Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Backstage With MISS MAY I At KNOTFEST BRISBANE 2025

Transcript

Backstage With MISS MAY I At KNOTFEST BRISBANE 2025 · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Angie and Kara from Heavy mag and
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: we're at not best with LEVI.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: What's mismay I? How are you going? I'm good, I'm good, fantastic.
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: How's Australia.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: It's been awesome.
• 0:10
  Speaker 4: I feel like we used to come all the time,
• 0:12
  Speaker 4: so I'm happy to sort of reignite that play.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: And do you have a particular memory from the last
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: time you guys were here or one of the times
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: he that stands out.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, we have really spoiled our first time here Parkway Drive.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: Somebody fell, something happened where they someone dropped out of
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: their tour. We were already in Europe and they're like, hey,
• 0:31
  Speaker 4: guys want to come out and we just left that
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: tour came down here.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: We're like, it's the first time in Australia. Wow.
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: But that was like one of the it was the
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: Mix and Mash tour and it was so fun. Uh
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: And I think one of my favorite memories was, because
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: obviously they're iconic for everyone down here, we got to
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: play there high school on that tour, so we like
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: got to play their gymnasium and it was just chaos
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: and they were like, this is.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Where our classroom was.
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  Speaker 4: We used to walk here and surf and we got
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: to see like how they grew up and that was
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: really cool. It was like way off the beaten path
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: of a city and it wasn't even a venue. We
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: just showed up to a school, will play the show.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: It's so cool. Yeah, so it was cool.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: It's such an awesome surprise to see you on this
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: line up. It's really nice to be to you.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to you for a long time, back
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: in like I polled Nano Days with a little tiny
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: album might work on there.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Do you think young LEVI.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Would believe you if you said that you were still
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: touring now and you're growing around the world.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: You know what's funny is like that question to this day,
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: like every day, like my mom and my wife and
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: I like we're.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Just still like this is crazy.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because they're like they're coming after this tour, Like
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: we'll go grocery shopping and someone's like, new album's awesome.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what is happening?
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: It's just weird because it's sort of like you get
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: desensitized because we've done it so long. Yeah, So like
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: those little reminders are just nice little, uh that's cool reminders.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: So that actually leads me to my next question.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: A few of you have kids now, right, Yeah, so
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I've always wondered what do your kids think about having
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: you guys as famous musicians for parents.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I hope they think it's cool.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: I always heard this thing from David Girl like that
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: said that his daughter.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Will everythink he's cool. It's so true.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: And because like I was just talking about earlier, we
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: so the girls come on tour with us. Now they
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: come on the weekends or they're coming out at the
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: end of this tour. And my daughter did six weeks
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: on our first tour and she was nervous. We'd have
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: this part on stage where we bring them out and
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: talk about it and because that's what the last album's about,
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: being a dad, and she was nervous. And then towards
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: the end of tour six weeks later, she was so
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: like jaded, and she had like a she.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Had a harmonica like a crowd.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Of cheer and she'd blow and she would be like,
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: she thought, that's what everyone's sharing about. And then we
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: got off stage, she's like, did you hear them? They
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: love harmonica and I'm like, I created a monster.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, that's wicked.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: So I want to talk about pop ghost punk.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Swing, Yeah, oh my gosh.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: I fucked so many people out with that. I was
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  Speaker 3: the meddal head of.
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  Speaker 1: Course, and all the friends will listen to pop, so
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I'd start that songe of course with a party and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: they'll be like, yeah, this is great, this is a yeah.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: So we used to.
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  Speaker 4: We stopped playing in twenty ten because it was actually
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: pre punko's pop. It was like we did it as
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: a cover ourselves with.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: No legal he just threw it up.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: But that was like the.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: Wild West of the Internet where like exactly, so unteel
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: legal legality caught up, which is around twenty ten, we
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: had to quit playing it. But that song sort of
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: changed our That's what sort of changed our lives. Like
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: we used to get a couple hundred plays a day
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: on MySpace, and like I put that song up and
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: the next week we wereetting two hundred thousand plays a
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: day and everyone thought it was Like then we thought
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: it was like hacking MySpace at school, Like.
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  Speaker 2: What did you do? I'm like anything, I'm like I
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: put a song up and like it's on fire.
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  Speaker 4: I don't know what's happening, and then our lives changed
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: over night from that's that goofy song that was so good.
