Speaker 1: This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
Speaker 1: and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half and I don't
Speaker 1: have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Speaker 1: Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
Speaker 1: on the road, My DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interesting people about what brings them happiness.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: My guests today have the best name of any band
Speaker 1: in the history of bands. They are two members of
Speaker 1: the Presidents of the United States of America.
Speaker 2: They are on the Mount Rushmore or rock and roll
Speaker 2: What motherfuckers?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what I have to say right away, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: how sorry, I'm because this is the the people listening
Speaker 1: or watching this will not no but this is the
Speaker 1: third time we've attempted this, Yeah, third time, because we
Speaker 1: tried it when I was in my house in my
Speaker 1: apartment in London, and we tried it again from that
Speaker 1: same apartment or something I can't remember, and then anyway,
Speaker 1: here I am in the best studio in London.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 4: We actually, Chris and I used a professional podcast studio
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks ago to pre record something for somebody,
Speaker 4: and we were moved nearly to tears by how amazing
Speaker 4: it is to just walk into a podcast studio and
Speaker 4: have someone sit you down in front of a good
Speaker 4: bike and just have it all be amazing.
Speaker 1: Kind of incredible. It's incredible. I'm going to keep doing
Speaker 1: it if I can afford it. I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: doing it because I think this is fancy. I suspect, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Brianino probably works in here too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think I saw him go by it.
Speaker 2: He does work here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know you were going to tell me a
Speaker 2: story about Brianino? Was it you? Christ? We're going to
Speaker 2: tell me of a story about Brianino?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I've had three different experiences where I've met
Speaker 3: my heroes and it's gone back.
Speaker 2: Brian It was very hero for me, So I don't
Speaker 2: want a meal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, sometimes you don't like As a side
Speaker 3: bit story real quick, I went to Nantucket one time
Speaker 3: and saw Jonathan Richmond in a tiny little feater on Nantucket.
Speaker 3: I mean we were second row right there. He's just
Speaker 3: being his insane self and playing Spanish flaming guitar for
Speaker 3: twenty minutes, just an incredible performance, and we were supposed
Speaker 3: to go. We knew the people that promoted the show
Speaker 3: set up the show, so my wife and I were
Speaker 3: supposed to go out for drinks with him afterwards. And
Speaker 3: after his performance, I just said to the people who
Speaker 3: were hosting the after thing, I can't do it. I
Speaker 3: can't go out and have a regular conversation with this guy.
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 1: I would never allow the bookers when I was doing
Speaker 1: Late Night, I wouldn't allow the bookers to even approach
Speaker 1: David Boie just in case he said yes, I don't
Speaker 1: want it, don't want you to be here, because well
Speaker 1: he turns up, Hey you crying, You're a fucking.
Speaker 2: House home, and then I'd be like, well that was
Speaker 2: the point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he and he already roasted Ricky Gervais on
Speaker 3: his own show. That's right, Ricky made that, although Ricky
Speaker 3: says that he was lovely. Yeah, by all accounts, incredibly
Speaker 3: love Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Brian, you know what happened.
Speaker 3: So this is the third of the jewels in my
Speaker 3: Stupid where I met my heroes. But the other two
Speaker 3: are stories for another time. But I was a young
Speaker 3: starving artist in Boston he in the late eighties. He
Speaker 3: was coming to mass College of Art to do a
Speaker 3: presentation of some sort. So naturally I went. And as
Speaker 3: I approached the auditorium, there's all these big glass doors.
Speaker 3: He's outside the auditorium talking to somebody, obviously a friend.
Speaker 3: He's kind of conversing and hanging out with this person.
Speaker 3: And I noticed as I approached, different people are walking
Speaker 3: up and kind of taking a moment to say, you know,
Speaker 3: shake his hand and kind of acknowledge thanks for coming
Speaker 3: and it's great to meet you and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: I say, three or four people do that, and I'm
Speaker 3: like the fifth person who's going to walk up and
Speaker 3: shake his hand and say something. And he just turns
Speaker 3: to me and says, wouilch you please fuck off? Wow,
Speaker 3: Because he was trying to have a conversation with his friend.
Speaker 3: So he's like, butuld you please fuck off? I'm trying
Speaker 3: to talk to my friend. I was the straw that
Speaker 3: broke the camel's back on so Brianino just basically told
Speaker 3: me to fuck off. And I cherish that interaction, probably
Speaker 3: a lot more than I would if we should have
Speaker 3: had any deciation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he just But maybe Brianino had the courage to
Speaker 4: to tell you that when I always wanted to and just.
Speaker 2: You have done it. Yeah, I don't know. You haven't
Speaker 2: done it?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, not yet, not yet? Yeah, yeah, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't thirty five years.
Speaker 2: I think that is that basquach behind you, Jason. Is
Speaker 2: that basket?
Speaker 3: I wish I would be. I would be zooming in
Speaker 3: from my private island.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in case, but no, that's actually a that's a
Speaker 4: portrait of my old bandmate Kevin from Love Battery, done
Speaker 4: by the uh uh a regional Pacific Northwest artist Ed Fotheringham.
Speaker 3: Very nice piece. Yeah, there's about the good stuff here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just saw the looks like a Bocht crown.
Speaker 3: I think it's an homage.
Speaker 4: It's from the earliest nineties and that series all of
Speaker 4: the subjects had crowned on there Bruce Pabot, one of
Speaker 4: the creators of subpop, was in there and one of
Speaker 4: the mud Honey, guys, it's it's a it's a regional.
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest art history, regional regional royalty. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think that, you know, I'm always a
Speaker 1: little intimidated by you types from that time period in
Speaker 1: that zip code that you guys are from, because it
Speaker 1: is very arty and very influential in pop culture to
Speaker 1: this day.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: But but you guys were kind of slightly after grunge.
Speaker 2: Is that what you call it? After grunge? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were fun.
Speaker 2: That's right, That's right. I knew there was some and.
Speaker 3: If only we were kind of come up with that
Speaker 3: at the time, we were constantly being pressured like what
Speaker 3: do you call your music? What's happening here? What do
Speaker 3: we put what umbrella can we put it under so
Speaker 3: we could sell more of it? What we to make
Speaker 3: of this response, this obvious response to grunt that you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it was only like four years ago that
Speaker 3: I came up with funge. So whoops, I missed the
Speaker 3: boat there. But isn't that always the way the stuff
Speaker 3: that J always thinking? You know, if only i'd have,
Speaker 3: you know, told Brian Eno to fuck off.
Speaker 1: Uh like when you go up to him as he
Speaker 1: turned around, you could have said, you know what, fuck
Speaker 1: off Brianino, or at least if you.
