Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Ketch Secor

Transcript

Ketch Secor · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Catch Secor of the Old Crow
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Medicine Show. Catch, you're a busy guy. What keeps you going?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: What are you doing all this time?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Bob, thanks so much for having me on the show.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I am a busy guy. I've been in this band
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: for twenty eight years. I'm getting married in a couple
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: of weeks to this amazing singer. I chase after my
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: own children. I started a school, so I'm really involved
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: with nonprofits. I'm involved with politics. I'm I don't even
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: know where to start on what I'm not working on
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: right now?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Bob, how about you? Okay, well I can tell you
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: my story, but this is about you. So when do
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: you get married?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I get married on August twenty second, don't you know?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And so the second time around, how seriously do you
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: take it? How big a deal?
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: This is the big one.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: This is the This is that me and Molly Tuttle.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I've been together for six years now, and we're we're
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: throwing quite a bash in the Redwood forest, don't you know.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: We'll tell me a little more.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you that I met her well, I
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: first heard Molly on the radio. I'm a really avid
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: radio listener. First time I ever got a radio was
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I was in the fourth grade. See, I had a
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: paper route and I had to get an alarm clock
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: because I had to get up at five point thirty
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: in the morning. And I went down to the shop
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: and I got an alarm clock that happened to have
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: an AM radio on it. So all of a sudden,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: not only was I getting up early, but at night
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I could listen to the stations from Cincinnati and Detroit
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: and Toronto and Quebec and all of these amazing ways
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: that I felt so connected to the rest of the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: continent because of the power of this late night clear
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: channel AM signal. And I love talk Net. That was
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: a talk radio show where you had to call in
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: with your issues, and I dreamed that I would have
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a problem so big that only talk radio could talk
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: me down from the cliff. Anyhow, it was no surprise
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: then that I would meet the love of my life
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: listening to the radio one night when I heard this
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: voice in this wonderful guitar playing, and I knew right
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: then I had to meet this woman, Molly Tuttle.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, remember where you were in what station it was? Yeah,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: sure I was. I was next door in the house
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: over there. I just moved in.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: You know. It was like right in the middle of
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: getting divorced, and I had two kids upstairs asleep, you know,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: about six and four, and there was no furniture in
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the house, so just the radio kind of bare bones
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: part of life, right. And this was in the year
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, and the station was AM six fifty WSM
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: and the program was called The Grand Old Lotry.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you hear her, you say, you have to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: beat this woman. What's your next step?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Well, my next step was to leave the next day
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: and travel to Walpole, New Hampshire for the for the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: new Ken Burns movie that they were having me advise
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: him on called Country Music as a sixteen hour mini series.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So I had it up there and that gave me
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a whole new kind of lease on LFE. I was like,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about Molly, this new person that I
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: was interested in and confused about, and all of a sudden,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I was like, Ken really sort of jogged my mind
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: and made me feel like, oh, well, I got this.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: It's going to be fun. Not being married anymore and
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: raising these kids with somebody else. It'll be good, It'll
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: all be fine. And then back to Ms.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Tuttle.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: The next move was to get Molly to work with
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: me an Old Crow Medicine show. So about six months
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: past and then Molly was opening up for Old Crow
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: at the Ryman. We still hadn't met before, and I
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: remember being there at the soundcheck we were performing, and
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: she came walking across the stage at the Ryman Auditorium
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and I thought.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Immediately, oh my god, look at her. I've got to
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: break up with my girlfriends. So you were getting divorced
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you already had a girlfriend?
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: No, No, I'd already been I was already divorced.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you did have a girlfriend when you saw
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a bother?
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he had a boyfriend.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: That's fine, okay. So what were the new steps involved
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in getting together?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Well, we just needed to become friends.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: See.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So first we started as business colleagues, I guess probably
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: like a lot of people with Tuttle, like I started
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: as a fan. You know, she got a lot of fans,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: and then we became you know, colleagues, right because she's
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: opening up the show.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Well, then she's doing.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Five other dates with us that summer, and then at
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: sort of the last date of the summer, I said.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, how about you and I go on a duo tour.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: We'll book something around Christmas when we're both kind of off,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: will just be the two of us, and we'll so
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: again just sort of pushing it, seeing how it is shape.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And then I determined, well, let's just be friends. I
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: was just going to befriend this lady. So we turned
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: into good friends, and then we started writing songs together.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: She still had her sweetheart and I still had mine.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: And then during the global pandemic, remember how that sort
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: of made you rethink everything you were doing, and it
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: made if you feel like you wanted to be really
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: truthful about the way that you were the choices you
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: were making, really brutally honest, because it seemed like if
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: there was ever a time to go get what you wanted, well,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: this would be the time. The time when there wasn't
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: any job, anything to do all day except for what
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: you made of your day. You know, I was running
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: my quarantine homeschool with the kids, and I perfected this
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: this curriculum. We started the morning every day with a
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: spiritual program. We would read a passage from some holy book,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: maybe the Bible, maybe the bagavad Gita, maybe Lausu poems,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: maybe Gregory Corso's bomb, whatever it was. We would take
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: in something powerful and of a spiritual persuasion. And I
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: guess it was working on me too. And oh and
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: I got a smartphone right then, same time I got
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: a smartphone during the pandemic. Well that was really powerful
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: because suddenly I was connected to what people were doing,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: you know, like I could like before when I had
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: a flip phone all through the other decade. Previously, you know,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: i'd have to be like, what are you sending me?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Or what is described this photo that you're saying that
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: you sent me. Now I could just get real time,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and now I could start. Then I could follow Molly
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Tuttle on social media, see what she was up to,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: watch her videos and anyhow, all that sort of came together,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and that's when I wrote it, started writing funny. I
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: got me a smartphone, and then I started writing her
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: letters because I went back to my old tricks.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Bob.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: See, you can't you can't teach an old dog new ones,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: even if he's got a damn computer in his pocket.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I'm still just a letter writing thumb wagon hitch hiker
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: from the nineties. I just I can't shake how I am.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So I've tried to get updated.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Anyhow.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: But when I went to declare my love to her
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: with all of the faculties at my disposal, with every
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: high speed Giga whatever, I had to do it with
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: a damn pencil.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: So where was she during the pend? She lived about
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: two miles from me, okay, And so you sent her
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a letter. How long until you've heard back from her
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: about that letter?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I think about was she she went on this road
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: trip with her boyfriends. And that's I knew that she
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: was going because, you know, like as a pandemic, so
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: we were all nobody had gone anywhere, and it was
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: so phenomenal.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: How I.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Did the math, Bob, and I realized that I had
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: never stood this still since I was thirteen years old,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: and now here I am about forty two, maybe as
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: how old I was during the pandemic twenty twenty. Yeah,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I was born in seventy eight, so I was forty
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: two years old, and in thirty five some odd years,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I had never gone six weeks without moving somewhere going,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: you know, like since I had been in about the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: eighth grade, that's how once, because I went away to
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: high school and so that high school was like a
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: traveling thing, you know, in a fancy New England prep
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: school where you would go quarterly. And I was some
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: point I was probably in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. I'd
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: taken the bus to Boston or the Peter Pan trailways
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: up to Burlington, Vermont to play on the street corner
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and then I you know, by then I was once,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I was eighteen, Lord knows, I was going all the time.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: So it was a big deal that Molly was heading
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: cross country. And I wrote the letter right before she
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: took off so that she would have my intentions on
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: her way, and uh yeah. She sent me a message
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: on the text about about two weeks after that and
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: told told me that she was feeling it too. So
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: that's when our friendship began to take this turn. We've
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: been friends for about a year and a half and
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: then the pandemic ratcheted up the tension, and then we
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: started dating just a little bit, and immediately it seemed like, oh,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: this is this could never work, but then it did,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: and it just at every impasse, we just kept pushing
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: through and look at us now.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, A couple of questions, to what degree did
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: you hang it out in that letter? To what degree
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: did you profess your.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Love to the to the ninth degree, to the umpteenth degree,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: to the to you know, shovel off to buffalo kind
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: of degree.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And did you think that possibly she might not feel
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the same way?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was the pandemic, so it was okay
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: if she didn't, at least I would know, and you know,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: as far as like behaving honestly and openly about what
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: I felt. And it wasn't the only relationship that I
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: sought to do something about at that time. The pandemic
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: really helped me want to forge a new path or
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: you know, cut a new trail in other relationships too
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: that were non romantic relationships. So a lot of things
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: were changing. But yeah, she she didn't say no.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: But now you get her. Just she's going off on
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: this cross country trip with her present boyfriend. What was
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that like for her?
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I think that's that she realized that she had wanted
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: to break up with him for a while. And we
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: were both a little our feelings were really intense, and
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: I hadn't felt him before, you know, like, and i'd
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: been married. You know, I married my high school sweetheart,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: and I dated a little bit, but most of all,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: and then when I got divorced, I dated a little
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: bit and learned a few things, but most of all,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I was just somebody, you know, like I'm a Roman
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: tick bob. You know, you could probably tell look what
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: I'm wearing. I got a pink shirt on and bright
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: orange pants. You know, I went sailing earlier today. I'm
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: a romantic guy. Like I'm my wind. The wind hits
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: my sails and it pushes me forward. I'm an artist,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: so you know, I feel great, big feelings, and my
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: loves are my arms are barely wide enough to contain them.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I love people very much. I love music very much.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, And from the time you send that letter, how
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: long until your face to face?
