Latest / Troubled Men Podcast / Feral Zone 26 ROBBIE FULKS NOW

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Feral Zone 26 ROBBIE FULKS NOW · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Inside the feral zone. Greetings, listeners. Welcome back. Inside the Feral Zone. I'm Rene Coman recording from the world famous Carousel Lounge in the beautiful Hotel Montleyon here in French Quarter of New Orleans. Many of you know the Feral Zone is a sister podcast of the Troubled Men podcast. It shows up in this space from time to time as circumstances call for. This is one of those times. Very excited to have this fantastic guest on today. He's a frighteningly talented alt country, folk, bluegrass, two time nominated singer, songwriter, guitar player, banjo player.
• 0:56
  Speaker B: Nominated for what?
• 0:58
  Speaker A: Grammy nominated.
• 0:59
  Speaker B: Oh, thank you, thank you. Sorry, just gotta get that in there.
• 1:03
  Speaker A: Two time Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, guitar player, banjo player, producer, recording artist. It's released 16 solo records and collaborated with a long list of giants including the great Steve Albini, Mekons Skeletons, Buck Owens, Lucinda Williams, and NRBQ's Al Anderson. The his latest release, the Excellent Now Then came out just a couple of months ago in September. He's playing in town tonight with the great John Langford of the Mekons opening the show. So we're gonna get into all that and much more. But without further ado, the fantastic Mr. Robbie Fulks. Welcome, Robbie.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: Thank you. I think we're out of time, so.
• 1:45
  Speaker A: I like to come out big from the gig build up to the letdown.
• 1:49
  Speaker B: I think almost all of that was true. So we're off to a good start.
• 1:53
  Speaker A: Thank you for helping me out with the verbiage there. Sometimes I get caught up in my.
• 1:57
  Speaker B: Well, I thought for a minute maybe you had to pay a rate every time you said the word Grammy. And so we were avoiding it, but.
• 2:03
  Speaker A: Oh, perhaps there's a lot of fees I may be foregoing in this operation. Kind of running under the radar, so to speak. So welcome back to New Orleans.
• 2:15
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 2:16
  Speaker A: When was your last time playing here?
• 2:19
  Speaker B: It's one of those things I have trouble remembering the pandemic, kind of. I think it was 2019, maybe early 2020.
• 2:26
  Speaker A: It's been a while. It's sometimes tough to find a spot for certain kinds of artists to play in New Orleans.
• 2:32
  Speaker B: You know, people who don't live in.
• 2:33
  Speaker A: New Orleans, for instance, it's very insular culture. You know, we're very New Orleans focused, naturally. And you know, certain things like translate here, but a lot of rock stuff, a lot of folk stuff kind of, you know, there's. You try to think of what room would you play and like, mmm, I don't know, it's. And like chicky wawa for a long time had, you know, this guy Dale who was running it. And he brought a lot of acts like you and, you know, John Doe and, you know, other things like that. And.
• 3:06
  Speaker B: But is that gone now?
• 3:08
  Speaker A: Well, he passed away and it got sold to some other people who made some upgrades. And it's kind of a consortium of music business guys and a nice room, but it's a higher ticket. It's, you know, you got to draw a lot. I don't know, it's just a whole.
• 3:24
  Speaker B: I've noticed in life, whenever the word upgrade comes up, it usually means the end of me.
• 3:29
  Speaker A: Well, for a lot of people, you know, it's become, you know, a lot harder to get in there and a lot more expensive to play there. You know, the overhead's a lot higher and stuff. So, anyway, so it's great that Mark Guerino, the great Marc Guarino, former guest of the Troubled Men podcast, is promoting this show here. Now, that's a studio that was originally a club, so that's at the Marney Studios tonight. And it was like a dance hall called Luth Jens, way back in the 60s, I think, or 50s. And then that closed down. I don't know what they did with it. But in the 80s, it was a punk rock club called the Beat Exchange.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: Where you played yourself, I imagine.
• 4:13
  Speaker A: I did play there. The first gig I played with Alex Chilton was at the Beat Exchange when I was. When I. The very first time I, I, you know, met with him and. And 1980 with him, that was 82, probably.
• 4:28
  Speaker B: Okay, so that was. So the first time I heard you play. I'm going to interview you now.
• 4:34
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 4:34
  Speaker B: First time I heard you play was on no Sex on that, like, EP, which was, what, 1986, probably a while later. Okay, and was that the first recording that you did with Alex or. No?
• 4:47
  Speaker A: No. So, you know, the first. First record I did with Alex was Feudalist Arts, and that was 85. 84. 85, I think. April of 85.
• 4:59
  Speaker B: It's funny, you texted me a couple moments ago when I was up in the room. I said, I'll be a couple minutes late. You said, no sweat. And I start. I immediately went, no sweat, not anymore. Like, I was a really big Alex Chilton fan. And I don't know, it wasn't you on the base. When I saw him in Chicago one time, it was some guy from. Is there a guy named Shirley that played with him from Memphis?
• 5:25
  Speaker A: Bass player Ron Easley, perhaps?
• 5:28
  Speaker B: Ron Easley, maybe.
• 5:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, Ron played with him for a bunch of years after I was gone.
• 5:33
  Speaker B: And he had Maybe glasses and would have been about, I don't know. I don't want to describe him. You should. Kind of a taller dude, how people look anymore. It's very offensive to people, but it's funny. So you. And you mentioned Steve Albini, and there's like, a little funny overlap in my memory, because when I was, like, so into Alex, because he just suddenly came on my radar for whatever reason, like in the 80s, and I was just aware of him as a name before that, but he was super close to my heart. And when I met Steve, I said to him, I want to sound like, you know, High Priest, this record.
• 6:13
  Speaker A: Oh, wow.
• 6:13
  Speaker B: And I brought him the record and he said, yeah, I'm not going to listen to that. And he said some disparaging things, like he did. You know, he had all these, like, wild opinions. And one of them was. He goes, yeah, and Big Star was terrible. He goes, but Box Tops, they were really good. He says, okay. He says, in any event, I'm not going to listen to this music. We'll just do whatever happens, you know, you're not going to sound like somebody else. Which was, you know, smart of him to say that part. The rest of it, I don't know.
