Speaker 1: It's one of my first night show business. Honest to god,
Speaker 1: I gotta do it. Music, comedy, gambling, and drugs and prostitution,
Speaker 1: all in all five food groups in the same night. Hey,
Speaker 1: here we go, Episode three ninety two. Gary Muldeer, he
Speaker 1: just got inducted as a member of the Grand ol Opry.
Speaker 1: He is so funny. I did not know he was
Speaker 1: in his eighties. I thought he's probably a young seventy.
Speaker 1: I did not know he was in his mid eighties.
Speaker 1: I also did not know he didn't live in Nashville. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we talked about this. He comes down once a
Speaker 1: month from South Dakota to play the Opery, but his
Speaker 1: comedy career is so storied you're gonna hear stories about
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra, Andy Kaufman, David Letterman. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to say anything else, but I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of Gary Muldier, and we were trying to track
Speaker 1: him down to get him on this. It was a
Speaker 1: little harder than we thought because he doesn't live here.
Speaker 1: But even as much of a fan of him as
Speaker 1: I am, I still came away going holy trap. He's
Speaker 1: been through a lot, has done a lot, has towards
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Weren't you a bit mind blown? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely. I mean that he used to open for
Speaker 1: Dolly in like the seventies in Vegas. That's a hilarious story.
Speaker 1: So Gary mule Deer. I just can't believe some his eighties'
Speaker 1: This is wild to me because he on stage he
Speaker 1: is rocking man. Here is his highest streaming joke. It's
Speaker 1: called Grandpa. My grandpa used to say, listen, if we
Speaker 1: all like the same things, everybody'd be after your grandma.
Speaker 1: My grandpa used to say some weird things. He used
Speaker 1: to say things like one good turn gets most of
Speaker 1: the blankets. One time somebody asked him what he wanted
Speaker 1: to be when he got out of high school. He
Speaker 1: said no more. In twenty five I have mentioned this
Speaker 1: to him, but Caitlin's grandfather had never been to the operation.
Speaker 1: So I took her and Gary was playing and he
Speaker 1: was laughing so hard, and I also was laughing, but
Speaker 1: we were both just dying laughing, but really love it.
Speaker 1: His documentary comes out called show Business in My Life,
Speaker 1: but I can't prove it. It's coming out later the summer.
Speaker 1: Conan is a big part of it all. These comedians
Speaker 1: that say he influenced them Carrot Top, But here we go.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. It's Gary mule Deer here
Speaker 1: on the Bobby Cast. My introduction to you was the Opery. Honestly, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I consider myself a moderate fan of comedy, but
Speaker 1: I was watching your stuff and the night it was
Speaker 1: just even different back then, it was really different. And
Speaker 1: I can see where a lot of these guys credit
Speaker 1: you as being an influence on them. Yeah. I run
Speaker 1: into that all the time. I have for some time
Speaker 1: and lean up on the microphone a little bit. Sorry.
Speaker 1: They're always asking me. Younger guys will ask me too,
Speaker 1: like do you have any tips for me? I just
Speaker 1: always say I don't see anything. This is funny, you know.
Speaker 1: I just I always made sure I never had anything
Speaker 1: to fall back on, So you never had a what
Speaker 1: do you mean, fall back up on stage or life life.
Speaker 1: I just going to do this, and I thought, if
Speaker 1: I want to do it, I better do it right,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's what I've been doing all this time.
Speaker 1: I was always a little under the radar, you know.
Speaker 1: I was helping down all the time. Did you wherever
Speaker 1: frustrated with being I'll just say what you said under
Speaker 1: the radar. Was therever a frustration like I'm actually good
Speaker 1: and I'm different, but I still hasn't like hit like
Speaker 1: you wanted to hit. I deal with that now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every day I feel I feel that. Now, what are
Speaker 1: you feeling that? Then? Never did? Never have? I just
Speaker 1: always been pretty comfortable wherever I've been. I was always
Speaker 1: I always thought to me, just making seven five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a week in the lounges in the seventies and
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, Reno and Toe and alternating with toppless reviews,
Speaker 1: I thought that was as good as it gets. Every
Speaker 1: so often I would do it Tonight Show. They never
Speaker 1: let me do the Tonight Show at Johnny because drops
Speaker 1: of my guitar. Okay, they hated it, but when somebody canceled,
Speaker 1: they'd call me. I did thirteen shows when people canceled.
Speaker 1: In fact, one time we did a show where the
Speaker 1: guest host canceled and like us, sad to be the host.
Speaker 1: I mean that they just didn't like my props. I
Speaker 1: remember one time I did a show. It was so
Speaker 1: good on Tonight Show. They were still clapping to the
Speaker 1: commercial and after the show, I walked up to Freddie
Speaker 1: Decarterbay I said, what do you think you know the producer,
Speaker 1: and he said, it was great, Gary, but that's not
Speaker 1: the Tonight Show. You want to be the Tonight Show.
Speaker 1: You wear a suit, you know, you come out, you
Speaker 1: get rid of all this stuff, your props, your guitar,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. We'll put you on through or four
Speaker 1: times a year. And that never worked out for me.
Speaker 1: So ironically, you know a guy, would you really will
Speaker 1: in the Tonight Show. Johnny would call him more to
Speaker 1: sit down. That was a big deal. If you got
Speaker 1: to sit down with Johnny, that you were made with me.
Speaker 1: I got to know Johnny better than they did because
Speaker 1: they just met him that night, you know, on the show.
Speaker 1: But Johnny would work the weekends in the main room
Speaker 1: with the Sahara and I was in the lounge, so
Speaker 1: I would go and hang out of the backstage with him.
Speaker 1: He'd come and look watch me in the lounge. Sometime
Speaker 1: we'd sit around later after the shows and talk. I
Speaker 1: got to know him pretty well. And the other guys
Speaker 1: that really did well on the Tonight Show, except for
Speaker 1: two or three, like Steve Martin who played poker with
Speaker 1: him all the time. Nobody really knew him like I did.
Speaker 1: What was Johnny like, I'm a massive late night talk show?
Speaker 1: Like I used to go to library as soon as
Speaker 1: I could drive. Where can people drop me off? I
Speaker 1: would go and watch old Jack Park. I got a
Speaker 1: Jack part microphone. Yeah. Like also that to me, you're
Speaker 1: talking about things. I get just excited about him. But
Speaker 1: what was Johnny like hanging out? And why was he
Speaker 1: doing a set? Was he practicing material for the show
Speaker 1: because he wasn't. He just had a show and he
Speaker 1: would do a lot of stuff from his monologue, but
Speaker 1: he had writers with him, and he also just did
Speaker 1: his own our observations of things. He was the guy
Speaker 1: and what I noticed about him, which is so different
Speaker 1: from today. You have a celebrity out among a lot
Speaker 1: of people. God, you know, they're they're they're just they're
Speaker 1: just surrounded. And with Johnny, people kept a respectable distance
Speaker 1: from him. They always did. And Johnny, we love your show.
Speaker 1: They nice to see you where we saw your show tonight,
Speaker 1: but nobody came up for an autograph. He just had
Speaker 1: this thing about him and he remember taught me one thing.
Speaker 1: We would leave to go to the elevator, to go
Speaker 1: to the rooms. People would talk to him, but he
Speaker 1: would just keep talking to him, but keep moving stop
Speaker 1: And you know today that doesn't happen any Why do
Speaker 1: you think that is with him? Because you know he's
Speaker 1: what was it from Nebraska? Right? Yeah, so he's like
Speaker 1: middle America. You really couldn't define where he was from
Speaker 1: by how he talked to Everybody felt like that he
Speaker 1: was from where they were from, right was it? Did
Speaker 1: he have kind of like a regals a weird word
Speaker 1: because we don't have that here, but like like he's
Speaker 1: some sort of like royalty, and you respected and liked him,
Speaker 1: but you didn't want to get too close because the
Speaker 1: rules were you don't like, why do you think that
Speaker 1: is with him? I'm not real sure because I see
Speaker 1: things like he'd be in the main room and Buddy
Speaker 1: happened to be coming in the next week, and Buddy
Speaker 1: was out in the out in the showroom or out
Speaker 1: in the casino trying to get all the attention he
Speaker 1: could get. He was totally different John. There was something
Speaker 1: about John that people just respected and they really just
Speaker 1: kept their distance and we're just happy to just to
Speaker 1: be able to see him, having him talk to them.
Speaker 1: And there was No, he just kept walking, just kept moving,
Speaker 1: and no one felt offended. Were you ever like Johnny,
Speaker 1: let me let me come on with you? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't you put me? You want to
Speaker 1: call me over? If you're like hanging out? You never
Speaker 1: thought about kind of hopping into that water with him there? No,
Speaker 1: never did. No. I just I was always happy with
Speaker 1: I always worked. People thought I was always the hardest
Speaker 1: working guy in show business, and I was. I had
Speaker 1: to work every night to keep even because I was
Speaker 1: a twenty four year Provian marching powder guy. I mean, jeez,
Speaker 1: I never I went to bed Monday, Wednesday and Friday
Speaker 1: for twenty five years. I mean, I'm lucky to be here. Seriously.
Speaker 1: What was it like in South Dakota where you grew up?
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool. I grew up in a ranch
Speaker 1: and I tried every job after I got out of
Speaker 1: high school. I have a record of Black Hill State
Speaker 1: Teachers College. I was a seven year of freshman. I
Speaker 1: had thirty three incomplete and an A and archery. Have
Speaker 1: you been for a Yes, had thirty three incomplete and
Speaker 1: an A and archery. Yeah. I mean, and that's why
Speaker 1: I came famous on shows by taking my guitar using
Speaker 1: it as a bowl, putting a Rubbert chicken on a microphone,
Speaker 1: putting a cigarette in his mouth, walking up thirty two
Speaker 1: feet and shooting, using my guitar as a bowl shot
Speaker 1: shooting the cigarette out of the chicken's mouth. Back to record,
Speaker 1: I have his own David David Letterman. It was a
Speaker 1: thirty two feet so you set the record on I
Speaker 1: said the record on Letterman? Yea, how many times you
Speaker 1: got Letterman? I was on Letterman about a dozen of
Speaker 1: each shows each one like Late Night and Late Show,
Speaker 1: so NBC, NCBs, Yes, And we bonded immediately when I
Speaker 1: when I met him, I'll never forget. I was at
Speaker 1: the comedy Store a few years before he came in
Speaker 1: when he went up for his first set that night.
