like ideas of like how can we not cut corners? It would be
• 21:26
  it would end up being that, and sometimes like we would be cutting corners,
• 21:27
  would be actually doing a disservice to ourselves. But it was always in
• 21:33
  the spirit of like finding the thing that like either made it more interesting,
• 21:37
  made it more profitable, or just anything or just getting rid of anything that's
• 21:42
  like superfluous. You know, it was seen as unnecessary. So the ways
• 21:47
  that we kind of hurt ourselves is not having a sound engineer. Josh Bender,
• 21:52
  he was a sound engineer for a long time, but he was also
• 21:53
  the tour manager and uh but he's just like the tor manager would come on
• 21:59
  and he would get on in the house system and he you know, he
• 22:00
  kind of self taught. And but when you get like a real engineer like
• 22:04
  we got. We brought on a couple engineers and later on life or later
• 22:07
  on the band's career, most notably Michael Lane, who was our engineer from
• 22:12
  or is still our engineer from twenty fifteen and on. Like that is a
• 22:18
  game changer, Like it makes the day to day easier, like mentally it
• 22:23
  just goes smoother, Like the show sounds better, like there's less strife within
• 22:30
  the band because there's less gear failures, or like people can hear themselves on
• 22:33
  stage, Like everything goes better and the crowd enjoys it. Mark and the
• 22:37
  crowd enjoys it. The crowd will always say that they can't hear the vocals,
• 22:41
  but that's just because they're standing like but like behind the pa, you
• 22:47
  know what I mean, Like right, so, uh yeah, there's just
• 22:52
  things like that that we didn't quite always fall in line with I'd say though
• 22:56
  like more often the not it benefited the band, like if not, it
• 23:03
  made us sort of more appealing I think from sort of like from a punk
• 23:08
  aspect or like some like a hippie aspect, just like doing something that was
• 23:15
  di y that was sort of countercultural, that was always like it was cool,
• 23:19
  and I don't think it was ever really like this is gonna be countercultural.
• 23:22
  It was like, no, we're just gonna be We're just gonna you
• 23:26
  know, we're just gonna do it our way. We're gonna do something that
• 23:30
  we want to do it that's interesting to us. And so much of that
• 23:33
  is was Chris Kleinberg and and it's probably mostly Chris Kleinberg and Aaron and Mike
• 23:40
  to theft the least degree of those people, but but still a great I'm
• 23:45
  not. That's not saying that Mike's not. But my point is Chris and
• 23:48
  Aaron were like the bus broke down, it's like they're up shirts off inside
• 23:55
  of like you know, a diesel manifold, like five hours before a show,
• 24:00
  trying to like you know, figure out, you know, if we
• 24:03
  dropped a valve, you know why shirtless Aaron weis by the way, I
• 24:08
  mean everyone he's half naked on stage. I was gonna say most of the
• 24:12
  time. Yeah, when he gets sweaty and he's just skinning bones, you
• 24:17
  know what I mean, he just didn't have to. He's that comes off
• 24:21
  pretty quick in in a sweaty room, or if he's trying to cross a
• 24:26
  river, right, yeah, which I forget which river it was, but
• 24:30
  I think it's like the Chesapeake. Yeah you know that story. Yes,
• 24:34
  I well, and he was on he was on a bus with a person
• 24:40
  that he was romantically interested in. Yes, I heard this on the Label
• 24:44
  podcast. Yeah, he was like romantically interested. Tell the story. I
• 24:49
  think it was I think it was Mike, but yeah, he was like
• 24:52
  he's on the bus and like clearly can kind of tell like the girl is
• 24:56
  not into him or whatever, and he was like, all right, I
• 25:00
  need to like can you stop the bus now, and I'll just like head
• 25:03
  back, and he like ends up like hitchpike hitchhiking back. And then for
• 25:07
  whatever reason, like he gets off and then has to like cross some river
• 25:11
  and so literally like literally like swimming across this river, gets across it,
• 25:17
  and then like he's so exhausted he like is in somebody's yard or something else,
• 25:22
  like on the shores of this river, and he's like on a sleep,
• 25:26
  like asleep on this rock or whatever, and then wakes up and that
• 25:29
  like the moment there's I forget what the lyric is, but one of the
• 25:30
  lyrics on in January nineteen seventy nine is where there it's like he's like being
• 25:37
  worshiped by like all these like little bugs and creepy, right, So that
• 25:41
  that like that moment where he wakes up, he's like in this sort of
• 25:45
  lucid dream, and that's that lyric. Is what is from that that moment
• 25:49
  in his life. Yeah, there's a lot of Yeah, it was some
• 25:52
  girl that he was with and he said like there's I'll try and string all
• 25:56
  together. But like he was with some girl. He was coming back from
• 26:00
  DC, going back to Philadelphia, and he looked at this girl and the
• 26:07
  way he described it as like it was like hallucinatory, Like he looked at
• 26:10
  her and she like turned to like a skeleton. And that's when he got
• 26:15
  out of the car. You said, bus, I don't know what it
• 26:18
  was the vehicle and then yeah, he crossed I think it was the Chesapeake
• 26:22
  River and it was next to a bridge like a car, like a street,
• 26:27
  and he opted for the crazy thing, and he tried to cross this
• 26:33
  river, swim across this river at night. That's why floating in floating in
• 26:37
  a piece, we'll see rescue by a sinking ship like that, full sort
• 26:41
  of stuff. So yeah, it's like all this I don't even know why
• 26:44
  or how or what, but every time we cross it. We kind of
• 26:47
  crossed that bridge coming back from like the Black Cat or something like that,
• 26:49
  that get gets brought up. I mean, whom's among us hasn't done a
• 26:53
  stupid thing for a girl now. He also at one point I think he
• 26:57
  rode his bike to Boston from Philadelphia after a tour to propose to a young
• 27:03
  woman who he had like maybe met once. It's a helpless romantic I love
• 27:10
  it. He you know, heine see. And that's that's the key,
• 27:12
  is that the big gesture, the big gesture is sort of like the big
• 27:18
  romantic thing is like what he is like very attracted to. I think,
• 27:22
  yeah, it's the same thing. Was even just sort of like you know,
• 27:26
  even when he would dumpster dive, it's just sort of it's just it's
• 27:29
  almost like a he kind of gamified it at some point where it was just
• 27:33
  like, yeah, I have money, but like I know that there's probably
• 27:37
  a half a big mac in there, and like he's fun to find it
• 27:41
  and eat it. I was like, okay, yeah, but I think
• 27:45
  there's something so romantic about this idea that he don't have to just get into
• 27:48
  food waste and that there is actually there's so much bounty around us that is
• 27:53
  you may think it's gross, and yeah, to some degree it is,
• 27:56
  but like it's also safe to eat and largely delicious. It's not like it
• 28:00
  has poop on it, you know what I'm saying. Right, I think
• 28:03
  it inspired a lot of dumpster diving because I used to in college. I
• 28:07
  used to go and this wasn't by a necessity by any means, but I
• 28:10
  used to go to the bakery in town and I would go dumpster dive and
• 28:14
  I would grab like loaves of bread out of there, out of their dumpster,
• 28:18
  and they were always like fresh, like exactly maybe a day old,
• 28:22
  yeah, the two old ones y, yeah exactly. And it's like,
• 28:25
  boy, I have like week old bread in my kitchen, right, I
• 28:27
  mean a blt today. It's like it's not like the bread is that bad,
• 28:33
  But it's just not it's just not up to the standards of like what
• 28:36
  you would get at a fresh break at a fresh bakery exactly. And I
• 28:40
  kind of love that that they all live their lives like with that, with
• 28:42
  with some sort of like conviction like that. But there's something I'm curious about.
• 28:47
  Yeah, what's one of those stories about me without you that has not
• 28:52
  been shared that you can think of? Like, what's one of those things
• 28:56
  we were like, I can't believe that this is a thing that happened to
• 29:00
  this band or and I was witnessed to it or something like that, and
• 29:04
  and has never been publicly told. Oh my god, I wish you would
• 29:07
  have given me a second to think about this. I have to roll back
• 29:11
  the last the last two decades of things that have happened. A. Yeah,
• 29:17
  I don't know. I mean there's I don't know, there's so many.