Speaker 3: Mustard a back at you or something.
Speaker 4: Right, you know, how do I know you are but
Speaker 4: one of my finger.
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let me.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, because you guys have been
Speaker 1: working together off and on for a long time, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: how did that come about? How did it start? Were
Speaker 1: you like Chris Well it started?
Speaker 3: The embryonic version of the President's was The Dukes of Pop,
Speaker 3: which was a acoustic duo which is me and Dave
Speaker 3: Dieter are the guitar player. And I used to work
Speaker 3: at a coffeehouse here in Seattle called the Last Exit,
Speaker 3: and on Monday nights, I would take my apron off
Speaker 3: and we'd play open mic kind of style sets at
Speaker 3: the Last Exit. And that was kind of the beginning
Speaker 3: of me and Dave connecting as songwriters and performers. And
Speaker 3: that was super fun and loosey goosey. And then I
Speaker 3: went to Boston, lived in Boston, lived in Seattle, back
Speaker 3: and forth. Finally I settled back in Seattle in like
Speaker 3: ninety one or two three, something like that. It's all
Speaker 3: very blurry that time.
Speaker 2: Guys are doing a lot of drugs and alcohol and stuff.
Speaker 3: I was doing my share. I was doing my share.
Speaker 1: Then before cell phones, the cell phones of the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties was the drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 2: It's different now, It's.
Speaker 3: True, yeah, it's true. Well, one big difference really is
Speaker 3: that we depended on each other to eliminate boredom. You know,
Speaker 3: we had to schedule a show on a Tuesday night
Speaker 3: so that we wouldn't die of boredom. And so out
Speaker 3: of that, well really out of the joy of finally
Speaker 3: moving back from the East Coast to Seattle, I started
Speaker 3: writing songs and Dave and I started playing again as
Speaker 3: a duo. This time we were electrified, and we had
Speaker 3: a bass amp that we both plugged into, and then
Speaker 3: we put that into a speaker cabinet made out of
Speaker 3: an acoustic guitar case. Because when I moved back from
Speaker 3: the East Coast, I didn't have room in my car
Speaker 3: for my bass cabinet, so I just took the speaker
Speaker 3: out and brought the speaker. So we were, you know,
Speaker 3: held together with spit and chewing gum at that time
Speaker 3: until we played a gig with my friend Dave Thealy
Speaker 3: sitting in on drums and Jason was there, and I
Speaker 3: might let you tell this part, Jason. There was a
Speaker 3: there was a.
Speaker 5: Softball, and so, yeah, how did you come in and
Speaker 5: know anything about these guys except I knew Dave a
Speaker 5: little bit from from whatever a p and nest to
Speaker 5: him at the stall somewhere.
Speaker 4: But they were performing and it was it was pretty fun.
Speaker 4: But then there was this moment where Dave had planted
Speaker 4: someone in the audience and he just Dave pulls a
Speaker 4: baseball mit off of his amp and says, anybody got
Speaker 4: a ball? And so the plant throws the softball out
Speaker 4: of the crowd and he's a bang, catches it and
Speaker 4: puts the net back down, which was, to my in
Speaker 4: that moment the absolute dumbest, slash greatest thing I'd ever
Speaker 4: seen at at at a rock show. So I was
Speaker 4: instantly obsessed with these guys and I started a sort
Speaker 4: of a month's long campaign to just you know, hey,
Speaker 4: you got to just drop what you're doing and start
Speaker 4: a band with me. And they reacted to that the
Speaker 4: way anyone would, which is to say you are a lunatic?
Speaker 6: Please go yeah, would you please fuck off?
Speaker 3: So yeah, after a couple of rounds of fuck offs
Speaker 3: and backatches and your mom's we we got we got
Speaker 3: it together. That part I don't.
Speaker 2: Even remember.
Speaker 1: The presidents of the United States of America. That was it,
Speaker 1: I would say, except that that.
Speaker 4: Of course, Chris's friend Dave Peely was was sort of
Speaker 4: the original uh drummer.
Speaker 3: But that was a different band that was good, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: different songs and stuff, and Dave was a sort of
Speaker 3: hobbyist drummer. Uh so he was Yeah, he wasn't like
Speaker 3: going to make a career out of playing drums. But
Speaker 3: I remember, yeah, Dave and I were kind of like,
Speaker 3: we don't need a drummer because part of the fun
Speaker 3: of doing what we were doing was we were kind
Speaker 3: of trying to rock out. We're like some nerds that
Speaker 3: are trying reaching for being a rock band but not
Speaker 3: you know, the not achieving it so that the crowd
Speaker 3: would come and see us and be filled with empathy, like,
Speaker 3: look at those poor dorks trying to rock those you know,
Speaker 3: it was not an act these guys.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite details about them in the earliest
Speaker 4: days is they would show up and you know how
Speaker 4: guitarists always have you have your gear, you have your
Speaker 4: your your guitar, and on the other hand, you have
Speaker 4: your you know whatever, your your case is that you
Speaker 4: have your pedals and stuff. These guys would both show
Speaker 4: up with little toat sacks with like with like a
Speaker 4: cord and a pedal in there, like it's the totsack
Speaker 4: guys a.
Speaker 3: Role like a faded tote bag. That says New Mexico auditors.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 1: Sounds pretty cool. I mean, it's still it has coolness
Speaker 1: about it. But what I think is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: particularly about the Presidents, is that that you guys, I
Speaker 1: mean there's real musicianship in that band when you I mean,
Speaker 1: even though though there's like there's fun and it seems
Speaker 1: to not take itself so seriously. It's the music is
Speaker 1: very accomplished, the playing is very accomplished. It didn't seem
Speaker 1: to me that there was a joke about I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that always about weird Al. You know that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can think Al is making fun, but
Speaker 1: he he follows the rule if you're going to parody something,
Speaker 1: you have to be better than it.
Speaker 4: You know, yes, absolutely wearing tight ship in alice in
Speaker 4: our world.
Speaker 3: And we know that from when when he did come.
Speaker 3: You know that I'm blinking on his name.
Speaker 4: The drummer contact to be out of the blue, and
Speaker 4: he just had some really specific questions about Muta Schwartz.
Speaker 3: That's right. He was like, now listen on the second verse,
Speaker 3: you're doing this thing with the with the floor time
Speaker 3: and and what's it? And yeah, he needed to recreate that, you.
Speaker 2: Know so well.
