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STANLEY SIMMONS- Nick Simmons & Evan Stanley · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: What happens when two people who've known each other their entire lives finally hear themselves together for the first time and realize something new just showed up in the world?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: The two of them failing stimulants.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, those names are a part of rock history.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: But this story isn't about legacy.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's about discovery.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: What started at the spontaneous Instagram reel turned into Insta Chemistry, a third voice of 41 songs written in under a year and a full-length director produced by Rob Cavallo.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: This conversation isn't about hype, it's about creativity, connection, and what happens when you stop chasing a sound and finally come home to it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mickey.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Caught on the Mic.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: And when I say I'm excited, I am truly excited.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: I have been following these next artists for a while now on TikTok and social media platforms.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: It came to me in such a almost serendipitous way.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter, she's a vocalist, she's 18 years old.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Her favorite band is Fleetwood Mac.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I am scrolling through TikTok one night and I see this astoundingly awesome cover of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, and I sent it to her right away.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And from that point forward, I became a fan of this next project.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Stanley Simmons, Nick Simmons, Evan Stanley.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: How the heck are you guys?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that's how you uh came across us.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's rad, man.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's so cool.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad uh I'm glad that was the intro.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Glad it's multi-generational.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think music in general is like genres are so genre fluid anymore because you know, if there's a silver lining to streaming, you know, we can say all the negative things about it, but I've literally given that exact the exact way you just phrased that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've been telling people this my whole life is like the one really good thing you could say about algorithmic culture is that nobody clickifies genres anymore.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: People don't care about oh, it's dad's music.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, yeah, well, dad's music is pretty good.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like people who hates Fleetwood Mac?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's like everybody loves them because they're awesome, and there's no stigma now about liking new stuff, old stuff, heavy stuff, light stuff.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think even when I was in high school, it was a weird thing because it's like, okay, if you listen to this, you were cool, but as soon as you stepped out of this box, it's like you were no longer the rock guy or the singer-songwriter guy or the hip-hop guy.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you had to just be in one box.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, that's boring, dude.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta listen to everything.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe he just phrased it that way.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've literally like, it was like you were quoting I've literally said that spiel to people for like the past year.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: What's funny is like m I'm sure you saw the look of shock, but Evan said pretty much the same exact spiel I give.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we're all on the same page, fellas, because I talk about that a lot too.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like it used to be frowned upon if you stepped outside of your lane.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And as musicians, like that was my generation for sure.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: As musicians, we've always liked different things, but we almost had to keep them a secret, you know, if you liked like something.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but that's that whole phrase.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny, I was on TikTok live a couple days ago, and someone said, you know, what's your guilty pleasure, Ben?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have guilty pleasures.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: I love my taste.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: My taste is good.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, you know, I like what I like, and I I feel no guilt about any of it because I like it for a reason.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: It moves me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: And whether that's literally Slayer or ABBA is gonna be different on any given day.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: But they both move me in their own ways, and I like both of them.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: So they're I I'm not guilty about any of it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, the the generation uh after us, the the much the ones that are much younger than us, I they don't even remember the world being that way.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: People just like whatever now.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I literally was in the car with somebody who was like one of my sister's friends or something, and and she was playing like I think Beethoven came up and then ASAP Rocky, and then like the stone, like it or like you know, Otis Reddick, it was just all over the place, and it didn't strike anybody as odd.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if I did that in high school, it would have been like, so what's your deal?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been a question I would have to answer.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I love it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I kudos to the kids, man.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're doing it right for hair.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I have that I a funny anecdote that I have is when AFI Sing the Sorrow came out, it came out around the same time as the first Justin Timber like solo CD.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember going to Target, I grabbed AFI Sing the Sorrow.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Is that Future Sex Love Sounds?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, the one before, Justified.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I grabbed Justified and I think I a deftone CD and like sandwiched the.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure that cashier looked at you like what the fuck.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in line with the with my girlfriend at the time.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, scans the AFI, scans the Justin Timberlake pauses and looks at me, and he's like, he's and I'm like, that's hers.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, it's not either.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't listen to that shit.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I own it.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we're taught, we're taught that um that the sort of loyalty to genre.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's not innate.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think everybody, every little kid just likes whatever the hell they like.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same reason that Deftton's is so sick.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: They bring something new to their genre, they don't listen to only the type of music they make, and that's where you get the light and shade.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same as Zeppelin.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: As Zeppelin didn't listen to hard rock, Zeppelin listened to blues and folk and half acoustic, and that's why it was so interesting.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: And you look at the Beatles, you look at, I mean, even up to new bands, you look at Green Day, who's one of my biggest influences.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're secretly into like doock.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like Billy Joe's an Everly brothers freak.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's like he's a punk guy who loves the Everly brothers, so like you have real melody and heart.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: To the mainstream was that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you have to bring something new.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: If if you that's what I don't get about, I think rock in a lot of ways, when people, you know, they'll comment on our stuff, they're like, what do you think is rock dead?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: Is it like, well, no, I don't think it's dead, but I think also trying to relive something that was is not the way to capture anyone's attention for a long period of time or really emotion.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you gotta look back at those bands that we all grew up loving, they were trying to push the envelope forward.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: They were trying to do something that hadn't been done.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: So to only listen to 70s rock bands and try and recreate that faithfully, I think is um you get a little lost in the sauce and then you end up making something that's really just kind of diluted.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think ideally, you know, whether it's mana skin or young blood, like rock is in really good hands.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: They're doing really cool stuff that is by all means of the same tree, but it's a new branch.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, as musicians, you guys understand it as well.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: In in kind of summarizing your point to an extent, is you end up becoming derivative of what became before if you limited your listening habits to one lane and one lane only.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean you tell him uh the Justin Hawkins quote was in my in my that that's the Bible of how I think about influence, right?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: So Yeah, so he well, I love Justin Hawkins, rides again.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think I mean he's awesome, and I love his take on something.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: He was talking about a particular band that's out right now that a lot of people hate on and a lot of people love.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but he was saying, hey, I think they're they're very good players, but you know, what to me doesn't quite connect is they're stealing from one place, where everything they're doing takes from this one band.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: He says, you know, to make something original, you have to steal from at least two places.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he he even goes back to the darkest.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, wearing wearing your influences on your sleeve, we all do that.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of our favorite bands were derivative of their heroes, but multiple.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: But you go, oh, he, you know, with the darkness.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, you know, we were queen meets ACDC.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, we weren't doing anything too, but we were taking two different bands and putting them together.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think And that's what's worthwhile about hearing your band as opposed to just going back to the source material.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: And hopefully, hopefully that's what people will find with uh, you know, me and Nick is like we're not trying to reinvent the wheel here.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: We're just trying to make the kind of music that we love.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_03: We do happen to have a pretty broad range of influences, and I'd like to think hopefully those all come out, you know, simultaneously in different songs.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not just, oh, well, this is them trying to be Fleetwood Mac.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: This is them trying to be this.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We get those comments and we're not even uh mad at it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, yep, that's what we were going for.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think uh luckily so far, when we've shown people stuff, each song has gotten a different uh reference point, which was a lot of people have gotten the reference points that we love and and look up to, but each song has a different so we're we're not uh we're not doing a Simon and Garfang.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a little of this, a little of that, a little we're trying to make a collage of all the people we look up to and and then our and then ourselves.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: And thankfully, within the songs, you know, I I think we've been really lucky where each song seems to have a different reference point, but also depending on who you ask, you get different answers where someone says, Well, this song is so Fleetwood Mac, and then someone else says something entirely different, and that makes me very happy.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's unintentional.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: We got one uh the song that already came out, which is called Body Down, which is just uh the first the first single that's out.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were in we we had a couple reference points that it was like it was a little uh Crosby's Nash, it was a little bit James Gang, you know, we were going for like Sympathy for the Devil.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then someone goes, Allison Chains.