Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is my friend Dwight. Yoakum, Dwight. Good
Speaker 1: to be talking to you.
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you, buddy. I'm I'm always flattered
Speaker 2: you will consider me a friend and thank you. From
Speaker 2: the time we last sol and I think we were
Speaker 2: in the bottom of the it was pre COVID because
Speaker 2: we were in the building over at the at XM
Speaker 2: when we all were going up. You were passing me
Speaker 2: in the night on an elevator. You were coming from
Speaker 2: doing your show and I was just starting my you know,
Speaker 2: my nocturnal vampire kind of you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, people can't see. This is audio only, but you're
Speaker 1: wearing a hat with STP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just don't have my foster grants on.
Speaker 2: You know, Richard Petty, you won't see remember, you won't
Speaker 2: see me driving without him.
Speaker 1: Well, I just remember the sixties STP was such a
Speaker 1: big and people started talking what did it mean? And
Speaker 1: it was stop teenage pregnancy.
Speaker 2: And no scientifically treated petroleum.
Speaker 1: I do know that, but you know, in the pre
Speaker 1: internet era, it took years to figure to find that out.
Speaker 2: When I walk around with this at tow. I always
Speaker 2: let a cool hat and I go not the Stone
Speaker 2: Temple pilots.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, that's what it is. How many baseball
Speaker 1: style hats do you have?
Speaker 2: Too many? You can't get the good ones anymore. The
Speaker 2: problem is they went to low Crown. Look, you and
Speaker 2: I we've never really gotten deep into what year are
Speaker 2: you born? You born? You older than me.
Speaker 1: I'm three years older. I was born in fifty three
Speaker 1: year were born in fifty six?
Speaker 2: Fifty six? Yes, but we're in a window. I've I
Speaker 2: came I think from a point of origin that left
Speaker 2: me with the uh, the cynical side of the sixties.
Speaker 2: You know, I kind of came out of it because
Speaker 2: I graduated high school in seventy four. You got out
Speaker 2: in seventy one or seventy seventy, seventy seventy. Yeah, would
Speaker 2: you graduate early?
Speaker 1: I skipped a grade way back.
Speaker 2: Whatever I was gonna see, I want you to show off.
Speaker 1: You set that up for me pretty well.
Speaker 2: You were scheduled. Yes, he's an advanced placement kid, this
Speaker 2: guy so so. I, on the other hand, should have
Speaker 2: been held back a year because my birthday's almost November
Speaker 2: is October twenty third, and now they wouldn't have let
Speaker 2: me go. I would have done better academically, as I
Speaker 2: looked back at it, because I was, you know, I
Speaker 2: used to we get in junior high. You had, you know,
Speaker 2: no singular class that you were stuck in and you
Speaker 2: could do whatever. And I had study hall periods and
Speaker 2: I skipped him, you know where I didn't go outside
Speaker 2: and you know, screw around and smoke with friends or anything,
Speaker 2: because I never smoked. But I was in the library.
Speaker 2: They had a library in the junior high and I
Speaker 2: would sit there and just read the encyclopedia. And when
Speaker 2: I thought back about it, after I did some college,
Speaker 2: you got went to Ohio State. My favorite courses were
Speaker 2: you know, lecture courses, you know, things where there was
Speaker 2: a full professor dealing in rhetoric, you know. And then
Speaker 2: these were because you went to a small school. Right now,
Speaker 2: my high.
Speaker 1: School, well everything's relative. I grew up in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: High school had eighteen hundred people.
Speaker 2: Well I had two thousand. We were in Columbus at
Speaker 2: that point, so I was a two thousand, you know
Speaker 2: person high school. It was a spread over of the
Speaker 2: three classes. It was a sophomore, junior, senior but meaning
Speaker 2: university though college you went to.
Speaker 1: I went to a very small college in Vermont. It
Speaker 1: had eighteen hundred students. And that was in the dark era,
Speaker 1: pre internet, pre DVD, pre cable, like you had to
Speaker 1: entertain yourself.
Speaker 2: Well, I was at Ohio State when it was sixty
Speaker 2: one thousand students on one campus. It was a small
Speaker 2: city in itself, but so I had So you had
Speaker 2: tas you know usually you know grad students that were
Speaker 2: you know for a freshman chorus or a sophomore course.
Speaker 2: You pick those up. But once a week you would
Speaker 2: end up in that in a grand lecture hall with
Speaker 2: the full professor you know who ran you know that
Speaker 2: it was, you know, sometimes head of a department or whatever.
Speaker 2: I found myself really fascinating with that when I and
Speaker 2: I what, we just went off and I took you
Speaker 2: down a rabbit hole here that you.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that digression is a spice of life.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of questions. Let's start at the end.
Speaker 1: So how hard How hard was it to drop out
Speaker 1: of college?
Speaker 2: Not at all. I kind of did it by default.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of just quit going to classes
Speaker 2: and there was no formal kind of you know, removing
Speaker 2: them myself. I just uh, I left and and and
Speaker 2: I came. Well, I'd gone to Nashville first. And then
Speaker 2: a buddy of mine, a kid that was a year
Speaker 2: younger kid, uh, a guitar player named Bill Alves who
Speaker 2: was in stage band with me in high school, a
Speaker 2: year behind my class, and he was in this greaser
Speaker 2: band that we had had out of the theater department
Speaker 2: that you know, because Shananah and all that had blown up,
Speaker 2: you know, in the ensuing years after Woodstock, they kind
Speaker 2: of you know, that whole revival, the throwback stuff of
Speaker 2: the fifties. And at this this variety show that the
Speaker 2: theater department had at my high school, I front of
Speaker 2: this band. It became Dwight and the Greasers because they
Speaker 2: were all gassed back with duct tails and everything. And
Speaker 2: we actually opened in Columbus at the Loew's Theater the
Speaker 2: weekend they opened American Graffiti. They had us perform. Wow
Speaker 2: people did people well, no, but people didn't know what
Speaker 2: between the showing the screenings, and it was one of
Speaker 2: those old, you know, eight hundred seat modern but that
Speaker 2: big span of you know, not like the Cinerama dome,
Speaker 2: but but big and we were this tiny thing down there,
Speaker 2: jumping around between the screenings of the different you know
Speaker 2: of graffiti and doing that. It was kind of you know,
Speaker 2: it was kind of interesting and weird. But I so
Speaker 2: Bill Alves, the guitar player who was in that, and
Speaker 2: have been in Stage Man a couple of years after
Speaker 2: I was out of high school and was at Ohio State.
Speaker 2: You noticed my colloquialism there. My granny would always down
Speaker 2: in southeast Kentucky where I was born, would say, are
Speaker 2: you all doing well up in Ohio, Ohio? Very properly say?
Speaker 2: And I'd say, you know, we would, those of us
Speaker 2: from Columbus and south to the river. It was a
Speaker 2: Hia high It's like so Ohio State. And you know,
Speaker 2: I left, and my intention was I went back to
Speaker 2: La City. Out here, I actually had better professors. I
Speaker 2: had guys at La City College that were full PhD teaching.
Speaker 2: You know, where I was picking up, you know, sophomore
Speaker 2: year stuff. You know, I thought, well, I'll pick up
Speaker 2: you know where I left off there and do an
Speaker 2: AA and go to UCLA. I will transfer over. And
Speaker 2: that got interrupted by what I was doing, you know,
Speaker 2: finally in the clubs out here and then having a
Speaker 2: moment of you know, just seeing the reality of what
Speaker 2: I'd come to the you know, West Coast for. But
Speaker 2: Billy olves went back to the finished this said to me.
Speaker 2: In the winter of seventy seven, he said, Hey, you're
Speaker 2: gonna go with me. I'm going to my He and
Speaker 2: aunt and uncle lived out and here in Tustin, the
Speaker 2: you know, down in Orange County. He said, I'm going
Speaker 2: out there. You're going with me. He had its nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy Volkswagen bug and we loaded everything I owned, which
Speaker 2: wasn't much, but we had you know, Duffel bags on
Speaker 2: the roof and drove from Columbus on I seventy. You know,
Speaker 2: we took that highway away and he spent a couple
Speaker 2: three months and went home. By July fourth, he was
Speaker 2: out and U I stayed. I didn't even have a bicycle,
Speaker 2: you know. I rode the bus and we ended up
Speaker 2: in Long Beach, living on the beach, and I rode
Speaker 2: the bus to Bullock's Lakewood. Are you've been out here
Speaker 2: long enough to remember Bullocks? Right?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, absolutely, I've been out here longer than you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's a mid seventies, so seventy seven. I
Speaker 2: got here, arrived and I ended up working there, and
Speaker 2: I worked at moving furniture for a time and then
Speaker 2: I drove air freight. But anyway, so yeah, I ended
Speaker 2: up out here and stayed and planning. Let's go back
Speaker 2: a few seconds.
Speaker 1: You brought up the fact that you were born in
Speaker 1: November in the fact that today, well, lamber hold on
Speaker 1: one second, since you were one of the youngest kids
Speaker 1: in the class, did that affect how people treated you
Speaker 1: in your personality?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, I think back, I never got bullied. I
Speaker 2: was kind of the wallflower kid. That was what was
Speaker 2: weird when I got to I remember at the end
Speaker 2: of elementary, I was in a large old school, McGuffey Elementary,
Speaker 2: Junior High combined, and so they would have a talent
Speaker 2: show and I was up in there until fifth grade.
Speaker 2: And this is in Columbus. Like I said, we had
Speaker 2: made the move, you know, out of Appalachia at that
Speaker 2: point up and for anybody that wants me to say Appalachia,
Speaker 2: I ain't gonna do it. No. Somebody started chastising me
Speaker 2: on either how can you being from here? And I'd
Speaker 2: say Apple, I'd say, yeah, I've never heard it called Appalachia,
Speaker 2: except if you're in Florida, you know Apple, Apa Cola
Speaker 2: or whatever the swamps and the lakes are anyway, and
Speaker 2: Stuart Copelan would have said Appalachian Spring. Right. So in
Speaker 2: any event, this is a great book. By the way,
Speaker 2: have you read the United States Appalachian I haven't.
Speaker 1: But if we're going to digress, I remember my roommate
Speaker 1: first year in college, his girlfriend went to Appalachian State,
Speaker 1: which was in western Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: The other one is in North Carolina, Appalachian State, right, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's what I meant. Yeah, North Carolina, boone, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I'm confusing two parts of my life, but you're right.
Speaker 1: I had friends went to Appalachian State.
Speaker 2: Who I do that myself on more than one occasion.
Speaker 2: I confuse.
Speaker 1: But also there's an ally I kind of ed what
Speaker 1: I would say to so many times. It's like a
Speaker 1: tongue twister. Appalachia Cola in Florida too.
Speaker 2: That's what yeah, which to me, that's where I heard Appalachia,
Speaker 2: and it's Appalachia where I was, and I was born
Speaker 2: there anyway, So I mean, so whatever I ended up, Uh, well,
Speaker 2: you started to say something, how was affected by that.
Speaker 2: I didn't think about it at the time, because you know,
Speaker 2: I was gonna be five years old and he told,
Speaker 2: you know, nineteen whatever. That was sixty one. I guess.
Speaker 2: I went to kindergarten and I was the oldest kid
Speaker 2: in my family. They didn't have an older sibling, which
Speaker 2: had a lot to do with how I embraced music
Speaker 2: or didn't. In other words, the Beatles were a little
Speaker 2: beyond me. And I said to Mike ness With one time,
Speaker 2: you know, I was a huge Monkeys fan, and I
Speaker 2: probably got one of the best educations I could have
Speaker 2: ever had with those first two Monkeys albums. Now that
Speaker 2: I know what went on with that, right, that's the
Speaker 2: Wrecking Crew. I'm listening to Carol King, Neil Diamond, the writers, right,
Speaker 2: John Stewart people and Boyce and Hart, you know, do
Speaker 2: backwards inversions of Paperback Writer when they do you know,
Speaker 2: last prand to Clarksville's opening. And I was down in
Speaker 2: the basement with a half baked drum kit because I
Speaker 2: had a real snare drumm and then we had one
Speaker 2: of those sort of not real the rest of the kit.
Speaker 2: My parents couldn't afford, you know, to do that. But
Speaker 2: I had that, and my mother ranted. She was at
Speaker 2: that point working at a place called Columbus Autoparts, a
Speaker 2: factory that supplied stuff out of Detroit. Used to Joe
Speaker 2: and say that our family didn't make it to Detroit.
Speaker 2: We only got gas enough to get to Columbus, and
Speaker 2: had to make her stand there was actually that there
Speaker 2: were a family that was there, you know, on her side,
Speaker 2: out of Kentucky, that had moved up ahead. And you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've read Hibiliology. I'm sure you have,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I have the book and I told Ron Howard.
Speaker 2: I did the reading with him, and he had asked
Speaker 2: me about doing a role, and I couldn't schedule wise
Speaker 2: do it. But the thing that I was remiss about
Speaker 2: was that they weren't doing it as a series. I
Speaker 2: thought as a series he would give the breath and
Speaker 2: width of that life and what he was, you know,
Speaker 2: the story he was telling that as opposed to a film,
Speaker 2: which we got four hours. Right, we can get into.
Speaker 1: This with we go as long as you want.
Speaker 2: Digress No, but your streaming observations are the greatest, because
Speaker 2: it's maddening to me that we have to wait like
Speaker 2: it's nineteen sixty six for the next episode or something.
Speaker 2: I want to strangle the TV when I look up
Speaker 2: on and Amazon used to not do it right going backwards.
Speaker 2: Now they're doing it. It's like what in the anyway?
Speaker 2: So I'm an oldest kid of three, so I'm kind
Speaker 2: of on my where were you in family line? Were
Speaker 2: you give an older son? No?
Speaker 1: But since you're the oldest kids to three, how old
Speaker 1: are the other?
Speaker 2: Next? It's three little Indians. It's like two years separate
Speaker 2: my brother and then three to my sister. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a three total, right, there's still that hierarchy because
Speaker 2: of school. I'm two grades ahead of him and three
Speaker 2: grades ahead of her, you know, but.
Speaker 1: Usually the oldest, my younger sister's really into birth order.
Speaker 1: I'm the middle. Usually all the hopes and dreams in
Speaker 1: the family are in the oldest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's a lot of weight. It's like, even
Speaker 2: if it's only two, they make that and uh, you're
Speaker 2: the middle. You went outside the home to seek attention.
Speaker 2: That's I'm still seeking attention. Well, there was there was, Well,
Speaker 2: there was a great book I think my sophomore year
Speaker 2: of college at Ohio State that that Uh, it was
Speaker 2: called firstborn second born. I've never been able to find
Speaker 2: it since I've looked on Amazon. Every firstborn second born
Speaker 2: sibling birth order traits and it broke down, you know,
Speaker 2: and in large families, it goes in subgroups. You know.
Speaker 2: They used the Kennedy family as an example of there's
Speaker 2: a second oldest, there's a My mom came from six
Speaker 2: my wife Emily, who actually shot photos of us and
Speaker 2: videoed us that night that we had you do the
Speaker 2: Beatles song with us. We She is the oldest daughter
Speaker 2: of twelve kids, so that's a whole another dynamic because
Speaker 2: she becomes the mother. Hint right, the last three could Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they were. Well, there was an eleveniese Catholic family that
Speaker 2: on the one side, she Danish Irish on the other
Speaker 2: and uh but anyway, so yeah, I remember one time
Speaker 2: I went to camp and the councilors my brother hadn't
Speaker 2: been there the previous year I had gone. I was old,
Speaker 2: you know, going to a summer you know, uh, a
Speaker 2: youth camp, church, youth camp. So I went down there
Speaker 2: and this is I think back, because at the time,
Speaker 2: it's just the kind you know, it's your life. You
Speaker 2: don't know any different right, you don't know, there's no
Speaker 2: counterpoint to it. And uh, I went down there. It's
Speaker 2: in southern Ohio. It was an old it was an old. Uh.
Speaker 2: I think may had predated World War One, but it
Speaker 2: was an old. It was called Fort Hill in southeastern
Speaker 2: Ohio between Cincinnati and Portsmouth along you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of north of the Ohio River. Beautiful down there
Speaker 2: in the hills. And they had these huge cabins that
Speaker 2: all the you know, the boys would stay in and
Speaker 2: the girls were on the other side of the camp,
Speaker 2: on the other And I had a ball the first
Speaker 2: year I was there. The next year that I went,
Speaker 2: my brother was of age that he could go, so
Speaker 2: he came with right the middle right, and they called
Speaker 2: my parents after about the third day and said, look, uh,
Speaker 2: they says there's something wrong because my brother had some
Speaker 2: issues when he was young. He had had some convulsions
Speaker 2: and he had some I don't know what meds. He
Speaker 2: probably on riddle and I don't know now what, you
Speaker 2: know what the fifties, sixties, you know, were giving kids whatever.
Speaker 2: He was. He was an ad D kid, you know,
Speaker 2: became actually later classically flew jets. You know, he was
Speaker 2: a charter jet pilot and you know, really smart guy,
Speaker 2: brilliant kid. He but but he had his struggles, you know,
Speaker 2: and he and he wasn't taking his medicine. He had
Speaker 2: something he had to take. I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 2: and it made me sick at my stuff. I could.
Speaker 2: They called my parents, They said, something wrong? Is something
Speaker 2: wrong wrong? And I said, no, no, it's it's the
Speaker 2: other it's your son, twit. You got to let him
Speaker 2: off the hook. He's miserable, he won't he's worried to death.
Speaker 2: The other kid running around having a ball, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's probably not taken whatever he's supposed to take.
Speaker 2: But so that's what was you know, that's what you're
Speaker 2: living with when you said that, the hero kid. And
Speaker 2: I read also that the firstborns will either stay very
Speaker 2: close to the family or they leave and never come back.
Speaker 2: And I fell in the latter category. Finally, I kind
Speaker 2: of left came to the West Coast. Now. I had
Speaker 2: a great relationship with my parents that till to my
Speaker 2: dad's death. My mother is still alive, thank goodness. She's
Speaker 2: eighty nine o ninety coming up and in this next spring.
Speaker 2: But she and I had as again perspective from me
Speaker 2: over the years and growing to know other people. And
Speaker 2: I was I was reading, you know, because I get
Speaker 2: your your your your online letter and the what is
Speaker 2: it the Guest? The new book you're reading sounds great,
Speaker 2: sounds fantastic, actually, because I'm a fan of, like, you know,
Speaker 2: Pete Dexter and the writings you ever read Spooner by
Speaker 2: Pete he wrote Paris Trout and Deadwood. He wrote the
Speaker 2: book in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: I have not read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Deadwood is great. It's one of the most brilliant
Speaker 2: Western descriptions of the Old West that I've ever come across.
Speaker 2: They attempted it twice. The first one was Walter Hill
Speaker 2: in the nineties with with Jeff Bridges, and they as
Speaker 2: soon as I heard the title, I think, okay, they
Speaker 2: missed the mark. They called it wild Bill and that's
Speaker 2: one foot in old school. And then the early two
Speaker 2: thousands they actually did the series. HBO did dead Wood
Speaker 2: and now they got close, but it's still not the
Speaker 2: same visceral kind of element that Pete Dexter captured in that.
Speaker 2: And so my parents were because you're talking about the Guests,
Speaker 2: and it was really interesting what you were saying about
Speaker 2: that kind of personality and especially if you don't grow
Speaker 2: up within that, you know, and I had. They were
Speaker 2: lacking my parents, but they were never for a moment ever,
Speaker 2: ever malicious to any one of the three of us.
Speaker 2: And we knew every day they loved us. And I
Speaker 2: think back about the lacking of whatever, you know, and
Speaker 2: maybe not being held back a year, you know, and
Speaker 2: I probably would have done, you know, I would have
Speaker 2: been grown a little more. You know. What. What's the
Speaker 2: is it in Outliers where he talks about or is
Speaker 2: it uh uh? The other one that he wrote before.
Speaker 1: Well, Outliers is what he talks about with the best soccer.
Speaker 2: Players, after the hockey players, the hockey players, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: the hockey that's Outliers, because Tipping Point was the earlier
Speaker 2: one that was about writ you know, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: but which deals with the hushpuppy issue. Right remember the
Speaker 2: kids in South like in Lower East Side, the hipsters
Speaker 2: couldn't afford cool shoes, des are buying hushpuppies and blue
Speaker 2: hush puppies up.
Speaker 1: But him talking about the Gladwell books in case people don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell, you know, brilliantly written stuff, and he
Speaker 2: uh uh, I just forgot my point. What was it?
Speaker 2: What was I referencing? I'm gladwell and outlined.
Speaker 1: He was talking in Blink, which was the second book,
Speaker 1: that if you were born all the great hockey players
Speaker 1: right born in the first half of the year.
Speaker 2: We take them because they're bigger, you know, at that
Speaker 2: age you're physically bigger. So I was there and I
Speaker 2: was just, you know, slight, skinny kid. I wasn't I
Speaker 2: wasn't small, but I wasn't you know, like a guy
Speaker 2: going to be six ' four, you know. I ended
Speaker 2: up being roughly right six feet tall. But it was
Speaker 2: like so with that age in answer to the question,
Speaker 2: not succinctly answering it, but with all the tangents I
Speaker 2: can muster. It was at the time I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is what I'm supposed to do. You know, at
Speaker 2: four years and three quarters, I went into you know,
Speaker 2: the school and was always the youngest kid in the class,
Speaker 2: you or one of the youngest. There were probably kids
Speaker 2: born in November and December actually when I think back
Speaker 2: to that time, but not many. And it was later
Speaker 2: like in fifth grade there was this talent show that
Speaker 2: was I mentioned that, and uh, I was a hey
Speaker 2: crossing guard, a safety patrol kid, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a great honor.
Speaker 2: Oh no, they let you do it right, and that
Speaker 2: was trying. I remember after that afternoon, because they held
Speaker 2: it in the afternoon, I went down and played a monkey.
Speaker 2: I played I'm not your stepping style, and my class
Speaker 2: voted me to go down to the to the to
Speaker 2: the variety show centre in the big auditorium combined on
Speaker 2: toury in the junior high and elementary and do it.
Speaker 2: And I remember the older kids, you know, kids that
Speaker 2: were you know, fourteen, coming across the crosswalk and look
Speaker 2: at me, kid, that wasn't bad in my little flag.
Speaker 2: So that was the first handhold right of actually thinking.
Speaker 1: It's funny you mention this because I always had a
Speaker 1: history since I was a year younger than everybody. I
Speaker 1: would get along with the older people when I was
Speaker 1: in college whatever. It's sort of a similar thing. But well,
Speaker 1: let's go through a few other things. Okay, you said
Speaker 1: you can't get a good hat anymore. What's a good hat?
Speaker 1: And what can you get?
Speaker 2: Well, a high crown, this hot the old classic seventies
Speaker 2: look you and I know the truck stop hat was
Speaker 2: twenty feet tall, right, the ball cap running rolled and
Speaker 2: you don't bend, you roll the brim if you if
Speaker 2: you're a real hot rod Gaylord Perry Pitcher, you roll
Speaker 2: that brim. And the same thing with you know guys
Speaker 2: the old Air Force caps, they had a different kind
Speaker 2: of crown on there. If the Marine Corps had the
Speaker 2: that you know, high peaked anyway, crazy, I'm into observing. Oh,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Exactly what you're talking about with the crown, because that
Speaker 1: was a big thing in Little League. I mean, you wouldn't,
Speaker 1: like Babe Ruth the old schools how it is now
Speaker 1: if they're even smaller now where it goes straight to
Speaker 1: the head.
Speaker 2: But what bothers me, which is horrible, it's not it's
Speaker 2: not aesthetically very flattering. No.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is in the old days they
Speaker 1: were not adjustable. You got your own size and they
Speaker 1: really fit well.
Speaker 2: You had to fight. Yeah, you had to know your
Speaker 2: hats and get the size because it was wool all
Speaker 2: the way around. The pro teams are still that, I
Speaker 2: mean you still buy them sized. But the adjustable this
Speaker 2: is dnhim. The one I got on it was a
Speaker 2: great store on Melrose that had stocks of these blank
Speaker 2: denim Classic trucker caps. They come and go every few years.
Speaker 2: Even still, I've tried with my merch people. I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I really want to get the Classic. I
Speaker 2: don't know how many answers I And we measured at
Speaker 2: one point with the height of the crown should be,
Speaker 2: you know, for the label to be sticked to whatever
Speaker 2: you know, patch you're putting on the front. Another when
Speaker 2: I've got to Union seventy six, big old Union seventy
Speaker 2: six badges, the last gas station job I had right
Speaker 2: after i'd quit going to you know, college in Ohio state,
Speaker 2: and right before in the months ensuing before I left
Speaker 2: and came to California. But I was Union seventy six.
Speaker 2: My dad owned a Texico for a time, so we'd
Speaker 2: as a kid, you know, growing up with with that.
Speaker 1: Okay, but I'm gonna switch to another thing before we
Speaker 1: go forward. One of the other things you said earlier
Speaker 1: was being cynical, as they say in class. Amplify that well.
Speaker 2: I remember, I had a great I had what I
Speaker 2: was I mentioned I touched on a second ago. When
Speaker 2: I went to La City College, I was fascinated because
Speaker 2: I had this professor O'Mara was his name, and I
Speaker 2: realized halfway through it was a Western CIVI class that
Speaker 2: the book on Egyptology we were using he had authored
Speaker 2: at the University of Chicago. I thought, whoa this guy?
Speaker 2: Because he could teach at La City, I think it
Speaker 2: was five years and they could pick up another state
Speaker 2: of California. At the time, this is in the early eighties,
Speaker 2: they could pick up a full retirement, a second full retirement,
Speaker 2: and so I had that. And I had a professor
Speaker 2: from USC, an English lit professor or creative writing professor
Speaker 2: who had been a publisher and again was retired out
Speaker 2: of USC as a full PhD and was picking up
Speaker 2: a second retirement, right, And so the you know, at
Speaker 2: close range, you know, with twenty kids in the class,
Speaker 2: and they said to me. The one said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: this philosophy professor I had it was also a full
Speaker 2: professor from USC that was doing double duty. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, the difference in a skeptic and a cynic
Speaker 2: is that the cynic has been a true believer that's
Speaker 2: become disillusioned. Right. I always held that I understood as
Speaker 2: soon as I said, yeah, that's one of the Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and so when I said cynical, I was
Speaker 2: watching the older part of that generation of boomers, you
Speaker 2: still probably believed. See I'm the kids sitting there watching
Speaker 2: you and the older parts of the boomers. Right, I'm
Speaker 2: the tail in the last years of the boomers, watching
Speaker 2: it go to shit, right, watching the Summer of Love
Speaker 2: become ultamont.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, I understand your point. It's well taken,
Speaker 1: and there are certainly people older than me. The line
Speaker 1: of demarcation that's so important to me was I was
Speaker 1: fully conscious when the Beatles hit. But I always I
Speaker 1: always use the analogy. I have a beach analogy, okay,
Speaker 1: where the wave comes in, the wave goes out, and
Speaker 1: there are certain people from that era who are still
Speaker 1: on the beach. They don't go back out. So you know,
Speaker 1: in the fifties wave came in, we got Mayner, g Krebs,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, wave went out, people like Alan
Speaker 1: Ginsburg whatever, they were left on the beach. For those
Speaker 1: of us who lived had the sixties values, okay, and
Speaker 1: then Reagan legitimized greed. It's like our values don't square
Speaker 1: with everybody else. It's like the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: even in music, you know, the first thing people want
Speaker 1: to know is how do they get paid and how
Speaker 1: do they extend it. Not that the people in the
Speaker 1: old ages weren't interested in getting paid, it just wasn't
Speaker 1: the first question. So I believe, you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me. This is going to be controversial.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Even in the Joni Mitchell album Blue California, she says
Speaker 1: she's going to kiss a sunset pig. Okay, pig is
Speaker 1: a cop. Subsequent to nine to eleven, the firemen and
Speaker 1: when the policemen they're venerated, whereas in the sixties you
Speaker 1: have to beware. And it's funny because a cop has
Speaker 1: never done anything good for me. Cop has done a
Speaker 1: lot of bad shit for me, but never anything good.
Speaker 2: Really, that's fascinating. I mean, and I I've had Look,
Speaker 2: I've had experiences with cops that are not great. But
Speaker 2: I didn't What I was going to say was I
Speaker 2: I felt like, I guess the disillusionment by the early seventies,
Speaker 2: right when Vietnam finally.
Speaker 1: But I have to tell you we all felt that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what I understand.
Speaker 1: The concept of being ripped off because they talked about
Speaker 1: that a lot with Generation X.
Speaker 2: You got to do it.
Speaker 1: And we're in the trails and we're picking up the
Speaker 1: the ship from the elephant.
Speaker 2: In the circus, and it was one of the It was.
Speaker 1: Very very strange to have Ken state in May and
Speaker 1: then everything switched. It was back to the land and
Speaker 1: all the protests they ended after that.
Speaker 2: It was very weird. Well, Kent States were seventy yeah,
Speaker 2: so but by I remember I was sitting in I
Speaker 2: was a junior year because I had to go down
Speaker 2: and I had to go down and take the physical
Speaker 2: for the draft or anything. Even though they had stopped
Speaker 2: right the active draft by the time I, you know,
Speaker 2: got out when I turned eighteen, uh in late seventy four,
Speaker 2: I still had to get on that bus and drive
Speaker 2: down there, you know, ride a bus full of dudes
Speaker 2: down with an army sergeant hollering at you and getting
Speaker 2: the line. That's why I got up there and went
Speaker 2: now neck one yello him and he's calling out and
Speaker 2: I'm standing in my own word and he's measuring my
Speaker 2: Hair's a five ft eleven and three quarter inches. I said,
Speaker 2: you can't just give me to the other quarter inch
Speaker 2: get on.
Speaker 1: Well. The great thing is you remember the movie stripes
Speaker 1: with barn Oates is Sergeant Holka. And what I loved
Speaker 1: about was, you know, they're sitting there and gon't think
Speaker 1: he's taking a little too seriously and that irreverence really
Speaker 1: is the sixties, That's what I love.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the seventies, I mean they were letting guys.