Speaker 3: Part of our deal was we wanted to appear not
Speaker 3: to carry at all while simultaneously carrying deep. So we
Speaker 3: we knew that if we were going to make funny,
Speaker 3: fun music, it had to be you know, there had
Speaker 3: to be a certain amount of proficiency in it. Otherwise
Speaker 3: it's just you know, it's it's a it's a hat
Speaker 3: on a hat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that was quite interesting, but
Speaker 1: I mean the same thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I I get a vibe from you.
Speaker 1: It's not the same band, but I get a vibe
Speaker 1: like they might be giants who were always producing songs
Speaker 1: which didn't necessarily take themselves seriously in the lyrically, or
Speaker 1: they had some humor in it because it seemed to
Speaker 1: me that particularly grunge, and I think that's correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm you know, going away off in the wrong
Speaker 1: the wrong tangent here, but the funge that came out
Speaker 1: of it, because because grunge was pretty pull faced and grumpy,
Speaker 1: it was quite an adolescent vibe. It was great, but
Speaker 1: it added an adolescent vibe to it, and I think
Speaker 1: that what you were doing suddenly it was like it
Speaker 1: seemed that like there was an extra layer of confidence,
Speaker 1: like we don't give a fuck, We don't give a
Speaker 1: fuck what you think, but clearly you did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did. I mean part of what we used
Speaker 3: to always say when asked like how do we resonate
Speaker 3: against the grunge explosion and stuff we've kind of talked about, Well,
Speaker 3: go back further in Seattle music history and you'll find
Speaker 3: party rock, right, you know, you'll find Paul Revere and
Speaker 3: the Raiders, the Kingsman, the Sonics, although the Sonics were
Speaker 3: pretty intense, but still you know, you could party to it,
Speaker 3: and then more recently the young Fresh Fellows, which were
Speaker 3: like heroes of mine, and so yeah, we would always
Speaker 3: kind of leap frog back over the grunge thing to
Speaker 3: the sore for us, which was Northwest Party, was it?
Speaker 3: But if you're also, if you're implying that we're also
Speaker 3: genius musicians, then we'll take it correct correct kind of.
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit I heard you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Hello, this is Greig Ferguson, and I want to
Speaker 7: let you know I have a brand new stand up
Speaker 7: comedy special out now on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's called I'm So Happy, and I would be so
Speaker 1: happy if you checked it out. To watch the special,
Speaker 1: just go to my YouTube channel at the Craig Ferguson
Speaker 1: Show and is this right there?
Speaker 2: Just click it and play it and it's free. I
Speaker 2: can't look.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to come around your house and show
Speaker 1: you how to do it. If you can't do it,
Speaker 1: then you can't have it. But if you can figure
Speaker 1: it out, it's yours. I remember when because I worked
Speaker 1: on a television show called The Drew Carey Show.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember it.
Speaker 6: And when Drew played me because he played me when
Speaker 6: you guys did the cover of the Odine Hunter thing Cleveland.
Speaker 1: Rock, Cleveland Rock, and I heard it, I was like, bander,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing i'd heard the band.
Speaker 2: Let's spand a fucking banging. I mean they're great.
Speaker 1: I was in bands before I you know, I was
Speaker 1: such a bad drummer that any band that I was
Speaker 1: in immediately became funny, and so I had to be
Speaker 1: there kind of leaned into comedy because I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing that to Roken Roll anyway. But the idea
Speaker 1: of I mean, the band was really good. So I
Speaker 1: don't think you ever fooled me for a minute about, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: we're just wacky.
Speaker 2: It doesn't that's no.
Speaker 3: Well, the caveat with that is that in the beginning,
Speaker 3: when we had you know, fifty people at a little
Speaker 3: place called the Robber Room, this little bar, uh, that's
Speaker 3: where we could be as sort of discombobulated it yet
Speaker 3: still pull off the show as possible. Then when we
Speaker 3: stood up in front of you know, we had success
Speaker 3: and we had to stand up in front of a
Speaker 3: lot of people, we kind of got more into like
Speaker 3: revving up the machine and getting tighter and tighter and
Speaker 3: hitting our marks and stuff like that. And the Cleveland
Speaker 3: Rocks thing I think came when we were really kind
Speaker 3: of at the peak of you know, efficiency as well as.
Speaker 4: Being alive, right definitely, because we didn't really prepare for that.
Speaker 3: We were just we were in the studio doing something
Speaker 3: else and they're like, yeah, you want to take a
Speaker 3: pass of this song Cleveland Ross for a TV show.
Speaker 3: We're like, okay, we just you know, bang through it
Speaker 3: twice and that that was.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean we knew added to but yeah, because
Speaker 8: because we were on the Rosy O'Donnell Show and Drew
Speaker 8: was a guest as well, apparently, and he came to
Speaker 8: for some reason, the backstage was little trailers and he
Speaker 8: came to our trailer and.
Speaker 3: Came in as I remember it, and I might have
Speaker 3: embellished this over the years, and Jason can confirm or
Speaker 3: deny this, but I remember him coming in with a
Speaker 3: supermodel on each arm, like girls that were significantly taller
Speaker 3: than him. But this may be my creative I.
Speaker 1: Think, well, I think I think you're it's a generous
Speaker 1: use of the word supermodel, but I understand, but I
Speaker 1: Drew average model.
Speaker 2: Drew went through a period from that.
Speaker 1: He went through a period I think in the early
Speaker 1: part of success where you know that that was part
Speaker 1: of his life. He very quickly that went away and
Speaker 1: he go, you know, his thing became driving a mini
Speaker 1: that had a union a British flag, on.
Speaker 2: It, you know. I mean, it's like.
Speaker 4: He h he has some ties to the Seattle Sounders,
Speaker 4: the MLS right there, and he would it's particularly in
Speaker 4: the early seasons. He would come to a lot of
Speaker 4: the games and and and be right on the on
Speaker 4: the side of the field and my my family had
Speaker 4: front row uh seen tickets at that time, and he
Speaker 4: would walk by and by the by. There were no supermodels,
Speaker 4: but there was an earnest team of young people that
Speaker 4: were there. They were obviously doing something professionally oriented with him,
Speaker 4: and it would occasionally I would be like Drew and
Speaker 4: he'd be like, hey, it's gone, and I I would
Speaker 4: only do that because it would blow the minds of so.
Speaker 2: So good times for me that happened.
Speaker 4: I remember from that that that day that we met
Speaker 4: him in the in the trailer, here's how little I
Speaker 4: knew about the show. He was already I think pitching
Speaker 4: this the the idea of this theme song. And I
Speaker 4: immediately asked him if I could tell him a joke.
Speaker 4: And I proceeded to tell this joke about Cincinnati, not Cleveland.