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Someone was like, Oh, this so reminds me of Alice and Chains, and we were like, that was not in it, you know, in our in our uh uh purview, but then multiple people said that we go like, Oh, I think that's just an accidental quality of the the harmonies which we chose.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just we were like, Okay, sounds good, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: We both definitely listen to Alice and Chains, like it's in there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: They're great, but yeah, I think you never know what kind of seeps in and how or when it'll come out, which I think is that's what you want out of music.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's like your your mind is a blender and you throw everything in there, and hopefully a little bit of each thing makes its way out.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Hawkins was was right.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is the thing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: All of my heroes, uh I mean, the Stones looked up to a number of artists, they looked up to Chuck Berry, they looked up to the Beatles, they looked up to this and that, and they you can hear all those in each song.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Zeppelin looked up to Sunny Boy Williamson and Bert Yaunch and uh you know this and that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So like every song has a little heavier here, heavier there, but then the band itself is a chimera of all these influences.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, you know, whoever they really are at their course, you know, not crediting their people aside.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the band is so good, because they have like five or more influences per album, and then it becomes this awesome, eclectic festiche.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, the bands that that get hate for like, oh, this is a ripoff, it's because they're doing one guy every time.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're just doing that guy, they're doing what happened with Zeppelin.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: After Zeppelin disbanded, in the wake of them was just this sea of copycasts who were good.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and I I don't mean to knock it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of them were really, really good.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: They were great players, great singers, but they weren't copying the source material.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: They weren't copying Bert Janch and Jake Holmes and Muddy Waters down to the roots.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: No, they were tracing, they were they were chasing and and tracing back to Zeppelin, which came a couple years before.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I think you gotta go to the source material.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think every every every bit of music that I like is uh has some relationship to Roots music, I think.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even the even the most unexpected ones, I think usually somewhere in there.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: What I love hearing from you guys about all of this is like this string of authenticity in like leaning into your influences, but you know, building building your own your own castle as a byproduct.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and you guys are not afraid to be authentic.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's throw out the obvious marketing aspects of things.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you're embracing new forms of marketing culture, like getting and do on and doing the TikTok lives.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta tell you guys a little confession.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I spent probably a good 10-15 minutes watching you guys do Christopher Walken impersonations the other night.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I don't think I have the marketing gene to use it on because I really don't, I really don't.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not good at it.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're hoping that just uh we're just trying to have fun and be out there.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But that works.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't, I don't know what I don't know what the fuck tell you.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: But that's where that's where society's at right now is authenticity and we're a little marketed out.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, it's also funny when you when you say the obvious marketing angle, it's a really funny one for us where you know, uh uh or to anyone who is familiar, it's you know, our our parents are in a band together, and it it's a pretty big band, and that's great.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really cool.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's one of those things where online it's a very funny thing.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: You read these comments, it's like you're trying to do your own thing, but then you use their names right in the code tails.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, dude, it's literally our names.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like, this is my birth name, it's our legal name.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't actually anticipate that, which is stupid.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I should have, but we when we talked about it, we were like, oh, the we like a lot of bands that have that do that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Carlos Gilles and Nash Hollonotes and Simon and Garfunkel could just we could just be like Stanley N.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Simmons or whatever.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that we did that conversation.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, yeah, sounds good.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense with the type of music we're doing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then people were like, look at them, you know, going milking the fucking thing.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, oh, I guess you're damned.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really think about that.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: The thing is, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because at the end of the day, there are so many talented musicians out there, and there's so much great music coming out.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's also just an ungodly amount of platforms to try and keep up with, and there's so much noise to cut through.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: So there's so much great stuff, and then also because everyone has a platform, everyone wants to use it and be loud.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: So then there's also a lot of noise.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: So anything that we can do to help cut through the noise and get people to listen to our music, I'm willing to do.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: I have no problem with that because at the end of the day, someone will listen once out of curiosity, but they won't listen a tenth time because they're curious.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna either love it and connect with it and be part of it, or they won't be, and that's not something you can buy.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: You can get in front of people, and we're very, very lucky in that way.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, we gotta leg up the very first time.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But uh not the second time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's but it's so funny reading all the comments, it's kind of like, okay, so so you don't want us to use this, but then when we don't, you ask why we don't, and then when we use our actual like to us, the reason we went with Stanley Simmons is this was such an unexpected collaboration.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like we've been friends for a long time, but we've never really done anything together.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: And when we tried writing, we were like, wow, this is something, let's let's run with this.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: And from the get-go, it has been, I think the word organic and authentic, both of those words get tossed around so much.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: But this was never trying to be a thing.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: We just were like, let's go.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, we weren't trying to start a band.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, let's do it, let's do a reel for shits and giggles.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how it started.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then a producer heard it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty much it.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then it was like, let's let's write a song or two together, and and maybe we'll do one or two songs together.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: It'll be it'll be fun.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a goof, you know, was the was the goal.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And then we wrote the first one.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, well, wait, this is the best song I've ever been a part of.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: There's some.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I felt the same.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: That song's not out yet, but there was a song we wrote where we were like it happened in one afternoon, and we were like, Wow, I'm really proud of this.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't usually feel this this good right away about a demo.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It just came very very easily, and we were like, oh, maybe we should try this again.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: And uh And then we did, and it it happened again, and then we did it a third time, and we got the same thing.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was it second?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean the one third, because old friend was second, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: So like the the song that's out now is like the third one we tried, and it was again, it came in like one afternoon.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were sitting with our our friend Jacob Bunton.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: We actually wrote two songs on the record that same afternoon.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just hanging.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was like again, it w the best stuff that I think is good off this stuff has come from it's like that old thing, like people hanging out and and tossing around ideas, not really with any sort of grandiose goal.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was just fun.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I don't know.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully that comes through.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I hope so.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's kind of why we went with Stanley Simmons is just hey, this is like this is who we are.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: We're not we're not trying to the dead designer, like let's just it's just our names.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're just hopefully we're trying to the anti-gimmick.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like we're there really isn't a thing except the thing is that it's like us singing together and playing stuff that we like.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so hopefully, hopefully that's appealing to somebody.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's hit that linchpin on that real quick, because the the s the reel that went viral was uh your take on Simon and Garfunkel's Sound Asylum.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was before we had a band that was just us trying to do that to we had our own projects going on and we were like, oh, this will help.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I still have the texts of like we were hanging out and he was like, Oh, bring a guitar, like maybe let's just record something for Instagram.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that that was the that was as much thought that went into that as there was.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no there was no band at the time of that video.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Did you guys know your voices would harmonize as well as they did?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I actually kind of doubted it because we have very different, like even speaking voices were sound really different.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, what are the odds we're gonna gel?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: This will be a goof, and it'll be you know, I d I don't uh I'm at the time my band uh was very different from his band.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like he had a hard rock band, like high energy, and I had a very like chill, weird, atmospheric indie project.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so we we were like we were in totally different directions, and we're like, oh, we'll do this as a goof.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where does our taste meet in the middle?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, acoustic stuff, that makes sense because you know his was or organic but electric, and mine was kind of atmospheric and chill, so organic and chill.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we just did it, it was like a goof.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also what I think both of us really came up on.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, it's an interesting one.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was in a rock band because I I played guitar, and I think you kind of oftentimes when you are really into like real guitar playing, not just like uh using the guitar for chords or anything, not that there's anything wrong with that, but when you get like real guitar nerdy, it often turns into some sort of form of rock.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: But what made me want to write was listening to like James Taylor and Graham Nash, and yeah, that's that's what made me want to.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: Richie Haven's like, man, that dude.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, whoa, I want to write a song.