Speaker 2: It was, it was. There was cynicism even in the military.
Speaker 2: You know, it was like, what with the hell was
Speaker 2: that ten years? And why you know what I mean
Speaker 2: if you talk to guys and I know you have
Speaker 2: that that came out of it, They're like, what a waste,
Speaker 2: you know? And how many young lives, how many young
Speaker 2: I used to look in Columbus there was a little newspaper,
Speaker 2: a local thing called the Londen News. At the height
Speaker 2: of that warrant. I remember the pictures of those kids,
Speaker 2: some of them with acne, acne still their photo from
Speaker 2: boot camp, right with their dressed uniform, and it would
Speaker 2: run and they weren't coming back. They would run them
Speaker 2: every week, the kids that were gone. And I really
Speaker 2: sad when I think back at those faces, those young kids.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember being in high school remember being
Speaker 1: in high school and over the intercom for the first
Speaker 1: time they announced all the school that a student, you know,
Speaker 1: a previous student had died in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, very sobering, and it's a an experience that,
Speaker 2: like you've said, watched you write, I mean, we're very
Speaker 2: nine on one to now is not the same because
Speaker 2: it's still an all volunteer force. It's not.
Speaker 1: There's okay, but growing up forgetting that Vietnam, you know,
Speaker 1: bad war, et cetera, et cetera. But you're growing up
Speaker 1: and you say, shit, I can't see ever fighting for
Speaker 1: my country, And now I can see fighting against people
Speaker 1: who want to end democracy, of which there's a good
Speaker 1: number in America. I hear from them every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean there's an argument to me, mate.
Speaker 2: I was a few years ago Pire's Morgan's show on CNN.
Speaker 2: I did a thing about and he wanted to interview
Speaker 2: me and talk about the Second Amendment, and I said, look,
Speaker 2: it's not about hunting, it's not about you know, sporting rifle.
Speaker 2: There's a reason I believe that it was written in
Speaker 2: there that way, and it was to prevent tyranny, and
Speaker 2: it was to rise up against the tyranny of a government,
Speaker 2: the tyranny of someone taking over the government, you know,
Speaker 2: the military, you know, performing a coup whatever. So I
Speaker 2: didn't I was I guess I was hopeful, and hopefully
Speaker 2: I was more of a skeptic than a cynic, because
Speaker 2: a cynic it's hard to it's hard to go on,
Speaker 2: you know, cynicism, it's hard to kind of overcome it.
Speaker 2: But I remained skeptical and remain skeptical. You know of
Speaker 2: a lot of people power, right power, and those who
Speaker 2: get it and the wrong people getting it and who knows,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a coin toss.
Speaker 1: Well, it's skeptical. You do you talk about that my father,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd hear the old what's the real story here?
Speaker 1: It's like when you see somebody driving down the street
Speaker 1: in the Bentley and they don't have a job, Well
Speaker 1: they either have a rich father or something. Especially in
Speaker 1: LA when somebody you can't accept it if face value,
Speaker 1: when it's incredibly go oh wait a second. There's a
Speaker 1: real story here. Part of being a skeptic, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are leased in lamed.
Speaker 1: As I say there, there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: live in that way. But there's all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, HBO Max has now been turned
Speaker 1: into max Max and that makes no sense to me.
Speaker 2: And then I can't remember who owns it, but.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's more of discovery and it's run
Speaker 1: by this guy Zoslav. And I was listening to this guy,
Speaker 1: Scot Galloway, big business guy says, no brand person, no
Speaker 1: branding person in the world would say to change it.
Speaker 1: This guybo Yeah, that's a guy brand This guy changed
Speaker 1: it because if he wins, he wants all the credits credit.
Speaker 1: And then I was listening to this podcast with his
Speaker 1: economist from Columbia talking about what he said to the
Speaker 1: White House, et cetera. They won't listen. It's a dick thing.
Speaker 1: It's like I guess I was brought up my parents
Speaker 1: always telling me, you're not the guy. There's always somebody
Speaker 1: who knows better, who knows more. Find them, but you're
Speaker 1: not the guy.
Speaker 2: And then you don't don't think you're the smartest guy
Speaker 2: in the room. I don't. Yeah, I go in, I think, look,
Speaker 2: i'm I'm I'm pretty good. I'm quick. I'm quick. I'm
Speaker 2: not fast, but i'm pretty quick. And uh that I
Speaker 2: want to have smarter people than me, you know, informing me.
Speaker 2: That's what I hope always, and somebody smartest me.
Speaker 1: You know, as one gets older and time starts to
Speaker 1: run out of the hour glass, it's very weird because Okay,
Speaker 1: when you go back when you're still in school, there's
Speaker 1: a big organization. They're into what you're doing. Are you
Speaker 1: cutting class, you're getting good grades, whatever. Then you graduate,
Speaker 1: they don't give a fuck. Do whatever you want, you know, living,
Speaker 1: gutter whatever. And it's funny that there's that side. So
Speaker 1: you're ultimately forced to find your own way with no structure.
Speaker 1: And it's weird because you have you outgrow people, primarily
Speaker 1: because not that they're stupid, but the choices they made.
Speaker 1: They don't want to continue to go down the path.
Speaker 1: And it's very weird because then you're hanging with them.
Speaker 1: It's not as satisfying as it used to be, and
Speaker 1: you have to find new people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I've over the year has been asked well
Speaker 2: how do I how do I do this? Or that?
Speaker 2: You know musicians that are talented maybe, and they go, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I said, well, first of all, you got to get
Speaker 2: out of where you are. You know, it's like you're
Speaker 2: in You're you're in Indianapolis, or you're in Des Moines,
Speaker 2: you're in Omaha. Okay, cool, But you got to go
Speaker 2: to New York, go to La or at least Nashville
Speaker 2: so you can compete, you know, and put it in
Speaker 2: front of people, right, and and it surprises me, especially
Speaker 2: as a point of age. You know, you've you've written
Speaker 2: about this. I've read where you where there are those
Speaker 2: that do and those that don't and those that don't.
Speaker 2: You could tell over and over again. Are you when
Speaker 2: you're beach analogy? Are you saying you're one of those
Speaker 2: one of those persons left on the beach you feel beat? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And you didn't go back out with the current or
Speaker 2: the wave, right, yeah, I probably went out with the wave.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's what you know it's like because I
Speaker 2: understand the analogy, I get it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, let's just say you bring up you know,
Speaker 1: you go on tour. A lot of places you tour
Speaker 1: are not the top line of the metropolis. All right,
Speaker 1: if you are just by being there the brief period
Speaker 1: of time, is it just another gig or do you
Speaker 1: learn something?
Speaker 2: You learned something insight, you learn something every night. Everywhere
Speaker 2: you go, I think, I mean, I'm just curious enough
Speaker 2: that I look for what there is. I'm fascinated with
Speaker 2: people in places. The thing I never had to study,
Speaker 2: and I probably would have made it bout I was
Speaker 2: going to major in philosophy, but as I look back
Speaker 2: in history, history and geography, I never had to open
Speaker 2: a book. It seemed like it just was in me
Speaker 2: from some previous lifetime. I knew the globe, and that
Speaker 2: was what I was saying when I would cut class,
Speaker 2: I would, you know, actually cut classes. I could get
Speaker 2: away with it and sit in the library and read.
Speaker 2: Because my dad, God bless him, he tried to. I
Speaker 2: was raised very devoutly in Church of Christ, which they
Speaker 2: founded Pepperdine University out here. But the Church of Christ
Speaker 2: is a non denominational, you know, Christian church, and in Columbus,
Speaker 2: the fascinating thing for me, again in retrospect, was that
Speaker 2: it was this major university hub, right, so we had
Speaker 2: this influx of guys that were teaching my Sunday school
Speaker 2: classes that were doing I know it now because I
Speaker 2: remember doing their PhDs, one of them in high level
Speaker 2: mathematics at Ohio State. Another one we had a friend
Speaker 2: of our family, became very close to my dad because
Speaker 2: they both shared a love for cars, and he loved
Speaker 2: he had a little old Porsche Sea the C model
Speaker 2: looked like the bathtub, you know, because he was finishing
Speaker 2: his residency there in antestesiology. So I got exposed, you know,
Speaker 2: this cross polarization of culture. My dad was a ten
Speaker 2: year career Army sergeant. All I came, I was going
Speaker 2: to stay do the twenty you know, and because of me,
Speaker 2: he used to look at you, you know, boy, he
Speaker 2: lamented it until the end of his life. Almost I
Speaker 2: have been I'd have been retard. But now if I'd
Speaker 2: have stayed in but you don't because he couldn't. He
Speaker 2: was last posted in Korea posts the truth and people
Speaker 2: don't realize the Korean War, remember Korean conflict, John Prime,
Speaker 2: Hello in There is one of the great songs that
Speaker 2: deals with that. And you know the couple the old
Speaker 2: man on the bench and Hello in there and the
Speaker 2: Korean War. We don't know what for? You know, that
Speaker 2: lyric was so poignant and great. Anyway, it was post
Speaker 2: the war, the active war, and it's still to this day.
Speaker 2: I guess just a truce, you know, that's why it's
Speaker 2: such a you.
Speaker 1: Know, well I read just to you know, put this
Speaker 1: in and you hear about how is it going to
Speaker 1: end between Ukraine and Russia and they say it might
Speaker 1: be like Korea and that there was never a treaty.
Speaker 2: Is the truth.
Speaker 1: They just kind of decided to stop fighting.
Speaker 2: Stop and just became a truth. That that's what had
Speaker 2: DMZ is real. It's like right, it's like they're looking
Speaker 2: at each other still with loaded guns. So anyway, he
Speaker 2: was there and couldn't take us. He left. My mom
Speaker 2: was just pregnant with me, and he spent the time
Speaker 2: and he didn't meet me till I was nine months old,
Speaker 2: and that it was an interesting dynamic between the two.
Speaker 2: But he looked he said, you know, i'd have been retard.
Speaker 2: But I said, you'd have been in Vietnam. He said, well,
Speaker 2: you know maybe, but he ran a motor pool and
Speaker 2: he ran tank transporters, which you know, but those old
Speaker 2: sergeants did end up over there. And then I said,
Speaker 2: you know, the first thing I ever wrote, funny enough
Speaker 2: because I was watching all the news reel footage. I
Speaker 2: was eight years old and I had my first real guitar. Well,
Speaker 2: he had one he brought home. There's a shot of
Speaker 2: me in my box. Said that it's a k F hole,
Speaker 2: remember the old F hole guitars a k that he
Speaker 2: he couldn't play. He brought more instruments on the never
Speaker 2: could play a lick. He brought one from Westinghouse when
Speaker 2: he worked out there after he lost his gas station.
Speaker 2: That's another whole topic that they give these guys gas
Speaker 2: stations or great mechanics that have no business acumen whatsoever.
Speaker 2: And the oil companies know that, by the way, I've
Speaker 2: read analysis of that. They knew because they owned the
Speaker 2: real estate. So they would just flip every three or
Speaker 2: four years another, give another mechanic, you know, the station lab,
Speaker 2: try and run it. And but he brought a bass.
Speaker 2: He brought a bull horn Dan electro bass home. And
Speaker 2: so I bought this from this guy out at the plant.
Speaker 2: He said, he's young guy. He just needed money. He said,
Speaker 2: I figured you could play an electric guitar. I said, well, dad,
Speaker 2: that's not a guitar. I don't know how to play
Speaker 2: a bass a base. And when I thought about we
Speaker 2: in my it was black. It's a classic. It's probably
Speaker 2: worth multiple thousand dollars now. I think about that bullhorn,
Speaker 2: Dan electro bass and we painted at baby blue. For
Speaker 2: some reason, we sprayed my brother and I, you know neither.
Speaker 2: You know, I fooled around with it, but I couldn't play.
Speaker 2: But I had a real acoustic guitar. He had this
Speaker 2: k that I had when I was about two years old.
Speaker 2: Three there photos me with it, just bellering and trying
Speaker 2: to hold my granny hole in the top and the headstock,
Speaker 2: and I tripped and fell and crushed that. So then
Speaker 2: I had a couple of toy things that you know,
Speaker 2: between then and at eight years old. And this goes
Speaker 2: to who he was. And my parents saw the earth
Speaker 2: people that worked really hard, and he had a bit
Speaker 2: of walder Midie and he was always dreaming. And this
Speaker 2: was back to what I was talking about with the
Speaker 2: people that he knew, the cross pollinization of culture because
Speaker 2: they knew he was a great mechanic. And some of
Speaker 2: these guys like cars and they had that in common,
Speaker 2: but nothing else with him. And even him trying to
Speaker 2: learn to golf was hilarious. I caddied for him till
Speaker 2: the last time I laughing, so I collapsed onto the course.
Speaker 2: And anyway, but I wrote this song on that guitar
Speaker 2: because the newsreels were coming at dinner. You'd hear, you know,
Speaker 2: the Marines have gone into landed at Danang, Remember that
Speaker 2: they did. They did a landing craft landing if you remember,
Speaker 2: it was like a big staged you know, bit sort
Speaker 2: of all of World War two. And that must have
Speaker 2: prompted me because I was starting to see, you know,
Speaker 2: in that first couple of years of the active war.
Speaker 2: You know, it's would have been what eight, I was
Speaker 2: sixty four, eight years old, but.
Speaker 1: Sixty four was really before that. I was just advisory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, when went in when of the Marines?
Speaker 2: Actually sixty five. But anyway, I wrote this song called
Speaker 2: how Far Is Heaven? And my parents didn't quite they
Speaker 2: didn't know it was a hillbilly thing. It was half finished.
Speaker 2: That talks about it over the years a few times
Speaker 2: in interviews, but it went uh and it started with
Speaker 2: this hillbilly waltz ching ing, which is not all. I
Speaker 2: could plague two couple of chords. I don't play much
Speaker 2: more than that now, but I was getting interested. My
Speaker 2: daddy got killed over in Vietnam. Then there's just a
Speaker 2: few things that I don't understand boom boom boom. How
Speaker 2: far is heaven? When can I go? I love my daddy, Lord,
Speaker 2: I miss him. So so anyway, they heard me doing
Speaker 2: something they hadn't. I came downstairs, said what are you playing?
Speaker 2: And so I played it for him. My dad was
Speaker 2: flabbergast and almost offended. He said, whoa what in the
Speaker 2: world's he writing? Like I'm dead? My mother? He didn't
Speaker 2: like he's you know, poetic license. He didn't quite great,
Speaker 2: didn't grasp it. It's like you want me dead? You
Speaker 2: think he's looking at my mom. It's like he was hilarious.
Speaker 2: Actually a tough dude, tough guy, but a soft heart.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, A couple of things. So with your father,
Speaker 1: this was really you're a little young, as you said,
Speaker 1: but anti Vietnam and pro Vietnam was. I don't want
Speaker 1: to equate it with abortion because there are two different things,
Speaker 1: but the vociferousness that people held their positions. Was your
Speaker 1: father always pro Vietnam? Or did he ever start to crump?
Speaker 2: I think he well, no, I think by the end
Speaker 2: he like a lot of xgis were like watching that
Speaker 2: from the distance and going, I don't know what in
Speaker 2: the hell there you know, yeah, he became disillusioned. But again, uh,
Speaker 2: there was. It's not as clear as black and white
Speaker 2: if your memory, if you really in line is the moments, Bob,
Speaker 2: there was, especially where we were, you know, the Ohio Valley.
Speaker 2: You've moved out into Greater Appalachian, right, you're out there
Speaker 2: in that region, and it's I mean I came from.
Speaker 2: He was in a union. He was a shop steward
Speaker 2: in the union. But he became disillusioned because you know,
Speaker 2: the power of unions becomes correct, they become corrupt, right,
Speaker 2: whether it's Hoffer or whatever. I forget what. He was
Speaker 2: a shop steward and one day he came home with
Speaker 2: his eye cut open because a guy on the line,
Speaker 2: because there was a guy that kept showing up drunk
Speaker 2: right to work at a plant, big factory, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're all on the line, and this guy was
Speaker 2: going to get somebody killed. He said, this guy's drunk
Speaker 2: and in not showing up, and it was his job
Speaker 2: to go defend him to the teeth, right, you know,
Speaker 2: and say he can be you know, he's absent now
Speaker 2: he you know, he's sick. He was sick. He was sick,
Speaker 2: and finally he said, and this is the old army sergeant.
Speaker 2: I can't do that anymore. You know, I can't cover
Speaker 2: for this clown, do you know what I mean? The
Speaker 2: Union was saying, hey, dude, you're covering for him. You're
Speaker 2: the shop steward. You're covering. And he said, not doing it.
Speaker 2: And the guy down the line let a flywheel part
Speaker 2: of a refrigerator like it was a it was a
Speaker 2: Westinghouse plant, right, They built refrigerators to let that go
Speaker 2: down the line the conveyor, but and it bounced, ricocheted
Speaker 2: and caught the guy next to him his hand and
Speaker 2: cut him and then hit my dad in the eye,
Speaker 2: you know, came up and cut him and it could
Speaker 2: have killed either of them. You know, it could have
Speaker 2: killed him. That was the warning shot right from you know,
Speaker 2: the Union. It's like, you know, so I saw that
Speaker 2: at close range. I watched him come home with stitches
Speaker 2: in that eye and what happened. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: this guy didn't like that. I I'm fed up. I'm
Speaker 2: not covering. You know, the Warren Oates moment. Remember the
Speaker 2: scene in the barracks where the guy jumps up and goes,
Speaker 2: it's his name, And they introduced themselves, and he says,
Speaker 2: I'm Francis, So any of you guys, he said the
Speaker 2: pejority of the interview mother, call me Francis. I'll kill you.
Speaker 2: He goes, and you touch my ship, I'll kill you.
Speaker 2: And he goes through a laundry list up. Anybody does
Speaker 2: this and that, I'll kill you. And Warren Oates is
Speaker 2: sitting there chewing on the cigar. He just sit down
Speaker 2: and stow it. Francis were the top thing on the list.
Speaker 2: Don't call me Francis. Sit down and stow it. Francis.
Speaker 2: Which is that's those guys right that run the army.
Speaker 2: They run the military. You know, anybody's smart, that's been
Speaker 2: the officers will tell you the thing that'll get you saved.
Speaker 2: Listen to your NCLs. Right. Let the old sergeant lead.
Speaker 2: And that's who he was. You know. He had have
Speaker 2: a career in and didn't want to get out. But
Speaker 2: he couldn't take us. His heart wouldn't let him go back.
Speaker 2: And his captain, I mean, he said, wow, my captain
Speaker 2: told me just go home. Spent a few months as
Speaker 2: you realist. I'll give you your full stripes back and
Speaker 2: put a stripe on it and come back to me,
Speaker 2: and he never did. But he never quit. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't about you know, the raw, raw end of it.
Speaker 2: It was about the function of the hierarchy of the military.
Speaker 2: I think you know what I mean, the organization. Do
Speaker 2: you know it made sense to him? Does that mean
Speaker 2: you know? And and great, great mechanical aptitude, So order
Speaker 2: probably made sense to him in that way. I was
Speaker 2: fascinated with it. I would say, I could tell you
Speaker 2: the crazy service in terms of rank and insignia is
Speaker 2: the Navy. The Navy's and I have a whole theory
Speaker 2: about the Navy that that the most uh suspect officer
Speaker 2: corps might be the Navy, because I my theory is,
Speaker 2: and this is my own barnyard theory is, you know,
Speaker 2: from teenage years on, was that there there will He
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily it can be compromised a little bit. There
Speaker 2: was ever a real coop in the United States. I
Speaker 2: think it might come from Naval intelligence rather than any
Speaker 2: of the branch because they're so removed when you think
Speaker 2: about their duty post from the country, especially in peacetime.
Speaker 2: Right they're on the high seas, They're all over the world,
Speaker 2: So there's a disconnect maybe possibly anyway, whatever, that's a
Speaker 2: whole like I said, no.
Speaker 1: No, okay, but tell me about him owning the Texico station.
Speaker 2: Well, he had that. He was great. And then his
Speaker 2: younger brother. He was one of three boys. He had
Speaker 2: an older brother and he was in the middle, and
Speaker 2: they had this younger brother and the two of them.
Speaker 2: He owned it and this brother, and it's just managing
Speaker 2: the money of it and all that stuff and trying
Speaker 2: to make it go. And that's back in the day
Speaker 2: when there were four corners. There were four stations, like
Speaker 2: there was a Saint Clair or Chevron, and my mom's
Speaker 2: cousins who had come out of Kentucky, the Christian Brothers,
Speaker 2: he owned a Sinclair I think. Then one night I
Speaker 2: remember all the stories, but he walked out and flicked
Speaker 2: a cigarette or a cigar. But as the tanker was loading,
Speaker 2: you know, fueled into the station and went it skipped
Speaker 2: across the lot and exploded. His whole station burned to
Speaker 2: the ground. That's the classic move. My dad didn't do
Speaker 2: anything that because again he was our army sergeant, kind
Speaker 2: of smart and and seizoned and he was like, what
Speaker 2: you what the hell are you thinking? There? Flicker a cigarette,
Speaker 2: a cigar butt across the lot. When that guy's out,
Speaker 2: the fumes are gonna And that's what happened. The fumes
Speaker 2: caught just one spark and it was like the whole
Speaker 2: corner went up. And they're lucky that the four could.
Speaker 2: I don't know, and and and uh because you were
Speaker 2: raised in Connecticut, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh I remember the four gas the four corners. Now
Speaker 1: it's like you have to think about buying gas. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're the never mind the price wars and the glasses
Speaker 1: and all that.
Speaker 2: And Sonoko he had a Texico and he had it
Speaker 2: for about three and a half years. He had a
Speaker 2: red pickup truck with that big star on the side,
Speaker 2: and it was fascinating. We got our first real dog
Speaker 2: from there. A guy didn't want to gave us his boy.
Speaker 2: He had a boxer that he ended up in that
Speaker 2: gas station. Uh, he had him there for a week
Speaker 2: or two, and he brought him home, Duke and that
Speaker 2: boxer that we ended up inheriting from from the gas station,
Speaker 2: and uh uh, you know, he he just it ended
Speaker 2: up financially failing. I was too young to know the
Speaker 2: machinations of it, you know, But he just couldn't make
Speaker 2: the business side of it go and makes sense. And
Speaker 2: they were being charged rent by Texico and sometimes the
Speaker 2: was set up on the margins when I look, you know,
Speaker 2: I know now that and they expected a certain amount
Speaker 2: of failure and they would just replace you with the
Speaker 2: next guy. They didn't. Texao didn't lose the corner. You know,
Speaker 2: they owned it and you were paying them.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this there's the same scam now in
Speaker 1: lawn haul truck drivers that they basically leash you the
Speaker 1: car to own and the guys can't keep the payments
Speaker 1: and they just you know, they charged a lot to
Speaker 1: get in and they just pass it on to the.
Speaker 2: Net next guy. And it's just a shame, but anybody.
Speaker 2: So that was that world. And then he went on,
Speaker 2: like I said, and always attempted to better himself. And
Speaker 2: you know, it was always looking to like he went
Speaker 2: to night school to try and you know, and just
Speaker 2: wasn't hadn't been prepared for that, you know, because he
Speaker 2: ended up dropping out of high school. He was sixteen
Speaker 2: when he enlisted. He was under age when he went
Speaker 2: in the army. It was post war, the Treatsy Forces.
Speaker 2: Because Colonel David Hackwort was a great book called About Face.
Speaker 2: He was a full bird colonel, highly decorated in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and he went on what was you know, the Sunday
Speaker 2: morn warning should meet the press from Vietnam and railed
Speaker 2: against the conduct of the military and you know, the
Speaker 2: politicians running the war in I don't know what I
Speaker 2: think nineteen seventy or seventy one whatever, in saying, this
Speaker 2: is getting good kids killed for no reason. And he
Speaker 2: immediately was you know, I don't know if he quit
Speaker 2: the military at that point, but he was dumped. But
Speaker 2: I don't know why I was talking about hack course book,
Speaker 2: but about Face, and to you know, he was trying
Speaker 2: attempting to oh, I know what it was. He went
Speaker 2: in the army under age, like hack Corts had done
Speaker 2: post World War Two. He jumped in as a way out.
Speaker 2: You know. My granddad been a railroader, right, you know,
Speaker 2: and was with Penn Central at that point. My great
Speaker 2: grandfather had been a cabinet maker for the railroad. Came
Speaker 2: out of he was a baby and came out of
Speaker 2: the Shenandoah Valley and a constagle wagon across the Ohio,
Speaker 2: you know, and in the Ohio Valley and that's where
Speaker 2: they landed in southern Ohio across from Kentucky. And then
Speaker 2: my mom's side of the families steeped in southeasternmost Kentucky
Speaker 2: in deep western Virginia, you know, goes back. We don't
Speaker 2: know how many generations. I never really explored enough of
Speaker 2: it on that side, the Tibbs family, Ratlets, Gillhams, it's
Speaker 2: old mountain names. But so he had this railroad background,
Speaker 2: but he wanted to escape it, and I think I
Speaker 2: got a bit of his optimism, you know. He you
Speaker 2: know that he was always hoping for a better life,
Speaker 2: you know, and not always successful at trying to attempt
Speaker 2: the next move, you know. And ironically he ended up
Speaker 2: living the last thirty years of his life in Kentucky,
Speaker 2: in Louisville actually, but he became a state He worked
Speaker 2: for the State of Ohio at one point he became
Speaker 2: a construction inspector for the city and was really good
Speaker 2: at that. He had great, you know, mechanical aptitude. And
Speaker 2: then ended up working for the State of Kentucky his
Speaker 2: last you know, I don't know, fifteen years of his
Speaker 2: working life and retired from there. But I think back
Speaker 2: he and I were just so different, as you know, personalities.
Speaker 2: My brother and he were more in common with each
Speaker 2: other any think, and locked horns a lot more than men.
Speaker 2: I would look at my my younger brothers. You're the
Speaker 2: rebel without the cause, Bob and the middle kid. Right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: we'll get to that adventure.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've talked about this before, but let's
Speaker 1: go back here where. Yes, you basically grew up in Ohio,
Speaker 1: but it's like Kentucky. It's the epicenter of the opioid
Speaker 1: culture and bad things. So for those of us who
Speaker 1: did not grow up there, you know, we hear about
Speaker 1: coal miner's daughter, we hear about the holler. You know,
Speaker 1: what exactly what was it like in your father's error?
Speaker 2: What was it like for you?
Speaker 1: What is it like?
Speaker 2: Now? Well, there they were, you know, and my mother,
Speaker 2: who I regret for her that she didn't go on
Speaker 2: to college because she was an exceptional student and great
Speaker 2: with English grammar. She would correct us, you know, and
Speaker 2: a stickler for it. And my granny who barely you know,
Speaker 2: maybe had an I don't know, in eighth grade, the
Speaker 2: classic eighth grade education in the Mountain people, one of
Speaker 2: the ironic moments for me was sitting in that holler.
Speaker 2: It was dirt road. It was basically hollers. Rory Kennedy, huh.
Speaker 2: She's one of Bobby's daughters, all right, Bobby Kennedy junior
Speaker 2: domic Bobby Kennedy daughters is a documentary filmmaker. And she
Speaker 2: did a piece a few years ago. It was a
Speaker 2: great piece called American Hot. I only took exception with
Speaker 2: her calling it a hollow instead of because in the
Speaker 2: New England area where you would call it a hollow, right,
Speaker 2: sleepy hollow or well, that's what they are. It's a hollow.
Speaker 2: And it usually was a creek bed coming off the
Speaker 2: mountain top, you know, in southeast Kentucky in that case,
Speaker 2: or in West Virginia or wherever in the mountainous areas,
Speaker 2: and this it was a single car wide dirt road
Speaker 2: up that hollow to get to the top of them,
Speaker 2: you know, from down at the bottom, and a creek
Speaker 2: would run alongside of it out of there. So I was,
Speaker 2: and that was only it was ninety miles you know,
Speaker 2: to Kentucky from as we would go home, they call
Speaker 2: it going home. That was what I my mother would
Speaker 2: We're gonna go home this weekend and would take I
Speaker 2: used to say we're tail like babies, because you would
Speaker 2: see a line on Route twenty three out of Columbus.
Speaker 2: You would get back onto Route twenty three and beheaded
Speaker 2: south to Portsmouth, hind and go over to Ironan and
Speaker 2: cross into Ashland, which is where the Juds are from.
Speaker 2: And then Ricky Skaggs is another few miles in Louisa.
Speaker 2: Down that road, that same highway, Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gale
Speaker 2: or another county down. I'm on a sign that you
Speaker 2: get to Pike County and that's where I was born.
Speaker 2: Pipe Well, Patty Lovelas is a string of us that
Speaker 2: came off that highway and that one section of Kentucky,
Speaker 2: that state that went on. And then if you go
Speaker 2: just across from Pike County where it borders it borders Virginia,
Speaker 2: and you go across Ford Grundy and up and through
Speaker 2: there's Clinch Mountain, which is where Ralph and Carter Stanley
Speaker 2: came out up in the Carter family. Right ap card
Speaker 2: the beginning of modern country music. Really right, they go
Speaker 2: down and do the Bristol Sessions. Two acts came out
Speaker 2: of the Bristol Sessions. Jimmy Rogers, right, and which was
Speaker 2: it Ralph Pierre that went down with the recording. I
Speaker 2: can't remember who went down and did the Bristol sessions
Speaker 2: down anyway, And Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter family and
Speaker 2: those of the two that blew up and made country
Speaker 2: music in nineteen twenty seven commercial And so I'm born there, right,
Speaker 2: and the escape route across the river lands me, you know,
Speaker 2: up there in Columbus, And so my perspective was, and
Speaker 2: I would get so carsick when we'd drive down through
Speaker 2: therecause you follow Coultro as a two lane road, two
Speaker 2: lane highway it was. It was a US Route Route
Speaker 2: twenty three, and to this day it's widening and stuff,
Speaker 2: but there's no interstate running over there. They were supposed
Speaker 2: to put a new sixty six out of d C.
Speaker 2: It's never been finished. It was going to go through there.