Speaker 2: So they're pretty supposed to each other. It's all right.
Speaker 4: But he was very he laughed his ass off at
Speaker 4: the at that middling joke and never never corrected me.
Speaker 2: So good on him.
Speaker 1: You know, I used to say hey, and he used
Speaker 1: to go, hey, you to me. It took him with
Speaker 1: three seasons to realize that I actually worked.
Speaker 2: On the show. I think he's sixty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, long because he called me mister Wick for about
Speaker 1: two years.
Speaker 2: He's like, hey, mister Wick. I'm like, it's not my name.
Speaker 4: I I.
Speaker 2: Ca I ask a.
Speaker 3: Question about the show and you you're from Glasgow, right,
Speaker 3: I am Glasswegian?
Speaker 2: Yes, great word.
Speaker 3: It is a good word, fucking good word. You were
Speaker 3: doing something different accent wise on Oh yeah, yeah I
Speaker 3: did that, No, Scott, what happened was, this is a
Speaker 3: true story.
Speaker 1: What happened was that I auditioned for the part of
Speaker 1: the Spanish photographer in the sitcom Suddenly Susan. And it
Speaker 1: had been been a hiccup and obviously you know that
Speaker 1: the accent work that I was doing was unacceptable to
Speaker 1: the team that we're making Suddenly Susan.
Speaker 2: They wanted something a bit more Spanish.
Speaker 1: But but the casting guy that was there said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got another show. They're looking for an English guy.
Speaker 1: Can you do an English accent? And I was like,
Speaker 1: season George as I can, and that's how I ended
Speaker 1: up doing Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: That's that's my Spanish.
Speaker 3: I just remember when you when your late night show started,
Speaker 3: you talking, and I'm like, that's what is happening. I
Speaker 3: guess that at that time I wasn't as I couldn't.
Speaker 2: Hard to hear it broke out.
Speaker 1: I think as well, what happened is that because I
Speaker 1: was playing because mister Wick.
Speaker 2: Was a very it's a very arch character. It's very good.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely your fire.
Speaker 1: No, that's I mean, there is, there is, Yes, I
Speaker 1: absolutely talked like.
Speaker 2: This is entire show.
Speaker 1: And because that's the only thing that anybody knows you from.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm always amazed when you see these English
Speaker 1: actors that like, did you ever watch Yellowstone?
Speaker 2: You should watch Yellowstone.
Speaker 1: Because there's an actress in that I can't remember her name,
Speaker 1: forgive me, but she plays Beth uh, the very very American,
Speaker 1: kind of great character in Yellowstone and she's English. I
Speaker 1: heard her in an interview was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. I but you get locked in
Speaker 1: with the sound of someone and then yeah, it just
Speaker 1: it becomes part of the whole identity. So it changed
Speaker 1: for me after I had to convince people I wasn't
Speaker 1: from England when I started doing the late night show.
Speaker 3: They're like, man, his Scottish accent is terrible.
Speaker 2: It's pretty Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I've always wanted to ask you something actually,
Speaker 3: because I am such a fan of your late night shot.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was so refreshing. I don't think I
Speaker 3: ever felt like the guest had been produced when they
Speaker 3: sat down, you know what I mean, Like it felt
Speaker 3: like maybe they were maybe you knew what you were
Speaker 3: going to talk about, but it just felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: let's just hang out. And that was so really more like.
Speaker 1: That as time went on. But it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the way you guys describing the music. Like I like,
Speaker 1: at first, the first year or so, when I was
Speaker 1: on late night, nobody was watching it, so I could
Speaker 1: fuck up as much as pausible and you know, and
Speaker 1: to kind of find my way. And by the time
Speaker 1: you know, people started watching the show, I kind of
Speaker 1: knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2: I got comfortable and I realized that.
Speaker 1: Also as the show became more popular, better guests started
Speaker 1: coming on as well, which, you know, people who were
Speaker 1: like familiar with the terrain, but.
Speaker 2: It it's uh.
Speaker 1: I think I always approached that kind of like music anyway,
Speaker 1: the same way as approach stand up. It is like
Speaker 1: you've got to rehearse, but it doesn't mean you're going
Speaker 1: to play those notes.
Speaker 2: But you got to practice.
Speaker 1: You've got to pick up the guitar every day, or
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta play the drums every day. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're going to play that, but you've got
Speaker 1: to be there. You know, you've got to be incited
Speaker 1: to get the rest for sure. Yeah, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we're we were.
Speaker 4: That was our credo the whole time, was we wouldn't
Speaker 4: really rehearse ever, and maybe that led to some extra
Speaker 4: shenanigans early in in like a you know, early in
Speaker 4: a tour, first couple of shows, but as much excitement
Speaker 4: as just playing clams.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know, keeping it fresh. There was
Speaker 3: a sensation I would have when we would go on tour.
Speaker 3: The fourth show was where we stopped just playing the
Speaker 3: notes and started playing the songs. It was a subtle
Speaker 3: shift where it was like we inhabit the song because
Speaker 3: now we're not worried about where the notes are and
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But what I really wanted to
Speaker 3: ask you, And by the way, I did recognize how
Speaker 3: comfortable you got, because sometimes I think you were almost
Speaker 3: completely reclined as a host. You were like just yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like, when is Craig going to bring out
Speaker 3: like a cot and just lie down? Well, everybody talks.
Speaker 3: But here's what I've always wanted to ask you. And
Speaker 3: this might be totally off base, but do you think
Speaker 3: that your accent was an impediment to you just taking
Speaker 3: over the world of Late Night? Like I feel like
Speaker 3: you should have been a Carson level, you know, human
Speaker 3: in that world. Yeah was Do you think your accent
Speaker 3: was a glass ceiling like that?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, possibly if it had been something that had
Speaker 1: been aspirational for me. But I think what happens that
Speaker 1: I came from a different angle then, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if this is the same for you guys.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Look, I didn't grow up watching Carson.
Speaker 2: I didn't grow up watching David Lherman. I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up watching Late Night. I grew up in Scotland.
Speaker 1: It was late night in Scotland as the pub, So
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's a very different thing.
Speaker 2: It had no mistique for me. I took the job
Speaker 2: in late night.
Speaker 1: Because I I just got divorced, that had a little kid,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be in town and this was
Speaker 1: a job that would keep me there all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, like I would. I would have to work
Speaker 1: every day. So that's why I went after the job.
Speaker 1: When I got the job, I fell in love with it.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't It wasn't something that was aspirational for me.