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's what got me interested.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: And um, when Nick and I found that common ground, it was like, well, yeah, this makes sense.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh take the Venn diagram, it's like, all right, this is that's the overlap.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do that.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've been a uh like a pre-war blues head since high school.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So like since uh again, Zeppelin was the pathway to to uh really early, like I mean, I like Alan Lomax recordings and like early Sonny Bo Skip James and shit like that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Stuff that is like you put it on at a party and people are like you're killing the vibe.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: People will leave.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've it's like the recording is on a on someone's porch, you know, crackle and whatever.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I just fell in love with that stuff.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was into Tom Waits and shit, you know, like stuff that's not in the club.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so like uh I was into that, but I never got to do it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, oh, we'll do this, it'll be fun to actually scratch that itch.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was only but we were like, the odds that we're gonna harmonize well are pretty slim.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have very different singing styles, very different intonations, pronunciations, you know.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of that is like you try to get a similar voice.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then we were very, very surprised that immediately it kind of sounded right.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, oh, not only is it good that we have different voices, but he was like filling a gap up here, and I was filling a gap down there, and it kind of fit together pretty well.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think the So I don't know why, but that's we we kind of call it the third voice thing.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's like to me, there you can harmonize well together and sing locked in, but there's a very different thing when there's real chemistry.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like you listen, whether it's the Temptations or the Beach Boys or the Eagles or Crosby, Sills and Nash, the Birds.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Crosby's Nash is like the real example, right?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, those guys' voices are all very different, but there is this voice that's just the CSNY voice.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it's independent of each of their individual voices.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Any of their identities.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: When you have them all together, it doesn't sound like three guys or four guys or however many are singing together.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds like one new voice.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what shocked me the most is when we listened back, it was like, hold on a sec.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't either of us, this is its own thing and it's its own life.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: CSNY, like, think about how different CSNY sounds from a Stevens record or a Neil record or a gram.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it doesn't sound like that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like its own identity very uniquely itself.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we had we had that experience where like, oh, this doesn't even sound like anything I've ever made.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's and it's the same thing as when you hear those guys make those records of their own where they sing multiple parts.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um the harmonies are great, they don't sound the same though.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's like that's why there's so many songs that we do that it's like, okay, yeah, I could punch a verse harmony here, but but why?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: And vice versa.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: It it sounds so much better when you get someone else doing it.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a blend.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, for some reason we blended and we were like, oh, that's lucky.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: We should, we should fall, we should pull on this thread.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't expect it really.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it's a little bit, I don't want to say a lost art form because there's some great harmony uh centric guys out there, but especially in in the pop world, and I've done this, like I've produced stuff like this, and I get it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: Double yourself where you double yourself a bunch, you do all the harmonies, then you use vocaline, which aligns the actual sound wave, the transient.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: So everything's lined up, then you tune them.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: What you're actually doing is making everything a lot smaller because harmonies are great when you have different timbers of voices, but also slightly different timings.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: And tuning is not here.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Tuning is here, and you want a little bit of waiver.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you get that uh width and that size from and that kind of cosmic thing.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everything unique about a harmony comes from the stuff that's imperfect, not the stuff that's the wobbi sabi.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: The wobbi sabi is very important.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: You need wobbi sabi.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I like that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think it would be better if they had tuned Keith's harmonies of bind Mick.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be a horrible thing.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been horrific.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because he's all over the place.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you listen to those stones records, he's not even on the right grid.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well he's just yelling in the background, which is awesome.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's just way back there, and for some reason it worked.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's perfectly imperfect, right?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So right.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: So once the toothpaste was out of the tube, was there any resistance like internally as far as moving forward with this project or turning it into a project?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first it started as a side project, and then I think it was uh our producer Rob Cavallo took an interest.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: He heard it and he was like, This is I'm doing this.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're managing it, we're producing it, we're doing it right now.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: He basically had a had a meeting uh and it was Evan had already told him he was ready to make this his priority, and he was like, Hey, uh, I'm not interested in producing a side project.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this your top priority?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are we doing this for real or not?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, okay.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, now that you've now that someone real said, like, hey, you need to, you need to prioritize this.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So yes.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's it was not intended to be, but yeah, now we're we're all our eggs are in the basket.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: So well, it's a hard thing too when this started, all of this too, like this happened over the period of like about a week and a half, keep in mind.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: So like February 3rd is when we wrote the first song together.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think we sat down for that meeting with Rob, maybe the 15th.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, something like that.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: So all of this is happening really quick.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't even stuff he heard like real rough demos.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Just from our bedroom.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: That was it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And he I sent it to him because I knew him, and we had actually worked on a little bit of stuff for uh my previous band, but this was a very different reaction.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: He heard this one song and he calls me, goes, What the fuck is this?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Within like who's managing, how many more do you have?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: When can you come to the studio?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Yeah, this is the only song we have because we wrote it yesterday.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh here's a couple of things we're thinking of bringing to the table.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, we we kind of didn't have much to show him, but he was like, No, I see it, let's do it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it it moved quick, and I think there's something, you know, you can always throw more gas on a fire, but the fire needs to be there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we were really lucky when we posted that video.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: So many people kind of came out of the woodwork that I think Nick and I had both been, you know, chasing for years, trying to get in rooms with certain people or trying to get people to listen.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: And everyone's like, Yeah, yeah, like that's really nice.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: We'll put it on the fridge.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh, you know, they heard this on their own, and all of a sudden, you know, both of our phones wouldn't stop ringing.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: And um, now you want to talk about it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I had a buddy, a good buddy of mine who actually we had opened for before my band, and he called me.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, hey man, like I love the band, but I just wanted to ask, like, you're you're doing this for real, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because he's like, You guys have something really special.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's something going on with these harmonies.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me you're writing, and like you're gonna do this.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, Yeah, man, we are.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: He goes, Okay, just like don't don't lose sight of there's something happening here, and you gotta it's a shame that they're all wrong and we blow.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, imagine someone catches us and they're like, Wow, this is a really great podcast.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: I can't wait to hear the music.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's like, what the fuck is that?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I think both of us were were really pleasantly surprised, but also couldn't deny uh the chemistry, but also the interest.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there were so many people coming out of the woodwork going, whoa, what is this in a way that neither of us had ever gotten before.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we should probably follow this too.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty easy to prioritize, and more importantly, at least for me, the the easiest thing to chase is music always.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: And what to me really made this immediately cut the line of anything I have done or uh want to do is it's so easy.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like working together, we've been able to write nonstop.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: And whenever I'm stuck, Nick has an idea.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: And whenever Nick's stuck, I have an idea.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_03: And there it really hasn't been it's been painless, and the yield is yeah, that's not that's not been my experience group writing.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Same.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always painless.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's I was in bands for years too, and I'm I'm like listening to how this flowed out of you guys.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's like 41 songs, 41 songs in 11 months.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't know that number until we tried to count the other day.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought we were at maybe like 25.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were just assembly lining it, I guess.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean counted and it was it's 41.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Written, not recorded.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Written.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh in demo form.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's 41 songs in 11 months.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: And of those, and I I don't I think every pop songwriter's like that's nothing like that.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: My sister does uh my sister writes for pop groups, so she has to write like five songs a day.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes it's just like they have they have to be done that day.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a different animal.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: But uh when you're your own artist, you know, you you you only finish one you think is has a point.