Speaker 2: But and on one of the people that blocked you know,
Speaker 2: a US road going down through there was I believe
Speaker 2: Johnson post Lincoln, And it's weird. That's a weird presidency
Speaker 2: and of itself and his his you know, kind of
Speaker 2: hostility towards the South, you know at that point because
Speaker 2: he's from Tennessee the form and vice president, right, I
Speaker 2: mean Johnson who became the president and was impeached, you know,
Speaker 2: prior to Trump, the only I think sitting president impeached. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that culture was there up and down that highway, and
Speaker 2: I used to say that on Friday nights and tail
Speaker 2: a babies, you'd see all these license plates from Michigan
Speaker 2: and Ohio headed south. They were going home from Detroit,
Speaker 2: tons of these cars because they could make it. You know,
Speaker 2: at that point it was it was mostly you could
Speaker 2: do interstate coming down to Columbia. You could jump on
Speaker 2: that US route and take it across into Kentucky. But
Speaker 2: you could be down there from Columbus and you'd be
Speaker 2: at the river an hour and a half and then
Speaker 2: you'd start the hard part of it and there'd be another,
Speaker 2: you know, three hours to get you know, to the
Speaker 2: house in the holler. I wrote about it reading writing
Speaker 2: Route twenty three. You know about the grandparents staying up
Speaker 2: to see those grand babies. You know, they would bring
Speaker 2: us in and then I would spend time down there
Speaker 2: with them in the summers and you just stay there.
Speaker 2: My you know, mother would leave me and you know
Speaker 2: I'd be with them, and they were old mountain people.
Speaker 2: My granddad was born in nineteen oh one, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's you know, kind of the Sergeant York
Speaker 2: you know version of that stuff, you know. But I
Speaker 2: learned to shoot a shotgun with him. You know. It's
Speaker 2: all that was, you know, part and parcel of what
Speaker 2: I was living. And they'd had a tougher road to hoe,
Speaker 2: you know than me. I was lucky, you know. They
Speaker 2: they escaped me, you know, so I got to see
Speaker 2: the world and then have it come into the living
Speaker 2: room and color at some point, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Have Okay, So with this late day, what is it
Speaker 1: that people in the blue areas in the metropolis don't
Speaker 1: get about people from that era area?
Speaker 2: Well that there number one I think that I can
Speaker 2: talk about holler that they're suspicious. One of the things
Speaker 2: that stayed with me from Gladwell's book Outliers was his
Speaker 2: discussion about not being able to keep a circuit judge
Speaker 2: as late as the eighties, remember in Southeast Kentucky and
Speaker 2: Harlan and he was talking about Harlan County specifically. But
Speaker 2: if you remember that part of the book, he said
Speaker 2: they were going in people would walk in with a
Speaker 2: gun into court and threaten the judge. And they knew
Speaker 2: him minute. I had a great oral surgeon out here
Speaker 2: that had done his his his.
Speaker 1: I think this is hillbilly elogy you're referring to.
Speaker 2: Right, No, no, no, it's Gladwell's book Outliers. He talks
Speaker 2: about Harlan County, Kentucky, and how the feuding culture it
Speaker 2: crops up around the world in places that are not
Speaker 2: hospitable to agrarian culture, that are herd cultures, like if
Speaker 2: you remember the Highlands of Scotland, of the Mediterranean Crescent
Speaker 2: right the menu, where they don't operate as a collective
Speaker 2: force in it. They had to take any any suspicious person.
Speaker 2: A stranger shows up and if he bumps into you
Speaker 2: in a bar, you can't let it go because he
Speaker 2: may be testing you like a perimeter, you know, probe
Speaker 2: to see if he can come that if you're a
Speaker 2: weekly and he can come back that night and steal
Speaker 2: your herd of goats, steal your cattle. Because you can
Speaker 2: do that overnight. You can't take a thousand acres of wheat.
Speaker 2: You can't move that overnight. It takes a collective effort.
Speaker 2: Right to harvest it, put it on a truck, put
Speaker 2: it on you know whatever, and take it to market.
Speaker 2: But with herds, and it moved out across the country
Speaker 2: when you think about it, you know, with the last
Speaker 2: bashing being the cattle country in the west right where
Speaker 2: they fought the farmers coming in and putting up fences,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And they even got down to killing with regulators,
Speaker 2: you know, and things like that. So that culture's there.
Speaker 2: And what I would say is just know that they're
Speaker 2: suspect of everybody that doesn't, you know, come from their
Speaker 2: local area. Any outside that shows up, they're watching you.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, I had this this this
Speaker 2: oral surgeon out here who found out me. You got
Speaker 2: acquainted with me a little bit, and he went, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, you're from Kentucky's I want the University of Kentucky.
Speaker 2: He's wearing diners and know where you've ever heard of
Speaker 2: it either. I went to the University of Kentucky and
Speaker 2: did my They had a program there where you did.
Speaker 2: He had gotten his degree in dentistry and went back
Speaker 2: there to specialize in oral surgery. And while you're doing it,
Speaker 2: they became an MD, became a medical doctor. Along with
Speaker 2: you know, getting his specially in oral surgery, he said.
Speaker 2: But part of the deal was, I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: from You probably never been where I'm born, Pipewell, Kentucky.
Speaker 2: We down it's last corner of the state. And he said,
Speaker 2: are you kidding? He said, our professor, the head of
Speaker 2: the department at University of Kentucky, had had dental offices
Speaker 2: in Pike County, in Floyd County, which is where I lived,
Speaker 2: he said, and we had to Part of the deal
Speaker 2: was we had to go work those on the weekends
Speaker 2: for him. He said, let me tell you something I
Speaker 2: learned a lot. He said. There was a guy had
Speaker 2: a dog near him. He was living and he had
Speaker 2: a little house that was owned by the by whoever.
Speaker 2: This doctor was at University of Kentucky. And he said,
Speaker 2: I was asleep the first couple of nights and there
Speaker 2: was a hound dog, like you know I was. It
Speaker 2: wasn't even it was a hunting dog, but he was.
Speaker 2: They were in this pen on an adjacent lot and
Speaker 2: they were barking all night, and he said, I had
Speaker 2: to get sleep, he said, so I went over and
Speaker 2: just lifted the thing. They weren't going to stop. They're
Speaker 2: hound dogs, you know, just in there, bellering and hollering.
Speaker 2: He said, I just lifted the latch and kind of
Speaker 2: let them go. He said. About two days later, he said,
Speaker 2: I gotta knock on my door in that little house,
Speaker 2: shotgun house, he said. He said. The guy came up
Speaker 2: and he said, uh, I said, hey, mister. He said,
Speaker 2: just two guys. He said. They were scary looking, haunted,
Speaker 2: gaunt faced, you know, coal miner looking guys, and they're
Speaker 2: hunting caps. And there to them, he said, said our
Speaker 2: dog got out. And he said, oh really, he said yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he said we got them back. He said, but you
Speaker 2: wouldn't know anything about that, would you let them getting out?
Speaker 2: And he said I was like, he said, I literally.
Speaker 2: But he talked about the culture. He told me. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, they would pay in cash and somebody said,
Speaker 2: I knew they couldn't afford any of it. And they
Speaker 2: would come in and have wads of cash to give
Speaker 2: him to fix their kid's tooth or fix and he
Speaker 2: said it was just it was heartbreaking at times. He said,
Speaker 2: and what was you know, part of that experience? And
Speaker 2: and but he said they looked at him and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't let a man dog loose and
Speaker 2: he said, I took it. He said, I got the warning.
Speaker 2: He said. They were both standing. He said they were
Speaker 2: holding shotguns because there were hunters, you know, and hunter
Speaker 2: caps and he said staring at him. He said, because
Speaker 2: so his experience there, it was interesting, you know. He
Speaker 2: and I uh talked about it many times over the years.
Speaker 2: So that culture it's a lost part of America, you know,
Speaker 2: in a way it's it's it's and it's been forgotten
Speaker 2: a lot, you know, they've been left, you know, like
Speaker 2: you said, the opioid crisis that's gone on down there
Speaker 2: and throughout that area of the region, you know. And
Speaker 2: and he'll be theology. He touches on all that the
Speaker 2: aspects of it you get out and Gladwell discusses that
Speaker 2: aspect about in outliers about at the University of michigand
Speaker 2: a double blind study of kids that were removed from
Speaker 2: the South or just recently moved from them stuff, but
Speaker 2: even those that were two and three generations removed. And
Speaker 2: I believe they found in the nineties when they were
Speaker 2: unlocking the DNA code, right, they finally pre prior to
Speaker 2: twenty three and meterison all that stuff they discovered maybe
Speaker 2: a gene why people think they've had past lives. You
Speaker 2: know that you're carrying a sense memory gene. If you've
Speaker 2: read about the sense memories, you're carrying memories from all
Speaker 2: the relative your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great great great
Speaker 2: as long as they lived through experiences long enough to
Speaker 2: you know, convey those thoughts and experiences through their DNA
Speaker 2: by pro creating forward right, so that if you had
Speaker 2: a great great grandfather that fought in something, you have
Speaker 2: this it's memory, Or you have apprehensions about height, or
Speaker 2: you have you know, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 2: they were talking. Gladwell discusses that these kids that were
Speaker 2: even a generation or two generations removed from the South
Speaker 2: still behaved with the umbrage of Southerners at the University
Speaker 2: of Michigan when they were presented with a circumstance that
Speaker 2: felt insulting to them, How they would react versus a
Speaker 2: kid from New York or you know, a kid from
Speaker 2: the Northeast who didn't react the same way, didn't take
Speaker 2: you know, as much umbrage was something you know, the
Speaker 2: you know the challenge of it. And I do believe
Speaker 2: that it has to do with with being a lost element.
Speaker 2: And I used to tell people, I said, look, Kentucky
Speaker 2: is a mountain state. There's parts of it that are
Speaker 2: that are dixiefied, you know, the central and western part,
Speaker 2: but eastern and southeastern Kentucky, eastern West Kentucky. It's mountain culture. Billy,
Speaker 2: Bob Thornton and I have talked about that because he's
Speaker 2: from arc which is a mountain state again, and it's different.
Speaker 2: The dialects are different. It's not Southern, it's not Southern
Speaker 2: colloquialism the same. It's not you know, Dixie Land kind
Speaker 2: of you know stuff. It's and it was a border
Speaker 2: state for that reason, I think, and that's why West
Speaker 2: Virginia broke away from Virginia, that section of the state,
Speaker 2: you know, within you know, within those states. There was
Speaker 2: this conflict going on. The Hatfields of McCoy's feuded in
Speaker 2: that county historically, that's where it happened, Pike County, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: and they believed that it was an outgrowth of the
Speaker 2: Civil War. I think the McCoys sided with the Union
Speaker 2: and the hat Fields were sympathizers to the Confederacy, and
Speaker 2: they had sons that were in the Southern Army and
Speaker 2: one of them came back and was hiding in a
Speaker 2: cave and the McCoy's allegedly gave him up to the
Speaker 2: Union troops that were there and pipe Bull and they
Speaker 2: went up and killed it. And they believe that's where
Speaker 2: the feud began with the Hatfields of McCoy's and it
Speaker 2: went on, you know that one, you know, for about
Speaker 2: forty five years. A sheriff finally arrested one of each
Speaker 2: part of each family, put them on a barge because
Speaker 2: they couldn't keep them. They would go break them out
Speaker 2: of the jail, you know, literally, and he put them
Speaker 2: on a logging barge at that time before the coal
Speaker 2: barges and sent him up river to Ashland and over
Speaker 2: to Louisville and they were held there and stood a
Speaker 2: trial and that tamped it down and they both went
Speaker 2: to prison and that stopped the feud. As you know
Speaker 2: what historically I've read anyway, that culture is different than
Speaker 2: the Deep South. It's it's the isolationists, you know, they
Speaker 2: really are. It's like the Scottish Highland culture. You know,
Speaker 2: the Scots they're not you know, they weren't like those
Speaker 2: from England, you know, going back as far as you know,
Speaker 2: Mary Queen of Scotts, all of it. You know, it's
Speaker 2: so I think that the Blue States don't understand that
Speaker 2: dynamic of American culture, the you know, the outlier culture
Speaker 2: that's part of that, right, those that are disenfranchised, no
Speaker 2: matter what race, you know, the disenfranchised that are part
Speaker 2: of that. You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, your father was such an organization company man structure.
Speaker 1: You said he liked that. How'd you end up being
Speaker 1: so entrepreneurial? Me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, me being I don't think I'm not that much.
Speaker 1: Two things, it's you're inherently an entrepreneur if you're a
Speaker 1: musician making it's like he did a weekly he.
Speaker 2: Would have never done that. He looked at me one time,
Speaker 2: he said, well, I'm just graduated high school. He said, son, boy,
Speaker 2: you got to know your station in life. And I
Speaker 2: thought I was sad for him when I looked at
Speaker 2: him across you know, I was. I guess I was
Speaker 2: eighteen or nineteen at that point, and I'm still living
Speaker 2: at home and going to school, you know, school at
Speaker 2: a high state. And I thought, wow, it kind of
Speaker 2: broke my heart for him. You know that he felt
Speaker 2: there was a point as much as that Walter Mitty
Speaker 2: was in him, he didn't fully believe he could really,
Speaker 2: you know, grab that ring, you know, and that brass
Speaker 2: ring was not okay?
Speaker 1: Did you always know that you were gonna make it
Speaker 1: that you were going to grab the brass ring doing something?
Speaker 2: For what I said fifth grade? Right that I even earlier,
Speaker 2: there was a craziness, you know. So I'm just egotistical enough,
Speaker 2: because enough of the narcissist maybe that I that I
Speaker 2: anyone that gave me encouragement again outside family, because they
Speaker 2: were and my parents were not. They didn't tamp me down,
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't criticize you know, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. It's like I've been I've been witnessed now
Speaker 2: as an adult to some families. I'm stunned. I like, wow,
Speaker 2: That's why I said earlier. They weren't malicious ever, And
Speaker 2: I look at it now and I think you where
Speaker 2: you've got parents that are competing. I don't think what
Speaker 2: I've read from you that your parents competed with you.
Speaker 1: They love not what I think my mother on a
Speaker 1: very subtle level, but the difference between my family and
Speaker 1: your family sounds like by today's standards, we were abused kids.
Speaker 1: My father used to hit us all the time.
Speaker 2: Well we got spanked, oh and you didn't my dad,
Speaker 2: but my mother, my mother would make us go pick
Speaker 2: our own switch. That's a hillbalid deal. We would have
Speaker 2: to go pick our own switch. And it wasn't one
Speaker 2: you should bring back that would break. I remember testing
Speaker 2: the switch out on my bare legs and shorts, going
Speaker 2: back across the yard because she had this. We had
Speaker 2: this huge hedge that was we're on this house that
Speaker 2: we had and we have to pick a switch out
Speaker 2: of there. This is brutal, right, we have to go
Speaker 2: pick the element of your of your torture yourself. And
Speaker 2: so we got switched, but they didn't. Never got hit
Speaker 2: in the face, never got hit with you, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. It was I was spanked, you know.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit more vicious where I grew up. Really,
Speaker 1: my father was a little out of control. He'd had
Speaker 1: his father lost a hand in a railroad accident and
Speaker 1: had been married before. And when he lost die he
Speaker 1: left all whatever money he had to the first family.
Speaker 1: My father had a heart upbringing, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: very you know, we were way out of the house
Speaker 1: where I remember there used to be this chairlifted Aspen Highlands.
Speaker 1: He was a shitty skier, but he was a terrible athlete.
Speaker 1: It's one thing he could do. And there was this
Speaker 1: chair that took a half an hour. And it would
Speaker 1: be difficult to talk to my father. You could listen
Speaker 1: to him, but it's hard to have a conversation. And
Speaker 1: he started pontificating about all these things that happened to
Speaker 1: him growing up. Never told any of those stories until
Speaker 1: he had made.
Speaker 2: It right right. Wow, did you did you get hit
Speaker 2: like around the face and all that? I mean, oh,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: You know that great line, I'm gonna hit you till
Speaker 1: you stop crying. Wow, that was all that, you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was me.
Speaker 1: Usually it was the belt, sometimes the hair brush, They
Speaker 1: get the hair brush in the head. My father would
Speaker 1: slap you in the face.
Speaker 2: Sure, and yeah we didn't. My father, he contains him.
Speaker 2: Not a guy.
Speaker 1: My father was not the type of guy who was
Speaker 1: beefy and scary that way. But man, when he lost it,
Speaker 1: he was it was almost like this guy is losing control.
Speaker 1: It's like you felt sane.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, well, they believed
Speaker 2: in corporal punishment, they were you know, they they spanked,
Speaker 2: but we again I didn't. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 2: my brother. My brother probably came to closest because he
Speaker 2: threatened my dad. And uh, one time I heard him.
Speaker 2: I was in college. My brother was in a bedroom
Speaker 2: next to me. But at that point we had a
Speaker 2: you know, a house you know, on the sub we'd
Speaker 2: gotten one car garage, but had had four bedrooms. My
Speaker 2: sister had a bedroom, brother and I and my parents.
Speaker 2: And he came upstairs and my brother was still in bed.
Speaker 2: He was supposed to be out and going to you know,
Speaker 2: high school, getting and I remember he was grown. He
Speaker 2: was probably in his senior year and I was in
Speaker 2: bed because I didn't have a class at at high State.
Speaker 2: I was and I heard my dad walk in and go, hey,
Speaker 2: get up, and my brother turned or no, he opened
Speaker 2: the door with me first is what was? He said,
Speaker 2: you're getting up? And I said yeah, I mean you know,
Speaker 2: and opened the door of my brother. My dad got up,
Speaker 2: even when he didn't. I never knew dated he and
Speaker 2: have another job. He would leave a job and go
Speaker 2: right to another job, you know, he did. He just
Speaker 2: had that ethic, you know, he would find work in
Speaker 2: early because the army. He was up even in his
Speaker 2: days off. He was up to six am with coffee,
Speaker 2: you know, down there, you know. And so he walked
Speaker 2: into my door first, and he closed and opened my
Speaker 2: brother's door, and my brother rolled over in the bed
Speaker 2: said I heard your mouth. Now what's the t ow
Speaker 2: He said that, and all I heard was my dad
Speaker 2: crossed the room in like three strides and he picked
Speaker 2: him up by the collar and the butt of the
Speaker 2: sheets grabbed his body, picked him up and threw him.
Speaker 2: And that was the barracks I'm sure that was a
Speaker 2: barracks moment. Across the room. He hit the wall. He goes, hey, boy,
Speaker 2: you could you call me my mouth again? Whatever it
Speaker 2: wasn't it stormed out and left, didn't it even face?
Speaker 2: And I got him. I remember, I walked down. I went,
Speaker 2: I leaned on the door John, I said, look at him,
Speaker 2: and he's on the floor, still in a pile of sheets.
Speaker 2: And I said, dude, what were you thinking? It's like,
Speaker 2: what are you thinking? And I and he threatened. I
Speaker 2: heard threats, like another great euphemism. He said. My brother
Speaker 2: had the refrigerator door. You know, this is when we're
Speaker 2: manchild's right. You know, I'm like seventeen, my brother's you know, fifteen.
Speaker 2: We're all standing and he's drinking out of the cart
Speaker 2: and you know, instead of pouring it into the glass, right,
Speaker 2: which which turned my stomach. I didn't do it because
Speaker 2: I don't want to see it done and I'm not
Speaker 2: doing But he was standing there and he did something
Speaker 2: like that, and he left the door just standing open
Speaker 2: and looked over at My dad was sitting at the
Speaker 2: other end of the kitchen table drinking coffee and read
Speaker 2: the newspaper. And he looked up and he said, hell
Speaker 2: you think you're doing He said what he goes, how
Speaker 2: would you like to have to drop up your parts
Speaker 2: to eat your next meal? And we both looked at
Speaker 2: each other, like, how would that happen? He let us.
Speaker 2: He let that sink in for a minute, and he said,
Speaker 2: because that's about how far down your throat your teeth
Speaker 2: are going to be if you keep this up. When
Speaker 2: I got that's the army sergeant going on. And like
Speaker 2: I said, he grew up. My granddad I barely remember.
Speaker 2: He died young. I mean it was early fifties. He
Speaker 2: had a heart attack. My grandmother at forty nine, so
Speaker 2: My dad's parents are both gone. My mom's parents the
Speaker 2: Kentucky side. My granddad, Luke, I knew till I was grown,
Speaker 2: and he was really a soft spoken mountain man, you know.
Speaker 2: He was just this humble coal miner. And I knew
Speaker 2: about all that from the mate Wan point of view, right.
Speaker 2: You know. He was there when the shootings happened, all
Speaker 2: of it. You know, they were back in the twenties
Speaker 2: and thirties. He was a minor, and when they unionized
Speaker 2: and the Pinkertons came in and killed people, you know,
Speaker 2: so I saw all of it, you know, I saw
Speaker 2: you know, the plus and minus of the unionists, you know,
Speaker 2: and what happened and how it happened, and watched in
Speaker 2: any event, my dad said, no, my brother came the
Speaker 2: closest because they would lock horns like that. Example. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like what he's the middle kid, Bob. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't help believe me.
Speaker 1: My older sister used to test my father all the time,
Speaker 1: I remember, because we all ate dinner together.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we didn't take didn't take.
Speaker 1: Much set my father off, and he would reach over
Speaker 1: and smack you. It was about how much could you
Speaker 1: tamp it down, and my sister would get in our
Speaker 1: One time she got in an argument with him and
Speaker 1: took his car. What just could not fucking believe it.
Speaker 2: It's like, what were you thinking of it? Oh?
Speaker 1: Broke?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: But the only thing is my mother. You know, when
Speaker 1: Reggie Jackson came to New York, he said, I'm the
Speaker 1: straw that stirs the drink. My mother socially was the
Speaker 1: straw that stirs the drink, right, But she was a
Speaker 1: hard ass. Where's my father? As crazy as he could be?
Speaker 1: If he sensed you were really in a bad spot,
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, it sounds like you're really a bad
Speaker 1: Send you twenty dollars, go out for a good deal,
Speaker 1: try to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My mother would say, go get a job tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah, blahlah blah.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 2: My mom was actually is a tender hearted person. My
Speaker 2: dad was actually underneath that facade. You know, he would
Speaker 2: he was you know, the thing that I regret that
Speaker 2: we're forgetting is forgiveness on our society and life. Do
Speaker 2: you know, Bob, forgiveness is a lost thought?
Speaker 1: Well, hey, there's two types of forgiveness. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: they hold people to unreasonable standards. Now, we all make mistakes.
Speaker 1: If you make the mistake and you apologize, we can't
Speaker 1: hold it against it forever. But I must admit there
Speaker 1: are people who've done things in my life where I
Speaker 1: don't forgive them, and then people say, well if you
Speaker 1: give them, you know, forget that third party. You know, well,
Speaker 1: if you forgive them, you'll feel better. I don't think
Speaker 1: so as far as letting my father off the hook.
Speaker 1: He came from such a hard background whatever, sure.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, that's but also I think my dad had
Speaker 2: the willingness to you know, and as guys you know,
Speaker 2: and my wife sometimes was like, look, yeah, guys fighting
Speaker 2: and you get over you like, you know, you wrestle
Speaker 2: around to one and then you guys now are friends.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, but that's the listen.
Speaker 1: You know, that's one thing you learn growing up my mother.
Speaker 1: You know, people today they'll call up the school and
Speaker 1: say they have to stop bullying my kid. In my era,
Speaker 1: that would be like.
Speaker 2: The curse of death.
Speaker 1: If your parents stood up for you, these kids would
Speaker 1: beat the shit out of you. So, you know, my
Speaker 1: mother would never get involved, and she had the right
Speaker 1: lesson unless you stand up to them. Once you stand
Speaker 1: up to them, then they get over it. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1: They move on to the next.
Speaker 2: Some of the culture that's going on now, to the
Speaker 2: whole thing with us. You were referring to that we're
Speaker 2: being so zealous in destroying people for a mistake.
Speaker 1: Is I couldn't agree.
Speaker 2: He was a bully. Called a bully culture to the
Speaker 2: victim can become the in fact, most of the time,
Speaker 2: you know. I talked with Billy Bob Thornton and I
Speaker 2: when he wrote gave me the script for Sling Blade.
Speaker 2: I said, this character is interesting because he's he's a bully,
Speaker 2: and bullies are usually those that are most afraid. And
Speaker 2: I said, he said, yeah, he said he. I said,
Speaker 2: you know the character that I was playing, And I said,
Speaker 2: he's the one that's the most afraid in the room
Speaker 2: and that's why he's or it's out of his control
Speaker 2: and he freaks and starts to But the bullying is
Speaker 2: usually born out of oftentimes being having been the bullied, right,
Speaker 2: the victim, Oh, yeah, the last person you want in
Speaker 2: charge of something. And that's what they do at prisons.
Speaker 2: They make you know, trustees out of other inmates, and
Speaker 2: they you know, put them in charge of the other
Speaker 2: and they're oftentimes the worst you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the worst thing that could happen to the other prisoners
Speaker 2: is another prisoner being elevated being in charge of them. Anyway.
Speaker 1: But well, no, it's the same type of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about your forgiveness. There are all these people who
Speaker 1: can't change their mind. What kind of life is that,
Speaker 1: you know, like in politics, Okay, I believed one thing,
Speaker 1: I now know I'm nothing else.
Speaker 2: Let's move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can't do that. It's all a team sports.
Speaker 2: To me, that shows a capacity of intelligence that you're
Speaker 2: able to evolve, right, and we can all evolve, you know,
Speaker 2: all of us and anyway, so yeah, but my mom
Speaker 2: also tamped that down. She wouldn't stand. She said, he
Speaker 2: shook me one time when he had just gotten back,
Speaker 2: you know, and just kind of knew me. And she
Speaker 2: was driving in the car and he was holding me
Speaker 2: and I started crying, screeching, like you know, the ten
Speaker 2: month old or whatever I was, and he kind of
Speaker 2: just said he shook me. And she took the car
Speaker 2: across the highway into the medium and back up the
Speaker 2: other side yelling at him into about he's all right, okay,
Speaker 2: don't kill him whatever. I'll never touch the kid. It's like.
Speaker 2: But she, very early on was our protector, and she
Speaker 2: wouldn't allow my granddad, who I was touched on a
Speaker 2: minute ago. My dad had a tough way, you know,
Speaker 2: like your dad, you know, he got knocked around. I mean,
Speaker 2: my granddad was a frustrated prize fighter. He had fought
Speaker 2: in clubs what they call a club fighter when he
Speaker 2: was underage, like at seventeen eighteen nineteen, and you had
Speaker 2: to be twenty one. And they went to his parents.
Speaker 2: There was a guy manager came through and saw him.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of fights and was evidently had
Speaker 2: a really vicious right hand, and they tried to get
Speaker 2: him turned pro and his parents. The old railroad or
Speaker 2: my great granddad, who I knew, actually I knew years
Speaker 2: beyond my grandfather because he outlived he lived into his nineties.
Speaker 2: Samuel Burt, who had come in the wagon, that covered
Speaker 2: wagon into the Ohio territory, come across. He he wouldn't sign.
Speaker 2: He said, nope, nope, Lawrence. That was LR Lawrence. He's
Speaker 2: gonna work on a railroad. And he said destroyed him.
Speaker 2: So he never could. And he drank, even though you
Speaker 2: know he was true to my grandmother, but he drank
Speaker 2: and fistfought. He became a yard boss from the Penn
Speaker 2: Centry and ran the yard railroad yards. But tough guy.
Speaker 2: And my brother, my my my dad and my uncle's
Speaker 2: you know, were uh, you know, treated pretty rough, you
Speaker 2: know by him. So my dad had an empathy for us.
Speaker 2: But my mom is who guided it. You know. I
Speaker 2: watched her at the dinner. He never hit one of
Speaker 2: us in the you know, like you were saying the
Speaker 2: never back. And he threatened, he threatened. I could see
Speaker 2: he was trying real hard not to With my brother especially.
Speaker 2: I used to say to him, said, dude, just say
Speaker 2: yes whatever, and when you get gone and do what
Speaker 2: you're gonna do, get out, you know, don't be the
Speaker 2: rebel that has no cause here. You know, you're not
Speaker 2: gonna win, right. Family dynamics. It's funny that you and
Speaker 2: then you're the youngest of your family.
Speaker 1: Well what happens is my older sister would be out
Speaker 1: of control, then my younger sister would act.
Speaker 2: Like the baby. Well they stay there. You know.
Speaker 1: The key is just don't get caught in the crossfire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was so much. My father owned a liquor store. Oh,
Speaker 1: my sister started to have these parties on on the
Speaker 1: weekends where not only would they drink his booze, they
Speaker 1: would leave the boxes at the end of the street.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: My father would go bersirque, say you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lose my liquor license. Forget. It's like you're there's gonna
Speaker 1: be no money. The other thing my father, my father
Speaker 1: would turn around in the station wagon and smack all
Speaker 1: of us in the back to eat, and we were
Speaker 1: less scared to get expacked.
Speaker 2: The thing's got to drive the car right off the
Speaker 2: road was the bigger issue was dying at that point.
Speaker 2: The only time I've got my old man. We had
Speaker 2: a Buick Electra to twenty five convertibles. They inherited from
Speaker 2: my aunt and uncle had it for they sold it
Speaker 2: to my parents. My mom drove it. So we were
Speaker 2: going to Kentucky in that and we were taking this
Speaker 2: cat that we had a duce in a quarter, duce
Speaker 2: in a quarter. I heard it at the at the
Speaker 2: carboys the gap came up and said, where's y'all's car,
Speaker 2: And I said, it's over there. He goes that deduce
Speaker 2: in a quarter that. I was like, wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2: I heard more slang from my dad pre anybody in
Speaker 2: my junior high or high school saying it, because he
Speaker 2: was this old army guy, right, They had the slang,
Speaker 2: the stuff like he'd say, the dude thought he was bad.
Speaker 2: I said bad. My mother said, David, David, will you
Speaker 2: please just go easy on how you talk to these kids.
