Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is musician, entrepreneur member of fall Off
Speaker 1: Boy Pete Wets. What's up? Good to be? Okay? So
Speaker 1: you got the Stadium tour with Green Day and weez Or?
Speaker 1: How did that come together? Well? So we've always talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, like I guess everyone has, whatever your ambition is,
Speaker 1: you always think about, you know, the the office above
Speaker 1: you or whatever. So we always talked about how do
Speaker 1: you do as stadium tour? And we played uh, Wrigley
Speaker 1: last year, which is our hometown UM, and we've always
Speaker 1: talked about kind of trying to do like a Monsters
Speaker 1: of Rock thing, and I think green Day had talked
Speaker 1: about it as well. So we you know, we're all
Speaker 1: on the same management company. So I think that's what
Speaker 1: really UM eliminates. Maybe some of the red tape makes
Speaker 1: it like more feesa bol to do you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like managing of egos and man, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like it's a lot kind of
Speaker 1: with one band is a lot, do you know, with
Speaker 1: three bands a whole lot? You played Wrigley, How did
Speaker 1: you do it? Wrigley. It was good. It was great.
Speaker 1: I mean it was our hometowns. I mean, did you
Speaker 1: go clean at Wrigley? We did? Yeah, I mean it too.
Speaker 1: So whatever everything there's different configurations for everything, but yes,
Speaker 1: we went clean. So what configuration did you have? I
Speaker 1: think that we did over thirty And I'm guessing, like
Speaker 1: there's probably a way that you can do a configuration
Speaker 1: where you put people behind you, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like I guess you're going to like the full Beatles,
Speaker 1: I mean configuring Chase Stadium configuration. But we didn't have
Speaker 1: people behind us, but yeah, we did. It was there's
Speaker 1: something special about Chicago because Chance the Rapper played a
Speaker 1: stadium in Chicago fairly well from the Dead. You know,
Speaker 1: Detroit always talks about it's fan base. Is it a
Speaker 1: very active fan base or it's just that's where you're from.
Speaker 1: It's an active fan base. It is where we're from.
Speaker 1: But I think that and and and Chances the one
Speaker 1: that's a little is different on here. But people play,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's Eddie Vetter or whoever play. You know,
Speaker 1: people have a special connection with I think Grigley Field
Speaker 1: people have a special connection with Fenway there's these places
Speaker 1: where people it's bigger than the city. It's bigger people
Speaker 1: can sell out Hollywood Bowl and not sell out Irvine
Speaker 1: down the street totally. And so I think people go
Speaker 1: there because there's a you know, we made a weekend
Speaker 1: of it. We did a pop up experience there also,
Speaker 1: which is always experience. So when we did our album,
Speaker 1: Mania always envisioned it as you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: having something tangible, like, I think we live in this
Speaker 1: world where it's all filled with like this that kind
Speaker 1: of non tangible things, you know, like likes and things
Speaker 1: like that, and they all go away, disappear in twenty
Speaker 1: four hours away ever, and I think, uh, it's counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: but I think it's interesting to do something that people
Speaker 1: can hold onto and experience and walk into ensure. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't take pictures of it, but I think it
Speaker 1: means more to actually be there. So we we created
Speaker 1: a space that was like every song, every song had
Speaker 1: a room in the space, and you walked in and
Speaker 1: it was like what the album was, but like a
Speaker 1: physical version of it. How big was it it was
Speaker 1: in So we found a building that they were going
Speaker 1: to tear down, so it was big. It was massive,
Speaker 1: but they were like, you can do whatever you want
Speaker 1: to because we're gonna just turn it down afterwards. Um,
Speaker 1: So we built walls and kind of created a place.
Speaker 1: But it was it's interesting because it was all it
Speaker 1: became event but you know, like it was one of
Speaker 1: those things that's in between a bunch of different worlds
Speaker 1: or a bunch of different people's um specialties. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we would I probably would
Speaker 1: do differently if I did it again, And there's a
Speaker 1: part of me that thinks like I would just never
Speaker 1: do it again because it was just a bigger undertaking
Speaker 1: than we expected. Like we were literally gluing things as
Speaker 1: people were waiting in line at it, you know. So okay,
Speaker 1: you're talking about it is physical. Did people pay to
Speaker 1: get in? Yeah, but you could also win you could
Speaker 1: you could you could win tickets people paid to get in,
Speaker 1: And then I think there was like a package for
Speaker 1: the show where like you was included. How far was
Speaker 1: it from Wrigley It was Uh. I would say it
Speaker 1: was like ten minutes, twelve minutes, but it was like
Speaker 1: Chicago minutes, not those minutes, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it was like funny because you know, people are
Speaker 1: expected on time in New York and you think how
Speaker 1: dense it is. Where's in l A, you know, because
Speaker 1: the traffic you never know. Yeah, I'm I'm how late
Speaker 1: I was to this podcast? Is how late I am
Speaker 1: to literally everything in my life, which is unfortunate, except
Speaker 1: I'm not late to my just minutes people listening and
Speaker 1: what's about what I am? And I don't factor in.
Speaker 1: So I factor in like, okay, five minutes shower, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, But I don't factor in those in between
Speaker 1: minutes like where you're toweling off or you're like looking
Speaker 1: for your keys. Those are these in between minutes that
Speaker 1: really add up, and those become the fifteen minutes for
Speaker 1: me every single time. Well, the only thing is certain
Speaker 1: people have a thing where they're always on time, and
Speaker 1: it could be the most powerful person because I hate
Speaker 1: when I'm on time and I'm the greeting committee because
Speaker 1: like you know, if the parties at seven, you can't
Speaker 1: get there at seven, or you know, there's a dinner
Speaker 1: and I get there and I'm waiting and I gotta talk.
Speaker 1: But then there's some really heavy players get on time.
Speaker 1: I feel really shitty if you're late, totally and I
Speaker 1: think that it's it's like to me. Uh. I remember
Speaker 1: being in a meeting. I was in a meeting. There
Speaker 1: was like a pitch for a movie or something like that.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. This was like years ago. And I
Speaker 1: looked over and there was like, you know, like a
Speaker 1: box of like the spread you guys got, but like
Speaker 1: it was like coke and sprite and whatever. And then
Speaker 1: there was one tab uh for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: like tab the Cola or whatever, and that was the
Speaker 1: original diet drink from Coca Cola. Totally. And this I'm
Speaker 1: talking this is like ten years ago. This wasn't big,
Speaker 1: Like these things had to be out of Prince in
Speaker 1: the eighties or whatever. And I was like, that's so odd,
Speaker 1: like they would have one and we're in the meeting.
Speaker 1: Uh in the billionaire in the meeting goes over and
Speaker 1: get to the tab and I was like, got it.
Speaker 1: So if you're a billionaire, you can get a tab
Speaker 1: in the meeting. I hate to talk this way, but
Speaker 1: you know what it's like when you fly on the
Speaker 1: private jet and you didn't book it totally. There's certain
Speaker 1: seats if you can no, you can't exactly. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: thrilled that you're on Okay, what would you do differently
Speaker 1: if you did the installation again? Um, I would allow
Speaker 1: more time for the build out. I would. I think
Speaker 1: that this is one of those things where you can't
Speaker 1: cut corners. I think, notoriously in the music business, people
Speaker 1: really people either under vastly underspend or vastly overspend. And
Speaker 1: I think in this case you should lean air on
Speaker 1: overspending because I think people having the experience are going
Speaker 1: to come out and they talk about it, and they'll
Speaker 1: talk about how, oh like it looked like it was
Speaker 1: this but it was actually made out of cardboard and
Speaker 1: was super cheap and was falling apart, or they walk
Speaker 1: out and they're like, oh my god, that was the
Speaker 1: best thing I've ever experienced. And there's you can't really
Speaker 1: like put a figure on people walking out and having
Speaker 1: that experience. It's hard to like sit there and like
Speaker 1: say that in a marketing meeting or you know, like
Speaker 1: have a pie chart and like be like, well, this
Speaker 1: amount of people are going to say this about it
Speaker 1: because it's a real feeling. It's like authentic, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think I would air on spending more. And
Speaker 1: I think that I would uh, And I don't know
Speaker 1: that we had any um. I can't remember if we
Speaker 1: had any ad space or any like it was put
Speaker 1: on by anybody or something like that it might have been.
Speaker 1: I would have none of that. I would have no signage. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's your general philosophy on sponsorship. I think sponsorship can
Speaker 1: be great when someone gives you the money and says, listen,
Speaker 1: we have no idea what to do with this. We
Speaker 1: trust your vision, we trust your brand, we trust what
Speaker 1: you're going to do with this, and that's why we're
Speaker 1: coming to you. I think that is great. I think
Speaker 1: when you get into the like and we need need
Speaker 1: you to like meet like seven people and we need
Speaker 1: you to like change this messaging and like that lyric
Speaker 1: doesn't work for us, it's not worth it to me
Speaker 1: because then at that point like jeopardizes and changes your art.
Speaker 1: It changes what your vision was going to be for it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, like, have you worked
Speaker 1: with brands? Yeah, for sure, never on like ah, you know,
Speaker 1: shake it like a polaroid picture level, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But like, but we've had tour sponsors. This
Speaker 1: tour has a Harley Davidson sponsor and I think that, like,
Speaker 1: especially when the brand makes sense with you. Like to me,
Speaker 1: I'm always like, kids are smart, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: kids can smart can spot when somebody's like doing something
Speaker 1: that doesn't really fit in with what they normally do,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And so I think if
Speaker 1: you do something, if if there's things that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I love this, like, uh, let me think um, Like
Speaker 1: I love salt and straw the ice cream. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to do something with that forever, you know, and
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to do something with them, but
Speaker 1: I like it, so it would make sense. So it's
Speaker 1: like whatever you do would would actually be like in
Speaker 1: line with it. And I think it's when you step
Speaker 1: out of line is when people are like, oh, that
Speaker 1: feels a little weird or it feels like you know,
Speaker 1: and I okay. But it's well known if you do anything,
Speaker 1: you're getting money, whether you're putting it back into the show,
Speaker 1: are you putting in your pocket. Do you think that
Speaker 1: has any negative effect credibility wise on your fans. I
Speaker 1: don't think that it does anymore. I think that this
Speaker 1: generation has grown up with seeing people like really shill
Speaker 1: and I think that the difference is uh is knowing
Speaker 1: that you like, you know, like they saw us and
Speaker 1: we would have like cell phones and our videos and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And I'm like, this literally is to
Speaker 1: pay for the video. Like we're not walking away. We're
Speaker 1: still losing money making this video, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And and I think we we as a man, and
Speaker 1: I think other artists kind of like educated that you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that there's a difference between like doing a
Speaker 1: commercial for something that you don't believe in and and
Speaker 1: taking money that is gonna enhance your art, make anything.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the led Zeppelin example, when they launched
Speaker 1: this new Cadillac for ten million dollars? Would you do anything?
Speaker 1: Would say? Okay, that's what I mean. It's almost like
Speaker 1: an indecent proposal. Would you do anything for ten million dollars?
Speaker 1: Or at some point your your credibility says no, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely no, No, I don't think you can do anything
Speaker 1: for ten Okay, Let's switch it to politics, whatever side.
Speaker 1: Would you go on the record when it comes to
Speaker 1: candidates or political issues? Would I go on the record? Um? Sure,
Speaker 1: I think that this we're in a time where you
Speaker 1: should step out and not necessarily step out, but you
Speaker 1: should be okay with who you are and authentic with
Speaker 1: who you are. The funniest thing to me speaking of
Speaker 1: that is like the other day I saw that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Vince Vaughn is all over the place, and
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, people freaking out that he'd
Speaker 1: like met Trump and you know, and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: think this guy's like a pretty known libertarian for the
Speaker 1: past like twenty or thirty years, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it shouldn't be shocking, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I think that when people don't know and then they
Speaker 1: see you're doing something and they're like, oh, that doesn't
Speaker 1: stand in line with like what that guy has been
Speaker 1: doing for the past twenty years, that can be a
Speaker 1: little weird, I think. Okay, but how about the issue.
Speaker 1: And I've dealt with people who shy away from this.
Speaker 1: Let's if you choose either side. If you're an actor,
Speaker 1: you're playing a role music done right, it's yourself, okay.
Speaker 1: So would you be worried about alienating a potentially alienating
Speaker 1: part of your personality, a part of your already fan base.
Speaker 1: Excuse me? Sure, I mean you you can you can
Speaker 1: worry about it. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 1: that we live so we live in a time of
Speaker 1: like extreme inauthenticity, you know. I mean we live in
Speaker 1: a time where people are like who they are on
Speaker 1: Instagram is not who they are, and those experiences like,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw my friend who was just like
Speaker 1: at a cabin in the snow and it looked beautiful
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, I'm so jealous,
Speaker 1: and like it looked magical. And he came back and
Speaker 1: he was like, it was rats. It was disgusting. He
Speaker 1: was like, I would never go back there. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's because it's the exact opposite of what it looked like,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And so I think that
Speaker 1: being authentic to you are actually cuts through right now.
Speaker 1: I think you see that with Billie Eilis, you see
Speaker 1: it with Kanye, you see it with Lana del Rey.