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, 41 is a lot, and it's always like it's a lot, and it's and it's also like Nick said, like we don't finish anything that we don't think one is is great, but also two, really fully encapsulates what we're trying to get across at that moment and works for our band where it's like yeah, that's a lot there's a lot of criteria to check before a song even gets finished, and uh to have that many this quickly, I was I was floored when we counted up and I was like, We almost got the second record uh done.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, if if people wanted.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well, let's let's go philosophical for a moment.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because you've written so much in such a short period of time.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see songwriting as creation or more discovery?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh depends.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think discovery it's at first and then creation.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I not to get esoteric, but I definitely think um, you know, you can kind of tap into something out there.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same reason that like if a good idea comes to you, don't let it go away because someone else will get the idea right after.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Tell the prince stuff.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, this is actually a great one.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: So there was I forget who it was, but uh Michael Jackson was working, I think it was for his last tour, and he wanted to change a whole stage setup or a set list or something.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it had been a bunch of times, and they were like getting down to the wire, tons of money spent.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And um it was I was listening to an interview of one of the guys who was kind of setting it up, and he said, you know, Michael was talking to me, and at one point I kind of tried to brush it off and say, Hey, like, that's really great.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: I love this idea.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Why don't we table that for the next?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: And he goes, Michael got really, really serious.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and he said, No, because it was an idea that came to him in a dream, by the way.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, so they're even more, he's like, Hey, like, that's really nice.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: Can we do it on the next?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, No, you don't understand.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: If I don't do this, God will give the idea to Prince.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: And he meant it.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: He was like, I have to take this idea and run with it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, if I don't do it, Prince is gonna get it going to the next guy.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: And um, yeah, and I I really believe that's true.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: There have definitely been times where I've I've seen it with friends or I I've experienced it myself of like, this is really cool, and then you know, maybe around people who go, Oh, it's not that great.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then six months later, something comes out that's like exactly like that, and it's awesome.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, man, I really should have chased that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: So now for us, like what's been so great with this project is we really just chase what's getting us excited and what we love.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I think you discover a seed, but then the creativity comes where you gotta nurture it and water it and turn that into something.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's easy to get that initial spark, turning it into a fully realized idea that really uh conveys what you what you felt from that initial spark.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's the craft part.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's that's the part that you can practice and and is the hard part is figuring out how to take this little kernel that was just given to you, this gift that just hit you out of nowhere and go, okay, this moves me and I feel it and I get it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: How do I turn that into something that is gonna connect with other people and how do I how do I you know do that to the fullest extent?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I always do the thing where uh sorry, we're yappers.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're we can go on forever.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But uh but uh I think the best lyrical lines I ever come up with are always something you gotta turn the lamp back on after you've already gone to sleep and jot down real quick so you don't lose it.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've always uh I've I've regretted not doing that before.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, what was that?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: We it's always the thought that happens uh when you're not trying to write something, you're trying to go to bed or something.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I have I have a lot of times that's why I like the little note setup shortcut or a piece of paper is so worthwhile because it often comes when I'm trying to turn my brain off, frankly.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever that is.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I I think I'm uh I'm just a child banging on pots and pans here, but uh but that's what I mean.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I John Cleese said that like every good creative work comes from a spirit of childish play.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I I try to key stay there.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh a lot of the themes that you guys are talking about is kind of like a spiritual serendipity that bleeds into art.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: So of what people can listen to right now.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about body down a little bit, because it is spiritual, it's resilient, it's rooted in history while still sounding modern.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um when you chose this as your first release, what did you want listeners to immediately understand about who Stanley Simmons was?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, we wanted to come across as uh like uh again, we're railing against the inhumanity of music at the moment, because uh now it's not just a human endeavor.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can have non-humans making it, and uh it doesn't uh resonate with me, and a lot of a lot of people agree with me about that.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Saying there's a big backlash, and I think it's for good reason.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we wanted something that sounded extremely human.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was us in the background banging on stuff, it's imperfect, and it's everything on there is just plate.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's us in a room, yeah, our buddies in a room.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_03: The way we did the percussion was Rob brought out this giant it's a road case of percussion, and then another giant, like almost a massive Tupperware container, and he goes, Okay, everyone grab something you think looks fun and try something.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: We and all our friends were so it was like we wanted to make some we wanted to do something that AI can't do, which is have all our friends over and have a great time in an afternoon.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it can it can probably simulate any sound that we made, but it can't have the experience we had.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: It has no point of view, and so we have a point of view because every sound on that record is a memory we had with friends of ours in a room.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the one I mean uh whether that's tangible or not, who can say?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: But to us it is so a hundred percent.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I think body down two I think really captures body down two body down two, too much day.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: More body or body or end downer.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Two body, two down.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh but uh, Focio Drift.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, sorry.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Focus, it's really good.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I I think too, one thing that all of us liked for Body Down as a first is it pretty well encapsulates the breadth of what we are.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there are songs that are a single acoustic guitar in our two vocals, and there are songs that are all electric.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Body down is great uh as a as a mission statement, I think, because it shows hey, this is built on harmonies, but there's also blazing guitar and a lot of people having fun in the room, but it's still acoustic-based.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's kind of a song that has a little taste of everything that's gonna be on the record because there's gonna be uh total stripped down songs that are much like Simon Garvog, and there will be total full produced, full band songs on there and everything in between.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: And and we didn't want to, you know, if we came out with the second single, is a little bit more up.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's I I don't think I don't want people, and I know Nick feels the same to get the idea saying you're a rock, like a hard rock, and granted, this song is not heavy, but it's definitely rock and roll.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the new one that's coming out is uh is more so.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's more what people maybe would have expected just from uh the where we come from.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we it was important to start with body down because body down is halfway there, not quite all the way.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So this next one will make the the the rock heads happy, but then the one after that won't.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we've got a plan, you know.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: I normally say you don't want to go for middle, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because middle is middle's lukewarm and that's horrible.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't mind when people hate us.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's actually very fine with me because it's pretty much love, it's just packaged slightly differently.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: I hate when people go like, yeah, it's good.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's like no, that is the worst.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bad is better than okay.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like Vitry all of some.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: I hate this is the worst thing I've ever heard.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, wow, wow, you think this is actually the single worst.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I made you I really made you uh feel something there too.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but when you go like yeah, it's good, and then you never think about it again.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's scary to me.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing is, so normally normally the idea of middle, I think, is not good, but in our specific case, body down is kind of like right in the middle of the middle what Stanley Simmons is.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there's you can tell that that band could do an acoustic song.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: You could tell that that band could do an higher energy song.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we wanted to make that pretty clear that uh it'll be an eclectic album.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not in genre, but in dynamics.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully that appeals to somebody.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I got all our favorite bands are like that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like Zeppelin gets so much like, oh, they're the heaviest.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: More than half of their songs are acoustic.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why people forget that part.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Even of new bands, I love the Foo Fighters.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think they're awesome.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: I love their catalog stuff, and people think of them as this hard rock band, which they are.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: Some songs.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: But then you go listen to other go listen to Aurora and tell me that's hard rock or listen to Big Me.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, those are acoustic songs.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: The acoustic version of Everlong's like one of the greatest songs ever.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: I love they have the light and shade too.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think they just package it a little bit.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stones.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for every Start Me Up, there's an Angie and there's a uh I just want to see his face, you know.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like I what variety is a spice of life.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I wish uh some of the some of the guys who are very uh there are older guys who are very dedicated to their genre.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if they really looked into the bands that they claim to like, they would see that they are actually more eclectic than they think they are.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's those are the same guys who go, you guys gotta be more masculine, like your dads.