Speaker 1: So I never came at it from a place of
Speaker 1: great reverence. And I think the accent was a weird
Speaker 1: thing because I remember when I started, all the executives
Speaker 1: were saying, well, this is gonna crash and burn because
Speaker 1: of the accent, and of course they you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was a problem when I was doing it.
Speaker 2: I will see this though.
Speaker 1: I mean I said this before, But for the ten
Speaker 1: years I was doing that show, I worried about my
Speaker 1: weight and my accent. And when I quickly hired James Cordon, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I think that perhaps I was worried about
Speaker 2: the wrong thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, James.
Speaker 4: James was looking pretty tight though when he started. My
Speaker 4: only previous experience being the what was the BBC.
Speaker 2: That's a great show.
Speaker 3: I mean he was he was a little he was
Speaker 3: a little round.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a terrific performer, I think, and he's a
Speaker 1: really nice guy.
Speaker 2: I've always really liked him.
Speaker 1: He took some hate when he took over the show,
Speaker 1: but I think that I did. Two people forget that
Speaker 1: because a long time ago, and when I took over
Speaker 1: the show, the hate that you go it was no
Speaker 1: social media, so you know that you took the hate,
Speaker 1: and the New York Post or the or the New
Speaker 1: York Times or by the time that he took over,
Speaker 1: there was social media, so you take hate.
Speaker 2: But it is what it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the whole thing about the new bass
Speaker 1: player turns up. The fans that have been watching you
Speaker 1: for years are very angry, and then they forgive you or.
Speaker 3: Take Chris old base player.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, look, you dodged a bullet, Craig in with
Speaker 4: the Late Night Wars. We know now that there's a
Speaker 4: lot of like that's just a blood sport, that whole
Speaker 4: who's gonna host what next? And all that stuff, and
Speaker 4: probably you would have gotten screwed by that, by that
Speaker 4: asshole Briani. I think that if you would have gotten
Speaker 4: the gig and he would have gotten in there.
Speaker 2: And and have you ever seen that little animation on
Speaker 2: the internet. I don't know who made it.
Speaker 1: It's a work of genius where it's an imagining of Brian,
Speaker 1: you know, David boy and Tony Visconti right in the
Speaker 1: little album and uh in hansa studio writing this down
Speaker 1: right is fucking genius.
Speaker 2: You got to look it up.
Speaker 1: It's it's okay, it's insanely good that it's just that
Speaker 1: that's going to the cute. I don't know who did it,
Speaker 1: and I feel bad because and I'm sure someone in
Speaker 1: the internet will point it out, but it is a
Speaker 1: is a work of comedic genius. Whoever does Boy's voice
Speaker 1: is spot on and they have you know, Brian and
Speaker 1: Tony Visconti's this character is saying can I be in it?
Speaker 1: And David Boyce said, I'm going to make up a
Speaker 1: special language that no one understands for this.
Speaker 2: It's just lovely. It's very funny. Okay.
Speaker 4: I can think of so many other episodes of that
Speaker 4: show I would watch. Yeah, you know, like, okay, let's
Speaker 4: do David Bowie producing Iggy Pop's the Idiot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Transformer album when David Boid fantastic. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, did you ever run into like you know,
Speaker 1: I know you said that, you know, don't don't meet
Speaker 1: your heroes, but in the world of Roken roll you
Speaker 1: you are going to run into these people all the time.
Speaker 1: Did you ever collaborate with people that just blew your mind?
Speaker 1: You can't believe you doing it?
Speaker 3: Well? Number one of that ILK would be weird out himself.
Speaker 3: I mean the fact that he and I are still
Speaker 3: good friends and great and he's just such an amazing human.
Speaker 3: He produced a video for us for a song from
Speaker 3: one of our later records. We've jumped, you know, we've
Speaker 3: ambushed each other on stage at each other's shows countless times. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's one of those people that I'm hanging out with
Speaker 3: or being collaborative with, and I'm just like, pinch, pinch, pinch.
Speaker 2: He's amazing.
Speaker 1: Did he ever tell you about when he came to
Speaker 1: my house in Scotland? No, he came to the We
Speaker 1: had a party. Remember there was a like, I know
Speaker 1: he has this place in Hawaii, but there was a
Speaker 1: big kind of like thing and he couldn't go there.
Speaker 1: One summer, and so he came to this party that
Speaker 1: we were having at my house in Scotland and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this about I'll plays the accordion.
Speaker 2: And yeah, good, you don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Scotland we were having this party with this
Speaker 1: accordion bad you know, and.
Speaker 3: These accordions as you do in scott.
Speaker 2: So I said to the accordion players, hey, there's a guy.
Speaker 2: Do you mind if this guy said said it with
Speaker 2: you a little bit? They're like, oh, that weird.
Speaker 1: Al walked in who is a god amongst the courts
Speaker 1: like a guitar bought to say, Hey, Jimmy Hendrix is here.
Speaker 2: Do you mind if he sets in with you? Guys?
Speaker 2: They were blown away.
Speaker 1: But of course I wouldn't tell you because it makes him.
Speaker 1: It would be grandizing for him and that's not who
Speaker 1: he is. But it was amazing to see these people
Speaker 1: bow down to his greatness.
Speaker 2: It was fantastic.
Speaker 3: That that would be an amazing thing to see. I'm jealous.
Speaker 4: We've, as Chris says, we've interacted with Al a ton,
Speaker 4: but man, seeing him walk into a room of twenty
Speaker 4: five accordion players, this must be insane.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really twenty five, but let's say that was
Speaker 1: twenty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But I did have the
Speaker 3: pleasure of a one time introducing al to Wayne Kramer
Speaker 3: from the MC five and figuring that they would maybe
Speaker 3: have nothing to talk about, but it was just a
Speaker 3: social experiment and they hit it off like crazy, squirreled
Speaker 3: away in a corner and just talk to music for hours.
Speaker 1: But I think that is a thing with musicians that
Speaker 1: there is a kind of weird Like comedians are different now,
Speaker 1: but when I was coming up, comedians were very aggressive
Speaker 1: and competitive with each other, and I always felt with musicians.
Speaker 1: Maybe young musicians are a bit like that too, as
Speaker 1: they're making their bones and stuff. But I always felt
Speaker 1: with musicians, if you get them onto music, they're fine.
Speaker 1: You can be you know, a rapper and a classical
Speaker 1: flawtist will find a way to connect, you know, because
Speaker 1: it seems to be the desire to be a musician
Speaker 1: is in a weird way a connection thing, particularly people
Speaker 1: who playing bands. You know that because people who hate
Speaker 1: each other will play in bands for years because there's
Speaker 1: a musical relationship.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is, do you guys hate each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to share this. I'm
Speaker 3: glad we're here today. Sure, I have an announcement. We
Speaker 3: have a low level, simmering hate for each other that
Speaker 3: just kind of keeps.