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: I think it was. Our first date was like six
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: weeks after that. She had gotten back from her big
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: road trip. The boyfriend had moved out, see they were
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: living together, and we had had we had a face
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: to face.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: It was sort of like there was the face to
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: face and then the le It was kind of both.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: So yeah, then about by about July. You know, we
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: went on our first date in the twenty twenty and
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: we went down to Shelby Park and we saw a
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: great music writer there, somebody that I always loved a
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: lot named Peter Cooper, who died just a few months
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: after that. Peter worked for the Tennessee in here, but
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: then he got this big job working at the at
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: the Country Music Hall of Fame. And he was somebody
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: who had great respect for me and great respect for Mollie.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: And as you know, we live in East Nashville, so
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: it's like we're around each other, like I see the
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: same people, like I see Gilly much at the grocery store,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: like it's just where we live. And I saw Peter
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Cooper that day that we had our first date, and
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: he was dead not six months later. And we saw
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: him again one time when we were together, and his
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: decline was so rapid he started to look like a
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: ghost when I saw him that one time, and then
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: the next time, just a few months later, he looked ashen,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: and then he was gone, and he died of alcoholism.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And it was a.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Really really painful for all of us who loved that guy,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: and uh and half the town of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Probably still morning. Okay, you've been married before, you had
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: this brief interregnum where you were single and dating. You
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: felt something for Mollie, did anything in the back of
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: your mind say, I like being involved with her, but
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to be married to her.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we started dating and then it wasn't
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: really like that wasn't on the table. But I knew
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I wanted to marry her basically immediately, and that I
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: had met my person, like my the person that I
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: had experienced this painful divorce. You know, I felt it
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: so strongly that I really wanted to tell my children
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and my ex wife, but I didn't.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I kept that to myself.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: That.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Oh I think I understand now what this was all for.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So what caused the divorce?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Oh? I guess most of all, she just didn't want
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: to be married to me anymore and.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Split. Was there a third party involved? No? So how
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: much did that hurt? Oh? It was terrible.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, she just dumped me and moved on. But
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: that's okay. You know, she's a she's an artist too,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: and people, the wind hits you in the right way.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: So I only you're turn in another direction. But when
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: you got two kids like I did, and you know,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I had kids ages three and five, so it was
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: a really it was truly shocking.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That she was leaving. It was like.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I hadn't experienced an agony in my life ever like this,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: you know. It was there was a level of pain
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: that I just and I didn't see it come in.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I had no idea.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: So I was really blindsided by this huge change that
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: came into my life at about age forty thirty nine
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: or something. And at that time when she split, I
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: was I had just chartered this new school, So starting
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: as school and going through a divorce, I think, looking
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: back on it, I realized that this nonprofit work was
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: sort of like my lighthouse that was keeping me from
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: crashing into the rocks. I was also stone cold sober
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: through the whole thing, you know, so I was stealing
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: it all thoroughly. You know, there was no numbing of
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: the pain. And then starting a school meant that, like,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: even though I was crying in every red light in
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Nashville and every off ramp and on ramp and beating
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: my breast in traffic, I had to, you know, I
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: was the chairman of the board of a nonprofit that
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: had to like breathe life into this entity and like
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: make it a great and wonderful place for children. So
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I think just having a real mission that was unrelated
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: to my suffering and actually became a kind of holistic
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: part of the healing, just to sort of distract me
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: with the world's most challenging thing starting a school.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, that was crazy.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: And so that was you know, that was a five
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: year project that happened right there, right as you know,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: right as she was walking out the door.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So did she literally move on? Are you the soul?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Do you have soul custody? Or is she still the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: picture with your children? What is going on there? Yeah,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: it's fifty to fifty, fifty to fifty, So now there's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: another party involved, Mollie. Are things friendly or is it tough? Yeah, no,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it's it's fine. I mean, we all.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: It's a blended family. So I just my parents are married,
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and I didn't know that many people that were divorced.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: So divorce wasn't ever something that I was like wrecked
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: on or really knew that much about. And it certainly
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: wasn't like, as I mentioned some that I foresaw for
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: myself at any point in my life.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: But then when it.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Was thrust upon me, well, then I realized that all
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: my kids' friends were divorced to every single damn one
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: of them, and that they were all, you know, and
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: blended family and relationships. So I mean, I say, as
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: a blended family like the the you know, it's amicable
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: between me and my ex, but she's not really come
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: around that much. But yeah, everybody's friendly. Most of all,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: it's Molly moved in about a year and a half ago,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: and you know, all the kids just love her. She's
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: such a wonderful person. God, she is really, really a
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: very special person. She's out on the road right now
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: in Oregon or where I'd be like, hey, come show
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Bob what an amazing person you are.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: And I know it may be too soon to tell,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: but would you anticipate having children with Molly too?
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I reckon not.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: But maybe let's go back to the school.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: What inspired you to start a school?
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Well, mom and dad were educators, are educators, and they're
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: retired now from this work. But I went to five
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: different elementary schools by the time I was in the
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: fifth grade, in five different states. And it was all
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: on account of my mom and dad moving around with
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: the work that they were doing, learning about elementary education
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: and ultimately getting to the point where Dad started schools
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: and he did this as a as a as a headmaster, principal,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: school founder.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: So when I was.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: When I was about thirty three, my first daughter was born,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: my first child was born, and my ex wife said
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: to me, why don't you doesn't it seem like this
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: could be a good neighborhood for you to do like
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: what your dad does, And I thought, okay, yeah, let
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: me put out some feelers. That's a good idea, that'd
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: be cool. And it just so happened that all the
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: feelers took, you know, like they I went to It's
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: an episcopal school, right, So my first move was to
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: go to the bishop of the Diocese of Tennessee, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: basically he gave me a punch list, and I did
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: everything on the punch list, and then everything that I
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: punched out on that list made me another list, and
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I punched that out, and then.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: The snowball just kept rolling and rolling.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: And pretty soon we had a ledgling board and a.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Whole bunch of people on it.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: And then it was time to hire a head of
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: school and teachers and find a location. And then they said,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: we want you to lead it, and I said, okay,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: I guess I will. And so you know, I did
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: about eighty five shows that year that I first became
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the chairman of the board of this nonprofit. And I
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: was doing it all on Like I told you, I
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: had a flip phone at this time, so I just
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I had like hamstrung myself with technology. I'm at the
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: library in Peoria, and you know, Saint Louis and Kansas City,
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: every town I'm traveling in, I go to the library
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: so I can make sure that the school is failing.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: It was a wild ride from the moment your wife,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: ex wife excuse me, said you should do this till
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the door's opened. How long was I four years at
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: this point in time? How many kids? Five years? How
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: many kids go to that school? The school is in
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: its eleventh year starting in August, and there'll be one
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty kids in it. And how did the
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: economics work?
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: I met some people by about year six of the
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: school who were willing to become really principal, you know,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: transformational gift givers.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: But in the but the first half of it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I was the largest donor and I did it all
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: with my money from Darius Rucker.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's an Episcopal school. I know people going
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to Piscopal schools where there really was not much religion involved.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: What is it like at your.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: School, Like you're described, it's very it's not a religious
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: environment at all. Really it is at the chapel, but
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the rest of the time it's just not And like
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of Episcopal schools, the you know, the vibe
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: is pretty It's a school with a lot of kids
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: that have two moms and two dads, or a school
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: with biracial kids with biracial families or blended families, or
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: you know. And certainly there's a lot of kids that
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: are not Christian at all. There's Jewish kids, there's Muslim kids,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: there's Bahai kids. We had a big Bahi force in
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the in the infancy of the school. Kind of my
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: my ald the guy I often I've often needed something
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: to rub against, like a like a grindstone in life,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: like somebody to make some sparks with as a as
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: a as a doer of hard things, like being in
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: a band for twenty eight years. I always needed something
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: that that I could push against. I'm a real collaborative
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: type of artist person. And anyway, one of my principal
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: uh counterpoints in the starting of the school comes from
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: this faith called the Bahai Faith, which is from Iran
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: and Persia. And so you know, I'm saying this just
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: to show that, you know, the religion factor of the
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: school was pretty wide open. And my idea, like during
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: the pandemic of what is what are spiritual texts kids? Well,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: here's the whole name rack of them. You know, I
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: think you know Jack London and Jack harrowac just to
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: name a couple of Jacks.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now, more than any time in my lifetime, they're
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: different education philosophies. You know, some people teach to the book,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: some people are banning books. What is the philosophy of
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the education at your school?
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of hot button issues that you
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: that you're alluding to right there with some are teaching them,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: some are banning them. And we're definitely on the teaching
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: side and not on the banning side. But I live
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: in a state that's been very has really busied itself
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: with making sure that these so called woke agendas are not,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: you know, infiltrating the school systems, and the kids aren't
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: being forced to learn about tolerance or what slavery might
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: have felt like or whatever.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I don't really fool with that stuff. You know,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: there's plenty of schools out there for parents that want
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: their kids to grow up in an environment where they
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: don't know how richly diverse this country is, or the
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: city is, or even their own zip code. And that's fine,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: you make those choices. But our school is certainly one
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: where we celebrate all of our differences. And you know,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: the curriculum is really focused in a classic sense on
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: reading and math and some of the computering stuff. It's
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: a little slow. We probably need to get the tech
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: going a little bit better. It's a startup so startup schools.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It is different in the charter movement because sometimes charter schools,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of brand new charter schools
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: in Nashville and this is not one of them. We're
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: just you know, this school is sort of is made
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: by a community, and so it really feels like a
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: community school. You know, the overwhelming number of families come
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: from this zip code now, and it wasn't that way
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: when we started it when we just had sixteen kids.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: What grades does the school have.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: It starts with three year old, so that's called three
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: K and that's new. Like when when I started the
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: school it was it was four classes, a blended pre
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: KK and a blended one two. So it started in
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: four grades, sixteen kids. Two construction trailers that I diligently
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: got Metro to agree to for two years in the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: church parking lot over by the show Neees that burned
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: down by the Girst House that they demoed to build
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the new Taylor Swift Swift Memorial ball Stadium that they
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: are putting up right now down the street from me.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So presently, where is it in? What grade?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: So presently We moved to a permanent building when I
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: got me a lease from Metro. And this was all
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: when I was still running the board and working really
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: closely with the head of school, who was, you know,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine. You know, we'd kind of gotten
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: into this together.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And we are now in a.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Historic Metro school building built in about nineteen oh six.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: And it feels a little bit like Ramona Quimby being
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: washed across the street by her father and Jesus is there.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: It's old school. It's very Beverly cleary school scene.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: But what grade if I start out at age three?
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: How long could I go to this school?
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: You can go until until you're finishing the sixth grade.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: For a while we had a middle school program, but
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: again with the beakers and the test tubes and the computers,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: you know, we just didn't have the kind of program
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: that you know, the curb appeal like we had kids.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: But when I first.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Started it, we did this study from Belmont University and
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: about the demographics of the neighborhood and everything said start
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: at middle school. But then when we had a you know,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: K through six and then we are adding the seventh
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: and at eighth, immediately it was like, don't start in
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: middle school. So sometimes the numbers aren't right. I know
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of people in the music business loved to
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: go by the numbers, and I never I feel like
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: it's best to be led by the spirit.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, this is audio only, but I saw you get
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: up get a cup of coffee with the mocamaster. How'd
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: you get turned out to the mocamaster?
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Uh? My friend got me a uh, she got this
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: for me because she's a I don't know, works for
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: a huge company that maybe makes these or owns these alongside.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: And she's married to the Senator Hickenlooper from Colorado. I
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: know these people. Yes, yeah, he ran for president. He's
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: a great friend of mine. And his name is John Hickenlooper,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: and he's just so great. I introduced him to his wife, Robin.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: She went to high school. Wait wait, wait, wait wait,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I know both these people. I heard their story. How
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: did you you know? I've heard their version. You tell
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: me how you introduced him?
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Sure, I mean I was just just thinking about him
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: because I was where I introduced him, which was at
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Red Rocks. Old Crow was there. It was twenty thirteen.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I was there with my daughter and wife and and
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: our good friend from high school, Robin, and John Hickenlooper
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: was there because he was a friend of the Avid Brothers.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: You know, he's always around musicians. And we were sitting
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: up there in the dressing rooms and I heard, you know,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Robin and my ex wife talking about the guy down there,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and she's like, yeah, that's John Hickenlooper. He's the governor.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: He used to be the mayor of Denver. I met
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: him at a party one time, but I don't know,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna go talk to him. Well she did,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: and then they started dating and then they got married
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: and now they got a kid, and so yeah, we're
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: old friends.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Now, Okay, let's jump back.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: So that's why I got the Mocha Master.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, the wedding is on the twenty fourth in the Redwood.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: So what's the wedding going to be. What is it
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: going to be? How many people? Oh? Hundred and a half.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: But what are you doing for entertainment? Oh?
