Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftstts Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is the one and only Steve Holtz. Steve,
Speaker 1: where are you right now?
Speaker 2: I'm in Sydney, Australia and it is Thursday morning?
Speaker 1: And how do you end up in Sydney?
Speaker 2: Well, it's my twenty second time over here and I'm
Speaker 2: on a tour. I'm on my way up to play
Speaker 2: Byron Bay Blues Fest. And so that is how I
Speaker 2: ended up in Sydney. I played a show last night
Speaker 2: that win till about midnight at a really cool club
Speaker 2: and it was packed. And the night before I was
Speaker 2: in Newcastle and so I'm here on the road my
Speaker 2: twenty second time. Can't believe it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. How do you
Speaker 1: go to Australia the first time?
Speaker 2: The first time I went to Australia, I was invited
Speaker 2: to come over with Jewel and we had put together
Speaker 2: a band with myself and Tony Hall playing bass, Brady
Speaker 2: Blade on drums, Doug Pettybone on electric guitar, and Steve
Speaker 2: George on keys. And Steve George was in a band
Speaker 2: called Mister Mister and he had written a song called
Speaker 2: Currie Eleys song and take these Broken Wings, and we
Speaker 2: put together this band and Jewel had had this hit
Speaker 2: record out and so I went over and I got
Speaker 2: to open the shows and be in her band. And
Speaker 2: that's what first brought me to Australia back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, twenty two times. Almost no music lact is going
Speaker 1: to Australia twenty two times, So explain how you keep
Speaker 1: going back.
Speaker 2: I have boundless energy, and so Australia has become kind
Speaker 2: of just like another tour stop to me. I live
Speaker 2: in Nashville, and it's like, oh, do you want to
Speaker 2: go to Louisville and play a show? It's that easy
Speaker 2: for me now. I just think, oh yeah, I'll fly
Speaker 2: down to Melbourne, Australia, and then hit Sydney and go
Speaker 2: to Tasmania. I love it, and so I've always kept
Speaker 2: coming back, and I rent cars and I drive on
Speaker 2: the left side of the road, use my iPhone for
Speaker 2: the maps, and I just always end up at the
Speaker 2: gigs and I've never quit coming back. So it's become
Speaker 2: a regular tour stop.
Speaker 1: Okay, you want to play Australia, do you have an
Speaker 1: agent that books the dates. How do you line up
Speaker 1: the dates? Yes?
Speaker 2: So I at the time, the first time I came
Speaker 2: over here, I was on CIA and I had this
Speaker 2: agent named Rick Roskin, so he booked the tour and
Speaker 2: then Frontier, a big agency down here, brought Jewel over
Speaker 2: and then they saw me play when I opened and
Speaker 2: they said, how would you like to come back? We'll
Speaker 2: bring you back. So that was how it started here.
Speaker 2: But now I have my own agent. He's a smaller agency,
Speaker 2: and he saw me play somewhere and said he wanted
Speaker 2: to work with me, and that's what me back and
Speaker 2: keeps me coming back. And there's so many festivals I
Speaker 2: can play.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you go to Australia, how many gigs
Speaker 1: can you play?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Now, when most people come here, they'll
Speaker 2: do like maybe four gigs. I'll do like twenty to thirty.
Speaker 2: It's crazy because I go to all these little country
Speaker 2: towns now and they sell out. And like I was
Speaker 2: just in a little place called Archie's Creek and you'll
Speaker 2: get three hundred people in there. They make you a
Speaker 2: great meal and you're hanging out with all these crazy
Speaker 2: Australians and every night it's just like a new thing,
Speaker 2: and I show up and they go all out for
Speaker 2: the shows, and they're just so welcoming.
Speaker 1: How do they know you?
Speaker 2: And Archie's creak just over the twenty two years, like
Speaker 2: everything in my career has been built with my hands,
Speaker 2: just playing live shows, and then people talk about the
Speaker 2: live shows, and every show I just go out and
Speaker 2: I give all the effort I can and then they
Speaker 2: tell their people and everything just keeps happening and it
Speaker 2: slowly grows. So it's the most organic thing ever.
Speaker 1: Is it lucrative for you to go to Australia?
Speaker 2: It really is, believe it or not. Like I go
Speaker 2: over here and I make money. I actually have an
Speaker 2: Australian tax accountant who is in co He works with
Speaker 2: my accountant in the United States, and he just can't
Speaker 2: believe because I bring over so much merch and I'm
Speaker 2: slinging T shirts, tope bags, hats, Vinyl records, CDs and
Speaker 2: it just goes on and on and I sell all
Speaker 2: this merch and my wife is my tour manager, and
Speaker 2: we're just like a dog and pony show and we
Speaker 2: go in and we just sell merch. We play shows
Speaker 2: and every night it's just a blast. And then the
Speaker 2: next day I'm headed to another city.
Speaker 1: Now you have hardcore fans, but for those who have
Speaker 1: never seen a Steve Poltz show, do your best to
Speaker 1: describe it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of madness because I've never used a
Speaker 2: set list in my life, and I never know what's
Speaker 2: going to happen. So I have fans, like last night
Speaker 2: fans that came three shows in a row from different cities.
Speaker 2: They drive. It's like the Grateful Dead fans or something,
Speaker 2: and they're never going to get the same show twice.
Speaker 2: So what it is is I just go out and
Speaker 2: I just sort of feel the room and I can
Speaker 2: feel the energy of everybody, and I slowly take them
Speaker 2: on a two hour journey. And I've tried to really
Speaker 2: learn to play fewer songs, like because for a while
Speaker 2: I was doing four hour shows and I realized, you know,
Speaker 2: there's got to be a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Speaker 2: So I've learned to pair it down.
Speaker 1: Okay, if every show is different, you know, back in
Speaker 1: the old days of classic rock, you'd go to see
Speaker 1: acts in different cities who would have the exact same pattern. Okay,
Speaker 1: your stories are different. I mean, how much is prepared
Speaker 1: how much have you told the stories before? How much
Speaker 1: are you making up that night.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll have stories that'll be a rough outline, and
Speaker 2: they're always changing. It's like if you took a pack
Speaker 2: of tortillas and they were in saran wrap and you
Speaker 2: nailed them to a wall and they slowly got mold
Speaker 2: and the mold grew on them. That's the stories. They
Speaker 2: change and they blend in for whatever city I'm in,
Speaker 2: and then I'll talk about what happened that day. So
Speaker 2: the thing I've learned is if I go on stage
Speaker 2: and just talk about what I did that day, something
Speaker 2: funny is going to come out of it. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to take the piss out of the audience, make
Speaker 2: fun of their accent and what I did that day,
Speaker 2: and hopefully have them all smiling and feeling good. I
Speaker 2: always want like a sense of redemption by the end
Speaker 2: of the show, where everybody's just up there on their
Speaker 2: feet and they're just feeling really good.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what happened yesterday that was worth talking about?
Speaker 2: Okay, So for instance, last night, I got on stage
Speaker 2: and I had written a little story about I told
Speaker 2: people that they need to start creating, because if you
Speaker 2: have friends over for dinner. What I said is you
Speaker 2: should have them prepare a poem that they wrote, because
Speaker 2: if you write something, it will feel good for you,
Speaker 2: and then to perform it will make you feel nervous.
Speaker 2: And the body makes its own drugs, and who here
Speaker 2: doesn't love drugs. That's what I told the audience. And
Speaker 2: so I want you guys to feel good, and so
Speaker 2: I would give them an example of a poem. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to rhyme, but you just go up
Speaker 2: and you get to do this poem and it makes
Speaker 2: it so much fun. So, for instance, last night I
Speaker 2: was on stage and I just I remember I was
Speaker 2: sitting there and I said, dear Diary, this was my poem.
Speaker 2: I took a shower and used doctor Bronner's peppermint hemp
Speaker 2: hippie soap. It smells so good. I washed my armpits
Speaker 2: and my bum and my private parts. And then I
Speaker 2: thought to myself, I need to wash my feet too.
Speaker 2: The water in the shower isn't going to just clean them.
Speaker 2: I should scrub them with his hand towel and soap.
Speaker 2: Now I'm sixty four years old, So I lifted up
Speaker 2: my foot and scrubbed it real good with the soap
Speaker 2: every little toe. It felt so good and clean, like
Speaker 2: I was doing God's work. Then I washed my other
Speaker 2: foot and that felt good too. I was so happy
Speaker 2: and proud that my feet were clean. Then I thought
Speaker 2: I should scrub my butthole because I have this hand
Speaker 2: towel and lots of soap. But then I was worried
Speaker 2: that the foot germs might get into my butt like
Speaker 2: athlete's foot, so I scrubbed my buttole anyways, and then
Speaker 2: I had to pee in I thought to my so
Speaker 2: I should wait till I get out of the shower
Speaker 2: and pee in the toilet. But then I looked around
Speaker 2: and Sharon wasn't in the bathroom, and I obviously wasn't
Speaker 2: live streaming. So I peed real good like, and I
Speaker 2: watched it all go down the drain, and it felt
Speaker 2: like I was doing something bad and that felt good
Speaker 2: to me. So I got out of the shower and
Speaker 2: dried off. Now I can't sleep because as I was
Speaker 2: drying off, I looked in the mirror and my balls
Speaker 2: looked terry. So I thought I'd try shaving them, even
Speaker 2: though I'd never shaved them before. It just seemed like
Speaker 2: an impulsive decision. So I tried it, but I accidentally
Speaker 2: got a cut on my scrotum and red blood dripped
Speaker 2: into the white sink. It looked really cool, like art,
Speaker 2: and I like art. Then I signed my name in
Speaker 2: the sink with a swirly S and a swirly P.
Speaker 2: But then Sharon walked into the bathroom as I was
Speaker 2: stretching my ball sack and looking at the blood, and
Speaker 2: she goes, what the fuck is wrong with you? And
Speaker 2: then some the air scaped out of my butt and
Speaker 2: made a party sound. So I decided I should go
Speaker 2: to sleep and not shave my balls anymore, and Sharon
Speaker 2: put a band aid on them. The shaving was a
Speaker 2: bad idea. Thank you God for listening to me, your
Speaker 2: friend Steve. So I did that piece last night because
Speaker 2: I knew it would make me sweat to do that
Speaker 2: on stage, and I just wanted to take them on
Speaker 2: a journey, and see, I like to take a risk.
Speaker 2: And then my body makes a drug and that drug
Speaker 2: is this adrenaline, and then all limits are off and
Speaker 2: I can sing any song I want because I've taken
Speaker 2: them to a place where I want them to go,
Speaker 2: and I want to encourage them to write.
Speaker 1: You mentioned this drug adrenaline. To what degree do you
Speaker 1: use or have used recreational drugs or alcohol?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man. It all started when I was young and
Speaker 2: I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church, and
Speaker 2: I was in Palm Springs, California, at Saint Teresa's and
Speaker 2: they had this altar wine and I would drink it.
Speaker 2: I called it backstage, and the priest would leave the
Speaker 2: altar wine back there, and I'd go out as the
Speaker 2: altar boy at Saint Teresa's and I would pretend I
Speaker 2: was a French waiter, so I'd bring the wine up
Speaker 2: to the priest and when they ring the bells, that
Speaker 2: changes the wine into Jesus's blood. This is what they
Speaker 2: tell you. So I would go up and pour the
Speaker 2: wine into the gold chalice that the priest is holding,
Speaker 2: and I would say, this is in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Goblin Savignon. He would be good with it, Phil Mignon, Goodrea,
Speaker 2: and then the priest would just look at me and go,
Speaker 2: this guy is crazy. And that kind of basically stopped
Speaker 2: my altar boy career. And so then I kept drinking,
Speaker 2: and I would have fun drinking, and that led to
Speaker 2: marijuana queludes in the seventies led to cocaine, opium, everything,
Speaker 2: and then, like any good musician, I ended up in
Speaker 2: rehab nineteen years ago and I haven't had a drink since,
Speaker 2: and my career got better due to not drinking and drugging.
Speaker 1: Okay, reab only works if you want to get clean.
Speaker 1: What was the motivation to go to rehab? And why
Speaker 1: did it works? People have gone like ten times and
Speaker 1: it still hasn't worked.
Speaker 2: The reason it worked for me is because I never
Speaker 2: wanted to do it till I was ready, and I
Speaker 2: knew one day it was going to happen. I just
Speaker 2: could feel I was heading into that direction. And I
Speaker 2: had this best friend of mine named Steve both spelled
Speaker 2: fot and we had written a Rugburns song my old band,
Speaker 2: the Rugburns, and the song was called Hitchhiker Joe. It's
Speaker 2: about a cannibalistic hitchhiker that would hitchhike and then he
Speaker 2: would eat you, and so we made a video for
Speaker 2: it and everything, and then Steve got into drugs and
Speaker 2: he got stabbed to death in a crack deal that
Speaker 2: went awry with some prostitutes, and so I had to
Speaker 2: id him at the Morgue and I had a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 2: And I remember I flew back to San Diego from
Speaker 2: being on the road. I've been doing blow all night
Speaker 2: and I kind of collapsed at the airport night. There
Speaker 2: was this one attorney. I knew this guy, Michael Wilson,
Speaker 2: and I called him and he heard it in my voice.
Speaker 2: He answered the phone. I don't even know how he
Speaker 2: answered the phone because he had secretaries, but he heard
Speaker 2: my voice and I said Michael, and he goes Stephen
Speaker 2: and he goes, what's up. And I said, I'm in
Speaker 2: big trouble. I've gone insane. And he said, you need
Speaker 2: to go right away to this rehab place. And for
Speaker 2: some reason, after twenty eight days in rehab, they graduated
Speaker 2: everybody except for me, and they said you need to
Speaker 2: do another twenty eight days. So I did another twenty
Speaker 2: eight days and then they let me go, and I
Speaker 2: remember I got out and I had a show at
Speaker 2: the Belly Up in San Diego Salona Beach, and they
Speaker 2: sent guards with me to make sure I wouldn't drink.
Speaker 2: And then it was weird Bob. I just I didn't
Speaker 2: want to drink anymore. I realized I could do more
Speaker 2: damage not drinking and drugging, and it was getting in
Speaker 2: my way of my muse and my creativity. And I
Speaker 2: love not drinking like I love it. It's a drug
Speaker 2: to not be on drugs and to just create and
Speaker 2: take chances and risks.
Speaker 1: Well, I had a similar thing giving up drinking, and
Speaker 1: it is liberating in a way that people don't understand.
Speaker 1: But let's go back. You're playing these festivals in Australia.
Speaker 1: If you play a festival, not everybody knows who you are,
Speaker 1: and it's like being an opening act at an arena
Speaker 1: for a superstar. It's very frustrating. How do you win
Speaker 1: over a larger audience who is unaware of you and
Speaker 1: may not be paying attention.
Speaker 2: It's the greatest thing in the world. So before I
Speaker 2: go out, I say a little prayer to my id
Speaker 2: of whatever the powers that be are in the sky.
Speaker 2: Because when I went to rehab, they said you needed
Speaker 2: a higher power, and that higher power was God. And
Speaker 2: I had a hard time with the God thing. So
Speaker 2: I made my higher power Neil Young because he was
Speaker 2: a power greater than myself, I figured, and they accepted that.
Speaker 2: So Neil Young became a higher power. And then as
Speaker 2: it went on, I had no problem with the God thing,
Speaker 2: the idea of that there might be something up there, stronger,
Speaker 2: and who knows what it is if it's just a spirit.
Speaker 2: So I just say a prayer of thanks. I don't
Speaker 2: pray to be good, but I do this visualization thing.
Speaker 2: It only takes me a minute where I picture everybody
Speaker 2: on their feet smiling, and I've converted the room and
Speaker 2: it's just going to be I've done some work that
Speaker 2: was good. I made people feel good. Maybe I'm down
Speaker 2: in the middle of the crowd, maybe I'm on the stage,
Speaker 2: but I love it. I just like coming out with
Speaker 2: whatever I'm feeling. So it's just honest because people can tell.