• 29:22
  I mean, we've there's there's been somewhat publicized the whole thing in Russia
• 29:27
  when the band got pulled over and got pulled over, they had their show
• 29:32
  stopped in Mermansk, which is like in like the Arctic Circle and it's way
• 29:40
  north. They're playing like a basement show on like toy drum sets and just
• 29:48
  like any piece of equipment they could get their hands on. This is what
• 29:51
  the promoter set up as like an additional thing. And I don't know that.
• 29:56
  I don't know if the police, the KGB came in and like stopped
• 30:02
  the show, got everyone out, like detained the band on like having the
• 30:08
  wrong visas I responsibility by the way, Oh no, and they were so
• 30:15
  they brought them, they detained them. And I'm not there, by the
• 30:18
  way, because I it's not it doesn't really I don't love to travel to
• 30:22
  Europe because it's just because I'm not gonna be driving. I'm not gonna like
• 30:26
  it's just it's not really worth my time. Like I have to hire someone
• 30:30
  to do all the work that I would do anyway, So we usually have
• 30:33
  a tour manager over there who runs around do stuff. I just stayed back
• 30:37
  here with my family. I felt someone guilty about that. But because I
• 30:41
  like to be in the trenches, and this was the trenches right, like
• 30:45
  trenches around Moscow. Well they you know, the opportunity came up to get
• 30:52
  this Russia, these two dates in Russia, one of the Moscow and the
• 30:56
  answer was like, yeah, let's do it. This is like that sounds
• 30:59
  great. This is before any of this. This is two thousand I don't
• 31:03
  even know when it was two thousand and seventeen, maybe two thousand two down
• 31:07
  sixteen seventeen. Yeah, so it's like, let's do it. Some apprehension
• 31:11
  from some people, but it's it's gonna be fine, right anyway, I
• 31:15
  go go through the process. The guy tells me, hey, you get
• 31:18
  these visas, it's you know, will pay. It's it's like not like
• 31:22
  an artist. It's like an artist visa or it's not a working visa because
• 31:25
  they're not technically you're getting paid in US dollars and it's being wired to you
• 31:30
  beforehand, so it's like money doesn't actually change hands in Russia. There for
• 31:36
  the workaround, right anyway, Moscow show goes off well with the hitch.
• 31:41
  I mean Aaron like dislocates his finger not onlike like what happened to Jalen hurts?
• 31:45
  Oh wait is that the one there's that picture where it's like, yeah,
• 31:49
  yeah, that's in Moscow. I didn't realize that that's in Moscow and
• 31:52
  he refused to take any payments for it. Like when they were gonna like
• 31:56
  they're gonna put it back, and that's just he's got to go full tilt,
• 32:00
  right, no drugs. It's like, if I'm in Russia, I'm
• 32:05
  probably not taken any of their pain meds either. Fair enough, Yeah,
• 32:08
  I just don't trust the fair enough. Yeah. I mean there's normal people
• 32:13
  in Russia too, right, and there are, but I just h well,
• 32:16
  you never know. Well I don't know actually, Uh. Anyway,
• 32:22
  so they went to Russia and or they went to Moscow, and then it
• 32:25
  was suggested a couple of months before, like hey we could also tag on
• 32:29
  like Murmansk and I was like, sure, let's do Mermanz. Guys were
• 32:32
  like, yeah, fine, one more show. So they just did Murman's
• 32:37
  was the one in the basement and that's you know, it was just like
• 32:39
  total ragtag. No one comes here to play clid. There's no equipment around
• 32:44
  even play on. They get detained by the cops. They get brought into
• 32:47
  like a holding room. One by one they're brought in and like they're being
• 32:52
  shown like photographs of themselves at the airport, like either coming into Russia are
• 33:00
  coming, like they've been watched the entire time they've been in the circle and
• 33:07
  they're all yelling at each member in Russian and uh, no one has any
• 33:14
  idea what's going on. I'm at home in Philadelphia and I get a call
• 33:19
  from Rick from Russia and he is just like, I don't know what's going
• 33:25
  on. I don't know. They got us, they're taking us somewhere.
• 33:30
  I don't know. Can you just call my wife? Like I was just
• 33:34
  like you, I was just like, what's going on? Like what can
• 33:42
  I do? Like what can I do? Yeah? And then like I
• 33:46
  heard nothing for like days or like a day maybe like then they got into
• 33:52
  the they got back the next day, I guess, because what eventually happened
• 33:55
  was they were released from this detainment there. They had another translator there who
• 34:00
  was like translating for them and all they had their liaison and they were let
• 34:08
  go. Everyone's like shaking with fear. They think this is gonna be like
• 34:13
  man not man, can pussy pussy riot right where it's like, yeah,
• 34:15
  you know they're gonna get detained. It's gonna be this awful thing. Someone's
• 34:21
  gonna get caned like and that's yeah, And could you imagine what that would
• 34:25
  have done to the status of the band, though, oh no, we
• 34:29
  talked about. It's been talked about. Could have been huge, Like all
• 34:34
  I had to do was be like in a Russian prison for five years.
• 34:38
  They get on the flight and like they're like Beaver tells this story, like
• 34:43
  this utter dread coming up, like he didn't feel like he was safe,
• 34:47
  like even as the plane was taking off, he felt like any moment they
• 34:52
  were going to be grounded again and brought back in for like they were just
• 34:54
  mortified with tear, with fear, and uh yeah, and that was so
• 35:00
  that the billboard wrote about it to some degree, like Russian billboard or European
• 35:05
  billboard, not even an American bill board. So yeah, that was a
• 35:07
  pretty And I wasn't even there for it, that's what And I want to
• 35:12
  be. I want to be there for it. I want to be if
• 35:15
  I'm responsible for it, and this is my band, like I want to
• 35:19
  be there to have the experience and live to tell about it. But also
• 35:23
  like the solidarity of it, Like I felt incredible guilt like I should have
• 35:28
  been there. I should have had I should have been detained, I should
• 35:30
  have been like having these like like Russian cops scream at me. I should
• 35:35
  have been in fear for my life, Like, but I don't I don't
• 35:37
  get to have that experience. I just have to get to talk about a
• 35:39
  podcast. There's just like Russian cops just not into like indie post hardcore bands
• 35:46
  or what they're I think they're just into like like Russian dominance. I think
• 35:52
  that's what it is. Just that the art is not something they're really concerned
• 35:57
  with. Wow, it's just about the state. So were they were They
• 36:01
  not charged with anything? No, No, the slap on the man just
• 36:09
  of them getting detained in the first place, Like what was their reason fear?
• 36:15
  Just like driving home like don't mess with Russia. I guess like maybe
• 36:22
  like maybe something happened to the promoter where he maybe he got in trouble in
• 36:28
  some way. But yeah, that's the first one that comes to mind.
• 36:35
  That's terrifying. Yeah, I wow. Uh sort of along those lines,
• 36:40
  though, it sounds like you sort of like fell into this where you know,
• 36:46
  you're just like literally like, hey, this is a band that I
• 36:50
  really like and I'm wanting to become friends with them, and then you do.
• 36:53
  It doesn't sound like you were like a music industry insider by any means,
• 36:59
  And so was there anything as you went into specifically the managing role of
• 37:05
  this, where you're like, oh shit, there's like industry stuff that I'm
• 37:08
  gonna have to navigate now that I had no idea about before, because that
• 37:13
  seems to like have to be a thing that had to have been a part
• 37:16
  of this since you didn't have that prior experience. Yeah, and I don't
• 37:21
  wonder how much people have. I mean, I didn't really have any real
• 37:22
  mentorship outside of Josh Bender. And yeah, there was a couple of moments
• 37:30
  where I was like, oh, I'm out of my depth, you know,
• 37:32
  But I realized in those moments, now you can just like if you're
• 37:38
  working with relationships with people who you trust, if you have relationship with people
• 37:44
  that you trust, right, you can just you can be humble. You
• 37:47
  can ask questions which will make people trust you more. And that's actually something
• 37:54
  that you know. Aaron would ask me. I would say a word and
• 37:59
  he goes, what does that word mean? I'm like, you don't know
• 38:01
  what that word means, you know, But instead of faking it, he
• 38:06
  just would just straight out admit, I don't know what that word means.