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: We got a cool bands called the Hot Club of
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: San Francisco playing some jazz standards and Stefan Gripelly type
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: of stuff. I love that kind of music and django.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: And then you know, a lot of my friends are
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: going to be there in hers too, so there'll be
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: lots of music. You know, her family all plays, and
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: my kids play.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And you know, all my pals we all make music. Bob.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: It's just it's kind of like the it's sort of
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: a skill set that I tend to find myself around
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: a lot of pickers.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: And who's going to marry you? My dad? So let's
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. You say you were in
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: five different states. What were those five different states? Growing up?
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: They were Louisiana, New Jersey, Missouri, South Carolina, and Virginia.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Now they say it's very hard on kids to travel
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and make new friends. How was it for you?
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't mind it. I didn't know that there was
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: anything hard about it. But I definitely didn't make friends.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: You did or did not? I did not.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: The friends I had were you know, imaginary.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: I thought Michael Jackson would have been a good friend.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I sang all his songs, I acted like him and
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: mimicked him. I thought my bicycle was a good friend.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It took me to.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Drug stores and back alleys and river fronts. And I
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: loved my teachers. I really connected with my teachers. But
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: my best friends were my sisters and mom and dad
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: and my grandparents, the people that were getting into that
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: VW micro bus and rolling on.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: And I had a dog. So how many kids in
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the family. I'm one of three, and were you in
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the hierarchy.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: I'm the middle child, so the stable, middle only son.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: And Dad was ever a very you know, Dad wasn't
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: a rough, tough dad. You know, Dad was a dad
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: was mild mannered, tolerant, a classic administrator. So it was
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: a little bit like sometimes I get around somebody whose
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: father is a preacher, and I feel a similarity. Because
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: my dad was the head of the thing that was
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: and because these were all independent schools, you know, dad,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Dad's being the head of the school, there was an
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: approachability factor in independent elementary education that wasn't there in
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the public school. Like I've had my kids in public
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: school in the past couple of years since they ran
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: out of grades at Episcopal, and I don't I never
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: talked to the person in charge. But at my dad's school,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: you know, he called this guy all the time. He's
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: a little bit like a priest too, because you know,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of the families that go
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to an Episcopal school, they don't go to church, and
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: so the school kind of becomes the church. And I've
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: been thinking Bob about because I don't go to church anymore.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And I stopped during the pandemic, and I realized that
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: I felt that the school was given me everything that
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: the church was supposed to give me, a sense of community,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: a sense of purpose, a sense of right and of
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: duty and action. But all I ever saw at the
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: church was moch a master and gossip just shitter chat,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: you know, like golf scores and shit is so irritating.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: I wanted to I wanted it to be fiery and
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: have radical empathy and compassion. And it wasn't until I
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: got into the school as Church that I saw an alternative.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: And I still kind of believe that. So i'd you
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: end up going to Exeter.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: I got in on a scholarship from readers Digest got
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: to tell that story. Well, I got a I had
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: really really bad test scores, like laughably bad.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: So here I had, you know, a.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Whole thought about where I was going to go to school,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: and then I got my test s course back and
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, I can't go to any of
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: those schools. I better start looking at some lousier schools.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: But then lo and behold, just out of nowhere, and
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: like my application process to the school like this is
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: where Lincoln sent his kids to school, right, Like this
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: is a hell of a place. My classmate, you know,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: I went to the same high school as Mark dam
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Zuckerberg and Gore Vidal. They all went to my school.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: All these great all these really great thinkers and tinkerers
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: did mostly people in business though, so but I got
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: in on a fluke. I don't know how, and I'm
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: very early.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Tell me about the reader's digest thing.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I submitted my application. It was like mostly poetry.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: I was really into poetry when I was thirteen, wrote
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of poems. And I submitted this poem and
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: then this sort of plagiarized analysis of really the only
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: decent book that I had read, called Animal Farm by
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: George Orwell. But like you know, straight out of cliff notes,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, like I got the letter back,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: they said you're in. And then and not only are
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: you in, you're you're a scholarship recipient. You know, they
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: cut the feet in more than half. And I've looked
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: looking back on it, Bob, I think I may have
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: represented a kind of mid nineties diversity as a person
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: from some place really far away from New England. I
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: mean that far away, but you know, Virginia, and living
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: in a town that was self professed to be the
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: poultry capital of the world, where there were feathers flying
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: down the road, and every other high school was named
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: for some part of a chicken, like our big rival
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: where the Gobblers.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, where I went to college, forty five percent of
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: the people were from prep school, and they were very
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: well read, and they knew the game, you know, certainly
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and over an Exeter the absolute elite. What was your
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: experience at Exeter. It was the first.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Place that I really felt like I was home.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Like it was really great. I liked it. I loved living.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I loved being fourteen and not being with my parents,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: not being with my sisters, and not having my old friends,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: making all new friends. I loved living in New England.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: It was so rich.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Where I had lived in Virginia, you know, all there
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: was was what was on the radio. And when I
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: got to New England, people listened to all kinds of music,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: so much music, you know. I listened to The Grateful Dead,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: and I listened to all this wonderful folk music and
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: music from Equatorial Africa and the Talking Heads is so
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: much great stuff. And then I was learning so much.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Then my best friends back in Virginia, you know, they
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: were instantly. You know, I had to walk through a
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: metal detector to go to school. School was sort of
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: like a place to keep you before they would go
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: send you out to go work at the dollar general
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: or send you into the military, and you know, about
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: half the kid went out of college and then they
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: would forget entirely about their high school because it sucked.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: It was supposed to be a springboard. But for me,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: the whole high school experience, like, I didn't go to college.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't want any more. I didn't want another serving.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I certainly didn't want to go spend four years at
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Harvard like many of my classmates did. I just wanted
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: to go straight to playing music and getting out on
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: the road and learn and going to see with my
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: own eyes all these places that I learned about from
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: the books that I read up in Exeter, New Hampshire.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, but there's a real difference between the actual people
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: who were going to Exeter and where you came from.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: A lot of them are the sons and daughters of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: wealthy people. They live a lifestyle involving a lot of money.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: There's a social hierarchy. To what degree were you accepted.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: It? It was great people were you know.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: This was.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: I went to Exeter in nineteen ninety two and I
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: graduated in nineteen ninety six, and everybody was really welcoming
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: kinds you know, it was the I don't know how
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: it is now, and I don't and I think it's
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: very different.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I got a really wonderful and famous musician friend who
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: went to Exeter named Benmont Tench. Benmont was.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: The principal, a principal member of the Heartbreakers and grew
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: up with Tom Petty in Gainesville, Florida, but went away
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: to Exeter and was classed in nineteen seventy three, four
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: or five or something. And I think in that time
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Exeter may have been different, or like we read this
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: book by John Knowles called a Separate Piece that is
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: read widely by high schoolers across the country. Well, it's
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: that guy went to Exeter. The you know, Phineas is
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: this Egxzonian character. The whole thing happens at my high school.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: And so I looked at my own experience, you know,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: through the lens of time, and I can see that
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: the window in which I arrived and departed from Exeter was,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: It was it was a time in which the.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Teaching staff and the administ the the admissions team had
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: been really hot to trot about diversity. So I went
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: to school with a lot of kids who were from
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Spanish Harlem, or from Brooklyn, a lot of Aramco kids
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: from the you know out there in the Middle East.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: It was really diverse, and so what it wasn't was
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: solely the Boston, the Boston Brahmins.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're in this story. Do you start to play music?
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And the last town that dad started a school in
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: was called Verona, Virginia. Like Verona, like fair Verona where
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: where Palas Romeo and Juliet get together and do the uchiku.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Well, that was a town that.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Needed me to get a part in a play, and
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I was at the I went to Monticello, you know,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson's place, and that's where I got my first instrument.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: If I had one here, i'd play it for you,
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: but I guess not in this room. But I got
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: me a jaw harp, and that was in the fourth grade,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: and then I got a harmonica in the fifth grade,
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: and then the sixth grade I got a penny whistle,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: and then I could play all those things. But then
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: in the seventh grade, up in my up in the attic,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I found my mom's old guitar. Now she had, like
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of people my mom's age, she grew up
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: thinking that the Kingston Trio were just outrageously cool, and
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: that folk guitar was the thing to do. In nineteen
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: sixty seven, my mother got an acoustic guitar and she
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: it just stayed with us, you know. Mom never played it,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: but I got it and I learned to play it
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: when I was twelve in the seventh grade.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: How did you learn self taught? Did you take lessons? No?
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I was always self taught. And then the combination was
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: I found my mom's guitar up there. But my uncle
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: had moved to Manila to be a teacher, and he
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: left all of his shit in our attic. And my
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: uncle had My uncle had lived in San Francisco in
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: the summer.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I love.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: He had gone out there on a motorcycle.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: He had.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: He had gotten arrested, he had burned his draft card.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: He had gone to Antioch College's San Francisco affiliate called
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the College without Walls. I would I would get a
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: reduce to all this. When my children were born on
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: a hippie commune called the Farm, which was started by
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: this guru that had been at the same time as
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: my uncle had been in SF. He had come east
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: and this was the back to the land movement. They
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: started this commune down here in middle Tennessee, a place
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: called the Farm. It was one of the most successful
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: intentional communities of the era and their angle was mid Whippery. Anyway,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: that's where my kids were born. My uncle left all
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: this crap in the attic, and so much of it
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: were these touchstones to his counterculture lifestyle. But what spoke
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: to me the most, Like there was mild pornography, which
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: was really a thrill to find in my own attic
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: at age twelve, Like whoa sweets? There was just boxes
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: of Zippo lighters, just arts. But the most important thing
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: that I found there was his record collect And that's
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: when I were back to the part where I got
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: my clock radio. I quit that job because I had
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: a new job shine and shoes at the at the
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: barber shop downtown, and and I took my money and
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I bought a record player so I could play all
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: my uncle's records that were up in the attic. And
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I put these records on it was like the most
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: powerful feeling nothing's ever really felt quite like hearing it
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: for the first time. I could, you know, I could
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: get emotional thinking about it. The feeling of popping this
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: record on by Phil Oakes singing about the murder of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: Medgar Evers, and I was like, oh my god, what's
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: going on this? Did this just happen? Or are there
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: lynch mobs in this town? And god, it was so
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: arresting to hear the music ofighteen sixty three and listening
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: to Pete Seeger sing live at Carnegie Hall with this
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: whole group of activists singing we Shall Overcome talking about
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: you know how kids weren't allowed to swim in swimming
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: pools and public pools in Alabama and Mississippi, And it
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: was just so I was just it was staggering to
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: hear this music of the protest movement in the sixties,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: and that really lit a fire for me.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're listening to the record, you're playing the guitar,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Are you learning the songs off the records? Are you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: playing with people in high school? Oh?