Speaker 2: And an audience is like a horse, and a horse
Speaker 2: knows when you get on it, if you're scared of it,
Speaker 2: if you come out and let the audience know you're
Speaker 2: in control, they're gonna come along for the ride. And
Speaker 2: that's where you really build a fan base because you
Speaker 2: got five thousand people out there. You know, I'll be
Speaker 2: playing Newport Folk Festival this summer, or in Australia, I'm
Speaker 2: going to Byron Bay Bluesfest. Probably played a seven thousand
Speaker 2: people and a lot of whom have never seen me,
Speaker 2: and so what you need to do? Do you know?
Speaker 2: Do you remember Huey Lewis?
Speaker 1: Of course I remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So there was an article once in Rolling
Speaker 2: Stone and Huey Lewis did a quote that I've never forgotten.
Speaker 2: He talked about how he was in a blues band
Speaker 2: in northern California and they were doing cover songs and
Speaker 2: he said, every once in a while they would sneak
Speaker 2: in an original song. And I loved how he said that,
Speaker 2: and he said he called it infiltrate then double cross,
Speaker 2: so he'd suck them in and then double cross them,
Speaker 2: and then on the break people would come up and go,
Speaker 2: what was that song you did? I loved and he'd say, oh,
Speaker 2: that was an original, and they said that is so good.
Speaker 2: So at a festival you need to infiltrate then double crossing,
Speaker 2: not meaning you're doing covers, but go out. You can't
Speaker 2: just go out and talk about shaving your balls in
Speaker 2: the shower. You've got to lure them into your world.
Speaker 2: And then slowly, once they commit to loving you, they're
Speaker 2: with you. They're a part of your tribe. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: And then you slowly collect people. My buddy Oliver Wood
Speaker 2: from the Wood Brothers has a quote that he told
Speaker 2: me about my career. It's a slow rise to the middle,
Speaker 2: and that's the best kind of career to have.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just use that. You're playing to seven thousand people.
Speaker 1: Usually an act that's not well known throughout the world
Speaker 1: has to play during the day when the sun is out.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you have to get all seven
Speaker 1: thousand people interested or you just need three hundred in
Speaker 1: front of the state, What do you say. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get this three hundred and grow it and grow it.
Speaker 2: I know that it's going to be successful. It sounds weird,
Speaker 2: but I love walking out on stage and there's five
Speaker 2: or seven thousand people and it's just a little cadence
Speaker 2: and the voice are the way I may tell a story, slowly,
Speaker 2: suck them into my world. And you see people kind
Speaker 2: of touching each other, like what's going on here? And
Speaker 2: then the diehard fans are up front and the energy
Speaker 2: passes from fan to fan. It's crazy. And by the
Speaker 2: end of that everybody's over there at the merch area.
Speaker 2: You're selling stuff and I shake everybody's hand. I believe
Speaker 2: in the Willie Nelson School of music, you'd always wait
Speaker 2: by his tour bus afterwards and shake everyone's hand and
Speaker 2: sign everything. I love it. I love the interaction taking
Speaker 2: pictures with people and then playing the show, and slowly
Speaker 2: they convert over. And then you play a club in
Speaker 2: a town and they show up and say, oh, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I saw you at High Sierra Music Festival, or I
Speaker 2: saw you at tell your Ride Bluegrass Fest. And the
Speaker 2: cool thing is I'm just solo on stage, so I
Speaker 2: don't have to deal with a lot of logistics of
Speaker 2: band members and everything. I can surgically strike and play
Speaker 2: Stan Rogers folk Fest way out in Canso, Nova Scotia,
Speaker 2: and then zip across the country and play Rocky Mountain
Speaker 2: Folksfest in Lions, Colorado. And I can do it and
Speaker 2: get there pretty fast.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the Oliver Wood quote. I
Speaker 1: think the Woods started off independent to begin with. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you started in the pre internet era, the key
Speaker 1: was to have a label deal and to have a hit,
Speaker 1: whether it be a top forty hit at MTV, hit
Speaker 1: a hit on a FM rock The point is to
Speaker 1: have a notable trick. So today to use a word
Speaker 1: that has too many connotations, but I'll use it anyway.
Speaker 1: You are a cult item. It's amazing. I printed an
Speaker 1: email that you had written all these people who know
Speaker 1: who you are. Okay, you can't see that and say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's Steve Poltz and you know, number ten in the
Speaker 1: Spotify Top fifty, but they know who you are. So
Speaker 1: the game has changed. Yet you have continued in the game.
Speaker 1: To what degreed does it frustrate you that you have
Speaker 1: this middle level of success and to what degreed do
Speaker 1: you have hunger to be known and exposed to more people.
Speaker 2: This is a great question, and I would like to
Speaker 2: first say I love you. I want to get that
Speaker 2: from here, but okay, okay, I do. And the way
Speaker 2: that it works for me is I picture everybody, you know,
Speaker 2: those rock climbing walls, Bob, where you got sure a
Speaker 2: place and climb up. You know, there's always somebody going
Speaker 2: to be above you and somebody below you. That's the
Speaker 2: business we're in. There's always going to be somebody who
Speaker 2: has something you want. Even Springsteen, where he's at on
Speaker 2: the wall now isn't in the stadium thing he was
Speaker 2: at at one time. So we always want to be
Speaker 2: somewhere else. So number one, the first rule is be
Speaker 2: kind to everybody you meet on the way up, because
Speaker 2: sooner or later you will meet him on the way
Speaker 2: back down, and you're always going to want more, but
Speaker 2: you've got to just remain grateful and thankful for what
Speaker 2: you have, your little slice of the pie. And for me,
Speaker 2: I'm happy with the slice I have because I get
Speaker 2: to do the weirdest shit on stage. Bob, I'm not
Speaker 2: beholden to a hit song. I go out and I'm
Speaker 2: doing spoken word and it's a drug to me. I'm
Speaker 2: an addict, and so I'm addicted to the performance and
Speaker 2: I'm looking for that high, that sort of danger on
Speaker 2: stage and also the sense of community. And so I
Speaker 2: have like the ultimate career because I go from city
Speaker 2: to city. People show up in Australia and it's like whatever,
Speaker 2: a fifty dollars ticket and they're showing up. The shows
Speaker 2: are selling out and they're in small areas. Of course,
Speaker 2: you think, God, it would be cool to go up
Speaker 2: to bigger theaters, but it's just one day at a time,
Speaker 2: and I get such a high from the shows that
Speaker 2: I'm happy where I'm at and if it grows I'm
Speaker 2: playing on the house's money because I don't have to
Speaker 2: do this anymore. I could retire right now. My wife
Speaker 2: always reminds me of that, that you don't have to
Speaker 2: do this anymore. I was one of those musicians that
Speaker 2: put money away back in the day when some jewel
Speaker 2: money came in and other money, and I'd just go
Speaker 2: out and work and I just put it in a
Speaker 2: Charles Schwab account and never touch it. I've never touched it.
Speaker 2: I'm sixty four years old, and I don't need a
Speaker 2: lot because I live kind of a simple life.
Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, certainly your stage act is unique and
Speaker 1: no one is going to see you and not remember it.
Speaker 1: So is there a part of you that says, well,
Speaker 1: if only more people could see me, they would have
Speaker 1: the same feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think that sometimes, and every once in
Speaker 2: a while you do get a little bit of jealousy
Speaker 2: and you want the career, maybe you want the crowds
Speaker 2: that somebody else is getting. But I've learned to just
Speaker 2: get that out of my system and I just sort
Speaker 2: of say a prayer of gratitude for what I have,
Speaker 2: and I truly believe in that. Of course, you me Nactually,
Speaker 2: I only speak for myself. Like when Jewels started getting
Speaker 2: big and we were dating and I was in the
Speaker 2: Rugburns and I was helping her find a place to play,
Speaker 2: and then she blew up really big. I was just like, Wow,
Speaker 2: why is she blowing up big? And I'm not or
Speaker 2: Jason Moraz another friend of mine from San Diego, Like
Speaker 2: there's a whole San Diego scene, why did these people
Speaker 2: blow up so big? But then when I really analyzed
Speaker 2: it and did a deep dive in it, I'm not
Speaker 2: really made for the masses. I'm not. Jason Ras has
Speaker 2: a great boys, Jewela has a great voice. I'm sort
Speaker 2: of a wild card, and I get the freedom of
Speaker 2: doing the show I want, and I have gratitude for
Speaker 2: what I'm doing. And Jason's a friend of mine, Jewele's
Speaker 2: a friend of mine. And I saw Blink one eight
Speaker 2: two blow up big, but the Rugburns didn't, And why
Speaker 2: didn't that happen? I just felt like we weren't made
Speaker 2: for the masses. Probably, and that's okay. You got to
Speaker 2: make peace with that way.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. You're born in Halifax, Canada.
Speaker 1: Are you just born there? And you move on or
Speaker 1: do you live any of your life there.
Speaker 2: We moved when I was really young to southern California.
Speaker 2: So all the relatives are in Nova Scotia and Cape
Speaker 2: Breton and some in Ontario. But I'm a total Southern Californian.
Speaker 2: I may live in Nashville, but I'm a Southern Californian.
Speaker 1: As it gets, okay, And what did your parents do
Speaker 1: for a living?
Speaker 2: So my dad was in the Royal Canadian Air Force
Speaker 2: and one morning he woke up and we were snowed
Speaker 2: in and he said, I want to go somewhere warm.
Speaker 2: And it was the early sixties, and we came out
Speaker 2: to Pasadena, California. We lived right in Pasadena, and my
Speaker 2: dad had a job in air conditioning and he just
Speaker 2: found this job. He drove us across the country with
Speaker 2: no money, got a job in an air conditioning warehouse
Speaker 2: and became a manager of it. And I went to
Speaker 2: a private Catholic school called Saint Rita's Elementary School. We
Speaker 2: lived in Hastings Ranch for a little while, and then
Speaker 2: we moved out to Palm Springs, California, because he got
Speaker 2: a great air conditioning job out there, and that was
Speaker 2: how I ended up meeting like Frank Sinatra and Elvis
Speaker 2: Presley and Liberacchi and Bob Hope and all these people
Speaker 2: that lived there, and it was pretty interesting being a
Speaker 2: part of that. So it was great.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about being a part of that. This
Speaker 1: Palm Springs.
Speaker 2: So in Palm Springs, when we would go trigger treating
Speaker 2: and stuff, we would go to Liberacchi's house and everybody
Speaker 2: knew where he lived, and he had these piano keys
Speaker 2: for his front steps and they would wind almost in
Speaker 2: an Alison Carroll kind of weird psychedelic way, and you'd
Speaker 2: ring the doorbell and you'd be dressed up like Casper
Speaker 2: the Friendly Ghost, and the doorbell when it rang would go.
Speaker 3: Dun dunt dunt dun dun't dunt dun dun Livereracchi would
Speaker 3: come out and he'd have a big boa around his neck,
Speaker 3: and then chauffeur guy, his boyfriend, the blonde guy, he'd
Speaker 3: have arm next.
Speaker 2: To him like this and he'd say hello kids, hop
Speaker 2: a Snicker's bar and he'd give these huge Snickers bars
Speaker 2: out and then I'd go change in the Batman and
Speaker 2: come back again. And we would keep changing our outfits
Speaker 2: because he had the biggest candy bars, and it was
Speaker 2: so cool and I always loved being a part of that.
Speaker 2: And my uncle was gay, my mom's brother, and so
Speaker 2: I was raised with this sense of gayness in our house,
Speaker 2: which was like a different time. Nowadays, everybody's flying a
Speaker 2: rainbow flag and stuff, but back in those days, it
Speaker 2: was like some more broke back Mountain type stuff, especially
Speaker 2: for my uncle who had come from Cape Bretton and
Speaker 2: he was a musician.
Speaker 1: So okay, And what did your mother do all day?
Speaker 2: So my mom was a teacher, an English teacher, and
Speaker 2: she demanded she wouldn't even accept an A minus. I
Speaker 2: had to get straight a's. And I would always get
Speaker 2: bad citizenship grades because I was always making smart at
Speaker 2: I just couldn't help it, and I was pushing things
Speaker 2: to the limit. But I got a's and I loved school,
Speaker 2: like I loved going there, and I liked studying guitar,
Speaker 2: and I started playing guitar when I was six years old,
Speaker 2: And so my mom really made sure I practiced. She
Speaker 2: was very strict about it. She said, if I pay
Speaker 2: for lessons, you're practicing forty five minutes every day, no excuses,
Speaker 2: Not thirty minutes, not forty two minutes forty five minutes,
Speaker 2: and I realized how hard it was to learn guitar,
Speaker 2: and I hated it. But after twenty one days it
Speaker 2: became a habit, just like anything, and then I just
Speaker 2: would get so into it. My guitar was my best
Speaker 2: friend because I stuttered as a little kid, and I
Speaker 2: had asthma and exema, and so I would just be
Speaker 2: alone in my room playing guitar, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: So how many kids in the family just.
Speaker 2: Too my sister. I have an older sister, and you
Speaker 2: know how, I think you've written about this too in
Speaker 2: your letter. A lot of times somebody has an older
Speaker 2: sibling and that older sibling is the one who turns
Speaker 2: the other one onto music. And my sister had exquisite
Speaker 2: taste in music, and she would make me put my
Speaker 2: head between the speakers and she would put on Joni
Speaker 2: Mitchell Courton Spark and say, listen to it, really listen
Speaker 2: to it with your head between the speakers, and you
Speaker 2: would hear Joni. All of a sudden, love came to
Speaker 2: my door with a sleeping role and a madman's soul.
Speaker 2: I thought for sure I'd seen him dancing up a
Speaker 2: river in the dark looking through a woman to the
Speaker 2: core and spa and I would listen to that, my
Speaker 2: mind would be blown. We had a Moranz receiver, these
Speaker 2: big speakers, and my sister would have me. Then she
Speaker 2: would put on another record and we would listen to music,
Speaker 2: and really listen to music. I'm talking like where you
Speaker 2: would drink it in. And I remember I went to school, Bob,
Speaker 2: and there was a Jewish girl named Hallie Rothstein, and
Speaker 2: she was so beautiful and they had been living on
Speaker 2: a kabbutz in Israel, and her dad, Jean Rothstein, was
Speaker 2: the chemistry teacher, and he was so cool, and he
Speaker 2: also did the hiking club and he went out of
Speaker 2: town on business and Hallie Rothstein asked me to come over.
Speaker 2: And I was fifteen years old and she had me
Speaker 2: come over. I know, I couldn't believe it, and I thought,
Speaker 2: this is when I'm going to lose my virginity. And
Speaker 2: I always loved the I just my mom was like,
Speaker 2: you're Catholic. You got the only dated Catholic girl. And
Speaker 2: so when I heard Hallie Rothstein was Jewish, it was
Speaker 2: like that forbidden fruit. It even made me like her more.
Speaker 2: And they would talk about you know, how they would
Speaker 2: celebrate Hanukkah, and I found it all so interesting. And
Speaker 2: my gay uncle Louie would dress me up and I
Speaker 2: would sing Fiddler on the Roof songs to all his
Speaker 2: gay boyfriends. And so I always had this love of
Speaker 2: the Jewish faith because it was so different to me.
Speaker 2: So my uncle Louie would dress me up and I'd
Speaker 2: sing if Iridi go dumb, and he'd have his arms
Speaker 2: around a couple guys, and I thought that's how all
Speaker 2: kids grew up. But I went over to Halle Rothstein's house,
Speaker 2: and I remember she wanted me to bring some boons
Speaker 2: farm wine over, and I was only fifteen years old.