Speaker 1: I remember standing in the back room, which all the
Speaker 1: comics did when a new guy came on their back,
Speaker 1: kind of sizing up the guy, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And I remember him saying he was doing
Speaker 1: an editorial. He said, you know, w x ZUY would
Speaker 1: like to take this time to say we are a
Speaker 1: diametric diametrically opposed to using orphans as the yardage markers
Speaker 1: at driving ranges, and that got me right away. Wow,
Speaker 1: this guy is something. So I went up and sat
Speaker 1: till I got off, and we talked and became really
Speaker 1: good friends. I mean, that's that's how we've known Letterman's
Speaker 1: probably I was about probably seventy five something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I started, you know, Tom on stage. It was nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six. I think, what kind of stage could you
Speaker 1: get on? I was at the Silver Dollar Bar at
Speaker 1: the Ward Hotel and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was a
Speaker 1: bus boy at a place called Pahaska Tepee at the
Speaker 1: east entrance of the Yellowstone and the guy in the
Speaker 1: bar had a big country gentleman a gretch guitar, and
Speaker 1: he could play one song, Johnny Cash's Big River. I
Speaker 1: could sing it. So we got to be pretty good
Speaker 1: at every night in the bar, and on our night
Speaker 1: off we went over to Jackson Hold the silver Dollar Bar.
Speaker 1: He got up and played a Big River. I sang it.
Speaker 1: They gave us a couple of free drinks. We did
Speaker 1: about three times that afternoon. We got some food that night,
Speaker 1: and coming back. I remember driving his convertible driving back
Speaker 1: through Yellowstone at night, which was something at nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: and thinking to myself, someday, I want to do that
Speaker 1: song with a band. And then I started putting bands
Speaker 1: together and started in fold music. I think about fifty
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, and I got into comedy by mistake, by accident.
Speaker 1: The B seventh chord got me into comedy my first night.
Speaker 1: I don't i'd learned. I think ten Johnny Cash songs
Speaker 1: and Mule Skinner Blues in the key of E, and
Speaker 1: I went at the song with Johnny Cash's fulsome Prison Blues,
Speaker 1: and the first two lines I missed the B seventh chord,
Speaker 1: and all eight people in the audience who had been
Speaker 1: ignoring me after that time, just stopped and looked at me.
Speaker 1: So I told the first joke I ever wrote, which
Speaker 1: was three snails Molesta Tortoise officer arrives to mccut the report.
Speaker 1: Assist to the tortoise, all right, I want you to
Speaker 1: tell me exactly what happened. The tortoise said, well, everything
Speaker 1: happened so fast, and everybody laughed, and then I went
Speaker 1: back there drinking again. I went back into the song,
Speaker 1: and I missed a chord or two or all night long,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon I noticed I was getting more response
Speaker 1: from my comedy and my jokes, and it was from
Speaker 1: my singing. And I was playing the pinball machines in
Speaker 1: between my sets. I think I was getting fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: for the weekend. I was playing it from nine to
Speaker 1: one with forty five on fifteen off. And this is honest.
Speaker 1: It got through. What happened. I lost most of my
Speaker 1: money between sets playing the pinball machines. And then when
Speaker 1: I got through, there was a lady sitting at the
Speaker 1: bar said, what are you gonna do now? Gary said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna probably get something to eat and go back
Speaker 1: to spearfish. This was in Deadwood, South Dakota. She said,
Speaker 1: come with me. She was the madam of the Pine Rooms,
Speaker 1: one of the brothels in Deadwood. There were from eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six to nineteen seventy six there were brothels all upstairs,
Speaker 1: all along main street. And she was the item of
Speaker 1: the Pine Rooms. So I took my guitar and my
Speaker 1: amp and you know, my little microphone, sat in the
Speaker 1: corner and entertained. The guys are up to see the girls.
Speaker 1: There were miners, you know, from the mining camps. There
Speaker 1: were guys from the oil rigs over in Wyoming. They're
Speaker 1: the cheap herders of in Montana, all kind of in
Speaker 1: that area. And plus the college was only ten miles
Speaker 1: away of Whish where I got thirty drink completes and
Speaker 1: an a and archery and I played until about probably
Speaker 1: until about four in the morning. I'm starting to fade,
Speaker 1: and she walks up and gives me a little black pill,
Speaker 1: but a half an inch long. It was exit drain
Speaker 1: and I took this and next day at noon, I
Speaker 1: was still playing my guitar. This is the honest truth.
Speaker 1: She came up and said, you know, Gary, you can
Speaker 1: stop playing now. So I stopped, and she said, by
Speaker 1: the way, one of the girls kind of like ships.
Speaker 1: So I went down to the room with one of
Speaker 1: the girls. But I just sat there and just talked.
Speaker 1: I was just so high, and pretty soon she looked
Speaker 1: at her watch and said, you know, I got to
Speaker 1: get back to work. That's okay. So I stayed up
Speaker 1: all that day and then I started to fade that evening,
Speaker 1: and so I went up to that madam again. I said,
Speaker 1: if I can have one of those pills again, I'll
Speaker 1: come back after I get through with my set at
Speaker 1: to a Buffalo bar so my first night in show business,
Speaker 1: honest to god, I got into music, comedy, gambling, and
Speaker 1: drugs and prostitutions, all in all five food groups in
Speaker 1: the same night. That night, my first night in show business.
Speaker 1: Say so, were you funny as a kid? Were you
Speaker 1: smart as a kid? And not so much? Like? Did
Speaker 1: you study and make good grades? But did you feel
Speaker 1: like you were quicker at more advanced than others? I was,
Speaker 1: and I could have made good grades. All I wanted
Speaker 1: to do is read. I'm still a reader. I read
Speaker 1: two and three books a week. My thing is to
Speaker 1: My favorite time is to read till two or three
Speaker 1: in the morning and get up with eleven, have somebody
Speaker 1: to eat, and go play golf. That's kind of where
Speaker 1: or go get ready to do a show with that
Speaker 1: afternoon or that evening. But that's I still read two
Speaker 1: three books a week. That's what I do. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: two or three books a week. Yeah, And I'm always
Speaker 1: been a reader and a speller. By the time I
Speaker 1: got into first grade, I had an uncle who had
Speaker 1: a big business. He took me around and maybe read
Speaker 1: billboards to him and read the paper with him at night.
Speaker 1: I could read pretty well and spell by the time
Speaker 1: I was in the first grade. Yeah, were you not
Speaker 1: challenged as a kid intellectually? And so you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't make good grades, because why would you you're so
Speaker 1: advanced anyway, Do you feel like that was it? I
Speaker 1: got by. I always got by. I just always got
Speaker 1: by with where they're always with the teachers or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was where I hung out with the smartest kid
Speaker 1: in all the classes, my friend Building Wigan. He was
Speaker 1: a genius. He'd do my homework for me in a second.
Speaker 1: He'd do all this stuff for me. So I always
Speaker 1: got by doing that. And that's a I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just uh, I had We had lived on a horse,
Speaker 1: you know, at the ranch for ever. And then when
Speaker 1: I got out of college, I got married to my
Speaker 1: high school sweetheart, had to get married. We had a
Speaker 1: son coming along, and my dad gave me the movie theater.
Speaker 1: We also had a movie theater and the ranch. So
Speaker 1: I would just remember how I got into the music
Speaker 1: with that. During the late fifties and early sixties, all
Speaker 1: the top groups came through and there's a two thousand
Speaker 1: dance hall to held two thousand. They came to South Dakota. Yes,
Speaker 1: Spearfish as a matter of fact, it was called the
Speaker 1: Spearfish Park Pavilion. That's where I met Jerry Lee Lewis,
Speaker 1: I met the Everly Brothers, I met the Fenderman. I
Speaker 1: bet God, all these different acts came through all the time.
Speaker 1: The Everly Brothers and I would be at my theater
Speaker 1: the night before on Thursday night watching Kelly's Hotel across
Speaker 1: the street. When the guys pulled in, I would go
Speaker 1: over and tell them, you guys want to see a
Speaker 1: movie to night after if you want to run a
Speaker 1: movie and give you a popcorn. And so they would
Speaker 1: all come over and I'd keep the projectionist over and
Speaker 1: they would watch a movie. Then the next side I
Speaker 1: would get onto the park and sad by this stage
Speaker 1: and they'd see the guy gave him a movie in
Speaker 1: popcorn and say can I got to do a song
Speaker 1: with them, And so this day all the guys remembered me,
Speaker 1: The Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, all of them remember me,
Speaker 1: the Ventures, even getting up on stage. Ventures never played anything,
Speaker 1: sang everything. They just played and they'd let me do
Speaker 1: Summertime blues and mule Skinner blues with them. And that's
Speaker 1: how I got work up. That's how I worked in
Speaker 1: show business and spear feature. So you cut your teeth.
Speaker 1: Basic played musically in a lot of ways with the
Speaker 1: very famous people because you had a movie theater and
Speaker 1: you just kind of yes, traded it out. Yes. And
Speaker 1: I finally decided to put a band together because I
Speaker 1: found the best musicians in the area. Were you good?
Speaker 1: Could you play? I was just a rhythm guitar player
Speaker 1: and I could sing. Once again, I just got by
Speaker 1: because I had the best musicians I could find in
Speaker 1: the area. Had a guy that was an incredible guitar player.
Speaker 1: I mean he played like Noki Edwards from the benchures
Speaker 1: he played like James Burton. He played like he could
Speaker 1: play anything, even jazz. And I found the best drummer.
Speaker 1: I found the best saxophone player, the best bass player,
Speaker 1: and we opened for all these groups when they came through.
Speaker 1: I've got posters opening for the Champs in sixty three,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm right about this. I think the
Speaker 1: Champs at that time they had the song to Quila.