Speaker 1: I think that and yeah, you are gonna Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it'll take off some people. We live in like
Speaker 1: a polarized world right now. But like, I think that
Speaker 1: you have to be I think that you what you
Speaker 1: gain from being who you are massive is massively overwhelmed
Speaker 1: what you would lose, Okay, are you ever creating in
Speaker 1: whatever field, and worried about the audience response, not whether
Speaker 1: they're gonna like it or not like it, but whether
Speaker 1: they're going to react negatively. Where it's coming from. I'm
Speaker 1: a hyper anxious person that is goes off the rails
Speaker 1: when I'm giving my Starbucks order, you know what i mean,
Speaker 1: Like when I'm stepping up the next person in line,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going to lose it because I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're gonna blow it, You're gonna say it wrong, They're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna take too long. The person behind you
Speaker 1: is gonna freak out. Um. So yeah, I worry about
Speaker 1: it all that stuff all the time. But on some level,
Speaker 1: I think that it's really it's really important to push
Speaker 1: ahead and push and push the envelope. I think that
Speaker 1: like when you look back at like for me at least,
Speaker 1: when I look back at like Clash Records or Metallic
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, like everybody has a different you know,
Speaker 1: like uh uh inception or yeah or starting point, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So like you, when you think
Speaker 1: back on it, Um, Clash changing was hard, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard for fans, like when you fall
Speaker 1: in love with something. It's hard when they change and
Speaker 1: the thing, but I think sometimes it makes it easier
Speaker 1: when you're as an adult or an older person, like
Speaker 1: going back and listening to those things, you're like, God,
Speaker 1: blessed it this change, because like it's easier for me
Speaker 1: to like understand and appreciate now. Um so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I guess I yeah. I think we do think
Speaker 1: about it and worry about that. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I think you can't like live or die by it.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the installation. Are you the type of person I was
Speaker 1: talking actually with Irving aids Off and he show with
Speaker 1: about Dom Henley. Don Henley needs to get it exactly right.
Speaker 1: Everybody's worked with him. It's got to be his thing.
Speaker 1: And Irving said, it's that one percent that makes a
Speaker 1: huge difference. You were talking about the perception of the audience.
Speaker 1: But what I ask you is that your personality where
Speaker 1: it's got to be exactly right or do you lift
Speaker 1: should go? Um I it is my personality to to
Speaker 1: get it exactly right in the way that like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was just playing tennis today and my coach was like,
Speaker 1: you got like destroyed by this guy. And I was like,
Speaker 1: but my strokes look like like if they hired me
Speaker 1: to do play a tennis player in a movie, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to have a double, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like they would just be like, mis strokes look pretty good.
Speaker 1: You know, he looks like he could have played in college. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think that everyone you know, like growing up
Speaker 1: and watching the way the Internet has changed and the
Speaker 1: way that you know, entertainment has changed, there's a danger
Speaker 1: in making you know, Chinese democracy or whatever the record is,
Speaker 1: you know, like where you you cook it for too
Speaker 1: long and you like muddy it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you put too many colors in and you muddy it.
Speaker 1: So I think that having a sounding board or like
Speaker 1: uh being okay with things going out and being like,
Speaker 1: well it's not perfect, but you know, like it needs
Speaker 1: to be done, you know what I mean. Okay, But
Speaker 1: but let's talk on a different thing. Let's just assume, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm talking about is that edge, that
Speaker 1: fine edge, because certainly some of the greatest records of
Speaker 1: all time were cutting the matter of minutes. Okay, are
Speaker 1: you someone It's like me, I'm a big skier when
Speaker 1: every when the skis everything is really right. Um, that's
Speaker 1: important to me. Okay, if I go out and the
Speaker 1: skis are dull and it's an icy day, it's kind
Speaker 1: of ruined my day. So the question becomes, I guess
Speaker 1: let's go back to your Starbucks order. Um, is it
Speaker 1: an O C D thing? I don't think it's an
Speaker 1: O C D thing. It's more of a um, maybe
Speaker 1: it is an O C D thing, but it's more
Speaker 1: let me this on the D your home alone, Yes
Speaker 1: you leave you ever say, holy funk, did I set
Speaker 1: the alarm? Did I the uh the uh the grill
Speaker 1: on whatever? Yeah, yes I do. But more so my
Speaker 1: stuff is like, um, when you're at a you know,
Speaker 1: like I was just at a coffee place and they
Speaker 1: have the screen where you like sign your fighter on it,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there in my head and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've evolved to the point where we have
Speaker 1: these screens and these smartphones and everything, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: but like, what is the germ level on these screens
Speaker 1: that you have to sign? Like it's got to be
Speaker 1: like a million fingers on there. And they're like just
Speaker 1: it freaked me out. Well, yeah, I know they did
Speaker 1: that study that they're not gonna get any disease from
Speaker 1: a toilet seat. But as far as you know the
Speaker 1: signing on the iPad, I'm not really sure. But uh, okay,
Speaker 1: but is it a social anxiety? I mean, what is
Speaker 1: when you when you're uptight about giving your order? What?
Speaker 1: Why do you think you're uptight? I think that I
Speaker 1: am I'm thinking about the person behind me, and that
Speaker 1: I'm taking too long, and that um am I saying
Speaker 1: it right? And okay, because you you came in here
Speaker 1: immediately fall into a groove, you're very easy to talk. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just assume we take you to somewhere where people
Speaker 1: don't know who you are, your name, your fallout. Boy.
Speaker 1: Should I say, Okay, we're gonna go to a party
Speaker 1: with twenty people. I I can't go, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: go alone? You canna say finding say, man, I'm not
Speaker 1: going alone. I will probably be like yeah, that'll be great,
Speaker 1: and then like, uh, like an hour before I'll tell
Speaker 1: you I can't get a babysitter. Okay, which maybe the truth.
Speaker 1: Maybe you won't be the truth. Okay, you buy something
Speaker 1: at best biased one goes to best buy, but you
Speaker 1: do it fucked up? Okay, came that way? You uptight
Speaker 1: about returning it? Absolutely? I don't want that conversation. You
Speaker 1: know what that conversation. Okay, this is not treated. But
Speaker 1: let's go back to the stadium show. Was it the
Speaker 1: manager's idea or was it in the air? Was it
Speaker 1: one of the bands? It is? I think it came
Speaker 1: from the bands. I think the managers were like, we
Speaker 1: can make this happen. Um. I think it would be
Speaker 1: a would have been a lot harder to get it
Speaker 1: together without having the same manager, because you can like
Speaker 1: do like vertical moving, you know, whereas otherwise it's like
Speaker 1: this fun is this size and like you would not
Speaker 1: believe the stuff that guys and bands will argue about.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Um. So I think it came from
Speaker 1: the bands, like it was organic and and I knew
Speaker 1: Rivers and we'd obviously grown up on on Green Day.
Speaker 1: Um and so yeah, I mean I and listen like
Speaker 1: it's like you you get asked like where you want
Speaker 1: to ski? Like everybody has like a like an ultimate
Speaker 1: version of like what it is like for guys in
Speaker 1: or girls in rock bands. It's like a stadium, you know, festival,
Speaker 1: Like these are like these things that you yeah, absolutely
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta do it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you want to do it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it's it's just about like making it work,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Okay, so your build in
Speaker 1: all the building I've seen is the middle act? Was
Speaker 1: that hard to work out? Irrelevant of the fonts uh
Speaker 1: that we were playing, that we were in the middle
Speaker 1: or that we were was it hard to work out? No,
Speaker 1: I think that we Yeah, I mean it's hard to
Speaker 1: work out in the way that like we haven't supported
Speaker 1: any band in a really long time. So it's just
Speaker 1: a different thing, you know. Um, but every time you
Speaker 1: come back to it, you you know, like every time
Speaker 1: I like freak out about anything, like my manager will
Speaker 1: send me like Monsters of Rock posters, like pictures of
Speaker 1: Rounsters rock posters, and you're like, these guys did this
Speaker 1: and this was like an epic, epic, epic thing that
Speaker 1: was bigger than all the bands, you know, and if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about like who's like one or two of
Speaker 1: four on those, it's like pretty insane, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And so uh, yeah, you're you're making things
Speaker 1: work for the greater good, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And Okay, is there anything where Okay, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: out and blow away the head miner? Sure, of course.
Speaker 1: I mean there's of that. I mean in the way
Speaker 1: that like you want to Okay, so this is this
Speaker 1: is what it is. So we played the we played
Speaker 1: at the at the Whiskey, the three of us, three
Speaker 1: bands played and there's part of you that's like, I
Speaker 1: want to do this and like it's different and whatever.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you're I'm watching Green Day play
Speaker 1: and I'm like, damn, but they have these songs. And
Speaker 1: we played the probably the best small club show that
Speaker 1: we could have ever played. And when Green Day played,
Speaker 1: they had these songs that were like baked in people's
Speaker 1: cultural DNA, you know what I mean. And it was
Speaker 1: like seeing basket case in this tiny room. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: it's just bigger. It's just the difference between like opening
Speaker 1: like a bottle of wine that's like from the basement
Speaker 1: of a seller of a French chateau, versus like screaming eagle.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's just different, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's had like fifty years and going to the
Speaker 1: minor point. Are you into wine? Do like wine? Okay?
Speaker 1: But you into you know, you're also collecting you mentioned
Speaker 1: screaming eagle. Okay, I I've got a tastings I've I'm
Speaker 1: not like uh no, I'm not like a real collector
Speaker 1: of one. Do you collect anything? Uh? Yeah? I um
Speaker 1: let me think, what are What are some things that
Speaker 1: I'm like really into collecting. I have like all my
Speaker 1: eighties toys? Uh you have the original ones? Who you
Speaker 1: rebought them? No, they're all the originals. I'm like a
Speaker 1: kind of like a what like literally from age five
Speaker 1: seven that kind of toys. Okay, your parents, you have
Speaker 1: any brothers or sister. I do have a younger brother
Speaker 1: and younger sister. Okay. Hempic was the house. It was
Speaker 1: I guess. I grew up in a upper middle class
Speaker 1: and it was I guess my mother. She threw all
Speaker 1: my ship up. My parents tried to and I would
Speaker 1: like lose my mind, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 1: it was like and there and I'm probably should be
Speaker 1: in some kind of therapy session for this, but I
Speaker 1: would like, you know, like and eventually they just packed
Speaker 1: it all when they moved out of the house. Moved downsized.
Speaker 1: They um, they just shipped it all to me in boxes. Okay,
Speaker 1: So other than your toys, what do you have from
Speaker 1: your childhood? Oh? Man, I have a blanket that I
Speaker 1: have all my baseball cards which are worth and those
Speaker 1: would be worth Yeah, so I'm from like I got
Speaker 1: my baseball cards are from like the junk era, so
Speaker 1: like everything. Yeah. So uh that Ken Griffin is just
Speaker 1: now worth a right? Um? What else do I have
Speaker 1: that I collect? Uh? I collected vinyl for a little bit,
Speaker 1: but nothing that crazy. Can you get rid of any
Speaker 1: of this ship? What is it? Marie condo? Is that
Speaker 1: what it is? Because you know, Marie now selling a
Speaker 1: product that's the whole thing. Right, that's like the dream. Right,
Speaker 1: you get somebody to get rid of everything, and then
Speaker 1: like you all of a sudden have a brand, so
Speaker 1: you gotta like sell the merch. Although I will say
Speaker 1: I don't want to go uh you know, make light
Speaker 1: of all the people's houses burned down, But I am
Speaker 1: a real hoarder and sometimes say, well, you know, as
Speaker 1: long as they have my computer, if the whole house
Speaker 1: burned out, it might be liberating, right. Mine would definitely
Speaker 1: be Mine would definitely be liberating, uh, except I can
Speaker 1: get my kids stuff out. But um, there's definitely a
Speaker 1: point where like I was like, I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: a collector. And then I like looked at pictures of
Speaker 1: this stuf. People were showing me pictures of my stuff,
Speaker 1: and it like looks like hoarder stuff, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And I guess that's how it how it
Speaker 1: switches from collecting to hoarding. Is that like you don't
Speaker 1: know right, Like there's like some like it's interesting, it's
Speaker 1: in your DNA, and there's some dys morphia. There's some dysmorphia,
Speaker 1: right because you look at it and it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like okay, may look like junk to you, but I
Speaker 1: know we're literally everything right, and if you reorganized that
Speaker 1: I won't know where it is. And everything has sentimental
Speaker 1: I just moved and for the first time ever, I
Speaker 1: threw a lot of stuff out, stuff that I would
Speaker 1: never throw out. And the cliche, unfortunately is true in
Speaker 1: that you don't miss it. But there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things I threw out a few years ago that I
Speaker 1: still miss So how got a house do you live in?
Speaker 1: How many square feet is it? I don't know it's
Speaker 1: all in the garage. But I can't but I can't
Speaker 1: park in the garage. Okay. And it's how many car garage?
Speaker 1: Three car garage? So the three three things are full
Speaker 1: of your ship? Yeah, okay. And then there's a storage
Speaker 1: you did okay? How far? How far away is the
Speaker 1: storage you? I have a close one in a far okay.
Speaker 1: You you go on the road. Okay. There's lamb and
Speaker 1: it's there's all kinds of stuff. You save all that ship,
Speaker 1: A lot of it? I save. Yeah, I saved every
Speaker 1: lamb in it. Okay. So we're in the house. What
Speaker 1: other How easy is it for you to throw out anything?
Speaker 1: Like the newspaper. I have an issue with other people
Speaker 1: throwing my things away. Oh man, this is my girlfriend.
Speaker 1: I what do you do? But I can do it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I have a problem with other people making the call.
Speaker 1: I have a huge problem and I want to And
Speaker 1: it's like it's not super healthy, right, there's different I
Speaker 1: see a special doctor for this. Okay. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been in therapy? Okay, Well, it turns out regular therapy
Speaker 1: doesn't work for o c D. You have to go
Speaker 1: to a special person and it's called exposure therapy. Okay,
Speaker 1: And there's two things. I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: any issues. Like one of my issues is if you say,
Speaker 1: if one of those can't has like big skulls and
Speaker 1: bones on it, it's very hard for me to touch that.