Speaker 2: It's an odd relationship musicians. It's a weird it's the weird.
Speaker 4: The rock band is the dumbest social unit ever invented,
Speaker 4: and one of the least stable and one of the greatest.
Speaker 4: Man it might not be around for another fifty years,
Speaker 4: but uh, we we were around for the middle section
Speaker 4: of it, and and we do a good job because
Speaker 4: we've never been huge road dogs or workhorses, so we've
Speaker 4: we've definitely had enough time between things to not get
Speaker 4: to def con either one or five.
Speaker 3: I forget which one, Yeah I.
Speaker 2: Or yeah.
Speaker 3: You just go on and maintain a nice def con
Speaker 3: three the entire Well, it's funny.
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 3: It's funny too, because when there's whenever I see like
Speaker 3: a list of the greatest hundred bands of the nineties
Speaker 3: or something, we're not on it. Or it's like the
Speaker 3: greatest bands from Seattle from nineteen ninety four, we're not
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 4: We actually if you can, it's hard to find, but
Speaker 4: if you Google Greatest seven hundred Bands of the nineties.
Speaker 2: We sneak in there Anxiety six anxiety. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. I see that as a superpower
Speaker 3: because I feel like that means that the fans that
Speaker 3: do show up are true fans, and the fans we
Speaker 3: do have like a connected connection with her true fans
Speaker 3: who aren't you know, It's not like we were trying
Speaker 3: to take over the world. We just wanted to take
Speaker 3: over the room that we were in on any given
Speaker 3: so it fit us perfectly also, and enough people have.
Speaker 4: Been involved over the over the long term that we've
Speaker 4: we were able to have just a really cool living
Speaker 4: and careers such as it was Slash is including actually
Speaker 4: great great shows in Glasgow time to time.
Speaker 3: We are first ever was at King Tut's Wall. That's great.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that is a great It can't possibly still be
Speaker 8: Yeah it's still there.
Speaker 2: How good for that?
Speaker 3: It was old when we were there, and.
Speaker 1: That's where the where Oasis got signed to their first
Speaker 1: record deal was in there after the show they did
Speaker 1: that night, famously that it had just opened when I
Speaker 1: was leaving bands in Glasgow because I was I was
Speaker 1: in bands the early eighties.
Speaker 2: I think it opened in the mid eighties.
Speaker 3: Did you not get to play there?
Speaker 2: I think I did. Actually I did play there, Okay.
Speaker 1: I played there with a band called James King and
Speaker 1: the Lone Wolves, which always baffled me because if we
Speaker 1: were Lone Wolves, I could understand why there was four
Speaker 1: of us, but no one asked that question. The band
Speaker 1: were pretty good, but they a bad name.
Speaker 3: I think I disagree.
Speaker 4: It's very it's a little a little uh serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we were serious wolves. We were angry. We
Speaker 1: were very angry and drunk. We were in angry drunk band.
Speaker 1: But I think that market is full. I think that
Speaker 1: that's a very very well populated area.
Speaker 2: It certainly was then.
Speaker 3: And continues to be, for sure. And that's that Chris
Speaker 3: and I where we've always sort of maintained that we
Speaker 3: were doing a different thing and just fulfilling a certain
Speaker 3: sort of almost a niche like, Yeah, it.
Speaker 1: To not be of the job to not be angry
Speaker 1: all the time, I think, is okay. It's probably the
Speaker 1: coolest emotion when you're young. But I think when you
Speaker 1: get to above thirty and you put on about ten pounds,
Speaker 1: if you're angry, you start to look like an angry
Speaker 1: clown like, and then angry clowns are not It's not good.
Speaker 2: You have to be an upbeat clown.
Speaker 3: Either that or you continue to try to be angry
Speaker 3: after you have great success and you're being your life
Speaker 3: is being pampered, but you're still pissed off.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But you know a lot of you were talking earlier
Speaker 3: about like this sort of dark cloud of grunge. But
Speaker 3: if you isolate any a bunch of those band members
Speaker 3: and have a beer with them, they're hilarious and funny
Speaker 3: and great. You know, lighthearted people. There's a few, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a few dark souls that anchor you know, the
Speaker 3: angst to the to the movement to the scene, right
Speaker 3: like generally the lead singers. Yeah, but you know, you
Speaker 3: get any of those guys who play bass or drums
Speaker 3: in those band bands aside, and they're delightful.
Speaker 1: I always felt the same thing in movies when if
Speaker 1: ever you talk to people who write horror movies, they're delightful.
Speaker 1: People who write scary like Stephen King is such an
Speaker 1: upbeat nice man, And people who write romantic comedies are
Speaker 1: fucking evil. They are They are so twisted and dark
Speaker 1: and pesto. It's unbelievable love that. I think that the
Speaker 1: I've seen it so often that it's going to be
Speaker 1: a thing. There's going to be something in it. It's
Speaker 1: not just I've seen it once. I've seen it alone.
Speaker 1: People who write upbeat cheery stuff. I mean just some
Speaker 1: of your stuff.
Speaker 2: It's way upbeaten cheery, and you guys seem okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well looking for now. That was actually that my
Speaker 3: whole life For some weird reason, as a songwriter, I've
Speaker 3: been sort of working my way toward the goal of
Speaker 3: having the music I make be exactly a reflection of
Speaker 3: who I really am. I don't know exactly why I
Speaker 3: was driven by that, but it drove me to eventually,
Speaker 3: after the Presidents do music for little kids sill zero
Speaker 3: to five year olds as Casper baby Pants, and that
Speaker 3: that was when I arrived at that. I was like, ah,
Speaker 3: here it is. Here's like there's no pretense of adult
Speaker 3: issues or anger or sexuality or whatever. It's all removed,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like the innocent core of Planet music.
Speaker 2: Do you have kids?
Speaker 3: Craig was asking whether you're an asshole in private?
Speaker 2: Right right right? Do you have kids? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 3: I have a twenty six year old in the twenty
Speaker 3: four So, did you.
Speaker 1: Start doing cosper baby pants when your kids were little?
Speaker 2: Was that the thing that brought you into it?
Speaker 3: No, No, not at all.
Speaker 2: It was funny.
Speaker 3: But when the presidents were successful, I felt great about it.
Speaker 3: I was very It was a very double edged sword.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I felt like validated and excited, and you know, we
Speaker 3: were all becoming successful and navigating those waters and everything.