Speaker 2: He said, well, that's what he said. He thought he
Speaker 2: was bad. He thought he was a bad dude. I
Speaker 2: mean a decade before I heard anybody on the streets
Speaker 2: say that guy's bad, right, and it's like bad badly
Speaker 2: where Brown was late catching up to me, and my
Speaker 2: dad said it and all other kinds of slang. And
Speaker 2: he said, well meaning he thought he was tough, you know,
Speaker 2: he thought he was a real bad cat. And I
Speaker 2: used to say and it was a fascinating moment. I
Speaker 2: got to take he and his wife to Europe with me.
Speaker 2: He had not been back to Germany and he didn't
Speaker 2: want to leave. He was going to get married. I mean,
Speaker 2: thank god he didn't get I wouldn't exist. And the
Speaker 2: commanding general took over his division had been the colonel
Speaker 2: at bestone in the famous note where he wrote back
Speaker 2: to the Germans, nuts and the guy reads it and
Speaker 2: remember them. It's in the midde of the Battle of Ball.
Speaker 2: He was nuts Buss and he's like and so he
Speaker 2: spoke German at the dinner table to us because he
Speaker 2: was there six years. He would speak at go Ah,
Speaker 2: expl said Dodd shot because he dated this, and so
Speaker 2: that general took over and said, anybody'd been over here
Speaker 2: longer than eighteen months, they're gone. He'd been there six years,
Speaker 2: he loved it, and so he had never been back.
Speaker 2: So I think it was in nineteen I was playing
Speaker 2: the Monterey Jazz Festival Montro Jazz Festival, not Monterey, Montro
Speaker 2: Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and they did a bunch of
Speaker 2: things with this. I took them. We had several dates
Speaker 2: across around Europe, a whole run of stuff, and I
Speaker 2: took Key and his wife. And one of the great
Speaker 2: moments for my dad and I to have shared was
Speaker 2: I got to introduce him to Johnny Cash. You know,
Speaker 2: he was the songs that made him famous. Sun record
Speaker 2: I had because my dad had it. The albums that
Speaker 2: I got exposed to her because my dad, my dad
Speaker 2: was one of those what I used to call and
Speaker 2: Cash knew when I met the hillbilly cats that were
Speaker 2: the gis right, that were otherwise would have been locked.
Speaker 2: He What helped open my dad was the almost ten
Speaker 2: years in the army he went culture shopping. Right, they
Speaker 2: were exposed to the world in the way that his
Speaker 2: dad never was. Right. They were locked in the Ohio
Speaker 2: that didn't go outside, you know, from wherever he run
Speaker 2: from Pittsburgh to Evansville, Indiana, along that river and the
Speaker 2: railroad that was it. And my great my granddad and
Speaker 2: my mom's a man. He I remember my granny moved
Speaker 2: out to north of Dallas and Texas with her daughter,
Speaker 2: the youngest of my mom's family, my aunt Kay, and
Speaker 2: lived with them the last year of her life. And
Speaker 2: she used to look. She said, Luther would have never
Speaker 2: imagined this Texas. She said, he never thought there was
Speaker 2: any places flat, you know, because we were just because
Speaker 2: you could see the sunrise and the horizon sun set
Speaker 2: in the horizon, you know, for one hundred miles. So anyway,
Speaker 2: my dad in this really element in a weird way,
Speaker 2: you know. Hillbilly Katz they were the post World War
Speaker 2: two generation of GI's right that occupied remember Elvis's great
Speaker 2: song out of g I blues occupation GI blues right,
Speaker 2: meaning it was his occupation. But they were occupying those
Speaker 2: places that were conquered, right. So that's what my dad was.
Speaker 2: And Johnny Cash and he they turned out that they
Speaker 2: were standing there and I introduced it, Dad, this is
Speaker 2: mister Cash, and Johnny this is my dad, and I said,
Speaker 2: I think you guys might have been here, and they
Speaker 2: turned out they were in Germany, stationed forty miles apart,
Speaker 2: same years, and they hit it, you know, they were like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, but Johnny was in the Air Force, Dad,
Speaker 2: My dad was in the Army, and so that was
Speaker 2: a great moment to share with him, to watch him
Speaker 2: somebody who he really you know, idolized and had those records,
Speaker 2: those early Cash records, that stuff, and that's who he was,
Speaker 2: you know, those guys Cash Dad, you know Cash out
Speaker 2: of Arkansas and it's you know, Johnny Cash. And reading
Speaker 2: his biography, you know he was a code breaker in
Speaker 2: the Air Force. He listened to Russian code and was
Speaker 2: a listener and that what is what is? But he
Speaker 2: wrote walked the line. They still had to pull sentry duty.
Speaker 2: He I don't know if you ever read this, but
Speaker 2: he wrote that song about pulling sentry duty on the
Speaker 2: flight line at the airbase in Germany, as I keep
Speaker 2: a close watch on this heart of mine, right, brilliant. Huh,
Speaker 2: how genius is that art? You're pulling guard duty. That's
Speaker 2: a difference in a guy who's a poet and the
Speaker 2: guy who just turned the wrench and going I just
Speaker 2: got to get out of here, you know. John Johnny
Speaker 2: writes that I walked the line out of pulling guard duty,
Speaker 2: but it was an interesting moment for that and then
Speaker 2: and so yeah, wow, we've talked so much. I've never
Speaker 2: talked this much about my dad with anybody.
Speaker 1: You know, Bob, did you know from a young age
Speaker 1: you were somebody special and you were destined for a
Speaker 1: different outcome from than your dad and your relatives?
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, there's probably enough narcissism in me,
Speaker 2: and it's just don't you come in with that. And
Speaker 2: maybe you know, but firstborn, you know, you're kind of
Speaker 2: treated like you're expected to be the shining star, but
Speaker 2: you're also treated differently. You know, I've got a little
Speaker 2: guy at this point, in my life. She know, I
Speaker 2: thought that train left the station a long time ago.
Speaker 2: It did not. We've got a little guy coming up
Speaker 2: on three years old. Dalton and I watched and there's
Speaker 2: a and I said, I said, he's kind of precocious.
Speaker 2: You know, there's something about because firstborn's talk to more,
Speaker 2: you know, and she and I and are you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm, you know, a bit older than my wife,
Speaker 2: you know, and thank god that she's you know, still
Speaker 2: got her youth on her side with him. But the
Speaker 2: beauty of it is that we've never either of us.
Speaker 2: I think we just talked to him like he's an
Speaker 2: adult from the time he was born, just kind of
Speaker 2: expecting and and my mother expected a lot, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think I carry with my mom. I had
Speaker 2: to get rid of some of it because it's it's
Speaker 2: it's packweights. You can't carry up that mountain, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to climb, you have to be able
Speaker 2: to shed it at some point. And I know when
Speaker 2: had happened. It kind of happened in stages. But one
Speaker 2: of the moments was right before I left to come
Speaker 2: to California. You know, I just had a moment where
Speaker 2: we she and I had and my dad couldn't. He
Speaker 2: never got in between my mother and I, and I
Speaker 2: think it's because he felt we had a bond that
Speaker 2: was unique and different, because she spent almost her entire
Speaker 2: pregnancy alone with me, and we were down you know,
Speaker 2: my grand her parents, and then the first nine months
Speaker 2: of my life, he wasn't here right and he wasn't
Speaker 2: with us. So I think he always left the two
Speaker 2: of us, my brother, not his movies. He was, you
Speaker 2: know there, you know, handed my brother and my sister
Speaker 2: and my sister and dad had a very special relationship
Speaker 2: with it, you know, unique and and her you know,
Speaker 2: she was this little girl, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: and uh uh, I think the connection to his own
Speaker 2: mother was was my sister, you know, and and who
Speaker 2: he dearly loved, you know. And he used to say
Speaker 2: that about his mom as much as his dad was
Speaker 2: rough on the three of them. He said, but we
Speaker 2: knew we were mom, mom, mother, your grandmother, Helen. She
Speaker 2: never let us go to bed, not thinking we were loved.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, good deal, good deal, you know,
Speaker 2: so I'm in the through line. Uh was that for
Speaker 2: us as kids? You know, we didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: you know, and they were struggling, you know, week to
Speaker 2: week paycheck people, and uh, you know, we had had
Speaker 2: a double aunt and uncle. My dad's older brother was
Speaker 2: married to my mom's older sister. That's how they met. Wow,
Speaker 2: they almost became surrogate parents, for they lived very close
Speaker 2: and they were both they never had kids, and so
Speaker 2: we were there with them, very close to them. My
Speaker 2: dad's brother was Larry, and my mom's sister was Margaret,
Speaker 2: and she was about eight years old my mom and uh,
Speaker 2: his brother Larry was six years old. I think that
Speaker 2: my dad are five maybe five, but enough that there
Speaker 2: was a gap and it was this you know, so
Speaker 2: that was interesting the perspective there and you know this
Speaker 2: is unique. And but this back to the car ride
Speaker 2: and the threat of death. You know, there was two
Speaker 2: times in that same buick that that that Electra two
Speaker 2: twenty five convertible and funny what year was it? As
Speaker 2: a sixty five? A cool look at me white, I'm
Speaker 2: white on white? Right? My aunt had to talk about
Speaker 2: something that would be worth a lot today. My oh yeah,
Speaker 2: my aunt had a black on black on black and
Speaker 2: and then my uncle got this white on white on
Speaker 2: white when they went this pair of these and then
Speaker 2: they graduated. As I wrote, that's why my you know,
Speaker 2: the guitars, Cadillac's reference the album title and my original
Speaker 2: that that second hit that I ever had about the culture,
Speaker 2: the Hillblo culture. You made it if you had a Cadillac,
Speaker 2: you know, and a lot of American culture. You had
Speaker 2: made it if you oh where I was absolutely with
Speaker 2: the Goombas and everybody. If you had a Cadillac, man
Speaker 2: that was you know, Rolls Royce. We don't know nothing
Speaker 2: about it, but if you had. So they graduated to
Speaker 2: the first Cadillact they ever bought was a sixty nine.
Speaker 2: That's when my mother inherited, you know, the the deuce
Speaker 2: in a quarter. So she was driving. We were in
Speaker 2: that and we had this cat that we had no
Speaker 2: business having cats anyway. We had the cat for about
Speaker 2: I don't know, nine months a year and they decided, okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to take it down and give it to
Speaker 2: you know, mother and daddy. They'll they'll, you know, they'll
Speaker 2: like this cat. We were taking it to Kentucky to
Speaker 2: the hills, right and my brother, my dad was put
Speaker 2: the cat. Well, they had it in a box they
Speaker 2: put so he would sleep you know, and he didn't
Speaker 2: put in a trunk with the whole air. You know.
Speaker 2: It was invented like a like a homemade kennel. And
Speaker 2: my brother insisted on Topper being in the car with
Speaker 2: him in the back seat with my sister brother in
Speaker 2: I right, And that thing was cool. It had stereo,
Speaker 2: but it didn't have air conditioning. Sixty file is still another. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a convertible, a luxury car, that particular one,
Speaker 2: the black one had air, but this one didn't have air.
Speaker 2: And my uncle actually had an after remember those aftermarket
Speaker 2: air conditionings. They would sit on the floor.
Speaker 1: We had one in a sixty four olds will be on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would put him in afterward. Right, the big
Speaker 2: bobsolutely look like a microwave ove and dinner with events,
Speaker 2: you know. And reverb units. My old man bought a
Speaker 2: JC Whitney catalog reverb unit. Of course under the dash.
Speaker 2: It's like it's just a reverb spring. Why would you
Speaker 2: have it on the radio. But it had this the
Speaker 2: front speaker and the one in the convertible the deck,
Speaker 2: you know, the back seat, right, and you could have
Speaker 2: those two because I remember listening to such great music
Speaker 2: in that car and all He had a sixty four
Speaker 2: Ford Galaxy convertible aqua blue with a white top with
Speaker 2: the first glass back window I ever saw in a convertible,
Speaker 2: And most of them were plastic up there, and it
Speaker 2: came glass and it would split when they would put
Speaker 2: the top down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's sixty four Ford fair Lane five hundred. And
Speaker 2: then she had that Electra and and he was another thing.
Speaker 2: He was like, you know, Jack, these cars, all the
Speaker 2: hot riders had him raise right in the back with
Speaker 2: the big wide old tires, and he said, you ain't
Speaker 2: gonna raise nothing on the old NASCAR. And he's the
Speaker 2: boot layer, and he said, we would put weight that
Speaker 2: back end to keep it on, you know, in the
Speaker 2: trunk his cards. They were riding like this right on
Speaker 2: the angle I'm doing like we're on TV, but you
Speaker 2: and I are look but on that angle anyway, with
Speaker 2: fenderskirts and all that. So we got this cat topper.
Speaker 2: My brother argued wanted him in the back seat, so
Speaker 2: I watched. He said, he said, you can't open that
Speaker 2: box that cat, you know, leave leave them in there.
Speaker 2: Well we weren't. We were fifteen miles from the house
Speaker 2: doing a clover leave to get on the route twenty
Speaker 2: three and my brother reached down popped it open to
Speaker 2: check on him. You know, my brother was always also
Speaker 2: very mechanically inclined, had tools. They would drive my dad
Speaker 2: crazy with his tools stuff being missing, and my brother
Speaker 2: would be out there in the garage with him. I
Speaker 2: wasn't I was up in the room of the guitar
Speaker 2: and my brother had to look. And the cat came
Speaker 2: out of there straight up, hit the ceiling, ricocheted across.
Speaker 2: It was nuts, you know, was like wow, it went
Speaker 2: across the ceiling into the My dad tried to stop
Speaker 2: it and pin it. Now we're doing seventy miles an hour,
Speaker 2: you know, it's pre fifty five. You know, it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, the speed limits sixty five there, and people
Speaker 2: were driving seventy seventy five and eighty on the inn
Speaker 2: on the highway, and he's coming round that cliffer and
Speaker 2: the cat went crazy because we're doing a circle and
Speaker 2: that's the little cat, and he hit the front windshield
Speaker 2: and went across, hit my mom's side of the windshield,
Speaker 2: went back and hit past the three of us, and
Speaker 2: came back up and hit my dad and lent bit
Speaker 2: him in the neck. Scratched him across the face all
Speaker 2: the drum and I remember my dad, my dad. All
Speaker 2: he did was pin him with that big arm and
Speaker 2: he grabbed it and went bam on the dash, hit
Speaker 2: the windshield, pinned him. He goes, I'm good, My mother said, David.
Speaker 2: David slowed to kill us. He goes, I'm get in
Speaker 2: his car. Off the road, and he pulled over off.
Speaker 2: He got off the clover and got down to the
Speaker 2: and he grabbed that cat and had him by the
Speaker 2: and his cat flip, jumped out of the car, went
Speaker 2: back out, got the cat, threw him in the cat tails.
Speaker 2: There were cattails growing in the you know, against the
Speaker 2: side of the road, down the medium, and threw him
Speaker 2: into that and let the cat was out there by
Speaker 2: that point because he had strangled him out, you know,
Speaker 2: get him out of the car and he had a cut,
Speaker 2: I mean he was and so he put him back
Speaker 2: one after they both coughed it out for a minute
Speaker 2: or two, he put the cat and back in the box,
Speaker 2: said bring me in that box and put him in
Speaker 2: a trunk and we drove him on that and he
Speaker 2: lived with him for the next ten or twelve years.
Speaker 2: That cat was still down there. And how he made
Speaker 2: it he because he cause he stayed outside, but would
Speaker 2: come and sit in there kitchen window on an old tree,
Speaker 2: uh and stare in at him, and they'd go out
Speaker 2: and feed him. There was a topper anyway, you were
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Your cat, my younger sisters. The cat went away for
Speaker 1: two and a half years and came back, really lived
Speaker 1: outside of him.
Speaker 2: What was going on there? Because coyotes to get him
Speaker 2: out here. You aren't going to live beyond you know,
Speaker 2: cats are you know in jeopardy all.
Speaker 1: Somebody else obviously adopted him and then didn't feed him,
Speaker 1: and then he came back to your house.
Speaker 2: Cats and strange creatures. Kinky Friedman. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've read any of his the kind of fictional little
Speaker 2: pulp fiction things that he wrote, kind of pretty funny,
Speaker 2: pretty funny stuff. And his whole cat routine is his
Speaker 2: affection to his cats. He still has a lot of
Speaker 2: cats in it. And uh, you know, I was never
Speaker 2: a cat guy. I you know, kind of a dog.
Speaker 1: Bunch of an animal guy. But why are you Dwight?
Speaker 2: My mother just loved the name people assumed, and I'm
Speaker 2: Dwight David, which was worse because everybody's like, oh, you
Speaker 2: named It was like, no, my dad's name's David. So
Speaker 2: she wanted to get you know, without making me a junior,
Speaker 2: which I appreciated that, but uh, Dwight. She just liked,
Speaker 2: you know, she just liked the name, and it was
Speaker 2: it'd been not commonplace at that point, you know, and
Speaker 2: Eisenhower was president. But but uh uh. And then my uncle,
Speaker 2: her brother, the only boy in the six of them,
Speaker 2: he was was he three years older than Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think he's three years older than my mother. They were
Speaker 2: very close. Guy Walton, my granddad always called him peanut.
Speaker 2: He's a you know, old peanut. He's a pankerdons man.
Speaker 2: He used to look at a peanut he goes. My
Speaker 2: mom said, that's guy old grandfather. Daddy just always calls
Speaker 2: him peanut. And they were both My granddad was about
Speaker 2: six one or so, like he just just looks like
Speaker 2: what those mountain men were. And uh and my uncle
Speaker 2: was about six two is calling him peanut. This was
Speaker 2: always beyond me, but you know, as a kid and
Speaker 2: uh uh, he would walk up. He was a good
Speaker 2: basketball player and he taught me how to balance it
Speaker 2: on the tip of my finger, you know, spin the basketball,
Speaker 2: and he he never would quit call me Ike. Ike
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with Dwight's first name, right Ike,
Speaker 2: And my mom said, yeah, he just like how you doing?
Speaker 2: And book. My middle name was David from my dad
Speaker 2: and uh, and we gave Dalton our little guy. One
Speaker 2: of my great regrets is that he didn't get to
Speaker 2: meet him. Uh. His middle name is Lauren and my
Speaker 2: dad's middle name was Lauren. And uh, you know, so
Speaker 2: there's a so what have you learned?
Speaker 1: What have you learned from being a dad?
Speaker 2: Uh? Hopefully and measured amounts some selflessness, uh, some willingness
Speaker 2: to impatience. And I'm still learning. So I'm learning every day.
Speaker 2: But uh, I've learned love in a whole new way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that I think. I really I shuddered
Speaker 2: to think that I could have gone on through finished
Speaker 2: life and not experienced it. Now that I have it,
Speaker 2: you know that that you know, it's a I wrote
Speaker 2: a song. It's going to be on this new album.
Speaker 2: That'll that won two things with him in mind. One,
Speaker 2: he came into me because he's fasting with the guitar.
Speaker 2: Gphty makes me pulled out and he's got a little
Speaker 2: finder makes a Yuku lele version of the telecaster, and
Speaker 2: he's had it since he's done. He's been on the
Speaker 2: side of the stage for like sixty shows over the
Speaker 2: last year and a half or two of mine. And
Speaker 2: it's been interesting to watch and his his kind of
Speaker 2: almost eerie understanding of the me of both of us,
Speaker 2: my wife Emily and his mom and me. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting because he's born to you know parents. I mean,
Speaker 2: she was thirty seven, I'm I'm so much older. And
Speaker 2: it's an interesting dynamic to watch him, you know. And
Speaker 2: and uh, but love, love is you know, the thing
Speaker 2: I've learned, you know, at a different level.
Speaker 1: You know, what about if you want to do one
Speaker 1: thing and the kid wants attention, I need to.
Speaker 2: Learn to give over. It's tough when you've been as
Speaker 2: solo as I've been for as long as as much
Speaker 2: as I love him, I have to remind myself, no,
Speaker 2: I owe him my attention. I owe him my attention
Speaker 2: because he needs it. You know, there's there's a need,
Speaker 2: you know. And anyway, yeah, so, but did you plan
Speaker 2: to have him or did you just well, we wanted,
Speaker 2: we wanted to and we didn't know we were, Yes,
Speaker 2: it was it was with you know, willingness that we did.
Speaker 2: You know that we uh, but enough, we didn't need help,
Speaker 2: just our own encouragement. And here he came.
Speaker 1: And then what about a second you were mentioning, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, maybe I don't know, you know, but you know,
Speaker 2: I think I think it would stop there. I don't
Speaker 2: think I'll have a middle and they have the oldest
Speaker 2: and a younger.
Speaker 1: You know, they need each other for when you're gone
Speaker 1: or when you're in your old Well.
Speaker 2: I see that. I think so because I had and
Speaker 2: I see it. And of course my wife twelve, you know,
Speaker 2: she just doesn't know how you have only kids. Only
Speaker 2: kids I've known you know somew you know, uh and
Speaker 2: oldest kids and only kids get along.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Only kids tend to be very adult, you know, because
Speaker 2: they deal in an adult world in a different way
Speaker 2: than you know, those of us that had, you know,
Speaker 2: the siblings to fight and all with and you know,
Speaker 2: and engage in any kind of you know, endie or
Speaker 2: jealousy with you know all that.
Speaker 1: But ah, it's just yeah, okay, let's go back.
Speaker 2: Life's what goes on when you're making other plans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but now it's a little bit different when your
Speaker 1: time is totally your own.
Speaker 2: You know, once you have a kid.
Speaker 1: I don't have any kids, so they say that you're
Speaker 1: a kid yourself your whole life if you don't have
Speaker 1: any kids.
Speaker 2: Well that's what it feels like now when I think
Speaker 2: back that I got away from being a kid. I pay.
Speaker 1: But now the choices are different. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: have a kid, you can say, well, you know, we're
Speaker 1: just animals. We're here to reproduce. This is what it's
Speaker 1: all about. When you don't have a kid, your choices
Speaker 1: are more important, like, well, this has got to count.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people are drifting. I don't want to
Speaker 1: judge them, but myself it's like, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't invest in kid, I didn't invest in family, so
Speaker 1: my career think it's got to work because I didn't sacrifice,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. And and uh, I love
Speaker 2: my wife even more than I loved her because she
Speaker 2: because of her, she gave me this. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just a very very unique gift that Emily brought to
Speaker 2: my life. Uh and uh, yeah, she never thought anything
Speaker 2: different than that. You know, we were we should have
Speaker 2: a child. And I was never opposed to having kids,
Speaker 2: and I always thought but again, my plan was, well,
Speaker 2: when I'm really feeling that I've got it, you know,
Speaker 2: handle and everything's in order, and you know, I've got
Speaker 2: this and that, and then you look around one day
Speaker 2: and you're like that ships sail, I guess I don't
Speaker 2: think that, you know, my life is good. And then
Speaker 2: it didn't, you know, you know, another another another horn
Speaker 2: was heard coming across the horizon of the of the
Speaker 2: you know, the ocean there and here he is. So
Speaker 2: it's it's but this is your this is your old
Speaker 2: married man. Right again, I didn't I didn't marry this
Speaker 2: one different.
Speaker 1: I've been married once before. I've been living with my
Speaker 1: girlfriend now, I mean you and only been married once before?
Speaker 2: Now, I just I just uh again, you know, had this.
Speaker 2: My parents divorced, but it was after we were all
Speaker 2: three grown. It is an interesting dynamic and they were
Speaker 2: together that long and and it was tough on them.
Speaker 2: I think it was tough with my aunt and uncle,
Speaker 2: you know, the older brother and said they never divorced,
Speaker 2: you know, and uh uh yeah, and so so I
Speaker 2: probably felt apprehensive about it, you know, and I just avoided.
Speaker 2: I just I also knew that I didn't want a
Speaker 2: marriage where I wouldn't be able to uphold the integrity
Speaker 2: of the of the promise, you know. You know, by
Speaker 2: the time I really started to have any success success,
Speaker 2: I was thirty. I was twenty nine when I signed
Speaker 2: with Warner and re released the EP that had been
Speaker 2: out about eighteen months or so. It was late twenties,
Speaker 2: and I thought, man, I've been broke and single all
Speaker 2: these this decade of my life. Maybe I should be
Speaker 2: not broken single for a while. And then, you know,
Speaker 2: life gets in your way, and you know, like I said,
Speaker 2: the John Lennon quote, you know, that's what happens while
Speaker 2: you're making other plans. And she and I met, we've
Speaker 2: been to we've been together actually for almost ten years
Speaker 2: before we got married. We've been engaged, and I know,
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to marry her. And but again
Speaker 2: I was, you know, still trying to make things feel complete,
Speaker 2: you know, for lack of a better way to put it,
Speaker 2: you know, with my own just personal life. Believe me,
Speaker 2: I know that.
Speaker 1: I know, when you get married the first time, it's
Speaker 1: like yeah, And then I was a year old enough
Speaker 1: and you're in a position where you realize you never
Speaker 1: feel that no.
Speaker 2: You finally yeah, I tried to give over.
Speaker 1: So how did you and Emily meet?
Speaker 2: We met in Nashville. She was working two three different
Speaker 2: jobs she had left you know. Uh. She was raised
Speaker 2: in Omaha, and she came from one side of the
Speaker 2: family had cattle ranchers outside and well both sides of
Speaker 2: her parents, you know, the Joyce says her name is
Speaker 2: Emily Joyce as her maiden name, and she, uh, she
Speaker 2: grew up there and then went to creyton a on
Speaker 2: a full academic scholar She was a volleyball player and
Speaker 2: was going to own volleyball scholarship in her junior year.
Speaker 2: Right after the season she was a sectional player and
Speaker 2: there was a car accident. A drunk ran a light
Speaker 2: and hit she and a girlfriend. She was in the
Speaker 2: pastor's side, hit her in that side and destroyed a
Speaker 2: rotator cup. I mean, just so it ended the aspirations.
Speaker 2: She would have been a these five eleven. I mean,
Speaker 2: she was on her track to probably go to a
Speaker 2: Big ten school or whatever, and Creighton gave her a
Speaker 2: full ride to do pre med and so she graduated
Speaker 2: a year and she like you. She was a year ahead.
Speaker 2: She had done so much advanced placement and so forth,
Speaker 2: and she burned out finally because you know, she was
Speaker 2: there with family, you know, she was still being made
Speaker 2: to feel responsible, you know, for all those siblings under her,
Speaker 2: you know, the other ten beneath her. There was one
Speaker 2: older brother. They're twelve months apart, Irish twins that I
Speaker 2: think they're referred to as and that close. So her
Speaker 2: older brother and she and she left. She did one
Speaker 2: year pre med. Then she decided she could take getting
Speaker 2: close to patients. She was working in a hospital and
Speaker 2: and and studying, and then she did nursing for two
Speaker 2: more years. She had three years of you know, almost
Speaker 2: a nursing room. She left and went to Nashville, joined
Speaker 2: the circus and thought she'd go back to school there, didn't.
Speaker 2: And we met in a restaurant there, and she was
Speaker 2: working at one of the Cumulus stations there and radio
Speaker 2: like working with a radio group. And and we didn't
Speaker 2: meet in the station, and we kind of stayed in touch,
Speaker 2: you know, both of us were in all with different people.
Speaker 2: And then she traveled out here at one point, just
Speaker 2: on a brief vacation, and we saw each other out
Speaker 2: here and then we began she then she took a
Speaker 2: scholarship again at Mount Saint Mary's University, you know in
Speaker 2: Brentwood on top of the mountain there that'll run by
Speaker 2: the used to be an all girls. Uh, it's a
Speaker 2: Catholic university up there, but she did it. Some years
Speaker 2: later she picked up and then she had moved out
Speaker 2: here and was doing that and we began to date,
Speaker 2: you know that following in and and uh, uh that's
Speaker 2: how we you know, I met and just there was
Speaker 2: some soul connection, you know. At that point she's uh,
Speaker 2: you know, pretty, but it's beyond that. It's it's it was,
Speaker 2: there's beauty. Uh. And her best described by the third party.
Speaker 2: One night, we were coming out of a restaurant and
Speaker 2: and the actor Mira Sorvina's father wanted to forget his
Speaker 2: first name from Goodfellows to all and he just passed
Speaker 2: a year before last. Paul, you know, Paul Sorvino was
Speaker 2: there and he flagged me over and we were talking
Speaker 2: because he was doing a bit of opera here in
Speaker 2: town at the time. He's saying opera if you knew that,
Speaker 2: or the actor Pulserman and there was somebody else, a
Speaker 2: friend with us that was an actress, and she reached
Speaker 2: over for very you know, fused toward him and kind
Speaker 2: of telling him, you know, some things she was doing.
Speaker 2: And he looked across behind me at Emily and he said,
Speaker 2: you you're soulful. And I told her, I said, that's
Speaker 2: the best description I've ever heard of you. You know,
Speaker 2: there is a soulfulness. And so we met and you know,
Speaker 2: fell for each other and in that way, and and
Speaker 2: stayed with it. And I'm not easy, to say the least.
Speaker 1: I'm okay, Well, why are you not easy?
Speaker 2: Just who I am? You know, my nature and my
Speaker 2: my idiosyncratic nature.
Speaker 1: You know, well tell us a little more.
Speaker 2: I don't want to go into it, Bob, because that'd
Speaker 2: be given up too much. I can't tell you you
Speaker 2: already got somebody who was my idiosyncras. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just you know, look, I've lived alone the order of
Speaker 2: my how I'm a neat freak. You know. I keep
Speaker 2: things in, you know, like certain spots and places.
Speaker 3: And and.
Speaker 2: I'm not uh uh, I don't really have a d D.
Speaker 2: But I'm obsessive compulsive. Probably you know, I've got tend
Speaker 2: to Warren zvon. One night Billy Bob Thornton was talking
Speaker 2: about you know, uh O c D. And he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got We were at a restaurant, remember Elsa Leigh
Speaker 2: on the Strip. Uh rest great great food and uh
Speaker 2: he was talking about it one night. Warrens zvone was
Speaker 2: a friend and and and he said, and did you
Speaker 2: ever meet Warren and all your I'm surprised because he
Speaker 2: charming guy and real rye wit obviously and were wolfs
Speaker 2: of London was the you know, the tip of it.