Speaker 1: So first you work up your way to touch that.
Speaker 1: Then hoarding. They actually send somebody to my house once
Speaker 1: to teach me how to get rid of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's definitely treatment for it. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it comes down to two things. One the O c
Speaker 1: D thing is you're crippling your life by when it
Speaker 1: comes to the stuff, whether you have enough space for it.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you do, I mean kind of. I mean
Speaker 1: I definitely was hold that our garage was dangerous the
Speaker 1: other day, dangerous way something might fall. I guess that's
Speaker 1: something might tip on somebody or fall or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had that experience after the earthquake. You weren't in
Speaker 1: l A. The earthquake now living in Santa Monica really shook.
Speaker 1: And I had my vinyl records all the way up
Speaker 1: to the ceiling, and I said, and I moved. I
Speaker 1: was just afraid if they fall, if anybody's lying on
Speaker 1: the couch, gonna kill them. But okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the tennis. You play tennis at a club or
Speaker 1: you have a court or what I don't have a court.
Speaker 1: I play like at either public courts or I played
Speaker 1: like there's this one in the valley that's it's like
Speaker 1: just barely kind of the valley that's called Weddington that
Speaker 1: is like it's like public, but you pay so then
Speaker 1: you don't have to like wait, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: like how good a tennis player are you? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: So they have levels? Uh, I guess I would be
Speaker 1: a four oh or a four or five? Four oh
Speaker 1: for sure? Not really explain what the levels are for
Speaker 1: those people on sophisticated um. It goes through like whether
Speaker 1: you're able to just hit return a shot, of whether
Speaker 1: you well to know the correct positioning, or whether you're
Speaker 1: able to hit an aggressive offensive shot. And like for instance,
Speaker 1: like like Gavin Gavin Rossdale, I think he's probably like
Speaker 1: a four or five or five if not beyond you know,
Speaker 1: what's the lowest? I don't know. I guess one maybe
Speaker 1: or five yeah, But like I think after you get
Speaker 1: past maybe six or seven, maybe it goes to a
Speaker 1: professional somethime. So how often do you play? Oh boy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I need to go on record,
Speaker 1: if somebody's listening that I tell that, I go to
Speaker 1: like that. I'm you know, in meetings, I play out
Speaker 1: too much. You play every day. I play every day. Okay,
Speaker 1: what if you miss a couple of days. You're cool
Speaker 1: with that, or you have a jones to get back
Speaker 1: out there. I definitely have a jones to get back
Speaker 1: out there. And did you play tennis as a kid?
Speaker 1: I did not very well, but yeah I did. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did you get back into it? I just played it,
Speaker 1: goofing around and I played. And it's just one of
Speaker 1: those ones that like is addictive the way, whether it
Speaker 1: would be skiing, you know, like once you you get
Speaker 1: back in the rhythm, you're like, oh, I could just
Speaker 1: do this every day, Like if somebody was like you
Speaker 1: could just do I used to ski every day and
Speaker 1: over Christmas ice ski twenty six out of twenty seven days.
Speaker 1: You get a fine edge when you do it every day,
Speaker 1: and that fine edge is very rewarding. Person may not
Speaker 1: even tell by looking at you, but like with this,
Speaker 1: you know you can get to that shot. You know
Speaker 1: you can get it back over the net because once
Speaker 1: you're in that groove and you go out and play
Speaker 1: or ski, when you're not in that groove, it's depressing
Speaker 1: because people say, oh you look, they say, no, I
Speaker 1: know I can do this, and I'm not that I can't.
Speaker 1: And tennis is one of those like really messed up
Speaker 1: ones where like you'll like that's similar to golf, and
Speaker 1: I think golf is the more extreme version where you like,
Speaker 1: we'll play one day and you're the best player you've
Speaker 1: ever been, and then you played the next day and
Speaker 1: you're like literally the worst. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like one of those like super frustrating. Right certainly
Speaker 1: is okay, So how did you get back into tennis?
Speaker 1: I just like started playing and I just played a
Speaker 1: couple of times, goofing around, and then like I just
Speaker 1: got super into it. I think I had a ton
Speaker 1: of time and I got super into it, and then
Speaker 1: I like went and started playing on tour when we
Speaker 1: like in Australia, I played like with some of like
Speaker 1: the AUSSI pro women and basically like you go from
Speaker 1: being like I watched it on TV, maybe I could
Speaker 1: like do this, and then like I they this this
Speaker 1: one woman hit literally she was like, I'll serve one
Speaker 1: real one to you. And it was like I just
Speaker 1: tried to move out of the way. I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even like about returning it. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: So like this is like not in the cards of
Speaker 1: Like I remember when I was a little kid, I
Speaker 1: used to play a lot of golf. Was never good.
Speaker 1: And you got with someone who really dos how to play.
Speaker 1: They're just not hitting the ball, they're working it. You
Speaker 1: have to spin to be at that elite level. I
Speaker 1: mean obviously Michael Jordan could never play baseball. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. So you grew up where
Speaker 1: in the Chicago area, the North Side, like the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Chicago which met Wineka. We basically grew up. We're like,
Speaker 1: so like Breakfast Club was set at my my high school,
Speaker 1: but did they film it or just set in terms
Speaker 1: of it was filmed there? So like basically every John
Speaker 1: Hughes movie was set in Shermerville or whatever. And Shermerville
Speaker 1: is not a real place. But there was a road
Speaker 1: that ran between me and the guitarist Joe of our
Speaker 1: bands town his town in my town, and it was
Speaker 1: shermer Road. And so like everything was based on that.
Speaker 1: Like Home Alone was like one block from his house,
Speaker 1: which is where we had had practice. But it's basically
Speaker 1: like this, Like it's all those every one of those
Speaker 1: movies is basically like that our town, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Okay, So you grow up, you're the oldest kid.
Speaker 1: Your parents have all their hopes and dreams invested in you.
Speaker 1: I think that I had. I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but I think that my parents had like, um, I
Speaker 1: was like the experiment, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: I was the one that like, you're an experiment because
Speaker 1: of their parenting style or by nature of being the
Speaker 1: first kid. Uh both. I think in the way that like,
Speaker 1: let's go back, your parents had you. How old or
Speaker 1: young were they? Um, my dad was thirty and I
Speaker 1: think my mom was twenty nine. Okay, so that's all reasonable.
Speaker 1: And as your mother working outside the house at that point,
Speaker 1: she was before I before the young Prince came along, okay,
Speaker 1: and then I think okay, and your father did what
Speaker 1: for a living? He was a lawyer, was still a lawyer,
Speaker 1: still practicing. Yeah, you refer to yourself as the young prince. Okay.
Speaker 1: My mom called me the uh, when I was born
Speaker 1: the Prince of Edgewater. We lived in this uh part
Speaker 1: of Chicago called Edgewater Village, I think, And so she
Speaker 1: called me the Prince of Edgewater. But it was your
Speaker 1: risk or she really treated you like a prince. I
Speaker 1: think it was humorous. I don't. I don't think my
Speaker 1: mom really, I don't know. I'm not really sure, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like I I look at all
Speaker 1: these pictures of me when I was little, and I'm
Speaker 1: in yellow and all of them, and she was like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like people just didn't have People didn't go
Speaker 1: and look at what their baby was beforehand unless there
Speaker 1: was a problem, Like you wouldn't we just wouldn't, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And so like we just had
Speaker 1: yellow because we thought you might be a girl. You
Speaker 1: just never know. And I was like, yellow, such an
Speaker 1: interesting color to put a baby in a bunch of time,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the time, you know. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: I had your two siblings here, would they say you
Speaker 1: were the prince and the favored child or they'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're all equal. I think that my my my sister
Speaker 1: um in some ways because it's two boys and a girl.
Speaker 1: And I think that she got um some special attention.
Speaker 1: She was. She was different. She was also like of
Speaker 1: us was the was the easiest, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: she's the middle and she was just she was just easy.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't think I would think I was
Speaker 1: like pretty. I was like difficult in the way that
Speaker 1: like I dye my hair and I'd do a band
Speaker 1: and you know, like it was just all you know,
Speaker 1: like I left college, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: it was just all like I was, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was as the first Okay, what is what
Speaker 1: are your sister and brother do? Uh? My sisters studied
Speaker 1: family sociology maybe um and she is stay at home
Speaker 1: mom in Chicago with three kids, and my brother is
Speaker 1: a fine artist in New York. Successfully. Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: I mean off the parents pay roll, off the parents
Speaker 1: pay roll. I think he I don't really like it's
Speaker 1: the same thing as like I have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a of a guy in a band's perception of
Speaker 1: like what my dad and my brother do, because they
Speaker 1: like explain it to me, and I'm like I kind
Speaker 1: of understand, but I don't really because he were he
Speaker 1: does marketing as well, you know what I mean? So
Speaker 1: I don't really fully understand. Okay, and you're close with
Speaker 1: your family and your siblings, Yeah, definitely. So you grow up,
Speaker 1: are you good in school or bad? I was always
Speaker 1: like a very like I had to like, um, not
Speaker 1: living up to your potential kind of thing, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It was like a lot of like
Speaker 1: test Well doesn't do a lot of people that doesn't.
Speaker 1: And you're like the you know, the king of the class,
Speaker 1: the class count clown and outcast. Where do you fit in?
Speaker 1: I never out like I fit in where I lived. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I just I don't feel like I
Speaker 1: really looked like anybody. And I didn't really like understand
Speaker 1: the way people kind of like did their thing. And
Speaker 1: my family was always the family that like we were
Speaker 1: like a little bit like the weird family. Like my
Speaker 1: parents would have us go eat it like Ethiopian restaurants
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and I was just like I
Speaker 1: just want to eat fucking McDonald you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like I just wanted to be normal, you know.
Speaker 1: And now I appreciate it and I understand it, but
Speaker 1: like at the time, it was like, um, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't think I really felt like
Speaker 1: I fit in. I think I was like probably always
Speaker 1: trying to goof around to fit in. Maybe did you
Speaker 1: have friends? Yeah, I kind of had friends. I kind
Speaker 1: of was friends with everybody, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like but like not, I don't. I didn't have like
Speaker 1: close friends until I was a little older. Okay, So
Speaker 1: were they playing music in your house? My dad played
Speaker 1: a ton of like um, like Temptations and a ton
Speaker 1: of like Fogerty, Like it was like anything that was under,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the stuff was under, like the
Speaker 1: like the oldiest station I guess in my town. Um,
Speaker 1: and like my first concert he took me to was
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett, you know what I mean, which is so
Speaker 1: I was I think I just wanted to go to
Speaker 1: a concert so bad that it was like it was
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And I thought like Margaritaville and like Cheeseburger
Speaker 1: and Paradise were like pretty catchy songs. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think I just wanted to go to concert.
Speaker 1: My dad was like, I'll take you to this one,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I want to say I was
Speaker 1: like ten or eleven, and then like the summer that
Speaker 1: I was fourteen, which was what year or thirteen, which
Speaker 1: was so I graduated in nineties seven, so you were
Speaker 1: born like in yeah. So yeah. So this summer, uh
Speaker 1: basically all at the same similar timing, maybe not the
Speaker 1: whole summer, but like, uh, we were at this lake
Speaker 1: house uh that my parents would go to. Um. It
Speaker 1: was like kind of like a group lakehouse. I don't
Speaker 1: really not explain it. It's like family camp or something
Speaker 1: like that. And I water skied, but like the older
Speaker 1: kids all slalom water skied, and all I wanted to
Speaker 1: do was slalom because it looked like a juicy for commercial. Also,
Speaker 1: Terminator two came out, um, and all I wanted to
Speaker 1: do was see that movie, but it was radar and
Speaker 1: I think my parents didn't let me. And then I
Speaker 1: think it was that summer. In the next summer in Metallica,
Speaker 1: Guns and Roses went a stadium tour and all I
Speaker 1: want to do was go to the show, and my
Speaker 1: parents were like, you're not going to that show. So
Speaker 1: it was like this like it was all wrapped to me.
Speaker 1: It's all wrapped up in the same thing kind of
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, did you have the Metallica and Guns
Speaker 1: and Roses albums? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I said, I had
Speaker 1: the Guns and Roses album in my mom's car on tape,
Speaker 1: and I would have to sit there and turn down
Speaker 1: the swear because I knew when the squares were coming,
Speaker 1: and this is when they had like Getting the Ring,
Speaker 1: like and I had that whole getting the Ring speech,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, you'd be ripping off the kids
Speaker 1: to paying their hard earn money to read about the
Speaker 1: man's they want to know about talking ship writting? Do
Speaker 1: you want to antagonize me? Antagonize me? You know, Like
Speaker 1: I had that whole speech memorize and I would be
Speaker 1: turning it up and down, like trying to like get
Speaker 1: to swears like basically like you know, to put hi
Speaker 1: cough buttons from my mom in the car because I
Speaker 1: was like this music school, it's cool, trust me, don't worry.
Speaker 1: But then I would like have to like you know,
Speaker 1: self edited. Okay, but how did you get into Metallica
Speaker 1: Guns and Roses? Um? So I had a group of
Speaker 1: friends that like skateboarded and and that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how they got into it. I
Speaker 1: think there might have been an older brother, um Nick
Speaker 1: Poole and his older brother maybe Alex Pool I think
Speaker 1: maybe like made a tape this is back. I don't
Speaker 1: know people would make tapes and would have a bunch
Speaker 1: of different songs on it and uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: Metallica and Slayer and stuff. But did your parents buy
Speaker 1: you albums or was it mostly these tapes? That was
Speaker 1: those tapes? And I don't think my parents, like my
Speaker 1: parents would not buy me an album like that. I
Speaker 1: don't think. So did they buy you any albums? Man?