• 6:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, that's High Priest is so different from Big Star. Couldn't. Couldn't be.
• 6:48
  Speaker B: Well, those three things kind. Well, I guess you're right. It's closer to Box Tops, for sure.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and. And like, you're familiar with the, Like Flies on Sherbet record, so, you know, Alex. Yeah, it wasn't that far, but, you know, it was like. Yeah, those. Those sessions. Now, that was a really fun record to make. That was after I was not playing in the band anymore, but I went back and played on that record.
• 7:12
  Speaker B: High Priest or like High Priest.
• 7:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I was like, Flies was before my time.
• 7:17
  Speaker B: Who was the rhythm section on High Priest?
• 7:20
  Speaker A: It was Doug Garrison. Same rhythm. Well, Ron played on. On some. Ron Easley played bass on. On some songs they had this guy, Sam Shute played bass on a couple songs, but I played bass on most of it. And then I played keyboards on a few songs. Like all that Volari stuff, the organ and stuff.
• 7:40
  Speaker B: That's all new.
• 7:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker B: Nice. Oh, man, you were totally in my head for some years there.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 7:47
  Speaker B: And anyway, just right enough about that little anecdote, not enough about you, but it's just like, Alex is an icon.
• 7:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was. That was incredible. I don't know, circumstance or, you know, blessing to run into him. When I did. At the time I did. You know, I was in Loyola Music School and totally disgusted with the state of my musical experience and where I was at. And I thought I loved my playing when I came into this thing two years ago, and now I really hate my playing, and I have to stop and figure out how to get back to where I was.
• 8:25
  Speaker B: Like, he was turning you into a wedding band player or something.
• 8:27
  Speaker A: It was, you know, it was just. They were training us for something that didn't. Hadn't existed for 10 years. And, you know, I was already playing in big. In a big band in New Orleans, so it's not. Wasn't exposure to that kind of music, but it's just. Just the whole approach that. That they were using at the time, the people that I was, you know, I looked around at the people around me and I thought, I think in about two years, most of these people are going to be selling shoes and not playing music or maybe possibly teaching somewhere, but they won't be on the bandstand.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: And so with Alex, I'm imagining like you're a lifer now, or he's a lifer, and so you are by extension, you're with. You're with his thing. It's. It's the real world. It's like, probably not a lot of rehearsing, right? Or is it.
• 9:13
  Speaker A: Well, it was. It. It was learning a tremendous number of songs because Alex had, you know, such a broad, you know, palette of taste and knew so many songs and. And, you know, that's. That was actually the. We. We had this rehearsal together, and like I was saying, you did this Michael Jackson record where you went and covered all these Michael Jackson songs. I had to go. And it's like, did. What did you do from off the Wall? Because that was. That was a record that Alex was obsessed with, was off the Wall record. And the first rehearsal, he taught me, like, two songs from the record. Then the second rehearsal, he goes, yeah, you remember those songs? And I said, yeah. And we played him. He goes, wow, you're the first person I've met in New Orleans who can remember a song or, you know, something that had some chord changes in it.
• 10:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. And plus, like, stuff that gets that popular is kind of disdained by a lot of people in our scene or whatever that is. And. Yeah, that's a great record.
• 10:12
  Speaker A: Let's go back. So tell us about where you came from, where you were born, where you grew up.
• 10:17
  Speaker B: Sure. I was born in York, Pennsylvania, and my parents, for whatever reason, I'm still not exactly sure the reason, except they were young, didn't have a lot of money, and were kind of on the. On the living, on the fly and on the cheap. But we moved, you know, to houses and to towns, like, once a year on average, until I was 13 when we stopped moving. And that was in Creedmoor, North Carolina. So we just kind of moved south, south, south over the years. Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina. And after a little brief spell in Wake Forest, we ended up outside a little town called Creedmoor on a farm. And my father taught at a Quaker school. That was the reason that we could settle. Like, he finally got a job he liked and was like, sort of long term for him. And so after graduating from there, I went to New York to live and.
• 11:08
  Speaker A: Well, let me stop you. So had your father been a teacher? That was his career?
• 11:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, he was. I don't know how to sum up his thing. So when I was born, he was 20. You know, he's still in college. And then he got his master's degree and was an assistant teacher a little while and at UVA in Charlottesville. And then. Yeah, and then he taught, like, history for I don't know how long, maybe 20 years. And then he worked. I don't know. This is a story probably nobody's that interested in, but he worked at another place and then retired early. And I don't think he was. There was a period where he was, like, really kind of in love with his work, and that was that Quaker early Quaker school period where he was, like, imbued with some idealism about Quakerism, and that sort of buffeted his teaching, I would say.
• 11:59
  Speaker A: Now, were y' all Quakers?
• 12:02
  Speaker B: No. And, like, 90% of the people at that school weren't.
• 12:05
  Speaker A: Right, right. Well, I know, yeah. The Quaker schools are very popular. Like, everybody in D.C. they send their kids, like, all the.
• 12:11
  Speaker B: To Sidwell.
• 12:12
  Speaker A: Right, right, right, right. All the Sidwell Friends. Any school that has the Friends and the title is usually a Quaker school.
• 12:19
  Speaker B: Right, right, right. But.
• 12:21
  Speaker A: And. And you attended that school, right?
• 12:24
  Speaker B: I did, yeah. Well, that's a Carolina Friends. Yeah.
• 12:28
  Speaker A: Quakers are very kind, polite people. So you could do a lot worse than being around Quakers.
• 12:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, you can knock them over really.
• 12:35
  Speaker A: Easy back your hand and they still.
• 12:39
  Speaker B: Smile at you, and they come up smiling.
• 12:43
  Speaker A: And you came from a musical family, huh? That was like a tradition in the family.
• 12:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, in my family, like, everybody played something. And like, most of them, definitely my dad, my uncle, my granddad, paternal granddad, like, they wanted to go into it, like, as a career. And they were stymied by the usual things, you know, money and children, family and. And for whatever reason, my brother and I weren't. And we got. We got luckier in part because of their sacrifices, I guess you would say. So. Yeah. Anyway, we. We played music around the house. It was like a living, kind of an idea of music. You know, you go on trips in the car to see a relative and you work out song parts on the way. And I'd be the tenor because my voice hadn't changed yet. My dad would be the. Or no, my mom would be the lead because. Because of whatever. And my dad would symbolo her anyway. Like that. That was like that. And church and chorus and school, all that was great training for being a singer.