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: We saw we saw one from this guy that said they they saw our album art, which like we're dressed in like psychedelic kind of George Harrison wear.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was like a deliberate, like not and Which also is not that far off from a lot of the stuff I just wear.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but like he said, like, this is gay, your dads were never gay, and I'm like, excuse me?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Arguably, okay, first of all, nothing wrong with being gay, and there's nothing signifying that being gay.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: However, you're a fan of 70s rock and roll, and you think androgyny is a little too far.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Have you have you ever looked at the artists you like?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Arguably, Kiss was the gayest of them all, if we're talking about cross-dressing?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about right now?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: New York dolls, Bowie, Jagger, Jagger, Bowie, Prince, Freddie, Elton.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why how did how did classic rock fans find a way to be homophobic when they grew up with the most androgynous genre of music on the planet?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And out of your fucking mind.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you're out of your mind.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also the idea that they there's like, do you think that's gonna That's a little too light in the loafers for the Prince fan?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Get the fuck out of here, man.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's actually so batshit.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And also I want them to think I'm gay so that the people who for that that's a problem for will leave.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Same.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't like them.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the idea that they think that's a bad thing, they'll comment and it's like, okay, like, is that an issue?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: Is that an issue?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what it's like What if we were?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what who cares?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, but it's it's the funniest thing.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the big critiques, but I love the idea of like you guys gotta be, but there was one.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be like more alpha males and manly like the men who wore red lipstick and fishnet stockings.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Get the fuck out of town.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, dude.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's did you hear what Kirk Cobain said in the 90s about that?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, like, I'm not gay, but I wish I was to scare away the homophobes.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, dude, rock and roll is peppered with this stuff.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're on the wrong side of this genre, man.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the weird thing is I feel like they just it's always been the they hit a certain age because you know when those guys were like 20, like, this is so cool, and then they hit like 45 and they're like, uh Why do you think rock people had long hair in the first place?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was to scare the conservatives.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was to scare the madmen guy, the John Hamm guy.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't like those guys.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to be, ooh, he's a little he's breaking, he's breaking sexual norms.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's dangerous.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was the whole 70s love revolution, man.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's where all the music you like comes from.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: How did how did these buttoned-up types steal rock and roll from us?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: How did they do that?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not theirs.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: If that scares you, you're not in the right genre, man.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: But that's that's where I think rock went a little off the rails.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: Is it a lot of sub genres, they take themselves so seriously.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: You listen to hip-hop stuff, and dude, there's especially like the last few years, there's been so much awesome stuff coming out because they can be really serious and talk about like really serious social shit and then be absolutely hilarious, ironic, weirdline, ridiculous.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: They can be super weird.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, dude, some of the stuff Tyler the Creator, some of the stuff ASAP Rocky does, Lil Yachty, all these guys are getting like really experimental and trying to push boundaries in a way that rock isn't pushing boundaries anymore.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where No, it's like falling into lockstep with this sort of perceived notion that was actually never the case.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's the problem, is that it's this perceived nostalgia for a rock that didn't really exist when you think about it.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because like they they cite like the stones as this pinnacle of straight-ahead masculinity.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, look up some of those, some of that concert footage.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the most androgynous, weird kind of like it's circus that you've ever seen.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: How did that get translated into this sort of idea like I'm a good old boy?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's never that's never been the case.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Rock has always been about breaking taboos.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been about like, no, that's what a real man's about.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, you're in the wrong club, man.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: And more than that, welcoming everyone.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's the cool thing about music is hey, it's a circus.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you can show up in loafers and a suit and tie, and you're welcome.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: If you like the stuff, come on in.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Or you could show up in a thong and nothing else, and you're welcome.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: Come on.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like whatever you feel like, just be you.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's that's the cool thing about music.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Woodstock spirit.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's where all your heroes played.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow they they grew up, they cut their hair, and they forgot.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: They forgot that that was the spirit of the thing in the original.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that's where people get lost, is they play dress up with a certain aesthetic, but it's more about the spirit.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about having long hair, it's about what that embodies and what that means.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I think uh when you get a little too lost in the sauce and forget that, it's like, okay, like it's not wearing bell bottoms.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's and granted, I wear bell bottoms, I like bell bottoms, right?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: But that's not the that's not the thing, you know?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, it's the guys who actually lived through it that forgot the the younger generation actually does kind of get it.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: The the young bloods of the world, whatever they do remember because they they're looking into the history of it.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: The guys who grew up actually going to see young Queen in concert and young Zeppelin in concert, they're the ones that kind of forgot what the spirit of the whole thing was about in the first place and what their heroes were up to pissing people off on purpose.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: I do need to be fair to that generation.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very small fraction of them.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like we've been so lucky we're this is like probably 1% people.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: I uh we gotta put a big asterisk on the last 20 minutes of bite the hand that feeds.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: But also just but also just being realistic, sometimes the most negative voices are the loudest.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we've been so lucky where on our TikTok lives, I can't tell you how many people have been like, I showed my mom this and she loves it, or I showed my grandkids this and they love it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: That means a lot.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's being able to cross generations to me is the coolest thing.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I want our shows to be filled with 16-year-old kids up to 75-year-old grandmas because music should be something that bridges all the gaps.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're not a pop act, we're not trying to just mark narrowly to like ages.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just not it isn't interesting.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want come one, come all.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I was one of those kids.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was an old head kid where like I didn't feel like I fit in.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, I skipped my semi-formal to go to an Ian Hunter concert.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: I went into you there.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was like 13 or 14.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were we were uh we were weird old head kids, and now that's not so weird anymore.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're hoping that uh those people find us, you know.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, and that brings this conversation almost completely full circle, starting off talking about being genre fluid, and I think that's and gender fluid.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, I I think bring I think that's an amazing sense of spirit that you guys are carrying out with the Stanley Simmons project is we're just fans, we're not.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's all that's that's exactly it.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly it.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's like leaning it into fandom, you know.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Evan, Evan, you've uh quoted been quoted as saying that music is a form of immortality.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think you think that's something that artists should continue to chase or something that happens accidentally when the work is not honest enough?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: No, I don't think you should chase it.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I think the only thing you should ever chase, and this comes from chasing a lot of the wrong stuff for a long time.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think the only thing you should chase is your own muse, and what makes you when I say happy, I mean more satisfied.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know, what reason to get up in the morning.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what your reason did what are you happy to do during the day, and what can you put your everything into?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: Wear yourself out and then go to bed going, yeah, but that's pretty awesome.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I want to spend my time on Earth.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: A byproduct of that is the fact that I do think I think most people who make music start because you're inherently missing something, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think you have to create something to fill a gap, a void.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: And uh whether you're better or worse at hiding, it's a different story, but I don't know a single musician who isn't missing something.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I think uh trying to fill that ultimately leads you to connecting with a lot of other people.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: And in doing that, I think a uh a Tertiary byproduct of all this is immortality.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's music that's moved me so deeply and and really changed, you know, my life at pivotal moments, uh, from artists who have not been alive for 40 years.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: No, and I found it when I was, you know, 15, 16.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in that somehow you're feeling how they felt.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I would say that's pretty incredible.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: That is magic to me.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I I don't think that's something you should chase at all.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: You should chase your own uh your own truth and muse and and your own feelings.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: And in doing so, the more personal you can get, I think inadvertently, the more universal you actually end up being.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you try and write something for everyone, it's really for nobody.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: But if you try and write something for yourself, there are a lot of people on the planet like you, which means they're also a lot like you, and they're gonna find it and it's it's gonna connect.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's the best thing you can do.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I mean Ruben had a thing where like when you first start writing, you're writing for an audience of one.