• 38:08
  What does it mean? And then here I am teaching him. Then our
• 38:13
  bond grows stronger, and I feel like that's something that would have helped me.
• 38:17
  Like it, Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Yeah,
• 38:20
  there was a time when me and that you was getting offers to tour with
• 38:27
  Paramore overseas and it was like super duper last minute. It was like usually
• 38:31
  when you do like tours, it's like I'm giving a couple of months like
• 38:35
  heads up, and we all sit down and we talk about we agree to
• 38:39
  it, and then we just figure out how to do it. Europe's a
• 38:42
  whole different beast because like now I've got to like budget stuff. I don't
• 38:45
  get to bring my bus over. I gotta rank, it's on our own
• 38:49
  gear. We gotta get flights, we gotta get the TM, we gotta
• 38:51
  we gotta deal with merch, we get all this crap. So it's a
• 38:52
  whole logistical thing. And this offer comes up while we're on tour. So
• 38:59
  I'm this tour and I'm potentially dealing with this thing that happens in ten days,
• 39:04
  and like I have to like negotiate guarantees. But I have like another
• 39:09
  booking agent who is a European booking agent who is just like and I don't
• 39:15
  never even really even met him. He's just like a guy that can help
• 39:16
  you find gigs overseas, and he was the one doing all like the negotiating,
• 39:23
  and there was no relationship between him and Paramore's European agent. I didn't
• 39:30
  really have a relationship with Paramore's management, and so like so much stuff is
• 39:35
  like getting lost in translation, and I'm just like, I just need more
• 39:40
  money to make this happen. Are we Paramore's favorite band? Just like give
• 39:45
  us, like give us two thousand pounds a night, and like we can
• 39:47
  make this happen. No one has to, like we just break even,
• 39:51
  you know, it'd be fun. Yeah, And anyway it fell through.
• 39:58
  It never happened that one didn't And that was which I was somewhat relieved about
• 40:02
  because I was like, this too much work at the last minute for this
• 40:06
  thing for me. Guys were all disappointed, and in our booking agent in
• 40:12
  the US was really bummed out because he's like, I have a relationship with
• 40:16
  all of those people, who the heck is this other agent that You're like,
• 40:22
  why was it? Why didn't you ask me to do this thing?
• 40:25
  We had to let this like big heart to heart in Brooklyn after a show
• 40:30
  and I was like, I didn't know. I didn't know. He's like,
• 40:32
  I will tell these guys to fire you. Like this is like are
• 40:37
  you royally am screwed up here? And I was just like you know,
• 40:42
  and I was able to be somewhat honest and bear with the guys. I
• 40:45
  was like, I feel like I screwed this up. Like Bridgewater or agent
• 40:47
  at the time, was like he told me that, like you know,
• 40:51
  like he's gonna tell you guys to fire me. And he's like, we
• 40:52
  you're not gonna fire you. It's like like we all love Justin, but
• 40:58
  like he doesn't he we're not going to fire you. Based on his word
• 41:01
  on this situation, I was like, okay, good, you know,
• 41:06
  but that was a moment where I was like, oh, I really needed
• 41:10
  to trust Justin. If I had questions, I felt like I could be
• 41:15
  like, well, I'll just figure this out on my own. But what
• 41:16
  I needed to do is like really rely on my team. And I just
• 41:20
  didn't know that like Justin would deal with anything non domestically, right. I
• 41:24
  think it just like he would. He won't even touch Europe. He doesn't
• 41:28
  even know your they have a whole office. He was part of the agencycret
• 41:31
  They have a whole office in Europe that could have helped this out. Got
• 41:35
  this thing, you know, it would have been fine. So that was
• 41:39
  a big like moment to learn and a lot of stuff like in this day
• 41:44
  and age, Boy, it's so helpful to just look at Google, like
• 41:46
  what certain things are and how certain things are done. But you know,
• 41:52
  you can fake it, team to make it. You can also just ask
• 41:54
  questions, you know, if you're unsure. It is shocking that at no
• 42:00
  point there was a paramour MEW without you tour. There was, it just
• 42:06
  wasn't in the US. Yeah, we did Southeast that, We did Southeast
• 42:10
  Asia with them. When when was that it was Southeast Asia? Was I
• 42:16
  want to say twenty twenty, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, I can't remember
• 42:24
  exactly. I want to say twenty. I want to say twenty fourteen.
• 42:27
  Yeah, did shows a pair of Moore I think in twenty in twenty nineteen
• 42:35
  in Europe as well, And I wasn't there for that, but I think
• 42:37
  that's what it was. Yeah, So but nothing in America. I can't
• 42:40
  believe they wouldn't. Now we did now we did parahoy like three times,
• 42:45
  right, so we did their cruise. So I mean we weren't given so
• 42:46
  many opportunities like yo, let's go on a freaking national for like like that'd
• 42:52
  be fun, like like you know, like it's like we all know each
• 42:57
  other. Like I'm in a fantasy for fall league with Taylor York. It's
• 43:01
  like with Rick, you know, like it's just like, let's make this
• 43:06
  happen, right and never never, By the way, is Taylor York?
• 43:08
  Is he good at fantasy football? No? No? I think he like
• 43:15
  he he was almost like trolling us. I think like in the draft,
• 43:20
  like he was just picking, like he's one of those guys who's like getting
• 43:23
  the kicker in the second round just like a mass of people. Oh man,
• 43:28
  that's how I remember it. But he fared a lot better than and
• 43:32
  I tried, and I I feeled miserably this year. Wow. I got
• 43:37
  a situation where I was like I had a great team on fantasy and it
• 43:40
  was like I would kick everyone else's ass, like except for the one person
• 43:45
  that I would go against that week. The matchup never worked out. It's
• 43:49
  like, oh you oh, I have one hundred and sixty three. It's
• 43:52
  like, Oh, you just happen to have one hundred and sixty four.
• 43:54
  Meanwhile everyone else is like one ten. You know what I mean. It's
• 43:57
  saying I want to clean up, but I had to get matched up here.
• 44:00
  It happened like eight weeks in a row. I'm starting to become convinced
• 44:04
  that that happens to everybody because I did. That happens to me too every
• 44:07
  time I fantasy football. Yeah, oh yeah, everybody peas p rs against
• 44:13
  you. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a it's gotta be like a
• 44:17
  mentality thing though, or uh, what do you call it? Like a
• 44:21
  shared mentality that if you if you play, if you play fantasy football,
• 44:25
  you're you're losing by just a couple of points every week that you lose.
• 44:31
  Mike, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your side of the
• 44:35
  story when it comes to like the breakup. Obviously you were there for roughly
• 44:39
  tennis years, and obviously, like the announcement was like before COVID happened,
• 44:44
  and then COVID delays everything, and uh and and then eventually the final tour
• 44:49
  happens. But I'd love to hear just kind of like you know, we
• 44:52
  talked to Greg about kind of like where he was at in life at the
• 44:54
  time, and why uh he was sort of like on board with a breakup.