Speaker 1: I think it was Glenn Campbell and Seals and Crofts
Speaker 1: were the first three guys in the Champs. And I
Speaker 1: remember that's when I met Glenn and years ago. Years
Speaker 1: later when I came out to LA I got into
Speaker 1: a group called the New Society and our CEO Vector Records.
Speaker 1: We went into record and Glenn Cambell we had the
Speaker 1: Wrecking Crew to our song we went out on the road.
Speaker 1: We couldn't play our album. You had the Wrecking Crew
Speaker 1: to you had the Wrecking Cup. Yeah. We had Carol
Speaker 1: k on bass, We had Jim Kelton on drums, we
Speaker 1: had Glenn Campbell on guitar, and we couldn't play our album.
Speaker 1: It was just they were so good. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: so good, and we had this album it was kind
Speaker 1: of doing okay, and we couldn't do anything. We couldn't
Speaker 1: play it. These guys were so good, but it was
Speaker 1: amazing for me to I won the calend contest with
Speaker 1: another guy called the Black Hills too, at this college
Speaker 1: that I flunked out of. We went the first prize.
Speaker 1: You got to go to Denver, Colorado, and you got
Speaker 1: to play free at the airbase for the Officers Club.
Speaker 1: They gave you a meal and put you over the night.
Speaker 1: That was your That was it. It sounds like word, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah. So my partner went back to South
Speaker 1: Dakota and I stayed down there and I saw a
Speaker 1: sign up one night that said jose Feliciano coming in.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who he was, but he said they're
Speaker 1: looking for an opening acts. So I went in and
Speaker 1: uh mits. When I met Michael Johnson, you know, I
Speaker 1: had Blue or Than Blue and Let's Spend the Night
Speaker 1: together those songs. Michael and I both got the jobs
Speaker 1: working with Jose Feliciano, and I hung out in Denver,
Speaker 1: did as many bars as I could, and when a
Speaker 1: friend came up to me one day and said, can
Speaker 1: you play bass? I said yeah. He said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going out to join the Greenwood County Singers in LA.
Speaker 1: They're looking for a bass player. I said, okay, I
Speaker 1: could you play bass? No, okay, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I couldn't play bass. Got then we went
Speaker 1: out to California. I went in with the group. In fact,
Speaker 1: Van Dyke Parks was the leader of the group at
Speaker 1: the time, and they had me a bass. They said,
Speaker 1: let's play our hit, went into the Frankie and Johnny song,
Speaker 1: and h I couldn't play, And everybody just stopped and
Speaker 1: froze and looked at me and the guy that brought
Speaker 1: me out and says what And I said, I camp,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty funny. And I remember Van at seeing Gary.
Speaker 1: We're not looking for funny, We're looking for a bass player.
Speaker 1: So I went out on the street and waited while
Speaker 1: they rehearsed. That night, he came out to me and said,
Speaker 1: you know we're leaving it. We're going on the road tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I know a guy. He's a cook at Ledbetter as
Speaker 1: it is Randy Sparks club that had the New Christian Minstrels.
Speaker 1: You can stay at his house the first night you're
Speaker 1: on your own. He dropped me out with the club.
Speaker 1: I went in, honest to God. The MC was John
Speaker 1: duchendor if he wasn't John Denver yet. Steve Martin was
Speaker 1: the magician who had an act that never worked. The
Speaker 1: carpenters who were twelve and thirteen years old, who had
Speaker 1: to sit with their mom out in the in the alley,
Speaker 1: in the car between jobs, between shows, I mean because
Speaker 1: they had a served liquor. It was Mike Settle in
Speaker 1: the first edition. Kenny Rogers was just the bass player
Speaker 1: in the group and that was and then we had
Speaker 1: the back porch majority which was a farm team for
Speaker 1: the New Christian Minstrels. So that was my first, my
Speaker 1: first night walking into this club. Let me walk back
Speaker 1: through the first second. So the MC was John Denver,
Speaker 1: John Denver, he was still do duchendor if he hadn't
Speaker 1: changed Denver yet yet, So that by itself would be
Speaker 1: a crazy story. Yeah. Obviously Kenny Rodgers before he went solo, Yes,
Speaker 1: he was just part of the band and bass player. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he could play bass. Actually was the difference there, and
Speaker 1: say he actually knew how to play played? Yeah. Who
Speaker 1: was the carpenters? Carpenters twelve and thirteen years old? I
Speaker 1: think that's what they were. Crazy. Yeah, and Steve Martin
Speaker 1: was the magician. Was an act that never worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you see that now were you performing? Did
Speaker 1: you do anything that night on stage? Not? That night
Speaker 1: was the next night. I came back with the cook
Speaker 1: and the guy that ran the place, Danny Will and
Speaker 1: his wife was one of the back porch majority. They
Speaker 1: were a farm team of the Christian Minstrels. He said,
Speaker 1: are you old enough to check I d s? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: were you? Yeah? Okay, Steve lied a lot, I know,
Speaker 1: I led all the time, I was actually twenty two.
Speaker 1: I could check IDs. So he said, by the way,
Speaker 1: Michael Martin Murphy's leaving the New Society and they're holding
Speaker 1: you're holding auditions tonight, so write down people's names after
Speaker 1: we're gonna have auditions. So after that, I wrote my
Speaker 1: own name in and I went up on stage and
Speaker 1: I silly thing I did. I just said, I'm new
Speaker 1: I'm from South Dakota. I was just outside and I
Speaker 1: saw some guy having an argument with a girl and
Speaker 1: she's stabbed in the hands with a pineoneil a while
Speaker 1: and she screamed and took off. I said, I'm just
Speaker 1: from a small town. I took my hand on my
Speaker 1: pocket and I had it wrapped, make it look like
Speaker 1: like it was you. That. Yeah. For some reason, Brandy
Speaker 1: Sparks thought it was great, and he said, that's it.
Speaker 1: You're in. And I didn't know any of the songs.
Speaker 1: We're going on the road in two days. Then we're
Speaker 1: gonna go down and do the Miss Universe pageant in
Speaker 1: Miami at at the Found Blue Hotel, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be with the Pat Boone as the host, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna do that, and then we're gonna do Jack Link
Speaker 1: Letters Talent Scouts on NBC, and this is I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything I did. You were in LA for a day,
Speaker 1: like a day, two days, two days at this point,
Speaker 1: two day, two days, the right time, at the right place,
Speaker 1: at the right time. But you also had to do
Speaker 1: the right thing at the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: I was funny. So we changed it to where I
Speaker 1: would just introduced all the songs and made fun and
Speaker 1: I just they always made me sure my microphone was
Speaker 1: my microphone, from my guitar, my post vocal. We're off
Speaker 1: until I learned the songs. And that's how I got
Speaker 1: into it, just being at the right time. Hang tight,
Speaker 1: the Bobby Cast will be right back. Wow, and we're
Speaker 1: back on the Bobby Cast. If it hadn't happened. But again,
Speaker 1: I don't think you get yourself off credit because you
Speaker 1: did the right thing at the right place, at the
Speaker 1: right time. But if that hadn't happened so quickly, do
Speaker 1: you think you to move back home to South Dakota.
Speaker 1: I no, I wouldn't have gone to South Dakota. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what I'd have done. I just I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what I wanted to do even at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I was so happy to be
Speaker 1: into this group and it was so incredible. There's a
Speaker 1: story that I love to tell. I'm gonna drop a
Speaker 1: few names here, so keep your feet. We love the
Speaker 1: name drop. Okay, well what's your feet because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you this one. So I was in the New
Speaker 1: Society and we went down to the Miss Universe pageant,
Speaker 1: and of course these girls hadn't been around guys for
Speaker 1: like six months, and we're out at night. They would
Speaker 1: sneak out of the rooms. We were out on the
Speaker 1: beach with all the Miss Universe girls and one girl
Speaker 1: that got runner up, Miss israel vb Israeli was her name,
Speaker 1: they called her. She was runner up. I gave her
Speaker 1: my phone number and I was in LA. About a
Speaker 1: week later, I get a call from her and she
Speaker 1: had been hired by hired by Israeli Bonds to be
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for them, and she was put up at
Speaker 1: the at the I think it was a big hotels
Speaker 1: very close to somewhere around Westwood. I can't remember the
Speaker 1: name of the hotel, but anyway, she had a suite,
Speaker 1: so she said move in with me. So I moved
Speaker 1: in with her. I was with her two nights and
Speaker 1: I had to go on the road to play a
Speaker 1: place called Bimbos up up in San Francisco and with
Speaker 1: the New Society. I'm up there a day and I'm
Speaker 1: rehearsing in the afternoon at the bartender said, you got
Speaker 1: a phone call, and it was her and she said, Gary,
Speaker 1: you're stuff with the Bellman. I'm getting married. So that's
Speaker 1: quite she wanted. She wanted somebody to had a lot
Speaker 1: of money could bring her mother over. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: So I just got my stuff with with, you know,
Speaker 1: from the Bellman. Now here we go. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: I'm with Deborah Winger. We were together for a year
Speaker 1: and a half. We were in Las Vegas gambling. We
Speaker 1: have run out of money, we have no place to go,
Speaker 1: so we go over to see Freddie Prince opening for
Speaker 1: Andy Williams, thinking we could get something from you to
Speaker 1: keep us awake. All Freddie her quay Lads, which opposite. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we did quay Lads and gambled. So that didn't work.
Speaker 1: By the way, anyone listening out there, don't do this.
Speaker 1: And uh so we gambled away all of our money
Speaker 1: on quay lads, we went over to start Us Hotel.
Speaker 1: I called Jim Hager from the Hagar Twins because he
Speaker 1: was part of that group too that I forgot to
Speaker 1: tell you about within Randy Sparks that night, the Hagar
Speaker 1: Twins were there to send us one hundred dollars. So
Speaker 1: Debra Winger and are standing in the start Us Hotel
Speaker 1: waiting for one hundred dollars telegram to come with some
Speaker 1: money to get home. And I'm walking around the place
Speaker 1: and I'm looking for I'm looking for money that people
Speaker 1: might have missed in the you know, in the pans
Speaker 1: out of the slot machines, and I hear, hey Gary.