• 13:41
  Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, no kidding, man. And an instrumentalist. You start off playing banjo, I believe.
• 13:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. I started banjo when I was 7 and guitar when I was 11 and my folks showed me some chords and most of the rest of it came off of records. I unfortunately didn't take lessons until I was. I don't think I took a lesson until I was actually making records and like out in the world as an adult. Yeah, so I kind of missed out on that. But yeah, learned a lot from, you know, Doc Watson records and.
• 14:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, records. Well, I mean, you're pretty hot picker, you know, as. As. As they say, you know, it's as opposed to someone who's just strumming guitar chords. You know, you obviously went way beyond that to, to, you know, have. Develop a lot of facility as, as, you know, lead player even on, on steel string acoustic guitars.
• 14:32
  Speaker B: And yeah, I'll take the compliment. I mean, I love playing. I think if I just could only do one thing, it would probably be that I just love playing and admire. I think of all the people around the music world, it really is the players that I am most in admiration and awe of. I don't know about you, but I don't know. It's cool to meet songwriters and find out how their brains work.
• 15:02
  Speaker A: Work.
• 15:02
  Speaker B: But I think, you know, the common ranking that a lot of people have where songwriters are these mystical overlords of the place, right. I reject that. I. I really like a person that can play an instrument.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: You know, when I, when I was playing at times I would be in England. I was, I played in this band Green Unread for a couple of years. You know, we spent all the. The only gig I played in the US was one gig at McCabe's guitar store. Everything else was, Was in England or Europe. And the English press would always. They'd say, like, oh, he's a muso. Like, with the. Which just meant you were just a musician as opposed to, like a recording artist or, you know, like a songwriter or something. Just a muso, you know. It was like a very disparaging kind of dismissive reference, too. So it's funny. It's nice to see.
• 15:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, musicians are cut out of the royalties usually, so that's one reason to downgrade them. Maybe because they're lower on the economic pole or something.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: Right, right, right. Anyway, back to you.
• 16:05
  Speaker B: I keep drawing it away from me.
• 16:06
  Speaker A: That's okay. We like the digression here on the Feral Zone.
• 16:11
  Speaker B: Feral Zone.
• 16:13
  Speaker A: Quite a environment we're in here, huh?
• 16:15
  Speaker B: No kidding. It's not too noisy? Like, these mics aren't picking up this stuff?
• 16:20
  Speaker A: No, no, no. It's nice and. Nice and quiet. So you. You. You go to the Quaker school, then you. Where do you go to college?
• 16:29
  Speaker B: I tried to go to college at Columbia, New York, and that's where I went to live after North Carolina. It was a huge, like, culture shock, obviously.
• 16:39
  Speaker A: How. How did you get the idea to go to Columbia?
• 16:42
  Speaker B: Right. I. You're asking the wrong guy. Like, I was into the romance, I would say, of some people who had gone there. Like, who? Like Lionel Trilling, maybe Mark Van Doren or Allen Ginsberg or these people and the romance of the 60s. And really, I didn't want to go to college. I applied to one place, pretty sure that they wouldn't take me.
• 17:08
  Speaker A: I see. I see the strategy.
• 17:10
  Speaker B: Contrary to expectations, they took me. And so my parents, like, you got to go because it's free and it's a good deal. So I went. And I didn't last too long. I last, like two years there. But. But I took in New York for three years before getting out of there, maybe three and a half. And you know how it is. It's just all part of the stuff that goes in your head. I mean, on a career trajectory, it counted for very little. But, you know, everything that you absorb is really meaningful when you're 18, 19, 20.
• 17:40
  Speaker A: Sure. And it was so different from what you'd seen in rural Pennsylvania or North Carolina. It's obviously totally different scene up there. Well, so in New York, were you playing music with people there? Were you finding places to play, other musicians to play with?
• 17:56
  Speaker B: Not much, but that was true of high school as well. I was mostly a loner. I wasn't a band joiner. At all until I got to Chicago. But I played with a college friend. My friend Wally Griffith and I played together a lot. And when I was at Columbia, and then I also played by myself in the Village a little bit at those places. Folk city, speakeasy, those places. But not a very impressive performance career in New York.
• 18:23
  Speaker A: That's interesting. Even though you'd been playing all this time and, you know, proficient on all these instruments, you. You didn't have a desire to. To go?
• 18:32
  Speaker B: I don't know if I didn't have a desire, but I'm like, just, like, constitutionally, I'm kind of shy and introverted. I've gotten over that a lot over the years. But back then I was just like. I mean, I was just this skinny farm kid roaming around New York, and I didn't have a. I just didn't have that ambitious spark that made me get in people's faces and say, you know, check this out.
• 18:53
  Speaker A: Okay. Right. So you're there for a few years. You go from there to Chicago.
• 19:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, I impregnated a young lady who was my girlfriend for some years there from high school, and her parents lived in Chicago. And we were like, what can we do? And she's like, well, we'll go there and live with my parents and see what happens. So that was the beginning of a really long and happy stretch in Chicago where I finally did establish a career and joined a band and had children and married somebody. Not that woman, but another.
• 19:31
  Speaker C: And.
• 19:32
  Speaker B: And, you know, in my obituary, I'll be a Chicagoan, probably.
• 19:36
  Speaker A: Okay. Now, what was going on in Chicago at that time? This is the early 90s.
• 19:41
  Speaker B: This is early 80s. I moved there in 1983. Yeah. What was going on there? Like, a lot that you and your listeners wouldn't recognize? The names, I guess.
• 19:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, they.
• 19:53
  Speaker B: Chicago, the era of Prine and Goodman and Bonnie Kolak and all that stuff.
• 19:58
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 20:00
  Speaker B: That time was, you know, in the past, and the time of Liz Phair was in the future. So I don't know what you call the early.