• 45:00
  I'd love to hear considering the fact, even though you weren't one of
• 45:02
  the band members, you were certainly a very important member of me. Without
• 45:07
  you, I'd love to get from your side of like, what just the
• 45:09
  whole story of the breakup looked like. Oh yeah, well, first of
• 45:13
  all, correct a couple of things. It's not a breakup, it's you
• 45:16
  know, it is a hiatus. It is also just a farewell. I
• 45:21
  think we put it pretty concisely to simply in that On Wikipedia right now it
• 45:24
  says me without you was rock band. Can we put can we can we
• 45:30
  change that too is and then maybe make the like hiatus piece to it if
• 45:36
  you want to. Yeah, you can get past those Wikipedia editors there you
• 45:39
  We'll do it. Yeah. On the mew that you website, it says
• 45:43
  according to Like that we have a little blurb on there, or it just
• 45:45
  shows the band's picture, and then like it shows a blurb and it says
• 45:49
  according to Wikipedia that you was an American rock band. You know. So
• 45:54
  we try to be somewhat playful with it, but I mean it's it's hard
• 45:57
  to can't even talk about like what it is because well, I guess I
• 46:01
  don't want to get too far ahead of myself. I can start from the
• 46:04
  beginning. Maybe that you is hard. It's really hard work because it requires
• 46:12
  so much energy in order for it to be sustainable. We have to tour
• 46:16
  a lot, you have to put out records pretty consistently. You have to
• 46:22
  try and grow your fan base. You can't really rest on your laurels for
• 46:25
  too much. So it always has to be movement forward, and that just
• 46:31
  gets to being harder and harder as you get older and older, right,
• 46:37
  I think, and guys in their mid forties now, it's just people have
• 46:42
  families and mortgages and relationships and aging bodies, PhDs, PhDs, you know,
• 46:52
  other things in front of them that are important, and maybe that you
• 46:58
  is not the thing that can always guaranteed to bring all those things to their
• 47:04
  into their fullest right. So we had this sort of realization, I would
• 47:12
  say probably in two thousand and eighteen, like December to that. The end
• 47:15
  of December, right around the holiday break, Aaron wrote us an email,
• 47:21
  and like he often does when we're running a record where it's just like,
• 47:24
  guys, I just did vocals for this thing, and I think it's the
• 47:29
  last song that I can. I just I have nothing more in me,
• 47:31
  Like I feel like a whatever it is, I feel like a shell of
• 47:35
  myself. Blah blah blah. Yeah, you know, it's just I think
• 47:37
  I'm done. I think I've written my last meet of that you song.
• 47:39
  I just I wrote back, and I was like, Okay, you know
• 47:45
  this, We're so many years into this thing at this point, like we
• 47:49
  can just we can just agree that that was it, Like untitled wasn't even
• 47:54
  called untitled the moment, but this, this next record will be the last
• 47:57
  record. Let's just say that, and maybe we can do an album cycle
• 48:00
  and then we can move on to a farewell. And that was always just
• 48:05
  kind of like huh and some reason, like I feel like there would have
• 48:07
  been a lot of way more pushback and like sadness to it, but it
• 48:13
  felt like that was something that was received with a lot of peace. And
• 48:17
  I don't even know why I suggested. It just kind of felt like the
• 48:20
  writing was on the wall. I remember like writing the email, like while
• 48:22
  I was on like well, my wife was getting like was trying on clothes
• 48:25
  like Anthropology and King of Pressia. Just I'm writing this email just being like,
• 48:30
  yeah, I think we should end the band. Then I guess,
• 48:34
  not as not to be like reactionary, but just to kind of like accept
• 48:37
  it for what it is, and then maybe this is like a good thing,
• 48:40
  Like you have all these records, we don't need to how much further
• 48:44
  can we push? It's always what can we do in the next album,
• 48:47
  Like will Aaron write another record? All these questions and people are getting at
• 48:51
  each other's throats and things are getting harder, and so I felt like,
• 48:54
  Okay, the writing's on the wall, like this can be it. And
• 48:57
  what would this actually allow us to do is to in some ways extend the
• 49:01
  life of the band by giving it an end date. We can also like
• 49:06
  live into it being more healthy and hopefully more profitable time for the group,
• 49:14
  have a nice send off, not just like I hate you guys and like
• 49:17
  we're done and like goodbye forever and we're gonna do one show and that'll be
• 49:22
  it. It's like we can make it like a celebration of what we did.
• 49:24
  Yeah, And so like coming out from that angle, where it's like,
• 49:30
  we're not gonna announce the untitled is the last album. We're gonna keep
• 49:32
  that in our back pocket till the album cycle is done, and then we'll
• 49:37
  be like, hey, by the way, we've got one more year and
• 49:40
  you know, in twenty twenty, and that'll be that'll be it. So
• 49:44
  we make that big announcement, this big outcry, everyone sad boo hoo,
• 49:49
  and we've got a stacked ear set up for twenty twenty, like we're gonna
• 49:52
  do reissues and we're of like I don't even know what it was of like
• 49:58
  Catch or Brother's Sister whatever. We're gonna put all these records back out that
• 50:01
  you haven't heard a long time, and we're gonna go on tour with Thrice,
• 50:05
  and we're gonna a European tour, and we're gonna do a brother Sister
• 50:07
  tour, and we're gonna do a big fair. We're gonna like really do
• 50:12
  it up for one whole year and go bigger and batter than we've ever been.
• 50:17
  And I think we all know how that turned out. For twenty twenty,
• 50:21
  it was like we got the Thrice tour in and then we got back
• 50:24
  and we announced the Brother Sister Tour of the day, they like were like
• 50:30
  everything's shutting down. Everyone stayed everyone What did they say, stay in place?
• 50:37
  What is it like shelter in place for two weeks? Yeah, And
• 50:40
  I just like this is gonna be done. We'll be out of this thing
• 50:43
  in sixty days, like you know, the on sales on like we have
• 50:46
  like a ninety day on sale, Like we'll have a good month of like
• 50:50
  people feeling ready to go out. And it just never came back around,
• 50:52
  obviously, So we had to kind of like pivot and reset things obviously,
• 51:00
  and for like a good you know, five hundred plus days until we could
• 51:04
  play another show. And that was also, in a strange way, like
• 51:10
  a blessing because it allowed us to spread things out, not feel like everything
• 51:16
  has to happen within this nine month period or this you know, ten month
• 51:21
  period wherever it would be. We could just make it almost a year and
• 51:24
  a half where we can kind of put the pieces in front of us and
• 51:30
  knock them down as we as we can, so I feel like we albably
• 51:31
  have a stronger farewell. Right. It just for me, even in terms
• 51:37
  of the way I would organize my work. The original plan for twenty twenty
• 51:40
  would have been like damn near impossible. I probably would have, you know,
• 51:45
  my marriage would have been in shambles, and I would have been overworked
• 51:46
  and stressed and it just wouldn't have been great. So having things bump out
• 51:52
  to twenty one and twenty two for the farewell where was was actually very good
• 52:00
  for the group and the whole farewell itself. We didn't even really have like
• 52:07
  a lot of like how we were going to talk about it in place,
• 52:09
  and we didn't really even talk about it too much, you know, but
• 52:13
  we put quotations around the farewell. We were explicit and trying not to be
• 52:17
  like, you know, the band is breaking up, or like this is
• 52:22
  the final thing. You know, everything was like this is the final quote
• 52:24
  unquote farewell show. Like we wanted this to be like the band saying goodbye,
• 52:30
  not like the because like not being to be like this is the final
• 52:37
  mea that you show. This is the final time we're saying farewell, but
• 52:39
  you can always say hello after you've said farewell. We didn't want the permanence
• 52:44
  of this thing because we've seen that happened so many times, especially in this
• 52:49
  modern age where it's like every band breaks up, tells you they're breaking up,
• 52:55
  and then like they're back a year and a half later. Yeah,
• 53:00
  And I my opinion is that, like I understand why that happens, but
• 53:04
  it looks a little silly. It looks a little disingenuous from the outside,
• 53:09
  and we didn't want to be caught too much in that trap. Like I
• 53:13
  think everyone fully realizes that, like there is a great possibility that me that
• 53:16
  you will definitely play another show. You know, there's it's just out there,
• 53:21
  like we want that to be a possibility. It may never actually come
• 53:23
  to fruition. There may never be another media that you song show or whatever,
• 53:28
  but like they're also at the same time just as much could very well
• 53:31
  be another song show, tour, whatever. Because life comes at you fast,
• 53:37
  things change. Everyone still likes each other. I'm having lunch tomorrow with
• 53:42
  Mike. We all got together for like a band meeting last Monday, Like
• 53:46
  you know, things are still like we all like you know, it wasn't
• 53:50
  a band practice. No one played music, but we discussed future projects for
• 53:53
  the band and stuff like that that we're gonna, you know, be doing
• 53:58
  in twenty four and just like trying to you know, everyone's just got there.