Speaker 2: So I went to the liquor store, and everybody knew
Speaker 2: there was this old perverted guy that would sit outside
Speaker 2: the liquor store and if you let him touch your
Speaker 2: leg a little bit, he would go in and buy
Speaker 2: you the wine or the beer you want. So I
Speaker 2: remember having this whole existential crisis. Do I let the
Speaker 2: old man touch me so I can go to Halle
Speaker 2: Rothstein's house and lose my virginity. And I rode my
Speaker 2: bike over to her house and the old man was there.
Speaker 2: He got to grab my leg and he comes out
Speaker 2: with a bottle of Boons Farm wine and I had
Speaker 2: it in a brown paper bag, and I was so disgusted.
Speaker 2: After the old man grab my leg. I was riding
Speaker 2: my bike to Ali Rothstein's and I had screwed the
Speaker 2: cap and I was drinking the wine and chugging it.
Speaker 2: And I went over to her house and I crawled
Speaker 2: in the window of her room and then we started
Speaker 2: making out. And you know, back in the early seventies,
Speaker 2: you would make out with the girl and she'd have
Speaker 2: Levi's five oh one button flies on and she would
Speaker 2: let me on dudes like two buttons, and I'd get
Speaker 2: my hand ride down her pants almost to the promised Land,
Speaker 2: and then she'd pull it up put it back on
Speaker 2: her boop. We both had braces, and the braces were
Speaker 2: clicking as we were making out, and the dried saliva smell,
Speaker 2: you could smell it wafting up your nostrils and we're
Speaker 2: making out. But then back in those days, you couldn't
Speaker 2: just put your iPhone on Spotify shuffle and have it
Speaker 2: keep playing music. No, the record would die out. So
Speaker 2: you hear this, and she asked to get up change
Speaker 2: the record, so she gets up to change the record
Speaker 2: and she puts on this other record. Come back. I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna lose my virginity to this beautiful Jewish girl.
Speaker 2: We're making out. One thing leads to another, and I
Speaker 2: hear this voice, this beautiful voicego moving in silent desperation,
Speaker 2: keeping the nih on the Holy lad a hypathetical destination.
Speaker 2: Say who is this Walking Man? And I just stopped
Speaker 2: kissing her and I said who's that? She said, it's
Speaker 2: James Taylor. And I just looked at the album covered
Speaker 2: Walking Man. He was in this cool pose. And back
Speaker 2: in those days, you couldn't look up if they were
Speaker 2: shopping at Kroger and what they looked like, and when
Speaker 2: they were getting their groceries. All you had was the
Speaker 2: mystery of what was on that album. And you held
Speaker 2: that big album up and you look at the back
Speaker 2: of You're like Danny Kortzmark Russell, kunkle Leland Sklark. Who
Speaker 2: are these people? These are gods. I need to know
Speaker 2: about all these players and who they are. And I
Speaker 2: looked at Hallie. I said, I'm sorry, I have to go.
Speaker 2: Can I borrow this record? She said, I guess so,
Speaker 2: so I didn't lose my virginity because I wanted to
Speaker 2: go home and listen to James Taylor and hear Danny
Speaker 2: Korchmark Cooch. They called him Cooch. That's all I knew.
Speaker 2: Cooch was his name. I needed to do my research
Speaker 2: and I needed to listen to this James Taylor guy.
Speaker 2: Then years later, Danny Goldberg signs me to Mercury Universal Records,
Speaker 2: and Timothy White, the now deceased editor of Billboard Magazine,
Speaker 2: calls me up because he hears my record One Left Shoe,
Speaker 2: and he says, Steve, I'm wondering if you were influenced
Speaker 2: at all by James Taylor because of your fingerpick. I
Speaker 2: really like this record, And I said, was I influenced
Speaker 2: by James Taylor? And I proceeded to tell him about
Speaker 2: the old man grabbing my leg embraces, clicking the drive Sliva,
Speaker 2: the buttons on the Levi's five oh one, my hand,
Speaker 2: going down to the promised land of Nirvana. And I said,
Speaker 2: because of James, I didn't lose my virginity, and Timothy
Speaker 2: White goes, oh my god, I love this story. Listen.
Speaker 2: I'm friends with James Taylor. He's in Martha's Vineyard. Right now,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call him up, and would you tell him
Speaker 2: that story? Well, Bob, I'm freaking out because James Taylor
Speaker 2: was like one of my heroes. Right. So he gets
Speaker 2: James on the phone in Martha's Vineyard. Timothy White's in
Speaker 2: New York Billboard Magazine office, and I'm in San Diego,
Speaker 2: and it's like a split screen, triple screen Doris da
Speaker 2: Pillow talk. We're all on our phones. Can't see him,
Speaker 2: but I can imagine it. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: right before James gets on the phone, Timothy White says,
Speaker 2: tell James's story, but don't tell him the part about
Speaker 2: the old man grabbing you, because that's kind of he
Speaker 2: doesn't need to hear that. But tell him the story
Speaker 2: about everything else. And I said, okay, okay. And so
Speaker 2: that James gets on the line and I hear that
Speaker 2: sweet tenor voice go hello, Steve, and I go James,
Speaker 2: He goes yeah, Timothy goes tell them the story, and
Speaker 2: then I go, I let an old.
Speaker 4: Man grab my balls.
Speaker 2: I couldn't help myself. And then I proceeded to tell
Speaker 2: him the whole story. And after I told James Taylor
Speaker 2: the whole story. There was this awkward pause on the line,
Speaker 2: and then I heard James go, well, I hope you've
Speaker 2: gotten laid since.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little cleanup. Where's Hallie today?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I would like to know. I need
Speaker 2: to track her down on Facebook, but I have some
Speaker 2: friends that told me I think she might still be
Speaker 2: in Palm Springs. I would love to know how she's doing.
Speaker 2: I would love her to hear that story because it
Speaker 2: really was a memory mark.
Speaker 1: Okay, you would have this one my old sensibility. This
Speaker 1: doesn't come out of nowhere. What was going on in
Speaker 1: your home that you had this way of looking at things, insights,
Speaker 1: telling these funny stories. Was this your mother? Was this
Speaker 1: your father? Your gay uncle? Where did this come from?
Speaker 2: It was a combo meal deal. My dad would write
Speaker 2: poems and he would run around the house and tap
Speaker 2: dance and sing. He would always sing the Canadian national
Speaker 2: anthem to me in the morning, so I would know
Speaker 2: my Canadian roots. And my mom played piano and guitar
Speaker 2: and would sing like an angel. And my uncle Louis
Speaker 2: was a genius piano player, and so I was a
Speaker 2: combination of all of them. And my uncle would always
Speaker 2: have me play at recitals, and I would do the
Speaker 2: part of Joel Gray and Cabaret. At a very young age.
Speaker 2: I could do everything I could get up there, and
Speaker 2: he would paint a little mustache on me and I'd
Speaker 2: go become Bear, come and I would do the whole
Speaker 2: thing and gabba lay, oh, gaballet do gabal lele, and
Speaker 2: he would dress me up as Oliver, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know how weird it was, because he'd have like eight
Speaker 2: gay men over to the house and he would dress
Speaker 2: me up like Oliver and make me go, please, suh,
Speaker 2: may I have some more? And then they'd go, he
Speaker 2: wants more. And then I'd have to think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: buye this wonderful morning, and I'd put on a whole
Speaker 2: show for them and I'd see how it worked. And
Speaker 2: that was where I really started learning stuff because of
Speaker 2: all of them. And he took me to see Julian
Speaker 2: Bream at the Hollywood Bowl at the age of six
Speaker 2: years old, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McCrae, Sarah Vaughan, Jesus Christ, Superstar,
Speaker 2: god Spell, Hair. He took me to every Planet of
Speaker 2: the Apes movie. My uncle Louis was just he was
Speaker 2: so good for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's your musical background. How about your twisted sense
Speaker 1: of humor and your observational character.
Speaker 2: So I started the rugburns in a garage and Sandy.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, way before.
Speaker 2: That, way before that was okay?
Speaker 1: Was it the type of thing you were all having
Speaker 1: dinner together and people were telling long stories where you
Speaker 1: were cracking jokes at the table. This sensibility has to
Speaker 1: come from somewhere.
Speaker 2: I think it was because my mom was really strict,
Speaker 2: so I liked finding a way to get my sister
Speaker 2: to laugh. Because my sister had a bit of depression
Speaker 2: and my mom suffered from depression. So my mom had
Speaker 2: to get shock therapy and the house was always really dark,
Speaker 2: and I remember she came out of shock therapy and
Speaker 2: she didn't know who we were, and it scared me,
Speaker 2: and she would I would come home and she would
Speaker 2: always be crying and the house would be dark. So
Speaker 2: I would play classical guitar songs to her and I
Speaker 2: would try to make her laugh. I really wanted to
Speaker 2: make my mom happy because it hurt me to see
Speaker 2: her so sad, and my sister was really sad. So
Speaker 2: I would figure out what made them laugh. So if
Speaker 2: I was able to do the Lord's Prayer with a
Speaker 2: French accent without my mom hearing it at church to
Speaker 2: get my sister to laugh, I would.
Speaker 5: I would.
Speaker 2: That's where things started. I would if false it would
Speaker 2: be that name, SOI Kingdom come and Kathy would be
Speaker 2: laughing so hard and my mom would get mad, and
Speaker 2: then I'd find out a way to get my mom
Speaker 2: to laugh. But honestly, I really believe I'm I think
Speaker 2: you know, my mom died a few years ago and
Speaker 2: the first thing I said was do you think she
Speaker 2: loved me? And I think she did. But I used
Speaker 2: to feel like the audience is kind of like my mom,
Speaker 2: and maybe I'm on this search to win over the
Speaker 2: audience to get her a rooval, And so I think
Speaker 2: that's where it all started. Was I wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure that I could try to make her happy because
Speaker 2: I wanted to make sure she loved me. And I
Speaker 2: haven't done deep therapy at all on it, but I
Speaker 2: sort of have a sense that the audience is like
Speaker 2: my mother.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you get to the Rugbirds, you're going to school,
Speaker 1: You're a smart kid, You're sort of sassy, which is
Speaker 1: frustrating because you're doing well, but the teachers don't like
Speaker 1: the disturbance. Did you have a lot of friends, Did
Speaker 1: you play sports? Were you in student government or were
Speaker 1: you off to the left somewhere.
Speaker 2: So I was into student government and I loved sports.
Speaker 2: I ran across country. I was on the wrestling team,
Speaker 2: and I was in drama, so I did all the drama.
Speaker 2: I did everything. Wrestling practices would go late. The only
Speaker 2: reason I was on the wrestling nam is because I
Speaker 2: didn't make the basketball team and the wrestling coach saw
Speaker 2: me crying when I saw my name wasn't on the list,
Speaker 2: and he said he needed a ninety eight pounder and
Speaker 2: I weighed about ninety two pounds in ninth grade. So
Speaker 2: I got on the wrestling team. And I wrestled for
Speaker 2: four years ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade. And I
Speaker 2: got really good at it and it really helped me
Speaker 2: because I didn't quit. But I was the only guy
Speaker 2: on the wrestling team that was also in drama. And
Speaker 2: I was in the Madrigals, which was the top singing
Speaker 2: group where we would go to other schools and compete
Speaker 2: sing songs in Latin and French and German, and so
Speaker 2: I was constantly busy in school, constantly, and I think
Speaker 2: part of that too was I didn't want to go home.
Speaker 2: Because I went home, I felt a sense of darkness
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to see my mom sad.
Speaker 1: Okay graduate from high school?
Speaker 2: Then what So I graduated from high school and I
Speaker 2: went away. My sister had gone away to up with people.
Speaker 2: Do you remember Up with People?
Speaker 1: Absolutely used to be the halftime show with the NFL.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So my sister she went away to up
Speaker 2: with people and I was playing.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, well that just doesn't happen by accident. How
Speaker 1: did she get up with people?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: Up with People came to Palm Springs High School, which
Speaker 2: is where I graduated from, and she applied and got in.
Speaker 2: So she left me her Dodge Demon three on a
Speaker 2: tree and on the back was a bumper sticker that
Speaker 2: said give Jesus a chance. She got me stoned before
Speaker 2: she left, taught me out to smoke beeed, and so
Speaker 2: she she leans to go to up with people, and
Speaker 2: then Up with People came back to our high school
Speaker 2: and I went, man, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2: If I could go away with up with people, that
Speaker 2: would be the greatest thing in the world. So they
Speaker 2: came into our high school and played I've Never Forgotten
Speaker 2: the shows in a big assembly hall a theater in
Speaker 2: our Palm Springs High and I went up and I said,
Speaker 2: can I apply for Up With People? And all my
Speaker 2: friends were like, the stupid man, don't do that, like
Speaker 2: all their wrestling friends. They're so lame. So I auditioned
Speaker 2: for them, and I've Never Forgotten. I played a song
Speaker 2: called Romanza, this Andre Segovia piece that's really sad. It's
Speaker 2: a beautiful piece, Romanza, and I played it and they went, man,
Speaker 2: you're a really gig guitar player. And then they ended
Speaker 2: up giving me a scholarship Up with People. So I
Speaker 2: got accepted and I went and I lived in Tucson.
Speaker 2: And this is back in nineteen seventy eight. Like most
Speaker 2: people have like that started band, like the Rugburns have
Speaker 2: like punk credibility. You know, they're listening to television and
Speaker 2: CBGB's what's happening. Not me. I was in Eliza Minelly
Speaker 2: Barber streisand and Up with p People, Joel Gray and
Speaker 2: classical guitar and so Up with People. I go over
Speaker 2: there and I auditioned, and I live in Tucson and
Speaker 2: I get in casts I think I was in cast
Speaker 2: A and we were in the Latin American group. So
Speaker 2: we went and lived in Mexico and we would sing
Speaker 2: instead of up with people, because the song up with
Speaker 2: people goes up up with people you meet and wherever
Speaker 2: you go. But ours was biev lahente, and so we
Speaker 2: would live with Mexican families and that's where I learned Spanish.
Speaker 2: And then we went to Argentina and imagine I was
Speaker 2: eighteen years old and I was in the band of
Speaker 2: up with people playing guitar and we had like a
Speaker 2: full orchestra, French horns, timpany, drums, everything, and that was
Speaker 2: where I learned about soundcheck, loading and staying with people
Speaker 2: in their houses. We'd have to write them a thank
Speaker 2: you note afterwards. And we'd stay with all these different people,
Speaker 2: and we traveled around the world and I got out
Speaker 2: of up with people, and then I went away to
Speaker 2: college University of San Diego, Catholic University, which made my
Speaker 2: mom happy because it was Catholic, and I graduated from
Speaker 2: there and that was where I started well a little
Speaker 2: bit slower, okay.
Speaker 1: So everybody Up with People has a tom No one
Speaker 1: continues to stay in.
Speaker 2: The act that no one what.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say I join up with People. Do I
Speaker 1: know going in that I have a two year tenure
Speaker 1: and then I'm done? Oh can you be in for
Speaker 1: ten years?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a one year tenure. So you go in
Speaker 2: and it's like going through boot camp. You learn all
Speaker 2: these songs. My fingers that blisters on them. They got
Speaker 2: me an ovation guitar around back guitar Glenn Campbell Artists
Speaker 2: signed by Glenn Campbell, and I had that Ovation acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2: So I go in for a whole year, and Bob,
Speaker 2: it's so goofy to say, I think I'm the only
Speaker 2: person in the world who has co written a song
Speaker 2: with Billy String's Jewel Mojo Nixon and wasn't up with
Speaker 2: People and played CBGB's and got to open for the Ramones,
Speaker 2: Like it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, but just staying with up with People for
Speaker 1: one second. Up with People didn't have a religious element.
Speaker 2: Did it.
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: It was about kind of building bridges. It was non denomination,
Speaker 2: right right, right.