Speaker 1: I look over and there's two ladies sitting there and
Speaker 1: they're they're hardcore slot players because if we're wearing gloves
Speaker 1: in those days, the stuff that dropped down was pretty dirty.
Speaker 1: So they were in gloves, they had potbillies, they had
Speaker 1: cigarettes hanging out of their mouth. It was missus Rael
Speaker 1: and her mother and she says, hey, Mom, that's Gary.
Speaker 1: Remember Gary. I told you about Gary. Mom says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember Gary. And there never stopped playing, just talking
Speaker 1: to a cigarettes hanging out of their mouth. So Debra
Speaker 1: Winger waves to me and says, the money's here. I
Speaker 1: walk over and she says, who is that? I said,
Speaker 1: missus Rael nineteen sixty seven. She says, yeah, right, I said, boy,
Speaker 1: do I have a story for you? And that's one
Speaker 1: of my stories. So a couple of things you said,
Speaker 1: I'm just remember to get back to them. But went
Speaker 1: to watch Freddie Prince. Did you know him? I knew
Speaker 1: him very well. In fact, I was on the first
Speaker 1: HBO comedy special, Freddy Prince and Friends. I was one
Speaker 1: of the five people on that show. So his death
Speaker 1: obviously he died very young, Yes he did. That was
Speaker 1: a horrible thing. Yeah, and apparently from what I have
Speaker 1: because again being a fan of comedy, and you would
Speaker 1: hear people just talk about how great he was in
Speaker 1: his brief time. Yes, that he kind of came on
Speaker 1: so strong and so fast. He was so good that
Speaker 1: there was so much potential that we never really to
Speaker 1: experience because he died so early. Exactly what was he
Speaker 1: like as a performer? He was incredible, He was really
Speaker 1: really good. And his best friend was Ellen Burski, who
Speaker 1: was a comedian who actually was with him when that happened.
Speaker 1: I mean like, Ellen's never gotten over that, and we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly why what happened. We know that Steve
Speaker 1: Lebetkin didn't get on the comedy list one night, so
Speaker 1: we went next door to the Hyatt, went up to
Speaker 1: the roof and jumped off into the it's like twenty
Speaker 1: stories down into the comedy store parking a lot with Freddie.
Speaker 1: We never really knew exactly why he did that. I
Speaker 1: think he was steering around. He always had guns. I
Speaker 1: think it was almost accidental, maybe a rushing roulette kind
Speaker 1: of thing. I don't know. I'm not sure even No,
Speaker 1: even the people are really close to him really have
Speaker 1: no idea why he did this. Was he dynamic on stage? Yes,
Speaker 1: he was. There was something boy immediately you were drawn
Speaker 1: to him when he walked up. There was just something
Speaker 1: about him. It was just his accent, his just his
Speaker 1: way he looked on stage. Everything about him was incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you look back at other comedians that you've seen,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Letterman, Yeah you saw us first ever, said
Speaker 1: who did you see? Really early on where you saw
Speaker 1: them went day? They are so good, either in a
Speaker 1: way of like adoration or like at times for me,
Speaker 1: I'm like I get jealous. I'm like, man, they are
Speaker 1: so good, Like, who was that for you? Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: As soon as I saw him, I knew he was
Speaker 1: going to do well. And we've had a place together.
Speaker 1: I was him and I and Michael Johnson lived together
Speaker 1: for a while. You live with Steve Martin? Yes, he
Speaker 1: was my roommate and he was worked for the Smothers
Speaker 1: Brothers show. I was too irresponsible to be at the
Speaker 1: office every day, so I just would ever so often
Speaker 1: send in stuff. So Steve has been on the show
Speaker 1: about three four weeks. He has contributed nothing. He calls
Speaker 1: me and says, I need a couple of things from
Speaker 1: your act. I said sure, So he gave him. He
Speaker 1: wrote him out and gave him to the guys that
Speaker 1: worked perfectly. Tommy said, okay, you're in. But Tommy had
Speaker 1: come to him and warned him he was gonna have
Speaker 1: to let him go. That broke his writer's block after that,
Speaker 1: so he always gives me credit for that. So I
Speaker 1: broke his writer's block on the Smothers their show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you live with Steve Martin. Like to me,
Speaker 1: I don't know who yours is because I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you this. But if I were to do, like you know,
Speaker 1: my top four greatest influences of all time on me
Speaker 1: at who I not who I've met, because I haven't
Speaker 1: met any. But it's like Letterman, because I saw a
Speaker 1: guy who was a bit of reverent, didn't look like
Speaker 1: what everybody else looked like. It was just odd, but
Speaker 1: people were drawn to him like it's Letterman, it's Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: It's both of those guys, and the fact that you've
Speaker 1: had relationships with both of them. I was always attracted.
Speaker 1: Besides Letterman, I was always hung out with funny musicians.
Speaker 1: To be to this day, most of the funniest people
Speaker 1: I know are musicians. Conan I mean, Roger Miller was
Speaker 1: one of the fastest and quickest I've ever known. But
Speaker 1: people like at Jack Benny was my influence who played
Speaker 1: a violin me. He could really play. But to this day,
Speaker 1: I noticed a bunch of musicians hanging around really funny.
Speaker 1: A bunch of comics hang around is one guy trying
Speaker 1: to top the other guy, and so I just kind
Speaker 1: of out away from that. I was always with musicians.
Speaker 1: That's we get through at the comedy story. But he
Speaker 1: would go out to Delhi and talk and do stuff.
Speaker 1: I would go out down to the strip and that's
Speaker 1: where I met Robbie Krieger from the Doors Sore, I'm
Speaker 1: at the Birds, who I met all these guys going
Speaker 1: way back. I was always attracted the guys that played,
Speaker 1: and to this day it's the same thing. Would you
Speaker 1: play then, so when you dedicated your life to doing
Speaker 1: more comedy, obviously kept playing because you have the guitars
Speaker 1: bay here, But would you try to stay let's say,
Speaker 1: in shape, playing wise in case you ever needed to
Speaker 1: really play? No. I just always made sure I had
Speaker 1: a joke ready and I could. I've never been above
Speaker 1: the fifth re read. That's how I got true. Roger
Speaker 1: Miller said, there's no money up there. He's right, but
Speaker 1: I just use it. It's true, it's true. I see.
Speaker 1: You got a picture of me right there with my
Speaker 1: guitar on this end with us right now. You see
Speaker 1: where it's all worn off up there at the top
Speaker 1: of the all that's cocaine days from what though, just
Speaker 1: slashing at my guitar. Yeah, yeah, like trying to make
Speaker 1: a lot of noise to make it sound like I was,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to be a one man bands whatever.
Speaker 1: Once I stopped doing drugs, I never did anything like
Speaker 1: that again to that guitar. By the way, that guitar
Speaker 1: now has say fifty six guitar players signed on it
Speaker 1: on the front back of it. Yeah. I was at
Speaker 1: the opery I got a few weeks ago, and my
Speaker 1: wife's grandfather came. He had never been to the opera before.
Speaker 1: I talked to you before the show. It was the
Speaker 1: last time that united seen each other, and Vince was playing.
Speaker 1: You were playing, and I was telling him. I was like, Gary, hilarious,
Speaker 1: you gonna love him. And he's like, yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: never seen comedy the operate. It'd been a while since.
Speaker 1: And so he came out and I remember him and
Speaker 1: I both laughing so hard. Do you have two you
Speaker 1: have forty years splitting us up and we were both
Speaker 1: laughing so hard. Did you find that your comedy then,
Speaker 1: let's say seventies eighties, did you find that it was
Speaker 1: palatable even enjoyed by different ages or were you kind
Speaker 1: of dialed in more to a certain demo. I always
Speaker 1: worked with all ages, and I just I'm really. They
Speaker 1: always said laughter is the best medicine, and then they
Speaker 1: meant I think they met healthy laughter all my all,
Speaker 1: my laughter is above the belt. And here's here's somebody
Speaker 1: a good example. You take somebody like Andrew Dice Clay
Speaker 1: and the late Bob Saget and they're on stage and
Speaker 1: they're doing the best they can with the audience. There's
Speaker 1: a certain decibel level that they are and then you
Speaker 1: take somebody like Rider Rudner of myself whatever. When we're
Speaker 1: up there at that same level, it's a different sound,
Speaker 1: it's a different it's darker. The other the other comedy
Speaker 1: is darker. Mine's always healthy. I love it when people
Speaker 1: come help to me. And the mom says, I've never
Speaker 1: laughed at my kids before. The kids say, we never laughed,
Speaker 1: see dad laugh like that. They usually the kids hate
Speaker 1: what the parents thinks funny and vice versa. And I
Speaker 1: just seemed to bridge the gap I always have. And
Speaker 1: that's what I was saying to it, like both of
Speaker 1: us were just dying. There's the bit that you did
Speaker 1: at the start of it. It It was I think you're
Speaker 1: playing Ring of Fire, Yeah, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: fell and you drop your guitar pick and the guitar.
Speaker 1: Then you spend the next twenty thirty seconds just trying
Speaker 1: to get the guitar pick out of the guitar exactly.
Speaker 1: I was laughing so hard because that is a brave
Speaker 1: segment to do, meaning you just gotta trust that the
Speaker 1: awkwardness is going to translate into some people and they're
Speaker 1: going to know that it's funny. That's right. It happened
Speaker 1: to me, actually happened to me, and people were laughing
Speaker 1: so hard. I just kept it in. So I've got
Speaker 1: about I got about twenty good picks in that guitar
Speaker 1: if you shake it and uh, and I put it in.
Speaker 1: Ever since then, when I found the Ring of Fire,
Speaker 1: it was perfect because of an ifill Ino right just
Speaker 1: right in and it's oh no, and then right down
Speaker 1: I'm down. I'm down on my knees. So there's the
Speaker 1: guitar mic right there, so I can tell a few
Speaker 1: jokes and the guitar mic until I get them going
Speaker 1: that I can raise get back up again and stew
Speaker 1: the show. I've just always had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: up there. I'm just and there's certain things that I've
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's not many things that I've I
Speaker 1: can't do anymore. They've been doing for sixty years. Do
Speaker 1: you still right. I still do. I still do. Do
Speaker 1: you have every all the jokes written down somewhere? Though
Speaker 1: I do, I have some. I just fact they're doing
Speaker 1: an exhibit of all my old stuff at the opera.