• 54:01
  Everyone's the group chats still still bumping, right, Everyone's sending memes and
• 54:07
  telling jokes and you know, so it's it's still like a really healthy thing,
• 54:12
  I think. So it doesn't feel like it's over Philly Eagles loss,
• 54:16
  right, yoh, yoh definitely. Oh. We rolled into Rick's house for
• 54:21
  on New Year's Eve. Like I pulled in to his driveway or up to
• 54:27
  his driveway like right as they like lost to the Cardinals, and I was
• 54:32
  just like I rolled in and like Rick shot me that look just like what
• 54:37
  the hell? And I was like, I don't know. And then Mike
• 54:40
  rolled up and he was just like, hey, how about them Eagles?
• 54:45
  You know, I'm not like commiserating for Like, luckily it was really nice
• 54:50
  because no one it was New Year's Eve and we're all there together, and
• 54:52
  like there wasn't too much commiserating. Rick's place has terrible five G, so
• 54:58
  I couldn't even check Twitter to like see what people were kind of complaining about
• 55:01
  even if I wanted to, you know, so like I kind of like
• 55:05
  got some space from it at that moment. Does does Aaron still not have
• 55:09
  a smartphone? No, of course he does yeah, oh he does.
• 55:13
  No, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's moved up
• 55:15
  in the world. Yeah, it's just like there's certain things like when you
• 55:19
  would go on tour and like you can't call your wife, you have to
• 55:22
  borrow someone else's phone. It's like there's that's your pigeons still could potentially exist.
• 55:29
  I don't know, No, I think that that's like a yeah.
• 55:32
  I mean he would always have like different ones. He's a little clumsy,
• 55:37
  he would lose them pretty frequently, and so I don't think he has I
• 55:42
  don't know what he has. I don't know, but yeah, he's had
• 55:45
  one, and it's great. It's nice that he has it. He picks
• 55:47
  up he facetimes. He never gets back to Texas. He's like, it
• 55:52
  was his birthday on what two days ago, on the twenty first, and
• 55:57
  then the group says like yo, heavy birthday and blah blah blah, and
• 56:00
  just like two days later he responds like he's just he's very like he's just
• 56:06
  not paying attention to it. He's not paying to a tax message threat that
• 56:09
  that that sounds like sounds like what I would assume of Yeah, exactly exactly.
• 56:14
  Yeah, he's I'm just going to get back to like emails. He's
• 56:17
  he is literally he's detached from the band away now. That is not normal
• 56:24
  for him because I mean his life is in Nampa, Idaho, and he's
• 56:29
  teaching, and he's got kids, and he's got homes out there and he's
• 56:32
  got he's just got stuff going on. He's busy all the time. And
• 56:37
  so like the band, the band, so that thing I stopped doing,
• 56:40
  like you know, fourteen eighteen months ago, Like I'm not you know,
• 56:45
  it's just not as uh, it's not in front of him, So I
• 56:49
  get that. Yeah, before we get into your top five, i'd love
• 56:52
  to hear just kind of how you think about the legacy of me without you.
• 56:57
  You know, obviously you're you're talking about like you know that at certain
• 57:00
  points this band feels sort of untenable and just in terms of like the finances
• 57:05
  where it's like you're having to go so hard just to make ends meet.
• 57:08
  At the same time, you've got one of the biggest artists in the world
• 57:14
  who that's her favorite band, with Haley Williams. And you've got one of
• 57:17
  the biggest up and coming artists with Julian Baker, and obviously like her work
• 57:22
  with boy genius. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I think she
• 57:24
  was at one of the last Meet Without Your Yeah. So, like you
• 57:29
  have artists who very much respect Me Without You. It's one of their favorite
• 57:34
  bands, yea. And yet it's also a band where it's like it's just
• 57:37
  it's small enough where they you guys really had to work your asses off just
• 57:40
  to make it tenable. So I'm just I'm curious about just like how you
• 57:45
  think about the legacy of Me Without You as somebody who has a different relationship
• 57:50
  with the band than being someone like Aaron, Right. So I'm curious,
• 57:53
  like how you think about that lasting legacy because so for so many people,
• 57:59
  Me Without You is not only their their favorite band, but one of the
• 58:01
  most important bands, you know, especially for those of us that grew up
• 58:04
  in like the evangelical world and have a way different faith than that now.
• 58:07
  And I still remember it, like going to Me Without You show and feeling
• 58:10
  like this is like the one of the most like queer friendly like band venue
• 58:15
  spaces I've ever been a part. Yeah, And it's like weird to think
• 58:19
  that that was like a band that was like really well known in the evangelical
• 58:22
  world at one point with obviously tooth fail connections. So anyway, I'm just
• 58:25
  curious, like how you think about that lasting legacy with all of these different
• 58:30
  factors being a part of me without you, where You've got like a lot
• 58:32
  of LSBTQ fans, You've got like that Julian Baker's and Hailey Williams of the
• 58:37
  world that really care about me without you, You've got all these fans that
• 58:40
  are like I would, and you've got bands nowadays that would say it like
• 58:44
  we I wouldn't be a band without me without you. I'm just curious,
• 58:46
  like how you would think of that that lasting legacy given the fact of your
• 58:50
  role in the band. Hmmm. Yeah, I don't know, or if
• 58:54
  there is a legacy, because it's not over. Yeah, I mean not
• 58:59
  e Noma is written. I suppose, I mean a large large portion of
• 59:01
  it is. I think that the legacy of the band is that, Like,
• 59:09
  I don't know, that is a It's an interesting question because I do
• 59:13
  think about that word legacy, but I don't know if I've ever actually been
• 59:15
  able to define what it is for me with that you You'd probably have to
• 59:20
  ask people who weren't as close to it, you know, like well,
• 59:24
  I'm in it, like today, I'm in it. You can like you
• 59:29
  can see like surrounded by records in merch and like people's packages still and like
• 59:36
  I just mean that you the legacy of it is what we did today and
• 59:39
  what we're doing tomorrow. It's still an active thing for me, So I
• 59:44
  don't know. I think that it's just I think for for people, it's
• 59:47
  probably like the big the big thing, the big takeaway from the band is
• 59:52
  sort of accessibility to mysticism, you know, through the lyrics. I think
• 1:00:00
  that that's been something that's and that's not something I necessarily even like resonate with.
• 1:00:04
  That's the strange thing for me to say. I'm not a real lyrics
• 1:00:06
  guy. I don't really pay I have no idea what any mew that you
• 1:00:09
  song is really about. I don't know, get half the references from Aaron
• 1:00:14
  or you know, not even half the ninety percent of the references. So
• 1:00:17
  I'm not really focused on that part of it. But I do feel like
• 1:00:22
  there is an openness to me without you, with their fans, their accessibility
• 1:00:28
  that they would allow themselves with their pot lucks or their sort of like the
• 1:00:34
  sacred heart sessions that Aaron would have before, like there was like this idea,
• 1:00:37
  like we can come together, this we can do something different than just
• 1:00:40
  like the hierarchy of like band to fan, like trying to even that play
• 1:00:47
  playing field, being humble, but then also sort of like being excellent on
• 1:00:54
  top of it, like not just as like not just as a musicians,
• 1:00:59
  because they're actually musicians and incredible songwriters. But I think there was this this
• 1:01:04
  idea that we can also like be excellent to the people that support us,
• 1:01:08
  And yeah, I think that's a big, big part of it. It's
• 1:01:14
  like it's never taken for granted where it's just like the people that people come
• 1:01:19
  out to shows by merch online, listen to our records, talk about us
• 1:01:24
  in the media like to a small amountain degree they do. But yeah,
• 1:01:30
  I think that that that would be I think there's I think it's just like
• 1:01:34
  the legend of me that you is that like here's a crazy band that like
• 1:01:38
  was ready to get down and dirty and like meet people. Mhm. One
• 1:01:45
  of my favorite quotes of all time is actually from Julian Oh. Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  I think it was like in a New Yorker interview that she did a number
• 1:01:52
  of years ago. But she says, Punk teaches the same inversion of the
• 1:01:57
  power of the gospel. You learn that the thing about having a microphone is
• 1:02:01
  turning it away from your own mouth. Knowing that Julian was like a big
• 1:02:06
  meal without you fan, Like, I can't imagine that, like when she's
• 1:02:08
  saying that quote that she wasn't thinking about Aaron and you without you, like
• 1:02:13
  given the like the nature of me without you and the ethos the ethics of
• 1:02:16
  me without you, that that like has to be a big influence of the
• 1:02:21
  coolest thing that we can do is like make this a family, Like let's
• 1:02:23
  turn the spotlight from ourselves. Like we enjoy the music, and we love
• 1:02:27
  making the music, and we love you know, performing it, but like
• 1:02:31
  you're all a part of this, like every one of you matters in all
• 1:02:35
  of this. I think that's such a powerful way of thinking about music,
• 1:02:37
  and certainly that there's a punk ethic to that. Sure, Yeah, I
• 1:02:40
  think, yeah, I think that's I think about the way that like Aaron
• 1:02:44
  even conducts himself all on stage, like when he talks to the crowd,
• 1:02:50
  it's never like Chicago, Illinois, how are you, Tony, Let's get
• 1:02:55
  ready, It's none of the pump up stuff. It's like hi, right,
• 1:03:00
  like where are you without shoe? How are you all? It's like
• 1:03:02
  this like sort of like there's like a meekness to it. There's a tenderness
• 1:03:06
  to it. It's never trying to be like this being like raw raw thing.