Speaker 1: But the things that are clean and cut have a
Speaker 1: reputation under the surface of being the wildest, the most sex,
Speaker 1: the most drugs, the mold booze. What was it like
Speaker 1: being in up with people?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So there were all kinds of cast relationships,
Speaker 2: like you're told you can't date somebody in it. That's
Speaker 2: kind of the reason I wrote the song hand Job
Speaker 2: on a Church Bus, Like I have a song called
Speaker 2: hand Job on a Church bus. Like there was stuff
Speaker 2: going on. There was gay stuff going on and cast
Speaker 2: relationships happening. I remember I had a cast girlfriend and
Speaker 2: a girl named Kathy McCarty, and we would have to
Speaker 2: find places to meet up, to sneak out of our
Speaker 2: host families or go in because you always stayed with families.
Speaker 2: So I would find out where she lived, and we
Speaker 2: didn't have Google maps. It was nineteen seventy eight. I'd
Speaker 2: have a street map in Mexico, and I'd at midnight
Speaker 2: climb out of the window of my place, find out
Speaker 2: what Kathy McCarty was, sneak into the room where she
Speaker 2: had a cast mate with her in another bed who
Speaker 2: was asleep, and have the most silent sex that was
Speaker 2: so forbidden, and the forbidden sex is the best, and
Speaker 2: then climb back in the window of somebody's house in Mexico,
Speaker 2: wake up in the morning and act like I've been
Speaker 2: in sleep, and then surreptitiously walk by her on the
Speaker 2: bus the next day and kind of wink and we'd
Speaker 2: be laughing at what we pulled off. Yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of sex happening.
Speaker 1: What about the University of San Diego? What was your
Speaker 1: experience there?
Speaker 2: Now that was really cool because what I did was
Speaker 2: I went to gross I'mont College first and I took
Speaker 2: classical guitar because they had a classical guitar.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, wait, wait wait wait, not everybody knows that.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Okay. So in San Diego there's a bunch of different
Speaker 2: colleges and they have junior colleges, that's what they're called.
Speaker 2: So a junior college I went to because Grossmont College
Speaker 2: was in La Mesa, and they had a classical guitar
Speaker 2: department run by a guy named Miles Moignier. So Miles
Speaker 2: was a great classical guitar teacher, and I was in
Speaker 2: love with the classical guitar. I was learning box forat
Speaker 2: I was doing duet pieces with Miles, so he was playing.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen seventy nine at a place in La
Speaker 2: Mesa called Porfivore, a Mexican restaurant, and then another restaurant
Speaker 2: in Eltahonne, California, and that was called Ela Migo Ballroom.
Speaker 2: So Miles went, hey, you're pretty good. I can't always
Speaker 2: play well. You sub for me at the gigs. So
Speaker 2: here I am nineteen years old playing at elam Ego
Speaker 2: Ballroom and at poor Footbore, playing like four nights a week,
Speaker 2: classical guitar, four hours a night, five hours a night.
Speaker 2: I'd get a break in the middle. They'd feed me
Speaker 2: when I got in and feed me again when I left.
Speaker 2: I was a growing kid. I'd did two Mexican meals.
Speaker 2: I had it made Bob. I was getting twenty five
Speaker 2: bucks a night sitting in the corner playing classical guitar pieces.
Speaker 2: And then one night I sang a song, and I
Speaker 2: sang the song Time in a Bottle by Jim Crochy,
Speaker 2: and we were only supposed to play, but I sang
Speaker 2: Time in a Bottle and one of the waitresses was
Speaker 2: named Brenda. I'll never forget. She was like forty five
Speaker 2: years old. She came up to me and she goes, hey,
Speaker 2: you can sing. I didn't know you could sing. You
Speaker 2: sounded really good. Come outside, you want to smoke a
Speaker 2: joint with me? And it was like Steve Martin and
Speaker 2: the Jerk. And I went all right. And she was
Speaker 2: this tough biker chick. So I smoked a joint with her.
Speaker 2: And then she said, my old out of town at
Speaker 2: a biker rally in Sturgis. He's got choppers out there.
Speaker 2: He's shown him with all his biker friends. Why don't
Speaker 2: you come over the house with smoke some more weed
Speaker 2: and drink some beer. So I went over to her
Speaker 2: house and it was in this area of Elkoholm that
Speaker 2: was kind of scary. And she brings me into her house.
Speaker 2: One thing leads to another. We end up in their waterbed.
Speaker 2: We're having sex. I'm nineteen years old. Also, I hear
Speaker 2: this Harley pull up in the driveway. She goes, you
Speaker 2: gotta get out of here. You gotta get out of
Speaker 2: the window right now. That's my old man. He'll kill you.
Speaker 2: And I said, I thought you said he was in Sturges.
Speaker 2: She said, he doesn't trust me. I think he came back.
Speaker 2: He will kill you. And I remember leaving out of
Speaker 2: that window, and one of my shoes was left there.
Speaker 2: It was my left shoe, and I ran out and
Speaker 2: I never showed up again at that place. I just
Speaker 2: quit playing classical guitar in that one restaurant because that
Speaker 2: guy was going to be looking for me. And to
Speaker 2: this day, So I was in nineteen seventy nine and
Speaker 2: she was four five years old. I was nineteen. I
Speaker 2: don't know how old she'd be today, but I'm still scared.
Speaker 2: When I see a biker come up, I imagine him
Speaker 2: coming up with like a voicebox thing in his throat.
Speaker 2: I'm going to kill you. I'm ninety.
Speaker 1: Okay, how do you segue from community college to University
Speaker 1: of San Diego?
Speaker 2: So I went to UH Crossmont College. Then I went
Speaker 2: to San Diego State for a year, and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: I was there the day John Lennon died. And at
Speaker 2: San Diego State they had these music rooms, and in
Speaker 2: those music rooms, you would show them your student card
Speaker 2: and they would have Vinyl records and you could go
Speaker 2: all alone in a music room and they'd have headphones
Speaker 2: and it was amazing. Bob and I'd pull a record
Speaker 2: out and I go ros Daman vibrations, re reggae music
Speaker 2: that sounds interesting, and I put it on and all said,
Speaker 2: I to hear Bob Mark like I'd never heard that.
Speaker 2: It was like this whole foreign feat and I got
Speaker 2: to listen to as many records as I want. So
Speaker 2: I finished that year out there, and then I was
Speaker 2: driving around San Diego and I saw University of San Diego,
Speaker 2: Catholic University, and it all goes back to my mom.
Speaker 2: I wanted to please her. I thought my mom would
Speaker 2: like it if I went to USD. It's a Catholic school.
Speaker 2: So I applied, got in, and I remember what got
Speaker 2: me in was that when you were in up with people,
Speaker 2: you're the kind of guy we want.
Speaker 1: So I.
Speaker 2: Know, I know, I know, it's just so wrong. And
Speaker 2: so I got into the University of San Diego and
Speaker 2: I played in the folk mass in church, and that's
Speaker 2: where the rugburns started because I knew all the folk
Speaker 2: songs because I was in a church choir my whole
Speaker 2: life in the Catholic Church. I would sing all those
Speaker 2: songs and so I knew them all. Like the Lamb
Speaker 2: of God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins
Speaker 2: of the world have mercy on us. Lamb of God,
Speaker 2: you take away the sins of the world, grand us piece.
Speaker 2: But I rewrote that as a punk rock song and
Speaker 2: I had to go, Lamb of God, you take away
Speaker 2: the sins of the world every day, give them back.
Speaker 2: We want them back. Well, you think it's so cool,
Speaker 2: you can take them away any time you want. We
Speaker 2: got nothing to say, so we rewrote that. And that's
Speaker 2: where the rugburn started. Was at USD and the guy
Speaker 2: I started with was a guy named Rob Driscoll, and
Speaker 2: we did classical guitar duets together, and now the Rugburns
Speaker 2: started as classical guitar duets like box Beret and we
Speaker 2: would play outside at Balboa Park for passing change. And
Speaker 2: then our first gig was at Oh Hungary's where they
Speaker 2: had yard long piers and I got really drunk and
Speaker 2: broke a yard long pier and rather than pay us,
Speaker 2: we had to pay them fifty bucks for the broken
Speaker 2: glass that we did. And that was how we got started.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what while you're still going to school, or
Speaker 1: really does your career start after you finish school?
Speaker 2: So it started in school. Now I studied political science
Speaker 2: with a minor in Spanish, so sometimes I like to
Speaker 2: say I knew I wouldn't have a job, but at
Speaker 2: least i'd know why. And so there I was. And
Speaker 2: I would bring home professors to Palm Springs, all the
Speaker 2: way from San Diego for Thanksgiving dinner. I would invite them,
Speaker 2: and one of them was a Nixon apologist right wing
Speaker 2: professor named doctor Starter, real right wing, and the other
Speaker 2: was a San Denista loving socialist named doctor gil Otto.
Speaker 2: And doctor Stoddard and doctor Otter Auto would come to
Speaker 2: Palm Springs. I would drive them, my professors from University Bob.
Speaker 2: I drive them two and a half hours. My mom
Speaker 2: would have them over and the professors would get drunk
Speaker 2: and try to hit on my sister, just like Elvis
Speaker 2: Presley tried to hit on my sister when he Elvis
Speaker 2: had me on his shoulders my sister, but these professors
Speaker 2: were hitting on my sister. And I would ask them
Speaker 2: political questions to try to get them into an argument.
Speaker 2: It was like I was. It was almost like I
Speaker 2: was Chris Matthews or somebody. I would ask me questions,
Speaker 2: what do you think about this? And I'd get them
Speaker 2: going at each other. They'd be screaming at each other.
Speaker 2: It was really fun. We'd have the best political discussions.
Speaker 2: He had a book written on Nixon Ping pong diplomacy,
Speaker 2: and gil Otto would talk all about the Sandinistas and
Speaker 2: what was going on in Central America. And I found
Speaker 2: both sides really riveting and fascinating. And I've always been
Speaker 2: a political animal because of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you graduate from college, do you ever think about
Speaker 1: getting a street job.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I got out of college, and the day
Speaker 2: I got out of college, they had, you know how,
Speaker 2: they would have job boards where they put all the jobs.
Speaker 2: USD had that, and I was on the Speakers committee
Speaker 2: at USD, so we would bring in speakers. You remember
Speaker 2: John Anderson ran for president. He was the guy that
Speaker 2: was kind of into no taxes. We got to bring
Speaker 2: John Anderson in to talk. And then one day a
Speaker 2: senator came in, and I was on the speakers committee.
Speaker 2: I got to have dinner with him. And it was
Speaker 2: a senator named Joe Biden. And so Joe Biden came in,
Speaker 2: I have dinner with him, and it was at that
Speaker 2: moment I went, oh, my god, this guy is going
Speaker 2: to be president. Of course, this is back in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three or eighty four. And I remember he looked
Speaker 2: like Charles Groden, and I always loved Charles Groden and
Speaker 2: the stuff he did with Goldie Hahn and Joe Biden
Speaker 2: was just so charming and so fun to have dinner with.
Speaker 2: And I went, I would quit everything and go work
Speaker 2: on this guy's career. Little did I know he would
Speaker 2: be president so many years later when he was old.
Speaker 2: But back in the day, that guy was sharp and
Speaker 2: he was so charming, and it was really neat to
Speaker 2: say that I had dinner with Joe Biden. Got out
Speaker 2: of USD. I graduated, had really good grades, and I
Speaker 2: applied for a job at a plastics factory because my
Speaker 2: parents used to always go to me plastics, plastics, just
Speaker 2: like in the graduate and so I thought my mom
Speaker 2: would be happy if I got this job. Honestly, Bob,
Speaker 2: the theme I'm finding out you're like a great shrink.
Speaker 2: You asked really good questions, and I'm going to reiterate
Speaker 2: this long time. I love you like I always have.
Speaker 2: I love your letter. I love what you write, and
Speaker 2: you've taught me a lot of just being yourself. That's
Speaker 2: all you can be. I'm apologetically you. And so the
Speaker 2: theme of this is I wanted to please my mom
Speaker 2: and get a real job, even though I wanted to
Speaker 2: just play music. So the night before the interview for
Speaker 2: my job, there was this girl that lived at the
Speaker 2: beach right by me named Kiara Talini, beautiful Italian girl,
Speaker 2: and she was in her room and I was walking
Speaker 2: down by the beach and she was with Elizabeth, her roommate,
Speaker 2: and she said, hey, Steve, I've you ever eating magic mushrooms?
Speaker 2: And I said no, but I want to. So she said,
Speaker 2: we just got some and I said, well, I got
Speaker 2: an interview at eight am. I had a plastics factory.
Speaker 2: And she said, oh, they'll be worn off by them.
Speaker 2: So it was midnight and I ate these magic mushrooms.
Speaker 2: It didn't kick in. It had been an hour. It
Speaker 2: was one in the morning, so I said, give me more.
Speaker 2: They gave me more, and it kicked in at about
Speaker 2: two am. And when it kicked in, I was out
Speaker 2: with my fucking mind. I took a can of spray
Speaker 2: paint out and started spray painting the wall of my house.
Speaker 2: I had Elizabeth and Kiara with me. I said, let's
Speaker 2: all three of us get in the bathtub and get
Speaker 2: a dozen eggs, and we took off our clothes, were
Speaker 2: in our underwear, and then they broke eggs over my head.
Speaker 2: And I remember this feeling so free and so good.
Speaker 2: And next thing I knew, my roommate came in and said, dude,
Speaker 2: I got to take you to your job interview. It
Speaker 2: was seven. I had egg in my hair and I
Speaker 2: bought an old suit at a thrift store. I duct
Speaker 2: taped up the pants and I went in for a
Speaker 2: job interview. I was tripping balls on shrooms and this guy,
Speaker 2: Tom Plane sits behind this desk and he was a
Speaker 2: Wharton graduate from University of Pennsylvania, and he said, tell
Speaker 2: me why I should hire you, dude, this is why
Speaker 2: mushrooms were so cool back then. It was like I
Speaker 2: became Tony Robbins or Stephen Covey the Seven Habits of
Speaker 2: highly effective people. I sat down and told him why
Speaker 2: he needed to hire me at his plastics factory because
Speaker 2: he had a product called slip Fix that could repair
Speaker 2: PBC pipe. And I said, let me tell you why
Speaker 2: you need to hire me. I'm going to get a
Speaker 2: truck and a barbecue, and I'm going to go out
Speaker 2: where the contractors go and I'm going to make them
Speaker 2: hot dogs, and he goes hot dogs and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call it slip fis and dogs, and I
Speaker 2: will sell more than you've ever expected in your life. Dude.
Speaker 2: This guy's mind was blown. And then he took out
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and he wrote seventeen point five
Speaker 2: and that was his offer for a salary for me,
Speaker 2: and he slid it across the table and I didn't
Speaker 2: know what it meant. So I crossed that ou out
Speaker 2: and I wrote fourteen point two. He goes, what do
Speaker 2: you mean that's less than I'm offering you? And I
Speaker 2: didn't even break a beat and I said, why would
Speaker 2: I want more when I could have less? And he
Speaker 2: said what do you mean? I said, I want back
Speaker 2: in deals, Tom, And I said, I know I'm going
Speaker 2: to sell a lot. I need a company car. I
Speaker 2: need a percentage of sales. And he said, I like
Speaker 2: your style. He hired me right there. He said, you
Speaker 2: can take the company on a car home. In my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm tripping balls on trims. Let me pick
Speaker 2: it up on Monday. So I got the job. He
Speaker 2: gives me the job. I worked there for three years,
Speaker 2: went to sales conferences, everything I would tell people I
Speaker 2: wasn't up with people to try to get them to
Speaker 2: trust me. And after three years, I read a book
Speaker 2: called The Edge by William Somerset Mom and Mom is
Speaker 2: spelled im a Uga Champ, great author. That book changed
Speaker 2: my life because the protagonist in the story was a
Speaker 2: guy named Larry Daryl, and he wants to just go
Speaker 2: bum around Europe, and that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I wanted to play my guitar on the streets. So
Speaker 2: I went into my boss's office. I said I need
Speaker 2: some time on He said how much time do you need?