Speaker 2: But but you know Thompson, the headless gunner and all
Speaker 2: you know, you know, excitable boy, all the stuff that
Speaker 2: he wrote, Lawyers, guns and money. You know, We're sitting
Speaker 2: there and I used to say, I knew Warren post graduate.
Speaker 2: You know, he was settled down by the time I
Speaker 2: met him. He was not doing the you know, the
Speaker 2: Peruvian marching powder. That can't he talks about doing it
Speaker 2: anymore because I've heard the stories, he said. So we're
Speaker 2: sitting there and we're Billy's talking about obsessive compulsive you
Speaker 2: know stuff, and he's I got to do this, and
Speaker 2: he goes on and on about obsessive compulsive Billy Bob
Speaker 2: Thornton now disorder and he's very open about it, you know.
Speaker 2: He's like, and Warren's listening and just smiles. That cheshuire
Speaker 2: cat grinned as he's like, that's smiling is He said,
Speaker 2: have you ever had it with guns?
Speaker 1: Like what have you ever had?
Speaker 2: What have you ever had it with guns? And we
Speaker 2: both like right up, like no, I never had it
Speaker 2: was obsessive couples of Warrens like hmm. He just nodded
Speaker 2: at he would like since I know he was guilty
Speaker 2: of doing something up in Santa barber with guns anyway, Uh,
Speaker 2: the same deal when Billy was talking about that at
Speaker 2: the same restaurant and the guy that one of the owners, Paulo,
Speaker 2: who would sit and he was a little pit bowl
Speaker 2: from Tuscany and he but he was like sit there
Speaker 2: and he would smoke a cigarette holding it a lah
Speaker 2: you know MASTRIONI or somebody like, holding it like upside
Speaker 2: down with his index finger and thumb to smoke. He
Speaker 2: was sitting there sideways to Billy and I. He would
Speaker 2: just plots down in anybody's table if he knew if
Speaker 2: you were a regular at all, and he knew you
Speaker 2: and just insert himself in your dinner, you know. And
Speaker 2: so he goes, and Billy was saying, you know, well
Speaker 2: if I if I don't do this four times in
Speaker 2: a row, he'd chop at his thighs with his hands.
Speaker 2: He said. He looked at me and he said, you'll
Speaker 2: die in the way home. Then I said, I'll die
Speaker 2: if you don't do it. Why why die if you
Speaker 2: don't do the obsessive complete He goes, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but that's just how it works. And Pablo Hollow Paulo
Speaker 2: was sitting there with his back to us, half listening.
Speaker 2: He was not realizing Billy's talking about HIMSELFOD He goes, see,
Speaker 2: see he's stuck with a cigarette. See see is maniac?
Speaker 2: Who does this? Is maniac? Who was like, yeah, so
Speaker 2: I'm not you know, I'm not. I'm a little obsessive compulsive,
Speaker 2: I guess, And but I'm not really add because if
Speaker 2: you stay with me long enough, my tangent will come
Speaker 2: back around. I'll figure out Oh yeah, I got that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is that there's a difference some people assume if
Speaker 2: they're only with me for fifteen minutes and I'm add
Speaker 2: it's not that. No.
Speaker 1: That was the shrink when I first started to see
Speaker 1: the shrink. I was in a bad space, and he
Speaker 1: thought that I couldn't track. That's like a big things. No, no,
Speaker 1: that I realized it always comes back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of the story.
Speaker 2: Well, watching reading your writing, that's what was always That's
Speaker 2: where I'd stepped on your train years ago when I started,
Speaker 2: you know, reading the you know the stuff you would
Speaker 2: you know, your letter and uh and I was fascinated
Speaker 2: with and that must make it makes you a great writer,
Speaker 2: you know, the way you can take us on the
Speaker 2: journey and take the tangents and bring it back, you know.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I'm a little untethered.
Speaker 1: Okay, well let me ask you a different question. The
Speaker 1: limo's there to pick you up, take you to the airport,
Speaker 1: limo pulls away. Do you think you are you concerned
Speaker 1: whether you lock the door or not.
Speaker 2: A little bit. I'm usually so compulsive enough that I've
Speaker 2: done and I have a routine like you know, touch three,
Speaker 2: you know, touch this, I don't do. I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not quite as extreme. You know, Bill is extremely well,
Speaker 2: you know they can treat that now.
Speaker 1: And I went to a special doctor for it because
Speaker 1: regular talk therapy doesn't work.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: No, you have to do exposures. I remember. It's like
Speaker 1: there are certain things to be able to let go.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like, uh, if you know all the cans
Speaker 1: with poison on them, like don't do this, don't do
Speaker 1: that whatever, they'll scare me. So you work your way,
Speaker 1: you work your way up a ladder, just touching them
Speaker 1: at first. Then you get to the point where you
Speaker 1: use them. So it's it's an interesting thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it never goes away, but you learn how to cope
Speaker 1: because otherwise it can torture.
Speaker 2: Well with Billy Boba does. That's why I know I
Speaker 2: don't have it as severely because I've been like what
Speaker 2: you're describing, and I'll turn the cans facing away. But
Speaker 2: that's just kind of an aesthetic thing with me. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm really given to do whatever you want. Yeah that's no, okay,
Speaker 2: So I turned the cans. But it's not OCD. It's
Speaker 2: it's aesthetically. It's the aesthetics, but not all. But I
Speaker 2: don't freak out if they're although I will move something
Speaker 2: on the I and I like asymmetry. I you know,
Speaker 2: I like things to be slightly asymmetrical, you know, just
Speaker 2: in a room or you know, on the angle on
Speaker 2: the top of a desk, and and then I but
Speaker 2: I let go, you know, I tend to let go
Speaker 2: of stuff. I mean like, there's certain spots that are
Speaker 2: just a mess. They're going to be a mess until
Speaker 2: I can get around to do it. And I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't, you know, I won't. People often think it's like,
Speaker 2: are you a hoarder. It's like, no, I don't hoard,
Speaker 2: because then they're shocked when I walk in and I
Speaker 2: have the time. I desperately feel like I need the
Speaker 2: time to focus, you know, and and I'll go through
Speaker 2: and when I clean it out, it's gone. It's like,
Speaker 2: get rid of that now, I don't need I haven't
Speaker 2: used that in five years. That is that was a dream,
Speaker 2: you know, I was like I was. I thought it
Speaker 2: was being a boy scout, you know, my holding this
Speaker 2: and this and this and it. So I don't I
Speaker 2: have bits of it. I have bits of it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, not all the things. You know, you
Speaker 1: can have different characteristics. I do have the hoarding characteristic.
Speaker 2: Progress is it hoarding or just preparing?
Speaker 1: First and foremost? I know where everything is.
Speaker 2: I used to you had to give that up with
Speaker 2: marriage and the child.
Speaker 1: You know, certain things are really hard to throw out anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: what books?
Speaker 3: Well, books especially I don't want to Well, I mean,
Speaker 3: not only do I have the books that I have,
Speaker 3: I have the books that everybody sends me like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you must get Okay, Rick Rubin, they did that special
Speaker 3: with him on HBO Showtime whatever, and he bought Shangri
Speaker 3: Lass Studios, you know, up in Malibu, and he's got
Speaker 3: a library with all these books. What you learn is
Speaker 3: an incredible percentage of the books I have will never
Speaker 3: be reprinted, and no one else has these.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying, well, when I can reach that level,
Speaker 1: I'll have like the same thing drives my girlfriend nuts
Speaker 1: because in the garage, I got stacks and stacks of
Speaker 1: these books. And then as you get old, the older
Speaker 1: you get, everything becomes meaningless anyway. But it's like, well,
Speaker 1: all my vinyl records, I chose each and every one
Speaker 1: of those. I'm my partner with those. I say, when
Speaker 1: I die, do not throw those away. They're worth tens
Speaker 1: and tens and tens of thousands of dollars, you know,
Speaker 1: because they're meaningless to you know, like my girlfriend. But
Speaker 1: and you know she's like you in the house. It's
Speaker 1: like she likes order. But let me go one step further.
Speaker 1: Do you tend to ruminate on things?
Speaker 2: No, I let go. I will let go. That's that's
Speaker 2: a difference. You know, Like you're getting ready to get
Speaker 2: this at the airport, It's like, uh, and I'll just
Speaker 2: make a plan to avoid it the next time. If
Speaker 2: I've left something, you know, I'll make a you know,
Speaker 2: I'll do something in order of getting out that.
Speaker 1: I will tell you when they go for treatment, they
Speaker 1: get rid of all.
Speaker 2: That which the order of getting out of the rituals.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to lock the door and
Speaker 1: walk away. And the funny thing is you have to
Speaker 1: do everything three times you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you could do it. Because I used to be like you,
Speaker 1: I would hold okay, I'm gonna rush, I'm gonna hold
Speaker 1: the key, and I'm gonna think about it so I
Speaker 1: know that I can remember, well, you got it, do
Speaker 1: it just quickly. You know, this is a whole nother
Speaker 1: avenue to go down.
Speaker 2: I don't have as much of the ritual That's what
Speaker 2: I mean about Billy Bob, and what you're describing. I
Speaker 2: never had the ritual stuff that I had to turn
Speaker 2: three like stand tap tap tap and and turn or something.
Speaker 2: Mine was more pragmatic based, I guess me the function
Speaker 2: actually to some degree.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the essence. Here Emily comes
Speaker 1: into the house and she moves something.
Speaker 2: Might bug me. She was great though. We had a
Speaker 2: housekeeper a few a couple of housekeepers back that came
Speaker 2: in over and she said, I watched you. We were
Speaker 2: walking her through and I was saying, okay, and this
Speaker 2: and then, but you don't need to move. You can
Speaker 2: dust around like there's a an athmost clock, one of
Speaker 2: those you know brass you know. And I said, but
Speaker 2: in there it's not an angle. It's not straight, okay,
Speaker 2: but for just the aesthetic, I just like it on
Speaker 2: an angle, not because I think I'm gonna if I
Speaker 2: don't do the angle, I'm gonna walk out. And I
Speaker 2: got it, I got it. It's literally what pleases me.
Speaker 2: The energy that almost almost the what's the Japanese the
Speaker 2: you know the way huh feng shui? Yeah, yeah, feng
Speaker 2: shui of that, so that it's almost that maybe of
Speaker 2: what and she watched her go over. I literally said, so, stuffs,
Speaker 2: didn't you just leave? I haven't placed very specifically, just
Speaker 2: because that's where I want it and how I like it.
Speaker 2: And she walked over two minutes after I had said
Speaker 2: that and turned that carck she goes and Emily was like,
Speaker 2: that's not going to go. Well, yes, we hired she
Speaker 2: worked for us for two years, I guess, but there
Speaker 2: were those moments just and because Emily's a shrewd observer
Speaker 2: of you know, she had to learn. You know, she
Speaker 2: had all these kids, she cut the um biblical court on,
Speaker 2: you know, her youngest brother in the hospital, you know,
Speaker 2: with her mom. I mean, she she was made a caretaker.
Speaker 2: So she's had to observe. So she's been an interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, observational you know, a person to have at
Speaker 2: close range of me.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, well, usually when there's that, when
Speaker 1: there's that many kids, they know how to compromise. Like
Speaker 1: on all the reality shows they say the Mormons, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to use that word anymore. The Church of
Speaker 1: the Latter day Saints, they say they're really Mormon.
Speaker 2: I didn't get the memo, man.
Speaker 1: Well you're getting it now.
Speaker 2: And why not. Why is Mormon?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm tuned into this only because I lived
Speaker 1: in Utah for two years and that was an experience.
Speaker 1: It's much more cosmopolitan now. But uh, there's a reason
Speaker 1: and I forgot it.
Speaker 2: WHOA, you can't leave me like that. Now, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to go look this up.
Speaker 1: I could look it up.
Speaker 2: All we're about Christ of the Latter Day saying LDS, right.
Speaker 1: Right, You could say, hey, they're LDS.
Speaker 2: But at the extremist version of no, no, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: I thought extremists.
Speaker 1: I don't even think there's a specific for the extremists, okay,
Speaker 1: of which I remember when I lived in Utah, we
Speaker 1: would go buy somebody's house where there were six front doors. Said,
Speaker 1: that's where the polygamists lived.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, okay.
Speaker 1: But since she's has to get along with so many people,
Speaker 1: does that make it easier for her to be with you.
Speaker 2: Probably allowed her to put up with me. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: probably maybe.
Speaker 1: So Okay, someone like you who's very determined in the mediate.
Speaker 1: Let's say you come home and you say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going out to dinner with this person. I'm going
Speaker 1: to to the studio tomorrow, and then I'm going on
Speaker 1: the road for a week. She's gonna say that's fine,
Speaker 1: or why didn't you tell no?
Speaker 2: No, none, no, I mean she and she traveled a
Speaker 2: lot with me. She was shooting a lot of my
Speaker 2: live shows. She started shooting. She had great eyes photographer.
Speaker 2: She finished her undergrad degree. She completely chucked medicine anyway
Speaker 2: in science and ended up doing her undergrad when she
Speaker 2: finished her degree in history and English with a minor
Speaker 2: in English. And and but she had so many credits
Speaker 2: amassed from all of her you know, academic you know,
Speaker 2: uh years that she had to still put in on
Speaker 2: campus there at Mount Saint Mary's. And so she the
Speaker 2: last year studied film photography with a pretty talented you know,
Speaker 2: uh instructor, and she began to develop and you know,
Speaker 2: using film and then transcend transitioned into her digital camera.
Speaker 2: And uh, but you can't teach someone to have a
Speaker 2: good composition, law, you can't, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: You know you can't teach it. You can't teach speed,
Speaker 2: as the old coach's you know somebody you can coach it,
Speaker 2: But you can't teach people to be fast, right, And
Speaker 2: have you watched that Reggie Jackson documentary by the way,
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: Not watched it. I'm familiar with what you're telling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really did. I was a bit. We were
Speaker 2: out on the road coming back and I but she
Speaker 2: traveled with me. It's it's it's a good watch. It's
Speaker 2: an interesting perspective on him. It's a whole different perspective
Speaker 2: than what you and I probably had because he was
Speaker 2: Reggie Jackson in capital letters right when we you know,
Speaker 2: from the Oakland A's to the But when you hear
Speaker 2: his whole when he tells it now and now, it's
Speaker 2: a little bit, it's just it's it's pretty touching you
Speaker 2: know him, you know, and where he is and and
Speaker 2: uh what he did and how he's anyway, because I
Speaker 2: was a Cincinnati Reds kid, you know, like I hated
Speaker 2: the Orioles, you know, and I didn't like the Dodgers.
Speaker 2: I still, you know, it's tough sometimes. I was at
Speaker 2: the game the other day.
Speaker 1: I saw more people in the music business than I
Speaker 1: do at a concert. But I am not a Dodgers fan.
Speaker 2: Well I was.
Speaker 1: I'm an American League fan, that's just the way.
Speaker 2: Well, I rooted for the Angels and then turned that
Speaker 2: Gene Autry owned him and he took me, you know,
Speaker 2: once my career had succeeded. He had me come down
Speaker 2: and sit in his box one night and he and
Speaker 2: they were playing the Rangers, and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: mister Roubrey, I said, I don't you know. Jean looked
Speaker 2: at me. He said, I said, I don't want to
Speaker 2: offend you, but I'm a huge Nolan Ryan fan. Time.
Speaker 2: I moved out here because I could root for you
Speaker 2: guys and hate the Dodgers. Still the Angels, right, and
Speaker 2: I loved that there were the California Angels, not anaheind angels.
Speaker 2: There were the Californians. So I went to He said, O,
Speaker 2: come on, Nolan loved to meet you. Come on, and
Speaker 2: he was on the bike. He wasn't pitching that day.
Speaker 2: He was down in the clubhouse and he was peddling
Speaker 2: watching the game. You know, Nolan just never get nobody
Speaker 2: will ever break that record, you know, of no hitters.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so I because being a Reds kid, you know,
Speaker 2: the Dodgers, it was always exotic though, because their games
Speaker 2: would come on out of WLW in Cincinnati at like
Speaker 2: eleven at night. You know, we were right and it
Speaker 2: was Dusty in the Palm trees and the Dodgers Stadium
Speaker 2: no place like it. It's one of the most beautiful
Speaker 2: settings ever you know up there. And that old Union
Speaker 2: seventy six gas station used to be in a parking
Speaker 2: lot right out there right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I remember that because we didn't have seventy
Speaker 1: six where I grew up, and you had to wait
Speaker 1: till you had to wait till the next morning to
Speaker 1: get the results.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly from the West coast.
Speaker 1: Wait, cross was it Crossley Field with the Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: Reds then, Yeah, the Crawsley Field before they built Riverfront
Speaker 2: right by seventy when they became the big red machinery
Speaker 2: in the Riverfront, they were but Pete and Johnny Bench
Speaker 2: and all. And they came out of Crawsley Field because
Speaker 2: they were those guys that were coming up in the
Speaker 2: sixties and the Reds and brought to you a Burger
Speaker 2: beer down on the river anyway, So yeah, I why
Speaker 2: did I talk about the Dodgers and the Reds?
Speaker 1: You well, I remember to have to do with your
Speaker 1: wife and the photography. But I want to go back
Speaker 1: and traveling with me. Okay, I get and we let's
Speaker 1: why did your parents get divorced?
Speaker 2: I I think I think on some levels they were
Speaker 2: ill suited to each other. My mother was had hoped
Speaker 2: for I knew why she fell in love with it,
Speaker 2: you know, and he felt for her. He never quit,
Speaker 2: you know, he he was smitten when he met her,
Speaker 2: you know. But she wasn't prepared. She was a demure
Speaker 2: young girl from southeast you know, in the holler there,
Speaker 2: and just had not been prepared for his voisterous self,
Speaker 2: you know kind of and his nature. And I think
Speaker 2: the fears she lived with that, his Walter midyishness, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of the dreaming and the we're gonna you know
Speaker 2: it finally, you know, kind of got to her to
Speaker 2: the point that she couldn't. And I don't think she
Speaker 2: you know, he he was the one I think that
Speaker 2: suggested it. You know, Okay, well let's we should just
Speaker 2: we should split up. And my sister had gone to
Speaker 2: college and we were I was gone, my brother trying
Speaker 2: to think if he had anyway whatever, I don't think
Speaker 2: was at home, and uh, you know it was never.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a case of either of them, you know,
Speaker 2: one like one cheated and my dad never and uh, disillusionment,
Speaker 2: you know, truly, I think they just you know, and
Speaker 2: they had they had had to really just stay on
Speaker 2: top of it for so long to get us grown
Speaker 2: and you know out and I don't know, but I
Speaker 2: tried to understand, you know, for both of them. It
Speaker 2: was really My mother was really conflicted, you know, because
Speaker 2: she'd been raised to believe, you know, that you didn't divorce,
Speaker 2: and you know, her parents didn't divorce never, and my
Speaker 2: the the closest people to them, his brother, her sister,
Speaker 2: never divorced, you know, to the end of their you know,
Speaker 2: my aunt died preceded my uncle, and uh. And she
Speaker 2: always loved my dad, I mean, you know, to the end.
Speaker 2: You know. You say he was a good man, And
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I said, you know, and we know
Speaker 2: the bond if you can you imagine your parents were
Speaker 2: together right absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't come from divorce. If my ex
Speaker 1: wife didn't leave me, i'd still be married.
Speaker 2: Weirdly, it doesn't feel like I came from divorce because
Speaker 2: I was two years out here, you know, I was gone,
Speaker 2: you know, and it happened.
Speaker 1: I have a friend I went to college with went
Speaker 1: through the identical situation, and he still hasn't gotten over
Speaker 1: his parents before to cease now.
Speaker 2: But my sister had the toughest time because she had
Speaker 2: literally just left him and felt somewhat betrayed that she
Speaker 2: went to college and they you know, came back home
Speaker 2: there like the first you know, Christmas break or whatever.
Speaker 2: The that was like, what do you mean you're broken up?
Speaker 2: You know it happened within that window and you know
Speaker 2: you're you're divorcing. So yeah, but I also saw, you know,
Speaker 2: I saw the things that made them different in the
Speaker 2: struggle that they had, the arguments. Again, I didn't come
Speaker 2: from Knockwood. My dad never struck my mother. You know.
Speaker 2: One time, one time he might have threatened to spank her.
Speaker 2: The kids, Well you're a kid, You're like, you're gonna
Speaker 2: spank her. I'm gonna turn you over my neighbors. That's like,
Speaker 2: it's like you and it's like but that was more
Speaker 2: just absurd than anything that's right. But see, my mother
Speaker 2: worked from the time I was She stopped working for
Speaker 2: about three years, uh, I think post my sister's birth,
Speaker 2: and then went back when I was in first grade,
Speaker 2: I think, to work and she ran a data center.
Speaker 2: She'd been a typist and she knew how to type.
Speaker 2: She started running and doing key punch operator, right, and
Speaker 2: she became uh uh, she was a very smart woman.
Speaker 2: She became a computer operator. That was when they were
Speaker 2: the big old Univac. You know they were four feet
Speaker 2: five four and a half feet high by eight feet long,
Speaker 2: you know, and you fed cards.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That was our scratch pads at home, the left of
Speaker 2: her punch card, right, you know, the key punch cards.
Speaker 2: And uh she worked then that job for twenty five years.
Speaker 2: And uh uh she drove her own car. From the
Speaker 2: time I was a baby, she drove you know, she
Speaker 2: had her own she had her own credit cards. She
Speaker 2: come home from work, she followed sales. She knew how
Speaker 2: to you know, she was a very thrifty woman. She
Speaker 2: knew how to manage money, you know, with my dad
Speaker 2: on the other end, you know, been the army. Army
Speaker 2: took care of if you ran out, you were still
Speaker 2: had a place to sleep and eat. And she she
Speaker 2: would take us to sales at the big department store.
Speaker 2: There was Lazarus. You know, you go down in the
Speaker 2: basement sale, you know, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 2: it's like she that was that and I I she
Speaker 2: she really did, you know, uh conduct herself on an
Speaker 2: equal left footing with my father. You know that way
Speaker 2: we you know, we knew Mom would was able to
Speaker 2: do things on her own, you know, from the time
Speaker 2: I was a kid. I it probably makes me expect more,
Speaker 2: you know, from women than what some are raised to be.
Speaker 2: You know, like I like assumed, well, yeah, you can
Speaker 2: do all your own things. You can take your drive, yourself,
Speaker 2: do this, and uh yeah, so I didn't you know,
Speaker 2: suffer the consequence of a broken family. You know, we
Speaker 2: were grown and it was over, and they remained civil
Speaker 2: with each other, and you know, we're able to be
Speaker 2: around one another.
Speaker 1: You did either of them find someone new?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They both remarried and and stayed with the person
Speaker 2: who were married to to the end. You know. My
Speaker 2: mom's husband passed just about three was it four years ago?
Speaker 2: And he was a bit older than her. He was
Speaker 2: probably eight or ten maybe ten years older my mom
Speaker 2: and and my dad remarried and he outlived his his spouse.
Speaker 2: And yeah, but you know, I mean I'm fortunate. It
Speaker 2: lets me as an artist, I think in writing, uh
Speaker 2: you know, that's maybe why I'm drawing the things that
Speaker 2: like in film. You know, you were mentioning and writing
Speaker 2: about the guests that book. That's not entertainment. I've never
Speaker 2: liked just entertainment. I like, like, I'd rather watch a
Speaker 2: Robert Oltman movie. Oh yeah. If you remember when he
Speaker 2: got the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award at the end of
Speaker 2: his life, he said, Now, I know some of you
Speaker 2: haven't liked all the movies that I've made, he said,
Speaker 2: but I just asked you to keep watching. It gets better,
Speaker 2: meaning it's all one movie. Right. It was a brilliant
Speaker 2: statement of it.
Speaker 1: I just remember when h fuck, what was the name
Speaker 1: of the one with Warren Beatty shot in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest with all the snow.
Speaker 2: Missus Miller. Yeah, oh, that's one of the best. And
Speaker 2: I heard Warren Batty didn't, I said, yeah, because he
Speaker 2: did not doesn't act like a movie star in it.
Speaker 2: He's like a real person. I care. And the compression
Speaker 2: of time and that and now the charge me that
Speaker 2: for chippies. I'm not paying that for chippies. And you know,
Speaker 2: the hookers he's going And.
Speaker 1: If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his asshole,
Speaker 1: and and the and the deal and because it goes
Speaker 1: from you know, it's not the first time compressed time
Speaker 1: is being used, but it's Altman's use of it in
Speaker 1: that film was amazing in that you see Warren Baby
Speaker 1: go in to get you know, the chippies, and it
Speaker 1: can it comes back up like it's now the spring
Speaker 1: coming out of the winter.
Speaker 2: Seven months later and the place is built and he's gotten,
Speaker 2: it's working, and that always fascinated me. And even the
Speaker 2: scene with Keith Carrody. It's one of keys first on
Speaker 2: the bridge where and the guy says, oh, that's you
Speaker 2: got now it's a nice looking gun, and you're going,
Speaker 2: don't He goes, let me see that? Can you let
Speaker 2: me see it? Oh, you're going, don't you know? And
Speaker 2: because the women in the place are watching it and
Speaker 2: they like him, you know, he's just this young green
Speaker 2: cowboy that is you know, and you're going no. But
Speaker 2: his ability with stuff like that, you know, is always.
Speaker 1: Oh no, i think I've seen every close to every
Speaker 1: one of them, and kind of like it's very rare
Speaker 1: that someone can peak later in their career. But like shortcuts,
Speaker 1: shortcuts was.
Speaker 2: Great, Oh yeah, yeah again his telling of because his
Speaker 2: movies are about the interaction of people with each other,
Speaker 2: always it's not plot driven. There's a plot, and he'll
Speaker 2: get to it, but he's not in such a hurry,
Speaker 2: and he's not so overwhelming that that's the issue, because
Speaker 2: that's entertainment, right plot. You know, anybody can write plot,
Speaker 2: but not many people can write character and dial all
Speaker 2: the way. The other one is is even Peckingpad later
Speaker 2: in his life, right when he delivers the seminal Western
Speaker 2: is wild bunch because it takes you into and the
Speaker 2: way he was using slow motion, ptigraphy, the violence and
Speaker 2: all that. But that movie, i argue, always is much
Speaker 2: more with one foot still in the traditional Hollywood filmmaking
Speaker 2: because of the score Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Speaker 2: is the first rock and roll Western because of the
Speaker 2: way he scored it. Right now, I'm not having to
Speaker 2: dore all this stuff, you know, just all the recurring,
Speaker 2: the way it was done, Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid.
Speaker 2: But bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia is the
Speaker 2: one with Warren Oates going crazy, what right the hook
Speaker 2: or that he's in love with right and trying to
Speaker 2: get that head. I mean to me that you know,
Speaker 2: that's fascinating, and it's maybe because I didn't suffer the
Speaker 2: same kind of angst. I never felt fearful in our house.
Speaker 2: I never felt fear from the outside world. As my
Speaker 2: old man was, I always felt it was a protector
Speaker 2: from the time I was a kid. For whatever his
Speaker 2: flaws were, nothing that you were. It was over that
Speaker 2: guy's dead body. You were gonna do anything to our family,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean? I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: and I realized now and knowing friends and close people
Speaker 2: that are close to me that didn't grow up that
Speaker 2: way or suffered the under the threat of violence within
Speaker 2: the house outside you know, people coming into the house
Speaker 2: that were extended family that were violent towards you know,
Speaker 2: their you know them and their family. I've just experienced
Speaker 2: it with people and I'm like, wow, yeah, I'm lucky.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's what allows me to write about things
Speaker 2: that I you know, the sadness of some things and
Speaker 2: and uh, the willingness to you know, to watch it
Speaker 2: in film and observe it. And anyway, let's.
Speaker 1: Stay with Peckapah for a minute. People say movies are
Speaker 1: too bloody, too gory. I've never had a problem without
Speaker 1: it all but the only movie that pushed me over
Speaker 1: the line. But I sat there in the theater straw Dogs.
Speaker 1: WHOA remember was Susan Joya? Yeah, pretty, he's seeing those guys.
Speaker 1: Wow it dustn't Hoffman?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it Dustin Hoffman or that guy?
Speaker 2: Is it? I have to look it up. Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It's Dustin Hoffman. Is her husband? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And they come in there and are they in Ironland
Speaker 2: or England? I can't remember where it takes place. It's
Speaker 2: either they're out of their cultural element and you know
Speaker 2: they are Americans that are there and living. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I haven't watched it in years, but it's very disturbing,
Speaker 2: very disturbing. More so Clwork or Clarkwork Orange has been
Speaker 2: a cartoon of that. This is so reality based that
Speaker 2: it it'll make you, you know, check, go get a
Speaker 2: gun exactly.
Speaker 1: But there's one of the scariest movies I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: Angel Heart. Is that the name of the book or
Speaker 1: the name of the movie.
Speaker 2: That's the movie both, I think with Mickey ro Hoffman.
Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman played Louis Seiffer ship. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sat in New Orleans, et cetera. Wow. I even remember
Speaker 1: reading the book. Yeah, it was called Angel Heart. And
Speaker 1: I remember reading the book because I had it. Somebody
Speaker 1: sent it to me that even scared me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, no, and well straw Dogs, like you said,
Speaker 2: is disturbing, and it's you know, I've thought about it.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know what, there is something and the
Speaker 2: safety of the life I was, you know, I lived,
Speaker 2: and not that we didn't have up down problems and
Speaker 2: you know, and my brother, you know, had his own
Speaker 2: issues and there was stuff, you know, even in his
Speaker 2: early adult life that bled over into the family of him.
Speaker 2: But I realize the the lack of being fearful in
Speaker 2: our own home that somebody else was going to come in,
Speaker 2: you know, and and do something to us, or be
Speaker 2: able to you know, have a free hand, you know,
Speaker 2: in coming over. And you know I didn't have to
Speaker 2: live with that kind of fear.
Speaker 1: Well, we didn't have that at all. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about being the youngest. My father
Speaker 1: was a guy didn't fit in and he ultimately made
Speaker 1: his success individually and didn't have.