Speaker 1: Did they buy me? I think that there was, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was like um, like R and B
Speaker 1: stuff for like stuff that like my parents would also
Speaker 1: listen to was okay to be bought. But like I
Speaker 1: don't even think. I don't even know if it came
Speaker 1: into Like I don't even know. And this is weird
Speaker 1: because like this is not how people and I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a parent of three, this is not how people
Speaker 1: parent anymore. But like I don't I think I might
Speaker 1: have been nervous to ask my parents for it, or
Speaker 1: like I just expected that they were it was gonna
Speaker 1: be a no, So I just didn't even Like it
Speaker 1: wasn't even in the like wheelhouse, like it wasn't like
Speaker 1: it would never I would never think to ask, Okay,
Speaker 1: so those are all hard edge? Was that the only
Speaker 1: music you were into at the time, for sure? And
Speaker 1: then I got even harder. I got into punk rock,
Speaker 1: and I got into like death metal and like, so
Speaker 1: you never went to the Guns and Roses Metallica tour,
Speaker 1: you know. I went to Guns and Roses at Dodger
Speaker 1: Stadium maybe two years ago, and it was amazing because
Speaker 1: it was like all these people that had kind of
Speaker 1: like um been like stuck and frozen in time. It
Speaker 1: felt like, you know what I mean, And I was
Speaker 1: one of them, you know, I mean, because like you're
Speaker 1: in the merch and it just kind of like looked
Speaker 1: like you'd just like come out from underground and you're
Speaker 1: like Guns and Roses still around in two thousands, seventeen
Speaker 1: or whatever I always say. And I saw Guns and
Speaker 1: Roses when they played a week at the Forum after
Speaker 1: Use Your Illusion, you know, when and two came out,
Speaker 1: And that was still when they were coming on hours late,
Speaker 1: and they were phenomenal. But like when I go to
Speaker 1: see the Stones now, well, when I when the Stones
Speaker 1: first started doing really the stadium towards whatever, like a
Speaker 1: couple of decades ago, I always thought it was the
Speaker 1: people who were afraid to go the first time it
Speaker 1: was too dangerous. Now they had leather jackets. Was that
Speaker 1: like going to the Guns and Roses Show. I think
Speaker 1: that the Guns and Roses Show was a little different
Speaker 1: in the way that because they went away for so long,
Speaker 1: so I think a lot of people were like, I'll
Speaker 1: never see him again, you know, And and it was
Speaker 1: people who would like and I think in a weird
Speaker 1: way it kind of like you could speak about it
Speaker 1: in in our band, like having to two different portions
Speaker 1: of our career, because there was a lot of people
Speaker 1: like me who was like just too young or told
Speaker 1: that you couldn't go or something, and then you came.
Speaker 1: And I think that the way I experienced it was
Speaker 1: like and the music and art has a funny way
Speaker 1: of doing this. We were like it tricks you, like
Speaker 1: where I was like experiencing it as a fourteen year old,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I'm sitting there and
Speaker 1: I'm in the crowd, and like I came around. I
Speaker 1: went with like four people and like some of them
Speaker 1: were like, I don't know, this is like this kind
Speaker 1: of goofy or whatever. But for me, it was just
Speaker 1: like wish fulfillment. I was like, okay, like I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go my friends and the agents, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: don't want to go a because Izz he wasn't in
Speaker 1: the act. And two I had good memories and want
Speaker 1: there are a number of acts like that I won't
Speaker 1: go see again. So okay, you have those things you
Speaker 1: don't go to the show. Did you grow up playing,
Speaker 1: taking piano lessons or any of that. Ship I grew
Speaker 1: up taking piano lessons. I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: I quit. My mom was like, you're gonna regret this,
Speaker 1: and like it's the like stereotypical. I definitely regret it.
Speaker 1: How long did you take piano lessons for it? I
Speaker 1: took four or five years. Yeah, but I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: it never got to the point. And like I see
Speaker 1: these piano teachers now and I have to give like
Speaker 1: a huge, huge shout out. Is uh and maybe they existed,
Speaker 1: they just don't think exist and maybe where I was,
Speaker 1: But uh, it's fun now, Like I like my kids
Speaker 1: do like imagine dragons and and and Star Wars song,
Speaker 1: you know. I like it's like they do like fun
Speaker 1: things and real things and they're reading music and it's
Speaker 1: like making it fun and making it relatable, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't think it was the way I was
Speaker 1: doing it was like not super relatable, just sitting there
Speaker 1: doing scales and you know, I don't know, can you
Speaker 1: still read music? I could read music for piano, I
Speaker 1: can't read music for guitar. But okay, so when do
Speaker 1: you make the switch? When do you start picking up
Speaker 1: the bass or whatever? You pick up? Bass is a
Speaker 1: funny one because it's the instrument that, like, people always
Speaker 1: need bassis and it's always the one that like people
Speaker 1: before there, everyone was like, you know, like a DJ.
Speaker 1: People were like, oh, I could probably play that one.
Speaker 1: It's only got four strings. And I think I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, my friends were doing a punk band, and
Speaker 1: I was like, sure, this one's got this one seems
Speaker 1: easier to learn, you know what I mean. So they
Speaker 1: decided to do a band before you actually played the bass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean definitely. This wasn't Fallout Boy, but it was
Speaker 1: other punk bands and whatever. Okay, so what do you say,
Speaker 1: mom and dad, I need a bass because I gotta
Speaker 1: be in this punk band. No, no, no no no. It
Speaker 1: was like so scrappy then, where it was just like
Speaker 1: you were trading and you were borrowing, and the older
Speaker 1: brothers had things, and you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: it was like, no, for sure, I think my parents
Speaker 1: actually would have been supportive of me having a musical
Speaker 1: instrument of some kind. But I think this was like
Speaker 1: my thing, you know, like or whatever ports around it,
Speaker 1: but it was like mine, So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: do it my way. Okay, So you learned on the fly.
Speaker 1: You formed the band first, and then you learned how
Speaker 1: to play. Yeah, I learned. I learned how to play
Speaker 1: like in in the practices, Yeah for sure. And you
Speaker 1: know I you know, I could play the guitar. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine playing the bass, especially fretless bass. So how
Speaker 1: long did it take for you to say, Okay, I
Speaker 1: kind of understand that us we're getting there. Still think, well,
Speaker 1: whatever I mean, Lars went back for drum lessons long
Speaker 1: into Metallica's career. Did you ever go to professional or
Speaker 1: try to listen to records try to replicate and learn
Speaker 1: from people who were pros. Yeah for sure. And like
Speaker 1: for me, like a lot of like metronome work and
Speaker 1: and and and timing and and playing things that aren't
Speaker 1: in the wheelhouse to fall out boy to kind of
Speaker 1: like figure some of that out. And like honestly with
Speaker 1: Patrick our singer, like he's um so predator, naturally musically gifted,
Speaker 1: Like it's just to me off the charts. Bizarre. It's
Speaker 1: like when you just somebody you know, like throws the
Speaker 1: ball and you're like, oh, he just like knows how
Speaker 1: to do it. He does that with like every instrument
Speaker 1: kind of you know whatever. Um, he'll help me with stuff,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So now you're playing in
Speaker 1: punk bands, you're in the high school. Is it the
Speaker 1: type of thing where it's extracurricular or is it impinging
Speaker 1: on your studies? I didn't care about my studies in
Speaker 1: high school. Yeah. Well they sent me to uh, they
Speaker 1: sent me to a boot camp in um, New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you went to the boot camp?
Speaker 1: I think this all happened around fourteen fifteen. Okay, what
Speaker 1: was the straw that broke the camel's back that made
Speaker 1: them send you to the boot camp? I think it
Speaker 1: was missing like day eighty one at school something like that.
Speaker 1: I'd like, Okay, when I went to school, it was
Speaker 1: like a police state and if you didn't go and
Speaker 1: you didn't they called your house. Yeah, this was like
Speaker 1: one of those ones where you could figure out all
Speaker 1: these different ways to like kind of uh, there's ways
Speaker 1: to game it, I think at the time, like where
Speaker 1: you could build up your free periods and you can. Okay,
Speaker 1: and this was regular public high school. This is public
Speaker 1: high school. And then thisbly my last year a public
Speaker 1: high school though. Okay, so for three years it worked
Speaker 1: for no because this is like age fourteen, fifteen, so
Speaker 1: this was one year. Okay, that's what I thought. So
Speaker 1: what you're you're out of junior high, you're in the
Speaker 1: HIG school. Okay. Was this out of the blue or
Speaker 1: were they trying to discipline you first? Oh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were disciplining me. Like my parents were pretty pretty
Speaker 1: good about discipline or they were pretty you know, straight
Speaker 1: and narrow. But at the same time, like my dad
Speaker 1: was the kind of guy that would be like Adar.
Speaker 1: We played at this play this venue in Chicago called
Speaker 1: the Fireside Bowl, which is bowling alley, but they would
Speaker 1: kind of like let shows happen, but the guy was
Speaker 1: pissed that shows happened there, which is like all these
Speaker 1: great venues in Chicago. Like the guy like regrettably. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something would come and say, hey I can increase your
Speaker 1: business then totally. But my dad would be at all
Speaker 1: these shows with like the tie in the back, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. My father came to one of
Speaker 1: my Little League games. I mean he had virtues but
Speaker 1: supported me in my dreams by showing up. Never so
Speaker 1: in any event, Okay, why what did they say when
Speaker 1: they were going to send you into Hampshire? Um? I
Speaker 1: think it was like, you know, like it was like
Speaker 1: we talked about like it was like, you know, getting
Speaker 1: me back on the straight and narrow kind like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: And like now it's easy to like look back and
Speaker 1: be like, well it's fine because you were taking these
Speaker 1: these these turns because you're doing art and you want
Speaker 1: to do this that. But like I think that that
Speaker 1: had it gone a different way, they'd be like this
Speaker 1: is this was the turning point when we could have
Speaker 1: gotten you back, you know what I mean? So how
Speaker 1: long did you go to the Hampshire for? I think
Speaker 1: I was there a month. Maybe it's like ridiculous. It
Speaker 1: was like you know those giant like gatorade bottles, the
Speaker 1: ones that like they have for teams or whatever, Like
Speaker 1: one day, they would have you dig a hole and
Speaker 1: put it in the ground, and then the next day
Speaker 1: they would have you dig it up and take it
Speaker 1: out of like just like no, you know, like just
Speaker 1: kind of like how many other kids were there? Oh?
Speaker 1: I would say that there was like a hundred. Maybe
Speaker 1: boys and girls are just boys, boys and girls coad,
Speaker 1: but you were only with boys, okay, And it was
Speaker 1: like all uh I was in there with the the
Speaker 1: lightest record. Okay, that's my point. It's like going to
Speaker 1: jail from the other people. No, I was terrified. I
Speaker 1: was scared of everybody there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, these people are all
Speaker 1: like actual criminals, and so they have to decide when
Speaker 1: you get out or was a month set up in advance.
Speaker 1: I think you were supposed to come to some like
Speaker 1: um moment of clarity, but I don't know that I did.
Speaker 1: But I think you were supposed to come to some
Speaker 1: like I'm a changed kid, or like I'm a new
Speaker 1: boy or whatever. You know. I got something like that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Okay, And so when you
Speaker 1: went back, did you go back on the straight and narrow. No.
Speaker 1: So when I went back, I went to a private school,
Speaker 1: and um my mom was the dean of admissions or
Speaker 1: assistant dean of admissions at the private school. So it
Speaker 1: was very interesting in the way that like, if I
Speaker 1: ever got in trouble there, I would just go to
Speaker 1: my mom's office, and that's like about a hundred million
Speaker 1: times worse than going to the actual I can imagine,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So that got me on
Speaker 1: the straight and narrow in a weird way because it
Speaker 1: was just like your mom's just like at school with you. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you graduate from that school and you actually go
Speaker 1: to college for a while. I did. I went to
Speaker 1: DePaul University for local Okay, how long did you actually go?
Speaker 1: I went for so I know. So when I graduated,
Speaker 1: I went to UM Columbia in Chicago, and then I
Speaker 1: transferred to DePaul and I went there for you go
Speaker 1: to Columbia for like six months maybe I think that,
Speaker 1: And then I went to the Paul four I think
Speaker 1: maybe a year or year and a half. Okay, did
Speaker 1: you fit in inpl I did? I think that? Like, uh,
Speaker 1: in in colleges in in bigger colleges. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit like the movie Higher Learning. You can find
Speaker 1: your like your group. Well, I went to a small college.
Speaker 1: I stood out. I came to l a if I'm
Speaker 1: you know, a million people just like big so you
Speaker 1: can find like if you're at a if. I think,
Speaker 1: if you're in a big enough place, you can find
Speaker 1: your group and kind of find people like minded poll
Speaker 1: and I actually liked, like, I like like the basketball
Speaker 1: players there, Like there was a lot of people there that,
Speaker 1: like I think I would not have probably come across
Speaker 1: or like you know, like had interactions with that that
Speaker 1: because I was there, I did, and I liked a
Speaker 1: lot of the people. But we were doing the band
Speaker 1: at the same time, so it was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: why did you drop out? We were doing the band.