Speaker 2: A week? Two weeks? I want to go to Europe
Speaker 2: and he says I said to him, I need nine
Speaker 2: months and he looked at me like I was crazy.
Speaker 2: He said why, I said, because I want to play
Speaker 2: my guitar on the streets. And he goes for passing change.
Speaker 2: I said yeah, and he said like a bum and
Speaker 2: I go yeah, like a bum And he said, you
Speaker 2: know what, I'm going to give you nine months off,
Speaker 2: but you have to shake my hand and promised me
Speaker 2: you'll come back and work for me after nine months.
Speaker 2: And I said, I'm a man of my word. I
Speaker 2: will do that. He gave me. Nine months off, I
Speaker 2: went to Europe. I played guitar on the streets. I'd
Speaker 2: already been in the Rugburns, started the Rugburns, but I
Speaker 2: wanted to be a street musician. Nine months I went
Speaker 2: all around Ireland. I hitchhiked, rode a bicycle, played in
Speaker 2: front of the Loop in Paris. I played in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: Then I want to see what it'd be like to
Speaker 2: busk in Morocco, so I went to Africa. Busked in Morocco,
Speaker 2: went to Lisbon, Portugal, Bartholona, Spain, everywhere, ended up in England,
Speaker 2: and then went up to Sweden Norway. Met beautiful people
Speaker 2: and I would play guitar on the streets. Lived in Amsterdam.
Speaker 2: And after nine months I came back and my hair
Speaker 2: was long. He made me cut it, and he hired
Speaker 2: me back, and I did it for three more years. Well.
Speaker 2: I played at nights and then I said I've got
Speaker 2: to quit now. And I'm still friends with that guy
Speaker 2: Tom Play. I just stayed at his beachfront palace in
Speaker 2: San Diego. He has like a ten million dollar house
Speaker 2: right on the beach, and he's still a dear friend
Speaker 2: of mine. And he laughed so hard because he comes
Speaker 2: to my shows and sees the crazy shit I say
Speaker 2: on stage, and I always make him stand up and
Speaker 2: take a bow. Changed my life.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Yeah, that whole tripping sales pitch. Did you
Speaker 1: live up to it?
Speaker 2: Oh? I was really good. It was bizarre. I don't
Speaker 2: even I could go in there and I could sell
Speaker 2: anything to anyone because I would just become their friend
Speaker 2: and then take them out to dinner and they'd start
Speaker 2: getting orders coming in. So yeah, I made him a
Speaker 2: lot of money, and that's why he kept me on.
Speaker 2: But I knew my life wasn't as a nipple salesman.
Speaker 2: I sold nipples, is what it was. PVC nipple is
Speaker 2: a piece of pipe that's threaded. And I said, when
Speaker 2: I'm eighty years old and I'm on my deathbed, do
Speaker 2: I want to look back on my life and go, hey,
Speaker 2: you were a great nipple salesman. Or do I want
Speaker 2: to say you didn't whist out and you followed your
Speaker 2: heart and you lived your dream, which was to play music,
Speaker 2: make cassettes. The rug Burns we had cassette release parties.
Speaker 2: You know, would we would have this whole scene we
Speaker 2: created because I always believed rather than play in a
Speaker 2: bar without our has a scene like the Chasmon in
Speaker 2: San Diego or something. Find a bar that's your own.
Speaker 2: And that's what I told Jewel as well. Find a bar,
Speaker 2: create your own scene, and people will come to you,
Speaker 2: kind of like you. You started your lefts Its letter,
Speaker 2: you were mimiographing that shit.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 2: I mean, I knew of you back when I was
Speaker 2: signed by Danny Goldberg back in those days, and you
Speaker 2: would have the lefts Its Letter and then you just
Speaker 2: went digital. You've always gone with the thing, and you
Speaker 2: created your own thing. And there's nothing better than home cooking.
Speaker 2: That's why when I read a biography of Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: or Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, I relate, or Phil
Speaker 2: Knight even I relate to all those guys because they
Speaker 2: were singular, purpose driven. It's not about how rich you are,
Speaker 2: what you have, or if somebody has more people than
Speaker 2: you and they're playing to a stadium. No, what it's
Speaker 2: about is were you in the flow? How did you
Speaker 2: live your life? Were you in the flow? Did you
Speaker 2: find something that you had to do because I have
Speaker 2: to do this, like I have to play shows. I
Speaker 2: will play shows till I die.
Speaker 1: Okay, go back for three years after being in Europe,
Speaker 1: you quit. Tell me about quitting. Do you say, well,
Speaker 1: I have enough money in the bank. What was the
Speaker 1: plan when you quit? And what actually happened?
Speaker 2: So he gave me a forty thousand dollars payout, and
Speaker 2: I remember I called my friend Jerry and Boseman Montanae.
Speaker 2: I said, I just got forty thousand dollars and it
Speaker 2: was nineteen ninety two, and he said to me, You're
Speaker 2: never going to get that much money again. Put it
Speaker 2: in the bank, don't touch it. You'll never get that again.
Speaker 2: So I put it in the bank. Everybody in San
Speaker 2: Diego was getting record deals, right. It was at the
Speaker 2: time when things were just starting to happen Rocket from
Speaker 2: the Crypt, Rust, Blink Inch a Miniature. There was this
Speaker 2: whole punk scene happening, and so the Rugburns. I became
Speaker 2: really good friends with Mojo Nixon and the Beat Farmers.
Speaker 2: Those guys were kind of my teachers. So I said
Speaker 2: to myself, I gotta go out and keep playing music.
Speaker 2: So this guy who was in the Beat Farmers, his
Speaker 2: name was Buddy Blue. He's now deceased, but he was
Speaker 2: also a writer for the San Diego Reader and for
Speaker 2: the Union Tribune, and he was in the Beat Farmers.
Speaker 2: Buddy Blue got me signed to Bizarre Planet Records and Bizarre.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, wait wait I yeah, wait, Wait a second.
Speaker 1: I knew Herb and his brother, but there were stories
Speaker 1: onto themselves. How do you get hooked up with Herb cold?
Speaker 1: I know?
Speaker 2: Is this crazy? So what happened is Buddy Blue was
Speaker 2: signed to Bizarre and so he brought them in to
Speaker 2: see me, Herb Cohen and said, you got to see
Speaker 2: this guy. He's in this duo. We were a duo Rugburts,
Speaker 2: Me and Rob Driscoll, and he came to see us,
Speaker 2: immediately signed us and said you need to come up
Speaker 2: to La meet Mutt Cohen, and I want you to
Speaker 2: do an ePK. They used to do epk's back then,
Speaker 2: electronic press kits where they would send them out on
Speaker 2: a video cassette. And my ePK was me with Wildman
Speaker 2: Fisher because Wildman Fisher was on Bizarre and wild Mount
Speaker 2: Fisher would walk around and for those of you listen
Speaker 2: out there, wild Mount Fisher was signed by Zappa and
Speaker 2: he was this guy you would go.
Speaker 4: My name is Larry.
Speaker 2: I have a sister, and we have this whole thing
Speaker 2: where he would go up to people who's a better songwriter,
Speaker 2: Steve Poltzer, Wildman Fisher and wild Mattfisher would have crumbs
Speaker 2: in his beard and just crazy stuff. So we make
Speaker 2: this electronic press kit the rugber Get signed. Next thing
Speaker 2: I know, we're playing at like the True Badoura in
Speaker 2: La and Club Lingerie and all these different places, and
Speaker 2: so weird Al would always come out to see us,
Speaker 2: and so weird Al loved a song by the Rugburns
Speaker 2: called Dix Automotive. Because of Dick's automotive, weird Aal wrote
Speaker 2: the song Albuquerque, which is one of his songs he wrote,
Speaker 2: but it's a direct takeoff of the Rugburns, but he
Speaker 2: didn't credit us. I kind of wish he would have,
Speaker 2: but it's okay. He wrote Albuquerque. If you ab di'x
Speaker 2: automotive and Albuquerque he's doing. He would always he was
Speaker 2: obsessed with that song, would come in and listen to.
Speaker 2: John was living in Ocean Beach, California with his girlfriend
Speaker 2: Juliet's where I'm talking really rapid, and so we get
Speaker 2: signed herb Cohen for whatever reason, loves me. He flew
Speaker 2: He would fly me to Paris with him to meet
Speaker 2: this guy named Ben Waugh who worked at Monterey Jazz
Speaker 2: Fest and stuff. And Herb Cohen was this insane guy
Speaker 2: who used to to run guns with Fidel Castro. He
Speaker 2: signed Lenny Bruce, Alice Cooper, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Waits. I
Speaker 2: mean his history is crazy. They on the publishing on
Speaker 2: Everybody's talking at me. Fred Neil saw on that Harry
Speaker 2: Niels would say, so, Herb Cohen would fly me to
Speaker 2: Paris out of the blue and go, I know a
Speaker 2: great place where we can get couscous on Saturdays. Are
Speaker 2: you in? And he would buy me and him tickets
Speaker 2: first class, probably charge it to me, and then he'd
Speaker 2: pay like three hundred dollars cab. Right, we'd end up
Speaker 2: in some nondescript Moroccan neighborhood in Paris eating couscous with
Speaker 2: Ben Law. I mean, being signed by Herb Cohen was
Speaker 2: like a blessing. Even though he took half the publishing.
Speaker 2: I didn't even care. And he would show up at
Speaker 2: my gigs and Herb would go because Herb if put
Speaker 2: anybody out there listening. He was on the cover of
Speaker 2: Nighthawks at the diner with Tom Waits, he's the guy
Speaker 2: sitting in that picture, and Herb Cohen would go, you
Speaker 2: need to get midgets on the stage with you, and
Speaker 2: don't drink whiskey. Put iced t in the whiskey bottle.
Speaker 2: So we get signed to that label and this guy
Speaker 2: Mike Haller and ninety one X starts playing a song
Speaker 2: called Hitchhiker Joe and the song starts kind of getting
Speaker 2: college radio favorite type stuff. So we end up going
Speaker 2: on tour with the band X and I'd split my
Speaker 2: head open. I had fifty six stitches in my skull
Speaker 2: and we would play with X and John Doe and
Speaker 2: then we got to play with the Ramones and Cleveland,
Speaker 2: and it was just nuts because Joey Ramone was really
Speaker 2: nice to me. They didn't let bands stay backstage when
Speaker 2: they would be on, but Joey went, you guys are cool,
Speaker 2: you could watch us play. But everything changed when Mojo
Speaker 2: Nixon took me out, because Mojo was insane, and we
Speaker 2: would play stashes in Columbus, Ohio, and a biker would
Speaker 2: show up and you'd go come down to the basement.
Speaker 2: I just made some crystal meth in the desert in
Speaker 2: Baker's Field, and Mojo was like Saddam Hussein, and he
Speaker 2: would have me try his drugs to make sure they
Speaker 2: weren't poisonous first before he did them. So you go
Speaker 2: have Bolts try that drug. And so I would snort
Speaker 2: the meth and then we would be out of our
Speaker 2: minds and the Rugburanns would go on stage and just
Speaker 2: destroy shit, get the power turned off on us. And
Speaker 2: Mojo came up with this quote, no mom meth, but Bolts, y'all.
Speaker 2: Motherfucker is gonna make me work too hard. And so
Speaker 2: we became super close with him. And so the only
Speaker 2: couple times I'd done meth where with Shane McGowan of
Speaker 2: the Pogues and with Mojo Nixon and think I'm the
Speaker 2: only guy that sat on Elvis Presley's shoulders and snorted
Speaker 2: meth out of Shane McGowan's dirty thumbnail, and then with
Speaker 2: Mojo Nixon's drug taster. And so our shows just became
Speaker 2: nuts where we would just anything would go on stage,
Speaker 2: and the Rugburnds toured hard.
Speaker 1: It was crazy, okay, continue So.
Speaker 2: As we were going on the road, we had this
Speaker 2: drummer in the band. We became a full band, and
Speaker 2: we went from being a duo. Herb Cohen thought we
Speaker 2: should get a drummer and a bass player, and so
Speaker 2: I would go up to La a Lot to Herb
Speaker 2: and Mutt's office and they also have a son, Evan
Speaker 2: Con and I would hang out with Herb and Mutt
Speaker 2: in their office all the time, and Herb would go,
Speaker 2: I know a great place that makes a great oxtail soup.
Speaker 2: We're going to go over there. And we would go
Speaker 2: to Musso and Franks and just hang out, Me and
Speaker 2: Herb Cohen. It was crazy. So they would give us
Speaker 2: money to go out on the road. We toured NonStop.
Speaker 2: We would go for like nine months at a time.
Speaker 2: And we had this old van and most band members
Speaker 2: when they're in a van, they put band stickers on it,
Speaker 2: you know it's a band. But I came up with
Speaker 2: this idea because fans are always getting broken into tint
Speaker 2: out the windows black and on the side, just put
Speaker 2: Saint Joseph's Catholics had that on the back and on
Speaker 2: the sides.
Speaker 4: Nobody ever broke into our van, never, So we.
Speaker 2: Would just drive down the road in this van and
Speaker 2: it says Saint Justine's Catholic school. I remember one time
Speaker 2: we were in West Virginia and we got pulled over.
Speaker 2: But if you really inspected the van, on the roof,
Speaker 2: we had all these naked lady playing cards, you know
Speaker 2: where they used to sell those at truck stops where
Speaker 2: the girls would have big boobs and they'd be a
Speaker 2: deck of fifty two cards. We had them glued to
Speaker 2: the ceiling of the van, and my hair was like
Speaker 2: long and striped, weird. And we had this record out
Speaker 2: called Morning Wood. It was on bizarre and then we
Speaker 2: had Mommy, I'm sorry, this other one where I'd be
Speaker 2: in a pink dress. And so this state trooper pulled
Speaker 2: us over when we were in the rugbords and he
Speaker 2: starts looking at us and looking at our hair, and
Speaker 2: he goes, what is Saint Justsephe's Catholic school? I said,
Speaker 2: And I remember I said to him, I'm just singing
Speaker 2: for the Lord, sir. And then he saw make a
Speaker 2: lady playing cards and he didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 2: Just get out of the van. He looked at the
Speaker 2: van and he didn't know what to do. And this
Speaker 2: is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me. He goes,
Speaker 2: you can go and he goes here, maybe you need these,
Speaker 2: and he gave me some handcuffs with a key, like
Speaker 2: real cop handcuffs. He gave me them, Bob, and I
Speaker 2: remember I would pull them out on stage and a
Speaker 2: big part of my show would be I'd handcuff myself
Speaker 2: to the drum kit and I put the key somewhere
Speaker 2: and I'd fake like I lost it, like I was
Speaker 2: going to be chained to the floor of the whole show.
Speaker 2: So then we played in a Chicago at a club
Speaker 2: called shubas Southport and Belmont. There was a girl that
Speaker 2: was beautiful named Anastasia who was the booking agent. Now
Speaker 2: she's a big part of my life because she went
Speaker 2: to UCLA and I took her to a place called
Speaker 2: mccabs in Santa Monica to see a guy named Loud
Speaker 2: and Wayne right the third And I remember when I
Speaker 2: was with her at that show, I watched Luden Wayne Wright,
Speaker 2: and that's when I saw my future. So what I
Speaker 2: mean is I'm watching Laden Wayne Write play on stage
Speaker 2: at mccabs and I was in the rugburns and I
Speaker 2: have my arm around Anastasia and I looked at her.
Speaker 2: I've never forgotten this and I said I can do that,
Speaker 2: and she goes, what do you mean? I said, what
Speaker 2: he's doing, I can do that. I'm in the Rugburns
Speaker 2: right now wearing a dress on stage. But that's my future.
Speaker 2: I don't mean I can be him. I mean I
Speaker 2: can do what he's doing and I can make a living.