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's you're that's yourself.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: But uh again, you're uh you know while you're doing that that you're not alone out there.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: There is someone who feels the same way as you do about this, even if uh some of them are are like I'm even talking about this is it's a very highfalutin version of art we're talking about, but like even the party anthem, like fucking sir mix a lot, is about is that emotion is still an emotion, letting loose, being half serious, and and kind of just like or or being fucking being horny, whatever.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a m it's still a way of communicating an emotion.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes emotions can be very, very serious and eye-falutin, or they can be very light and breezy.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're still communicating how you felt in the moment.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think so, so I think it's the point still stands, even though it's you know, singing about big asses.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but it's I mean, look, it's a real feeling I have to do that.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm gonna tell you.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think people too, especially like uh and I love folk stuff and I love singer-songwriter stuff, but I think there's this tendency to put a lot more weight um in sad emotions and very heavy things, which by all means there is weight in them.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: But dude, like most of my life, my goal is to feel happy and light.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't always feel that, I often don't, but my goal is to feel that.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: And when you hear something like, you know, uh LMFAO, like party rock and stuff, it's hilarious.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: But guess what?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's 15 years later, and I'm still so happy when I hear it because it's really fun.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dude, yeah, let's you know, we are we are cringe, but we are free, man.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are ridiculous and silly.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so David Foster Wallace talked about that when like the hipster culture was irony over everything.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, the problem with irony is that it doesn't replace what you're mocking with anything of value, right?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're mocking sincerity, you take it off its throne, but you don't put a new leader in its place.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: So living off of total irony and uh sort of critical detachment and being sort of this dark brooding artist will take you about halfway to being a fully realized human being.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: The other half is being being embarrassing and being sincere and being uh willing to be naked.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's that's the scary part too about like you know, sometimes you get these songs people write that are very opaque and like deliberately obtuse of like, what is this?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then you hear something like I won't back down.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm petty.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: The lyrics are I mean, uh a child could understand.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like a a a third grader could understand that, but man, do we all need to hear that sometimes?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it it's and that's scary to write because there's nothing to hide behind.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: You're just gonna be.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: When we mock the office lady for having like the hang-in-the-kitten behind it, you don't realize that that emotion is as the emotion she feels when she sees that and is encouraged by it, even though we find it cliche, is as authentic as any emotion any deep poetic mind has when he's writing his masterpiece.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those emotions are not quantifiable or comparable, even though, even though she's less sophisticated in her expression, it's it's as real as any sort of epic Dante Algahari poem.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's the live, laugh, love thing.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: Is the sign funny?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: It's pretty funny.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it resonated with that lady, and that's no less legitimate.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: Well, also, when you actually think about it, take a step back.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like that sign resonated with millions of Hobby Lobbygoers for generations, but at the same time, I'm like, yeah, dude, like that actually sounds like a pretty good life.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: If most of your life is filled with living, laughing, and loving, that that's pretty good.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Take it literally as though you've never heard it before.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you can you can find uh sort of wisdom and uh deepity in almost anything.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think uh yeah, the people the people on Pitchfork who hate on pop music, I think you're you're about uh you're about halfway to being a music lover.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're not all the way there.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 100% because being being not only able but willing to write a straight up accessible, simple, uh celebratory pop song.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: Tell Paul that's really hard.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tell him the silly love songs, Paul McCartney.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love this.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great perfect story to illustrate this point.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: So John Lennon, after the Beatles broke up, you know, he said something kind of cutting in an interview about McCartney and something about like, you know, oh, he just writes those silly love songs.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: So Paul turns around and writes a song that goes, You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: I look around and I see that it isn't so.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: What's wrong with that?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like to know.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: So here I go again.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I love it.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's unbelievable.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it's an amazing song.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and I think part of it too is when he did it, I think this is where where you really have to be careful is he meant it.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like he it wasn't being ironic.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was a funny thing to jump off of Lenin's critique, but he meant it.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: He really meant what is wrong with that?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what's wrong?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's a wonderful thing.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: A fully formed person oscillates from sophisticated and ironic to sincere and base and and uh simple.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think you we are all of the Walt Whitman, right?
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are we are multitudes, we are all of these things.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when you try to not be, if your whole life is avoiding being cringe, you're not gonna live.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: We are cringe and we are we are free.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just be free, enjoy things, and be comfortable.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like like what you like, and hopefully that means us.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but if it doesn't mean us, that's okay.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like what you like.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I didn't get the marketing thing.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: Be unashamed.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: You got the marketing thing.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's not marketing, it's just truth.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: It it's funny, you know, you guys bring up such great points about the importance of authenticity in all this throughout this throughout this entire conversation.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, because I had that thought the other day.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the gym, I'm on a treadmill, and I'm looking around, and it's like, we're five days in January, and this gym should be absolutely jam-packed right now.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I wonder how much meme culture and people kind of shaming the whole New Year's resolutioner time type of mindset has kept people away because of those preconceived notions.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: And who does that who does that help?
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Who does that help to keep you away from even attempting that?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're afraid of being a cliche, right?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're afraid of right.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, do it.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: Do it.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's the biggest thing that's been so cool with Stanley Simmons for me is it's really gotten me back to what I felt when I was like 12, 13, 14, 15 getting into music where I I was too green.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: There was no irony.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: I liked what I liked and and what I didn't understand was magic.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't, oh yeah, I've heard that before.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's you know, he just he he gets that tone by using this samp and rolling that back, or oh yeah, like you know, he stole this mobile.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, another power core.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: How original.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, that's so cool.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_03: And this project has taken me back to that where there isn't irony.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: We're doing what we're doing and committing to it because we love it.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like you either like it or you don't.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the songs are are more uh complex than others, and some of the songs some of the songs will likely tickle the pitchfork crowd if they ever get to hear it.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them will be so straight ahead and sort of radio friendly that I think uh I think it'll be a mix of people that it'll appeal to, but I think uh I wouldn't want it another way.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be all I want to be many things, depending on how we feel.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, there it is, there it is.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, with more music coming in 2026, what will make you look back at this first chapter of Stanley Simmons and say, we did this.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Connecting with a lot of people, I think.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully it reaches a lot of people and they like it.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_03: My biggest goal, we were talking about this last night.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I see sometimes people will comment like, Grammys, like go for the Grammy, go for this, like none of that by all means, like we would be honored, but that doesn't really interest me.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: What it is.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: That means you appeal to like those five people.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean you're everybody, you know.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: I I want a platinum plaque, a platinum record to me is the ultimate, that's the ultimate award because what that means is people, not a governing body, but just the people out there decided to buy your music or stream your music.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: They gave you their time and or their money for your art.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and a lot of people did that.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, the ultimate award is that, because that's truly the people's choice award.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's actually the people democratically voted.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was some movie that came out recently.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I wish I knew the quote.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was some like A24 movie that came out, but in the trailer there was this line, and I was like, Oh, that's a really good line.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were like uh it was a character being lectured, like, are you in this for the for the money or the recognition?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Money is recognition.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: It means that someone thought the thing you made was valuable.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's actually really good.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you like it it means that the thing you made resonated so much that I'm willing to pay for it?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so again, like I I I am I'm a little less uh you know, I I we we were both born very lucky that we have a safety net of people that love us that won't let us, you know, starve tomorrow, right?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: But uh But I think there's this false dichotomy of there's either respectability or there's commercial success.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think that's a very that's a very rich person attitude, actually, to to think.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because like to go like, oh, I don't care about money, that's someone who's never had to worry about money, right?