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I'm not in high school yet. I'm in
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: the seventh grade, and that's what I Yeah, right, and
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: I'm playing my first song. You know, it goes in
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: the state of Mississippi. Many years ago, a boy of
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: fourteen years got a taste of southern law, and I
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: can sing all these other songs that felt like like
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: a powerful urgency, like they like they needed to come
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: through me, like they needed another vocalist, they needed like
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: a new vessel, like they had been discovered, Like as
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: if my attic were some sort of like crypt or
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: what's it called where they catacomb. It's like it was
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: like they were and as it was crazy, man, it
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: was like I was hearing voices. It was a really
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: powerful time in life and I felt that and my
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: friends were like unsucked with kick. But then I started
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: writing songs, you know, and my songs were all ripoffs
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: of you know Mary Travers and you know Leo Kotkey,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: any anything I was listening to became the songs I
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: was writing.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: So you go to actual or do you bring your guitar? Yeah?
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: I brought my guitar and to Exeter And in the
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: freshman year I petitioned the what I went to the
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: music department. I said I'd like to get a banjo
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: teacher because I wanted because I was by then I
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: was listening to Bob Dylan. The thing that happened before
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: I went away to Exeter was that in nineteen ninety
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I went to my first concert when I was twelve,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: sort of write because of the records I've been listening
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: to and because of the talk I was hearing at
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: the barbershop. See, we had a new black governor, the
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: first in the nation, Douglas Wilder was his name. No
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: state had ever elected a black governor until my state,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Virginia did. And the very first thing that the House
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: of Burgesses put across his desk was a new state
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: law that was going to combine Martin Luther king Day
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: in January with the birthdays of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Lee.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: So the very first piece of bill that he's got
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to take a look at is called Lee Jackson king Day.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: And the barbershop is just rife with commentary about the
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: black governor and Lee Jackson king Day. And I'm putting
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: that together with the records I'm hearing, and it's like,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: oh my god, it's real, it's still happening. It's happening
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: right now, and I'm the only twelve year old that
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: seems to know about it. So anyway, I heard Bob Dylan,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: and Bob Dylan was so much better than Phil Oakes, like.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: A lot better.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: And So I went to see Bob Dylan because I
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: saw that he was playing in Charlottesville. My mother took
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: me and my best friend and dropped me off and.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: We went in.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: I had never I didn't know anything about Bob Dylan,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: and I did it. I certainly didn't know much after
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the show, because I couldn't understand a word the man said.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: But I'll never forget that I heard him saying these
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: forwards maybe five, Hey, mister tambourine and man, hey mister
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: and tambourine.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I could make those out clearly in his mumbling voice.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: And I was blown away by the Bob Dylan show.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: So you're asking me about how I got to Exeter
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: and when I I petitioned the school to get me
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: a banjo teacher, right because I wanted to learn to
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: play this part by Happy Troun on a song that
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: goes cloud so swift the rain falling in going to
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: see a movie called Gunga Din Well Happy Troum, who's
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: a New York folks singer Banjo Picker played the part.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: He played the bluegrass role on that song called You
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Went Going Nowhere that Bob finally put out on his
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: greatest hits record and Tho a song was made more
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: famous by the Birds, and a bunch of other people
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: cut it. But anyway, they said, no, we don't have
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: a banjo teacher, but go through the academic you know process,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: and you can.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe get one.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: So I had to write letters and stand up in front.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Of the you know, the.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Governing body and plead my case. Well they did. They
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: got me this banjo teacher. And yet he didn't play Bluegrats,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: so he didn't teach me to play what Happy Troun played. Instead,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: he taught me I'm looking for a banjo. He taught
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: me to play claw hammer. He was an old time
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: banjo player, and he had this guy, Ryan Thompson. And
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Ryan had played in Appalachia on these field recording trips.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: He had played with Tommy Jerroll who was the great
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: fiddler and banjo player that became a hero of mine.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: So a real fork in the road happened for me
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: right at that freshman year high school where I was
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: learning to play a really really traditional form of banjo
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: and writing songs that were mirrored after Bob Dylan and
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: and uh and love and every minute of it.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So you're there at Exeter are you alone in your
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: room practicing and writing or are you forming bands and
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: performing in front of the uh populace. Yeah. I was
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like a popular kid, you know.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: I wore overalls and I had dreadlocks, and I got
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: in a lot of trouble for drugs and alcohol. But
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: when I when I did get busted, it was with
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: one of the kids with the highest GPA in the school,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: so they didn't kick me.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Out, which was great.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: And then once I got busted, which happened in my
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: sophomore year, I had to be real straight for the
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: rest of it. It kind of saved my life because
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: it kept me so focused because I couldn't get kicked out.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: I had dodged the bullet.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: I was the first kid who had been caught smoking
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: marijuana at Exeter to not be ejected. I was playing
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: with bands on campus a little bit, but mostly at
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: that time, I was really leaning into my friend group
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: at home, and especially my best friend, Critter Fuque, who
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: was back in Virginia, and we were really enjoying our
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: love of Bob Dylan. He would go see a Bob
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: concert and send me the bootleg, and then I would
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: go and send him one, and we were trading bootlegs
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: back and forth. And then every time I'd finished a
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: session at Exeter, I'd come back home and there was
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: a wonderful coffee house in my hometown of Harrisonburg, Virginia
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: called the Little Grill, and it was run by this
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Mennonite kind of driven, you know, kind of personality, Ron Copeland,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: who was like really into worker own stuff. And there
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: were a lot of homeless people hanging around, and we
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: could like pay for our coffee with dish detail. So
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: I lived at this restaurant and I played there whenever
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: they allowed me in front of the microphone.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, you said that you went to Exeter and you
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: hear the talking heads, you hear the grateful Dead. How
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: do you end up staying in let's call it traditional music.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess I felt like those were all had
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: a lot in common with traditional music. I think punk
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: rock is really related to old time music. In old
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: time music, like there's no solos, nobody plays a hot part,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: everything is together. The fiddle plays the same melody line
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: as the banjo. The guitar is the only thing that's
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: sort of backing it up. In a traditional old times
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: during band, there is no damn guitar. You know, the
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: guitar didn't make it into country music until the nineteen
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: twenties because of the mail order business. But nobody saying
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: nobody played guitar in Appalachia until Sears and Roebucks said
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: you can buy one for eight bucks. So the Carter
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: family really were the first generation of guitar players. So
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: like when the Bristol Sessions hit, like there isn't a
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: history of guitar playing in the Hills, there's a history
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: of fiddling and banjo playing even you know, to trace
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: the course with the Blues before the nineteen twenties, what
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: did people in the Mississippi Delta play fiddle? You know?
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Banjo?
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Get Joe six string Doughbros. Start coming through in the
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: late teens. So anyway, for me, I drew a straight
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: line from the Grateful Dead, who I went to see
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: when I was sixteen, the summer that Jerry Garcia died.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Think that was nineteen ninety five. I think he died
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: in August. Don't quote me on that, but I saw
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: him about three weeks before that in Giant Stadium Bob
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Dylan was opening, and I thought, well, that's that's what
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: I do you know when I sing, when I sing,
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: when I strum on an acoustic guitar, it really felt
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: like the same thing. So I just didn't really draw
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: the lines. And I think a punk rock is being
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: related to it because of the the collectivism and that
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: collective approach to okay, everybody all wants ready said.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Go okay, you graduate from exit ear then what.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Uh? Well? I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. I enrolled
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: in a Quaker college called Guilford College in Greensboro, and
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: then deferred as soon as I got in.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: And did never end up going to that college. Took
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: a job I had my.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Saw in my senior year, I had met a bunch
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: of musicians from Greensboro at this at this old time
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: music camp type of place at Davis and Elkins College
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: in Elkins, West Virginia, which is only a couple hours
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: from where I grew up. I met two people there
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: that really changed my life. One was one was this
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: group of musicians from Greensboro, and the other one was
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: this banjo player from Ithaca, New York named Richie Stearns.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: So I followed this group of musicians to Greensboro. But
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: I hadn't forgotten that Ithaca, New York was also a
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: place where there was a ton of really good old
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: time music. So, having bounced around Greensboro and then I
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: got a job, I put a sign up at a
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: feed mill.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: I was at this time Bob.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: I was spending a lot of time trying to determine
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: whether I was going to be an agriculturalist or a musician.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: I was really into farms. An ag I had worked
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: on a couple of different communes.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Had why I was.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: I loved selling food at the farmers market. I was
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: living with this family about forty miles out of Greensboro
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: and raising all this produce and all that thinking a
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: lot about farms. So I was really interested in finding
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: a job that could be like he plays music on
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: the weekend and then he farms all a week. He
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: gets to ride around on trackers, he's got goats, and
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I think, probably looking back on it, it was about
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: trying to find something to sing about. But instead of
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: all that, I ended up moving to Ithaca, New York
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: in the summer in nineteen ninety seven, having been out
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: having this part of life gets real squeezed in, like
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: there was a lot going on. Then I was in
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: some important bands, and I was really starting to take
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: my buskin thing another through line this time in my life,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: as I first started playing on the street corners when
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: I was about, I know, maybe fifteen sixteen, and ahead
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: of that, when I lived in Louisiana when I was
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: a kid. My mother always tells this story. My dad
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: went into a store and he said, wait here, I'll
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: be right back. I think it might have been a
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: liquor store, because I wasn't allowed in, because why else
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: does a parent leave their kid in front of the store,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: especially in New Orleans in nineteen eighty three, which was
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: the murder capital of America, as my mother's quick to tell. Anyhow,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: my mom says that when they got back from the store,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: I was out in front of the I was out
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: in front of the store, and I had money at
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: my feet, and there were like what did you do
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: to get that money? And it turned out like I
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: had danced, which is what I had seen them do
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: in the quarter. The kids, you know, they they take
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: a ballpen hammer, and they put bottle caps on their
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: bottoms of their shoes and then they get out there
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: and dance. Apparently I had done some kind of act
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: that earned me dough out in front of this liquor
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: store in Louisiana in New Orleans. So having unlocked this
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: great secret, I really saw it with my high school
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: years to go out on the curb. You know, I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: was always a hustler and I always loved making money
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: for music. Just thought that was the greatest thing. I
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: remember reading a book, or maybe it was seeing a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: cartoon in which a hobo steals a pie off of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: a window sill in the depression, right, that's how I
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: felt like. I feel like a thief of pies and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: tar like I will take things. And I always liked
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: that feeling of living by my wits and playing music
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: on the street corner really made me feel like ground
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: zero of freedom, just the sense of being liberated.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I don't have a job. I don't I'm not responsible.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: For anybody except myself, and I have this trick, and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: the trick is if I can go, they'll throw money
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: at me, and then I'll really be free, so free
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: that I can buy a case of beer and a
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: carton of cigarettes and a motel room.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: That's how free music will set me. Okay, so you're
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: in Ithaca.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I followed my girlfriend at Ithaca. She was
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: enrolled at Cornell, and I started playing as much as
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: I could down there on the Downtown Commons it was called.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: It was like a pedestrian mall, and that's where I
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: met the people that would populate Old Crow Medicine Show.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: I met Richie Stearns first, the great banjo player and
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: his band, the Tompkins County horse Flies, and they were
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: so great. They were like a punk rock old time experience. Well,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: he introduced me to Willie. Willie Watson and Critter came
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: up from Virginia to join me up there, and we
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: met the members of the band and we played everywhere
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: we could, and then my girlfriend dumped me, and I said, hey,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: let's get out of here. Let's go across the border,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: because I had been up there before to play on
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: the street corner in other bands. And they said okay,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: so we hit the road. An Old Crow Medicine Show
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: was born in the fall of nineteen ninety eight. Pot
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: we pulled our money together working at a and you're
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: picking grapes and we crossed the Canadian border in October
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety eight in a black Volvo eighty two
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: station wagon, all rested out in a Dodge Coachman, and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: the seven of us headed for the Pacific.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: So did you ever go to school in Ithaca?