• 1:03:09
  He's never acting like you're the crowd and he's the the band leader.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah, it's like there's like this, Uh, there can be a back
• 1:03:20
  and forth like does anybody have any questions like with something he would ask you
• 1:03:22
  know, it's like it's a silly thing to do, but it is this
• 1:03:25
  sort of like uh, inversion of the typical like rock star idea of what
• 1:03:31
  he really does. Feel like the like the anti rock star. Yes,
• 1:03:36
  he's the folk artist in the middle or in the rock world. Yeah,
• 1:03:40
  yeah, like I know that's how folk artist would talk, right. Rick
• 1:03:44
  said something. I would talk to Rick today on the phone and he he
• 1:03:47
  mentioned this. He's like, well he talked about He's like it's about when
• 1:03:54
  Aaron started to first like look homeless and he said it was some kid came
• 1:03:59
  up to I'm at some festival and it was just like he said something that
• 1:04:03
  was like uh, you know, so you guys are ups on stage and
• 1:04:08
  you're all like you're all like fit, and you're all like handsome and like
• 1:04:13
  well dressed, and like you're cool and you play you play cool music.
• 1:04:15
  You look cool playing your music. He's like, but like me, like
• 1:04:19
  I'm like overweight and like I can't write cool songs like you guys, Like
• 1:04:25
  I want you guys to be my role models, but like you're not my
• 1:04:27
  role models, Like you're like you could never be, Like I can never
• 1:04:30
  be you. And I think like that stuck with like Aaron, and he
• 1:04:36
  was just like, oh, time to only wear thrift store clothing and like
• 1:04:41
  you have a dumpster like and just you know, not shaves much or not
• 1:04:45
  you know whatever. However he would just look you know, and that so
• 1:04:48
  that like this idea that like the vanity of what comes with being like cool
• 1:04:56
  in a rock band. He was like, well, I'm not gonna have
• 1:04:59
  any part of that. I never heard that story until today, and I
• 1:05:02
  wonder how much of it's true or how much of it is being embellished or
• 1:05:06
  disconnected from reality. But I think you say something like that to Aaron.
• 1:05:11
  This is one of rick Boy's like oh it's funny, how like anybody can
• 1:05:14
  just get in Aaron's head and he'll it'll get him spinning. I was like,
• 1:05:16
  yeah, there does have to be conviction, Like he has to hear
• 1:05:19
  that, and it has to resonate, and once it resonates, like guy,
• 1:05:25
  a guy like Aaron just can't let it go. He has to listen
• 1:05:28
  to that small voice and like live into its truth, like and just be
• 1:05:33
  the thing that he's convicted to. He's so convicted, he just he has
• 1:05:38
  to tell the truth. He has to be himself and serves him well.
• 1:05:43
  And that's a lesson to learn too. Just kind of like listen to your
• 1:05:45
  conscious when someone says something. Don't just immediately be like recoil from it and
• 1:05:51
  be like that's not true and like be defensive. It's like, actually listen
• 1:05:57
  and hear the parts that speaks to you and let that let that inner voice
• 1:06:00
  change you. Mm hmm, dude, I love that. Yeah, I
• 1:06:03
  love that a lot. I think that's exactly what you'd be taken from it.
• 1:06:06
  Yeah, And Aaron feels like he embodies that more than almost anybody else,
• 1:06:12
  you know, anybody else I know in my own life, even though
• 1:06:15
  obviously I don't know him personally, and Mike, it sounds like you do
• 1:06:17
  too. What's that that you you've taken that that same kind of thought process
• 1:06:24
  in your own life. Yeah, I try, but I'm still a coward.
• 1:06:28
  Aaron's much greater than I am. One last question before we get to
• 1:06:31
  top five. A requirement for you to have facial hair. No, I
• 1:06:38
  mean I can barely grow facial hair. This is it. That's an excellent
• 1:06:43
  thank you. I just had it trimmed. But yeah, over a Buds
• 1:06:47
  barbershop, but the Southwest corner at sixteenth and Writtener, Yeah, bud so
• 1:06:53
  yeah, yeah, Bud. No, it's not I mean I can't grow
• 1:06:56
  anything. I've tried to grow facial hair for years years. I have a
• 1:07:01
  baby face as far as yeah yours is. Look you look good though,
• 1:07:06
  I have a baby like I'm able to do like kind of the five o'clock
• 1:07:10
  shadow thing, but after that it just gets all stringy and nasty. Look.
• 1:07:14
  Yeah, it's the same with me. Like I can't connect right here.
• 1:07:15
  They just doesn't connect. And like actually my i cyburns don't connect either
• 1:07:21
  to my hairlin had so like, uh so I'm real patchy, but the
• 1:07:27
  mustaches is pretty strong, so uh that's the way, and because I have
• 1:07:31
  a baby face, I've always wanted a beer because I kind of want to
• 1:07:33
  hide some of this, like bring on some masculinity to my look. This
• 1:07:38
  is the mustache is all I can do. And I probably wore it.
• 1:07:40
  I probably wore facial hair like twice in my seventeen years of me without you,
• 1:07:45
  Like, so, yeah, if I was going on tour, I
• 1:07:50
  would do it now right, I'd be like, Yeah, I gotta get
• 1:07:53
  the stash call for this tour. I gotta blend in. I love that.
• 1:07:58
  Yeah, Mike, you're ready for your top five most influential albums?
• 1:08:04
  Yeah? Sure, all right, you can start wherever you want to start,
• 1:08:08
  but uh yeah, I love to hear a little bit more about each
• 1:08:11
  one too. Sure, so I would say top five most influential records.
• 1:08:15
  Records have changed my life. The first one comes to mind is Upbeats and
• 1:08:18
  beat Downs by Five Iron Frenzy. Oh yeah, of course for a lot
• 1:08:25
  of different reasons. They were my favorite band growing up. I still one
• 1:08:30
  of my favorite bands. But I mean, totally honest, I just can't
• 1:08:32
  shake them. How can they? Yeah? And they are their last two
• 1:08:36
  records are their best records. Ye, So but that record like was like,
• 1:08:44
  oh, this is like I was raised in the church. I would
• 1:08:48
  never discribe You're big on like evangelical talk, Mason. I'm like, I
• 1:08:51
  don't know evangelical. I don't even know what that is necessarily, but I
• 1:08:55
  was raising the church. You probably call my family evangelical. I probably call
• 1:08:58
  me an ex eve. But uh yeah, well I follow you on Twitter,
• 1:09:03
  so I've seen all the memes. Uh so yeah. Five Iron was
• 1:09:09
  like this thing of like was like whoa, this is like this is countercultural,
• 1:09:12
  this is new like what but it's also like fast and it's fun and
• 1:09:16
  it's political and it's social and it's spiritual and it's like it's all these things
• 1:09:23
  and it's wild and wacky and so yeah, it's it's all these things up
• 1:09:30
  eats and beatdowns like shook me out of like whatever like CCM, like pop
• 1:09:35
  path I was on and like forced me on too, like this like alternative
• 1:09:41
  like music path. So that'd be one I would put catch for us.