Speaker 1: They're going to start putting it one of those glass cases.
Speaker 1: So I got a suitcase full of stuff to take
Speaker 1: to him. And I've got a guitar case from the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. There has so many stickers on it.
Speaker 1: That's a set lists that I just put on it.
Speaker 1: I noticed one that I just found yesterday. I've stayed
Speaker 1: with Randy Hart. He was my favorite, my best friend.
Speaker 1: Who's the staff keyboard on the opera. I met him
Speaker 1: when he was Roger Miller's music director in seventy seven.
Speaker 1: That's another story. Anyway, I've got this guitar case and
Speaker 1: I noticed something that I said a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I said, it's not who you know in the business,
Speaker 1: it's just knowing if they are really in a meeting.
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten that completely. I saw another one and said, bigger,
Speaker 1: bigger things and never been falling through lately, I've had
Speaker 1: some things fall through. I never dreamed I even get
Speaker 1: close to stuff like that. But I have all over
Speaker 1: my guitar. I've got a lot of stuff. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been writing forever and I write. Eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: stuff is my own. The other twenty percent. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: hear a joke and I and I tailor it to
Speaker 1: my to what I like. I've found a joke here
Speaker 1: just now that I rewrote that. Now I have to
Speaker 1: end my show with. I can't follow with anything. It
Speaker 1: used to be I would follow in my show with.
Speaker 1: A couple months ago, it was a knock at the door.
Speaker 1: I answered it. It It was huge Jehovah's witnesses. I invited
Speaker 1: him in and he said out of the couch. I said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to talk about? And they said,
Speaker 1: we don't know. We've ever made it this far before.
Speaker 1: That's what I always ended the show with. But now
Speaker 1: I just do that with the first thing when I
Speaker 1: dropped my pick because I've got this new joke. Now
Speaker 1: that's just ridiculous and it works so well, I just
Speaker 1: I end with it. You know, I've been with Johnny
Speaker 1: Mathis in the orchestra now for thirty years. Going In
Speaker 1: the middle of his show, Johnny comes out and does
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes. I come out and do thirty. He
Speaker 1: comes back and does an hour of fifteen. I've been
Speaker 1: doing that forever, And you can trace everything I do
Speaker 1: back to the game of golf. When I came out
Speaker 1: of rehab, I needed a new addiction, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, I took up golf at forty seven years old.
Speaker 1: And everything I do now or what it is, we
Speaker 1: can trace it back the Opry Nashville. Now, anything that
Speaker 1: I do came out of celebrity golf tournaments. It just
Speaker 1: that's how it happened. So I want to go back
Speaker 1: a little bit too. Being in South Dakota, you're he
Speaker 1: lived on a ranch. Yeah, you had a theater, your
Speaker 1: mom wash you around. My mom was around, Okay, so
Speaker 1: your mom and dad they were both there, yes, And
Speaker 1: what did they first of all to you? What kind
Speaker 1: of relationship did you have with them? And then secondly,
Speaker 1: what did they think of a kid from South Because
Speaker 1: I'm from Arkansas and my dreams were like aliens to
Speaker 1: people there because nobody left. Yeah, what did your parents
Speaker 1: think about your dreams of music or leaving to do
Speaker 1: something creative rather than staying home. Well, I failed at
Speaker 1: everything else. They weren't really sure that it was going
Speaker 1: to happen. In fact, I just kind of took off.
Speaker 1: I ran away twice from run away from home twice,
Speaker 1: once when I was a sophomore and once when I
Speaker 1: was a senior in high school. But I also I
Speaker 1: have to tell you this is how I lost the
Speaker 1: movie theater. My dad took it back. He gave me
Speaker 1: the theater as a wedding prison to run for, and
Speaker 1: to give you five hundred dollars a month to run it.
Speaker 1: And this is what happened. This is how I lost
Speaker 1: the movie theater. If every ember Ilford Hitchcock's movie The Birds, Okay,
Speaker 1: well but the birds are like so if you were
Speaker 1: sitting in the audience down below the balcony watching the birds,
Speaker 1: what would you do if somebody like myself and my
Speaker 1: assistant manager threw four live pigeons zone into the audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would, Yeah, yeah, that would freak me out.
Speaker 1: Well that's what I did. Yeah, that's what we did.
Speaker 1: It was like live live action, way ahead of your time.
Speaker 1: My dad took back just the worst. Do you still
Speaker 1: live in South Dakota? I still live in Spirit Fish.
Speaker 1: I'm back in Spirit fisht I had no idea you
Speaker 1: played the Opery. I mean, I feel like I see
Speaker 1: you play the opera a lot. Do you come in
Speaker 1: every time for the memory, every time for it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do. I come in from one month, one week,
Speaker 1: a month, Yeah, I do. I'm blessed to have this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just about break even. It's incredible. Whenever
Speaker 1: you were invited, not inducted, to different things, obviously, whenever
Speaker 1: you were invited to be a member of the Grand
Speaker 1: Old Opery, did you sense in any way that was coming. No,
Speaker 1: I did not. It was a Henry show and we
Speaker 1: were under the under the guys they were doing to
Speaker 1: do a new circle show called The Comedy of the Opry,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to interview us about the comedy and
Speaker 1: the Opery, and so it was all set up. They
Speaker 1: had cameras set up the whole thing, but they actually
Speaker 1: they were they weren't doing anything. Marty Stewart was asking
Speaker 1: us questions, and at the end he said a lot
Speaker 1: of times about it. He says, by the way, the
Speaker 1: Grand ol Opry members would like to invite you both
Speaker 1: to be members. We had no idea. I really did not.
Speaker 1: I had no idea we're going to be inducted or
Speaker 1: invited even Yeah, how did you create a relationship with
Speaker 1: Nashville and the opery At the beginning, I think being
Speaker 1: on TNN. TNN was a natural fit for me. I
Speaker 1: got I'd done everything, I'd done all the clubs. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of clubs. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: into other stuff. So I decided to go and do
Speaker 1: cruises because the they were families and they paid a
Speaker 1: lot of money. And I got that. By the way,
Speaker 1: I was playing a golf from it with the Charlotte
Speaker 1: Hornets and my partner was a guy was a guy
Speaker 1: that was I didn't know anything much about him, and
Speaker 1: about halfway through playing golf, he said to me, Gary,
Speaker 1: how come you don't do cruises? I said, he don't
Speaker 1: pay anything. He says, how much do you want? I thought,
Speaker 1: oh great? I said who are you? He said, I'm
Speaker 1: the head of Royal Crimpin Entertainment. I said, okay, I
Speaker 1: just doubled my price. He said all right. I thought,
Speaker 1: oh great. He said, well you know you'll get more
Speaker 1: of it works out than it did. And I did
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight cruises. Wow. So I did
Speaker 1: that and also started working on TNN. And it was
Speaker 1: a natural fit for me. In fact, roy aycoff Aycoff
Speaker 1: asked me to do the first opera. He because he
Speaker 1: saw me on TNN. I think I did sixty something
Speaker 1: of shows with with Ralph Emory and I did all
Speaker 1: the other watch Off Emory all the time, Crook and
Speaker 1: Chase anything. Yeah, I did him forever. They are all
Speaker 1: those shows in Nashville. It was perfect for me, perfect fit.
Speaker 1: And they said, oh, you're a country comedian. Well, I said,
Speaker 1: I guess I am. I never thought about it that way,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I do country music and I worked well
Speaker 1: with families and That's what I've done forever. And I
Speaker 1: was on the last year and a half a Hehaw
Speaker 1: That was weird too. That was great. That was I
Speaker 1: loved it. You know, I want to get to hell
Speaker 1: on a second with the backtrack. So you say country,
Speaker 1: you say country comedian. Were in LA? Were you like
Speaker 1: the country guy? That was kind of yeah? I was.
Speaker 1: I always wore a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. I
Speaker 1: always had a guitar, yeah, and I wore unusual, unusual clothes.
Speaker 1: Did you play into that a lot too? I did, know.
Speaker 1: I just wore just wore boy wore, and I have
Speaker 1: the guitar that I'm giving them for this exhibition. There
Speaker 1: were NBC tried to do a country show once. They
Speaker 1: tried to do a country show. What do you mean
Speaker 1: country show? And like, well they put me Carl Perkins
Speaker 1: with a couple of other people as regulars on it.
Speaker 1: And they tried to do a half hour country Western
Speaker 1: show on NBC and like comedy or music, comedy in music,
Speaker 1: so like he haw, yeah it was and it only
Speaker 1: lasted about one season. But I remember I wanted I
Speaker 1: wanted an unusual guitar, so I always played Japanese copies
Speaker 1: of j two hundreds made in Mexico. There were one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. They looked like they looked a good guitar,
Speaker 1: but they weren't, and I had them at that time.
Speaker 1: Shaneric Ducks came out all over the country. It was
Speaker 1: like it had a name of what it was, like
Speaker 1: oatmeal and then a bar code. Right, so I had
Speaker 1: him put make me a guitar like that. I hadn't
Speaker 1: painted white, I hadn't put a bar code on it
Speaker 1: and guitar across the front of it. And then instead
Speaker 1: of having Fender or Gibson, up at the top of
Speaker 1: the neck. I had n't put Ralph's Supermarket, and I
Speaker 1: played that thing for twenty two years. That's the guitar
Speaker 1: I'm giving them now for the exhibit. But yeah, I've
Speaker 1: played all kinds of different things that I never thought
Speaker 1: much about it. My guitar strap always had a quiver
Speaker 1: on the back with arrows in it, so ever so
Speaker 1: often I would just take out shoot into the audience,
Speaker 1: and then I started doing the chicken thing, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I always Yes, I had three hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of props at one time, and a partner Mulder and
Speaker 1: Moondog Medicine show from seventy to seventy five. We were
Speaker 1: pretty unusual in what way musically and skit wise and
Speaker 1: everything we did. We did incredible parodies on commercials. We
Speaker 1: did historical things which people would know now. You know,
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin running into John Hancock and we're upset because
Speaker 1: Betsy Ross has got a flag that looks like a
Speaker 1: holiday and towel doesn't look anything like it should. Things
Speaker 1: like that. But we did all these things and it
Speaker 1: was pretty amazing and it went very fast. It went
Speaker 1: really fast, and we were way ahead of our time.