Speaker 1: We were doing Fallout Boy, and it was we were
Speaker 1: doing with the way we did the band at the
Speaker 1: time was like it's so weird, Like you know, I
Speaker 1: talked to my manager about it now and he's like,
Speaker 1: so bizarre he did it, but like we would basically
Speaker 1: be like, well, what did like Molly Crue and those
Speaker 1: bands do back in the day, And it was like
Speaker 1: they we pasted flyers and like stuff like this. We
Speaker 1: were like on roofs like wheat pasting flyers, which was
Speaker 1: something that like no one did at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean at all, And so it was just like
Speaker 1: it's I think that maybe stood out a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: But we were doing about like forty hours of like work,
Speaker 1: forty plus hours of work in the band, and then
Speaker 1: you were going to school for you know, thirty ended school.
Speaker 1: Uh my, my parents did I could take a year
Speaker 1: off to see how the band went, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, and so that's this year. I'm in the year. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're playing the base, you're playing in punk bands.
Speaker 1: At what point do you say, Wow, this could be
Speaker 1: a real direction. This is what I want to do,
Speaker 1: like as like live on it. Um. That came super
Speaker 1: super super super late. Uh, because our band's trajectory was
Speaker 1: like really bizarrely slow, you know, like it's like the
Speaker 1: eight year overnight or whatever. You know. Um. Now, so
Speaker 1: I was like we were playing in it, but we
Speaker 1: were like and we were like doing the band full time,
Speaker 1: but we lived in our parents basements and stuff, and
Speaker 1: we were just on tour in a van and like
Speaker 1: we didn't have label support, you know. I mean, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like Okay, let's go back you're in the
Speaker 1: punk band. What's the evolution there to fall Out Boy.
Speaker 1: We were just in the like a million different bands,
Speaker 1: and I think that we were getting paid for gigs.
Speaker 1: I mean paid in like pizza or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean like not making anybody. It's fun. It's fun,
Speaker 1: and um, are you good with girls at that age?
Speaker 1: Real bad? I was just like fine. I think, okay,
Speaker 1: well this, you're playing the bass in a band, You're
Speaker 1: playing all these gigs. I figured that must do well
Speaker 1: for you romantically in the narrow when that's very important.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think it was like the
Speaker 1: band wasn't like cool, you know. I mean it was
Speaker 1: like a dorky punk band. You know, they're dorky punk bands.
Speaker 1: Dorky punk bands. How does that evolve into fall Out Boy?
Speaker 1: We actually wanted to I think we when we the
Speaker 1: inception of it was like we wanted to do. Um.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I think we got in these heavier
Speaker 1: bands that we took really seriously before, Like, so we
Speaker 1: went from these punk bands, We got into these heavier
Speaker 1: bands that we took super super seriously, like a heavier
Speaker 1: like metal was yeah, metal, hardcore, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: And we wanted to just be in these like heavy
Speaker 1: bands that we like kind of like looked up to
Speaker 1: um and that was like a grind, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like because you're screaming and you're you know,
Speaker 1: like it was just kind of thankless. I think, unless
Speaker 1: you're in one of those big bands, it's a little
Speaker 1: thankless and you just do it over night in, night out.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to do something that was just fun
Speaker 1: on the side, and that's what fall Boy was. Okay,
Speaker 1: And but it was different people originally, right, it was
Speaker 1: all the same people except for the drummer was different, okay,
Speaker 1: So they were all and was everybody agreeing that this
Speaker 1: would be a good thing to do, agreeing that it
Speaker 1: would be a fun thing to do. I don't think that.
Speaker 1: It was almost like Clay grishasen. You know, the innovator's dilemma.
Speaker 1: You have a disruption, At what point do you realize
Speaker 1: that's more successful than the scream? Oh thing? Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's a good um, you know, I guess at the
Speaker 1: point when you're playing. We were playing shows in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and well, first it became that our friends, more than
Speaker 1: just our friends were coming to the shows. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just people we were like begging to come to the shows,
Speaker 1: and this is like pre really the internet wasn't what
Speaker 1: the internet is now, you know what I mean, So
Speaker 1: like this is what one but like it just wasn't
Speaker 1: like there was like chat rooms and like email lists
Speaker 1: and there was message boards, but they weren't really what
Speaker 1: they are now, you know what I mean. And so
Speaker 1: it's turned from more than just our friends coming two
Speaker 1: shows to the fire Marshal showing up at like every
Speaker 1: show that we played in Chicago and being like this
Speaker 1: show shut down, there's too many people? How many people?
Speaker 1: It would be like we would be in like a
Speaker 1: Knights of Columbus hall that fit like two people and
Speaker 1: we would try to put like seven people in it,
Speaker 1: I mean, and it would be like and every show
Speaker 1: got shut down. Okay, how much do you think was
Speaker 1: word of mouth? And how much do you think was
Speaker 1: was sheer elbow grease with your promotion with with the
Speaker 1: flyers and all the pasting up the everything. People always
Speaker 1: ask this, you know, like they're like, how much of
Speaker 1: it you know? How much do we need to go
Speaker 1: on tour versus how much do we you know, need
Speaker 1: to be in the studio and how much you know
Speaker 1: is you know, and I think you have to do
Speaker 1: it all and to me, you know, like I think
Speaker 1: there isn't intangible like when the four of us are
Speaker 1: on stage, it's for some reason different than when one
Speaker 1: of us does a different day or something like that,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason that is. But I do think that,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you're not gonna get up tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning and go and do the radio interview, someone else
Speaker 1: is gonna go do it, you know. I mean like
Speaker 1: there is like something to be said for like this
Speaker 1: is you need to be ambitious and go out And
Speaker 1: do you still feel that today twenty years later? Sure
Speaker 1: it's in a different way, but yeah, absolutely, Well I
Speaker 1: don't think you can go right the same like punk
Speaker 1: record when you have like kids and you're debating whether
Speaker 1: they should be in like a monostory school or not.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like it's not going to sound the same.
Speaker 1: But I do think that's what like the Hella Mega
Speaker 1: toward the Stadium tour is to me, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like it's like we wouldn't do that unless
Speaker 1: we were there was an ambition to be in a
Speaker 1: state siphically about the music. Obviously you have your well
Speaker 1: known tracks if the audience wants to hear in today's
Speaker 1: are Although you have a very loyal fan base, how
Speaker 1: do you feel not making the record but playing that
Speaker 1: stuff live? And how much do you want to play live?
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good question. Um. I think for a
Speaker 1: band like us, it's like our our things always our
Speaker 1: our attempt has always been to create a culture. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think that just sitting at home will
Speaker 1: be you know, in the sandbox will really work, you know,
Speaker 1: in the sandboxing living room. Um. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean, like playing live becomes different and
Speaker 1: like how much how many of the songs are you playing?
Speaker 1: Like we're playing a seventy minutes set in stadiums and
Speaker 1: so we got to like figure out what that would
Speaker 1: be and what songs we should be playing. But um,
Speaker 1: we're I think we're Our band is really interesting in
Speaker 1: the way that like we have one full kind of
Speaker 1: like the music business is probably has the biggest chasm
Speaker 1: that it's ever had in my in my time of
Speaker 1: being alive, between the old business and the new business,
Speaker 1: and our band is a band that's like got a
Speaker 1: foot in both, like has seen both a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's it's interesting and like, you know,
Speaker 1: like some people will be like, you know, like you
Speaker 1: guys should only do singles or you know, like the
Speaker 1: album doesn't matter, and like for us, it's like we're
Speaker 1: kind of like all over the place, and I think
Speaker 1: we have to do what makes the most sense authentically,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's like that will be the
Speaker 1: only payoff for us. I think chasing a thing or
Speaker 1: whatever like won't. That won't work. Okay, But most acts
Speaker 1: in general, okay, they have assuming they have hits, they
Speaker 1: have their hit period and then they're encased in amber
Speaker 1: and they just basically play those hips until nobody wants
Speaker 1: to see them anymore to every increasing crowds. So I
Speaker 1: was talking to Pete Tongue and he talking about in
Speaker 1: terms of DJs, and he says, well, you need to
Speaker 1: reinvent yourself. Do you feel that at all of fawom? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's really it's a it's an interesting time. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting in the way that like, when you've been
Speaker 1: doing anything for twenty years, how do you have inspiration
Speaker 1: that's different than you had twenty years ago when you
Speaker 1: were probably hungrier and you wanted it more and you
Speaker 1: were you've never done it before, you know, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that you have what a lifetime to
Speaker 1: write your first song whatever it is, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And and to me, it's like that's why
Speaker 1: we worked with We worked with this kid, Burner Boy
Speaker 1: from Lagos on the last record. Like, I just think
Speaker 1: you have to kind of like, uh, go outside your
Speaker 1: comfort zone in order to find new things. There's just
Speaker 1: a fine line in the way that like there's a
Speaker 1: difference between us going and working with burna boy uh
Speaker 1: and writing a song with him than like me feeling
Speaker 1: extreme anxiety to have an account on like TikTok, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I think there's a difference. One like
Speaker 1: feels like natural and something that like is pushing us
Speaker 1: to do something that's beyond ourselves, and the other one
Speaker 1: feels like you could end up being like the old
Speaker 1: guy that's trying desperately to be I don't know to
Speaker 1: what degree you follow this stuff. But Justin Bieber tried
Speaker 1: to juice is Spotify. How do you feel about that.
Speaker 1: I don't think that Justin needs to do that to me,
Speaker 1: you know the funny the record came in at number two, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, but like to me, I'm like, Justin's
Speaker 1: like a big star, a big, super super famous, super talented.
Speaker 1: If you like watch him. I don't think he needs
Speaker 1: to you know what I mean, Like, I don't think
Speaker 1: he well, hey days of indie promotion. To me, that
Speaker 1: to me, doing that is like beneath him to me.
Speaker 1: You know my question. Okay, let's go back. So you're
Speaker 1: in college. By time you drop out, you take that
Speaker 1: one year. What is the status of the band? We
Speaker 1: were playing this place in uh in Chicago. We were
Speaker 1: headlining finally, this place called the Metro in Chicago, which
Speaker 1: I think is twelve capacity maybe or something like that,
Speaker 1: maybe more may We were headlining it. I remember we Uh.
Speaker 1: I looked at my parents were like in a you know,
Speaker 1: the balcony or whatever, and there was like these floating
Speaker 1: um dildo balloons that were like six ft big, and
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember I remember throwing one at my
Speaker 1: mom in the balcony and watching her like stomp this
Speaker 1: thing into kind of oblivion, and it was like there
Speaker 1: was like a moment where it was like I think
Speaker 1: she's gonna like let me keep doing this, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? You played the Metro, do you remember
Speaker 1: what the payday was. Oh man, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: There was the Metro. I think at the time before
Speaker 1: that there was like they would give a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of tickets away. So I think this was
Speaker 1: actually a hard ticket. But I'm not sure and I
Speaker 1: don't remember the payday was. I can't imagine. It was crazy.
Speaker 1: You have the dial Doo balloons. Well, how much other
Speaker 1: production in the mtics did you have in this show?
Speaker 1: We had a backdrop, which was like a big deal
Speaker 1: because we I think we had weren't able to hang
Speaker 1: our backdrop on tours before that. And that was it.
Speaker 1: That was the production. Okay, So is that the turning
Speaker 1: point in your mind saying this could really work? That
Speaker 1: was the turning point where I was like, my parents
Speaker 1: are gonna let me do it? Uh. The trajectory was
Speaker 1: so slow that, like you know, I remember, we were
Speaker 1: approached by a couple of management companies. They all seemed terrible,
Speaker 1: um uh, And we were approached. We we we reached
Speaker 1: out to what we I think we reached out to Crush,
Speaker 1: who became our managers, and they were kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just like you guys, just do what you do
Speaker 1: because we kind of had these shows where we just
Speaker 1: play super fast stuff and okay, so the Crush was
Speaker 1: the first manager you ever had. They were Yeah, so
Speaker 1: before were that? Who was the business guy in the band?
Speaker 1: You're you're talking to him? I think that's what I think.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to admit it though. But the funny
Speaker 1: thing is usually it's the drummer. But okay, so you're
Speaker 1: making all the deals, You're getting the gigs, etcetera. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is like the times where like, so I
Speaker 1: remember we played we were supposed to play in Baltimore
Speaker 1: at this tiny club in Baltimore, and we drove in,
Speaker 1: got to the club and there was like a sign
Speaker 1: on the door that said the show wasn't happening because
Speaker 1: there was snow or something like that. But there was
Speaker 1: just cell phones weren't really what they are, and the
Speaker 1: internet isn't like what we were talking about. It wasn't
Speaker 1: what it was. So it was like figuring this stuff
Speaker 1: out as like your own booking agent was not super easy.
Speaker 1: Okay at that point, how much were you working and
Speaker 1: how broad was your territory. Well, we started in Chicago,
Speaker 1: the suburbs of Chicago, and we played kind of any
Speaker 1: show that we could. We would jump on stage and
Speaker 1: play on the Piel's equipment. From there, I think we
Speaker 1: played Detroit, and then we played Cleveland and then Indian
Speaker 1: Apple Lists and then we would just we just begged
Speaker 1: for tours. We couldn't really get tours. This band Punchline
Speaker 1: took us out graciously super early, kind of everywhere with them,
Speaker 1: which was awesome. This band um you know, and and
Speaker 1: then you know, getting ahead to when I don't know,
Speaker 1: we we we ended up signing to a record label
Speaker 1: and uh. From there, this band Less than Jake took
Speaker 1: us on tour a bunch. Okay, listen, Jake is still
Speaker 1: working right, Okay, So when you drop out of college,
Speaker 1: I assume you're like twenty years old. Ye how long
Speaker 1: after that did you get the record deal? Maybe a
Speaker 1: year later? And this was a deal with an indie,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Was there any I know that,
Speaker 1: was there any money? Man? We had an upstream they
Speaker 1: had an upstream deal with with Island, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it didn't do anything on the LP that we
Speaker 1: put out, so it wasn't There wasn't really much okay,
Speaker 1: and who recorded who produced it? We had this guy
Speaker 1: named Shano Keith that we really liked. That was a
Speaker 1: local hero that recorded the whole the whole album. So
Speaker 1: how long did it take you to make that album?