• 1:09:45
  The Foxes is another one that's a record that you know, obviously I'm deeply
• 1:09:50
  connected to here. It's on the shelf over here, you know, being
• 1:09:54
  packaged on the it's it changed my life. It was a record that I
• 1:09:58
  first heard on like pure volume dot com. It was like recommended to me
• 1:10:02
  to listen to like January and then and then Paperhanger and downloaded. My roommate
• 1:10:09
  keme on downloaded a leak of it and we listened to it in this room
• 1:10:13
  and just was like holy cat, like on his like, you know,
• 1:10:15
  laptop, and I was laptop is like desktop computer. Just like sat there
• 1:10:20
  for the whole like forty two minutes and listened to this thing and then like
• 1:10:24
  listen to it again with him, and like I just couldn't get out of
• 1:10:28
  my head. And that really changed the course of my life because my love
• 1:10:32
  for that record eventually led me to the relationships and that you and to my
• 1:10:36
  you know, two decades long sort of career in music and most specifically with
• 1:10:42
  me, that you. After that, I probably have to put the Wild
• 1:10:45
  the Innocent in the East Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen. Saw Springsteen play on
• 1:10:54
  a Late night with Conan O'Brien and he played it was saying it was like
• 1:11:00
  it's a Christmas show. He played two songs. He's Springsteen on a twelve
• 1:11:03
  thirty five on NBC on this like Ragtag Show right in I guess late nineties,
• 1:11:09
  and he played Siana Claus is a Coming to Town and he played Kitty's
• 1:11:14
  Back, which I was like, I've never even heard this song. I
• 1:11:15
  know this is Bruce Springs, but it was like really like free wheeling and
• 1:11:20
  horns were being played and the song was like eight minutes long, and I
• 1:11:24
  was like, I was like, Bruce Springsteen sounds like this, and and
• 1:11:29
  when I got that record, I was like, WHOA Bruce Springsteen can sound
• 1:11:31
  like this, like early Springsteen, like early, like seventy two Springsteen can
• 1:11:35
  really let it rip and let it go. So his career is so different
• 1:11:42
  across all this disograpment, across all his decades, but that is that Kidty's
• 1:11:46
  Back and like wild the innoc in the Eat three Shuffle is what kind of
• 1:11:50
  like got me into Springsteen and into that larger body of work. And he
• 1:11:56
  is one of my all time favorites. He is He's still good today in
• 1:12:01
  some ways, he's just as good as he was back in seventy two.
• 1:12:04
  So like I would put that record on there as well. So it's up
• 1:12:08
  eats and beat downs, catch us the Foxes, The Wildly Innocent in the
• 1:12:11
  East Street Shuffle four. The next one that comes to mind is probably in
• 1:12:18
  the Airplane over the Sea by Neutral Milco Hotel. I just think that Jeff
• 1:12:26
  Mangham has such an incredible voice in such a gift a knack for simple songs
• 1:12:38
  that are just they have so much like it's just mostly an acoustic with some
• 1:12:44
  like accompaniment at times, and his voice and that acoustic and those you know
• 1:12:50
  c A DNNG chords, Like he can make a record man, and it's
• 1:12:57
  wild and weird and sexy and trippy and it's like folky like I don't,
• 1:13:03
  it's He's great, So I like that. There's Yeah, if there's any
• 1:13:09
  artist that I ever compare to Me Without You, it's Neutral Milk. There's
• 1:13:16
  so many similarities that interesting. I don't even understand how it works because that
• 1:13:24
  there that's such unique sound, but the fact that there's like two artists that
• 1:13:29
  kind of have some of that similar sound. I mean, obviously me if
• 1:13:31
  I use a little bit more dynamic and has a lot more going on,
• 1:13:33
  but this, like the pretty parts of Me Without You, I think definitely
• 1:13:38
  sound like other influenced a lot by Neutral Milk. Like Greg will tell you
• 1:13:42
  that Aaron will tell you that as well. It's all crazy has a lot
• 1:13:45
  of neutral milk influence on it, So that's a big one. And then
• 1:13:50
  from number five, I don't know, to be quite honest, like it's
• 1:13:58
  really hard for me to think about it in terms of like, you know,
• 1:14:00
  could you say influential right, or like important like the way they've kind
• 1:14:06
  of changed you. Yeah, I'm sure it's something really obvious that I'm just
• 1:14:10
  not remembering. But it's like, how about like when you were a kid,
• 1:14:13
  Like, what was it the first the first album that like just like
• 1:14:15
  turns you onto music. It's like, Wow, this is something that is
• 1:14:18
  going to mean something more to me than just your average run of the mill
• 1:14:23
  Kiddoh right, Yeah, No, I mean it was the radio. I
• 1:14:26
  saw this girl had a crush on Beca Lee and homech and she was singing
• 1:14:32
  along to the radio while she was I know who sings that song, Sophie
• 1:14:39
  B. Hawkins as Yo Star. Now she was saying that song. I
• 1:14:44
  was like, I need to listen to music. This like really pretty girl
• 1:14:45
  in my sixth grade HOMEC class is like singing this song and like I need
• 1:14:49
  to know music. I didn't really, I don't know I don't know what
• 1:14:53
  the fifth MOE would be. I feel like it's a lame Oh Millennium,
• 1:14:56
  my backstree boys. No, I can't even it's out there. It's somewhere.
• 1:15:02
  I just I can't place it right now. It's in the ether.
• 1:15:06
  Yeah, it's in the ether. Because I want to give a good response
• 1:15:10
  to this, someone wants to just be like, are there any albums of
• 1:15:14
  recent like maybe you have come out in the last five years that you're like,
• 1:15:16
  oh shit, that is so good. Blonde by Frank Ocean. I
• 1:15:23
  think it's like a freaking incredible album and it's a song that it's a record
• 1:15:29
  that I will put on that See, that's someone I was like thinking of
• 1:15:30
  my house like Blonde by Frank Ocean, and I just love his voice.
• 1:15:36
  He's a similar artist. I say, he's a similar artist to Jeff Mangam,
• 1:15:40
  where it's like kind of reclusive, like what the hell is he talking
• 1:15:44
  about, but also like the songs are really good and the only he only
• 1:15:48
  puts out like music like once every ten fifteen years. It seems like at
• 1:15:53
  this point, like non for a non lyrics guy, you have some of
• 1:15:58
  like the deepest lyrical art artists tell me about it. Sometimes I don't know
• 1:16:02
  what Frank's talking about. I just put it on, like the Apple Music
• 1:16:05
  thing where it's like here the here are the lyrics of these songs, and
• 1:16:10
  I'm just like, oh, that's what he's saying. Cool. I was
• 1:16:13
  just humming and coooning along with it, like not saying the N word like
• 1:16:16
  you know, so I uh yeah, But I love Frank. I love
• 1:16:21
  Frank Ocean's style of his sensibility on that record. I love the artistry of
• 1:16:27
  blonde being spelled the masculine and the feminine and like having these like things that
• 1:16:32
  are like contradictory to each other in some ways. He's called blonde. His
• 1:16:36
  hair is green on the album, Like I love that stuff. I love
• 1:16:41
  that sort of so I like the whole thing, like the way the whole
• 1:16:45
  whole record feels. It's like a perfect album to me. I love that.
• 1:16:48
  Yeah, it's I that's It's sort of like, you know, if
• 1:16:54
  you're met without Euphan, I could like see each one of those artists in
• 1:16:57
  some way, shape or form, like also being like yeah, me with
• 1:16:59
  that person would yeah yeah cool, so cool. That totally makes sense.