Speaker 2: To fit in because he was the youngest of the family.
Speaker 1: Was he in terms of the kids he was the oldest?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I mean he had a rough family. One sister,
Speaker 1: one brother was run over and killed in the driveway.
Speaker 1: Another sister committed suicide. I mean, it wasn't just your
Speaker 1: everyday family. But he, you know, not by today's rich standards.
Speaker 1: He would support you. He would buy you the sporting
Speaker 1: equipment and do that as long as you were geting
Speaker 1: good grades in school. Didn't want to hear that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a professional athlete. But as long as
Speaker 1: you were doing this, he would do it. To the degree.
Speaker 1: He wasn't trying to teach us a lesson. I remember
Speaker 1: talking about this the other day, but I was ten.
Speaker 1: My father bought me golf clubs. Almost no clubs in
Speaker 1: the There was a driver three five seven, three five
Speaker 1: seven and a putter. Everybody in the community went berserk.
Speaker 1: He's too young, I mean we just played the public course.
Speaker 1: He's the young to have alc golf clubs within a year.
Speaker 1: All their kids had much better golf sets than I did,
Speaker 1: you know, but he was one. He didn't give a
Speaker 1: shit what anybody else thought.
Speaker 2: I mean, my father made a.
Speaker 1: Living speaking his truth. And I guess, you know, you
Speaker 1: get old, you think you're so different from people, and
Speaker 1: you find out you're the same. I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some lessons I got from him, same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking your truth. I don't think you'd be accused
Speaker 2: of not right.
Speaker 1: But I really don't know any other way. I mean
Speaker 1: I tried to be the other way where you know,
Speaker 1: kissed but played politics. And you know, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: had a dream about this just the other night. You know,
Speaker 1: they said, how can you say this? You know, you
Speaker 1: gotta be ostracized. Most people learn to be a member
Speaker 1: of the group. That's not what my father taught me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he stay an outsider.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you were, you were successful. Classic thing is
Speaker 1: people buy their parents a house or something. To what
Speaker 1: degree did you buy your parents and your sister and
Speaker 1: brother on the payroll?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't. I didn't do that. Didn't have to,
Speaker 2: Thank goodness, it didn't. I mean, you know, they both
Speaker 2: had their lives that were you know, okay. But I
Speaker 2: was able to retire my mom early, you know, let
Speaker 2: her after twenty five years instead of working another five
Speaker 2: or eight or you know whatever. And that much I
Speaker 2: was able to do was help her retire early, earlier,
Speaker 2: and you know, being able to give them things, you know,
Speaker 2: over the years, you know, gifts and stuff, but but
Speaker 2: never really And then I was able to help my
Speaker 2: dad and his wife, you know, a similar kind of thing,
Speaker 2: just you know, help help them, you know along. You know.
Speaker 2: So that was a benefit of the success, a great
Speaker 2: benefit of success. But as I always felt like I
Speaker 2: owed because that guitar he ended up for several years
Speaker 2: having to do piece meal when we go hunting, rabbit
Speaker 2: hunting or whatever. He always had kind of a bowl
Speaker 2: that he ended up with, not great shotguns. And uh,
Speaker 2: because I found out years later that that that guitar
Speaker 2: I wanted so desperately eight years old, I wanted a
Speaker 2: real guitar. He hocked a great shotgun that he had
Speaker 2: and actually just sold it to you know, have the
Speaker 2: money to buy that guitar that Christmas. So I owe
Speaker 2: them a debt of gratitude. But I felt like, look,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think that kids that are able
Speaker 2: to get back to their parents, it's a gift to
Speaker 2: the kid for me. Anything that I was able to
Speaker 2: do for them, I thought was a gift because, like
Speaker 2: I said, I was lucky. And I realized how lucky
Speaker 2: now when I meet some you know, friends and here
Speaker 2: of their life with parents that were less than mature
Speaker 2: about love, you know what I mean? Love, I believe me.
Speaker 2: We're talking about love. The sacrifice they'll make for love,
Speaker 2: you know, nothing else that they'll give up their own
Speaker 2: selfishness for love. And my mother had that and women,
Speaker 2: you know, the mothers do you know, for the most part.
Speaker 2: Obviously there are nominlies and exceptions to everything, the rules
Speaker 2: that that is. But guys, we have to learn what
Speaker 2: we tend to be selfish, you know, all right, you know,
Speaker 2: and and but selflessness is there when if you've got
Speaker 2: it in you, it comes out when they you know,
Speaker 2: they look up at you, and like you said, you
Speaker 2: learn a different love. And that's that's selfless love, you know,
Speaker 2: with a child. And that's what I felt. Look, I've
Speaker 2: read enough of you. With your mom, you would do
Speaker 2: small things, whether you didn't necessarily buy you didn't have to,
Speaker 2: you know, buy her house. I didn't have to with
Speaker 2: my mother and her husband were okay, you know, they
Speaker 2: were uh and and uh. She was always very cautious,
Speaker 2: you know, with with her money. I would you know,
Speaker 2: I had a little bit of it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: at least save some you know, had some you know,
Speaker 2: underneath the stereo or something in my room. I was
Speaker 2: getting paper route or whatever. And you know, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean you've talked about even taking your mom to dinner
Speaker 2: right now, you know, and just things that you're able
Speaker 2: to do well.
Speaker 1: My mother, I mean, I'm going to talk about my mother.
Speaker 1: My mother was the inspir Like if I wanted to
Speaker 1: go to a movie, or I wanted to go to
Speaker 1: a play, or I wanted to go to a concert,
Speaker 1: unlimited money for that. If you wanted to buy an
Speaker 1: item whatever, that was a whole different thing, okay.
Speaker 2: But to engage in and art, art, watching art, you participating.
Speaker 1: I mean my mother once I remember my mother tell
Speaker 1: me is hey, Country, Joe and the Fish are going
Speaker 1: to be a new haven. It's like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go whereas he said, you know, give me
Speaker 1: some money to go hang with my buds. No, but
Speaker 1: she would encourage you, and then if you got really
Speaker 1: into it, she would push back and.
Speaker 2: You know, ha ha.
Speaker 1: And I told some of these stories before, but my
Speaker 1: one of my favorite stories. In the earlier part of
Speaker 1: this century, basically everybody had a computer, even your parents,
Speaker 1: because if they are well whatever, So you send email
Speaker 1: to your parents and I forward, like, you know, sometime
Speaker 1: two thousand and four or three whatever. I forwarded an
Speaker 1: email from Quincy Jones and I never heard anything. So
Speaker 1: the next time I spoke with my mother, I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you know I sent you email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Did you read it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I redreamail, you know the one, Yeah, Quincy Jones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read. Well, you weren't impressive with Quincy Jones whatever,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I said, Quincy Jones, you mean the
Speaker 1: artist I figured with somebody the same same name. How
Speaker 1: would you know Quincy Jones?
Speaker 2: You mean the artist she figured?
Speaker 1: You know, she would put you down?
Speaker 2: Who are you?
Speaker 1: How would you know that?
Speaker 2: Would you? Bob? No, Quincy Jones. That's hilarious? Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I you know. Yeah. The dynamic with with family is
Speaker 2: is interesting. I mean, fortunately they were they never traded
Speaker 2: on it, you know, when it, you know, the success happened.
Speaker 2: They they what's going on? Oh, somebody overheard as I
Speaker 2: heard somebody outside repeating what you said. They're they're hearing
Speaker 2: another speaker, and they were laughing about the fact that
Speaker 2: your mother was shocked, you know, Quinn. They yeah, so
Speaker 2: you know, knock Wood.
Speaker 1: Sings. How'd your siblings cope with your level of success?
Speaker 2: Really well, really well? Actually, I mean they they didn't again,
Speaker 2: didn't expect much. I mean I would. My brother had
Speaker 2: a bit of a struggle, you know, and life, and
Speaker 2: he helped my sister and I enormously. He went down
Speaker 2: and took care of my father when my father had dementia.
Speaker 2: He didn't have Alzheimer's thinking he had an arterial dementia.
Speaker 2: In the last couple of years with life and my brother,
Speaker 2: he had gone through a divorce and it was kind
Speaker 2: of in a different space. He moved there and stayed,
Speaker 2: you know, and stayed the course with him and and actually,
Speaker 2: you know, witnessed he was in an assisted you know,
Speaker 2: a place where my brother would go every day, you know,
Speaker 2: take him wherever he needed to go and do whatever.
Speaker 2: And for him, that was one of the greatest gifts
Speaker 2: he could give my sister and I. You know that
Speaker 2: he did that, that he did that for my dad.
Speaker 2: I loved him even deeper than I did, you know,
Speaker 2: my brother, I loved him, but but you know, it
Speaker 2: really played on him hard. He We think he casually
Speaker 2: of that first year of COVID he passed young. I
Speaker 2: think sixty two, wow, no, sixty what even was sixty one?
Speaker 2: And we think now that he may have had Louis
Speaker 2: body dimension, which is what Robin Williams was diagnosed with
Speaker 2: after the fact, because they don't know what and they
Speaker 2: start having And my brother had been at close range
Speaker 2: watching dementia take my dad and it was tough on him,
Speaker 2: and so I was, you know, but I was able
Speaker 2: to you know, help him by helping us and let him,
Speaker 2: you know, do that. And but no, they never expect that.
Speaker 2: They'd never tapped me, you know. I mean I've been
Speaker 2: able to do things with and for them and with them,
Speaker 2: but you know, uh, now, there was no no house
Speaker 2: buying or things like that. I was, you know, I've
Speaker 2: done some bit of lavish gift giving and over over
Speaker 2: time and and I did, you know, end up with
Speaker 2: a plane. One of the ways my brother built some
Speaker 2: multi time we have because I loved flying and I
Speaker 2: couldn't do it, and I bought a small twin engine jet,
Speaker 2: not jet, but a plane, and he flew and then
Speaker 2: he built his time and he on his own and
Speaker 2: he started doing you know, flying and jet flying and
Speaker 2: so forth, and doing it with first you know, carrying
Speaker 2: uh overnight banking, you know, back in the even the
Speaker 2: early night. They were still it was paper. They had
Speaker 2: to move it overnight. And that's one of the ways
Speaker 2: these guys will build enormous amounts of hours and flying
Speaker 2: is they'll they'll hire on to uh, you know, check flying.
Speaker 2: And he did that for you know, a couple of
Speaker 2: three years, you know, flew charter anyway. But yeah, so no,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, you know, not having to struggle
Speaker 2: with the function of life allowed me the luxury of
Speaker 2: being able to explore within myself whatever I needed to do,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean saying, it's like I'm not having
Speaker 2: to put myself back together, you know. And I didn't.
Speaker 2: I never never drank. I just I was raised, like
Speaker 2: I said, in a very absent environment, you know, until
Speaker 2: I was an adult. And by the time I got there,
Speaker 2: I almost kissed. Like I'm like, and I've watched it
Speaker 2: all you have, but at close range bars and I've
Speaker 2: seen professionals, I know, you know, and just it never
Speaker 2: because I had an event horizon that I kept staring at.
Speaker 2: I thought, I need to you know, I need to
Speaker 2: be awake and alert and sober, and I need to
Speaker 2: know what the hell I'm doing, you know, And I
Speaker 2: don't want they just never It's just not my nature
Speaker 2: to want to to come in. My old man smoked
Speaker 2: cigarettes and never never because of my throat. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to wreck you know. Weird early on, I knew
Speaker 2: from an early age I wanted to do this. I
Speaker 2: wanted to sing, and I thought I may I may
Speaker 2: be able to do this, you know. And and.
Speaker 1: I just, uh, well, tell me about I know you
Speaker 1: didn't want to abuse yourself, But tell me about knowing
Speaker 1: that you wanted to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just from my earliest memories. And it's strange.
Speaker 2: I see it in my little one. He it's almost
Speaker 2: a knowing about like he knows, you know. And it's
Speaker 2: my wife observes it in a different way because for me,
Speaker 2: it just reminds me of like, oh, yeah, I remember feeling,
Speaker 2: you know that I can do this, I could make people.
Speaker 2: Uh it's just yeah, I I And again, you can't
Speaker 2: teach it, and you have to have an experience along
Speaker 2: the way that lets you confirm if you've got any
Speaker 2: level of intelligence. I think you have to. You want
Speaker 2: to make sure you're not just delusional, right, So you've
Speaker 2: got to do it outside. Two things can happen at home.
Speaker 2: You need to be on the coffee table, and you're just,
Speaker 2: you know, the precocious little darling that you know they're
Speaker 2: going to dote over whether you're any good or not,
Speaker 2: or you can get the tall poppy cut down right.
Speaker 2: You know, I've seen both in families mine would you
Speaker 2: would it was not either, you know, they weren't just
Speaker 2: indulging me. But they knew when I came down with
Speaker 2: that concoction of a song about Vietnam, that there was
Speaker 2: something up. They didn't know what because they didn't know.
Speaker 2: You know, there are people they're so far removed from
Speaker 2: show business, you know, they don't know anybody that's even
Speaker 2: got a cousin that you know, did anything at the
Speaker 2: local radio or television station. So I was left to
Speaker 2: my own devices. And then by the time I got
Speaker 2: junior high, the first two years of my junior high
Speaker 2: was at a school. It wasn't middle schools junior high,
Speaker 2: but they the freshman class had been It was a
Speaker 2: new area that been built and we'd moved to this
Speaker 2: track home out there, and the high school had freshman
Speaker 2: through senior and so my junior high only had a
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth grade and in my freshman year, my
Speaker 2: ninth grade year was at that junior high and in
Speaker 2: that year, my former eighth grade history teacher, because they
Speaker 2: added the third class of students, he started a drama program.
Speaker 2: He started teaching you could take a drama class, and
Speaker 2: so he started putting up one act plays and I
Speaker 2: walked in and was able to be cast like I
Speaker 2: was good. I used to be doing the reading and
Speaker 2: he cast me, and I did a couple of these plays,
Speaker 2: and then I started doing it in high school. There
Speaker 2: was a great theater department there and a fellow named
Speaker 2: Chuck Lewis who was the theater teacher at that high school,
Speaker 2: who ran a summerstock company, weather Vane Playoffs is saying
Speaker 2: at Newark, Ohio. So he brought a certain level of
Speaker 2: professional expectation to how the stage was going to be around,
Speaker 2: how you were supposed to behave. So I got exposed
Speaker 2: to that in there, and I was always in band
Speaker 2: to march. I was trying to play football that was
Speaker 2: all of one hundred and thirty five pounds when I
Speaker 2: was a sophomore in high school and we had an
Speaker 2: all city team. I mean, it was like getting knocked
Speaker 2: around like a rag doll. And so by my sophomore year.
Speaker 2: I stopped after my sophomore year, I and it was
Speaker 2: became marched, one of the two based drums in marching band.
Speaker 2: My letter jacket is banned. That's funny enough, ironically. And
Speaker 2: we had a great marching band and had an instrumental
Speaker 2: drum band, you know, pro a stage band. I played drums,
Speaker 2: not well, but and the theater department and every other
Speaker 2: year they would do this combined variety show, you know,
Speaker 2: And I was back to what I was going to say.
Speaker 2: One day, the theater teacher in the junior high it
Speaker 2: was stubborn, gave me a ride home, give me a
Speaker 2: left home and from something we're doing. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it was a rehearsal or whatever. And he pulled
Speaker 2: on the driveway and he said, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know what your parents do for a living or how
Speaker 2: they are. I said, but I don't know how to say.
Speaker 2: I think, if you want to, you could make a
Speaker 2: living doing this. And I was kind of like taking
Speaker 2: aback a little bit. I said, mean make a living
Speaker 2: doing what you meant, no performing, you know what you
Speaker 2: do in in what we're doing in plays, And so
Speaker 2: he said, I'm not sure how to tell you how
Speaker 2: to do it, you know, because it's a history teacher.
Speaker 2: But that moment, you know, there's a moment that someone
Speaker 2: gives you confirmation a third party who's not your parent,
Speaker 2: not your aunt, uncle, no relative. At that moment, I
Speaker 2: and again, I'm just obstinately, obstinately optimistic enough, maybe egotistical
Speaker 2: enough to use that as a handhold, you know. That
Speaker 2: was the next And then in that high school theater department,
Speaker 2: I started doing plays very immediately. And in my junior year,
Speaker 2: I haping to be walking down the hall and heard
Speaker 2: part of the stage band guys trying to do some
Speaker 2: in some fashion rockabilly and the drum major from the
Speaker 2: marching band and he was a trumpet player in stage
Speaker 2: man was attempting to be the singer and it was awful.
Speaker 2: I heard it outside the band and I walked in
Speaker 2: and said, well, you guys doing and they said, well,
Speaker 2: you know we're gonna do it for the show because
Speaker 2: I was gonna host it with this other guy. We
Speaker 2: were doing a Smothers Brothers stick, you know, and he
Speaker 2: had an upright bass and I was playing guitar. I
Speaker 2: remember I performed Loud and Wainwrights hit Dead Skunk, in
Speaker 2: the middle of the road during that, which was a
Speaker 2: brilliant song. Actually, so on crossing the highway late last night,
Speaker 2: he should have looked left and he should have looked
Speaker 2: right right, didn't see the station flagging, cars got squashed
Speaker 2: and there you are. You got a dead skunk in
Speaker 2: the middle again. You talking about post hippie them kind
Speaker 2: of weird, oh yeah, weird song world. You know, it
Speaker 2: was there by then, you know, nineteen seventy three, right
Speaker 2: right and h So I was doing that and they
Speaker 2: knew and they said, well, we're you know, doing this
Speaker 2: kind of like you know Seannan I kind of, I said, well,
Speaker 2: he said, but yeah, but he's not, you know, I said,
Speaker 2: you mean like that. I took the mind and they
Speaker 2: started playing whatever, and I started singing. And they didn't
Speaker 2: know I sang, because this was the stuff I did
Speaker 2: at home. You know, I wasn't in chorus or choir,
Speaker 2: I mean some perfunctory one course, you know, I whatever
Speaker 2: vocal music as an elective, but nobody knew I sang.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the theater folks for my sophomore year
Speaker 2: thought that I couldn't sing at all because I did
Speaker 2: a play Miracle Worker, right, you know, that was the
Speaker 2: kind of you know, and I was playing the younger
Speaker 2: brother and he had to sing Buffalo Gallantry. I never
Speaker 2: heard the song, so they and I couldn't. I was
Speaker 2: like in the theater and started directing. It was like
Speaker 2: he said, it's They hollered it out to me from
Speaker 2: the seats, you know, rehearsal one day and like hollering.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I don't know. I think so
Speaker 2: it was this you know, kind of weak performance of
Speaker 2: that that I did during the play. So they were
Speaker 2: stunned when they saw me come out with this band
Speaker 2: and take over that show and kind of have that
Speaker 2: moment and it's and it's it's that weird seminal kind
Speaker 2: of thing, and there were girls went crazy and we
Speaker 2: were you know, it was like this nutty moment and
Speaker 2: you kind of again a confirmation of something. And it
Speaker 2: probably did more to wreck any kind of academic pursuit
Speaker 2: that I would have ever had, you know, because because
Speaker 2: and now in the back of my head, and I
Speaker 2: had that band and we started playing at other schools
Speaker 2: you know that wanted to have throwback sock hops and
Speaker 2: you know that kind of stuff. And I mean I
Speaker 2: had like a Golden may suit done after that, and
Speaker 2: it was ridiculous, but.
Speaker 1: It was this.
Speaker 2: It was rockable because I was showing them. I so like, well,
Speaker 2: what about this the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly stuff
Speaker 2: which had more hellbilly to it. And I didn't really
Speaker 2: delve into that aspect of what I was going to
Speaker 2: do till I started writing right at my senior year
Speaker 2: of high school and writing stuff to sing. You know,
Speaker 2: I wrote something called Lovely Brown, and I wrote something
Speaker 2: else called Anyway. And after moving out here to the
Speaker 2: West Coast, because by then I knew because that was
Speaker 2: in those years where the transition was happening. You know,
Speaker 2: the whole thing with the Bakersfield be is I told
Speaker 2: you is about how the California sound springs forward from
Speaker 2: the Tom Jod wrote, you know, from the Great Sarathia,
Speaker 2: when Buck and Merle's family end up out here in
Speaker 2: labor camps, right and they bring that music from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas,
Speaker 2: the dust Bowl to the West Coast. And then there
Speaker 2: are those that preceded the Maddox Brothers and Rose all
Speaker 2: that stuff, Woody Guthrie alllet But then by the fifties,
Speaker 2: late fifties, Buck starts to have the sixties in the sixties,
Speaker 2: Mrle and Chris Hillman and I have talked about it.
Speaker 2: He was this West Coast mandolin playing kid who loved
Speaker 2: bluegrass music right late fifties, early sixties and ends up
Speaker 2: by default the bass player for the Birds. Because I'm
Speaker 2: trying to remember the name of the guy that produced
Speaker 2: and put that together. But Tickner, I think was his
Speaker 2: last name. He knew Chris from the bluegrass band that
Speaker 2: he'd been in and had recorded him and said, hey,
Speaker 2: I think it was Jeane Clark first, and then Jim
Speaker 2: mgwin at the Troubadour put themselves together, right, And so
Speaker 2: all that was going on in my late adolescent early teens,
Speaker 2: and I started hearing it, and it was the hidden
Speaker 2: part of my culture right that I couldn't have much
Speaker 2: affinity with with those kids at that high school in Columbus,
Speaker 2: they didn't understand what I listened to at home. Like
Speaker 2: my best friend across the street in that track house
Speaker 2: world that we were. Now, his mother was from South Carolina,
Speaker 2: but he didn't grow up with that same kind of
Speaker 2: hillbil edge, but he watched me listen to Stonewall Jackson Records.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, fourteen fifteen years old I've Got
Speaker 2: Life to Go, which is written by George Jones. That
Speaker 2: song is I've been in here eighteen years and still
Speaker 2: got life to go. He talks about his family left.
Speaker 2: Its brilliant, brilliant song. George Jones wrote it. Stonewall Jackson
Speaker 2: had a country hit with it. But my dad had
Speaker 2: bought that album as an apology to my mother. It's
Speaker 2: called Don't Be Angry with Me. It was the hit
Speaker 2: off of it, Don't Be Angry with Me, darling h
Speaker 2: I fail to understand all your little because they'd had
Speaker 2: an argument. That's his way of he brought this album
Speaker 2: home to her to apologize. So I was listening to
Speaker 2: all the other stuff on that record. Johnny Horton. My
Speaker 2: mother was in the Columbia Record Club. The only thing
Speaker 2: that she ever regretted being in there was when she
Speaker 2: ordered because she was a big fan of Herbalbert and
Speaker 2: Tijuana Brass, and got the Whipped Cream album and my
Speaker 2: brother and I got it first at like nine or
Speaker 2: ten years old. I think it was eleven, which was
Speaker 2: even more dangerous space. I always look at that album
Speaker 2: cover and she forever regretted that she ordered that album,
Speaker 2: although she loved the music on it. But so I
Speaker 2: was listening, but my dad had and like I said,
Speaker 2: the Johnny cashed up. But she had the Johnny Horton
Speaker 2: stuff that had whispering pines. You know, of course the
Speaker 2: hits Bismarck and all that north to Alaska. But the
Speaker 2: other one that I clung to. I was playing it
Speaker 2: in clubs after I was out here in southern California.
Speaker 2: I would do when it's springtime in Alaska, it's forty below,
Speaker 2: you know. Just I mean all that they didn't know
Speaker 2: about my peers, they wouldn't understand.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I had a cousin, Mike Christian. He played a bit
Speaker 2: of guitar, and he got it because his family were
Speaker 2: the same hillbilly transplants, but not many did. So it
Speaker 2: was a kind of a hidden part of me. But
Speaker 2: what country rock happening did. And I've said that the
Speaker 2: Brito Brothers were the most famous band that nobody ever heard,
Speaker 2: you know, their reputation preceded him and out out distanced
Speaker 2: there the reality right of their records, And Chris and
Speaker 2: I talked about that, and I knew of Graham Parsons
Speaker 2: out of that moment and him being these long haired
Speaker 2: kind of hippie cowboy, you know, guys doing this thing,
Speaker 2: and Mike Nessmuth from the Monkeys was doing it, you know.
Speaker 2: And then when he post Monkeys formed the first national band,
Speaker 2: right and did Joe Anne and standing in the lonely
Speaker 2: light of the silver move all that, you know, and
Speaker 2: I was like, you know what maybe country music and
Speaker 2: the thing Brian and Hearn did with Emmy Lou Harris,
Speaker 2: and she gives that credit to Brian that after Graham died,
Speaker 2: she went back into the folk scene, back to d C,
Speaker 2: you know, and kind of, you know, just in shock
Speaker 2: and and I think in a moment of depression back there,
Speaker 2: and I think it was I can't remember Mary Martin,
Speaker 2: that from the record label that showed Emmy and gave
Speaker 2: demos of Emmy's stuff to Brian, and Brian had a
Speaker 2: deal with Warner and he moved her out here and
Speaker 2: he put the band together, the first hot band, and
Speaker 2: more so than the Linda Ronstats because the first couple
Speaker 2: of Londa Ronstadt appems I was a huge fan of too.
Speaker 2: And then Peter Asher came aboard and they kind of
Speaker 2: moved it into the pop I can as you know,
Speaker 2: the iconography that became her sound, you know. And then
Speaker 2: of course the Begat and Begat was you know, you
Speaker 2: got the birds and all that stuff. The Sweetheart of
Speaker 2: the Rodeo album that happened. But I didn't have it
Speaker 2: because they am an older sibling to direct me there.
Speaker 2: You know. It wasn't the hits. I just had what
Speaker 2: I could find on my own. But I felt inside
Speaker 2: and creating scle Revival was, yeah, there were. John was
Speaker 2: a hero of mine just because of what he was
Speaker 2: doing musically, and as I grew to know what it
Speaker 2: was later he's writing the songs, playing the lead guitar,
Speaker 2: producing the records really you know, and control, you know.
Speaker 2: And then he did that Blue Ridge Ranger solo excursion
Speaker 2: they did after it, and he took again, and there
Speaker 2: became this pertinence of country music having its moment again.
Speaker 2: So I realized because I had an epiphany one day
Speaker 2: when I was the last trip I ever took with
Speaker 2: my aunt and my mother, when I was still just
Speaker 2: in to Kentucky. We sorry bumpedo that mike with the
Speaker 2: last trip I took with them, my aunt's Cadillac, my
Speaker 2: sister and I went. My brother didn't. He stayed on
Speaker 2: with my dad that weekend and we went down and
Speaker 2: I remember listening as we crossed the river from Ohio
Speaker 2: and to Kentucky, and these AM stations began. You would
Speaker 2: pick up i mean, religious programs even during the week
Speaker 2: and it was very rural radio. All of a sudden
Speaker 2: you were there and it was exposed and hardcore hillbilly stuff.
Speaker 2: And I remembered on that drive this is maybe at
Speaker 2: that point fifteen or sixteen. I wasn't driving it, so
Speaker 2: I was probably fifteen years old, sixteen, but old enough
Speaker 2: to feel the future, you know, the sense I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be here. And I remember looking across at
Speaker 2: the hills when we were just north, just out of Ashley, Kentucky,
Speaker 2: and headed into Catholicsburg, where I would always hear about
Speaker 2: the car wreck where they went off and they flipped.
Speaker 2: They're lucky they lived, my mother and my aunt and
Speaker 2: uncle going back home and flipped a car. Because it
Speaker 2: was just a dangerous, dangerous road. And I remember we
Speaker 2: got past there, talked about that again. Every time we
Speaker 2: went through it. We had to hear about the wreck.
Speaker 2: And I remember looking out and thinking and not knowing
Speaker 2: anything about what that meant or why you have the
Speaker 2: thought other than you know, like unbridled ego. I don't.
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm supposed to. I'm going to sing about this,
Speaker 2: about these people in this world. I'm supposed to. I
Speaker 2: felt like that epiphanous moment was that in retrospect, I've
Speaker 2: thought about it several times over the years that ensued
Speaker 2: and once my career started, because you don't You can
Speaker 2: attempt to plan to have a journey, but you cannot
Speaker 2: be prepared for the topography of the journey. Right the
Speaker 2: landscape is going to be different than you imagined, and
Speaker 2: and you won't be prepared for it. I wasn't. I
Speaker 2: wasn't prepared for that, you know, for the for the
Speaker 2: the physical geography of you know, you can look at
Speaker 2: a map, but that's one dimensional. You can look on
Speaker 2: a map all day long and plan and think, but
Speaker 2: when you're really there, it's different. And I remember that,
Speaker 2: as I said, looking back over the years and thinking
Speaker 2: of that moment in that car with them, it was
Speaker 2: just a silent thought as that radio was playing all
Speaker 2: this various fading in and out am station stuff, and
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to this is what I'm supposed to talk
Speaker 2: about and do. And then after I was here for
Speaker 2: about a year and a half or so, I came
Speaker 2: across the very first John Prime album, that first Atlantic
Speaker 2: record that he did with the Memphis Boys. As you
Speaker 2: read the book, the Memphis Boys not great writing, but
Speaker 2: it's such a wonderful That's Chips Moments group that started out.