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah? For one year. I attended Ithaca College. When I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: was up there, shacked up with my girlfriend who was
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: at Cornell.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: It was a.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: Weird experience. I just didn't like it. I didn't do well.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: I didn't make friends, just felt like having a job.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Now this same girlfriend who dumbs you, is that the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: woman you ultimately married? Yeah, Lydia, Okay, in this continuum?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Do you learn how to play the fiddle?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: So, Bob, When I was when I was in Greensboro,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: I was in this old times string band and they
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: were they were so good and the fiddler was incredible.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I was the guitar player.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Uh, And I took over the job for this woman
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: she had been in the band, and she got another
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: gig in a really popular band at the time called
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: the Freight Hoppers. The freight Hoppers were one of the
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: most popular old times dring bands in the nineties. They
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: played on Garrison Keeler's show and everything I listened to
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: them with with with guarded jealousy. And I think because
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: of my personality type. I knew that that somebody that
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: was gonna, like Spearhead a great big transcontinental trip needed
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: to play the apex instrument in the old times dring
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: band the fiddle. So even though I could play the
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: other instruments like I had, you know, I had taken
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: mandolin lessons and I met David Grisman, and I still
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: suck at mandolin. I'm not saying I was ever good,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: but I could play it, and I could play the bass,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: and I could play the piano and the guitar and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: the banjo. But when I was eighteen, I knew that
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: the buskin bit like if I was going to I
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: saw that I could do it better with a band,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: and the band just needed a fiddler. And it was
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: such a tedious instrument to learn that I don't think
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: anyone else was willing to put up with what it
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: was going to take to teach yourself to play the violin.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: It's a very hard instrument to learn. But when I
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: was eighteen, I went to a pawn shop I bought
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: a fiddle, and then I went alone up to the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Province of New Brunswick. This was the summer of nineteen
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: ninety seven, and before I went to Ithaca College. It
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: was right after I can't remember anyway, ninety eight, right
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: before we started Old Crow, and I taught myself how
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: to play playing up there in New Brunswick and Prince
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Edward Island and found that I could spool them uh
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: and make money on the curb. And so I then
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: I went back to the boys and like, okay, I
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: can play fiddle. Now let's go wait, wait.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Let's sut out. Why do you go to New Brunswick.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we'd already played in Ontario and Quebec. You know
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: when I did all that. When I was eighteen, I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: went to Windsor and the and the up and we
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: were trying to go around Lake Huron.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: I was really into these quick sodics, sort of like
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: let's go to the farthest away place.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Some people they they you know, they read where they
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: watched those Jacques Cousteau films and then they want to go,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: you know, to the Sargasso See and they want to
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: go to the Seychelles and swim with the dolphins. I
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: listened to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, so it made
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: me want to go to the most remote places of
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: North America where I could meet people that felled timber,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: worked in mills and factories were native people's metal. I
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: was really really focused on wanting to be around indigenous communities.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: So that really sent me to the to the north Woods,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: into the Great Lakes where there were just so many
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Native people. And so one of the first things that
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do was also this sort of like
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: you know, Vasco to Gamma kind of bit, where like, hey,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: let's go put our flag in a moon that's never
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: been noticed before. This is at the same time, Bob,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: that this new Canadian territory was named and created. This
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: happened the same year the band started. It was called
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Nuonabut our Land in Innuctetud. But I just I've never been.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: I'm still dying to go. But it really signified for
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: me that there's this huge piece of North America that
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: you could only be really deliberate about going to see.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: And at age nineteen, I was convinced that I had
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: been picked to go lay eyes upon and I was
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: reading that book Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose, so old
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: Crowe basically did the Lewis and Clark trip.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, wait wait, wait, I want to get
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: the timeline right. You're in Greensboro. Do you go to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Ithaca when you ultimately go with the seven Members across
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: the border? You went to New Brunswick before that? Correct? Yeah,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: did you go to New Brunswick before that year? You
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: went to Ithaca College?
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: It was the It was that same year I had
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: finished my freshman year at Ithaca College and I went
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: to across the border. I'd gone up to Bar Harbor, right,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: and I played played up there and I was solo
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: and I met this guy in front of a jewelry
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: store there and he.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Gave me a dollar named Kevin Hayes.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: Later, Kevin met me in Ithaca and we and we
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: started Old Crow more or less together. He was a busker.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: He was a little bit older than me, from Haveroll,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Mass Well. We part of ways. He was up there
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: to break blueberries, and that's one of the other ways.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, people can pick fruit. That's what
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: you can do when you're a musician. You find itinerant
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: farm labor. I squirreled that idea away. It was important
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: to know it. Later when I got to Appalachia with
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Old Crow, was oh.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: Need money, find a job with.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: Whatever crop is being brought in right now, you know,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: hate work in the hayfield, tobacco, any of that stuff.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: He was picking raking blueberries. But you know, I wanted
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: to get across the border. I'd always wanted to go
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: to New Brunswick and Pei. So I went up there
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: and played on the curb that summer. And that's where
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: I was playing fiddle for the first time.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, how did you get from place to place?
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: I had a Volvo station Wagon that I was driving
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: at that time. You know, I had a car.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, a car. And then you literally
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: took no lessons, just figured out how to play the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: fiddle by yourself exactly.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so that was a hard instrument.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now you're in Ithaca, seven people across the border.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Tell me what happens then.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: Well, we had we had made these forays. Like before
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: I went to New Brunswick, I went across the border
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: with my best friends from Harrisonburg, Virginia called the Ratt
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: eleven Boys. That was a band that was my first
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: year out of high school, out of Exeter, and we
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: crossed and we went all the way up in the
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: dead of winter and we played on the curb and
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: we were We thought.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: This is the life.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: So then I sort of sought to duplicate that in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: different ways. I did it alone, I do it in
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: a duo. Now I pulled my money together. I had
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: just been dumped my girlfriend and we all worked in
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: dishrooms and everything we could do to make enough money.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: We raised about six hundred dollars and then we left.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: We crossed the border just to go back.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stop you for one second. You're in
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: bar Harbor, you're New Brunswick. How much money can you
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: make buski? A couple hundred bucks a day? Real good money?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was incredible. And you're performing for how
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: long for a couple of hundred bucks? Oh? Five, six,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: seven hours? And to what did we do? Establish relationships
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: with the people in these areas who come to hear you.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: Iediately, And that's the that's the rosetta stone of it
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: all is that you get out on the curb. Once
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: you open up your case, it's like you got a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: damn billboard in the middle of town, particularly if you're
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: in a shitty town where there's nothing going on, or
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: in an off season moment, because then people come over
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: to you and they're like, hey, I got this bottle
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: of wine, do you want some? Or my friend runs
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: this bakery. They'll give you a bunch of sandwiches and
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: a whole you know, all this food if you'll go
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: play there or you know, you can.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: You know, it felt like.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: The trade was opening up a lot of doors. And yeah,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: so that's how that.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: Was, okay? And were there ever any issues with the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: laws so you can't bust here? Oh yeah, yeah all
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: The I mean they were like in Bar Harbor, for example,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Like I slept in my car at that time, right,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: and you know, they didn't let you sleep in your car.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: That's the first time I ever learned that you're not
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: actually allowed to just park a car and sleep in it.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I thought you could, you know.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: Now it's twenty twenty five or whatever, and I there's
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: like somebody's sleeping in their car three blocks from here.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I know that.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: And that lady's never been out of that car. Her
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: whole life is in her car. That's all she can do.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: But the cops will eventually move her on too, just
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: like they moved me on. They did the same thing
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: in Fredericton, New Brunswick. That was the second time, but
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: the first time was bar Harbor and the cops woke
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: me up and I had made the mistake of sleeping
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: without any clothes on. And I was naked in the
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: back of this vall though, and it was like, oh,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: officer pardoned me, is like, you can't be here. I
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: don't think my nudity helped endear me to the share.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Happened again three weeks later in Fredericton, New Brunswick. That's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: when I figured out that it was really important to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: try and secure a place to sleep. You know, all
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: the roads were leading up to this big transcontinental trip.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: I had taken these little for to what degree would
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: you play on a street corner and the cops say
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: you can't play here?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: Oh it happened all the time. I mean, oh, well,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: this flashing forward a little bit. But after we had
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: done our big cross Canadian trip, I met a girl
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: at a you know, a barmaid in Vancouver, British Columbia,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: and I went back to see her and I did
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: some busking on the way and I was for the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: first time I was detained, you know, for about five
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: hours and questioned in a underground building in a downtown
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: in Pioneer Square in Portland, Oregon. I'd never been to Portland,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: Oregon before, and that nineteen ninety eight and ninety nine
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: whoa town was incredible.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I've never seen nothing like it.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I definitely saw like where they take they
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: on me and shit.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: So also, to what degree would you be busking and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: people offer you places to stay almost every time? Okay,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: so now let's go back. You got your six hundred dollars,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: you got your Volvo, you got your seven people across
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: the border.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: What happens, Well, they wouldn't let us in. Eight It's
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: like we had the wrong liar in riding in the
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: passenger seat court. You get up there to the to
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: the window and they're like, well, what where are you doing?
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: Where are you going? Oh, we're just gonna go see
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: some friends. Well we're not gonna let you in. So
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: we went to three border crossings before we finally figured
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: and this is all in New York State, like up
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: around Potsdam, like it sucks up there. We tried to
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: cross Agannonockway, we tried to cross at Ogdensburg, we tried
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: to cross at Messina. But then we got to the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: Mohawk Rets on Aquasasne, and I always read the newspaper
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: up there called Akuasasni Notes. I read it at the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: at the college library because the living in the in
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: the land of the Iroquois Confederacy, like I was from
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: the South, like you know, Andrew Jackson had a very
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: effective job to do in Indian removal. So I had
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: the like everybody from the South, unless you lived in
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: you know, near the Chalctaw res in Philadelpha, Mississippi, chances
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: were all you were going to have of Indigenous America
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: was the name of your river, the name of your state,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: the name of your town, the name of your county, whatever.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: But moving to New York State, which I did when
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: I was in eighteen nineteen, it was like, oh, there
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: are reservations here everywhere, like seven of them. More So,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: once we I was like, let's go to the Mohawk reds.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: I bet they'll let us across. We went to Aquasasne
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: and it was great, and they they were like sure,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: come on. And then they were like, hey, can you
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: bring the suitcase with you. We're like sure, put it
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: in the back of the car.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: It's okay. So now you're in Canada. What do you do?