• 1:17:03
  Love it, Mike, what do you want to plug obviously, it sounds
• 1:17:06
  like there's still mean without you stuff potentially going on obviously. Uh, you
• 1:17:11
  know, there's there's reissues, there's lots of different things still going on in
• 1:17:14
  the met without camp. Yeah, what do you want to plug? Well,
• 1:17:17
  I mean, you know me and that you is still like like the
• 1:17:20
  label ARM, the distribution ARM is still like very much alive and well,
• 1:17:26
  so you know, but if you like me without you, keep coming to
• 1:17:31
  me at you dot com to like buy whatever we have there because that still
• 1:17:35
  helps support the band if you like it. So, yeah, we've got
• 1:17:40
  we've got some stuff in the in the I don't know when this is gonna
• 1:17:43
  come out because that Greg podcast and it was like he was talking about putting
• 1:17:49
  together a photo book and I was like, that thing's been out for a
• 1:17:51
  year at this point, Like, yeah, we we released Greg's episode out
• 1:17:56
  like way later. Yeah, it's like nine months ago when he recorded this.
• 1:18:00
  It wasn't that much longer, was it, it felt? Oh yeah
• 1:18:02
  it was. It was at least a good nine months. Yeah it was.
• 1:18:05
  I feel like it was good nine months. The books should be shipping
• 1:18:09
  soon, they might still be available online. I was like, oh my
• 1:18:11
  god, this was February when he recorded this. Usually we tried to be
• 1:18:16
  able really yeah, uh so, yeah, but I mean I think twenty
• 1:18:21
  twenty four, hopefully we've got some stuff that surprises people. We put out
• 1:18:28
  some you know, like I said, the like we we're doing reissues.
• 1:18:31
  We kind of done it to death. I think we've got some plans for
• 1:18:34
  something new that maybe people aren't expecting and in in the next year, hope
• 1:18:41
  people. So just pay attention to me with that. You follow us on
• 1:18:45
  the only social media side I care about the Twitter waiting. I'm waiting for
• 1:18:50
  the meet without you, the met without you. The Flowers Direct company,
• 1:18:57
  that's what we Yeah, there we are. Damn it. You must have
• 1:19:00
  been on You've we talked about this already. Yeah, we're moving Flowers Interactive.
• 1:19:04
  We ship peonies straight to your home. Baby's breath is like an added
• 1:19:09
  tude ninety nine. But yeah, those are the only flowers I know,
• 1:19:15
  panies and babies breath. Mike, what else do you want to plug?
• 1:19:20
  Oh? Yeah, well there is some actually some big news that I'm happy
• 1:19:27
  you asked. By the way, This June, I'm going to space space,
• 1:19:34
  actual space space, like not like exosphere, but like actual space space.
• 1:19:41
  I'm being put on a rocket ship and like by like Bezos or Elon,
• 1:19:45
  like by who by NASA, NASA actual NASA yet NASA. I'm going
• 1:19:51
  to Cape Canaveral and They're going to put me in a rocket like in a
• 1:19:55
  space suit, and I'm going to be launched into space. And the point
• 1:20:00
  that is, I'm doing scientific research to see how close you can get to
• 1:20:04
  the Sun. What are your credentials? Like, like like why did they
• 1:20:10
  pick you of all people I filled out a survey online. Yeah, they're
• 1:20:14
  like who you got to meet? Without you? Job too? No,
• 1:20:16
  I already told you that story. This one was just like I mean,
• 1:20:21
  whoever gets close to the Sun? I mean you're it's me. I'm there
• 1:20:27
  with I'm there. So like in like there's like there's five other people who
• 1:20:31
  are doing it too, in separate rockets, okay, being launched from different
• 1:20:35
  parts of the world. Right, so one person from Seoul. I think
• 1:20:40
  the other one is somewhere in the continental US. I think it's either like
• 1:20:44
  in I think it's like in El Paso or Houston area, Like they have
• 1:20:48
  a new base in El Paso, and then there's there's one in South America
• 1:20:53
  like in Chile and whatever. It's like, so they're all going off from
• 1:20:56
  these different points. Oh, one person is from in Alaska like kind of
• 1:21:00
  like kind of down there, like there's like a thing on like the Baltic
• 1:21:03
  Sea. They're gonna launched out there different points right to see. Like so
• 1:21:10
  they're all gonna kind of like go, you know, they launch all these
• 1:21:14
  the German trajectories to see which one can get to the Sun fastest and then
• 1:21:17
  who can stay who can get as close as possible? Right, who will
• 1:21:21
  because the actual like the spaceships themselves, like the rockets are, they're built
• 1:21:28
  to a stand I think they can get within I'm gonna say, like like
• 1:21:32
  what they say, like maybe like like ninety four thousand miles from the Sun.
• 1:21:36
  But like so it so we're not gonna get that close, like we'll
• 1:21:40
  be dead before that. But like rockets. But the point, the point
• 1:21:44
  is there one there need to be enough leeway so they can see who survives
• 1:21:47
  the longest and eventually the rocket will just disintegrate into the Sun. But it
• 1:21:50
  is it is about human with how long can a human withstand getting close to
• 1:21:56
  the Sun. Wait, so are all of you going as far as you
• 1:21:59
  can until you die, or like is at some point you're like, you're
• 1:22:02
  heading back. No, well, the heading back into the arms of Jesus.
• 1:22:09
  Oh oh that's right. Well, I bet you'd you'd hope that each
• 1:22:13
  one of these people have prayed the Sinner's prayer. Yeah, exactly, it's
• 1:22:16
  written. It's written, they have it. They have it written up in
• 1:22:19
  the side of the capsule, just in case you didn't. And at the
• 1:22:23
  last moment, right, I forgot to recite the Sinner's prayer, and then
• 1:22:30
  God flecks the light switch, and then you go to Heaven forever. Sure
• 1:22:33
  great, sure, uh and each of these rocks is going to be equipped
• 1:22:38
  with the hell nine thousand correct. Uh that was not disclose to me.
• 1:22:42
  Oh well, you better start learning, daisy, Daisy, Okay, give
• 1:22:46
  me your answer. You better learn it. Okay, yeah, I will.
• 1:22:51
  Hopefully you get that reference. I don't know. I mean, it's
• 1:22:54
  it's Kubrick. Yeah, okay, okay, I have it. But like,
• 1:22:58
  but two thousand and one is film where I'm like, why do people
• 1:23:02
  like this? I watch it, watch it. I love Kuber right,
• 1:23:09
  I love Kubrick. I want to make this very clear. But when I
• 1:23:13
  watched two thousand and one. I was like, let's move this along.
• 1:23:17
  Oh my speed things up a little bit here. Yeah, I get it.
• 1:23:21
  There are a lot of slow scenes, but it's yeah, yeah,
• 1:23:25
  and it's intentional and I like that. I like that he is kind of
• 1:23:29
  doing something like that. Yeah, it wasn't And to be fair, I
• 1:23:32
  only I also only watched it in probably two thousand, like, so I
• 1:23:36
  was still in high school. What, Yeah, you got to give another
• 1:23:40
  shot man. Yeah, I'm sure with a modern perspective, especially it's one
• 1:23:45
  of those films that just especially since You're going to the Sun, Yeah,
• 1:23:47
  exactly, that's it really should be required viewing. But yeah, in the
• 1:23:53
  space Straight to the Sun, du I love it. Yeah, hell yeah,
• 1:23:57
  Well, Mike, thank you so much for chatting about you know,
• 1:24:00
  the just your history with me without you and you know, from a you
• 1:24:04
  know, kind of an interesting perspective. We don't talk to a lot of
• 1:24:08
  managers. I'm trying to think that you've even chatted with a manager before.
• 1:24:11
  Yeah, so you've got obviously, like a really interesting perspective with a band
• 1:24:15
  that has been one of the most important bands in my life for twenty years
• 1:24:18
  now. So I'm just like, really really grateful for your work with me
• 1:24:23
  without you, and just so excited for whatever might the hell happen without you
• 1:24:28
  world in the future. I'm just really stokes for so yeah, thank you
• 1:24:31
  so much for chatting about it. Absolutely thanks for having me guys. I
• 1:24:34
  hope your listenership doesn't decline because of this interview.