Speaker 1: I want to say this is a time when it
Speaker 1: took about okay, So standard would be that it would
Speaker 1: take us three months to make an album, but this
Speaker 1: one we couldn't afford anything. So like there was a
Speaker 1: time when we were we were working at the studio
Speaker 1: called Smart Studio in Madison where they recorded some of
Speaker 1: Nirvana and some garbage and um garbage of the band
Speaker 1: not garbage, and we couldn't afford anything. So we they
Speaker 1: would get us like a case of sprite and a
Speaker 1: case of coke every week, and we were like, instead
Speaker 1: of this case of coke and sprite, can you just
Speaker 1: get us bread and peanut butter and gella because we
Speaker 1: just have any money, um, and we're sleeping on the floors.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, we kind of like people are like, well
Speaker 1: was there, Like you know, like why are these songs
Speaker 1: and the records like these are the only songs we
Speaker 1: had and these are the only songs we could afford,
Speaker 1: so what is the big break? The big break it is?
Speaker 1: So we signed to Fuel by Raman an indie record label. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did that happen? Uh? This guy named John Janet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he called us up and was like, I want to
Speaker 1: do so he found Yeah, and we and I have
Speaker 1: a book, not a book, but I could make a book,
Speaker 1: a coffee table book of rejection letters from every indie
Speaker 1: label on the planet. Okay, so you were working at
Speaker 1: had you worked Fueled by Raman? We sent them a
Speaker 1: we sent them a yeah, we sent them a demo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really We said he was not responding
Speaker 1: to the demo we heard about you. Otherwise he must
Speaker 1: have heard about us from like MP three dot com
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, okay, so he were there
Speaker 1: any moments before Janet called you? We said, oh, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be the moment, but it turned out it wasn't.
Speaker 1: There were other labels that I really wished we'd I
Speaker 1: really wanted to sign to UM and they just didn't.
Speaker 1: We just didn't sign us. Okay, so Janet calls you
Speaker 1: when you say, yes, he called us and like, I'm
Speaker 1: you know John Janet and and and I've run this
Speaker 1: label with Vinny from Less than Jake and usually the
Speaker 1: other bands that are on the label, and this is
Speaker 1: the thing. And we were like, what is this like
Speaker 1: a sky label? I really know what's going on, but
Speaker 1: he was so excited and he was so uh about
Speaker 1: magnifying our vision that it seemed right. Um, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: we we signed to this little label from Gainesville. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you ultimately went to Ireland. So was this a
Speaker 1: one record deal? How did you work it out? It was?
Speaker 1: It was a one record deal with an option. They
Speaker 1: could pick up the option for how many records? Oh?
Speaker 1: So I don't know if we I think you know
Speaker 1: at the when we when we upstreamed. I'm sure either
Speaker 1: we renegotiated before that record or renegotiated after that record
Speaker 1: for like five or six albums. Okay, so just Fueled
Speaker 1: by Ramen still get a piece of all those records.
Speaker 1: I don't know how their exact money works, but I
Speaker 1: would yes that they got a piece of John got
Speaker 1: a piece of like Futures or something like that on
Speaker 1: our next two records or something like that. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna assume it all probably had to change when fuel
Speaker 1: by Roman became a part of Atlantic Records. I think
Speaker 1: that it probably had to be because I don't think
Speaker 1: Ireland wants to send them. Okay, when you make the
Speaker 1: deal with fuel by Ramen, you have a real music lawyer.
Speaker 1: Uh we did, Yeah, I think we we we have
Speaker 1: the Uh we have the same lawyer. I would think,
Speaker 1: I don't really know, um, but yeah we had a
Speaker 1: real music layer. Because Crush was smart about that. I
Speaker 1: would say, Okay, you were with Crush before you were
Speaker 1: with Janet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they helped us. They were
Speaker 1: pretty instrumental in getting us there. Okay, so the record
Speaker 1: comes out. What is the moment you realize this is
Speaker 1: gonna break? Well, that record, I was like, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna break. It felt good. It was good. It was
Speaker 1: really big underground. We were that band that like every
Speaker 1: kid knew and no adult knew, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: like we were the most famous band with kids and
Speaker 1: no adults. Like we were not famous at all, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you can walk down the
Speaker 1: street and you could not We couldn't open a taco bell,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean like it's uh. And then um
Speaker 1: we signed to Island. Uh. We had this song Sugar
Speaker 1: We're going down on a record from under the Cork Tree.
Speaker 1: We basically were like, we want to do a video
Speaker 1: for this song, and we didn't get any airplay, We
Speaker 1: got no ads, nothing. Uh. We did a video for
Speaker 1: this song, Sugar, We're Going Down. We wanted to do
Speaker 1: a video that just all the videos we were pitched
Speaker 1: were like party in the backyard, the kids are hanging out,
Speaker 1: they fall in the pool like something, you know, and whatever.
Speaker 1: And it was like, these videos are not going to
Speaker 1: be good. And so we had one video that wasn't
Speaker 1: like that. It was or one um treatment that wasn't
Speaker 1: like that, and we got it was like here boy,
Speaker 1: and it was so bizarre. And so we did that
Speaker 1: and our fans were were into it, and they basically
Speaker 1: ran it up t r L and then once it
Speaker 1: was on tr L, like this is the way it
Speaker 1: worked at the time, I guess, And so it ran
Speaker 1: up on tr L and then again this is two
Speaker 1: three maybe, and it got added to radio and then
Speaker 1: got crossed and that kind of stuff. How did you
Speaker 1: handle that you personally? Before the record came out, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, is this thing going to
Speaker 1: be all over because we're on the precipice of something
Speaker 1: either really big or very small. Um And then yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it was like going zero to like light speed,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was strange because I don't even know
Speaker 1: how I handled it because it was also compressed, like
Speaker 1: you know, like it was so many things happened in
Speaker 1: such a little amount of first there must have been excited, man,
Speaker 1: when you realized it was happening. Yeah, But like I think,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people that's always like, maybe is
Speaker 1: it really happening? Kind of you know, I mean, so
Speaker 1: even after it was happening. So at this late date,
Speaker 1: do you have a feeling that maybe you could all disappear? Now?
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that we could go on stage
Speaker 1: and nobody would care or nobody would be there for sure.
Speaker 1: Every time before, let's just as soon, for the sake
Speaker 1: of discussion, you never go on the road again. You've
Speaker 1: got enough money to get to the end, yeah, I think, so, okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go back. The band breaks, suddenly you become
Speaker 1: this big entrepreneur. Okay, you're signing other acts, whatever, How
Speaker 1: does that start? I always thought of the band and
Speaker 1: everything all of it as like something bigger, like the
Speaker 1: thing that I always liked about like punk rock music
Speaker 1: was it was like it was a world you know,
Speaker 1: like you create a world, and you know, like Billy
Speaker 1: Joel and Metallica and all these artists that I really love,
Speaker 1: Kanye Out like all these artists I love, created like
Speaker 1: something that was bigger that you could kind of like
Speaker 1: go there, you know what I mean. And so that's
Speaker 1: what I always thought of it as. And so there
Speaker 1: was merch, but it all felt cohesive to me. Like
Speaker 1: the thing that I like, the thing I've always felt about,
Speaker 1: like the label and and the bands that I've signed,
Speaker 1: is the like the thing that people I like the
Speaker 1: most about Seinfeld is they walk into each other's apartments,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like Cramer could walk in
Speaker 1: at any time. Like it's cool that like they that
Speaker 1: Jerry like them individual individually are interesting, but it's really
Speaker 1: interesting that they're all friends with each other. That's what
Speaker 1: I always thought about, like the the bands, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Okay, So how did you decide that
Speaker 1: you're gonna have your own label and signed bands? Uh?
Speaker 1: I first heard this band Gym Class Heroes, and thought
Speaker 1: it was super clever and didn't fit in anywhere, And
Speaker 1: I took it to my label, uh, to my Too
Speaker 1: Island at the time, and and I think. They were
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't this doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 1: and like, would you have to sign a band? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So I was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: not gonna work. Uh, And so I went back in
Speaker 1: a called Janet and he was Janet is is very
Speaker 1: very very good at betting on horses, and he's very
Speaker 1: good at like, um, like I said, magnifying a vision,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And so he he and
Speaker 1: he understood all the stuff that I didn't like understand.
Speaker 1: Like he was like, we're gonna do an end cap
Speaker 1: here and like this is what the you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And I was like, I don't really like
Speaker 1: I don't want to be I don't I don't care
Speaker 1: about that part of it really, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: I might care about it more than other guys in bands,
Speaker 1: but I don't really care about it. And so he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, let's sign them together, and so we
Speaker 1: signed Jim Class Heroes and then the guys in Panic
Speaker 1: of the Disco um Ryan at the time, one of
Speaker 1: the guitarists in the band was kind of like he
Speaker 1: was like, your band sucks to me, and it was
Speaker 1: like and I was like, what what is this? Kid saying,
Speaker 1: and he was like, oh, yeah, check out my band.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, I'm gonna go check this
Speaker 1: band out and I'm gonna come back here and tell
Speaker 1: this guy how bad his band is and uh, because
Speaker 1: it was just a human reaction. Um, and I went
Speaker 1: and listened. I was like, this band is like maybe
Speaker 1: one of the best man's I've ever heard, and um
Speaker 1: when they called panic at the disco, they where they
Speaker 1: were they were and how what what were they doing?
Speaker 1: Could they tour? No? No, no, they couldn't even play
Speaker 1: some of these songs. They never played lives, so they
Speaker 1: couldn't even play they were I went to the rehearsal
Speaker 1: space in Vegas and they were like I was like,
Speaker 1: play this song and they were like, we can't even
Speaker 1: play it. We don't even know how, like we don't
Speaker 1: even know how to play it. Um. I remember going
Speaker 1: to to Brendon the singer's house. He was seventeen or
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen. He was young, and I was supposed to
Speaker 1: talk to his parents, right, and I was supposed to
Speaker 1: tell him that, like, don't worry, it's gonna be all
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, Like what ye are we in there's
Speaker 1: maybe two thousand six, and I'm like sitting here, and
Speaker 1: I remember walking into the house and looking and on
Speaker 1: the on the table his family's more and on the
Speaker 1: table there was a book that said Santa and the
Speaker 1: christ Child. And I remember in my head being like,
Speaker 1: I'm fucked. I was like, I am fucked. I have
Speaker 1: no I'm in so far over my head right now.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what to tell these people. And
Speaker 1: we figured it out. Okay, you sign these acts. How
Speaker 1: much did you have to do with the making and
Speaker 1: records and marketing them. I really care about the marketing
Speaker 1: because I think marketing, uh, when done right, can be
Speaker 1: part cohesive with the art, you know. I mean I
Speaker 1: think that you when when when when marketing is done well,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's all part of the same thing.
Speaker 1: Like it feels like you're like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is like, uh, it doesn't it doesn't. It's not jarring
Speaker 1: because it feels like you're part of it. When marketing
Speaker 1: is done poorly, it is like the worst thing on
Speaker 1: the planet, and it feels like you're like, well, why
Speaker 1: are they doing that? This doesn't you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel barnament talking marketing you're you're not talking like in caps,
Speaker 1: You're talking more like a ven events in the big vision,
Speaker 1: and like what is the story we're trying to tell?
Speaker 1: And like what can we do that's gonna be uh counterintuitive?
Speaker 1: And what can we do that like no one else
Speaker 1: is doing uh at the time. Um yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that, like my goal with the bands has always
Speaker 1: been to a like the thing the best thing I
Speaker 1: learned from John was to magnify people's vision and like
Speaker 1: and then to tell people to try and tell people
Speaker 1: like you can make any decisions that you want to make,
Speaker 1: because this is your journey and it's gonna be different
Speaker 1: than my journey. But like if you go down and
Speaker 1: close this door or open this door, these doors over
Speaker 1: here will close probably. And my it's been my experience
Speaker 1: that like right now you think that like the only
Speaker 1: thing that matters is through this door, but like all
Speaker 1: these doors that are like way further ahead in the
Speaker 1: journey will be closed because of this decision. And like
Speaker 1: it's I think that trying to be someone's coach and
Speaker 1: big brother and and cheerleader has been like the most
Speaker 1: important part of that and like nurturing that and making
Speaker 1: hoping that people aren't going to make the like big mistakes.
Speaker 1: Okay if this late data you signing bands, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm trying to. I mean it's different now
Speaker 1: because like okay, so when we were signing those bands
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, there's no major labels cared
Speaker 1: about any of it, and um, social media wasn't what
Speaker 1: it is like the people that were on social media.
Speaker 1: It's just not like now it's like every people like
Speaker 1: that's their jobs, you know or whatever. I think that
Speaker 1: like between like when us are the label and crush
Speaker 1: and the team is working really well together, we're very
Speaker 1: very good at taking somebody from zero to eighty thousand
Speaker 1: units or whatever you want to to determine the units by.
