Speaker 1: Well, I got the episode six of the Bobby Cast,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, And it's our studio guest, Charles Eston,
Speaker 1: musician and actor and all around happy guy. Let's welcome
Speaker 1: him in with our two people clapping. Thank you for
Speaker 1: that matter. By the way, I don't you know after
Speaker 1: about I guess about nine months ago, I don't call
Speaker 1: you Charles anymore. I call you Chip. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: what everybody calls me. I mean when it maybe to
Speaker 1: watch twos line, it was always Chip, and on the
Speaker 1: show they said they chipped this, Chip that, and in
Speaker 1: fact they used that on the screen. But every other
Speaker 1: time you ever see me, my credit is Charles. But
Speaker 1: everybody's calling me Chip. People think I somehow moved to
Speaker 1: Nashville and I'm Charles. Now. It was never that. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: This is Mike. By the way, a producer, Hey Mike,
Speaker 1: I'm Charles called me Charles. Sorry. You had to walk
Speaker 1: through the war zone to get here. The flood has
Speaker 1: caused this place to be a disaster. No, it was.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting. It was like back at this alley,
Speaker 1: up through there and downstair. That felt very magical. When
Speaker 1: I finally arrived at it's like you've walked through the
Speaker 1: d dark woods then finally it opens. So let's start
Speaker 1: with today, and I want to make a full circle
Speaker 1: back all the way around to today. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: start with today because now I think it's interesting what
Speaker 1: you're doing. And so you're doing something now every single Friday,
Speaker 1: which means you put out a song every single Friday.
Speaker 1: It's like a single every single Friday. Now, So so
Speaker 1: talk about that for a second. So you decided why
Speaker 1: did you want to do this? Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: get to be on the show and I get to
Speaker 1: play a singer song, right exactly. Yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: brought me here. But I was a singer songwriter long
Speaker 1: before I ever came here, long before I was an
Speaker 1: actor either. And um, I just certainly the show gets
Speaker 1: to where you can meet a whole lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I've been able to write with a lot of
Speaker 1: people and performing a whole lot of people. Some of
Speaker 1: these last four years, I've been not only writing music
Speaker 1: but actually recording it and ended up with a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of music that when I would go out to
Speaker 1: play shows, I would play a show fucus songs that
Speaker 1: nobody had ever heard and then when I was done,
Speaker 1: nobody could even go buy it, or if they liked
Speaker 1: it they had there was nothing they could really do.
Speaker 1: And so I always meant to put out an EP
Speaker 1: or an album, because you know, that's what you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do. And finally I just I don't know what
Speaker 1: was holding me up. It was the very fact that
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing that. It was telling me something was
Speaker 1: wrong with that, that was rubbing against me and the
Speaker 1: wrong way. Certainly, some of it is is that it's
Speaker 1: not like there were all these labels, you know, O
Speaker 1: Line and dynam me or calling me or anything like that,
Speaker 1: just that that's just the nature of it. I have
Speaker 1: this following in these people that love the show Nashville
Speaker 1: and love and come see my shows, um, but I
Speaker 1: didn't have that, and so it was like, well, am
Speaker 1: I gonna do this? And I don't know what made
Speaker 1: me think of it, but when I finally did, it
Speaker 1: was just like an aha moment of Yeah, the only
Speaker 1: reason I wouldn't do this is because nobody does it.
Speaker 1: And that's not a good enough reason because what I
Speaker 1: really really want is all these songs that I really
Speaker 1: love and I love getting to go play. I just
Speaker 1: want them out there. I mean, if anything comes of it,
Speaker 1: that would be fantastic, but I'm not really chasing that
Speaker 1: per se. I want to say fantastic. I mean it
Speaker 1: would be unbelievably fantastic because I just wanted to get hurt.