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  Speaker 3: I had a little look at sitting at two million
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  Speaker 3: views on YouTube.
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  Speaker 2: Which really known it.
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  Speaker 4: So somebody put it up there because that's that's like
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: why we're not allowed to claim because like we.
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  Speaker 2: Just sort of rogue made it.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: Wow, I thought, no, no, yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, because
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: we were it was like people were messing around with
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  Speaker 4: crossing like mainstream and metal, and it's sort of when
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: we were like, hmm.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. We're a local band, like let's get everyody's attention.
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  Speaker 2: And it worked.
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  Speaker 3: It really worked.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So band walked to us reved have you played it before?
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  Speaker 1: Yes, we've done it three times, so everyone kind of
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: like either guys love it or they're like, ooh memory, yes,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: do you have any funny stories for us?
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: It is both it's love it and like I think
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: I think you had to be there knowing how like
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: hard it was from the outside looking in, I feel
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: like we were all just in like a concussion blast trance,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: like it's so fun.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, so many memories. So we got to
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: Chosen ten is like a smaller band, and then we
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: did the main stage two years oh wow, and yeah,
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: there's so and okay. One of my favorite memories was
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: we're on a small so we were notorious on that
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: tour for the like we had just rowdy crowds. Yep,
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: that's sort of why I think they kept in biting us.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: And we had I think we're in New Jersey. The
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: security guard, it was twenty ten. We're just coming up.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: The security guard was a fan of the band, so
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: I could see him. I was playing like stinging and jumping,
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: and he was back by a soundboard and I was like,
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: everybody turned around, pick him up, make him.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Come up here. And then he was like no, please, don't.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: And he's like he's going like holding on and the
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: crowd is like ripping him from the security. So the
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: crowd is taking security guard and he's crowdsurfing and then
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: once he's up, he's like singing and having a good time.
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: Oh so he lands and then before he gets there,
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: Kevin Lyman and like all of production is already side
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: stage like ready to yell at me, but like, no,
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  Speaker 4: don't do it exactly.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: He runs off.
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  Speaker 4: I could yelled that We're at the end of the day,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: we're at meet and greet and he's in line with
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: his shirt and he's like, I got fired. That was
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: the best time ever.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we like signed his shirt and he got fired,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: and yeah, he had a great time at work.
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  Speaker 3: How do you stand out on such a monster liner
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  Speaker 3: is huge?
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  Speaker 2: It's just, honestly, is just the crowd.
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  Speaker 4: It's just like that is where I feel like my
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  Speaker 4: job starts, is like just winning over, not even winning
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  Speaker 4: people over, but making sure they have a good time.
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  Speaker 4: And that's why I say it like ten times on
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  Speaker 4: our stage because like that's really like I know there's
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: bands that have all these messages and like we have
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: we have personal messages within our music, but like the
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  Speaker 4: live show is about having a good time and having
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: that moment, and that's just like that's just what we
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: try to do. So I think that's why hopefully we
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: keep getting invited to all these great shows all these years,
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: because I'm just like.
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  Speaker 2: Was that fun?
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  Speaker 1: Was this fun?
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  Speaker 2: Like everyone's safe? Okay.
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  Speaker 4: I don't want it to be just the performance. I
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: want it to be like we want every song to
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: have like we call them like East eggs. Like if
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: I asked everybody to jump. I only do it one time.
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  Speaker 4: It's not gonna happen again. So we just try to
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: make a whole depending on how long the set is,
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: that's a lot of little tricks to throw exactly, and
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: by the.
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  Speaker 2: End we went them over.
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  Speaker 3: So that's awesome. What was your reaction to finding out
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: that you were going to be a part of Office.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Oh man, we were just happy to get honestly. Not
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: fest was exciting, but the more exciting part was not
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Fast Australia. I think it was yeah to come back
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: down here because it's just been so long, and I
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: think last time we came here to Field seventeen it
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: was really good, but it was like short and sweet
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: and like it was, it was a quiet sort of tour.
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  Speaker 4: So we were excited to come back and sort of
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: have something loud and banger again.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So your artworks always stood out to me. The palette
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: you can look at.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: It, I appreciate that.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: Is that you?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: That's me?
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  Speaker 4: Yes, I'm I'm the art yeah, and the Ryan's the
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: business guy in the bandon so wow.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It always I always know too as soon as I
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: see it and not the color pilots are just yet
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: thank you.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my it's my baby.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So yeah, And does it blow your mind that all
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: these years later you still have all these loyal fans
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: who show up for years, still care about everything that
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: you're doing and year Yeah.