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because then they don't they have no idea how important that is to life.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they go like, oh, I'm not in it for that.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's very uh bourgeois, and we're kind of go ask ask a ask a very, very I mean again, my my old man is an immigrant and he always gets flack for talking about money a lot because he remembers not having it, so he knows that it's important.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm uh I'm like I I when people are like, oh, they just want to like you know get a platinum plaque because it means people cared about what you did.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it's not it's not about uh I want a I want a car.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the oh, that's what that means.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: People might people wanted it that much.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's uh and to add on to that, I think some people do have a wrong idea where look, we've grown up so well, we've been afforded wonderful opportunities, we have great families.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but sometimes people will comment things like, great, your parents are bankrolling all this in your lives.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, dude, I'm not a dime.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've worked since I was 15, and I can tell you, I really, really don't want to go back to working retail, man.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I really don't.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you know, I mean, fuck, I was on a fucking reality show, man.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like that's I've been living off that for it's you know my whole life.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh man, uh sure.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I uh I wish I was balling as hard as they thought we were, honestly.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: It really so easy to like buy ads.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_03: Show me where, or people, you know, they'll say things too.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing I'm doing great, don't get me wrong.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm very I'm doing great, like in different, especially in this economy, I'm killing it.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great, I'm I'm so like uh comfortable, but they think I have Lamborghinis, like they dude, no, and whatever.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to get there on the back of something I love.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's that's the big thing for us.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's like if you know I would love to be able to pay my rent and my truck and all that with something you like work, and knowing that exactly exactly what Nick said, to me, that's the biggest success because that is recognition.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's enough people going, hey, we love what you do, we love your art, and it really connects with me.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: Where I want to spend my money and buy a ticket to come see you.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: I want to spend my time.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: I want to I want to stream your music, I want to buy a hoodie and represent like that's like whoa, that's it means more than compliments.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh essentially what good reviews are.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're compliments.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like, okay, you got a lot of compliments, that means fuck all.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody drove to your show because they wanted to see you play, that means that's that's worth a thousand good reviews.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's so I mean we love it's lovely that people have been reviewing it nicely so far.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: But oh, it's so good, it's so kind.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: I would trade that in a second for concert goers any day of the week.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway, 100%.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I remember having an experience of my old band was supposed to do this residency, and uh long story short, the venue messed a lot of things up really seriously.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: We get to the first night and we have a couple hundred people lined up outside.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: It starts to rain, and we have to hold doors, and we have to hold doors for like an hour and a half.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_03: And these guys were waiting in the rain and they waited, they stayed, and then they came in.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like you cry.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: That is exactly I mean, that's the biggest compliment on the fact that these guys are waiting for cold.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: No, they don't wait to see.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it's that's everything.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_03: The idea that people time is the most valuable thing that we have because we have a bunch of it until one day it disappears and you don't know what day that is.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_03: And people willing to give you their time and energy for your art, that's everything.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's amazing anybody does that ever.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody anybody gives a shit enough to even dedicate enough time to listen to this?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's even are we running too long?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, you guys are perfect.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's another thing about even being on TikTok live.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we'll joke around, but then you think about it, like, I think the internet's really skewed our perception of things where it's like, oh, you have a hundred people on here.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a lot.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well, wait, dude, like we have a hundred people.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: Imagine being in a room with a hundred people who just want to watch whatever you feel like doing.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I've had people on there watch me play music, watch us do Christopher Walken impressions, and then watch me make jerky at two in the morning.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, wait, you're staying on here.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's profound.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: What it's like that's like the most unbelievable thing ever.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I I'll uh anybody who wants to see us do what we love is is welcome, and I'm I'm as excited about two people in a bar as I because it's like those two people can't just for me.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's incredible.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: You can't punish up for the people who didn't.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: You put on a you put on You put it on like it's the last show of your life, man.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's uh they they used to say that about the I know I know you get you're back and forth on the doors, but when they were the No, I like the doors I when they were whisk uh band at the house band at the whiskey, they were they would sometimes play for like empty houses.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a biographer who was like interviewing him at the time who wrote a book there, and they said like every time they played, he would just like do that thing where he danced until he passed out and like yelled and screamed and sweat.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, How do you do that?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you always play like it's your last show?
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, 'cause it might be like because it's yeah, you know, I might die tomorrow.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because also he was he was living on the edge, let's be honest.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing all the drugs.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's the mentality you need.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is that mentality is uh I do like that when artists have that.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh even small, we've discovered a couple.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the one really great thing about uh social media, which I have a lot of negative things to say about, but the one great thing is that we've discovered some artists that we now genuinely I listen to in the car and we like that have like 10 people who knew who they are, and we I think they're they're awesome.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like brilliant.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like after these little these kids are making some brilliant stuff.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I've I've I've my algorithm caught on that I like discovering, and now it's just showing me these like fucking amazing people.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there have been people I find playing on TikTok doing original stuff, playing their songs, and I'm like, oh my god.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: How has this not gone farther?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: They have 3,000 followers and over five songs, like 10,000 streams.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: I listen to them, they're really good.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they're great, great, great songs.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like we did a live the other day where we actually we asked the people in the live, like, hey, if you have a band, drop the name and we'll we'll play it.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so we did, and we discovered at least two that we now are like, oh, I'm into this band.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm into this.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they are 10 Spotify followers, like nothing, like zero visibility whatsoever.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: One actually has good social media, I guess for that.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: No kidding, one had 10 monthly listeners, 10.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_03: They were awesome.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, they sound like they sounded like the Jesus and Mary chain or something.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, cool.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: How is this not weird?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, so I'm a I know how I feel when I listen to them.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if two people come to my show, if they feel the way I do about that bent, great.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's like people ask us about our goals, and look, I I can give you honest answers that are pretty, pretty high bars, but then I can also say, like, which is true, Michael, someone's favorite song.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I just want to write someone's favorite song.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_03: Where that that would be a bucket list item.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like our song is the song they come back to on their roughest day or their highest moments.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's our song.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's my goal.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like so if someone reports that back, that'll be a bucket list check for sure.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know what that feels like.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've uh you know what's this guy?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we with this guy's no longer obscure, but we discovered this guy, Hudson Freeman, when he was not making a lot of noise, and now he's uh like you know, John Mayer noticed him and whatever, and now he's so gay.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's getting streams.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: But uh we s we saw his account when he was super small.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I like I come back to that hit that song that went viral of his all the time.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if I make somebody feel that way, even if it never blows up like he does, there's this other guy who has never blown up, and I want to give him some love.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: I go to him when I want to get better at piano because he's an incredible, he's like a composer.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Damon Smith.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he's got I mean, it's not like his account is not uh huge.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not visible yet, but I think he's I think it's a matter of time.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think he has nine nine thousand monthly listeners.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing to sneeze at, but not not global.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not discoverable for a lot of people.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he's got this song called Pelican Sky.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you sent me that.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Remarkable.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's in it's in it makes me feel all all the feeling.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: So Damon Smith is his name, and check him out because I I just I followed him.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: He followed me back.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's just a guy in in like Brooklyn or something, and he's just incredible at his instrument.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's a music school graduate, and it it's you can tell he was just playing with ideas that he was just kind of the one thing really positive to say about socials, and I think it's uh it's like the same thing.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not against guns, I'm against people killing people for no reason with guns.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we're against the way the tech oligarchs use these things.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not I'm not against a tool.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm against how the tools get used.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_03: We got some songs about it.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but socials, there's this really cool community where I think we've been able to tap into this community of young artists over the last couple years that um are spread all about.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm a big fan of a guy named Drayton Farley who's killer.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he's down proper country guy with like a gravelly voice.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: And he's amazing.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: He's a great writer, great singer.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: And our paths naturally wouldn't have crossed for probably some time.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just geographically.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's in.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember if he's Georgia or uh Alabama, but he's he's down in those parts.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: And amazing writer, great singer.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been a fan of his for a long time, and I've listened to him for probably about a year and a half, two years.