• 20:08
  Speaker A: So it's kind of in between. In between those. Like. I remember playing there with. With Alex a couple of times in that, you know, 85, 86.
• 20:19
  Speaker B: Where did you play, do you remember?
• 20:20
  Speaker A: Played like Shuba's. Yeah, we played maybe the Cubby Bear, but maybe not.
• 20:25
  Speaker B: Maybe some other Joel play at the Metro ever.
• 20:30
  Speaker A: Possibly. It's a bit of a misty, misty memory for me, what the club names were.
• 20:41
  Speaker B: So I moved there. I took a job in a law firm for A couple of years and played on the side and worked at Old Town School of Folk Music as.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: A teacher, because that had been going since the 60s, earlier. Something, huh?
• 20:53
  Speaker B: Since, I think, 1957. Yeah. Still there and doing better than ever.
• 20:57
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:58
  Speaker B: And, yeah, I played a show there the other night and. And I worked there for many years at Old Town and joined a band called Special Consensus, a bluegrass band, and, you know, fell in with Steve Albini and, you know, various other friends from, I don't know, different. I always, like, just, like, not having my feet too much in any one music scene. So, you know, friends from what you might call rock and then what you might call punk rock and then bluegrass and country, and, you know, it's all there in Chicago. And I think each of those scenes is, like, small enough that, you know, it just wasn't as daunting in a way, as in New York. The stakes are a little bit lower. The clubs. There are a lot of clubs that are easy to get into and play at, and people were more or less welcoming, so it was easy to traverse all those different scenes for me.
• 21:53
  Speaker A: Now, are you starting to write at this point? Had you been writing for years? Where were we? Where was that?
• 21:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, I started writing, like, my first song was a parody of a Red Sauvine song when I was, like, 13. And so I was always really into, like, funny songs and MAD magazine kind of parody songs.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: Dr. Demento, were you a Dr. Demento fan?
• 22:16
  Speaker B: Funnily enough, not so much. I don't know if it came in on our radio stations so easily. I did listen to it a little bit.
• 22:23
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 22:23
  Speaker B: But, yeah, it was more like, I don't know, Martin Mull was a big guy for me, and Steve Martin was. And like I said, MAD Magazine, National Lampoon, and then TV comedy in general, I just loved.
• 22:36
  Speaker A: That's one thing I love about your writing and your records is there's so much humor in it and. And, you know, you'll have humor melded with the sadness, you know, which is the sweetest taste for me.
• 22:50
  Speaker B: That's great to hear.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: And, you know, that's so much a part of classic country music. You know, like, all the great songs usually do have some element of humor, even if it's, you know, you're laughing through the tears or something.
• 23:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. A lot of them are. Have both of those qualities mixed together. And even more commonly, I think, like, in the old country music, you know, an act like the Leuven Brothers or Buck Owens or, I mean, Almost name an act. But, you know, they would just shoot from one mood to another in their shows and in their songs like, oh, here's a song about I'm gonna kill myself. And the next song is like, you.
• 23:35
  Speaker A: Know, and like it's right, right.
• 23:37
  Speaker B: Funny tune or a pigeon English tune or something. It's just like a bizarre. Like now it would be considered schizophrenic. Now everybody has their own brand and you kind of hew to your brand, I think. But in those days, I mean, I was. I just always loved that about that older style and aped that, as you say, in my own style. And maybe to my misfortune, I don't know, because it's hard for people to understand on some level, you know, when one. One minute you're cracking wise and the next minute you're, you know, spilling your guts.
• 24:12
  Speaker A: Oh, but it gives you a more.
• 24:15
  Speaker B: You and I get it.
• 24:16
  Speaker A: Gets you. Gives you a more rounded perspective. Okay, who is this waving? Just.
• 24:22
  Speaker B: We're not who you think we are.
• 24:24
  Speaker A: We're someone else.
• 24:26
  Speaker B: Some tourist ladies.
• 24:32
  Speaker A: Well, you know, you, you. Another record that you did of like a tribute record that you produced is the. The Johnny Paycheck.
• 24:39
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 24:40
  Speaker A: And, you know, the Iguanas are big Johnny Paycheck fans. And so it's so cool that, that, you know, Paycheck, I think by the. The world at large, all they know is take this job and shove it. And you know, they. They don't really know him as the very serious artist that he was the tremendous songwriter. And I have this strong memory that you've probably seen this thing where it's towards the end of Paycheck's life and he's like with Ralph Emery show or Pop Goes the Country, whatever it's called, he's surrounded by all these old time country music people and they're all kind of dressed up and they're. They're just kind of passing the guitar around. People are doing different songs, but Paycheck takes it and does Old Violin. Does Old Violin.
• 25:33
  Speaker B: I think that's country's family reunion that you're talking about. Maybe.
• 25:37
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 25:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. Where they're all sitting around and.
• 25:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 25:39
  Speaker B: It's like a song, right.
• 25:41
  Speaker A: And he does that version of Old.
• 25:42
  Speaker B: Violin and it's just knocks the room cold.
• 25:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you can tell it probably, you know, Paycheck doesn't have a whole lot more time on the timeline at that point. And man, it's just devastating. He lays that down.
• 25:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. That's really striking when you see when you see things like that in performance, where one guy just brings the goods and the room like gets down on its knees before him, basically. You know, Al Anderson did that once in a show I saw where it was like a bunch of Nashville songwriters and players at Steppenwolf doing kind of, I don't know, a little bit of an antiseptic environment. And he just played this one of his songs, I don't remember which one, but it had like crazy chords in it. And he sang his soul out and about a really serious subject matter. And when it was done, it was just like, I think we gotta end the show. I don't know how we go on after that.
• 26:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, sucked all the air out of the room.
• 26:44
  Speaker B: Totally.
• 26:46
  Speaker A: Man, oh man. So. So you're, you're, you've been writing all this time. I mean that you've been writing for a good long time. Your songwriting must have been getting pretty mature as you're there in Chicago. It's taken a long time, but it's a work in progress for everyone in every. Every respect of life. Yes, but, but you're meeting Steve Albini. He's. He's recording people at that point.
• 27:11
  Speaker B: He's right. Yeah, we started together in 87, so he was definitely recording.