Speaker 1: We did in concert. We did Jack Parr when he
Speaker 1: came back on the air, and Jack Parr came back
Speaker 1: on the air. Mulder and Mundog were his favorites, and
Speaker 1: we also were Heffner's favorites. We played every Playboy club
Speaker 1: probably a dozen times, and one night I was playing
Speaker 1: a Playboy club. We got through with our act. A
Speaker 1: guy comes up to me and says, someone wants to
Speaker 1: meet you in the back. I walked back. It was
Speaker 1: Jack Benny who shook my hand and said, young man,
Speaker 1: you have the potential of my timing. And this is
Speaker 1: when I had an afro. It was like two bushel baskets.
Speaker 1: You could hardly see my eyes. I got a picture
Speaker 1: of him and I on a TV show together the
Speaker 1: next day in Chicago. It was Gay IRV Cups and
Speaker 1: Eckers Cup. Anyway, we had a date day day TV
Speaker 1: show I'm on with my idol. He was my influence
Speaker 1: because I grew up with radio TV until I was
Speaker 1: a senior in high school. So that was something to
Speaker 1: me I never forgot. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it is my timing, you know, But again I hear you.
Speaker 1: I think timing is a big part of it. But
Speaker 1: if you hadn't had whatever, that innate whatever, you could
Speaker 1: be in the right place at the right time forever.
Speaker 1: But if you're not doing the right thing and it
Speaker 1: ain't gonna work out, that's right, the Bobby Cast. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. Just
Speaker 1: thinking about your mule deer. They called you that because
Speaker 1: you have to literally spot mule deer. Yeah, really the
Speaker 1: yead I dropped the bus and with the B B
Speaker 1: B stop the bandag, what's going on? I'd be spotting
Speaker 1: mule here with the spotlight. I had a Chrysler Chrysler
Speaker 1: engine in a old for four or five seat Limmo
Speaker 1: and I would drive that and I was always high,
Speaker 1: so people wouldn't even notice in the band that I
Speaker 1: hadn't been to bed yet. We'd drive in one place
Speaker 1: the other and then I do a show, get back
Speaker 1: and drive again. I go to bed about every three days,
Speaker 1: and it will be the host band and be the
Speaker 1: guy that ran the show. How did you not die?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean it all. It took two times.
Speaker 1: I went into tensive care in eighty seven and from
Speaker 1: from a wreck or overdose. Okay, but okay, harvest comes
Speaker 1: to the best. I almost had a stroke and almost
Speaker 1: had a heart attack, and the guy said to me
Speaker 1: when I came out of if you ever do this again,
Speaker 1: you're gonna die, so you better go upstairs. So I
Speaker 1: went upstairs in UH Saint Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, right
Speaker 1: behind the NBC, and stayed in there for thirty days.
Speaker 1: I went right to the heroin Attics because I knew
Speaker 1: they had all the chocolate, and I stayed in there
Speaker 1: for thirty days and gained about thirty pounds. Came out
Speaker 1: and I remember Randy Hart, my friend Randy, who was
Speaker 1: Steve Warner's UH music director at the time. They were
Speaker 1: playing in a a place I wanted to come over and
Speaker 1: see him, So I went over to see them. I
Speaker 1: was house sitting at the time. I'd been on the
Speaker 1: rehab ten days. They left, they left town, and I
Speaker 1: went back to the house, house sitting, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, I can probably do a half a GRAMMU
Speaker 1: won't hurt anything. Because I was trouble writing and doing
Speaker 1: and making a song work. And there was a guy
Speaker 1: in the in the San Fernando Valley that roamed with
Speaker 1: the Pager in those days, and he wasn't there in
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. It was like dominoes. It was free. He
Speaker 1: was never late. He brought me half a gramma cocaine.
Speaker 1: I put out two lines. I snorted one. Boom my heart.
Speaker 1: I hit the floor. I remember crawling over to my
Speaker 1: friends phoned I was out sitting for called ninety one,
Speaker 1: crawled out the curb and waiting for him to come
Speaker 1: and get me. Ironically, when I got into intensive care
Speaker 1: that night, it was the same guy that had had
Speaker 1: me before I rehab and he said now. I remember
Speaker 1: him saying, if we can slow his heart down, he's
Speaker 1: got a chance. And when I came out of it,
Speaker 1: he said, now do you believe me? I said yeah,
Speaker 1: And I never did it again. That was it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why I took up golf. I gave up
Speaker 1: one four letter word for another one. I gave a
Speaker 1: coke for golf. Yeah. I saw you at pell Beach
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, you were playing and you know they
Speaker 1: have everybody do something. Yeah, And I didn't even know
Speaker 1: you were there. And I'm sitting in there and I
Speaker 1: just met Ron Rivera, the head coach of the Cane.
Speaker 1: I'm like, and everybody was super cool. The first time
Speaker 1: I've ever been invited to go up there, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking around and going, man, I kind of don't belong,
Speaker 1: like these are really famous people. Yes, but everybody was
Speaker 1: so nice. I've never been to an event like that
Speaker 1: where there were so many famous people and the role
Speaker 1: was you better be awesome where you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: invited back. And then they're like, here's Gary Mulder and
Speaker 1: I was like, Gary's here, yeah, And then you get
Speaker 1: your guitar and you crushed and you crushed the room.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't even supposed to be on that. I
Speaker 1: brought my guitar. I would be with me. Usually I
Speaker 1: do the volunteer show on Thursday, but I couldn't exactly
Speaker 1: go with work somewhere else. But uh yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: my first celebrity golf tournament was the LPGA. Well, actually
Speaker 1: I was playing golf how to Balbo and Encino in
Speaker 1: San Fernando Valley and I played just a public of course,
Speaker 1: and Smokey Robinson came up to me and said, have
Speaker 1: you ever done a celebrity golf tournament? I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know what they are, so I'm gonna take you
Speaker 1: to one. So he took me to Roy Clarks and
Speaker 1: that was my first one, but my biggest term. My
Speaker 1: first big tournament was the Craft Nabisco, which was the
Speaker 1: LPGA thing the ladies did. It was originally the Diner Shore.
Speaker 1: I remember the guy Terry Wilcox calling me the day
Speaker 1: of my practice round and saying, Gary, You're going off
Speaker 1: at ten thirty with Joe Damagio, John Havlicek and H
Speaker 1: and Johnny Unitis. Is that okay? This was my first
Speaker 1: So one of the greatest baseball players ever. Yeah, huge Celtics,
Speaker 1: like best basketball player and then a crazy famous NFL player,
Speaker 1: the big, biggest every Yeah. And that was my first time.
Speaker 1: I hit the worst drive in my life. I think
Speaker 1: it went about thirty yards. But I've been a Yankee
Speaker 1: fan ever since I was nine years old. Was Dimajo awesome? Oh?
Speaker 1: I got to know him really well. He became my pal.
Speaker 1: Every time I would do three we did three different
Speaker 1: tournaments together. We'd have dinner together every night the night
Speaker 1: before I got to I've Got I've Got the only
Speaker 1: National League baseball signed by Joe Dimajol. I brought the
Speaker 1: wrong baseball one time. He said, you went me ever
Speaker 1: signed something and he said, don't ever show this to
Speaker 1: anybody till after I'm gone. I have a National League
Speaker 1: ball signed to me by Joe Demanjio. But I gain
Speaker 1: And remember one day out on the course, we were
Speaker 1: waiting for a group ahead of us that were kind
Speaker 1: of slow, and he said to me, you know why
Speaker 1: I like you. I said what he said, You've never
Speaker 1: asked about her Marilyn Monroe. Yep, yeah, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things he said. Man, I remember getting chills when
Speaker 1: he said that to me, and he said, I mean
Speaker 1: that you've never said a word. And that's I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Anybody that ever did boom out of his life, it
Speaker 1: had to be a different time without people having cell
Speaker 1: phones and documenting everything that was happening everywhere. Because just
Speaker 1: even Demaggio, like the guy world famous, the hit has
Speaker 1: the hit record for just the guy, and if we'd
Speaker 1: had phones, everything he would have ever done would have
Speaker 1: been documented. How is it so different back then? Oh,
Speaker 1: it was so different. I mean somebody might have had
Speaker 1: a camera, a little disposable camera with him, or somebody
Speaker 1: might have taken a picture, maybe send it to you
Speaker 1: or something. I have no pictures of my band of
Speaker 1: the carols opened for all those acts back in the
Speaker 1: back in the sixties. I have no, no, nothing from
Speaker 1: the news society that I was in. I have very
Speaker 1: few things for Mulder and Moondog. I just things happen
Speaker 1: all the time. I go back and I think, oh
Speaker 1: my god, anything we had, just all the people that
Speaker 1: I met, all the people I worked with, and no,
Speaker 1: it's totally different. Well, the only thing I really like,
Speaker 1: the only thing I really like right now that I
Speaker 1: really like I realized I liked about the seventies. I
Speaker 1: never lost a phone, because there's nothing worse now we
Speaker 1: can't find our phone. I have a friend not too
Speaker 1: long ago, Will Shriner. He's a great comedian. He has
Speaker 1: had his own show for years. I remember riding with
Speaker 1: him one time to a golf course. He's talking to
Speaker 1: his wife and he's driving and he's going like this,
Speaker 1: and he's looking, he's pulling up things. I said, Will
Speaker 1: what he says, my phone? My phone, you're on it.
Speaker 1: Will find your air, you're on it. You're talking on
Speaker 1: your phone right now. I mean that's I see things
Speaker 1: like that. When I get spam calls, I just usually
Speaker 1: say things like, you're on the air, or I'll say
Speaker 1: things click, We're all seeing like Lawrence Country Shrif's department.
Speaker 1: We hold, can you hold? And they go away and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you gotta have something to say. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: interrupt this interview to bring you a message from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: This is the Bobby Cast. I was looking for your documentary.