Speaker 2: Everything came before I saw everything my future. And then
Speaker 2: Anastasia got a job as the booking agent moved out
Speaker 2: to Chicago. I remember I showed up sorrow. I had
Speaker 2: just gotten the handcuffs, and I said, why don't you
Speaker 2: meet me anywhere in Europe this summer. Let's take two
Speaker 2: weeks and go make love on the beaches somewhere. And
Speaker 2: we opened up the Let's Go Europe book. This is
Speaker 2: pre internet, and I said, wherever my finger touches on
Speaker 2: the page, you're going to meet me there. In October.
Speaker 2: It was a place called Making Use and Greece. She
Speaker 2: showed up and I brought the handcuffs, and I was
Speaker 2: with my friend Kevin McGrath, who I wrote I want
Speaker 2: all my friends to be happy about. He died of
Speaker 2: cancer and he came out to run the Athens Marathon.
Speaker 2: I brought the handcuffs Bob and Tom Petty had just
Speaker 2: come out with free Fall, and so we were walking
Speaker 2: on the down the streets and Greece and making us
Speaker 2: singing She's a good girl, loves her mama, drinking shots
Speaker 2: of Luzo, but me and Anastasia are fake drinking the
Speaker 2: shots because we had no money, so we were all
Speaker 2: sharing a room. I wanted to have sex with Anastasia,
Speaker 2: but Kevin was going to be in the room, so
Speaker 2: I needed to get him drunk enough where he was
Speaker 2: passed out because I wanted to use the handcuffs on Anastasia.
Speaker 5: So we're walking on the streets going She's bat and
Speaker 5: I'm a bad boy living in Mezieda, and then he's
Speaker 5: getting the chorus.
Speaker 2: I'm free free falling. So we go back to the room,
Speaker 2: Kevin asses out, Anastasia goes. I brought over some sexy
Speaker 2: lainger aim and to go in the bathroom and change
Speaker 2: into it. So I got totally naked and I handcuffed
Speaker 2: myself to the ceiling fan, and then the ceiling fan
Speaker 2: was kind of going slow, so I was like a
Speaker 2: rotisserie chicken. But I almost looked like an egon ChIL
Speaker 2: painting because I was real skinny, my fingers are real long,
Speaker 2: and I'm hanging from the ceiling fan twirling around real slow,
Speaker 2: and Kevin's asleep and I'm nude. Anastasia walks out in
Speaker 2: some sexy lingerie and she sees me, and she goes,
Speaker 2: you're a bad boy. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Kevin sits up like a mummy.
Speaker 5: And goes living in Resida, and he was awake the
Speaker 5: whole time. I'd seen everything. So this is the kind
Speaker 5: of shit. This is why I do this line of work.
Speaker 5: For the handcuffs, for the love, and for the music
Speaker 5: and all of that stuff. To have been able to
Speaker 5: have been signed to Bizarre Planet Records after being on
Speaker 5: up with people, I mean, come on, it's a great life.
Speaker 5: We get to live here, Bob.
Speaker 1: So how did it end with Herb?
Speaker 2: What happened was Herb I would go up and see
Speaker 2: in La and then I met this girl named Jewel,
Speaker 2: and Jewel was working at a place called Java Joe's,
Speaker 2: and that was in Poway, California. So I would come
Speaker 2: off of the road with the rugburns and I'd gotten
Speaker 2: in a fistfight with our drummer and I had a
Speaker 2: big old black eye and I had taught Joe's strummer
Speaker 2: from the class how to play black jacket. Vegas got
Speaker 2: to see him play at the joint. He was with
Speaker 2: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros and I walk in I
Speaker 2: got a black eye, and I show up at this place,
Speaker 2: Java Joe's, and there's this blonde girl and she's beautiful
Speaker 2: and she says, oh, I like the Rugburns. How can
Speaker 2: I get a following like the Rugburns? And she was
Speaker 2: making me some tea. It was midnight. They would run
Speaker 2: an illegal poker game in the back of Java Joe's.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, you should find your own place
Speaker 2: and that that doesn't have a music scene and make
Speaker 2: it your own. I'm a big believer and create your
Speaker 2: own scene. And so Jewel says, you want to hear
Speaker 2: some of my songs and I said sure. So she
Speaker 2: takes me out to her Volkswagen van. She was living
Speaker 2: in it in the back of Java Jo's and Powie
Speaker 2: and we made stained glass art and then we fell
Speaker 2: in love and we would go surfing together and we
Speaker 2: found a place for her to play. And so at
Speaker 2: the time I was still signed with the Rugburns. And
Speaker 2: then Jewel and myself. We ended up in Mexico surfing
Speaker 2: and we ended up on a drug bust with all
Speaker 2: these cops and the pictures are online where there was
Speaker 2: tons of weed and we end up on this drug bust.
Speaker 2: We take pictures with her arms around these cops. And
Speaker 2: that's when I went back and we wrote this song
Speaker 2: called you Were Meant for Me in the room, which
Speaker 2: meant nothing to me at the time. Little did I
Speaker 2: know it was like writing a winning lottery ticket. So
Speaker 2: we write this song you Were Meant for Me. Come
Speaker 2: back to the United States from Mexico. We go out
Speaker 2: for six year old tacos.
Speaker 4: Wh whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.
Speaker 1: What happened with the drug bust?
Speaker 2: Oh? So we're out. We break into a hotel room
Speaker 2: in a place called Bahia. They San Luis Gonzaga, and
Speaker 2: I'm with Jewel and she wants to go well watching.
Speaker 2: So nobody's in the hotel, so we kick open one
Speaker 2: of the doors. We fall asleep in a king sized
Speaker 2: bed with Mexican blankets. We wake up and the sun's
Speaker 2: coming up and I look out the window and Jewel goes,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is beautiful. So we go out
Speaker 2: on the beach and she says, we got to get
Speaker 2: a boat, and none of us had any money. So
Speaker 2: we're sitting on the beach and Jewels in a yellow bikini.
Speaker 2: She looks beautiful, and these four Mexican federales come down
Speaker 2: the beach with guns in their belts and they walk
Speaker 2: up to us. It's like something out of a Clint
Speaker 2: Eastwood film and you can see the heat rising off
Speaker 2: the sand and they say, would you guys like to
Speaker 2: go watching? So I said no because I was scared
Speaker 2: to go out on a boat with them, but Jewel
Speaker 2: said yes, so I had to go. So we go
Speaker 2: out on the middle of the water the Bahia. They
Speaker 2: sent the weeds Gonzaga and these guys have automatic weapons.
Speaker 2: They're just looking at Jewel in this yellow bikini. I
Speaker 2: think they're gonna kill me, throw me overboard. It's like
Speaker 2: a Cone Brothers Blood Simple or something. And so instead
Speaker 2: they get a call on their radio and they say, hey,
Speaker 2: we have to go catch these drug smugglers and we
Speaker 2: don't have time to take you back to shore and
Speaker 2: put on these bulletproof vests. So we put on the vests.
Speaker 2: My heart's found it, so fast. The boat goes to
Speaker 2: this little island. It's like Miami Vice. You see these
Speaker 2: drug smugglers running. They caught the slowest one. He tells
Speaker 2: them where all the weed is. So the cops make
Speaker 2: me go to this boat and carry all the weed
Speaker 2: back to the boat and they give those guys those
Speaker 2: plastic ties around their wrists. They have like six drug smugglers.
Speaker 2: And we get on the boat with the drug smugglers
Speaker 2: who look at me like I'm stealing their weed, and
Speaker 2: they're like they want to kill me and the cops there.
Speaker 2: So we go back to the shore and we get
Speaker 2: out and I said, well, we're going to get going.
Speaker 2: I I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
Speaker 2: And I said, what are you guys going to do?
Speaker 2: And they said, this is the largest drug bust we've
Speaker 2: had in years in this area. We're going to have
Speaker 2: a party. And so we go to walk away and
Speaker 2: the cock goes stay by Bena key, which means Steve
Speaker 2: come here. And I said what he said, I want
Speaker 2: you to take some And this is back in like
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, right, maybe ninety four, I think, And
Speaker 2: he opens up a switchblade and he stabs one of
Speaker 2: the kilos of this Mexican dirt, and you can smell
Speaker 2: the skunk smell coming up through my nostrils, and he says,
Speaker 2: take some. So I'm trying to figure out what less
Speaker 2: than announces, and I stick my long, bony fingers in
Speaker 2: to grab the weed out, and as I do, he says,
Speaker 2: take the whole kilo jewel, digs her fingernails into my
Speaker 2: arm and goes, Steve, don't do it. You're gonna end
Speaker 2: up in jail. It's going to be like Midnight Express.
Speaker 2: I'll be talking to you from me on a glass wall.
Speaker 2: And then I just said, a man with the badge
Speaker 2: in Mexico is telling me to take the jewel, and
Speaker 2: they pulled their guns out, and I took the whole kilo,
Speaker 2: and they said, let's take a picture. So if you
Speaker 2: look and type in Jewel drug Bust photos, you'll see
Speaker 2: us and all this weed shoved into a black suburban.
Speaker 2: Behind us. We're holding Corona beers or some kind of beer,
Speaker 2: and we have guns in our hands, and the cops
Speaker 2: are next to us in Mexico. And these pictures I
Speaker 2: think made High Times magazine, and my parents were so proud.
Speaker 2: So we went back to the room after the drug bust,
Speaker 2: and I gave the kilo to this old woman who
Speaker 2: was making some spaghetti sauce for a Mormon youth group,
Speaker 2: and she poured the whole kilo into the spaghetti sauce
Speaker 2: fed the youth group. And I woke up at midnight
Speaker 2: and all these Mormon missionary kids were like playing frisbee
Speaker 2: and stuff. And I came back, got in bed with Jewel,
Speaker 2: woke up in the morning and I grabbed the guitar,
Speaker 2: and Jewel goes, do the thing where you make up
Speaker 2: a song, So I start doing the riff you were
Speaker 2: meant for me. Little do I know this song's gonna
Speaker 2: sell millions and millions of records, like ten million. Who
Speaker 2: knows set a record on the Billboard Top one on
Speaker 2: your chart. I have no idea I'm writing something that's
Speaker 2: gonna pay me the rest of my life. And so
Speaker 2: we write the song, but then we write a second
Speaker 2: song called food Stamp Love, and I go, this is
Speaker 2: the hit you were meant for me sucks. Food Stamp
Speaker 2: Love's cool, and the whole chorus was I'm sick of
Speaker 2: your Foodstamp Love about a lever who doles out food
Speaker 2: do you like, it's a government assistance program, and Jewel goes,
Speaker 2: I'll never forget jewels. She was like, I think you
Speaker 2: were meant for me as the hit, not Foodstamp Love.
Speaker 2: And we're driving back to get to San Diego, and
Speaker 2: you were meant for me flies out of the window.
Speaker 2: We didn't have iPhones back then. It was on like napkins.
Speaker 2: It was written and it flew out, and I go,
Speaker 2: it's okay, we got food Stamp Love and Jewel goes.
Speaker 4: You gotta go back and get you were meant for me.
Speaker 2: Those words were cool, please Si. We got in an argument.
Speaker 2: I made a U turn. I drove back. You were
Speaker 2: meant for me the winning lottery ticket that was on
Speaker 2: the freaking ground. And then we drove across the border
Speaker 2: and we go to a Mexican place called La Posta
Speaker 2: on University Avenue where drug dealers and prostitutes would hang
Speaker 2: out and it's the only place that was opened late
Speaker 2: at night, and you would get a bean and cheese
Speaker 2: burrito and six year old tacos with guacamole. Stick the
Speaker 2: Crispy World taco with the shredded beef inside, stick it
Speaker 2: in the bean burrito and then bite that for the crunchiness. Boh,
Speaker 2: it's sublime with the guacamole a on top of the
Speaker 2: six year old tacos for like a dollar ninety nine.
Speaker 2: So we're sitting out there, me and Jewel and there's
Speaker 2: four prostitutes and they say, what do you guys hippies?
Speaker 2: And we go yeah, and they said you sing songs
Speaker 2: and I go yeah. They go, sing us a song.
Speaker 2: I go, we just wrote a song called you Were
Speaker 2: Meant for Me. You want to hear it now if
Speaker 2: you look at Timespace Continuum. Nobody'd ever heard that song
Speaker 2: but me and Jewel and now four hookers. So we
Speaker 2: sing it for the four hookers. I go, tell us
Speaker 2: who should sing the song? So I sang it first,
Speaker 2: and then Jewel sang it, and then they clapped for
Speaker 2: both of us, and they said we're going to go
Speaker 2: over here and deliberate and we'll let you know. We'll
Speaker 2: come back tell you should sing it. And it was
Speaker 2: a quick verdict, which is never good. Off they came
Speaker 2: back and the lead prostitute, I said, have you reached
Speaker 2: a decision and she said yes, we have your honor,
Speaker 2: and I said, please let us know, and they looked
Speaker 2: at Jewel and they said, honey, you sing that that
Speaker 2: white boy can't sing. You do the song. And that's
Speaker 2: that was our an R department. And then Jewel ended
Speaker 2: up getting signed to Atlantic Records by the same guy
Speaker 2: you signed me, Danny Goldberg, because he was the Atlantic
Speaker 2: back then he was the president of the ACLU. He
Speaker 2: would switch things. He was married to Rosemary Carol, you know,
Speaker 2: who had been married to Jim Carroll, and Rosemary was
Speaker 2: Nirvana's lawyer. And so Jewel gets signed and everybody's going,
Speaker 2: you were met from me, this is the hit, and
Speaker 2: I was like, what about food stamp love?
Speaker 5: No like fuck you?
Speaker 4: That song means nothing, and I remember being really hurt.
Speaker 2: And then Neil Young came to see Jewel play at
Speaker 2: the Interchange, which was the scene she created because we
Speaker 2: found it and it would get so packed. Neil Young
Speaker 2: came all the way down at San Diego would record
Speaker 2: her outside of it, and then asked if we would
Speaker 2: come live at his ranch to make his record. So
Speaker 2: me and Jewel move up to Elliott Roberts Place that
Speaker 2: was on Neil Young's property because Elliott was going through
Speaker 2: a divorce and wasn't there, so we lived on Neil
Speaker 2: Young's Ranch and the Stray Gators were the band, and
Speaker 2: I got to beat the guitarist. The drummer was Kenneth Butchery,
Speaker 2: who was the drummer on Rainy Dame Women number twelve
Speaker 2: and thirty eight. I think that's the numbers from the
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan song.
Speaker 1: I never thirty five, but that's okay.
Speaker 2: Thirty five right, yeah, thank you? And so I remember
Speaker 2: I walked in, I saw Kenneth Buncher. I go, Kenneth Butchery,
Speaker 2: you're the guy that did that beat. Will you do it? Bob?
Speaker 2: This is one of my favorite moments in life. He
Speaker 2: looked at me and goes, young Man, Yes I will,
Speaker 2: and he went and I was in heaven. The bass
Speaker 2: player was Tim Drummond. He was so good. It was
Speaker 2: produced by the guy that was in Neil Young's band,
Speaker 2: Ben Keith, who also played pedal steel guitar on Patsy
Speaker 2: Klein's Crazy. We had the coolest band and I got
Speaker 2: to play guitar, so we did. You were meant for me.
Speaker 2: We lived at Neil Young's ranch and Ben Keith and
Speaker 2: Neil Young couldn't believe how much food I could eat
Speaker 2: because I'm so skinny, but I was always hungry from
Speaker 2: the Rugburns days. So Neil Young had his own personal
Speaker 2: chef who he called Cookie, and they would weigh me
Speaker 2: before breakfast and after breakfast because they said they'd never
Speaker 2: seen anybody eat so much. I was like a snake
Speaker 2: with apossum and his stomach, and so he would Neil
Speaker 2: Young would.
Speaker 4: Go, that was a four and a half pounder.