Speaker 2: The first record they ever had was I'm Your Puppet
Speaker 2: that he and Dan pencut and which became an East
Speaker 2: Lams like Sophie I'm Your Puppet. The Lowder going to
Speaker 2: just always imagine Art Bell not was it Art? I
Speaker 2: mean Art Lebaux Leau remember Art Lebau, I'm Your all
Speaker 2: those songs. Uh was it k R l A that
Speaker 2: Art lebaul was? Yeah, yeah, kr LA the amer I
Speaker 2: mean that was La. You know in the seventies, right,
Speaker 2: it was still there. You know, the you know, the culture,
Speaker 2: the car culture, you know hot Rod, those songs. But
Speaker 2: they did that and they made the spectrum on those guys,
Speaker 2: the Memphis Boys, like the Wrecking Crew, they did stuff
Speaker 2: that was I mean, Dan Penn produced the box tops,
Speaker 2: give Me a Dig Up One Air, Alex Chilton right
Speaker 2: of these teenagers, and he was so his voice sounded
Speaker 2: like that from what I've read, because he was so
Speaker 2: jacked up. See, he and his girlfriend were so excited
Speaker 2: he was going to go in and record. They stayed
Speaker 2: up for like two days straight before and they drank
Speaker 2: and he was all messed up when he walked in
Speaker 2: and sang that way. The cry like a baby's one
Speaker 2: of my favorite too, because Dan Penn wrote that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the electric cetar. Right. But but those guys went from
Speaker 2: that's end of the spectrum. And they also did the
Speaker 2: gentries I keep on dancing, sades out and fades back in. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and and and they did that. They did Neil Diamond
Speaker 2: like a month before they cut the comeback record for Elvis,
Speaker 2: the Memphis record. That's the one they did. And I
Speaker 2: was reading in the in the book it was the
Speaker 2: guitar player for Oh, I just went completely blank on.
Speaker 2: Oh that's it's horrible. I can't even anyway. Uh, he
Speaker 2: was saying, you know, we were non plussed you and Elvis.
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, sure, Elvis wants to come and cut
Speaker 2: with us. He knows who we are. Now we've just
Speaker 2: cut Neil Diamond. Sweet Caroline we've done this and that.
Speaker 2: And he said, but the night of the session, because
Speaker 2: it was at night, because you know, started at like
Speaker 2: seven in the evening or hey, he said, the door opened.
Speaker 2: He said, we were all sitting there just going yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess again. And he said, we looked up and went,
Speaker 2: holy ship, that's Elvis. He said. There was nobody that
Speaker 2: ever came to that studio but that. But to finish
Speaker 2: that thought, they did that spectrum of music. I mean,
Speaker 2: they were doing all the Wilson picket stuff like Mustang
Speaker 2: staly and allying. They were doing some of it first
Speaker 2: in muscle shows until he built the studio American Recorders
Speaker 2: in Memphis, but Elvis that was in Memphis, Neil Diamond
Speaker 2: and then they did John Primece first time because Wexler
Speaker 2: right at Atlantic that he heard the I'm your puppy,
Speaker 2: He said, who did this? He said, I want to
Speaker 2: wreath it a cut with them, and that's the famous
Speaker 2: story of how they went. But and then she left
Speaker 2: the whole session, you know, and fame because of whatever
Speaker 2: was said to her. There was some you know, a
Speaker 2: horrible off color remark or whatever, and he said, she
Speaker 2: won't come back down there. He called Chip's moment, he said,
Speaker 2: but she liked you guys, and he said, she ain't
Speaker 2: coming back to Memphis or must shows, he said, but
Speaker 2: she wants you to do it, but I'll bring it
Speaker 2: to New York. So he brought those cats up there.
Speaker 2: And you know who's on on that chain of fools
Speaker 2: because Dan Penn had written do Right Woman for and
Speaker 2: and he was smart. You know what they did. They
Speaker 2: let her play piano, that's what Wexle was smart, but
Speaker 2: d the first time all of her career after that
Speaker 2: on Clembing, she'd not you know, been allowed to company
Speaker 2: herself and she played you and sang do it and
Speaker 2: it took off. But Chaine of Fools is Joe South
Speaker 2: doing that pop stables literally that guitar change, change chang.
Speaker 2: It's amazing they cut. Did you never see her? No?
Speaker 2: I never saw her. And I saw her an Award show.
Speaker 2: I saw her do one you know like that, but
Speaker 2: I didn't see her in colle She it was you.
Speaker 1: Know, it was very interesting because she knew who she was.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, and she sauntered out and she just delivered.
Speaker 1: It was it was kind of like the Elvis moment
Speaker 1: walking Oh, that's Elvis. Yeah, well that's a wreatha. She
Speaker 1: can do it effortlessly. She can blow your mind and
Speaker 1: walk off the stage knowing she's a wreatha. It's not
Speaker 1: like she's feeding off of you. It's like your stunt.
Speaker 2: Just dropped the mic and say exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I mean I can remember she said
Speaker 1: when you're a chain chain chain, oh, because that that
Speaker 1: was really the killer.
Speaker 2: That opening guitar riff, and it's a it's like like
Speaker 2: Joe South. I found out later Joe South is who's
Speaker 2: playing that guitar with those guys, because he knew Chips
Speaker 2: and Chips was from Atlanta and that's where I mean
Speaker 2: Joe South. That's another story altogether of somebody.
Speaker 1: Joe South.
Speaker 2: He had the one hit. We had two. He had
Speaker 2: walked a mile of my shoes and in the games
Speaker 2: people play, Okay, I forgot the first one.
Speaker 1: But could he survive? Is?
Speaker 2: Could he?
Speaker 1: Did he write anything else?
Speaker 2: Oh? My god, Bob, he wrote He wrote Nana Hush hush,
Speaker 2: deep purple, I think out here name now hush hush.
Speaker 2: And he wrote one of my favorites. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: huge it, but it was he wrote down in the
Speaker 2: Boondocks down in There, down in It with Billy Joe
Speaker 2: Royal Billy. You remember the labor from down in the Boon.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what label the Deep Purple record was on?
Speaker 1: No for Grammaton It was Bill Cosby's label. Okay, since yeah,
Speaker 1: since we're so deep into this, what did Billy Joe
Speaker 1: Shaver survive on?
Speaker 2: Well? He wrote that whole Honkey Talks and Heroes first
Speaker 2: album for Whaling, right, and his son, Eddie Shaver. What
Speaker 2: a sweet soul, a kid that grew up right in
Speaker 2: the thick of it. I mean he was with Whaling
Speaker 2: and all of them, and Willie and I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: from the time he was a year old wandering around
Speaker 2: and Eddie had demons, but he was such a sweetheart
Speaker 2: and what a great guitar player. I saw him play
Speaker 2: with his dad at the club Lingerie when he was fifteen,
Speaker 2: maybe years old, in nineteen eighty three or four, because
Speaker 2: right as so I was putting out my EP now
Speaker 2: it was eighty four. And then in eighty seven Pete Anderson,
Speaker 2: who had been playing lead guitar with me and going out,
Speaker 2: couldn't do it. He had fourteen offers to produce. He said,
Speaker 2: I got to do this. I got to stay here.
Speaker 2: We have to find a guy. I said, I know
Speaker 2: who to call, and I called Eddie Shaver and he
Speaker 2: can't do it. Yeah, Eddie Shaver played with me that year,
Speaker 2: and he did it again in eighty nine when Pete
Speaker 2: couldn't go out for you know, producing, and Eddie twured
Speaker 2: in eighty nine again into ninety and just I mean
Speaker 2: a whole different style playing. He's a Texas big hand,
Speaker 2: you know, lead player. But Billy Joe, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: written some great stuff. I'm just an old chunk of coal.
Speaker 2: John Anderson had a huge hit. But you know I'm
Speaker 2: going to be a diamond someday. That rye tongue in cheek.
Speaker 2: But but what was I talking about with the chain
Speaker 2: of old Joe South? The other one, the other one
Speaker 2: that he wrote because he owes songs. He was on
Speaker 2: a plane to la to meet with his publisher to
Speaker 2: get a new check. You know, he's living on the
Speaker 2: you know advances, and he and he hadn't delivered two
Speaker 2: or three songs, right And on the plane ride from
Speaker 2: Atlanta out here, he wrote, I beg your pardon. I
Speaker 2: never promised you. Rose Garden along with the sunshine. He's
Speaker 2: got to come a little rain some time. So, I
Speaker 2: mean he wrote some great stuff for other people. The
Speaker 2: one that I love is don't it make you want
Speaker 2: to go Home? Which I think bj Thomas had a
Speaker 2: don't make you want to go home? Children? Don't make
Speaker 2: you want to go home? All guy's chilling, get weary
Speaker 2: when they roam. Don't make you want to go home? Anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, you know I grew up you know where we
Speaker 1: only heard those songs when they crossed over. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like Tom Petty. One of the last times I saw
Speaker 1: he played some country song and he called you know,
Speaker 1: today's modern country music is the rock of the seventies.
Speaker 1: If you grew up in the Northeast and you hit
Speaker 1: the country station, you saw the shit kickers. It's not
Speaker 1: like today. So there's a lot of history we don't know. Conversely,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you to what degree were you
Speaker 1: into the Beatles?
Speaker 2: In the rock seat? Oh? I was. You couldn't escape
Speaker 2: the Beatles because am rady right? You know the buttons
Speaker 2: And my mom listened to every station she loved. The
Speaker 2: Big Top forty station was on her car radio. My
Speaker 2: dad was the Hillbalay station, you know WMN I was
Speaker 2: the hillbalay station you didn't get in his car, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't on anything else. It was on that I
Speaker 2: was hearing. The one that crossed over a little bit
Speaker 2: was Hintson Cargil with the skip Rope. The Doom Doom
Speaker 2: skipp borro ain't a kind of fun and what to
Speaker 2: children say, skippero. It was about a divorce and a couple,
Speaker 2: And it was like there was that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: going on at that time, late sixties, the psychobilly era
Speaker 2: had kind of taken hold in Nashville and there were
Speaker 2: crossover hits. Harper Valley Pta that was a huge top hit,
Speaker 2: and that was a straight up hillbilly record to begin with.
Speaker 2: It was out of you know, kind of the country
Speaker 2: polatant moment. But so all that was going on, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, and then by the early seventies you got
Speaker 2: Jerry Reid breaking out of the Nashville scene doing Amos
Speaker 2: Moses and all that stuff. You had Tony Joe White
Speaker 2: doing Poke Salad Anning which almost first covered and so
Speaker 2: there was this that was the beauty of Top forty radio.
Speaker 2: Really was that right in that moment?
Speaker 1: Well, I remember the last crossover record was Charlie Rich
Speaker 1: Beautiful Girl in the World. After that, everybody had an
Speaker 1: FM radio. Yeah, they didn't have to listen to the
Speaker 1: top four, right. It became segregary when you come like
Speaker 1: you know, Polk Salad anyhow. I just know those listening to.
Speaker 2: The top forty. Yeah, no, it was and I didn't. Uh.
Speaker 2: And Charlie Rich, yes, along with the other guy that
Speaker 2: Freddie Hart had Easy Lovin that crossed over, which was
Speaker 2: this West Coast thing and you know he did, uh,
Speaker 2: Charlie Rich with the most Beautiful Girl. Yeah, and Behind
Speaker 2: Closed Doors that thing right, yeah, yeah, Behind Closed Doors
Speaker 2: was you know. The funny thing about Charlie Rich was
Speaker 2: he was out of Arkansas and he was studying. He
Speaker 2: was a very literate cat he was, I mean really musically. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was a jazz piano player, right, and studying I
Speaker 2: think at Arkansas State. And he went to Memphis and
Speaker 2: had an audition with with Jack Clements, right, you know
Speaker 2: who produced Charlie Lee and everybody, and and worked with
Speaker 2: Sam Phillips, you know, after Elvis left, Jack was and
Speaker 2: Johnny Cash all that you know, Home of the Blues
Speaker 2: and all that stuff, you know, was with Jack Clements
Speaker 2: and he wrote, what was it? He wrote, I guess
Speaker 2: things happened that way. I think was him. I don't
Speaker 2: like it, but I guess things happened anyway. Jack. He
Speaker 2: auditions Charlie Rich and he said, not bad kid. He said,
Speaker 2: you're really good. You're very sophisticated, accomplished musician, aren't you.
Speaker 2: And he said, well, I've studied.
Speaker 1: This, sir.
Speaker 2: And he said he dropped the needle on one of
Speaker 2: Jerry Lee's before he they had just done, hadn't released.
Speaker 2: He started playing Jerry Lewis. He said, you know, Son,
Speaker 2: He said, when you can play that bad, won't you
Speaker 2: come back and see me? But you can play that poorly,
Speaker 2: come back and see you. Right, that was And then
Speaker 2: Charlie wrote he did sign with Son and he put
Speaker 2: out Lonely Weekends. That was when his Sun record. It
Speaker 2: was like Orbison. They didn't have they didn't blow up
Speaker 2: on Son. You know, Roy had this day.
Speaker 1: People don't realize how different Nashville and Memphis are.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're a student of the game.
Speaker 1: They hear that Memphis is like Mississippi. Oh yeah, Doc,
Speaker 1: it's like a whole different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's another world. And and uh, and even Elvis.
Speaker 2: There was a story that I hold heard George Klein
Speaker 2: tell in the Elvis channel one time about when Sam
Speaker 2: Phillips sold Elvis to sold the contract to our ce.
Speaker 2: He warned, oh, he said, Now, Elvis, he said, you're
Speaker 2: going to be around those guys and they're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: start cuting. He said, they're going to try and change
Speaker 2: you because they're not they don't understand you said, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you they will not understand what you've done and
Speaker 2: what we've done. He said, And you're a really good singer,
Speaker 2: Sam Phillips, this is what he told Elvis, he said.
Speaker 2: And don't let them change you, he said, And don't
Speaker 2: let them change your band, because you've put your sound together.
Speaker 2: You know, Elvis in DJ, the drummer Fontaine, you know
Speaker 2: who come on board with him the last year and
Speaker 2: a half before he signed with the RCA, because they
Speaker 2: were a trio first Scottie and Bill Black and you
Speaker 2: know upright bass and he said, man, he said, well,
Speaker 2: people don't realize that's Elvis playing that rhythm guitar and
Speaker 2: all those Sun records that slapped them backed because they're
Speaker 2: no drums, he said. And I never played with a
Speaker 2: guy that had as good a right hand on the
Speaker 2: guitar as Elvis, he said, or that sang with the
Speaker 2: sense of time. That's what people don't get about Elvis Presley,
Speaker 2: you know, is how good a singer he was in
Speaker 2: terms of that's why rock and roll became rock and roll.
Speaker 2: In Capitol Letters and Little Richard, which there's a new
Speaker 2: documentary on him, I have everything, which is I liked
Speaker 2: watching Richard met Little Richard. Huh Old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The funniest thing about Richard is he was the same guy.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, he was. Little Richard was like he would
Speaker 2: come and he would see me and he did gravity,
Speaker 2: Oh baby, come here, and and everybody had to pray
Speaker 2: with him, you know, you had to pray prayer circle.
Speaker 2: Marty Stewart had me they were cutting over I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was a I don't know what it was a
Speaker 2: don Imus record that we were all anyway, he and
Speaker 2: he said you got to come over here me. He said,
Speaker 2: I got Richard of the Village recorders, and I went
Speaker 2: over that night and I hung out and he spotted me.
Speaker 2: He was living at the top of the old you know,
Speaker 2: the rock and roll Hiatt on. So I said, you know,
Speaker 2: he was living there for a year or so and
Speaker 2: I was doing a video on the roof and he
Speaker 2: caught me then and he was just always really really
Speaker 2: kind to me, and the few interactions I had with him,
Speaker 2: he was just a you know, a sweet guy. Uh
Speaker 2: and you got to feel, well, you watch this, you
Speaker 2: feel what a what a shattered kind of torn soul?
Speaker 2: You know. He boy the original version of Tooty Fruity.
Speaker 2: I'd never heard the original lyrics till that documentary Tooty Fruity,
Speaker 2: Good Booty. It was like wow, and uh, but anyway,
Speaker 2: so he pre sees he's Elvis, and of course the
Speaker 2: Pat Boone stuff of you know, is something it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, like wow, it's sacrilegious. But Elvis and I
Speaker 2: understood when DJ talked about he said, yeah, but you
Speaker 2: got to understand, man, when he and he actually was
Speaker 2: ahead of Richard regionally. You know, he was out in
Speaker 2: fifty three, fifty four or five, you know, those three years,
Speaker 2: and Richard doesn't hit till that day in New Orleans
Speaker 2: with the Old Session. Durm Earl Palmer talked about it.
Speaker 2: He's like, man, we all went to lunch Richard said,
Speaker 2: And they didn't know I played piano. They had him
Speaker 2: standard doing arms, like thinking he'll just be this guy
Speaker 2: standards sing sing blues, R and B. He said, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to do that. They didn't understand, he said.
Speaker 2: At lunch they all went over to this little dive
Speaker 2: that nearby and had a piano in her, he said,
Speaker 2: and Richard got up and started playing her, like what
Speaker 2: the and he started tooty fruity and said, we've never
Speaker 2: seen anything like that or heard anything that was like
Speaker 2: to be pretty good booty. And so they went back
Speaker 2: and the guy that was the A and R guy
Speaker 2: can't remember his name now this is in the documentary,
Speaker 2: but he goes back over and says to the owner
Speaker 2: of whoever's studio they had him in there, not carusive,
Speaker 2: but uh anyway that because that label, which is LA based,
Speaker 2: I think that that he was on right that decided
Speaker 2: to go with it. When he went in and said
Speaker 2: that the an R cat he said, hey, he just
Speaker 2: did something over there. We got to now we got
Speaker 2: to clean the lyrics up. And there was a staff
Speaker 2: woman who and she's interviewed and now she said it
Speaker 2: was nasty, nasty, nasty, Richard got him and he said, oh,
Speaker 2: that wasn't that was just her mind. You know, you're
Speaker 2: literally saying it, Richard. But so you between the two,
Speaker 2: rich has that hit. But again it was ostracized to
Speaker 2: race stations, right, black radio, and it had to find
Speaker 2: the white audience and Elvis you know, doing that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just and so I'm a kid that the
Speaker 2: meant the Sun stuff was with me from the time
Speaker 2: I was a baby. I was an Elvis free but
Speaker 2: mystery trained, you know. And and then by the time
Speaker 2: I got in high school, that album they re released,
Speaker 2: you know, the Sun album, the Sun Records as a collection,
Speaker 2: and I had them and I had them and I
Speaker 2: knew that's when I knew. I said, but this is
Speaker 2: and I was listening simultaneously at the same time, same
Speaker 2: window credence, you know. One of the first albums, well,
Speaker 2: the first record ever bought by myself was that this
Speaker 2: this shopping center and it was an old you know,
Speaker 2: apothecary drug store was record racks, you know, and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom.
Speaker 2: I had money in my own from whatever allowance I
Speaker 2: got from working George stuff around the house, and and
Speaker 2: I had you know, a few dollars and I bought
Speaker 2: Roy orbitson. They did a re release of pretty Woman,
Speaker 2: but the song that I found on the backside it
Speaker 2: was a double single because it was they were both singles,
Speaker 2: but it was re released uh as a spotlight series.
Speaker 2: It was Candy Man and Candy Man was cut monument
Speaker 2: in Nashville, you know, post the Memphis stuff with the
Speaker 2: first ever uh, playing on record of harmonica by Charlie
Speaker 2: McCoy who goes on to become a great harmonica session player.
Speaker 2: But it opens wet bone, Bone Bone. I'm That song
Speaker 2: fascinated me to this day. Come on Baby, And that
Speaker 2: was the extension of the Elvis thing. You because the
Speaker 2: other stuff with Roy I loved Woman, I love all,
Speaker 2: but it's a little more operatic. And Candy Man was
Speaker 2: swinging man. It was in that groove at shovel and
Speaker 2: and Elvis, especially the sun stuff, and I found it.
Speaker 2: That was the first single I bought. Album album was
Speaker 2: probably Cosmos Factory because I was on my bikes. I
Speaker 2: rode from this this uh, you know box store that
Speaker 2: had started, you know, sprung up by the early seventies.
Speaker 2: There were these things and it had racks of music
Speaker 2: and I was looking through it, and I found the
Speaker 2: Cosmos Factory because I wanted tracks off of that. And
Speaker 2: then I bought Green River. I bought the preceding things
Speaker 2: that I heard single.
Speaker 1: Green River was the first one I bought. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was Born on the bay unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Oh how how great? Huh? I mean born on the Bayou, right,
Speaker 2: because I mean all of it. But anyway, so I'm
Speaker 2: listening to that and this re release, this stuff they
Speaker 2: were rediscovering, you know, of the sun stuff of Elvis,
Speaker 2: you know, because the Brits all knew that. And yes,
Speaker 2: I was listening to the Beatles because of my mom
Speaker 2: with that AM radio, and I was hearing those hits
Speaker 2: and I really got And when you see the get
Speaker 2: back down here and you see the two of them
Speaker 2: looking up each other at one point point later in
Speaker 2: the in the movie, you know, after George leaves and
Speaker 2: then comes back and they're staring and John and George
Speaker 2: just like just by Osmosa begins singing bye Bye Love
Speaker 2: identically to the Everlas. Right, you realize they loved it.
Speaker 2: They loved that music, they loved that stuff, and uh
Speaker 2: so I could hear that in there. I could find
Speaker 2: it in the Beatles. I understood it, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was listening to the Beatles, and I've done homages
Speaker 2: to them, you know, you and I we did. You know,
Speaker 2: I've just seen a face. Right.
Speaker 1: But when when you come to LA this is not
Speaker 1: the music that's being signed and on the road.
Speaker 2: But but I get here in seventy seven and seventy eight,
Speaker 2: I'm up on the strip one night. One day in
Speaker 2: the afternoon, I'm roaming around and looking at tower because
Speaker 2: I'm living in Long Beach and I hadn't moved yet
Speaker 2: up here. I was driving. Okay, Joe, why Long Beach
Speaker 2: because that's the cheapest beach on the buddy of mine.
Speaker 2: And I came out. I said, dude, we can't live
Speaker 2: down in landlocked Orange count We've come this far, that's
Speaker 2: come this fighting. No, you either got to be in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: We should be right in Hollywood or early Ocean, all right.
Speaker 2: So we started in Santama. He goes, Okay, okay, we
Speaker 2: started in Santa Monica because we were staying with his
Speaker 2: relatives in Tustin, right, and so we drove up, spent
Speaker 2: a whole day. Dress we start in Santa Monica and
Speaker 2: we can't afford any of that, right, Santa Monica, Venice.
Speaker 2: We just go down down Route one. We're down Pacific
Speaker 2: Goes Highway, going all the way into the Then we
Speaker 2: get to Manhattan Beach and we can't or that and
Speaker 2: we get over it and we come up. I said,
Speaker 2: what what this thing? I'm looking at, Madie, there's somebody,
Speaker 2: come on, get back on the freeway. And we crossed,
Speaker 2: you know, over the San Pedro and roll into Long
Speaker 2: Beach and we go down there and the old pike
Speaker 2: was there, the Remuvement Park. It was still a run
Speaker 2: down ocean town, you know, Harbortown, Long Beach, and the
Speaker 2: apartments were literally on ninth Place, right dead end of
Speaker 2: the beach for nothing. And we got this little single
Speaker 2: you know, with a bat, you know, a little tiny kitchen.
Speaker 2: And he only stayed about three months. He left by
Speaker 2: the last week of June, and I was there, Okay, Well,
Speaker 2: why did he leave?
Speaker 1: How much of it?
Speaker 2: He just didn't? He never, I think I looking back.
Speaker 2: He wanted to visit his aunt and uncle and was
Speaker 2: held bent on delivering me to La. He knew I
Speaker 2: had already been to Nashville a couple of times, and
Speaker 2: in seventy six, seventy two. It was if you did.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. I've said this to Steve Earl. I said,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that those houses were the business, the
Speaker 2: publishing houses, right, music Row, it's quiet. There was no
Speaker 2: there was Lower there was Lower Broad, but it was
Speaker 2: just a few drunk bars. And there's Printer's Alley which
Speaker 2: Boots Randolph had a club and it was you know,
Speaker 2: it's a nightclub thing, but there was no live music,
Speaker 2: not like La or New York or you know, and
Speaker 2: it was it was the quiet. They got up nine am,
Speaker 2: they had coffee and we're writing solid right, and they're
Speaker 2: cutting them with the I didn't know that that that's
Speaker 2: how you did it there. And I went there a
Speaker 2: couple of times. I auditioned for the Grandel Opry Park,
Speaker 2: the Opry Land, and I got a slot in January
Speaker 2: as as an alternate. And they said, well, you come
Speaker 2: back to summer and if somebody gets sick or they
Speaker 2: will pull you in. And he said to me, do
Speaker 2: you really want to do that? I said no, I said,
Speaker 2: I guess. He said, man, you're coming with me, and
Speaker 2: he said and he paid for the gas, and I
Speaker 2: didn't have, you know, couple hundred bucks. We packed everything
Speaker 2: on which was nothing. My guitar and I had a
Speaker 2: k at that point, big open sound, okay, And he
Speaker 2: deposited me on the West coast, and then by his
Speaker 2: plan was all he wasn't staying.
Speaker 1: Well, how did you feel when he abandoned you?
Speaker 2: Not not crushed, because I kind of preferred to be alone,
Speaker 2: you know, scale I was like, you know, I wanted
Speaker 2: my own room. I never had a room, and I
Speaker 2: stayed in the smallest little apartments on the face of
Speaker 2: the earth, just a lit alone. I never shared the
Speaker 2: space because it would interrupt my I knew what it was.
Speaker 2: It would interrupt my thoughts and what I needed to do,
Speaker 2: and you know, write and to try and create songs.
Speaker 2: I knew then you had to write, you know, you
Speaker 2: had to create your material. And so no, what was
Speaker 2: going on out here then? I mean, you had you
Speaker 2: had the burgeoning La punk thing, but I don't even
Speaker 2: think Los Angeles had come out yet with the X
Speaker 2: hadn't happened. But you still had Fleetwood, Matt, you had
Speaker 2: all the that stuff. You know. The other end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum of country rock had become the new pop,
Speaker 2: right the Eagles had now become the pop rock act.
Speaker 2: Fleetwood Mac was everything, and you know, and and then
Speaker 2: you started hearing in the summer seventy seven. I remember,
Speaker 2: I think watching the Detectives Elvis in the attract. The
Speaker 2: English new waves started coming, right, So seventy eight, I'm
Speaker 2: up at Tower Records and one afternoon and stumbling around.
Speaker 2: We're looking through it and there's free tickets like you
Speaker 2: highlight tickets to the Whiskey. You go. There's a show
Speaker 2: that night and it's Robert Gordon with Link Ray and Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Robert Gordon at the time had had on FM.
Speaker 2: I would hear on the wirl if it was k
Speaker 2: R o Q or whatever. But he had a revival
Speaker 2: rockabillity thing of UH. I forget who the band was
Speaker 2: it did Lex Lex Lexlex remember that? And Robert Gordon
Speaker 2: was out of d c any he had well the
Speaker 2: first the opening act that night was UH was Billy
Speaker 2: Zoom pre X. Billy Zoom, the guitar player for X
Speaker 2: had a rockabilly band and he and he had that
Speaker 2: duo jets and he was out there slamming it and
Speaker 2: he was out and it was one of the last
Speaker 2: gigs he ever did, because he told Pete Anderson at
Speaker 2: the time told me. Larry said, yeah, he told me.
Speaker 2: He said, I you are gonna believe this. He said,
Speaker 2: I've been trying to do what I do great for years.
Speaker 2: I've just put this band together just doing We're doing
Speaker 2: trash punkins and we're signed. We're doing it. It was
Speaker 2: x he said. They got out and then did John
Speaker 2: Doe and Exen. They did Los Angeles and it was
Speaker 2: the cultural explosion of that. But I go in there
Speaker 2: and see Robert Gordon with link Ray. That was one
Speaker 2: of the loudest things I've ever heard to this day,
Speaker 2: nothing louder than link Ray because he would open do
Speaker 2: a couple did rumble of course, you know, brown, brown brown.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a sight to see. And the
Speaker 2: Blasters were somehow connected because Ronnie Weisner or whatever, this
Speaker 2: guy this he was either Czechoslovaki or Hungarian. He was
Speaker 2: a little guy, was out of his mind. He saw
Speaker 2: me leaning on a pole because I you know, you're
Speaker 2: you just want to drink in every single second of
Speaker 2: any of it. So I stayed that the show's over
Speaker 2: and they've all but turned the ugly lights on and
Speaker 2: their tearings. You know, they don't run you out of
Speaker 2: the whiskeys. You just stand there if you want to
Speaker 2: buy a drink. And I'm leaning against the pole, just watching,
Speaker 2: just to watch it, you know, watch them tear down
Speaker 2: the gear, watch them carry it to the curb, watching everybody.
Speaker 2: And I'm alone, and I'm and this guy comes to
Speaker 2: running Weisner. Wisner. Yeah. Anyway, He goes, what you do?
Speaker 2: What are you doing? The broken English Eastern European accident?
Speaker 2: Well do you know I think? I said, well I do,
Speaker 2: I said. He said, you're a musician, because he's just
Speaker 2: looking at me, and I'm leaning on you know, at
Speaker 2: that point, I'm more a David Essex. Looked at anything.
Speaker 2: I've got boots on, but I got you know, bells,
Speaker 2: it's bell bottom blues. Right at that point in La
Speaker 2: leaning against the wall, and he goes, look at of music.
Speaker 2: I said, well, you know, kind of country rock. For
Speaker 2: lack of a better discrete. You know, I'm letting them
Speaker 2: know that we're He goes, ah full you you know
Speaker 2: what you need to rockabilly? Rockabilly, rockabilly, that's what's bigger. Rockabilly.
Speaker 2: I'm like, dude, I know rockabilly from the inside out
Speaker 2: of me. I was born to rockabilly, and that was
Speaker 2: my first experience when you said, what was going on here?
Speaker 2: Was that moment? Think about seventy eight. You're already here.
Speaker 2: You're in the business. Right, it's the chains shift. Right.
Speaker 2: Petty comes out looking like a seventies rocker but playing
Speaker 2: like new wave. Right, you know, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's the economy of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Speaker 1: I saw them all at the whiskey, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello.
Speaker 2: In even the band, Joe Jackson, Yeah right, you know,
Speaker 2: and even the band was Joe Jackson watching the detectives.
Speaker 1: No, that was Elvis.
Speaker 2: That's Elvis. But what Joe Jackson was, uh usually really
Speaker 2: going out with him.
Speaker 1: One more time goes on. But they saw the papers.