Speaker 3: But I also felt kind of unsafe. I was as
Speaker 3: a child listening to the Beatles in my bedroom. I
Speaker 3: imagined that fame was like a doorway into a room
Speaker 3: where everybody else in that room is famous, and you're
Speaker 3: immediately accepted and all your problems go away, and it's
Speaker 3: just this beautiful experience. You know, the velvet rope is
Speaker 3: removed and you get to go in. So I got
Speaker 3: to experience set velvet rope removed. I go in the room,
Speaker 3: but immediately I noticed at the other end of the
Speaker 3: room is another velvet rope and another door, and I realized,
Speaker 3: oh shit, those things those doors go on forever.
Speaker 1: Meaninglly, there is an end to the doors because the
Speaker 1: last one you go through the last one and it's
Speaker 1: Keanu Reeves. But until you get to Keanu Reeves, it's.
Speaker 2: Just velvet rope after velvet rope.
Speaker 1: But I understand that when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: thought that if I hated going to the dentist, and
Speaker 1: I thought, if I get on TV, I won't to
Speaker 1: have to go to the dentist, which is the opposite.
Speaker 1: You're never a wait for the fucking days when you're
Speaker 1: on DV. It's just like it's all that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So with that in mind, you know, the the
Speaker 3: band for me was kind of like this weird skin
Speaker 3: that I was wearing that was in some ways very
Speaker 3: comfortable and in some ways like, ah, I got to
Speaker 3: get out of here. So I started, you know, this
Speaker 3: gut feeling I had that I was supposed to be
Speaker 3: doing something all so or something else welled up and
Speaker 3: I was experimenting on the side for like ten or
Speaker 3: fifteen years, and finally the experiments got small and acoustic
Speaker 3: and kind of intimate. And then I met my wife Kate,
Speaker 3: and I saw her art and she does this amazing
Speaker 3: like collage art with animals, and it's very well done,
Speaker 3: and it's bright and beautiful and silly and has integrity
Speaker 3: and it's you know, beautiful, happy universe that she's created
Speaker 3: with her art, and I was like, I want to
Speaker 3: make music that comes from that planet. And I did,
Speaker 3: and literally a cartoon light bulb, a big one went
Speaker 3: off over my head and I realized, it's kids music.
Speaker 3: That's what I should be doing, and specifically the zero
Speaker 3: to five year olds, because they're like little Buddhas, you know,
Speaker 3: they're like little enlightened beings. And hanging out with them
Speaker 3: and writing for them is really exciting. Because how I
Speaker 3: got into it.
Speaker 1: I have kids, and when they were young, my wife
Speaker 1: would he has an aversion to children's me and a
Speaker 1: lot of people do it's and she would play problematic.
Speaker 2: To this day, my youngest is no.
Speaker 1: Fourteen and he has the song from his childhood is
Speaker 1: Atmospheres by Joy Division.
Speaker 2: It's like it's not good deep runs, but he seems
Speaker 2: to be all right, though he used to be okay,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah. I mean, you don't need children's music really,
Speaker 3: But my whole goal was to make music. I used
Speaker 3: to say that I was actually a parents musician. I
Speaker 3: was writing. Ninety percent of the choices I made were
Speaker 3: for the parents. I was like, what's not going to
Speaker 3: drive them out of the room into another part of
Speaker 3: the house, and a lot of kids musicians pay lip
Speaker 3: service to that concept, but then they do not deliver.
Speaker 3: So I was very focused on the family experience and
Speaker 3: it was a really amazing songwriting challenge to kind of
Speaker 3: did you.
Speaker 2: Guys do for little kids?
Speaker 3: Actually, the President's did one kids show at the at
Speaker 3: town Hall, but I had a trio for a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it got kind of noisy and crazy, and I
Speaker 3: decided to go solo. So I did like thirteen hundred
Speaker 3: shows as Casper Baby Pets by myself before hanging up
Speaker 3: my boots when the pandemic came along.
Speaker 1: Your booty booty, yeah, yeah, So what you guys doing now?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 2: What's happening in the way forward? The band going out again?
Speaker 2: You're putting the band back together?
Speaker 3: No, we're not, that's headline.
Speaker 2: We are definitely do not want to do that now,
Speaker 2: hear this?
Speaker 3: No news exactly? Is that true, though you know it's
Speaker 3: it is true.
Speaker 4: We're just I mean, never say never and stay tuned
Speaker 4: and we'll let you know. But for now, no, and
Speaker 4: for for future no. But we are sort of celebrating
Speaker 4: this year or observing that the big popular record the lump,
Speaker 4: and each's record is turning thirty, which is a thing
Speaker 4: that people mostly celebrate and observe in service of a tour.
Speaker 3: But we're not gonna do that.
Speaker 4: So we're just gonna We're just gonna be happy.
Speaker 2: Doesn't editing? Do you have anith?
Speaker 1: And though you want to even scratch that itch a
Speaker 1: little bit and go out and hear the crowd, hear
Speaker 1: those songs again.
Speaker 3: You know, I really do not. I love to in
Speaker 3: my whole life, like the big picture, I see things
Speaker 3: as arcs, you know, like acknowledging when a creative arc
Speaker 3: is exciting and on its way up, and oh my god,
Speaker 3: here we are on the plateau and okay, there it goes,
Speaker 3: and another one will come up in its place. That
Speaker 3: arc is just arct. And I'm very very proud of
Speaker 3: what we did and what we achieved, and you know,
Speaker 3: how we presented ourselves and how we peppered the world
Speaker 3: with this joyful music. But it's it's arc for me.
Speaker 1: It's exactly how I feel about the late night show.
Speaker 1: Which is interesting because when people say do the late
Speaker 1: night do another late night show?
Speaker 7: Go?
Speaker 2: Why would I do another late night show? I did
Speaker 2: a late night show, and that.
Speaker 1: It almost got to like in the last year of it,
Speaker 1: once I knew that I wasn't going to do it
Speaker 1: beyond the end of my contract, it actually got better.
Speaker 1: I think when I knew I was going to never
Speaker 1: do it again, it was the best that ever was
Speaker 1: because it had a that I'm about to abandon this quality,
Speaker 1: which doesn't come that easy. I don't know if I can,
Speaker 1: if I'll ever find anything again that quite does that,
Speaker 1: with the exception of doing stand up, which is which
Speaker 1: is like my instrument now.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like you know the you know that's
Speaker 2: what I do. You know that's what I play it
Speaker 2: here or I play it there? What's that you recognize?
Speaker 4: That?
Speaker 2: Is that discussed?
Speaker 3: You know what I'm doing that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, what come on? Is that it's in your
Speaker 3: own stand up special?