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: It's it's it's like it's that like I know, he
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: says imposter syndrome, especially like our generation, it is.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Like that to the mad. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Like we just played oh crap or was it we
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: played some country this year that we've never played. It
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: was like way out there and there was like twenty
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: people that had like all these lines tattooed and like
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: we went yeah, and I'm just like we like way
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: Like it's like the Czech Republic were it was somewhere
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: in the Boltics and they were there.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Ready to press.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And then like the first day we did uh, we
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: were doing press like this and everyone was working at
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: Rolling Stones.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Was like I was a fan. I can't believe you
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: still got the hair or not. I'm like, like, you don't.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: Think you post these things on your Instagram and stuff
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: like for friends and family, and you don't think that
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: everyone's actually watching.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess you. Yeah, so
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: it's weird, it's surreal.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's awesome. And you guys, we recorded apologies for
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: the Wake. Can you tell us why it felt right
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: to the recorded off to the.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. Well the coolest part was there's
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: two There was a two part answer. It was we
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: wanted to go back because we were better musicians. We
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: did that in high school and like a lot of
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: it was computer not computer generated, but like a crutch
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: on the because we didn't know what.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: We were doing.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: We're like, this is how it's supposed to sound, but
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: we got a record deal, we've never toured, it will
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: sound like this one day. It's I'm like trying to
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: do the scream and we're messing with it. And then
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: so to go back and do what we dreamt of
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: sounding like it was fun. And then the other part
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: was Ryan Are Basically he left our band for the
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: six months that we went into the studio, so he
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: never got to sing on that album.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So to have him on.
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: The actual album for the first time, it was awesome.
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: See the only moment he left our band was when
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: we did the album. Wow, yeah exactly, So that was cool.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And then everyone had and we had all ten friends,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: like every single song had to guess, yeah, celebration.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: What's something in day in the Monday music industry that
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you just thought would never happen and something really cool?
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know back in the day agode, that would
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: never be a thing.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think like this. I think not only streaming,
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: but like monetization of digital music. It's crazy because like
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: I think of, like I told you guys, two hundred
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: thousand plays a day in my space that was like
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: pre algorithm exactly, and like we don't get that even
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: close to that on Spotify now, but like and there's
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: no monetization and I'm just like, but we didn't know that.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: It was a very innocent time. But I think that's cool.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: It's like because we were just putting this music out
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: and it was a it was a funnel to get
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: people to your shows. And now to see these amazing
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: musicians get paid for the music on the internet, I'm like,
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: this is amazing. Like we did this, We did tens
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: of millions of plays for free and we never got
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: a pin for it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, now these artists will get paid.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think that's really cool to like monetize music,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: and there's even more tech coming out more and more.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: That's like making sure it's on commercials and movies and
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: like making sure everyone's taken care of. I think that
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: is just really good. That's a very good side.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and leading into that as well, what kind of
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: bands are you listening to?
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Oh Man?
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: So well, Actually it's big in Australia now. So I
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: am a sucker for like top forty cheesy country music.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: That's my new favorite thing.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I was getting along with you, but I thought.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't like my mom.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: Everyone in my family does not like country, and I
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: was never a thing and it was I love pop
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: music though, and I don't know, I just the pop country.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: I'm like, it's sort of is bringing me into the Yeah.
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: I love the cheesy lyrics, like because they can say
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: stuff I can't say. Yeah, I can't talk about like
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: going and get catering, but he could write a hilarious
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: song like catering. I'm like, I love this song awesome
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: in the punchlines. I feel like every time the chorus comes,
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: it's a punchline, you know what I mean. I'll like
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: literally hear a song run downstairs and show my wife
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, where do you think it's going?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: You don't know, or.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: Like more modern country super mode? Yeah, I don't like
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: the good old nineties country and like the good stuff
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: with like denim and all that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Over my head. It has to be cheeseball country. Yeah,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I know. I don't know, guys, I don't know why.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: It just resonates.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was amazing, Thank you so.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Much, wonderful talking to Absolutely, I'm absolutely mind blowing that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you guys were teenagers.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that, Like, it's absolutely incredible. Thank you
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: crazy and we know you're crushing today, so absolutely, thank
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: you so much to