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_03: And about six, seven months ago, he followed me.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: He saw one of my reels of guitar playing, not even what we're doing.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he followed me.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: We started talking, then he checked out what we're doing, he's into it and be like, we're gonna collab on something soon.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: If social media was all this, there would be no problem.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like if this was all it was, it was just sort of like dealer?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: This this artist called Drug Dealer, who I think is big enough that people I think he's been on Camel or whatever, but uh he saw our reel, followed us back, and I I was like, this is all it should be.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is this this fucking mind control device really shouldn't be what it is.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: It should just be that and we've deliberately curated our algorithm to be this, but it's hard.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's really hard.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard because otherwise it's just this dystopia doom machine.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I don't need to pee I don't need to see people clout chasing and flexing stuff.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I just want to see like songs I like ranting, cute dogs and shit.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like, gosh.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: Connecting artists is the one real silver lining, I think, in the in the sub.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: I would I would love to just hang out in the real world because we have so much in common, like mindset.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like your concept of time, I say that a lot on some of the content that I've made and some of the stuff that I've talked about on the podcast in the past, is like time is the world's most valuable currency because once you spend it, you can never earn it back.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_03: Time is a weird one.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I it's a weird thing because I think when you're younger, and we're both not that we're old, but we're a little bit older.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you're younger, you think time is infinite.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: And then the sad thing is I don't mean to sound morbid, but once you start seeing a couple friends and peers drop in here and there, you start kind of having this moment of, oh, wait a second, you know, wait, we there is no time to wait.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: We used to hang out and now he's dead.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's really a weird, very sobering feeling.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I the finality.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it it's like, oh, that's it.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we've had a few uh recently.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: People we both know, and it's very sad.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like uh that'll make you want to get up and only do the things you love.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: It really will.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're so lucky we get to.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, but I I think I think that is available to all.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can have six jobs and really drudgery, but as long as you wake up in the morning and it it it uh my my my my therapist said uh gave me permission.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's like being an adult is all about uh even doing something you do badly just because you enjoy it.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, the hobbies andor passions, it's really what it's all uh the that is the meaning of life.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're here to what's Kurt Vonnegut?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're here to fart around.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like one of the great authors of all time said that.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, he's right.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's okay to not like, I mean, obviously you gotta make ends meet, you gotta make stuff happen, but like we're human beings, not human doings.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's okay to just sit and be, you know.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's true, man.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_03: You laugh, but it's the tr it's very true.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're just silly, we're just silly mammals, man.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: But think about it.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's like not everything not everything needs a purpose past enjoyment.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like not in the narrative sense.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like I like it.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_03: I like doing this.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a complete sentence.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's there's no I So we're lucky.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're lucky.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: We get to do this thing that is that for us.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: And people so far seem to like it, so that's a bonus.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: But uh the the the the pit of that cherry is we would do this if no one was watching.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: We would do this alone, um, because it's it's really what makes life worth living and what makes uh getting up in the morning we're making stuff that resonates.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully somebody likes it the same way.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully somebody gets uh what we were feeling when we did stuff.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully we made you feel something.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it was hate.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta tell you, um I not only a fan of you guys as artists after following you for a while on TikTok and listening to Body Down.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: I love that song.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: I listened to it on replacement.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: So glad you like it, man.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: No less than 10 times on a drive, and I'm not exaggerating.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just played in an endless loop.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: But more importantly, after having this conversation with you guys, I'm I'm an even bigger fan as you guys as human beings.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, because we never stop yapping.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: You kidding?
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know how hard it is as a podcaster sometimes to get people?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: Is that a thing you encounter?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, oh yeah.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: You would think people would love talking about their stuff.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_03: People are just like, yeah, it was cool.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, dude, you could ask us a question, leave the room, and come back two hours later, and we'd still be talking about it.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, I love that.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot of people from the podcast community for that.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was on I was on YMH back then and they fucking hated me.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_00: They fucking hated me because they were like, he interrupts.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know, we're in a dynamic conversation.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: You jump in, I jump in.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like it's not a debate where you like it's your turn, my turn, but they were like, no, he interrupts everybody.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: I go get new friends, fuck you.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_02: Fucking love it.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, why don't you guys take this opportunity, let all my viewers and listeners know where they can find your project online.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, if you've listened this far and don't know us, we are Stanley Simmons.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Evan.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_03: This is Nick.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_03: Our handle is at Stanley Simmons Music on every social.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_03: We're on Spotify, uh, title, YouTube, Apple, Instagram, Twitter, ever anywhere you can think of all of our tech overloads.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_03: Stanley Simmons Music.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: Own all of our shit.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_03: You will find us.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh or if you want the most direct ass that I can't talk about.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_03: You want the most direct ass?
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_03: If you want the most direct ass, uh you uh well you find Sir Mixalon.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_03: My ass.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: And uh direct.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Stanley Simmons.co.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you can find everything in one place.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_03: Stanley Simmons.co, Stanley Simmons.co.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_03: You will find all of our socials, our mail lists, everything you could find in one place.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're on any individual platform at Stanley Simmons Music, you'll find us.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: So are you guys able to say kind of an approximation when the album's gonna drop?
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh right now.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we we can definitely say an approximation.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_03: This is likely to change.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're uh kind of at the ends of um some label talks right now, so that would maybe change timelines exactly.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_03: The record's basically done.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_03: It'll be done this month.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um the next single's February.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_03: Next single will be done this week.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're just mixing it.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: Next single's February, then there'll be plenty of singles, and I would hope that the full length is out, what, at the latest fall, but yeah, fully.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're gonna release uh uh trying to release at least one single a month, if not you know, two.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so by the time February was one, we're gonna try to drop songs regularly.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much every month.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, the new way it's done is I think you drop more singles than than sort of the old record model.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just two, we're gonna drop like you know, three or four or five, whatever.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's crazy song after song and waterfall them.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was talking to a buddy, another musician you'd know, uh, but uh one of his contracts too, he had like same as ours, it's eight singles.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like half the album is wait, what?
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's just how because streaming works that way now.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You want constant news and you want each person to give uh a a song its time of day.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna try to drop like yeah, like the first half of the album uh one by one.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the fall, hopefully they'll all be out.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'll drop the you know a bunch at once at the end there.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a video coming, hopefully within the next month that we shot already and is being edited for Body Down.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's happening.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So but uh yeah, by next month there'll be another song and then another song shortly after that.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, awesome.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I hope you guys would uh consider coming back and hanging out in the future because I've really loved it.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_03: No, I love this.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's I've think both of us have had uh a lot of opportunities to talk with different people, and sometimes it's hard.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just like just being straight up.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_03: No, I mean I think you have a pretty similar vantage point as us, and uh, I I definitely really enjoy this, and we'd we'd love to come back on it.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so if you ever want to be uh interrupted and talked over, just let us know.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely, it'd be an honor.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Nick Evan thank you so much for doing the show.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_02: The world is a much better place with you guys in it.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's not true at all.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's thank you so much, and the world's a much better place with you in it, Mike, and all your lovely listeners and viewers.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Once again, I'd like to thank my friends Nick Simmons, Evan Stanley, Stanley Simmons for joining me on the podcast today.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Make sure you go check out their current single, Body Down, on all your streaming platforms.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: More importantly, once that album drops, buy the album.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_02: These guys are so old school in mindset.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_02: I bet this gets released on vinyl.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, I'm counting on it.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Make sure you follow them on all social media platforms at Stanley Simmons Music.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was a pleasure having them on the show.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: While you are being generous with the follows, make sure you're following me at Caught on the Mike on all social media platforms and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_02: This has been Caught on the Mike with Michael Clark.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Michael Clark.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, thank you.