Speaker 1: I didn't know wasn't getting released. Told released to late
Speaker 1: this summer. I was all over trying to find it,
Speaker 1: like a month ago. Just got sold. So and that's
Speaker 1: why I bring up Conan because I haven't seen the documentary,
Speaker 1: but I was like looking for anything I could get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I saw that Conan was a part of it.
Speaker 1: Starts it off yet Yeah, so what is the documentary?
Speaker 1: When does it come out? And how do we watch it?
Speaker 1: Five years before COVID's two guys came up. We said,
Speaker 1: they've been fans of mine for twenty for forty years.
Speaker 1: They were both in their fifties, since they were ten.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do a documentary on you. I said, Okay.
Speaker 1: Then I start following on all the scent, everything you've
Speaker 1: got that you did, TV shows, anything you have that
Speaker 1: we can that we can we can transfer over and
Speaker 1: we'll go out and we'll do with all the places
Speaker 1: you played in the early days. We're going to do
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And he said, the main thing we're
Speaker 1: gonna do is we're going to find a guy to
Speaker 1: play you when you were young, a guy to play
Speaker 1: wh when you were at middle age, and then you
Speaker 1: will play in yourself now. And h it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: It's Scott, It's Scott Conan. It's got Jay Leno, it's
Speaker 1: got Steve Martin, it's Goot Kevin Nealon, It's got the
Speaker 1: Carrott top. I was a big because I was a
Speaker 1: big influence on him. It's Goot Callis Cooper. It's got
Speaker 1: Vince Kill, Ammy Grant, a lot of different people doing it.
Speaker 1: And it's called Show Businesses My Life. But I can't
Speaker 1: prove it. And it's uh, it's done great at every
Speaker 1: screening it's gone to. It's it's one all but two times.
Speaker 1: It's one best best comedy documentary. And I'm pretty pretty
Speaker 1: happy with most of it. How do we get to
Speaker 1: see it though? One I Finally it's going to start
Speaker 1: streaming on Netflix and Hulu and everything else again beginning
Speaker 1: of September. It was sold somebody called Comedy Dynamics, who
Speaker 1: have who put out a lot of different comedy things,
Speaker 1: and they're just telling me, the producers just what you relax,
Speaker 1: we got a great deal. It's going to be really good.
Speaker 1: And I say, okay, So I'm just wait and see
Speaker 1: and people love it. Jay Leno called me after he'd
Speaker 1: watch it, said, this is the first Comedians documentary that
Speaker 1: I never fast forward through. I went back and looked
Speaker 1: at some of its again, so that to me, it
Speaker 1: was pretty good. I can't wait to see it. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope we all get to see it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send you. I'm gonna send you. I'll consume it immediately.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send it to you. Yeah, because I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a massive fan. I was just looking forward to the fan,
Speaker 1: not even that you were doing this. I was just
Speaker 1: trying to find it on a Sunday because I think
Speaker 1: about you all the time, day and night, and so
Speaker 1: as I was searching for it, I was like, day,
Speaker 1: I can't find it. And then I finally saw that
Speaker 1: it was a come out out till the summer. That's
Speaker 1: why I can't sleep. That's it. That's me. You see
Speaker 1: that little thing go by your window, that's where it is.
Speaker 1: A couple other things. I just want to bring up
Speaker 1: a few people. I don't know if you've met them
Speaker 1: or not. I'm sure and you're you know travels Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but Frank Sinatra story. I'm the only guy
Speaker 1: I've ever worked with. Frank Sinatra and Willie Nilson in
Speaker 1: the same night. I got a call three am from
Speaker 1: he went at the Golden Nugget and back in my
Speaker 1: proving marching days, I was still up at three am.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm opening the Crystal Ballroom downtown at the
Speaker 1: Golden Nugget. I'm going to have Frank Sinatra's going to
Speaker 1: go open, do forty minutes at the orchestra. We're going
Speaker 1: to close the curtain and they're going to strike the
Speaker 1: orchestra and set up Willie's band. He's going to do
Speaker 1: two hours. Who wants you to go out and do
Speaker 1: in front of the curtain whatever, how much time we need.
Speaker 1: So the first night Frank did the show and he
Speaker 1: stayed over to watch me and little of Willie. So
Speaker 1: after after they opened up and Willie goes into a song,
Speaker 1: I'm walking backstage and Jillie, who was Sinatra's guy, says,
Speaker 1: the man wants to see you. So I walk over
Speaker 1: to Sinatra and he puts his hand on my shoulder
Speaker 1: and he says, you're a very unusual young man. And
Speaker 1: then I look at Jillie and says, I'd say kid,
Speaker 1: I walked away. That's the only thing. But I got
Speaker 1: to know Barbara really well. I did twenty six Sinatra
Speaker 1: tournaments with Barbara Sinatra's Children's Foundation, so I got to
Speaker 1: know her really well. And I never got to see
Speaker 1: him again, never met him again, but Tom Dreeson opened
Speaker 1: for him for fourteen years. You know, Dreeson was with
Speaker 1: him a lot. But yeah, that was my deal with Sinatra.
Speaker 1: Ray Charles, Ray Charles, Randy Hart, who's the keyboard player
Speaker 1: now at the Opera. He was by guy at the time,
Speaker 1: just him and I went out and h we played
Speaker 1: there's a thing with Ray Charles. You might have ever
Speaker 1: heard it, but when Race who Ray fires his guitar
Speaker 1: player in the middle, that's Randy's recording on a little
Speaker 1: cassette sitting in a booth with with a with a
Speaker 1: girl and he punched the little cassette in That was
Speaker 1: That was the night we were working with him, him
Speaker 1: and we did Frank Sinatra at there, but then we
Speaker 1: did uh Roy Orbison, and we did Merle Haggard. We
Speaker 1: did all three of those at her at the time,
Speaker 1: but that was Randy's recording. You hear that. Did you
Speaker 1: ever meet or spending time with Andy Kaffin? Yes, Andy
Speaker 1: Kaufin was the only time I ever saw Andy Brake
Speaker 1: was when he was that character with a character and
Speaker 1: he had to brows on his on his arms and talk.
Speaker 1: You know, he had the character and ever went out
Speaker 1: of it, never came out of it. We went to
Speaker 1: the restroom together at the improv and we were standing
Speaker 1: to the urinals and nobody'd ever seen nobody had ever
Speaker 1: seen Andy break. And we're standing there and Kaufman looks over.
Speaker 1: He says, Yielder, how are you doing in his regular voice,
Speaker 1: good man, He says you, I've never heard you talk
Speaker 1: like this. He said, this is it. And we've been
Speaker 1: back and finished our business, went back out and he
Speaker 1: was that guy again, and then I never never saw
Speaker 1: him break. That's the way time ever. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: great memory of Andy Kaufman. Yeah, it's like you have
Speaker 1: a really great memory of Frank Sinatra one. Yeah, one
Speaker 1: of Kaufman. Yeah, and you did a Letterman, you said twice,
Speaker 1: but two different versions of the show. I did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did, probably Tana Beach, what kind of guy was
Speaker 1: Dave when when the show wasn't on and the show
Speaker 1: wasn't on. He's very private man, very private. I remember
Speaker 1: out of all those shows, maybe going back after the show,
Speaker 1: had the show, had dinner with him once before the
Speaker 1: show at one of the shows, and went up maybe
Speaker 1: two times after the US after the shows. Because David,
Speaker 1: as soon as the show's over, he's back watching it,
Speaker 1: every bit of it, to see what he liked, what
Speaker 1: he didn't like. He was never satisfied. I never saw
Speaker 1: David satisfied completely. He'd walk off stage would he would
Speaker 1: do a great show, but there was always something he
Speaker 1: did he didn't like it. It was the same way
Speaker 1: with watching the show afterwards. And pretty soon it got
Speaker 1: to where I think, you know, that was what I
Speaker 1: felt like, I'd say, Dave, and I see after the show,
Speaker 1: I just kind of knew that he was more comfortable being,
Speaker 1: you know, saying he got he almost lived there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was lit at the studio. You know what about
Speaker 1: Dolly early Dolly like you guys younger. Wow, I got
Speaker 1: a call to they're gonna do Dolly at the Riviera.
Speaker 1: She can make the most money anyone's ever made, more
Speaker 1: than Sinatra. They're gonna put just Dolly on the on
Speaker 1: the thing, on the thing, and they're gonna have just Dolly.
Speaker 1: And she was getting three and fifty thousand, and they
Speaker 1: wanted me to open for for thirty five hundred. I said, okay.
Speaker 1: So the place is packed every night. You hear the
Speaker 1: announcer going to gentlemen, welcome to Dolly Parton show. That
Speaker 1: people just screaming and yelling and clapping, and you hear
Speaker 1: and her please welcome Gary Guilder, which nobody ever heard.
Speaker 1: And maybe ten people out of the audience knew who
Speaker 1: I was. And I get out to the audis and
Speaker 1: it took me about ten fifteen minutes to get him
Speaker 1: settled down because they were shocked to see me walk out.
Speaker 1: I got no building at all. And but it's funny
Speaker 1: that Dolly was just so down home offstage backstage. I
Speaker 1: met her the first day. She was ironing her own
Speaker 1: clothes in her dress room when I walked by and
Speaker 1: I saw this, I saw her. She was just this
Speaker 1: little tiny thing, without a wig, and it took me
Speaker 1: a minute to say, Oh, Dolly, and she's come on in, Gary,
Speaker 1: Gary Muller, I love your stuff, Come on in. We
Speaker 1: talked and became friends. But she was just so natural.
Speaker 1: Just so I remember one thing that happened with that show.
Speaker 1: I remember Mike Douglas came out on a Friday night
Speaker 1: with his wife to Dolly the sag Award and they
Speaker 1: were going to do it in the midd her show.