• 27:16
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:16
  Speaker B: For maybe, I don't know, four years by that point.
• 27:19
  Speaker A: Y' all were there, right, Kind of at the, the beginning of the road together, I would say.
• 27:23
  Speaker B: So, yeah, he was recording out of his house at that point. You know, you went down to the basement and his little desk was in the attic. And so it was quite a, you know, climb to get. And the two stories from one to the other.
• 27:37
  Speaker A: Put your first record out in 96 country love songs. Yeah, that's a beautiful record. It's, you know, kind of stripped down record. Very direct. What was the. When that came out, what was the reaction? What was. How did that, what did that do for your career? What did.
• 27:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, it did really everything that I had hoped to do. Like I'd been trying to put out a record, like a non self release record for a lot of years at that point, like for, I don't know, like for 13, 14 years probably. And a lot had gone on in my life. Like I had a kid and was, you know, married and this and that and jobs and a lot of performance and a lot of this and that bands. But. So that's 1996 and I'm 33. And this record comes out and within, within a couple weeks, like three weeks. Like one thing that happened was Marshall Crenshaw called me, and he was one. He was a guy that. I'd always loved his records. And he called me one day and he said, I'd like to write a work on some songs with you. And I said, is this really Marshall Crenshaw on the phone? He said, I could show you my id, man. Something like that. I just couldn't get over the fact that I was, like, outside side of this. I was sort of like, you know, backstage one day and then on stage the next, if you know what I mean. And so I was swimming in this pool all of a sudden. And then the next week later, I got a call from Columbia Records, which I always remember because I made a joke. He said, I'm so and so from Columbia Records, and you've probably heard of us. And I said, oh, yeah, you're the, like, the 16 records for a Penny people, right? And he goes, no, that's Columbia House. Like, he didn't even take it as a joke. He corrected me. And so I started getting these calls from these. And so this is exactly what I wanted from an independent release, was to, like, to move up the ladder to a major. And that's what happened. Like, almost immediately. I was. My picture was on the COVID of Billboard, like, a month later. And, like, nothing economically had happened for me, but everything seemed to be just like, bam, falling into place right away. So it was really just gratifying and ego boosting.
• 29:51
  Speaker A: Sure. And, you know, causes you to think, okay, I'm onto something here.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:58
  Speaker A: Just have to keep doing this and see what happens.
• 30:00
  Speaker B: Right. And it was kind of a. It was a thing I didn't want to keep doing. Like, I'd done this record for this label, Bloodshot, which had this. You know, it was like a narrow niche. Right. Like, we are a country punk, and we believe this and we believe that. And I, like, happily cooperated with that program, not just because I wanted to get a record, but because I love country music, too, and, like, could really understand their ideas about it. But I didn't want to do that record over and over again. So that was really my first thought when all this stuff started happening was how do I move on to, you know, to broaden my. My base, so to speak.
• 30:35
  Speaker A: Right. And. And you start touring at that point, right?
• 30:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, maybe a little bit more.
• 30:41
  Speaker A: Because I think that's. That's when we start crossing paths. I'm out there with the Iguanas, and I think Derek Houston from the Iguanas turned me on to you. Say man, you gotta hear this guy. Incredible. So and so we would go around and see you, and. Yeah, we became fans then, you know.
• 30:57
  Speaker B: Good old Derek.
• 30:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's still out there. Still. Still text me funny memes or some rye comment on something from time to time.
• 31:08
  Speaker B: Well, tell him I still think of him fondly. He's a great guy.
• 31:11
  Speaker A: I will, I will, I will. So. So you. You wind up getting on Geffen pretty quickly there, and. So how was that? Did that meet all of your expectations?
• 31:23
  Speaker B: No, it did not. It did not.
• 31:27
  Speaker A: Now, not to shit on Geffen too much here, but, you know, friends and big fan of Southern culture on the skids, you know, from Chapel Hill, wherever they're from, and had played with those guys for years, and they'd always play New Orleans. I'd run across them on the road, and then they got on Geffen, and I never saw him again. I was like, what happened to those guys? Where'd they go? I just. I have no idea where they put them, where they were playing, but.
• 31:51
  Speaker B: Oh, no kidding.
• 31:52
  Speaker A: Suddenly I just, you know, would. Would never see them playing live gigs anymore. I thought, well, that's odd.
• 31:58
  Speaker B: So that's funny. Yeah, I. I saw them. It must have been during those years. Weren't they on it? Didn't they do a number of records?
• 32:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just it seemed like they were ubiquitous before they were on Geffen, and then it kind of had the opposite effect of what I. In my. In my experience, they might say something different.
• 32:17
  Speaker B: Right.
• 32:17
  Speaker A: I think I brought that. I had them on the podcast a few years ago. I think I brought that up. I can't remember what they said.
• 32:22
  Speaker B: Are they disbanded now?
• 32:23
  Speaker A: Oh, no, no, no.
• 32:24
  Speaker B: They're still at it.
• 32:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're still at it. Got the same trio, Rick and Mary. Mary and Dave, the drummer that they've had for, like, close to 30 years at this point.
• 32:35
  Speaker B: Wow. They're the iguanas of Chapel Hill. I mean, they're.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And they're still. Man, they. They go play, like, two nights at the Continental Club in a row and sell them both out, you know, in Austin. Yeah. Like during south by Southwest or, you know, other times. No, they. They're still hitting it hard, man.
• 32:54
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, and that's. So that's an example of a thing that I guess I didn't want to do. And I'm not knocking them, but I'm like, I don't want to have an exact sound and then repeat it for decades. Like, that's the thing. I don't want to do because it would just drive me nuts. You know, I want to experiment. I want to. And I'm a person, not a band, so I can pick different players to work with and, like, meet other musicians all the time. So that's the way that I wanted to go with it.
• 33:23
  Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha. So you were Geffen? Geffen, yeah. Back together.
• 33:27
  Speaker B: Geffen. It was a brief period, and it was. I don't know if it's such a bad fit in a way. I mean, it was hard for me to negotiate the corporate thing because I didn't have really. I didn't have management, you know, and that's a. Just a basic thing that you have to. Have to enter into that world.