Speaker 1: I think major labels are really good, like when you
Speaker 1: need to pour gas on that and you need terrestrial
Speaker 1: radio or whatever. But like I don't think that I
Speaker 1: think that they are particularly not suited for going zero
Speaker 1: to eighty tho and and I think that now because
Speaker 1: streaming is what it is and it's more about having
Speaker 1: bandwidth than anything else. That like you sign everything because
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't cost you any money and like
Speaker 1: you're getting paid based on the amount of you know,
Speaker 1: the pie you're selling or the amount of pie people
Speaker 1: are listening to, you know, And so people are being
Speaker 1: signed now like before. Like so our biggest problem at
Speaker 1: the time was that, like people were in bad management situations,
Speaker 1: and that like sometimes was like a really made it difficult,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like when you were signed
Speaker 1: in you're signed to a bad manager and the manager
Speaker 1: wanted to do just had like bad ideas and you
Speaker 1: were in a bad deal and there's no way you
Speaker 1: were ever gonna make money. That was tough. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: major labels just signed bands and artists way smaller than
Speaker 1: I think they would and should. So what's the last
Speaker 1: band you signed? We signed this kid? Uh, nothing nowhere.
Speaker 1: Um he's the first of the sound cloud rappers, I
Speaker 1: guess to really go into the you know, I did
Speaker 1: that deal with um Fuel by Ramen in Atlantic. Uh
Speaker 1: and and he's like the first of the SoundCloud rappers
Speaker 1: too at the time to a bigger deal. And Okay,
Speaker 1: so at this point, you also had a storefront where
Speaker 1: you sold ship that's dormant at this point. It is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in Chicago. It just was super expensive and
Speaker 1: didn't really make a lot of money. But it was
Speaker 1: a fun clubhouse to hang out and okay, and then
Speaker 1: but also online you were selling stuff too. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you're still doing that. Yeah, yeah I do. I do,
Speaker 1: like a jewelry clothing line online. Yeah, but didn't you
Speaker 1: have a deal with one of the major uh, with
Speaker 1: another company to sell your stuff in their store? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I haven't done a couple of those deals the time.
Speaker 1: I guess you know you're not smiling. No, I'm I
Speaker 1: think that any of these things any I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot in the ways that, Like, so we did a
Speaker 1: bar for a long time. So we did a bar
Speaker 1: where we had one in New York, we had one
Speaker 1: in l A, we had one in Chicago, wan in Barcelona,
Speaker 1: and basically it was like we started this bar because
Speaker 1: we would go to clubs and they would like let
Speaker 1: me and the band in, but they wouldn't let any
Speaker 1: of our other like goofy friends in, and we were like,
Speaker 1: we just want to go somewhere to hang out. Um.
Speaker 1: But you learn a lot about like how much you
Speaker 1: want to manage things and how like whether you want
Speaker 1: to be deciding every night, like you need something happening
Speaker 1: every night in a bar and you want to if
Speaker 1: you want to be micro managing that and if you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be micro managing it is like finding a
Speaker 1: partner that understands the markets. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: the same thing as like if you do a licensing
Speaker 1: deal or if you do uh clothing, and you know,
Speaker 1: like more and more I meet you know, aspiring um
Speaker 1: musicians who want to do all these different things, which
Speaker 1: is cool, Like a lot of them are really cool
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are really big already you
Speaker 1: know or whatever. UM, But I think you have to
Speaker 1: be you gotta be careful like who your partners are,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I think you have to work
Speaker 1: with people that you know are going to be honest
Speaker 1: with you. And I don't know, like I mean, I've
Speaker 1: never had a um a written contract with crush I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember like j D told me, like
Speaker 1: I don't I don't ever want to be in court
Speaker 1: uh with somebody that I work with. And and that's
Speaker 1: like the thing that makes the most sense to me
Speaker 1: is that, like you have to find partners that like
Speaker 1: where you understand each other and you understand each other's
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses and you try to fill in those cracks.
Speaker 1: So how did the bar end? Oh man? So the bar, so,
Speaker 1: the one that we had in New York was basically
Speaker 1: like this tiny, tiny, tiny bar in in Alphabet City
Speaker 1: and it was impossible going to drink when it was filled,
Speaker 1: and we had great karaoke there. But basically they would
Speaker 1: send like, uh, a twenty year old undercover police officer
Speaker 1: like one year and would you know, like it's so
Speaker 1: hard listen, I'm not alreading at the door, but like
Speaker 1: obviously like the tabloid headline, it's like that I am,
Speaker 1: you know, but like a thirty thousand dollar ticket can
Speaker 1: put you out of business when you're a bar that small,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? So did you wait? It
Speaker 1: never became my bar until it was like in in
Speaker 1: the tabloid headline when it was like served to an
Speaker 1: underage cop, it was my bar, but like otherwise it
Speaker 1: wasn't okay. So what do you think of the tabloids
Speaker 1: and uh and social media discussion today? Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the people are able to use social media
Speaker 1: in a way that, uh, you're able to respond to
Speaker 1: things that are you know, like you're able to like
Speaker 1: like I follow Kim Kardashian and she's able to respond
Speaker 1: and be like that's not true. This is true, Like
Speaker 1: this is actually what happened, you know, like Kanye didn't
Speaker 1: fall off a horse at Sunday Service. That's not real
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, like in a way that I
Speaker 1: guess you couldn't have before. Um, And I think that,
Speaker 1: like it's interesting because there's like a whole lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's just like again there's like the cow as. I'm
Speaker 1: so big between like the people who are like living
Speaker 1: old like mystery and people who are like like the
Speaker 1: new age who film everything. You know, there's just like
Speaker 1: a big divide between them, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: that's clearly like a generational divide. You know, I lived
Speaker 1: next to I used to live next to YouTuber's. Um.
Speaker 1: They were the nicest people that I think that I've
Speaker 1: ever had as neighbors. But like you would go, you
Speaker 1: go to their house and they film like absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: you know, right, Well, you know, most YouTubers burned out
Speaker 1: because they gotta to create that content satiate their audience
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. But you were tabloid fodder when
Speaker 1: you were married to Ashley Simpson. So how did what
Speaker 1: was that experience, Like, Um, it's very difficult to It's
Speaker 1: I think it's really hard to navigate life when there's
Speaker 1: constantly headlines of people being like you're doing this, you're
Speaker 1: doing that, You're not doing that, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's until you realize that, like you just
Speaker 1: want to you're just gonna be who you are, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like, and it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: if people take pictures of you, like picking your nose
Speaker 1: or whatever. It is, like you just have to Once
Speaker 1: you come to terms with that, then I think it's
Speaker 1: all right. It's interesting, Like I listened to um Leonardo
Speaker 1: and and I don't I'm not close enough with him
Speaker 1: to call Leo, I think, but uh and and Brad
Speaker 1: Pitt talking and they were just talking about how like
Speaker 1: he was talking about how like you know, his friends
Speaker 1: always find like you know, like try to find ways
Speaker 1: to game the thing where they'll have they'll he'll they'll say,
Speaker 1: like you put on I'll put on your hat and
Speaker 1: I'll put on the sunglass and I'll walk out, you
Speaker 1: know or whatever, and he's like it just never works,
Speaker 1: and it's like it it doesn't, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like I think that like, uh, that relentless interest in
Speaker 1: what entertainers or whoever do, like you know, like is
Speaker 1: like like I had a guy yesterday who asked me, like,
Speaker 1: what my opinion on like the Royal is leaving? And
Speaker 1: I was like, I haven't even really like ever thought
Speaker 1: of I don't know why anybody would want my opinion
Speaker 1: because I just like have never even really never for
Speaker 1: you to say something outrageous. I'm sure you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Um, it's just it's yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: super super super bizarre. Like it doesn't it feels like
Speaker 1: you're in a simulation or something like that, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like it doesn't feel real life. Okay,
Speaker 1: So at this late stage, you've achieved so much, but
Speaker 1: is there a dream beyond this? Man, there's always dreams.
Speaker 1: There's like you know, I remember our band, Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a dream, an unachieved dream that I don't think
Speaker 1: we can't that I don't think we can achieve. But
Speaker 1: it was this is the way that I think in
Speaker 1: our band things is that I remember being late at
Speaker 1: night and I was like, I want to be the
Speaker 1: first band to play on every continent, all five continents,
Speaker 1: emailed to my manager. He goes, it's great, there's seven continents,
Speaker 1: but like, actually it's crazy. Uh and um, so we
Speaker 1: went and we took uh. We went and played in Chile,
Speaker 1: and then we took a trip to the southernmost point
Speaker 1: of Chile, which is called Punta Arenas, and we basically
Speaker 1: stayed in this town, um, waiting to fly to Antarctica,
Speaker 1: and like we were taking a C one thirty or
Speaker 1: something to Antarctica, but it was the runway was never
Speaker 1: clear because we came at the very last time you
Speaker 1: could really fly to Antarctica, and we were in this town,
Speaker 1: in this hotel, and like the last interesting thing that
Speaker 1: had kind of happened there was like sheep or something.
Speaker 1: So we were like we were like the Beatles. Our
Speaker 1: hotel was surrounded with people like freaking out, and how
Speaker 1: many people lived there at that time. I think we
Speaker 1: had the whole town outside of us, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Like it was actually it was just it
Speaker 1: was big because there was nothing else, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Um, And we didn't end up we didn't
Speaker 1: end up being able to make the we didn't end
Speaker 1: up actually being able to ever fly to to Antarctica
Speaker 1: and we never were the first man, I think Metallica
Speaker 1: ended up doing Ittallica did go to Antic, so they
Speaker 1: did that. They were know but like I think to me,
Speaker 1: things like that are are interesting, like the playing places
Speaker 1: that we've never been and uh, like that's what's interesting.
Speaker 1: And like being and learning from the cultures and being
Speaker 1: able to like infuse that back into the music and
Speaker 1: like that's what's interesting. Those are like the like I
Speaker 1: mean the stadium tour um, like these things are all
Speaker 1: like okay, But you're a multifaceted guy. Dude, what do
Speaker 1: you see yourself? You see yourself as a bass player,
Speaker 1: a lyric writer, member of the band, uh A and
Speaker 1: R guy, how do you see yourself? What's the most
Speaker 1: important thing to you? Oh, it's my the most important
Speaker 1: thing to me, um, besides my family. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: I I always talked to my manager J D H
Speaker 1: and I think that you know, we talked about like
Speaker 1: how his book or my book would be titled like
Speaker 1: My Proximity to Greatness, And it's like I just really
Speaker 1: like being around people and like pouring the gasoline on
Speaker 1: their thing and like seeing their thing happen and be
Speaker 1: a part of it. You know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: especially when it's like something that nobody ever thought was
Speaker 1: gonna happen, you know what I mean, or like it
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere, and that's like the most exciting
Speaker 1: to me. And like seeing like you know, Brendan you know,
Speaker 1: backflipping with like Taylor Swift on a you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, like is this happening? Like
Speaker 1: this kid was like in you know, like I was
Speaker 1: looking at Santa and the christ Child at his house
Speaker 1: like thinking like oh my god, like what am I doing?
Speaker 1: You know? I mean, like so those that's for sure
Speaker 1: the most exciting thing to me is like the rooting
Speaker 1: for the underdog when the underdog like gets a hidden
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, like that's by far the most interesting. Okay,
Speaker 1: you pretty much have access to anything. Your name big
Speaker 1: enough opens every door or not. Oh no, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think that like so like man, it's
Speaker 1: so funny because I think the access keeps changing as
Speaker 1: you go up, you know what I mean, Like we
Speaker 1: play you know, uh uh President Obama's inaugural ball and
Speaker 1: and oh book that I mean, I guess it probably
Speaker 1: went through c A, you know what I mean, that
Speaker 1: he has seven ball. The the president has seven balls,
Speaker 1: and there was a youth ball and at the youth ball,
Speaker 1: I guess they probably I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the algorithm is, but they got us Usher and
Speaker 1: Kanye okay uh and you know, like we were we
Speaker 1: were at the We were there and they were like,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of things. They were like, we put
Speaker 1: a carpet over the Presidential seal because nobody steps on
Speaker 1: the seal, you know what I mean at all? Okay,
Speaker 1: And I was like, this blows my mind, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. There's all these things, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: And we were standing there and then you know, President
Speaker 1: Obamas did there standing on the seal and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess, like you know what I mean, like there's
Speaker 1: a little yeah, so there's like levels of all of it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And they were kind of
Speaker 1: like they were like when Potus is in the building,
Speaker 1: they were like, if your base brakes, if your techniques
Speaker 1: to run out, don't run out. They're like, that's not
Speaker 1: you are a target if that happens, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like and it was like, oh, so there's like
Speaker 1: these points of access that are beyond all of it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Okay, Well, that's President United States.
Speaker 1: Especially now in the era of internet cacophony, we have Trump.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows and everybody else is trying to get in.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to reach Obama, could you okay,
Speaker 1: anybody in the entertainment business your name opened the door anywhere?
Speaker 1: I mean, is there anywhere that you can't go or whatever?
Speaker 1: Or you'd have to use your connections? Oh that I
Speaker 1: don't have to use my connections. Maybe there's people that
Speaker 1: like in my phone that I like, Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: Drake in my phone as a number as a name
Speaker 1: to make sure that if I'm overserved at a restaurant
Speaker 1: that I don't accidentally or not accidentally text him and say, like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're the best fucking lyricist of all time, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be that guy, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Okay, So who are you? The type of
Speaker 1: guy who hangs with famous people, the people that I
Speaker 1: think are famous, like that that are famous to me
Speaker 1: because I go, I'm telling you, I'm the guy that
Speaker 1: corrected all of my eighties toys and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I want to meet, like Mr t and stuff. Like that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, uh, I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm asking is certainly when you move up the ranks. Okay,
Speaker 1: forget what the hoi POLOI thinks. Oh you know, these
Speaker 1: are famous people. These people it's like they say, why
Speaker 1: a rock stars very models because they have the same schedule.
Speaker 1: They get up at noon, go to bedefrood in the morning.