Speaker 1: And so Mike, Mike Douglas is standing at the counter
Speaker 1: to check encounter at the hotel because his wife didn't
Speaker 1: like the room and she's bored, and she's playing a
Speaker 1: progressive slot machine in the middle of the lobby and
Speaker 1: she got twenty bucks one or to play it and
Speaker 1: it went off and she had thirty thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: guys have been playing that machine for weeks and weeks
Speaker 1: and weeks, and she goes ooh, and they said, we
Speaker 1: got to put the money in these little trays, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to touch that stuff. So they put
Speaker 1: the money into trays for it, and now you have
Speaker 1: to come over to they have to go over to
Speaker 1: the you know, to the cage. We have to ride
Speaker 1: out of check and we do this all this stuff
Speaker 1: and taxes, and really he said, yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: do that, so she would just say okay, all right,
Speaker 1: going over and doing all this stuff and like oh geez,
Speaker 1: and hearing her that night saying, you can't believe what
Speaker 1: I had to go through to win thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that. I got three final questions for you,
Speaker 1: all right. Number one, why are you still going so hard?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't. I can't stop. Everybody I've
Speaker 1: seen that stop can't get going again. Plus I love it.
Speaker 1: I just am so happy to be right here where
Speaker 1: I am. This is where I'm supposed to be. I
Speaker 1: just know this is where I'm supposed to be. So
Speaker 1: I just I don't think I'm gonna quit. This is
Speaker 1: not one of the three. But do you ever think
Speaker 1: about moving to Nashville? Yeah? I have, but a humidity
Speaker 1: is really bad for my hair. How good of a
Speaker 1: golfer are you? And where are you at your best?
Speaker 1: I was at my best when I was probably in
Speaker 1: my middle fifties. I was never very good. I got
Speaker 1: down to a fourteen once. Now I hit from the
Speaker 1: red tees because I'm over. I'm the oldest person ever
Speaker 1: re inducted into the offering, by the way, I think
Speaker 1: at eighty three years old. Wow, I think I'm the
Speaker 1: oldest one. But now I hit from the Red Teas.
Speaker 1: I think I'm about a twenty from the Red Teas,
Speaker 1: from the White Teas, I'm about a twenty five from
Speaker 1: the Gold Tees. I'm probably about a thirty from the
Speaker 1: Blue Tees. It's probably at thirty five and from the
Speaker 1: Black Teas. I just want to hit it past the reds. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: way it is. You still enjoy playing I'd love I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. And I like scrambles because they don't have
Speaker 1: to drive. They'll never use my drive. I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: good chipper and putter. Yeah. And does that anything to
Speaker 1: do with this new CDAF coming out in three months.
Speaker 1: Probably not. I thought i'd better put it in. Well,
Speaker 1: I am. We're gonna get to that in a second
Speaker 1: because the documentary in the summer, and I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to the CD here in just a minute. Are there
Speaker 1: any Are there any jokes you don't use anymore you'd
Speaker 1: like to pass on to me. I have jokes that
Speaker 1: I can't use. It anymore, Like, what give me one
Speaker 1: that I can now use that I will always know
Speaker 1: this was a Gary Mule deer joke, but it's not
Speaker 1: politically correct. Okay, well then I can't do it. You
Speaker 1: can't do it. One thing about you're going to see
Speaker 1: in this documentary is they act out some of my jokes.
Speaker 1: You hear my voice and they're mouthing they acted with.
Speaker 1: Actually will see the joke and hear my voice. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think and I'm not going to say the joke.
Speaker 1: Did you do it when I saw you a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, if you operate it was about a dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the final joke about a dog. My final joke
Speaker 1: is about a parrot. M Okay, I guess the dog,
Speaker 1: or it's like the dog. I do a dog song
Speaker 1: for the kids, I do a pit bulls. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: also like, I remember what it was. I want to
Speaker 1: repeat your joke, but I remember being so funny. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't even I remember the parrot one, now I
Speaker 1: got I'm not gonna spoil it. I remember the parrot one.
Speaker 1: The parrots saying something that's a pizzet parrot. Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: parrots say something in jokes, right, Mike, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: the live or the CD. I guess it's not really CD,
Speaker 1: but yes, that new album, Yeah, a new album. Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where have you did you recorded or have you not recorded?
Speaker 1: Ard it? Live? You did a place just before COVID,
Speaker 1: a place called Buck Tower Gardens and uh in Florida.
Speaker 1: And now we hadn't worked for a while, myself, my
Speaker 1: production guy, and we just decided to just do the
Speaker 1: show that night for the heck of it. And it
Speaker 1: turned out to be real good. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: good I was going to be because we hadn't worked
Speaker 1: much because of COVID, and it just turned out really well.
Speaker 1: There's uh. I just had. I've got what I do
Speaker 1: I have when I'm on the road in my show,
Speaker 1: I had I traveled with the Duck and Cover Band.
Speaker 1: That's the name of Mike production companies, Duck and Cover Productions.
Speaker 1: I the Duck and Cover Band. What the Duck Cover
Speaker 1: Band is or tracks of the Opry band? The best guys.
Speaker 1: I've got eight Bears on drums, I've got all these
Speaker 1: great band parks on guitar, I got Steve Warner, I've
Speaker 1: got I've got everybody that say there's nobody with you.
Speaker 1: Everybody no y. I tell people people at night, you're
Speaker 1: going to hear them, you're not going to see them.
Speaker 1: And then I have empty instruments on stage. So when
Speaker 1: it because the guitar break boom, that spot like goes
Speaker 1: the guitar blake, which is ledd and flashes. If I
Speaker 1: want a bass solo, it's over here. Got an empty,
Speaker 1: empty set of drums. I got empty everything is all
Speaker 1: all the guy you just don't see them, but to
Speaker 1: the best tracks, and they tell people you're gonna really
Speaker 1: hear good players tonight, and I do that. When does
Speaker 1: this album come out? We're gonna hope, We're gonna have
Speaker 1: it out probably in October. We're hoping to do it right.
Speaker 1: I want to put some some good artwork and some things.
Speaker 1: And I've got three or four CDs I've had for
Speaker 1: years that still sell. I don't know why they still
Speaker 1: I got one that they did at the Ice House
Speaker 1: and Pasadena back in seventy seventies xits. For years, it
Speaker 1: was I was getting reseisuals maybe ten dollars a month.
Speaker 1: Now it's like three or four hundred, and I'm going, like,
Speaker 1: what in the world it's all from the opera exposure.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. Hey, Mike giving the unsk gary
Speaker 1: before you go. I mean I could do three hours
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah, what is your shortest joke? My shortest
Speaker 1: joke is, uh, let's see my short joke is um.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, god, you know I've got I got some
Speaker 1: really short ones. Um um um. Guy calls up his buses.
Speaker 1: I'm sick. His buzz is, what's wrong? The guys is
Speaker 1: and old glaucoma. He's just what's that? The guys really
Speaker 1: can't see my ass coming into work today. That's a
Speaker 1: twenty second joke. That's the one I was thinking out
Speaker 1: the step. But yeah, I don't know why I thought. Dog,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's his wildest I yet. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's over the top for me almost. That's when
Speaker 1: I saw Caitlin's grandfather freaking dying laughing. He was repeating
Speaker 1: that one when we left Great Yeah, he was repeating
Speaker 1: that one. Look, I'm a massive fan. I'm We've done
Speaker 1: over an hour here. Oh man, I love watching it.
Speaker 1: The opery. You're inspiring, you know to a guy like
Speaker 1: me who does a little bit of music, little bit
Speaker 1: of comedy a little bit, but to watch you do
Speaker 1: it like you're still just so good. So I just
Speaker 1: I appreciate your friendship. Congratulations on the opera. I know
Speaker 1: how much that means to you. Everything. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask you one question. Yeah, do you think you're the
Speaker 1: best note you've ever been at what you do? I
Speaker 1: think you probably are. I think that I've met this
Speaker 1: is the really answer. I probably yes, because I've done
Speaker 1: it wrong so many times that I know if something
Speaker 1: starts to go in a direction that I know doesn't
Speaker 1: feel right, I know how to quickly address, aboard and
Speaker 1: get back on track. Actly. Yeah, same way, so I figured.
Speaker 1: So there's several of us like that. I've talked to
Speaker 1: Johnny Mathis about it, talked to everybody about it. Been
Speaker 1: around a while, see Martin, everybody. Yeah, we're the best
Speaker 1: note of what we do. Ever you feel that about
Speaker 1: yourself to I just feel experience of things not going right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: doesn't make my ceiling higher, But what it does is
Speaker 1: it keeps me real high for almost all the time.
Speaker 1: Because I've messed up so many times, I now can
Speaker 1: see that coming or this coming, so I can dodge it.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, So that's that's an interesting question. I
Speaker 1: never really thought about that. Yeah, a huge fan. I'll
Speaker 1: see many many more times. I'm sure, are you still
Speaker 1: going back to but you're not playing at the Pebble
Speaker 1: Beach right? Probably anybody? No, I can't walk seven miles
Speaker 1: a day anymore. You still enjoy going out there? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I Clint has me come out and Clint has me
Speaker 1: do his turn right every year, and I'm his partner
Speaker 1: with a couple other guys. And at ninety two, he's
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a song. I do a song
Speaker 1: on my show now with I do a lot of
Speaker 1: senior jokes, and I say, you know I'm a senior.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm one year older than Bugs Bundy and
Speaker 1: four years younger than Porky Pick. I mean, and that's true.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen thirty nine, and uh yeah. Four years ago
Speaker 1: Clint was playing golf with Toby Keith up at his
Speaker 1: Tahima up in vermel and Clints and Clint so, I
Speaker 1: gotta I'm gonna be eighty eight this year. Toby said,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? And Clint s, well, I
Speaker 1: got a movie coming up. We go into production Monday,
Speaker 1: and Abby so we keeps you going, And Clinn said,
Speaker 1: I get up every morning and try not let the
Speaker 1: old man in. Well that Toby wrote the song, and
Speaker 1: now I do this song in middle of my show. Now,
Speaker 1: I've never done a song in the middle of my
Speaker 1: comedy act. But and I tell you something. You can't
Speaker 1: believe how many people relate to it. It's really really Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for people that are older. Yeah. The documentary later
Speaker 1: this year. The live album. We'll talk about both when
Speaker 1: they come out and have more details at Gary Underscore,
Speaker 1: Mule Deer on Instagram and just a big fan and
Speaker 1: thanks at the time. Oh, it's awesome. Play is I
Speaker 1: love this episode of the Bobby Cast. Subscribe on iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.