• 33:46
  Speaker A: Right, Right. Yeah. Because. Because all the people in the record company, you can't be beating on them all the time to get them to do their job because they. Then you're the artist. You got to be the good guy.
• 33:56
  Speaker B: Right. I had no idea what was going on. You couldn't even get basic information. So when the label kind of folded, you know, it was sucked into Interscope, and they let loose most of the roster of artists, including myself and most of the staff. And it was big shake up, and I didn't even know that was happening. I mean, there were sort of signs that things were going awry, but, like, between the time when my record was released in September and when I got news of the label folding, which was early December, I could tell, like, oh, they're not paying attention to me, and I'm hearing bad things that might be happening. But the A and R guy says, absolutely not. Everything's still happening, and we're really gonna start working on your record early. Next year is when it's really gonna start. Think of it as a plane on the Runway, and you're sitting there, you're waiting for your turn to take off. He says, oh, wow, I don't think that sounds right. So I finally got the news. I was let go, and everything just, like, you know, went not back to square one because I had a van that they had bought me, and I had a bigger audience, you know, a little bit bigger thanks to that record.
• 35:05
  Speaker A: Right.
• 35:06
  Speaker B: That I managed to hold on to. So it wasn't like falling back to square one. But it was. It was a disappointment nonetheless.
• 35:14
  Speaker A: Yet you had shaken them off. You'd shaken their uncooperative or obtuse relationship. On that note, let's take a little break here. The Feral Zone knows what to do. Go get yourself another drink and we'll be right back.
• 35:32
  Speaker D: It was a 30 year marriage. So poor a cup good years still ahead and money enough. Now the hard days of children and jealous mistrust were over. At a place by the ocean in Monterey we smiled at young couples they looked away. If they're lucky like us maybe they'll pick a 30 leaf clover. Something's still sizzling Something still hidden. I never thought it would end and it didn't. We didn't fall out of love. We fell into rhythm. From the first night we thought Leslie fell in bed, went and was. Was it your first thought to look ahead like me? Did you see yourself old, unwanted and lonesome? Did you look at my father and stop to think like him? I'd give in to disappointment and drink. Did you jump in the river blind or with half an eye open? Some things we tried in mapping. Most things just happened. Down payments and upkeep, not enough sleep. And 30 years on, it's all overlapping.
• 37:28
  Speaker A: And we're back back in inside the feral zone. I am Renee Coleman, back with my guest, the great Mr. Robbie.
• 37:34
  Speaker B: Folks, yes, when we left I was 35 years old. And we have another almost 30 years to cover in the remaining time.
• 37:41
  Speaker A: All right, so we're gonna. So. So you're. You now have a van. You're. You have a booking agent. I'm. I'm assuming someone keeping you out there.
• 37:51
  Speaker B: Same agent as you.
• 37:51
  Speaker A: Oh, great. Brad Madison from Mongrel Music. Shout out to Brad Madison. Yeah, and well that's probably why we would often see each other on same shows, you know, like. Like I'm sure you played the. The Fitzgerald's American Music Festival probably every year, huh?
• 38:09
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 38:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:11
  Speaker B: And probably. So you guys probably played city stages in Birmingham and.
• 38:15
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. In fact I remember there was one year that Linda Berry did the T shirt for it and she illustrate. She did a cartoon of every band. And you're on it. And the Iguanas are on it.
• 38:27
  Speaker B: Well, I wish I had that shirt.
• 38:28
  Speaker A: Still have one?
• 38:29
  Speaker B: First I heard of that one. She's great.
• 38:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, she is. So you're living in Chicago and you go back to Bloodshot. Is that what winds up happening or what?
• 38:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, kind of. I licensed my next. You start your own label to write.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 38:46
  Speaker B: And. And they had sort of short term license is on the next two I think or maybe three. And then I went to yup Rock for a little while. I mean label wise it's kind of a. It's kind of a dull way to frame the story, I think but.
• 38:58
  Speaker A: Okay, well let's frame it a different way.
• 38:59
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 39:00
  Speaker A: I'm just, like.
• 39:02
  Speaker B: I bounced around at different places. Ended up then on Bloodshot again, and now I'm on Compass, which is out of Nashville.
• 39:08
  Speaker A: Well, let's go. Musically speaking, so. So after the. The Geffen record, what's your, you know, on your horizon, artistically speaking? What. What were you looking to do?
• 39:19
  Speaker B: What was I looking to. I think. I think I had, like, two ideas going on at the same time, which was like, I'm still in love with country music, still want to meet people and develop that, you know, that. That skill, be a country player. But also, I. I've always kind of, like, come back, the idea that I want to synthesize everything that I'm interested in and make a record that is more grand in scale and just. Yeah. And isn't a genre, but it's hard to identify the genre of it because it's just me. That's been a goal of mine for a long time, and I've tried it, I don't know, maybe three or four times on different records. So I had those two things in my head when I got out of the Geffen thing, and another big chapter change in my life. Sorry, I'm just kind of skipping around, but.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: No, that's good.
• 40:12
  Speaker B: In 2008 or so, I had been doing the same road thing for a long time. I had a quartet of players, myself, an electric guitarist, and a rhythm section, bass, guitar, drum set. And I'm like, I think I might be done with that, because I've just done it long enough, and I wasn't sure what I did want to do. And it turned out what I did want to do, which I discovered a year or two later, was to play acoustic guitar quieter into a microphone, talk to the audience more, have the audience sit down, not stand up and be drunk, and enter this period of my 40s and maybe onward with that model of performance instead of the previous. And so that's been in place ever since then.
• 41:03
  Speaker A: Okay. Gotcha. Well, mostly as. As our. As we've gotten older, our audience has gotten older, and their desire to sit down has increased. So it's worked out, you know.
• 41:13
  Speaker B: Yes. Some of them are even lying down permanently.
• 41:17
  Speaker A: Sure. But, yeah. And particularly now, a lot of these venues, like the City, Wineries of the World, and, you know, like, Space or something, you know, and Evanston, it's all seated for the most part.
• 41:36
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:36
  Speaker A: And it's good. Like you said, people are really paying attention. They're listening. It's not all people shouting at their friends.