Speaker 1: They don't have regular commitments. So as you get closer
Speaker 1: and closer to the belly of the beast, you find
Speaker 1: other like minded people. So there are some people despite that,
Speaker 1: who are still singular, supposedly Fred Astaire, you know, droving
Speaker 1: the limo alone. Then there are other people, Laura's being
Speaker 1: an example. He knows everybody and hangs with everybody. I
Speaker 1: love hanging with everybody. I love meeting. I do believe
Speaker 1: in meeting your heroes or people that you think are cool.
Speaker 1: And if you don't like them, then that's cool. You
Speaker 1: just learned something about them that doesn't change the music
Speaker 1: or the movie to me. Uh. But I think that
Speaker 1: there are levels of access that are beyond you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, I think that like, um, you
Speaker 1: can hang with these like so like you know, like
Speaker 1: you go to parties that there's like tech guys that
Speaker 1: like the billionaire tech guys or whatever, Like they're not
Speaker 1: giving me access to invest when they invest in companies.
Speaker 1: They're not calling me up and being like, listen, we
Speaker 1: got this group together, were the a group and like
Speaker 1: this is what we get. Like I don't get that
Speaker 1: called like I don't have that access, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what that if that access comes with money, or
Speaker 1: if that access comes with success within tech or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, I I definitely can call any
Speaker 1: of those guys and probably go to like Katsuya with them,
Speaker 1: but it's like a different level of access to me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like I don't when I
Speaker 1: go and pitch something, I don't even really want to
Speaker 1: pitch something to somebody who can't green I did in
Speaker 1: the room, like if you if the guy can't make
Speaker 1: the decision, I don't want to talk to right. It's
Speaker 1: not it's just not really were like this town is
Speaker 1: a town where everybody takes meetings about everything and nothing
Speaker 1: ever happens. Makes me crazy. Okay, So what do you
Speaker 1: think about the music today? The like, what do I
Speaker 1: think about how it sounds? Or No, we're in an era.
Speaker 1: I mean this brings this goes into the other element
Speaker 1: that I referenced earlier. One if you go to streaming
Speaker 1: Spotify top fifty, generally speaking all hip hop, a little
Speaker 1: pop okay, And even though there are outlets for other sounds,
Speaker 1: they have a fraction of the mind share, and we
Speaker 1: can also say a fraction of the plays. But it
Speaker 1: gets so complicated that break there. Then in addition, many people,
Speaker 1: uh you reference this a little bit earlier, they're really
Speaker 1: interested in becoming a brand. The music is just a
Speaker 1: vehicle to sell ship, become famous, etcetera, so irrelevant of
Speaker 1: the music itself. What do you think about that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that it's all of these things have always existed,
Speaker 1: whether it's people who put billboards up of themselves or
Speaker 1: their movies or whatever. It's just now we have like
Speaker 1: more of a window into these people actually doing it
Speaker 1: in real time. And we've seen people who found success
Speaker 1: doing that, you know, or doing quote unquote nothing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like we've seen it, so you
Speaker 1: know that it's attainable. So I think people think that
Speaker 1: they can they can do it as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: it does feel like at some point some of that
Speaker 1: bubble will burst and people will be known for some
Speaker 1: of their talents. Um more so, and I think that
Speaker 1: the people listen. I think that, like whatever it is,
Speaker 1: whatever reality show it is, and I like all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I watch all this stuff. But whatever reality show it is,
Speaker 1: or whatever tech game it is, or whatever thing it is,
Speaker 1: like no one when you get your heartbroken, you don't
Speaker 1: go and go like, well, thank god I opened that
Speaker 1: app because I always you know, like that helped me.
Speaker 1: Or like you have the best day of your life,
Speaker 1: You're still watching films and listening to songs, and you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like those are the things that
Speaker 1: I think that, like you set your life by, like
Speaker 1: these big moments in your life by um, I think
Speaker 1: that there's room for all of it. I do think
Speaker 1: we live in the hip hop world. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you're crazy if you don't think that. Um. I
Speaker 1: go to my kids school and every kid is trying
Speaker 1: to be Kanye Fresh, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 1: I see see that happening in real time. I think
Speaker 1: that there's the pie is super super super big, So
Speaker 1: there's room for really all of it, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I think that, but it's very hard to get noticed. Yes,
Speaker 1: so getting noticed now. This is the thing that I
Speaker 1: think with getting noticed now is that you have to
Speaker 1: be unashamed. I had these kids come up to me
Speaker 1: in a parking lot, uh the other day in Van
Speaker 1: Nuys at the Van Nuys Laser tag and they come
Speaker 1: up to me in the parking lot and they were like,
Speaker 1: listen to this thing. I listened to it. I liked it,
Speaker 1: and we ended up having to talk. And I think
Speaker 1: you have to be you have to be cool with
Speaker 1: doing that, you know what I mean, Like you have
Speaker 1: to go out to people and like get them to
Speaker 1: notice you. Um. But I also think that it's super
Speaker 1: super important to be true to who you are. Like
Speaker 1: chasing just doesn't work. Okay, let's assume they give the
Speaker 1: tape to you, the CD that whatever, the file, and
Speaker 1: you think it's good. You and me both know there's
Speaker 1: an occasional thing you here we go. This is stratospheric.
Speaker 1: I heard it once. This is gonna go. It's just
Speaker 1: about assembling the team. But I listened to like x
Speaker 1: MU on the satellite or I'll go through playlist on Spotify,
Speaker 1: and I say, well, that's pretty good. But unless someone
Speaker 1: puts some gasoline on it. Chances I could be the
Speaker 1: only person who heard it. So let's just assume you
Speaker 1: have a team together, okay, and you're uh, forget hip hop,
Speaker 1: it's a world done to itself, another kind of music.
Speaker 1: How do you set about getting yourself noticed by a
Speaker 1: label or by the world at world at law. I
Speaker 1: think you have to you have to do. You have
Speaker 1: to be making great music. You have to make great songs.
Speaker 1: And I think that still great songs can stand on
Speaker 1: their own. Like you look, and if you don't have
Speaker 1: great songs, then I don't know, it's a different story.
Speaker 1: But like if you look at a band like Fun,
Speaker 1: uh or you you know, like there's these bands that
Speaker 1: come along and you're like, it's great, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it's for whatever reason, like it's great. It feels
Speaker 1: like a different era, but it feels kind of like
Speaker 1: this era at the same time. Um, and I don't
Speaker 1: and I don't. If you don't have greatness, then there's
Speaker 1: gonna be And and besides the greatness, there's so much
Speaker 1: of Like is that you have to be ready to
Speaker 1: swing the bat when you step up to the plate,
Speaker 1: Like when you get a chance to step out to
Speaker 1: the plate, there's deliver. Yeah, there's so many people that
Speaker 1: like they're waiting for their chance, waiting for the chance.
Speaker 1: They get their chance, and they don't do it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like you can don't do it
Speaker 1: because they funk up, or they're scared, or they they
Speaker 1: second guess themselves and or they're so nervous about like
Speaker 1: their friends are like that's selling out, and so they
Speaker 1: do the wrong you know. Like there's so many versions
Speaker 1: of it, you know that, And I feel like I've
Speaker 1: seen so many versions of it. Um. The truth is
Speaker 1: it's super hard, Like it's more democratic than ever because
Speaker 1: everybody can make music and there's so much out there.
Speaker 1: It's so hard, Like how does music last anymore? How
Speaker 1: did things stay? You know what I mean? How did things?
Speaker 1: They have to be either really great or really terrible
Speaker 1: to say, and even if they're really terrible, they kind
Speaker 1: of go away, you know what I mean. To stay,
Speaker 1: it has to be so great and it has to
Speaker 1: the Other thing is even the most the biggest people
Speaker 1: on the chart, fewer people know them than ever before. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's harder to get mind here at large and say
Speaker 1: unless you're literally president something else which is well publicized.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you about it. Supposedly you're bipolar. Is
Speaker 1: that true. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I was diagnosed years ago. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's something that like for a long time, I
Speaker 1: tried to self medicate, um, and that didn't really work
Speaker 1: out that well, you know what I mean. Like I
Speaker 1: think I went into the I think that I went
Speaker 1: into the idea that like I didn't need talk therapy
Speaker 1: and I could just figure it out on my own.
Speaker 1: I could use either alcohol or pills and I could
Speaker 1: kind of figure it out, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: on tour and I didn't want to like suppress the
Speaker 1: creativity and that kind of thing. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: since having kids, I kind of wanted to be I
Speaker 1: want what I wanted to be present, and I wanted to, um,
Speaker 1: be able to like kid around and not be kind
Speaker 1: of ruled by my moods and you know, and and
Speaker 1: and at the same time also be like it's okay
Speaker 1: for you to like feel not great, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like it's okay, any of this stuff is okay. It's
Speaker 1: all um. And so I mean since then, I've found
Speaker 1: ways to have like you know, like to to do
Speaker 1: therapy and to talk and to know that like, just
Speaker 1: because you're feeling better, it's not gonna like stifle your
Speaker 1: creativity that kind of thing. What is the number one
Speaker 1: thing or two things you learned in therapy? The therapy
Speaker 1: never ends really that you're tell my girlfriends, yeah, that
Speaker 1: you're never cured, you know, like you just it's not
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Um? And I think that
Speaker 1: the other thing that I learned, um, but it's harder
Speaker 1: to apply, is that you've got to be kind to yourself.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to be I think that. Give me
Speaker 1: an example, being mean to yourself, being too hard on yourself,
Speaker 1: whether you're doing like little like whether it's like little
Speaker 1: things as far as like when you're playing a sport
Speaker 1: or something and you're like I suck and like I
Speaker 1: won't be good, or like my you know, my band's
Speaker 1: not signed or whatever it is, you know, like all
Speaker 1: the you know, like I think that people are not
Speaker 1: particularly kind to themselves because we live in a world
Speaker 1: where you we live in a really fake world, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like where people think that everybody
Speaker 1: else's life is awesome and you feel super fomo about
Speaker 1: everything and it's not real, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's like it's not real, I promise, Like all
Speaker 1: these people, everybody in my phone and every anybody, like
Speaker 1: all these people have like bad days and I do
Speaker 1: really respect that. Like people like kid Cutty and and
Speaker 1: Kanye and whoever, like jay Z like have spoken you know,
Speaker 1: like it's aside from the really young rappers have like
Speaker 1: spoken out and talked about like the the idea that
Speaker 1: like everybody kind of has, like this mental health is
Speaker 1: something that everybody deals with because I think that's it's
Speaker 1: really important and we can still live like these aspirational lives.
Speaker 1: But like there's no like if you're not whole before
Speaker 1: you go into it, it's not gonna fill the whole,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like it's not gonna there's
Speaker 1: not like a whole theory about that that a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, going back to the pre social media era,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of guys who were not who
Speaker 1: are socially awkward, and they felt if they wrote hit songs,
Speaker 1: their lives would work. And when they found out it
Speaker 1: didn't make their lives work, they could write anymore. It's
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean, and for sure it doesn't make
Speaker 1: you It doesn't like you're it's like there's a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like a I'm like a total movie geek, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, more than anything. And uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: there's a moment in Empire strikes Back where like looks
Speaker 1: like going in this like cave of darkness or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he's like, don't my lightsaber and you know, just
Speaker 1: like you only bring what you you take in with you,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you don't need it basically, and
Speaker 1: he brings it in anyway and then fights a version
Speaker 1: of himself spoiler whatever. But it's true in life, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like it's like there's none of
Speaker 1: these like when you come out the other side, like
Speaker 1: you'll have different experiences. But I don't think you like
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't feel the whole Like you gotta
Speaker 1: figure that out on your own, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And do you take medication now? I don't take medication now,
Speaker 1: but I do a lot of therapy. Okay, someone who
Speaker 1: does a lot of therapy themselves. How much therapy is that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Probably twice a week? Okay? How long with the same person?
Speaker 1: Five years? No? Four years now? Maybe? And does your
Speaker 1: wife go to she does not? No, no, no, she
Speaker 1: she is probably the of the more level people that
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. People are on their own, but
Speaker 1: there was sometimes you're interacting in a relationship and you've
Speaker 1: gained these insights and therapy. Are you ever frustrated that
Speaker 1: your wife doesn't have the same insights? Um? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in arguments you get frustrated about everything. But
Speaker 1: I think that there's like a danger in like being
Speaker 1: like I've I've read this, or I learned that you
Speaker 1: can't say that we know, but I'm interacting forget significant others,
Speaker 1: and you see people acting that a certain way and go,
Speaker 1: holy sh it. If they had a little therapy, they'd
Speaker 1: never act that way and it would work out better
Speaker 1: for them. I think I see stuff where people are
Speaker 1: freaking out about the wrong thing all the time, Like, um,
Speaker 1: like you'll be people will be like like mad, they're
Speaker 1: broke because they spend all their money on the shoes,
Speaker 1: but like they want the people to think they live
Speaker 1: in the bowler house, but they're spending the money on
Speaker 1: the shoes, so they're never gonna get to the bowler house.
Speaker 1: And like I'm always like, I mean that's just like
Speaker 1: one specific thing. It like sometimes it feels like if
Speaker 1: you work through things in therapy, you can see like
Speaker 1: the bigger picture for yourself, you know what I mean, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean it can be otherwise it's like super
Speaker 1: frustrating and it feels like you're going through life and
Speaker 1: you don't like you don't see like it's you're in
Speaker 1: the matrix, you know, and there's other people who are
Speaker 1: like seeing all the numbers and you're just not seeing it.
Speaker 1: And I've definitely felt like I've been on both sides
Speaker 1: of that. Okay, Pete, this is being fantastic, has been fantastic.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for sitting here telling me all. Your
Speaker 1: story's being so opens. Okay, until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob left Us