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: Well, we right across the border from Aqua Sasne in
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: New York the Mohawk, the Saint Regis Mohawk reds. Right
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: across the border from that is a town called Cornwall, Ontario,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: and it's right tucked up against Quebec, south west of Montreal,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: about two and a half hour drive. And this town
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: was gold.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: It was like they were.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Like, welcome, welcome, We're so where you been.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, immediately like we.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: Get we're busting in front of some shithole and then
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: like somebody pulls up. It's like, hey man, why don't
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: you looked cold out there? Why don't you come play
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: indoors tonight? So we play some because this is in
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: you know, it's cold, it's in October. So now we're
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: playing in the you know, in a in a proper pub.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: And then they got us in the next town. They're like, oh,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: we know a guy up there has got a place
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: we play in there.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: And then we end up at in Ottawa where they
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: got this wonderful farmers market and the Tunis and the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: Loonies are just reining in the case.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: And so this is when you then go cross country.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the plan all along was to go
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: across the country. We we booked a couple of sort
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: of we had We had a woman in our group
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: that was dating the guy I met in front of
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: that jewelry store in Bar Harbor, and she knew this
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: uh Indian guy from Pine Ridge named Brian Brewer, and
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: Brian was a was an important person in the in
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: the leadership of the Lakota people. And so we had
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: this anchor date on pine Ridge. Like eve then if
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: you draw a line from you know, Cornwall, Ontario to
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: pine Ridge, South Dakota, like that's basically almost the entire continent.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: It's so far away, and so we try I had
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: to thread this and we did it by going just
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: sort of following our wits and wherever the wherever the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: good curbs were. And also that feeling of the books
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: I was reading, like hey, let's go north of Lake
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: Superior and we saw the northern lights. It was just
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: incredible seeing being in this in this vast North American landscape,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: places that I'd never even thought about, like thunder Bait,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: who goes there when they're nineteen with their band just randomly.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you got seven guys there's not much money involved.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: How do you keep the act together?
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: Well, and we're just we're successful. We just keep filling
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: the and we're living on the cheap, you know, we
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: eating ramen noodles. And you know, all you need is beer, cigarette,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: ramens and gas. That's all it takes. So it doesn't
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: mean a whole lot too. You know, if you have
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: a shitty day on the curb, you only make it
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: fifty bucks. So that's a tank of gas right there.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: So if you're live in collectively, you know, and you
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: could live off peanut butter crackers. And this is stuff
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: that like I look at today, like i live in Nashville, Tennessee,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: and I'm surrounded by kids who are in bands on
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: billboards around town around the I four for Interstate Spur.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: I see their pictures and I'm like, that kid don't
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: know nothing about living off peanut butter crackers. They probably
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: don't even know that you got enough calories in a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: cup of coffee, in a pack of anywhere.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you you go cross country, you come back,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: you go back to see the barmade of Vancouver. Then
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: what well, then.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: We had been on this big, crazy trip. It was
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: like ten thousand miles we traveled, and it was now
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: almost Christmas, and we decided that we would leave at
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: the c forever and we would move to either southwest Virginia,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: North Carolina, or East Tennessee. And so a couple everybody
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: kind of scattered after the tour, and then I went
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: down and started looking for a place to live. And
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: I went to Asheville, and I went to Mars Hill,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: and I went to Boone, and I went to ald Saltville,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Glade Springs, Bristol, all these places, looking for a place
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: where we could farm and play and.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: Lo and behold.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: We ended up in Avery County, North Carolina, renting a
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: farmhouse with one hundred acres attached to it. And by
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen ninety nine, we were we had
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: the best, you know, we had the we had the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: best garden of anyone. The old people would come and
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: just look at the garden. They'd be like, who are
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: these boys? H But we had, you know, potatoes that
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: were just the bounty of you know, we were growing
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: so much. The pole beans were incredible. Uh and uh.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: And that's when we started playing. And you know, we
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: met Doc Watson that that that summer.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, is it the same seven people? Yeah? So how
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: do you beat Doc Watson?
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: Well? We uh, like I said, we were doing a
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: lot of raising food. We had rabbits and chickens, and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: we had goats and we had a sheep and you know,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: we had all of us and there was a no TV.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: And so we just were so creative at that time,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: writing all this songs and making having such a good time.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: And we and we play on the herb and boone
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: sometimes mostly Willie would go down there and play solo.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: We all kind of had to get jobs, right, so
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: I worked manpower. That was always my go to because
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: you can make fifty sixty bucks a day doing horrible jobs,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: dig a ditch and then fill it in, you know
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: kind of thing lay pipe. But Reebar I did that for.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: A while.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: Anyway, we're playing on a curb. It's the fifth of July.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: The fourth of July, we'd made our first run of
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: corn whiskey that wasn't on the stovetop. See this time,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: we were like reading the fox Fire book and really
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: trying to live. The reason the garden was so good
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: is because we planted it all by the lunar signs
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: we were visiting with all these old time people. It
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: was like I had found this place where where where
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: all of the songs. This is this great book by
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Bruce Chatwin called The Song Lines. He's an Australian musicologist,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: and he talks about the way the indigenous people there are,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: the Aboriginal peaceeople, believe that music has has this profound pathway.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, people have been living there for fifty thousand years,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: so they ought to know. I felt like this confluence
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: of all the songs that I had ever learned was
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: in this town. And so it'd be like, well that
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: song we sing about that sheep, like who's got an
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: experience with a sheep? Well, suddenly there's one running out there,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: and now we're singing about it. And it all growing,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: all this food and then all this history too, like
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: the war and the Civil War. There just seemed like
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: the music was growing. It sounds like I felt like
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: we were at the headwaters that you could just go
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: fill a jug. And that was right when we were
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: really participating in all of these sort of elements of
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: the music. So it wasn't enough to sing about it.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: You had to do the things that you were singing
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: about So when we met Doc Watson, it was just
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: on a of We had made all this corn whiskey
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: and everybody was really made sick by it. But we
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: had missed the good busking and we were like, well,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: we better go down there.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: Like rents do.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: It was the fifth of July. A woman walked up.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: She said, I love this kind of music, and my
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: dad loves it even more. Are you Are you guys
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: going to be here for a while? And we said maybe.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: She came back twenty minutes later and she walked her
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: dad across the street. It was Doc Watson.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: So you meet Doc Watson. How does that change your life?
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: Well, Doc listened to us and he gave us a
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: gig on the spot. He said, I love what you
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: guys are doing, and I'd like you to play at
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: the festival that I have in honor of my son
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: Merle and it's about forty miles from here. I'd love
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: to have you be there. And then, you know, Doc,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: then we started writing. Then I started writing letters to Rosalie,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: his Doc's wife, and forging this relationship.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Because I was like, oh my god.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: We had paid you know, the biggest thing you ever
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: lie into a tip jar was the were the words
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: of Doc Watson saying you got a gig.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Before then.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, I guess we're just gonna try
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: and make it. I was still like I was taking
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: a permaculture course at the time. I was like, maybe
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I'll get into agg instead. But Doc sealed the deal
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: and we went to the merle Fest and uh, and
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: that's where we met Sally Williams. Sue brought us to Nashville.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: She brings you to Nashville.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: And what happened, Well, they invited us to Well, we
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: got to Doc Watson's place to Merlefest and we played
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: this really shitty set, you know that with We never
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: really used microphones before, and we were terrible at mixing,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: so awful ear piercing. So it was like, well, we
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: sure was sure to put a lot into this. You know,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: we better do something. So we started busking at Merlefest.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: We just started playing and we played. We made our
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: own stage, we called it, we gave it a name.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: We worked it all weekend long, and by the end
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: of it, I mean, we were on the front page
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: of the Wataga County Democrat.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: We were what you.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: Were talking about if you were at Merlefest and the
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: year two thousand, I mean, I met Willie Nelson. It
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: was incredible.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: It was like.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: The universe took notice of this band of gypsies that
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: was there. And not just the universe, but this lady,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: this person from the Grand Old Opry, Sally, and she
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: called us about three weeks later and said, hey, I'd
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: like you to do that same bit that you did
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: at Merlefest. I'd like you to do it out in
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: front of the Grand Old Lopry and you could do
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: it all summer long. And so we started working on
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: Friday nights at the Opry. I've been in Nashville before
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: and played on the street corner there I started. I
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: went there in nineteen ninety six, right out of high
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: school with that band from Greensboro. And I was like, well,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: and I told everybody, we got to go to Nashville,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: y'all that the Buskin is so incredible. It's five hundred
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: dollars town.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: And it was.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: So we started going down to Nashville on the weekends
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: from Appalachia, where we're living in Avery County, North Carolina,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: and we you know, we'd play on the on the
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: on the curb of the Opry House on Friday, and
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: then Saturday we play all day and all night on
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: the street corner downtown on Lower Broad and then take
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: all our money and go back home.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: To you know, to Boon more or less.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: So keep playing the story. Okay, Well, you know, eventually
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: we were like, well, why don't we just move there,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: you know, let's let's get out of the holler.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: Moved down there.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: So we first had to get rid of all the animals,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: and a bunch of a bunch of bad ship was happening,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: like really bad ship. You know, Willie's dad died and
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: it was super traumatic for everybody.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Back in Ithaca.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Uh. And we were all there, we're making a record
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: and Mike Watson died in a horrible accident. Uh and
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: that was really shocking. And so part of part of
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: the let's just go to Nashville was let's get away
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: from what's just happened. It was too tragic, let's not
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: talk about it, let's just go. So we found, you know,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: we moved to Dickerson Road, which was the worst part
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: of Nashville, and you know, we gave away all our animals.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: So now you're in Nashville, you're busking you're making records.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're playing on the curb. And then eventually they
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: they're inviting us up to play at the station in
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: you know that was and we're playing at Bobby's idel Hour,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: and we're meeting people, and you know, I was always
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: pretty savvy, you know, I like, I was good at
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: remembering people's names, looking people in the eye, and writing
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of letters. I was writing letters to DJ's
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: radio stations. I wrote letters to Garrison Keeler, I wrote,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: I wrote, and you know, we got our opry debut.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: We met Marty Stewart. I started writing letters to Marty Stewart.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: And then and then one.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: Day at the station inn, this couple came that had
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: hurt us on the radio, and it was Gillian Welch
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: and David Rawlings. And that was sort of the beginning
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: of really getting into living in Nashville and finding somebody
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: to help champion our cause.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, the question becomes everybody stays together. No one says,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: hey there's not enough money, I'm going home, or I'm
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: going to graduate school, none of that.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our bass player has a kid and leaves almost
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: as soon as we arrive in Nashville. But we're playing
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: downtown and Morgan walks by on Lower Abroad and throws
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: us a dollar, and this becomes well, like I told you,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: my friend Kevin threw me a dollar in Bar Harbor.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: That's the first person that I became inextricably linked to
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: because of busting.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: Morgan was the second.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: But then Critter dropped out of the bands because he
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: was he couldn't stop drinking. And we're playing in New
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: Orleans and another guy we met on the curve there,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: Gil Landry, became a member of the band. And at
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: some point the majority of the players in the band
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: had all met through chance encounters on street corners. It
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: was just like this divinity, you know, you just you
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: go out there and you open your case and the
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: right things seemed to happen. It was almost like, well,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: it's like this universe needed there to be a band
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: that was going to survive, particularly in those first you know,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: five eight years. Oh we were you know.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: We made it.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: Then we got a record deal, and right around then
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: is when I got married. It was the year two
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: thousand and one.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you get a record deal?