• 41:43
  Speaker B: You know, in one way, it's weird to think that there are acts that just aren't that interested in being listened to very fervently. You know, like, it maybe freak some people out to have people sitting in front of you, staring at you, instead of, like, just body in motion, involved in the atmosphere, like having a great time, socializing.
• 42:02
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 42:03
  Speaker B: Like, that's all. That stuff is great. But I don't know, for me, once I got on this train of being listened to, I found I couldn't really get off it, you know, it just, like, feeds my vanity, man.
• 42:16
  Speaker A: Okay, Right. I gotta say, as the iguanas were making the transition to some of these rooms and people aren't dancing and they're sitting down. It's like, you gotta. Because for years our gauge was, are people getting up and dancing?
• 42:31
  Speaker B: Right.
• 42:31
  Speaker A: That's how we can tell we're getting to them, you know, and now they're not gonna dance. No matter how much you get to them, you know, they're just gonna sit down. It's like, okay, you gotta recalibrate your expectations, recalibrate your nervous system to not panic.
• 42:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. Did you change the act at all?
• 42:49
  Speaker A: You know, that's interesting. We like to take it up and down, like you're saying, you know, not sticking one thing for too long. We have such a variety of music. We've always tried to mix it up and, you know, take. Take people on a. An emotional, you know, journey somewhere. You know, it's like. In fact, we don't even use set lists, except unless it's like a really tight thing where you got five songs, you got to figure out what they are. You know, you don't want to go out there and start talking amongst yourselves. But generally, we'll start with like, three songs, which I always talk about is the idea of achieving escape velocity. You know, like you're in a rocket and you just gotta get past the Earth's gravity. And then once you. Once you're out in space. Space, you're just floating on. You can go anywhere, you know, you don't. You don't have to push anymore.
• 43:38
  Speaker B: That's an interesting metaphor. I had not thought of that before. But, yeah, there's a lot to that. And I think, you know, on this subject, for me, I don't know about you. For me, once you see NRBQ and you see this model of a bangin rock quartet that doesn't have a set list, and then it's totally in the moment, that Was just hard for me to escape. Like this is the best thing to be doing.
• 44:00
  Speaker A: You know, we're huge fans of NRBQ for, you know, our whole careers and way before that. Speaking of NRBQ, I recently met this fella, Casey McDonough, who's playing bass with, with NRBQ now and hung out with him. What a great guy. You know, just met him for the first time at Fitzgerald's last year sometime and, and saw a video of, of him playing with you. So that's.
• 44:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 44:28
  Speaker A: Now there is a core of great players in Chicago that show up in all these things that must have been, you know, such a pleasure to be able to pick and choose from all those people, huh?
• 44:41
  Speaker B: Yeah. I couldn't even begin to name the people. I was out with two of them celebrating the blue wave last night till all hours. Grant Tyne.
• 44:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 44:51
  Speaker B: Gerald Dowd. And then Casey. I don't even remember when and where I met him, but it's been decades and well, you know how it is. Like even in a city the size of Chicago, all the NRBQ fans, for instance, get to know one another, right.
• 45:10
  Speaker A: It becomes a small community within the larger big town. Well, it's like even New York City, you know, people in your neighborhood, you'd think it'd be weird to, to run into people that you. That you know from other places in New York, but it's not. It happens all the time, you know, because people self segregate. They, they like you said, go to these same things that are, you know, like you see them all at NRBQ show or some other related act.
• 45:34
  Speaker B: Right. Takes a second to remember what their goddamn name is when they show up in some other city.
• 45:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all Stingray yards.
• 45:41
  Speaker B: Easy for me.
• 45:42
  Speaker A: That way it's all context and well then the Mekons or, or rather John Lankford is, is had been in Chicago for some time and you make a record with bunch of those guys at one point, huh?
• 45:55
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 45:56
  Speaker A: And what a, what an amazing career and, and you know, trajectory that, that those guys have had.
• 46:04
  Speaker B: I don't know what to say about them. I tour with them and it was hard on my constitution, but those guys live pretty hard.
• 46:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, The Welsh are pretty sturdy stock.
• 46:15
  Speaker B: That's what it is.
• 46:19
  Speaker A: So at some point you leave Chicago and move to Los Angeles.
• 46:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. Six years ago our youngest kid left for college and my wife and I were like, well, we could go somewhere else at this point. You know, we're not stuck in this. We're not, you know, married to the school system anymore and so on. And so we thought we'd try Los Angeles. And contrary to my expectations, I. I liked it there almost at once and like the weather and the people and being close to the ocean and the mountains and the desert. All three.
• 46:55
  Speaker A: Sure, yeah.
• 46:56
  Speaker B: It's beautiful. You know, there, there are some downsides as well, but I took to it right away. And even being a country musician there is pretty cool. I mean, there's people that like that.
• 47:07
  Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Well, they have, you know, all the Bakersfield stuff was cut right there in la.
• 47:14
  Speaker B: There's a rich local history of it more obviously than in Chicago. Really?
• 47:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:19
  Speaker B: So anyway, we live in a little neighborhood called Glassall park, which is kind of a working class Latino neighborhood. And I'm bit back where I was when I was 20, you know, meeting, trying to meet musicians.
• 47:29
  Speaker A: Right.
• 47:29
  Speaker B: And my newest record segueing to that now.
• 47:34
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect. I like dealing with professionals, man, because they know how show business works.
• 47:43
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's going a little far, but yeah, meeting people and it's been like being young again in that way. Like, oh, I gotta, I gotta find people to play with. And so, so the newest record, which came out just a couple weeks ago, I guess.
• 47:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. Congratulations, man. Terrific, right? Really.
• 48:00
  Speaker B: Thank you, thank you. I like it myself and largely because all these great players on it, not all of them are LA people, but maybe half of them are. And I'm talking about Jay Belaros and Pete Thomas, the drummers, Paul Bryan, the bassist.
• 48:15
  Speaker A: Thomas, man, the great Pete Thomas. Holy moly.