Speaker 2: Anyway, and Joe Jackson was the sharp you know the
Speaker 2: two tone shoes, you know, man, so so sharp? Yeah,
Speaker 2: really sure sharp? You know the Teddy Boys shoes right
Speaker 2: at the needle point. But but uh, that's the moment,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, man, you know, when the tide comes
Speaker 2: in and goes out, you know, when you can beach combe,
Speaker 2: you can go up and down and find the leftover
Speaker 2: if you see what's going to happen. And I just
Speaker 2: had a sense that there was going to be this moment,
Speaker 2: and because I had known about the whole buck Merle,
Speaker 2: the whole traditional country that was out here, Appitol Tower,
Speaker 2: the Capitol Records sound, the Bakersfield sound, and it led
Speaker 2: to and I knew it begat Chris Hillman, the Birds Sweetheart,
Speaker 2: at which begat Burritos, which gives Lynda Ronstat the footing.
Speaker 2: You know, they all that m com mingling. And then
Speaker 2: by Eagles and Emmy Lou and those records with Brian
Speaker 2: hern were a beacon that drew me. I thought, that's
Speaker 2: what I am, that's me, you know, with the purtiness
Speaker 2: of that. The John Prime thing, I didn't finish. They
Speaker 2: cut that album on him in Memphis. That first album
Speaker 2: was again one of the similar moments in the revelatory
Speaker 2: moments of my life in terms of in terms of
Speaker 2: my own family's experiences. I remember, I said, the epiphanius
Speaker 2: moment that I fell, I had, you know, at fifteen
Speaker 2: or six, riding in the back of that car down
Speaker 2: Route twenty three of my mom and my aunt and
Speaker 2: I thought John Prime and the song paradise about his
Speaker 2: own family moving from western Kentucky up into Illinois and Chicago,
Speaker 2: and he articulately and I thought, that's what it is.
Speaker 2: And it's almost like having to be moved so far
Speaker 2: away from it, so far removed that I wrote reading
Speaker 2: writing Route twenty three about those tailight baby years, you know,
Speaker 2: when we would leave on a Friday evening after they
Speaker 2: got off work. You have you ever seen folks pull
Speaker 2: up in a hollow after work on Friday night, you know,
Speaker 2: Prestonsburg can all that stuff. It was I realized it's pertinent.
Speaker 2: It's pertinent because it's me. It's pertinent to my you know,
Speaker 2: my expression musically in my life. But John Primes who
Speaker 2: inspired me to self examine and think. And it's like,
Speaker 2: what was it that I read that Dickens wrote all
Speaker 2: the great stories about London and the winter right Christmas
Speaker 2: Carol living on the Tuscany coast in Italy when he
Speaker 2: had moved far removed, you know, on the Mediterranean coast
Speaker 2: in Italy, you know, living expatriate, as you know, as
Speaker 2: a lender out of it. And he wrote from the
Speaker 2: vantage point because you're able to see, I think you
Speaker 2: pull focus when you write about the elements of your
Speaker 2: own life. When I read you from your distance, right,
Speaker 2: you're able to see from the distance with a greater
Speaker 2: degree of clarity what it was you came from Connecticut,
Speaker 2: the whole scene when you talk about your dad in
Speaker 2: the liquor store, and you know all of it, the
Speaker 2: ice cream, the ice cream, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: visceral when you write, it's visceral, and that's what people
Speaker 2: love to read. That's why they read, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean you haven't have you excuse me if I'm insulting
Speaker 2: you by not knowing that you You haven't published in
Speaker 2: book form, have you? No? I mean I have got to, Bob.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean just taking a detour here. If you
Speaker 1: talk to the major people, they only want fiction. Because
Speaker 1: I said I would do this, then I had publishers
Speaker 1: who would do it. But the advances were like ten
Speaker 1: to twenty grand.
Speaker 2: You can't afford to do it, you can't take the time.
Speaker 1: No, no, but yeah no, When I hit send, I
Speaker 1: reach more people than all these people who read their
Speaker 1: back their books.
Speaker 2: But I think a collection of all of it, Bob,
Speaker 2: has to happen, and somebody's going.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, right. But the other thing about it
Speaker 1: is nothing sells itself these days, not only making it
Speaker 1: is not the hard part. Then you got to go
Speaker 1: out and flog it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: That's both time and not quite my personality.
Speaker 2: But I hear you not your nature. No, But I'm
Speaker 2: telling you there are enough people that know that would
Speaker 2: love to have it all in one space and in
Speaker 2: a hardbacked version. I think people would love reading, and
Speaker 2: especially I mean, you've got va you could do more
Speaker 2: than one book. It's like you could just do just
Speaker 2: the things you've written about your family would be you know,
Speaker 2: it would be its own, you know, tome of four
Speaker 2: hundred pages. You know you would have. But so the
Speaker 2: visceral nature. What the John Pride album, that first one
Speaker 2: where he's on the Bailahet which has Sam Stone uh
Speaker 2: has has uh uh? Your flag decal won't get you
Speaker 2: to have anymore? I mean all that but Paradise Spanish
Speaker 2: pipe Dream. I used to play that in nightclubs out
Speaker 2: in the Corral in the lake View Terra Foothill in Osborne.
Speaker 2: There was a cowboy bar that was hardcore. They would
Speaker 2: ride down from up there in Tonga, and that ain't
Speaker 2: to Panga. People that someone to Honga ain't to Panga.
Speaker 2: Don't confuse it too, because the hippies are in Topanga,
Speaker 2: the bikers that sell meth or in Tonga. It's like exactly.
Speaker 2: But I played for a year straight the off nights
Speaker 2: the year Johnt John Lennon was killed on the night
Speaker 2: that I drove into work and got in there and
Speaker 2: we heard and Delaney Bramlet lived down the road and
Speaker 2: came in. He was torn up and got up and
Speaker 2: played with us, just to just to give Trivty a
Speaker 2: couple a couple of John's songs. And so my experience
Speaker 2: this is like nineteen what was eighty because he died
Speaker 2: in December of eighty, But I had been in there
Speaker 2: playing Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Because I wasn't good enough
Speaker 2: to play the weekends. They were fearful I wasn't because
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I wasn't doing I just wouldn't, you know.
Speaker 2: I was doing Bill and Row and doing some merle
Speaker 2: I was doing. You know, it was it was hardcore,
Speaker 2: you know, hillbilly stuff. Because to that point, once I
Speaker 2: got here and found just my headspace around it, I realized,
Speaker 2: but the vantage point I had, dude. That's what the
Speaker 2: car ride was about who I and my who I
Speaker 2: was by the birthright of my family, you know, and
Speaker 2: where I was born, and I need to take this
Speaker 2: and I need to, you know, pay tribute to that
Speaker 2: and those people that gave me a chance, you know,
Speaker 2: to get away from mining coal as a way to
Speaker 2: make a living.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're out, you know, the hungun you're playing the
Speaker 1: week nights. Okay, the nature of being in your twenties
Speaker 1: and the nature of someone who actually made it. On
Speaker 1: some level, you're happy. On some level, you're incredibly frustrated.
Speaker 1: I'm out of the far end of the valley singing
Speaker 1: Bill Monroe and the billboards are on sunset and everybody's touring.
Speaker 1: How am I going to get from A to B?
Speaker 2: Well, that happens because as fate what have Like I said,
Speaker 2: you sensed the tide, you know, the changing of the tide, right,
Speaker 2: you know, seventy eight, seventy nine, so eighty that entire year.
Speaker 2: I'm out there, you know, and it's still a life
Speaker 2: altering experience. I mean, I'm learning. You're from the bandstand.
Speaker 2: You see life go by every number, you see them
Speaker 2: dance pass on that dance floor and you're watching from
Speaker 2: the fist fights to the the to the heartache to
Speaker 2: the screaming matches. You you're in there long, five sets
Speaker 2: a night. You get an education. And I'm writing, I'm
Speaker 2: writing songs. I'm driving air freight during the day, Airborne
Speaker 2: getting off work, rolling out there and in between and
Speaker 2: on the weekend, I'm writing, it won't hurt about those
Speaker 2: people when I fall down from this barstool. There was
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a woman. I won't give your name,
Speaker 2: and it's just a different but she was.
Speaker 1: I think it's hilarious. You drove Airborne. I used to
Speaker 1: use Airborne all the time.
Speaker 2: Instead, Airborne was a competitive fed X. Right, there were
Speaker 2: three Emory right was the purple, the band, and Airborne
Speaker 2: was the red and black, you know, and then FedEx
Speaker 2: was the purple.
Speaker 1: There were I just have that like silver, red and black.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would over. Red and black was a who
Speaker 2: had a red shirt and a crack of dam. And
Speaker 2: so I'm driving Airborne air freight and and look at
Speaker 2: this bar. There was a woman that wo come in
Speaker 2: came in there almost every night and I won't give
Speaker 2: her name, and they called her Lady something, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't ladylike behavior. She was the screaming us. She'd be
Speaker 2: down at the end of the bar, and about the
Speaker 2: third set she would go off and start because somebody
Speaker 2: would be looking at her, she thought from down the others.
Speaker 2: It was an L shaped bar, and this place probably
Speaker 2: held two hundred people. I mean it was a good
Speaker 2: sized bar, I mean know. And it had an L
Speaker 2: shaped building that in the front. This is how rough,
Speaker 2: this was how hardcore. Their banner across the crowd and
Speaker 2: the outside of it said cock open for cocktail six am.
Speaker 2: Because they had they had a breakfast counter. Okay, they
Speaker 2: were close from two to set and they served breaktae.
Speaker 2: I was asleep on the stage one day. And because
Speaker 2: my drummer guy named stup Perry, who lived into Hungo,
Speaker 2: That's how I got to know to Hunga well. He
Speaker 2: had pit bulls in it. I remember, never forget. Stu
Speaker 2: was so upset one night when I'd give him a
Speaker 2: lift from there to get into He was a great drummer.
Speaker 2: He'd been on the Dick Clark tours. And remember there
Speaker 2: was a guy around town named Jimmy Rabbit. He was
Speaker 2: a radio person. Now I had a Jimmy Rabbit, right,
Speaker 2: not not related to Eddie Rabbit. And he was a
Speaker 2: you know, a bar band guy, but had local fame
Speaker 2: because of radio. You know, he was a radio now
Speaker 2: the DJ, I guess. And so Stu played with him,
Speaker 2: but he played with everybody. I mean he knew you know,
Speaker 2: Delayning Bramlet, and he had played over the years because stupid.
Speaker 2: So Stu was playing drums for me because this guy
Speaker 2: from Oklahoma who had helped me get my first demos
Speaker 2: done through a guy at Western Recorder, United Western at
Speaker 2: that time, those were where I made my first demo.
Speaker 1: And wait, wait, wait wait this guy who helped you,
Speaker 1: who paid for that out of the Western's a real studio.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, No, what happened was this drummer I had,
Speaker 2: Stuart h Stuart Perry replaced him because Richard Coffee, the
Speaker 2: guy that I met through another guy from Tulsa. There's
Speaker 2: this whole weird you know, Tulsa is a weird music scene.
Speaker 2: They don't know, they don't know if they're over under
Speaker 2: sideways down right there. Because the culture the continent meets,
Speaker 2: it's the South meeting the northeast, Midwest. It's oil money,
Speaker 2: it's big oil money. You know, the Phillips petroleum fortunes there,
Speaker 2: Phillips sixty six men. They've got one of the great
Speaker 2: museums of art there. But they are Oakie's you know.
Speaker 2: On top of it. Leon Russell is the example, right,
Speaker 2: he comes out of oak you know. So the drummer
Speaker 2: Richard Coffee who's from Tulsa, who I've met through another
Speaker 2: Tulsa character. They are characters, the guys that come up.
Speaker 2: Even Tom Petty has a Tulsa connection. Mudd Coach went
Speaker 2: through their right and Tom Petty. If I'm not mistaken
Speaker 2: what I've Yeah, he played bass on a Tulsa record
Speaker 2: by Dwight Twilley I'm on Fire, remember that, which had
Speaker 2: Phil of course, I'm on fire. You record in l A.
Speaker 2: Oh you don't, you don't, you don't, God.
Speaker 1: No, no, Phil Seymour was really and then he put
Speaker 1: out a solo album. Then he died very quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very he had cancer, I guess. And but but
Speaker 2: he was the drummer for Dwight Twilley and and right,
Speaker 2: but he also.
Speaker 1: He also sang in a lot. I would see Dwight
Speaker 1: Twilly at Madam Wong remember, Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, And and well, Phil then had the plym Souls.
Speaker 2: That was his band, right, Well, the Phillip.
Speaker 1: Soles was the guy who went Folky and went on Geffen.
Speaker 1: Oh God, what it was married to the woman? Uh
Speaker 1: not lud Williams, l.
Speaker 2: Williams somebody, somebody Williams, Williams, Lucinda.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't Lucinda. The name was Williams. How come
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name. I'll look this up in
Speaker 1: a minute. Because the guy from the Plimso has been
Speaker 1: in La forever and he changed from being a rocker
Speaker 1: to be a country Uh, Peter Case.
Speaker 2: Peter Case, that was his band. You're right, the Plymsols
Speaker 2: Phil Seymour, and I've misstated that a few times over
Speaker 2: the years. If Phil just went on to Geffen and
Speaker 2: had a solo thing, right Phil Seymour, I think it was.
Speaker 2: I owned the album on Arista for some reason, but
Speaker 2: it was all about Denny Cordell's stuff at that point,
Speaker 2: which was Leon's label. Right. They shared Shelter Records, right,
Speaker 2: and Denny Cordell, who is famous for Flippers the roller
Speaker 2: rink right at the corner of Losienega and Santa Monica,
Speaker 2: believe me, where they would have everybody. The King Be's
Speaker 2: played in the middle because I knew those guys and
Speaker 2: I would go watch him try and get out there
Speaker 2: with their gear in the middle of the roller rink.
Speaker 2: It was in the whole rage of you know, chaer
Speaker 2: was in their roller skating and yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Okay, anyway, so wait, wait, wait, King Be's Jamie Paul Warren.
Speaker 1: They used to play everywhere all the time. As far
Speaker 1: as Flipper's Roller Disco, I certainly went there and roller skated.
Speaker 1: But you remember when Reagan was shot and they delayed
Speaker 1: the oscars by one day, and that second day second
Speaker 1: day was Prince at Flippers.
Speaker 2: At Flippers, it was on the Dirty Mind album. My God,
Speaker 2: I went there.
Speaker 1: Maybe there were thirty people in the audience, and he did.
Speaker 2: The whole act.
Speaker 1: He was jumping on the bed and everything unbelievable.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the roller rink. Well, that's la
Speaker 2: and that's where we were, you know. It's nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eighty one, so eighty and then leads into yeah, eighty
Speaker 2: to eighty one. Because I'd switched from playing driving air freight,
Speaker 2: I took a job with United Couriers uci there were
Speaker 2: that red dot I drilled bank checks right in the
Speaker 2: Armored Car Company, you know. Anyway, because i'd started, I
Speaker 2: had gone back to La City College, like I mentioned
Speaker 2: to earlier, and was fooling around with that, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, thinking, well, I guess, you know, if it
Speaker 2: doesn't happen by the time I'm thirty or thirty one,
Speaker 2: I'm probably twenty seven. At that point, I'm thinking I
Speaker 2: better at least re you know, recalibrate or something. And
Speaker 2: so I am doing that at daytime. And Richard Coffee
Speaker 2: leaves me with stupe Perry as a drummer, but he
Speaker 2: also introduces me to a house engineer at United Western.
Speaker 2: His name's Gordon Shryock, and he was this real tall, lanky,
Speaker 2: like six to two, with a redheaded guy that had
Speaker 2: curved red hair like a you know, a natural and
Speaker 2: he had a band called the Mundane Willis World Review.
Speaker 2: That's a very tulsa kind of take on life, The
Speaker 2: Mundane Willis World Review. But he was a staff engineer
Speaker 2: and he did Andre Crouch, he did Natalie Cole, you
Speaker 2: know at United Western Engineering, right, I mean everybody. He
Speaker 2: knew Leon really well, you know, and he heard me
Speaker 2: sing and I played these songs. He said, now dig
Speaker 2: and he said, that's good stuff. So he decided, he said,
Speaker 2: but they're going to call this rock and roll because
Speaker 2: it's so you know, hillbilly and we cut and they're
Speaker 2: on my thirtieth anniversary re released The Guitarist Cadillacts and
Speaker 2: on the box set in two thousand and two. I
Speaker 2: think we put that out, a three or four CD
Speaker 2: box set Reprise Please Baby. But they're on the re
Speaker 2: release of The Guitars Cadillacts, the thirtieth anniversary Deluxe dish
Speaker 2: of that, those demos and it's interesting to hear because
Speaker 2: Gordon put together Glendy Harden on piano. And I'm getting
Speaker 2: off driving I was still driving Airborne at that point.
Speaker 2: Actually I was getting off to Airborne and going to
Speaker 2: the United Western because he had SPEC time so there's
Speaker 2: no charge. And he was he said, okay, well, if
Speaker 2: we make this go, if I get you signed, if
Speaker 2: I do, I'll I'll take half the publishing. You know,
Speaker 2: he was going to own part of the public. That's
Speaker 2: why we do it on the on the spec right,
Speaker 2: And I said, oh, you know, okay, look back now,
Speaker 2: so I don't know it. You know, I didn't didn't
Speaker 2: give it away. And but but we cut I think
Speaker 2: we cut eight or nine tracks in there, and and
Speaker 2: he had some connections in Nashville, and I went down
Speaker 2: there and pitched around and they just looked at me.
Speaker 2: But I did. Glendie Harden on piano, David Mansfield played
Speaker 2: fiddle and mandolin. Yeah, I mean, coming right off of
Speaker 2: Days of Heaven, you know the film the Michael Chimino, right,
Speaker 2: and he come out of David rolling thunder renew right,
Speaker 2: He's I mean it was the Prodigy, but so David's
Speaker 2: playing the mandolin fiddle on those demos, Glendy Harden on piano,
Speaker 2: Jerry McGee on guitar, you know Jerry McGee from The
Speaker 2: Ventures and Monkeys, and again a Wrecking Crew guy peripherally, uh,
Speaker 2: and Robert Wilson, this young bass player out of New Orleans.
Speaker 2: So that's what And then we had I'm trying to
Speaker 2: remember the steel players that did it. So that's what
Speaker 2: I'm doing. It didn't cost me anything. I showed up,
Speaker 2: you know, after work night, and we cut in the
Speaker 2: smallest room over there where we tracked at a parquet floor.
Speaker 2: It's now Studio D because they have no it's now
Speaker 2: Studio four, but it was, uh one is the big
Speaker 2: room over there, Studio one, two, and then three Rick
Speaker 2: Rubin Love's Studio two over there a lot that's a
Speaker 2: I mean those studios and I would be standing and
Speaker 2: I cut vocals then out in the big room which
Speaker 2: Sinatra built. I learned a lot of this later. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what an auspicious start to that I'm cutting for a
Speaker 2: first time in a real studio in LA and it's
Speaker 2: with this guy, Gordon SHROI all this Tulsa connection. And
Speaker 2: so I did that, and they had those demos, you know,
Speaker 2: in hand, and it kind of gone Nashville for a
Speaker 2: brief time to visit. My dad was in Louisville. I
Speaker 2: took his truck, got the Louisville and drove down and
Speaker 2: drove to Nashville and spent days down there trying to
Speaker 2: get somebody to listen and look at this stuff. And
Speaker 2: it was the songs that made up parts of the
Speaker 2: first three albums, you know. Eventually and a couple of
Speaker 2: them we became big hits. And they just kind of
Speaker 2: looked at it and blinked and didn't quite know what
Speaker 2: to make of me or what to do with it
Speaker 2: and that's when things changed and we can pick it
Speaker 2: up on the next one.
Speaker 1: Yes, Dwight, I think we've come to the end of
Speaker 1: the feeling we've known. There's a whole nother story when
Speaker 1: you emerge on the national stage. We'll get back to that.
Speaker 2: We want to thank you. The other side of the hills,
Speaker 2: on the Hollywood side of the hills.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, then there's there's that, and then there's
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, which we're still figuring out on.
Speaker 2: So many levels.
Speaker 1: From one, I mean, you had, you had a kid,
Speaker 1: so it makes sense the rest of us are still
Speaker 1: wandering through the universe trying to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but the kid just looks at me.
Speaker 2: He was on the phone with them, Okay, daddy, hang up, daddy.
Speaker 1: Oh little kids, right right right then I hung.
Speaker 2: Up on me, and then she mayn't call back. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: You don't ever have to apologize to me, just anyone.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll let you get back home to him.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm actually head of the studio. I'm gonna stop
Speaker 2: there and go I'm trying to finish his record. So
Speaker 2: but you know, Bob, thank you for having me and
Speaker 2: it's it's.
Speaker 1: Well, it's great talking to you because it makes all
Speaker 1: that stuff that I have in my brain important than
Speaker 1: my parents. You know, what, are you going to stop
Speaker 1: buying records for this girl I lived with? I didn't
Speaker 1: think I was moving in with your records and you
Speaker 1: know all these cultural references that means so much to us.
Speaker 2: We got to talk about that, and we've got to
Speaker 2: talk about free and how good all right now? Is?
Speaker 2: I mean the stuff that we That's the best song
Speaker 2: ever played on a state fair, County fair in Midway
Speaker 2: because you know who play the guy doing the Himalayan ride?
Speaker 2: Remember that ride? The Hemmel was the sled Because I
Speaker 2: was not a ride freak. I'd get motion sick real quick.
Speaker 2: But that ride with the mirror balloman and the guy
Speaker 2: was up there ex connor and escape the microphone around
Speaker 2: his neck, going you want to go faster? That's all
Speaker 2: I would yell, and it would be all right.
Speaker 1: Now, Well the other thing do you have? It was
Speaker 1: a double CD. Now there are no CDs. There's a
Speaker 1: free anthology called Molten Gold. I was a free fan.
Speaker 1: I bought that album Fire and Water. There is shiit
Speaker 1: on that album. You know there's I'll be Creeping.
Speaker 2: All I knew was all right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, and they have the Steeler. Do you know the Steeler?
Speaker 2: I've heard the Steeler because.
Speaker 1: Even Bob, you know, Bob Secret had all those Bob
Speaker 1: Segart was on Capitol, went to Warner Brothers, then back
Speaker 1: to Capitol when he went back to the Capitol, right yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well the Silver Bullet Man was on Capitol, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was.
Speaker 1: He came back with the Beautiful Loser album in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, right, But all the albums that he made
Speaker 1: on Warner others he refuses to release really, which is
Speaker 1: just pause.
Speaker 2: You and I have to talk about the insanity of
Speaker 2: fighting streaming. Come on, you know it's not that horse
Speaker 2: is at the barn. You're not going to bring it back,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's like the song believe I know I mean,
Speaker 1: but people don't know. I'm back in seventy two, which
Speaker 1: is a great album.
Speaker 2: Was that on.
Speaker 1: The Katmandu was on Beautiful Loser and then on Live
Speaker 1: Bullet in seventy five six? Okay, but the original version
Speaker 1: of Turned the Page, which is now seen as a
Speaker 1: Metallica song, do you know that song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ohly, I know Bob Seger's good loop Segret. It's
Speaker 2: it's haunting, it's unbelievable to turn the page, Seeger. And
Speaker 2: that's that Detroit stuff, because you know, Seeger was working
Speaker 2: with Mitch Ryder when he was and Mit Mitch oh
Speaker 2: Man and Pete told me a story when he said
Speaker 2: want and saw the writer ramp through the Peppermint Lounge
Speaker 2: and then just released Jenny Jenny, and you know, right
Speaker 2: right right, he said. And they came on stage, he said,
Speaker 2: the Fox, we're all down there in Detroit, and he said,
Speaker 2: we're all jit he said. And they come on stage
Speaker 2: and they stand with their backs to the audience and
Speaker 2: start playing with their backs to the audience. He said.
Speaker 2: They do one whole song, they do another song there
Speaker 2: in the third song, and they won't turn around. Now,
Speaker 2: he said, Detroit people are throwing shoes and throwing shit,
Speaker 2: and he said, and all Seger did was hold his
Speaker 2: middle finger up over his shoulder and keep singing with
Speaker 2: his back to the ground, he said. And then when
Speaker 2: they turned around on the next song, he said, the
Speaker 2: place came apart. And I said, well, that's theater, right,
Speaker 2: that's theater.
Speaker 1: Well, Okay, I got to tell you one more story.
Speaker 1: My friend Richard Griffiths, who ran Virgin Publishing and Epic
Speaker 1: and as a maniter in one direction a million other
Speaker 1: ates at this point, started out as an agent and
Speaker 1: he was the agent for Backstreet Crawler, which was Paul
Speaker 1: cass Off, a Freeze group after free broke up. Now
Speaker 1: Paul was he not the bass player, the kid, no please,
Speaker 1: the guitar player.
Speaker 2: Okay, but the kid bass player you know, wrote that
Speaker 2: in the dressing room. They came right right, right right,
Speaker 2: said we got to have something up to go off. Well,
Speaker 2: we can't just keep going off with blues. It's down man,
Speaker 2: And he's walking around banging and.
Speaker 1: Listen Chris Blackwell, who they were on island, He says
Speaker 1: they were the best act. That was the best act
Speaker 1: he had. They were just too young free well.
Speaker 2: But in any event, never not had a hit with
Speaker 2: anything he's ever done, any band. It was the next
Speaker 2: one's bad company. Well.
Speaker 1: The other thing about Paul Rodgers is he can still sing.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean most of those guys cannot, but
Speaker 1: he can.
Speaker 2: Still deliver about Paul Rogers was sitting somewhere with me
Speaker 2: just it's weird. Because they'd asked me to do this
Speaker 2: duet thing he's doing and we're trying to schedule and
Speaker 2: them coming in and out. I think he might have
Speaker 2: had a little bit of help. Stuff go on. There's
Speaker 2: a Paul Rodgers album on foot that he's going to
Speaker 2: do what And I said, man, I'm are you kidding?
Speaker 2: Just a school boy when I heard his very beetlestall
Speaker 2: love him?
Speaker 1: Oh think it wasn't from there.
Speaker 2: It didn't take him long, don't you know?
Speaker 1: Don't you know?
Speaker 2: Don't you know shooting that? You are shooting stuff, don't
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 1: Ye Oh God? In the second side, good loving, gone bad,
Speaker 1: all of it. And on the first album s the
Speaker 1: Firm What chi mean, Paige?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Absolutely they had a hit.
Speaker 2: Then he did in the nineties Bobby did the Law
Speaker 2: and they had a hit laying.
Speaker 1: Down the law. Yeah, I know because the same manager
Speaker 1: is the manager of Ceezy top All was the one
Speaker 1: send me the record.
Speaker 2: I still have the record.
Speaker 1: You can't even find that. But in any event, so
Speaker 1: he's the manager for he's the agent. Paul Kasof is
Speaker 1: the act. Paul Kassoff dies on the plane from New
Speaker 1: York to London. The opening act is ac DC, but
Speaker 1: the headliner is gone. A CDC says, we're going on
Speaker 1: anyway in this club, okay, there are five people there.
Speaker 1: You walk down the stairs and to this club in England. Okay,
Speaker 1: they do the whole fucking act. They carry uh what's
Speaker 1: his name around on the shoulders. You know, they're playing
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. As soon as yeah, as soon as
Speaker 1: the act is over, angus young. So as soon as
Speaker 1: it's over, the five people, the five people run out
Speaker 1: of the building and my friend is freaking out, not home.
Speaker 1: Did the guy died? Five people came and they immediately left.
Speaker 2: What they didn't know was.
Speaker 1: They were so blown away that all those five people
Speaker 1: ran out to the phone booth. They called me and said,
Speaker 1: you're not going to believe this. You have to come
Speaker 1: back for the second show completely full. But he got
Speaker 1: fired as the agent anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but you talk about theater, it used to
Speaker 1: be you had to go see the act, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they would never play certain songs from the album again,
Speaker 1: and you would come home and tell people say you're
Speaker 1: not going to believe it. Yeah, it's like I remember
Speaker 1: seeing Ziggy stardust Rales Cooper Killer.
Speaker 2: So you're not going to believe it.
Speaker 1: You have to come with me the next time. Now,
Speaker 1: there's none of that because everybody sees everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they think they did, but there's still nothing
Speaker 2: like it live. You see it live. I saw Steely
Speaker 2: Dan in Ohio State. They came out with that second
Speaker 2: A in their debut. They said, here's something new. We're
Speaker 2: just cutting it with Ricky, don't lose that number. And
Speaker 2: I was up in the upper deck of that arena
Speaker 2: was an old where the old basketball arena, and it
Speaker 2: was up there in the nose but in Washington, And
Speaker 2: as soon as you heard, We're like, Wow, that's a hit,
Speaker 2: It's like, Ricky, don't lose.
Speaker 1: Okay, one final question, We're gonna go, who have you
Speaker 1: not met that you'd like to meet?
Speaker 2: Alive? Wow? Alive? That's the trick because there are people
Speaker 2: that I've not had the chance to meet that died
Speaker 2: that I would have maybe had a chance to meet.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of it as anybody that I've
Speaker 2: actually I've met, Robert plant Uh and you know Fan Up,
Speaker 2: you know guys somebody that used that he's deceased. God,
Speaker 2: I would have loved to met Sam Cook. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm i'm, I'm bending the margins here for your parameters.
Speaker 2: But but I just think that's one of the tragedies
Speaker 2: of early death ever. And what a pinky weird deal
Speaker 2: that was, you know. And and it's still this dad
Speaker 2: thing somewhat dubious as to how he got set up,
Speaker 2: you know, that night with it. I mean, when you
Speaker 2: think about what he did, what he was doing the
Speaker 2: father of so really Sam Cook, you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of taking gospel style stuff and bringing I mean, what
Speaker 2: he was doing the songs he wrote. Bob, I mean, anyway,
Speaker 2: so you you limited me to somebody alive, you know
Speaker 2: what I'll know the next time we talk.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll leave it here, otherwise we'll be talking into
Speaker 1: the next century. In any event, I want to thank.
Speaker 2: You, Dwight.
Speaker 1: Till next time. This is Bob left Sex