Speaker 2: Come on promoting my stand up special?
Speaker 3: No, no, not money, it's in the stand up it's
Speaker 3: in uh.
Speaker 2: Was years ago.
Speaker 1: I kind of remember all that is like remember from Peaches.
Speaker 2: I kind of remember that. You don't remember that? All right?
Speaker 3: All right, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2: You've moved on. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, so Jason, what's it like? How do
Speaker 3: you relate to the band and and the and the
Speaker 3: present day and all that kind of stuff. What's your feeling?
Speaker 3: Pardon I'm not familiar.
Speaker 4: No, I'm glad. I think it's I will say that
Speaker 4: what Chris was just saying about the arc being completed,
Speaker 4: you'll off it. You'll always hear that from.
Speaker 3: Uh UH.
Speaker 4: Band guys that are that are talking about why they're
Speaker 4: not performing at that time. It's usually right before another
Speaker 4: UH cycle or tour is announced. I can say with
Speaker 4: some authority fully witnessing in the most candidate moments, Chris
Speaker 4: literally is the one, the one individual who is like
Speaker 4: he just wants to be out there and walking around
Speaker 4: in the trees. True, and he digs the trees. He
Speaker 4: moved into an area where there's a lot of trees,
Speaker 4: and that's just you know, it's complete.
Speaker 2: That's great and.
Speaker 3: I I, yeah, I tend to agree vibe wise, among
Speaker 3: other things, playing rock and roll, especially the way we
Speaker 3: do is pretty physical. And I'm not gonna we're not
Speaker 3: gonna bore you with the details. But the collection of dumb,
Speaker 3: stupid bullshit in our shoulders and our elbows and our
Speaker 3: and our it's it's robust. I guess the opposite of
Speaker 3: robut it's fragile.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find the appropriate moment for when stand
Speaker 1: up comedy becomes you're allowed to sit down on the stage.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure, but I know you guys were
Speaker 3: calling those water glasses around all the time, then you
Speaker 3: must be well, you know on Late Night you were
Speaker 3: almost reclined all ways. Maybe you can be the first
Speaker 3: reclining comic.
Speaker 1: I think the Lazy Boy tour where it was creative
Speaker 1: lighting and maybe some work from Brian Eno.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and wait with the Lazy Boy Tour,
Speaker 3: you've got more than one on stage, You've got a
Speaker 3: whole bunch from it. You just you can do different.
Speaker 3: Feel like Stanhope is doing this?
Speaker 1: Is he doing it right now? Dug Stanholps is like
Speaker 1: he's one of my favorite comics. Doug stan Jobe.
Speaker 2: Isn't he amazing?
Speaker 3: I mean he is incredible, And I'm just like, man,
Speaker 3: how can I would? I wish I could still smoke
Speaker 3: like He's.
Speaker 2: One of those people I think Doug.
Speaker 1: Who is like it's not an act, it's like that's
Speaker 1: a that's a that's a whole thing that he's I mean,
Speaker 1: he's kind of a work of art in himself. I
Speaker 1: think he's one of a seriously underrated stand up. I mean,
Speaker 1: like wonderful. I'm so glad you brought him up. I mean,
Speaker 1: he is, He's incredible.
Speaker 4: I've sort of lost track of what he's doing, like
Speaker 4: right now, right now, but I do pop in time
Speaker 4: to time.
Speaker 1: I guess, stand up, I don't know what he's up
Speaker 1: to at the moment because I don't even with with people,
Speaker 1: even with you know, let's get him up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, dog, you know what he should do. I should.
Speaker 2: He's one of those guys though, he's so clever.
Speaker 1: That I'm a little intimidated to talk to him, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's like I feel, Yeah, let's let's set it up.
Speaker 4: Let's get this going today. This is a This is
Speaker 4: a precursor to the next episode.
Speaker 2: This is the lead end to the Dug Stanhope episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so a country idea to promote the
Speaker 1: thirty years of the album that let's get Doug Stanhope
Speaker 1: to go out on the road.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't mentioned that album at all.
Speaker 1: That seems to follow the philosophy of what your guys
Speaker 1: are putting together.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, this sounds pretty perfect. I don't know,
Speaker 4: I'll just say it. I'm not gonna wait for you guys.
Speaker 4: We gotta get Brian, you know, somehow, and I don't know.
Speaker 7: You can do a rebase that's ambient presidents.
Speaker 2: We gotta go.
Speaker 1: But look up that animation on Light of David Boie
Speaker 1: and Brian, you know, and Tony Visconti making the very funny.
Speaker 3: I've written it down.
Speaker 2: It's very fun. Okay.
Speaker 3: One other thing I just have to point out is
Speaker 3: Josh Robert Toms cobody genius. What that episode of your
Speaker 3: podcast with him was so amazing. I immediately went out
Speaker 3: and signed up for The Distant Sound of Trains and
Speaker 3: I am enjoying everything.
Speaker 1: He will hear in the I mean, he's he's a
Speaker 1: he is you know, the guy behind Jeff Peterson on
Speaker 1: the Late Night Show is like all of that is
Speaker 1: to do with my When I did Jeff Peterson on
Speaker 1: Late Night, when I put that rule boat in that space,
Speaker 1: it was a stupid throwaway joke. I wanted to have
Speaker 1: a skeleton with a roleboat voice that would mock the
Speaker 1: convention of a of a sidekick, so that it would
Speaker 1: it would always agree with everything I say, and Josh
Speaker 1: would command and start doing the voices, and he'd fuck
Speaker 1: with me, and he fucked with me so much that
Speaker 1: what happened is that he completely ruined my joke of
Speaker 1: you know, my my idea that the stand up was dead,
Speaker 1: and he became, to my mind, the best sidekick in
Speaker 1: late night history. I mean, unbelievable what that guy did.
Speaker 3: What other sidekick fucks with the host? I mean even
Speaker 3: you know, like well Paul Schaeffer is just yes, Sarah
Speaker 3: a little bit. There's Ed McMahon. You are correct, sir,
Speaker 3: every you know, but yeah, he did such a great job.
Speaker 2: He makes me laugh so hard that I got off balance.
Speaker 3: I mean, so anyway, I just had to mention that,
Speaker 3: because well done for mentioning.
Speaker 1: So we've got Doug Stanhope, Brian, you know, weird Al, Josh,
Speaker 1: Robert Thompson. If we can get those guys into a band,
Speaker 1: now you got something.
Speaker 3: You get those guys in a band and have them
Speaker 3: cover the presidents and then send them out onto effect.
Speaker 6: We can't do better than that, you guys, Okay, you right,
Speaker 6: h