• 48:19
  Speaker B: And that's the thing about Los Angeles is that I think we were saying this earlier in our conversation, but yeah, like talking about like being off stage and then on. But I'm moving to Los Angeles and I don't know when it was in January, I guess. And a couple months later I'm doing a show and Pete Thomas is there at the show and I speak to him and then we have lunch together and then he's having me guest on his band show and it's like this is happening. Like I'm playing with this guy. This is a little crazy, but when you're 60 or whatever, it's really easier to take on. You know, now that we understand all these people are people and they're not gods.
• 49:00
  Speaker A: Right. And as we've all gotten older, everybody's kind of, you know, dropped any sense of competition or, you know, the, the urge to really, the, the ambition kind of, kind of gets taken off.
• 49:14
  Speaker B: Everybody that Ryan Adams has taken off the sunglasses and the cigarettes and the pretense of being, like, a French new wave star and just people sitting talking in. In lounges with other weirdos staring in at the windows, you know?
• 49:29
  Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. I recently played this to show that. That the Scott McCoy's band the was on. You know, they had, like, Mike Mills and Peter Buck and Steve Wynn and all these people that I've known, you know, marginally for a long time and hadn't seen in a long time. And seeing them this time, I was like, wow, this is so nice, because everybody just doesn't care anymore.
• 49:55
  Speaker B: Totally.
• 49:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 49:57
  Speaker A: It's just very relaxed and groovy, and people are just so happy to see someone that they've known for a long time who's still around, you're still alive, smiling at them, you know? And it was like, wow, you're a lot nicer than I remember you. I was like, yeah, you too.
• 50:12
  Speaker B: I think we have gotten nicer over the years. Like, we've been pounded into shape by the world.
• 50:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right, man. So we're kind of wrapping up here, but you have this new record out, and you're playing dates. I saw your calendar. You're. You're going. Are these mostly solo dates or kind of variety of.
• 50:30
  Speaker B: No, I'm in the middle of a thicket of, like, three months of promoting this thing and doing shows from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, pretty wall to wall. And each outing is a different thing. So I'm alone tonight for this show, but tomorrow I hook up with the bassist Missy Rains and the mandolinist Tristan Scroggins, who are well known in the bluegrass world. And we're doing. We're finishing out the week as a trio. And then next I'm with a quartet in Los Angeles and moving slowly up the coast. And that's a whole different thing of electric guitar operate, bass and violin. And so, I mean, that's a little snapshot of my musical life now, which I love so well, because every time I go out, I get to see usually different people and hear my songs played with different ideas, you know, and different textures and catch up with people that I haven't seen in a year or two in some cases. And so there's this circle of, you know, it always changes. The people come in and go year by year, but there's. I don't know, there's like, 20 or 24 people to draw from on a regular basis.
• 51:43
  Speaker A: I love it and keeps the music fresh and exciting, and it's always fun to get out there and see what's going to happen. You know, that the. The idea of the unknown, you know.
• 51:53
  Speaker B: And then young people. I mean, yeah, there's so many young players that I'd. I'd be enthusiastic about working with and for whatever reason, don't often get to. I think. I don't know about you, but they just don't manage to puncture my bubble. Players in their 20s and 30s, and you get into the hang definitely socially with people your own age. So that is to say next week. My guitarist is a guy who's in his early 30s, and the bassist is in his mid-20s. And violinist is closer to my age. And I don't know these young guys really that well. So those two people, I don't know that well, so I'm totally looking forward to that. Young people are. That's a different world.
• 52:43
  Speaker A: Sure, sure. And, you know, those. Those young guys, you can make them share rooms still.
• 52:47
  Speaker B: So you can do what?
• 52:48
  Speaker A: Make them share a hotel room.
• 52:50
  Speaker B: I hadn't even thought of that.
• 52:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because once somebody gets in their 40s, it's real tough to make them share rooms. But guys in their 20s go, well, you guys are sharing a room.
• 52:58
  Speaker B: You know, I gotta say, this guitar player, I do know him a little bit, and he's. He's kind of a friend, but he works with Michael Buble and with Sarah Jeros and other people like that. I don't think I can talk him into.
• 53:11
  Speaker A: He might be beyond Sharon or Sharon. I hear you. Yeah. Well, just something to keep in mind.
• 53:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 53:17
  Speaker A: Going forward.
• 53:18
  Speaker B: No, it's a great idea.
• 53:21
  Speaker A: Well, man, I know you. You got another appointment. You're so generous to come do this on the day that you have to sing.
• 53:28
  Speaker B: I had to come all the way downstairs.
• 53:30
  Speaker A: Right, right. Well, we like to keep it easy, but. Well, man, I'm really looking forward to the show tonight. And so great to see you again, Robbie. And. And, you know, just thank you so much for all the music that you've given the world and all the great records you've made and, you know, just your whole thing. It's fantastic.
• 53:47
  Speaker B: You're welcome. I might be doing it even if no one was listening, but I really appreciate people like you listening.
• 53:52
  Speaker A: Right on, man. As always, I am Renee Komen signing off from inside the Feral Zone.
• 53:59
  Speaker C: Down at the Peppermint Lounge. I felt like a pawn gazed upon.
• 54:08
  Speaker B: Stepped upon.
• 54:12
  Speaker C: I had to crash at a friend's Cause he had a functional shower I never quite danced until dawn and before I crossed the river back I hit a payphone and announce the time and temperature to the old ones back home in the desert it's down On a mountain it's down but in the city it is right now now, now, now, now, now. Oh, what a time it was at the Rush obstacle Tencent award no one was bored reaching out for a nurse as my kid's head crowned steady she sat as I hit the ground and when I came to my child was gone to be weighed and circumcised So I stood up and addressed the team with the tears hot in my eyes in your medical lounge I am sure it is now but in the birthing room it is right now now, now, now, now, now Set your heartbeat bunny.
• 55:58
  Speaker D: I'm looking at you on the drums at the TO.
• 56:20
  Speaker C: So you live far from me I can see you clear your ethical lines your rejection of mine. Well you may be a giant in your fairy tale land but I know your true size you'll never let down that morning you crowned and your drake can't touch my talking heads now your hat's my KRP and your New York shade called temptectron and the one messiah's me in your head out loud it is probably now but what you fail to see is your short century is such a weak of fatigue. So listen up pal while I explain how to filter the noise of the provisional now from the awesome changeless muds missed by star.