Speaker 2: So then we'd go into the studio and we recorded
Speaker 2: You Were Meant for Me, and Atlantic stuck with that record,
Speaker 2: and the version of You Were Me for Me didn't
Speaker 2: do a lot early, and they got it redone by
Speaker 2: some other guy who was a famous producer, Peter Collins
Speaker 2: or something. He redid it and they got Flee to
Speaker 2: play bass on it, and so they they did you
Speaker 2: Were Meant for Me again, and at first they had
Speaker 2: Sean Penn direct the video, and Sean Penn had stolen
Speaker 2: jewel from me and so he directed the video. So
Speaker 2: I was glad when the video failed because then they
Speaker 2: redid it and I was the guy in the video
Speaker 2: with jewel and I'm not wearing a shirt, and that
Speaker 2: version went really big and Flee played bass on it,
Speaker 2: and so it was pretty cool. Because I got to
Speaker 2: see Flee when we played Woodstock ninety nine and Fleega
Speaker 2: was about to go on stage naked, and I remember
Speaker 2: he didn't even have a sock over as Dick. And
Speaker 2: I remember talking to Flee and I had smoked some
Speaker 2: fog hat weed because Jewel bought fog hats sold tour bus,
Speaker 2: and I was so stoned, and I remember just looking
Speaker 2: at Flee's Dick and you should not be named Flee
Speaker 2: because that thing's big and he's a little guy, and
Speaker 2: he's jumping around on stage at Woodstock ninety nine is
Speaker 2: Dick's flopping around. And I remember before he went on,
Speaker 2: he was like, did you like the bass part? I
Speaker 2: laid on you were meant for Me? And when we
Speaker 2: played the riots calmed down. There was like all these
Speaker 2: limp biscuit dudes out there. Nobody was rioting because we
Speaker 2: were singing you were Meant for Me, and everybody was
Speaker 2: at peace at that moment, and Juel End had to
Speaker 2: set on who Will Save Your Soul? And Elvis Costello
Speaker 2: went on before us. He had warned us it was
Speaker 2: getting crazy, and then we got off stage, and then
Speaker 2: the Chili Peppers were the final band, and you could
Speaker 2: hear what.
Speaker 1: Give it to your mom?
Speaker 2: On fleas Dick's flapping around and people are setting porta
Speaker 2: potties on fire and everything. But when we played, I
Speaker 2: got to tell you, Bob, there was peace at Woodstock
Speaker 2: ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, Slower, did she already have to deal with Atlantic
Speaker 1: when you went to Neil Young's ranch? Or was it
Speaker 1: the work you did there that got you the deal?
Speaker 2: She already had the deal. She got the deal already.
Speaker 2: She got signed out of the interchange, and Tommy Mottola
Speaker 2: was coming down. He bought her a guitar from Sony Records.
Speaker 2: There was all these There was a bidding war, and
Speaker 2: I remember we met am at Erdigend. Then he had
Speaker 2: this cane and it was amazing to meet him. And
Speaker 2: then Danny won the bidding war. Jewel got signed and
Speaker 2: Neil Young had already heard of her, So Neil Young said,
Speaker 2: why don't you come open for me at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: I think it was like a couple of nights sold out.
Speaker 2: So he flies Jewel in to open for Neil Young
Speaker 2: at Madison Square Garden before her record's out. Nobody really
Speaker 2: knows who she is. And he comes backstage and he goes,
Speaker 2: how you doing, Jewel, She's not too good and Neil
Speaker 2: Young why not? And she goes come about to open
Speaker 2: for Neil Young at Madison Square Garden and it's sold out,
Speaker 2: and Neil Young goes, ah, it's just another hash house
Speaker 2: on the road to success. Show them no respect, which
Speaker 2: I think to this day is the best advice. And
Speaker 2: uh so, then the record Jewel goes out and she
Speaker 2: would open. I was with her. She would open for
Speaker 2: Peter Murphy and there'd be all these goth fans there
Speaker 2: and Jewel would come out barefoot and go, Hi, I
Speaker 2: just want you guys to know I believe in angels.
Speaker 2: And I would think I'd be standing side stage going,
Speaker 2: don't say that these are goth people. But to Jewel's credit,
Speaker 2: she was true to herself and it worked and she
Speaker 2: would win over these goth crowds. Then next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: the songs gets legs and it starts breaking all these records,
Speaker 2: and I am now checks were coming in and I
Speaker 2: was using my mom and dad's address and checks would
Speaker 2: be like one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and my
Speaker 2: dad would call me up and go, this must be
Speaker 2: a mistake. I'll put it in my account how much
Speaker 2: faith he in me?
Speaker 1: Just so I got it straight. Sean Penn stole Jewel,
Speaker 1: but then she came back to you.
Speaker 2: Well we did. We did that show in La I
Speaker 2: think it was the Leno Show, Jay Leno Show, and
Speaker 2: Jewel was opening for Liz Fair at the will Turn
Speaker 2: and so she would have me come out and we
Speaker 2: would play some songs and by the I still love Jewels.
Speaker 2: She's like one of my best friends. Like, that's the
Speaker 2: coolest thing. Is our relationship so fun? So we did
Speaker 2: the Jay Leno Show and that was I think Michael
Speaker 2: Caine was on it, and I remember I was backstage
Speaker 2: and I asked Michael Caine to make an outgoing message
Speaker 2: on my answering machine. We were getting our makeup and
Speaker 2: on the same time, and I had a flip phone,
Speaker 2: you know before we had iPhones, and I said, will
Speaker 2: you make my outgoing message of Michael King goes sure,
Speaker 2: and when it beats, he goes, hello, this is Michael Caine.
Speaker 2: Steve's nodding. They'll call you when he's recovered. It was
Speaker 2: so cool. Off the top of his said, So we
Speaker 2: do the show and then Sean Penn came to the
Speaker 2: Liz Fair Show and Liz Ferrer was playing I'm a
Speaker 2: huge fan of Liz Fair, Exile and Guieville and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. And then he invited us over to his
Speaker 2: trailer in Malibu because his house burnt down where he
Speaker 2: lived with Madonna, and so that house burnt down, and
Speaker 2: then I think he and Robin Wright had broken up
Speaker 2: or something. So he invited us to his trailer. And
Speaker 2: so we go to Sean Penn's trailer and Malibu overlooking
Speaker 2: the water, and I remember he had a broken nose
Speaker 2: and we were smoking weed. Jewel didn't smoke, she didn't drink.
Speaker 2: Me and Sean were smoking weed and he was playing
Speaker 2: me tapes that do you remember Dave Baerwald, David and David,
Speaker 2: that band.
Speaker 1: I know Dave Bearwald.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so Dave Barwald had given Sean these tapes
Speaker 2: he got from the CIA of bombings going on. Sean.
Speaker 2: I remember I was talking about everything. Sean knows a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff, like I love Sean Penn. But I
Speaker 2: remember I was so stoned and I went and took
Speaker 2: a piss and Sean was pissing next to me, and
Speaker 2: I remember I looked at his Dick for some reason
Speaker 2: because we were pissing side by side. I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: holy shit, he's gonna steal Jewel. I saw the future.
Speaker 2: I'm really good at seeing things. And I remember then
Speaker 2: she was in New York and I called her room
Speaker 2: and Sean Penn was in the room and answered the phone.
Speaker 2: I remember I go Sean and he goes Steve, and
Speaker 2: that was it. I was sad for a while. And
Speaker 2: then she flew to con Film Festival with Jack Nicholson
Speaker 2: and Sean Penn, but then they didn't last and then
Speaker 2: Jewel redid you were met from. Peter Collins was the producer,
Speaker 2: and redid it because they thought I could be a hit.
Speaker 2: And then Flee played bass on it and they kept
Speaker 2: my guitar part, and then Jewel asked me to be
Speaker 2: in the video, so I was like that. That was
Speaker 2: when MTV was huge. So I was the shirtless guy
Speaker 2: in the video and we were like the remote host
Speaker 2: of the MTV Music Awards. And me and Jewel lived
Speaker 2: in wind and Sea Beach and La Joya, and they
Speaker 2: had all these MTV crew there and they go, let's
Speaker 2: cut the Jewel Saint with Steve Poltz and La Joya
Speaker 2: and we would talk about the Music Awards, and that
Speaker 2: video was everywhere, and I was for a while known
Speaker 2: as the dude in the Jewel video and people would
Speaker 2: see me, go, that's the dude from the Jewel video.
Speaker 2: Like bikers and shit would come up and want me
Speaker 2: to sign their old ladies breasts and stuff. I was
Speaker 2: always scared it was gonna be the biker that was
Speaker 2: gonna kill me. I had slept with this old lady
Speaker 2: when he was at Sturgis. But uh, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: crazy all that stuff that happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, once, once Sean stole Jewel, it was never a romance.
Speaker 1: We knew and Jewel again.
Speaker 2: No, then we were just buddies. Actually got closer. We
Speaker 2: just got super close, you know, like at first you
Speaker 2: go through a heartbreak and I was really sad, and
Speaker 2: then I just thought, you know what, you get over it.
Speaker 2: And I love her so much and she's such a
Speaker 2: good friend of mine and she's so creative. To this day,
Speaker 2: we're just super close. So but Sean did steal her
Speaker 2: from me.
Speaker 1: I s okay, let's go back to you were meant
Speaker 1: for me. It sounds like you wrote it, but it's
Speaker 1: credited to you and Jewel.
Speaker 2: Oh no, we co wrote it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you co wrote it? Do you own fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the song?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I could have never written it without her, like
Speaker 2: I could have never written with it. I would have
Speaker 2: never said you were met from her.
Speaker 1: Okay, just just aligning the stories. Yeah, okay, So there's
Speaker 1: one hundred cents in the U in a dollar. Was
Speaker 1: your deal with publishing? Deal with her Cohen already over?
Speaker 1: How come he didn't get half the publishing?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he got money too. Yeah, herb got a
Speaker 2: lot of money, and Bob Duffy and Evan Cohen and
Speaker 2: Mutt Cohen. I don't even know how it works. I've
Speaker 2: never you know, I've never cared enough because I always
Speaker 2: had I was always making money. All I cared about
Speaker 2: was playing shows. So I was never the kind of
Speaker 2: guy who was nikelaing diming stuff. I mean, I probably
Speaker 2: had a bad deal because I signed it on the
Speaker 2: hood of a Cadillac outside Molly Malone's in la and
Speaker 2: I was like, you'll give me two thousand bucks cash
Speaker 2: right now if I signed half my publishing away, Because
Speaker 2: that was how those guys worked back in those days.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they probably owned part of it. I've never
Speaker 2: analyzed it.
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, is there still reasonable
Speaker 1: income from you where men for me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know what's weird? I still get checks. It's bizarre,
Speaker 2: like it's not huge, but it it makes me money.
Speaker 2: And it's pretty cool because it still comes in and
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for it to be used in some movie
Speaker 2: one day, like where Well Ferrell's naked singing it at
Speaker 2: karaoke or something.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to be your lawyer here, but
Speaker 1: there's rites of reversion, et cetera. You might be able
Speaker 1: to get the other half of the publishing back. Really,
Speaker 1: not that I'm giving Yeah, not that I'm giving you
Speaker 1: any legal advice. Check with your attorney. I'll leave it
Speaker 1: at that. Okay, So you're married to Sharon today. How
Speaker 1: many times you've been married?
Speaker 2: Once?
Speaker 1: So how did you meet Sharon?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 1: When did you meet Sharon?
Speaker 2: So? I met Sharon she had a hair salon in
Speaker 2: San Diego, and I went in to get my haircut,
Speaker 2: and we were both friends with a friend of mine
Speaker 2: who got murdered, Steve Boge, and so I had come
Speaker 2: out of rehab and we would do victims of violent
Speaker 2: crime benefit shows at the Caspo in San Diego and
Speaker 2: we would sing. My friend Steve was in a band
Speaker 2: called CLA that stood for Carnivorous Lunar Activity, and so
Speaker 2: we would sing all the Carnivorous Lunar Activities songs and
Speaker 2: I would learn all the parts that Steve wrote, and
Speaker 2: we had written a song called Hitchhiker Joe together, and
Speaker 2: so that was where I met Sharon because she played
Speaker 2: bass in the band, and so we started dating. And
Speaker 2: she has been really good for me because you know
Speaker 2: how that whole same behind every man, that whole thing,
Speaker 2: and she is organized. So see, I used to make
Speaker 2: money on the road and I would come off the
Speaker 2: road with Jewel, and I was making great money because
Speaker 2: I was opening every show as Rusted Route would go
Speaker 2: on first, I'd go on in the middle, and then Jewel.
Speaker 2: We'd play Red Rocks or The Gorge, and I was
Speaker 2: selling like if we played Royal Albert Hall in London
Speaker 2: a couple nights in a row, I would sell like
Speaker 2: three fifty four hundred CDs a night. Back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven of One Left Shoe this Mercury release, and
Speaker 2: Bob I had so much money. I would come home.
Speaker 2: I would shove it into suitcases. And I lived at
Speaker 2: the beach, would just leave my doors open. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: even put the money in the bank. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: So I would have like four hundred grand in my
Speaker 2: closet and old suitcases. I just shove it in there,
Speaker 2: come off the road. I lived in a shitty apartment
Speaker 2: and drove an old Ford truck. I never cared about money.
Speaker 2: I didn't need it. I just knew. I bought my
Speaker 2: clothes at thrift stores. I had my one guitar I needed,
Speaker 2: and I had an audience. That's what I cared about.
Speaker 2: So I didn't pay my taxes for like ten or
Speaker 2: eleven years. And the irs showed up at my apartment
Speaker 2: and they were outside the door, and I came walking up,
Speaker 2: and they go, does Steve Poltz live here? It was
Speaker 2: at wind and Sea Beach and La Joya, right across
Speaker 2: from the pump house that Tom Wolfe the pump House
Speaker 2: came about. And so I said, I don't know who
Speaker 2: you're talking about. I remember I ran as fast as
Speaker 2: I could down the beach and I got away. And
Speaker 2: then I called this guy who was the CFO of
Speaker 2: the San Diego Padres and he met me. He said,
Speaker 2: meet me at the tilted Kilt. And the tilt kilt
Speaker 2: is like a Hooters, but for girls that dress and
Speaker 2: plaid skirts and their boobs are pushed together. And so
Speaker 2: that was where the accountant wanted me to meet him,
Speaker 2: at the tilted kilt. I've never forgotten this, So Sharon
Speaker 2: put all my IRRs notices in a brown wrinkled paperbag.
Speaker 2: I'd never opened them, and I show up at the
Speaker 2: tilted Kilt with Bob Crozdill, the accountant who's still my accountant.
Speaker 2: And he opened up each one as he would eat
Speaker 2: some of his nachos with his other hand, and he
Speaker 2: opened him up and he looked and his face was
Speaker 2: kind of growing a little more pale with each one.
Speaker 2: And I remember finally when he was and I go,
Speaker 2: is it bad? Is it bad? Is it bad? And
Speaker 2: he looks at me and he put his hand on
Speaker 2: top of mine across the table, and he goes, I've
Speaker 2: seen worse. We're going to get through this together. And
Speaker 2: it made me feel so good. And then everybody said,
Speaker 2: you can make a deal with the irs. They'll make
Speaker 2: a deal. And the irs said, not only were it
Speaker 2: not going to make a deal with mister Poltz. He's
Speaker 2: lucky he's not going to jail for willful negligence to
Speaker 2: pay taxes. The next morning, I woke up and the
Speaker 2: night before I'd had four hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in my checking account like an idiot, like not even
Speaker 2: really earning interest, and it was gone, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: they're going to probably take my money, and I thought,
Speaker 2: if they take it, I want to kill myself. I
Speaker 2: want to take it out first and give it to
Speaker 2: my niece and nephew. But then once they took the
Speaker 2: money away, I remember going I felt a sense of
Speaker 2: peace because I paid off my debt to the irs,
Speaker 2: and it was almost as if somebody said, if you
Speaker 2: give us four hundred and fifty thousand dollar, you will
Speaker 2: have peace of mind. I'd say take it. I'd give
Speaker 2: you anything to have peace of mind. So then I
Speaker 2: just built it all up again, and I still had
Speaker 2: that money in my closet, and I slowly would put
Speaker 2: it into my account, nine nine hundred dollars at a
Speaker 2: time and get everything going again. I don't know why
Speaker 2: I wasn't putting it in the bank, because it wasn't
Speaker 2: like it was I was a drug dealer, so yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Well you brought this up, you said, Sharon. Agent organization
Speaker 1: sit you straight.