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: We we went to south By Southwest and We had
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: been doing some shows with this band that we had
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: met when we were out in Vancouver that where they
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: were so cool. They were like us, They were gypsies.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: They would go and do this thing called Hella logging
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: or Heila logging in which like after they go like
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: they log by helicopter up there because it's so damn
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: romon there are no roads, so that once they carry
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: all the woods out, then they bring these hippies in
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: they drop them down the middle of damn nowhere British
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: Columbia to go plant all the trees that will be
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: the next crop. And the girls in the Be Good
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: Tanias they would ride in on these them helicopters and
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: drip drop them down. Then they go plant trees for
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks and then they come back. And
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: that was like us, you know. We found a band
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: that was really kindred and they were hugely popular in
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: the year two thousand and one two and three, the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: Be Good Tanyas were. They played in Europe. We got
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: to open up for them. So anyway, their record company,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: a Canadian label called Network, signed us, hoping that they
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: were going to duplicate the same and we had two
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: competing record deals. We could either sign with Network or
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: we could have signed with Ricky Skaggs, and we chose
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: the Canadian label And how did that work out? Well,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: it was it was cool. I mean, they agreed to
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: fund our record and we had met this wonderful producer,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: David Rawlings, and he was like a member of the band.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: Once Critter left because he couldn't stop drinking, you know,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: David came in and now David was in the band
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: and we were doing all kinds of touring together and
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: sometimes then we started open up for Gillian Welch, and
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: you know, the work just kept following and we had
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: a record deal and it was and yeah, we were working.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: We had an agent, who is your agent, Bobby Cudd.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: For the longest time, for forever, for until the present,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: it's been Bobby cud and Bobby Cud nothing but because
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: we love Bobby. He was our very first music business champion.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: We did not have a manager. I was the guy
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: doing all the books. And then we met Norm Parento
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: who cautioned us and said, don't sign that record deal.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Let me look at it. That was the deal with Ricky. Okay,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: we're in this story. Does Wagon Wheel.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: Happen at Exeter. I wrote it there. Like I was
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: telling you before, I was trading these bootlegs back and forth,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: you know, and one day Critter sent me a bootleg
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: and I heard this song and I was like, wow,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: that's really good. I should really finish that. I'll doctor
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: it up. So this is the fall of my senior
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: year at Exeter. Around November seventeen, I wrote the song
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: wagon Wheel, and but my band well, then I went
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: to Greensboro and I was like, hey, guys, I've written
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: this amazing song. Way do you hear it? And I
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: played it for him and they were like, catch, we
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: only do traditional material. We don't do like originals. This
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: is not what we do. So I was like, oh,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: maybe maybe I don't either. Oh maybe I don't do originals.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: Maybe I just do traditionals. So I shelved it. And
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: when when Old Crow was on the street corner, we
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: hardly ever played that song when you know, it just
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: sort of sat there until I got to Nashville. And
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: you know, one of our first meetings was with a
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: song plugger and they were like, well, you guys are
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: really good and you're fun and you're you're all cute
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: and whatnot. But this isn't a town where Annie Bellham
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: folk music really has a stronghold.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: So what have you written lately? And I was like,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: well I.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: Got this song and I started playing it for him.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: They're like, that's a good tune. So it really helped,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: you know, it opened a lot of doors for us.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: It was an immediately popular tune back in about two
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: thousand and two, and then we sought to publish the
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: song for our first for our debut album. We had
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: made records before, but they were almost all traditional recordings,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: you know, songs, old songs. Even the new songs were
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: half borrowed and half stolen, and they sounded like old songs.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: But when Dave Brawlings went to record us, you know,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: that was that was one of the focus points, was
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: let's make sure we get a good version of wagon Wheel.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, but you went to publish it and Dylan it
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: started it tell us that story.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I didn't know anything about publishing, but I had
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: a but you just get a publisher, you know, they
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: signed I signed up for BMI because that's what they
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: said to do and that we'd make good contacts.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: So we signed up for BMI.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: And and then to go register your songs, you know,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: you had to figure out who wrote them and split
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: it up. So and I was somebody that was like, well,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: let's say we all wrote it, boys, let's everybody takes
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: a one fifth or one sixth draw.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Won't that be great?
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: We'll all get about fifteen twenty percent, fellas, it'll be great.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: But then the manager was like, well, actually, it's best
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: to like, if you wrote it, you get to keep it.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: And I had a real hard time with that idea.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: I had already tried to give away my publishing before
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: because I really thought that collectivism was king and that
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: part of the majesty of all this was kind of
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: hobbling yourself, you know, like you're supposed to give it
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: all away, you're not. None of this is yours to
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: keep catch So that's how I felt about it. So
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: it was really odd to me when they were like, hey,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: we need to have a lot of meetings about this song,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: and Bob Dylan like, this can't just be like a
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: gray area. So the record had already been pressed and
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: was being released in a matter of weeks or a month,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: and the song still wasn't published, So it was it
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: was a real nail bier, And finally Norm got Jeff
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: Rosen to pick up the phone, and Jeff Rosen said,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: Bob has heard the track. Bob wants you to know
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: that he did not write that song, but he has
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: come across that song, or it came across it in
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three from the author of that song, Arthur
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: crut Up. But Arthur is dead, and so Bob has
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: agreed that he will split it fifty to fifty with Catch.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: And then suddenly, like manna from Heaven, it was like, ah,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: it's over. The negotiation is done, the song is locked in.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: It's fifty to fifty Catch and Bob over the loss is.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: Your reference Earlier with Darius Rutger, the song starts to
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: have its own life. It becomes a standard. Are you
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: totally surprised? Do you even know Darius is going to
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: cut it?
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: Darius didn't cut it until maybe twenty twelve or something,
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: so this was all more than a decade before that.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: Plus I wrote it in ninety five, so I had
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: had all this other time with it, you know, And
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: I mentioned that, So we didn't play it very much.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: I was sort of embarrassed about it. It was like
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: it's like if you showed up at you know, a
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: knife fight and you have in your possession, you know,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: a bazooka. It was like, I don't let them see
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: that you got this gold. You're supposed to all be
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: out here hungry.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: There was just something in my DNA that was like,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: you know, I didn't want to be the kid from
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: prep school. I wanted to be like Woody got Thrie,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: you know. I wanted to get on a box car
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: and ride, you know. I didn't want to be jet set.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: I wanted to be a folk singer. So I had
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: to act it. And so some of some of the
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: thing about rock Me Mama, because that's what it was called.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: It wasn't called wagon Wheel, It's called rock Me Mama.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: Some of that was like me just trying to not
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: reveal that there were to do it the hard way,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: like I wanted it to be hard. I wanted I
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: thought it was important that we experience, you know, hardship
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: to grow the band, and it's e those like it was,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: you know, like that's why we got an ad because
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: because if it dies, it's on you.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: And I wanted it to be hard like that.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: But one day we were playing down in around a
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: milltown Hickory. We're in down in the Hickory, North Carolina.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: You know, it was like a Sunday night. It was
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: like fifteen people in the room. And this this old
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: guy was who had had the tobacco allotment behind the
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: house that we were squatting in, Me and Kevin, and
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: he is a Vietnam vet and he was missing teeth
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: and he was you know, he.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: And he you know, he sold drugs. He was like
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: an air do well.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: But he was a deer of friends we had. We
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: brought him with him down at Hickory and he heard
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: of the show. He heard the show, he watched it.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: He came up to me in the parking lot, Bob,
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: and he said, hey, Kitch, you just need to play
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: that wagon wheel about every night. And I turned to
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: him and I was like, what did I never heard
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: that word wagon wheel before, Like it didn't mean nothing
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: to me, and he had just that was the name
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: of the song, and he really coined it for me.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: James Sizemore. Now James then found religion and got clean
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: and James died with you know, a nice bass boat
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: and you know he had a new car. He died
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: right after Hurricane Helene, just a couple of years ago.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: I really miss him and I but I got to
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: reconnect with him and tell him, you know, and he
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: knew about Molly.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: He's like, I mean, I want you know. He gave
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: me a lot.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: Of love right there at the end before he died.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: But he gave me this really powerful gift. He told
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: me that I should change the name from rock Me Mama,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: So like my sisters still call it rock Me Mama
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: because they remember from before when I used to sing
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: it in the nineties at the coffeehouses and.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Shit, okay, this late date, is there still significant income
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: from Wagon Wheel? Oh yeah, that song's killing it.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: One day, Bob Dylan was sitting there for the Grammys
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: and the Mumford Boys were there, and we'd just done
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: a bunch of shit with the Mumford.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: Boys, so we knew him right.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: And Gil Landry, who I told you about, met him
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: on a street corner in New Orleans and Critter was
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: sort of flaking out, so Gil stepped in. Anyhow, Gil
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: was there in LA for the Grammys and T Bone's
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: there and we'd just done this project with T Bone
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: about for a movie that never came out. T Bone's
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: sitting there and Gil Landry's and Bob Dylan walks in.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: Bob Dylan sits down next to t Bone. Gil just
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: happens to be standing there, and Bob looks around like
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: you're seeing a ghost, and he's like, oh are you
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: And Gil says, oh, I'm I'm Gil from Old Crow
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: And he said, oh Crow you guys, I'm killing it,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: says Bob Dylan. So yeah, the song is still killing it?
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: Could you live off that song alone? Sure?