Speaker 2: So Sharon was like, you need to put your money
Speaker 2: in the bank, you need to put it in a
Speaker 2: Schwap account, you need to buy some property. And she's
Speaker 2: really really organized. She got my whole life in order.
Speaker 2: And I remember at the time, by then I'd gotten
Speaker 2: out of rehab. I got dropped from Mercury Universal Records,
Speaker 2: I got dropped from CIA. I didn't have an agent.
Speaker 2: I was booking myself. I was playing gigs. I went
Speaker 2: from flying private jets with Jewel to being in a
Speaker 2: Volkswagen van staying in trailer parks. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: I did this whole tour where I called it the
Speaker 2: where did it all Go Wrong? Tour. I would play
Speaker 2: like twenty three people in Iowa, and I would say
Speaker 2: to the audience, last night I found myself negotiating in
Speaker 2: a trailer park to get my costs down in my
Speaker 2: Volkswagen van from forty dollars a night to twenty eight
Speaker 2: dollars a night. And as I popped the top of
Speaker 2: my west Bali at Camper before I went to sleep,
Speaker 2: I said, where did it all go wrong? And that's
Speaker 2: what I named the tour, and I thought it was
Speaker 2: the funniest thing. So I got signed by this guy
Speaker 2: named Charles Dreby to be my manager. At the time,
Speaker 2: he was managing Blind Boys of Alabama, and it was
Speaker 2: He's still a friend of mine, he's an attorney. But
Speaker 2: it was the wrong mix because my first posters I
Speaker 2: sent out was me catching a rock in the air,
Speaker 2: opposing like I'm catching a rock, but it was blurred
Speaker 2: and I called it the Catch a Falling Turd Tour,
Speaker 2: and Charles Dreby got so mad. He was like, we
Speaker 2: poked the Blind Boys, but this is not how we
Speaker 2: want to be represented. And that was a three year
Speaker 2: management deal. I was so glad when it was over,
Speaker 2: and then I ended up getting finally got a booking
Speaker 2: agent again, and man, I'm still with him to this day.
Speaker 2: And I have the best manager, a nice Jewish boy
Speaker 2: named philine Son with seven S Management out of Denver.
Speaker 2: I love my manager, phil line Son, and I love
Speaker 2: my booking agent, Adam Bauer. He's with Madison House. He
Speaker 2: was with Fleming Artists and took me with him when
Speaker 2: he went to Madison house, and I say this to
Speaker 2: this day. I would not take any other agent. Anybody
Speaker 2: could come with me with any offer about anything, or
Speaker 2: another manager told me promised me in the world. I
Speaker 2: would not leave either of these guys because they took
Speaker 2: me in like a rescue dog. Adam Bauer saw something
Speaker 2: in me and has slowly built me up. I'll be
Speaker 2: playing Newport Folk Fest this year. I play all these
Speaker 2: great festivals. I tour everywhere, and I'm so loyal to
Speaker 2: that guy. I want him to make money and I
Speaker 2: want my manager, Phill to make money, like I would
Speaker 2: do anything for these guys. And we're the smallest team.
Speaker 2: Sharon books all the travel and we're Marriotts. We always
Speaker 2: stay Marriotts. Sharon has a sewed down We're special, like
Speaker 2: they have Titanium Platinum where this special top level called
Speaker 2: Ambassador Elite. And it's so funny because they have a
Speaker 2: special carpet you stand on when you stay at really
Speaker 2: nice places like we are here in Sydney, Australia at
Speaker 2: the Hyde Park And whenever I stand there, there's businessmen
Speaker 2: behind me and they always go, excuse me, sir, you're
Speaker 2: supposed to be over there, yes, And they go to
Speaker 2: the business time behind. I go, no, this is a
Speaker 2: line for me because the way I look, and they go,
Speaker 2: this is ambassador Elite. I go, yeah, I'm Ambassador Elite
Speaker 2: and they go, oh, I'm sorry, and they just look
Speaker 2: really weird, and I'm Ambassador Elite. I get upgrades to suites.
Speaker 2: And my manager always gets me the best deals of
Speaker 2: playing gigs, like gets my offers up and my booking
Speaker 2: agent does too. They work in tandem and we're just small,
Speaker 2: bare bones operation and we make a great living.
Speaker 1: Okay to sharing. Always go on the road with you.
Speaker 2: She's with me almost always, and she doesn't always come
Speaker 2: to the shows. She'll stand and we'll get somebody else
Speaker 2: to sell merch. But she gets up in the morning.
Speaker 2: She packs us. She's highly organized. Make sure we get
Speaker 2: to the airport on time. Make sure we're getting all
Speaker 2: our points for national executive car rental the best and
Speaker 2: getting good places to stay. If I do the Chaamo cruise,
Speaker 2: she gets us packed for that. Make sure my passports
Speaker 2: don't expire ab a Canadian passport in a United States passport. Everything,
Speaker 2: So she's the organized side of that. And Phil Einson
Speaker 2: with seven s, my manager. He looks at the bigger
Speaker 2: picture of things, and Adam is the booking agent, because
Speaker 2: you really need a good agent and you need a
Speaker 2: good manager. As you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you don't have any children, right.
Speaker 2: We have a son, Neil, who is twenty nine years old,
Speaker 2: but he's from her prior husband.
Speaker 1: How do you end up moving to Nashville?
Speaker 2: So I left San Diego eight years ago. Sharon wanted
Speaker 2: to move. She sold her hair salon, and she thought
Speaker 2: we should go to Nashville because she saw everybody living
Speaker 2: there and every time we play festivals, people would be there.
Speaker 2: So we moved to Nashville and bought a house. I
Speaker 2: never wanted to own a house, and Sharon said, you
Speaker 2: really need to own a house, and she's always owned
Speaker 2: real estate. So we bought a house together eight years ago,
Speaker 2: which was the best move ever. Like, Sharon has been
Speaker 2: so good for me. Now I'm a homeowner. My money
Speaker 2: is in a Charles Schwab account and I could retire,
Speaker 2: and so she said, you need to be in Nashville.
Speaker 2: So that's how I ended up writing songs with like
Speaker 2: Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle and Oliver Wood. Everywhere I
Speaker 2: go at Sierra Hall, there's all these friends of mine
Speaker 2: that are songwriters, and just being in that area, crumbs
Speaker 2: will fall on your plate just from being there. It's
Speaker 2: just it's such a great vibrant city to live in.
Speaker 2: I'd always been in San Diego and said to come
Speaker 2: to Nashville's I think the only place I would live
Speaker 2: other than Nashville would be Los Angeles, and that might
Speaker 2: be our next move because I miss California so much.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your heart attack.
Speaker 2: Well, I had a stroke, is what it was. Right
Speaker 2: about nine years ago. I was on stage at World
Speaker 2: Cafe Live in Wilmington, Delaware, and I went blind in
Speaker 2: the middle of my show, and I thought they had
Speaker 2: turned the lights out, but it was I couldn't see,
Speaker 2: and I didn't tell the audience because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to upset them. But I was singing the same verse
Speaker 2: over and over to an old Rugburn song called single Life.
Speaker 2: So I played single Life over and over and over,
Speaker 2: and then people were looking at me like this guy's
Speaker 2: I don't know what's happened to him. They thought I
Speaker 2: was taking the piss out of him, and the way
Speaker 2: Andy Kaufman might like, just to see how long I
Speaker 2: could keep a bit going. But it wasn't that, And
Speaker 2: so I got rushed to the hospital and if you
Speaker 2: ever want to get to the front of the line,
Speaker 2: tell them you've gone blind. And it's like a curtain
Speaker 2: coming down. They fast track you ahead of the guy
Speaker 2: with the ice pick in the side of his head
Speaker 2: and everybody else. And so they did these tests, and
Speaker 2: I've never forgot the lady. She was from India, doctor Mody,
Speaker 2: I think was her name, and she said, mister Poltz,
Speaker 2: you've had a stroke. You're going into the stroke woard.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't see and then my vision came back,
Speaker 2: and when it came back, I couldn't read, like the
Speaker 2: letters didn't make sense to me. And it took a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks and then everything started getting back in order.
Speaker 2: But I didn't want to drive for a few months.
Speaker 2: And I remember Sharon was like, you're going to drive again,
Speaker 2: and she pulled the car over and made me drive,
Speaker 2: kickstarted me. And I recuperated from that stroke and went
Speaker 2: back out on the road. And they don't know why
Speaker 2: it happened, because I'm pretty healthy, but things happened.
Speaker 1: And no after effects whatsoever.
Speaker 2: No, I've been really lucky, really lucky. I hope. You
Speaker 2: know that. Doctor told me he didn't know why it happened,
Speaker 2: but he said, the next time it does, it'll probably
Speaker 2: kill you. I remember because the other night I was
Speaker 2: on tour and I was in the United States, and
Speaker 2: I did fifteen shows with a good friend of mine
Speaker 2: named Paul Thorne. Do you know Paul.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know him personally, but I've seen him.
Speaker 1: I know who he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he's a He was a boxer and he
Speaker 2: lives in tup Blow, Mississippi, and he fought roberted around.
Speaker 2: We did a tour. It's really fun today because if
Speaker 2: you're a solo artist, you can do tours with people
Speaker 2: where you're on stage and trade songs. We discovered each
Speaker 2: other on Komo Cruise. We played in the theater and
Speaker 2: we realized we had a good vibe together because I'm
Speaker 2: kind of so cal and he's really Southern Mississippi kind
Speaker 2: of guy. And so we were on stage together and
Speaker 2: playing all these shows. And I just finished that tour
Speaker 2: and then came to Australia and I thought I was
Speaker 2: having a heart attack on that last tour and I
Speaker 2: missed a show because I had chest pains and it
Speaker 2: freaked me out, and I never I'm not a hypochondriac,
Speaker 2: Like I never go to the doctor. I should. I
Speaker 2: read your letter and you're always telling us we need
Speaker 2: to go to the doctor. I do get my teeth
Speaker 2: cleaned every three months. I and your letter is making
Speaker 2: me go I need to And I love it when
Speaker 2: you say that in your letter. It's really important. And
Speaker 2: so I was on stage and I got chess pains
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what it was and I didn't
Speaker 2: tell Paul, and I went to the room that night
Speaker 2: and it got worse than at two am, googling chest
Speaker 2: pains and a nausea, and it said, immediately call an ambulance.
Speaker 2: But I had a showing at the Vogel and Red Bank,
Speaker 2: New Jersey the next day. My buddy Mojo Nixon had
Speaker 2: just died of a heart attack. So I thought, I
Speaker 2: wonder if I'm having a heart attack Mojo just died,
Speaker 2: And instead I called an Uber like an idiot, and
Speaker 2: I'd got this uber and that uber driver was from Iraq.
Speaker 2: He was from Baghdad, and as we were driving there,
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm gonna die in the uber because it
Speaker 2: got worse than chest pains. This was just two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: And my last thing I said to the uber driver
Speaker 2: was I'm sorry we bombed you guys. I was apologizing,
Speaker 2: and then we pull up to the emergency room. He goes,
Speaker 2: are you sick? And I didn't want to upset them,
Speaker 2: so I said no, I'm just visiting someone here, and
Speaker 2: so I got out and they fast tracked me because
Speaker 2: I told him I was having chest pains, and they said,
Speaker 2: do you have heart disease in your family? And I
Speaker 2: said no, and then he goes, you don't have any
Speaker 2: and I said no, And I said, well, my mom
Speaker 2: had a heart attack, and he said, well that's heart disease.
Speaker 2: And he goes how old was she when she had
Speaker 2: I go sixty four. He goes how old are you?
Speaker 2: I go sixty four, and then he goes, is your
Speaker 2: mom still allowed to go No, she died of heart
Speaker 2: failure at the age of eighty eight. He goes, anybody
Speaker 2: else in your family?
Speaker 3: I go no.
Speaker 2: I go oh.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 2: Her younger brother died of a massive heart attack at
Speaker 2: forty four, and then Uncle Louis died as well of
Speaker 2: heart failure, and so didn't at her sister, aunt Sylvia,
Speaker 2: and the guy's like what part of heart disease in
Speaker 2: your family? Don't you understand? So they did the treadmill
Speaker 2: stress test on me, and he goes, I can't get
Speaker 2: your heart beat up. Even if you're in great shape.
Speaker 2: Your recovery time's great. They did the photos. He goes,
Speaker 2: you have a really healthy heart. What do you do?
Speaker 2: And I said, I dance around on stage every night
Speaker 2: because I don't sit. I'm running around stage. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: your heart looks good. What did you eat for dinner?
Speaker 2: And I said, I don't like to read the menu
Speaker 2: because I have add and I just like, I don't
Speaker 2: like to think about it. I'm in a hurry, so
Speaker 2: I just let the waitress decide for me, and she
Speaker 2: suggested it She's burger with deep bread pickles and hot sauce.
Speaker 2: He said, have you ever had heartburn before? And I
Speaker 2: said no. Back once I ate four bites of that
Speaker 2: deep bread pickles, it really affected me, and he said
Speaker 2: it mimics a heart attack. And I had chest pains
Speaker 2: for like four days after that, but now I feel great.
Speaker 2: So I'm back up and hat.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, here's my warning if you have heart
Speaker 1: disease in your family. There's a million other tests they
Speaker 1: need to do besides treadmill tests itself is not that accurate,
Speaker 1: but usually it's false positives. Do not think that you
Speaker 1: get a path. You have to get the carotid artery scan.
Speaker 1: You gotta get all the stuff because listen, I have
Speaker 1: one of my close friends, his father died of a
Speaker 1: heart attack at sixty seven, said, oh yeah, I went
Speaker 1: to the regular doctor. He fell over with a heart
Speaker 1: attack at sixty seven. Oh yeah, I was totally healthy.
Speaker 1: And then that's it. I mean, I see this special
Speaker 1: heart doctor, which I would recommend to you because with
Speaker 1: that amount of heart disease in your family. You know,
Speaker 1: the guy in the er, you know, it's good that
Speaker 1: he you know, don't take that as a complete pass,
Speaker 1: even though your symptoms may have been because of the
Speaker 1: deep right pickle. It's like you have no idea what's
Speaker 1: going on. Everybody thinks they're cool, and it just like
Speaker 1: Russ never sleeps, Calcium never sleeps. But changing subjects completely.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the dearly departed Mojo Nixon, you know, he
Speaker 1: had somewhat of a record career and then he had
Speaker 1: a giant career as a personality. He was on outlaw country,
Speaker 1: on serious XM. You have a lot of personality, You
Speaker 1: tell a great story. Have people ever offered you similar opportunities?
Speaker 2: People keep telling me to start a podcast, write a book,
Speaker 2: and I'll see what happens. You know, you never know.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm actually talking about something different. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: you're sitting there and reading a book. Whatever, Jered you
Speaker 1: have to get an email out of the blue. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm aware of you. You'd be good for me on
Speaker 1: X on the radio, on TV. God knows what. That
Speaker 1: never happened to you. No, well, I'm surprised. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to put too much faith in the
Speaker 1: uh you know, and the people who might make decisions.
Speaker 1: But you're certainly a man of a lot of personality,
Speaker 1: riveting stories, and a unique outlook. And Steve, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for taking this time to
Speaker 1: speak with me and my audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Bob. I'm a huge fan of yours, so
Speaker 2: it's a pleasure to be on your show.
Speaker 1: And it's always great to see you in mine in
Speaker 1: the box. Till next time. This is Bob left sets
Speaker 1: sh