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: I mean I could live off of playing a banjo
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: in Ottawa alone. I could open this door up right
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: here and go out on Shelby Avenue and live my
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: whole life with it, with whatever instruments that I can grab.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you get a record deal. Twenty odd years
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: in soup, band members come, band members go, what's going
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: through your mind? Do you feel like we're going up,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: We're having more success, we're reaching more people or do
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: you not care about that? Do you not? Just as
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: long as you can play What's going through your mind?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a job in a career. It's been twenty
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: eight years. I think if I were to I mean,
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: the first decade was really really intense, kind of crazy,
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: so then it became kind of a lot different, you
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: know suddenly, and then we started having like bigger successes
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: in about twenty and twelve and thirteen and on, and
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: now it's kind of plateau. I think the plateau hit
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: around maybe seventeen eighteen, and now it's just like cemented
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: as this is this fan it's been around, it's still
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: doing it. But the thing that has grown is is
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: this one song wagon Wheel. You know, it's it's touched
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: so many people, and it's been part of the story
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: of so many artists who have found their own way
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: in American music. You know, multiple artists that are you know,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: big time artists with billboards around town have told me, yeah,
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: that was my first song. So it's like it's been
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: carried beyond where I've been able to go.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about the career, the status of Old
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: Crow being cemented. There was an upward arc, and then
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: it's for you're happy that you made it to this level.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: Are you frustrated that you're not growing bigger? I guess so.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: I mean it's frustrating that I don't know that I'm
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: frustrated that we're not growing bigger. I guess I feel
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: like our influence is profound and you know, undeniable, so
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: but you know, you kind of got to steal yourself
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: like anybody that's you know, like I was. I was
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: with Molly last week at Shoreline Amphitheater and Molly was
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: opening up for Chris Stapleton and I sat in on
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: a couple of tunes and played.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard not to be like.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: Well, why aren't I selling out a twenty five thousand
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: seat coliseum or guy. I was at Red Rocks a
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: couple of days ago and we were opening up for Darius,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: And we've headlined Red Rocks on numerous occasions, but we
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: don't anymore, and so there's a little bit like, oh, well,
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: that feels a little salty that we're not the headliners anymore.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: But you know, at the same time, it's like there's
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: ebb and flow to it. And also it's so exciting,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: like seeing what Molly's up to and now being so
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: involved and invested in her rise. It's almost like I
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: kind of get to do some of it over again,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: but without nearly as much stress and anxiety as when
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: it was my own apple cart that I was trying
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: to get up the mountain and down the other side.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I think at some point you just
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: have to accept what your trajectory is and has been
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: and just be like, Okay, well I got I have
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: to do a lot of really cool stuff. There's still
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: some you know, parts of the solar system I didn't
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: get to visit yet. But I mean, I'll be playing
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: Fenway next week. I'm the opener. But how many people
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: that are that bought their fiddle in a pawnshop and
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: taught himself how to play it when they were eighteen
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: can say that they're going to play where the Red
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: Sox play.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have this great success with wagon Wheel, Was
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: there ever in your mind? Well this is all good?
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: Let me try to replicate it.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: I means not really, because every year I make a
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: new record like I happen to have. You know, Old
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: Crow has the number one record in the Americana genre
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: for four weeks in a row now, But that doesn't
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: mean that we have a career song or record that's
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: gonna last the next twenty eight years. Because when I
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: got started and sold a million records of the song
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: that the album that had wagon Wheel on it. Now
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: it's twenty eight years later, and people don't sell any
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: records at all, even like the top grossing records. They
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: didn't sell any copies of the record. So it's just
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: like it's.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: A little bit like the terminology.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: Has changed on success and now we you know, I
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: didn't have a number one record in two thousand and
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: three when My Shit came out, and I have one
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: now in twenty twenty six. But my not number one
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: record was a lot more powerful than my number one
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: record twenty five years later. I don't I have never
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: tried to, you know, write another Rockney Mama, because well,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: that's a magic song. I've tried to write another Your
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: Flag Decab won't get you into Heaven anymore. And I
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: tried to write another Uncle John's Band, and I tried
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: to write another Rocky Mountain High. But uh, you know,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: I'm always in the practice. I mean, I write. I
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: was writing songs yesterday, and I approached it the same
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: way I approached trying to finish this Bob Dylan song.
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: I write it all the same way. I'm a songwriter.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: I'll always be writing songs, and it's really up to
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: an audience and determine is it is.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: It greater or not? Okay, when you go back, you've
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: lived long enough the pre internet era, especially in the
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: MTV v H one video era, there was there was
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: a pyramid, and if you were at the top of
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: the pyramid, everybody knew who you were. That's been aviscerting
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: blown apart. So Mollie Mollie has a huge presence amongst
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: a certain segment of the population, and then there's a
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: large segment of the population who doesn't know who she is. Conversely,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: there are people who are listening to Balley's music who
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: couldn't even name a Taylor Swift soul. So hey, you
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: reference the America Americana chart. What is the status of
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Americana and folk in traditional music today and how has
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: it evolved over your time in it.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: Well, it's definitely a lot different than the apex that
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: you talk about in the nineties because in folk music
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: and in you know, what we then called alt country,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: there certainly was the top. But now where everything is
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: in a niche, you know, there's just there's something for everybody.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: Like I was thinking about it today because my fifteen
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: year old was playing her music in the car, and
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: I thought about somebody saying, who the hell doesn't know
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: who Dominic Fike is? You know, well I don't until now,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: and you know, like this guy is really really popular.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: He's like and he's like for a fifteen year old,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: like that's the top. And I'm still like thinking about
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: you know, Bill Morrissey on the folk charts in nineteen
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: eighty nine and like, oh, maybe I'll get as big
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: as like Laura Virs someday, or you know, just trying
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: to keep up with.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: You know, Tom Paxton. I think that.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: Nowadays the Americana music has been a kind of alternative
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: to country music. Ever since country music, you know, moved
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: so far away from what we thought of his country
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: music that a whole bunch of other or sort of
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: niche market music's popped up and was like, okay, well
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: here are these alternatives to country. So and that's only
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: been further Like when I was when Darius cut Wagon Wheel,
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: which was like eleven, twelve, thirteen. You know, our our
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: opener at the time was the Lumineers, and I was like, well,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: this is a good band, maybe they're really gonna go far. Well,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: I had no idea that this was a stadium act
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: that was playing small clubs with us.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: Conversely, like I remember the Cyo More record came out
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, this is a good band there.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: They're like the water Boys. Well, I didn't realize.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: That Mumford and Son we're going to go, you know,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: blow the doors off of the arena and be the
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: biggest thing in the land. And then in country music
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: seemed like, you know, Sturgel, who opened shows for us,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: was going to take it to New Heights, and you know,
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: and christ Apleton played before Old Crow at those festivals
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: we did. So I didn't realize that those that these
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: artists were really the future, and that our period together
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: was a sort of like passing of the torch onto
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: this next you know, long distance runner. So when I
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: think about it in the in the Pete Seeger sense
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: of it, like back to my uncle's record collection and
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: how this is a continuum, it's really important to pass
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: it forward. It's really important that American music traditions continue
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: to touch people's lives, whether it's the VH one era
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: or everybody's got a damn computer in their pocket. It's
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: really important that American music continue to calibrate the American
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: experience despite whatever technologies may you know, alter our consciousness
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: that that American music traditions be a through line to
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: from the past, from the present to the past, no
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: matter what our present is. So I'm really appreciative of
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: those who have carried it beyond my reaches so that
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: today's kids, like my fifteen year old daughter will grow
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: up knowing, you know, eventually she'll find her way to
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: some very rooted artist like Molly who can remind her,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: remind her generation that that this great experiment of making
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: American music the most popular on earth is one of
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: the most humanizing art forms on earth. That it it,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: you know, it sanctifies us, that it helps us atone
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: that it that it is a cooling salve and a balm.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: That America music is a miraculous art form. We just
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: need to be reminded of that lest we get too
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: far afield with you know, modern technologies or whatever would
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: take us away from the source material.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, unlike many musicians in Nashville, not only the country
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: at large, you've taken stands politically. Tell me more about that.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: What do you decide to stand up? Do you factor
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: in any risks to your image, your career.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: My band's been together twenty eight years. If we were
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: going to get sunk by something I said at what
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: happened a long time ago. Also, we're just not you know,
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: that household and name. You know, we're not that mainstream.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I could see if Darius Rucker took
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: a stance, maybe.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: But he's pretty established.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: That guy's fifty five years old, the double Nickel. So
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: I could see if Molly were to be outspoken, maybe
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: she could run the risk of But really, where you
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: see people getting canceled is online, So if you don't
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: pay much attention to it, I don't know, it's not
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: really it's not really bothering me. I don't feel I
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: feel like I got kind of a safety net here
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: as an established artist who's in their middle age. And
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: where I decided to take a stance most recently was.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: About gun violence.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: But you know, the Covenant shooting that happened here was
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: like that shooting happened at an evangelical Christian community where
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: our very Republican governor's wife had many many close friends,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: where you know, it almost like it happened on the right.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: And so for me to be all like lefty guy
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: about it. You know, I'm kind of a centrist anyway,
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: but the position can be often thought of to suggest
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: that Commentsen's gun reform occur that can often be considered
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: a left side.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: Of the aisle.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: The shooting that happened in Nashville, that was the catalyst
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: for me to stand up and you know, get my
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: name in the New York Times and whatnot, and then
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: go make this movie that's now being shown on all
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: the PBS channels. It was really, it was a motivating
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: force that didn't just touch me. And and really the
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: coming together the left and right are are essential at
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: this impasse during the Trump years. You know, we really
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: have to figure our shit out as a society if
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: we're going to make it safe for children, or we
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: just won't. You know, but if we can't get over
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: if we can't get over each other and the you know,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: polarization that we're facing right now, then it just won't
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: be safe. It just won't be healthy. It just you know,
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: it's not the kind of America that I want.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: To live in.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: And I'm really I'm really motivated by the Trump years
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: to seek community as an alternative to the ways that
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: the voices that are trumpeted in the media suggest that
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: we are wholly divided. I go out and play music
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: for a living, and I'm privy to a very purple
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: audience that is cohesively getting along, even though they might
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: feel differently about the Second Amendment or abortion, or environmentalism
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: or what war is or what the you know, defense
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: spending budget should be. When I see him in the
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: front row of my front row, I'm like, oh, look
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: at this. Look at the swath of America. Nobody gets
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: to see this. I mean, and playing country music, being
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 2: a fiddler and wearing a cowboy hat like I do
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: allows me to further bring the left and the right together.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: And it's a it's a it's a really lucky vantage point.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: So it keeps me really optimistic because I get to
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: see it every night. I get to see that when
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: you turn on Fox News or ABC. It's not what
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: they're saying at all, because I'm telling you, I look
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: out there and I see America grooving, dancing, drinking, singing along,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: dancing together, probably getting it on after the show's over.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: So I don't know what this shit is about how
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: we're all divided. Okay, ketch very well articulated. You're notice
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: the ambassador of country music. You're certainly that, but your
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: parapatetic life is just fascinating. How you sustained, how you've gone.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: I want to thank you for taking this time with
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: my own well, thank you so much for sharing your
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: audience with me, Bob. And you know you are an
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: ambassador for many many artists at much higher levels than myself.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 2: So thanks for slumming it with an old fiddler like me.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: But I gotta tell you I don't find many you
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: and Benma. I mean you went to exeteror and you
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: more you left your imprint on exitor than exitor left
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: it to imprint upon you.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: I sent on my gold record a wagon Wheel, and
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: I said, please hang this in the dorm room where
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: I wrote this song. And that was when it was gold.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: Then it went platinum, and now they now it's gone diamond.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: Now if you can't see me at home, I'm doing
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: air quotes here on diamonds.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: Did they hang it? Oh? Yeah, they got it up there.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: Every once in a while they'll call me up and
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: they'll they'll say, come on up here to Exeter and
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: give a speech to the to the graduate wait in class,
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: and then I like to keep them hanging. I'd rather
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: they I want to see the next folks singer come
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: out of that damn school.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: Hopefully there will be one. Thanks a lot, catch till
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob left Sex