Speaker 1: And for now, I know very well what the mistakes
Speaker 1: are about this. I know how you're stepping on your
Speaker 1: own single every single week and how long it takes
Speaker 1: for one to go. But this is really just inspiring
Speaker 1: for me. It makes me want to write, It makes
Speaker 1: me want to record. If I can do this for
Speaker 1: a while, if I could do it in some insane
Speaker 1: way for a year and somehow a song every week
Speaker 1: for a year, if I could, I'm not Look, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna go, oh I need a song. Oh this
Speaker 1: one sucks, but I need one. I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might think it sucks, but I'll never
Speaker 1: put out one that I think sucks. They're always going
Speaker 1: to mean something to me. And that's the other thing
Speaker 1: is that I'm all over the map. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the album would be everybody. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be cohesive. There's no A and R department or no
Speaker 1: label saying this is the album and this song gets
Speaker 1: off it, and this song gets on it. I also
Speaker 1: don't think the albums are going to be a thing
Speaker 1: right in five years, Like they're not going to be
Speaker 1: a thing because nobody cares. Right frankly, nobody cares about
Speaker 1: records and people do buy them because they have artists.
Speaker 1: And but you're saying, for example, Florida, Georgia Lina put
Speaker 1: out a record this week and I think it was
Speaker 1: number two Barbara Streis and beat it crazily like I
Speaker 1: was less. If people don't understand how big Barbara Streis
Speaker 1: it is and was and has sold over the years.
Speaker 1: So she's number one, their number two. Brittany's right there too.
Speaker 1: This album was like sixty thou less than the last album.
Speaker 1: And it's not because this album isn't any bigger or
Speaker 1: there any smaller. It's because people are consuming it the
Speaker 1: same way they're not buying whole products anymore. We want
Speaker 1: the songs, one to three songs, maybe because we're not
Speaker 1: looking for the whole album anymore. You know, go make
Speaker 1: when when when I was growing up, it was always
Speaker 1: mixed tapes. I mean, yeah, they had albums and we
Speaker 1: all had the albums, but then you would take your
Speaker 1: albums and you would make mix tapes with the exact
Speaker 1: songs you wanted on it, or even if it was
Speaker 1: the one artist. So I'm like, here's all these singles,
Speaker 1: go make your own albums out of my single I
Speaker 1: did on the radio, like I would hit a core
Speaker 1: pause play and then tone loqual come on and I
Speaker 1: would hit un paused and then record funky called Medina,
Speaker 1: and then I'll wait for that to go off, and
Speaker 1: then I would do I Touch Myself by the Divinyls
Speaker 1: and I would do that, and then I would do
Speaker 1: President and as I have there is the actual cassette tape.
Speaker 1: I bet you still have those tapes to I do.
Speaker 1: I just put them all on a playlist, now do it.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play this is uh, this town is ours.
Speaker 1: Tell me about this song here? Well, this is actually
Speaker 1: a song I wrote with Chris Farren and Matthew West.
Speaker 1: Just wanted a song that says I like songs when
Speaker 1: when you go play live, you probably notice yourself. When
Speaker 1: you play live, it makes you realize what you're set needs,
Speaker 1: what your show needs, um in, whether there's I need
Speaker 1: something tempo here I I just wanted a song to
Speaker 1: step out on stage and say we're here, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the first lines really speak to me. It's
Speaker 1: it's been a long time coming. It's been a hard
Speaker 1: road running. Now all that's done and all we want
Speaker 1: to do is play. Is it less that people searching
Speaker 1: as Charles or Chip It's that's that's a very good point.
Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't given me a long time. IM gonna
Speaker 1: go it's all under Charles because wherever, wherever it's written,
Speaker 1: it's Charles. But if they if they, if they search
Speaker 1: chip est and I believe they do find it. Here
Speaker 1: we go. This town is ours. I'm gonna give me
Speaker 1: some of this night. Who everybody right left the good town?
Speaker 1: You said so tonight We're gonna go and tell it's
Speaker 1: gone night, no doubt about it. You're friending in stuff.
Speaker 1: This town is so that's been part of every single Friday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the most recent single. And um, I tell you,
Speaker 1: even listening to you play, even listening to you play
Speaker 1: my single is a whole different ball game than hearing
Speaker 1: you play something that Deacon sings on the area. That's
Speaker 1: me performing it. But I think this is getting to
Speaker 1: the real root of it as I was hearing that,
Speaker 1: because you're like, well, that's that's my baby, that's my child.
Speaker 1: Some people are gonna like it. Some people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: like it. And by the way, the cool thing about
Speaker 1: is if you didn't like that, guess what in like
Speaker 1: three more days, there's another saying, So don't sweat it.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing about it is is that, um,
Speaker 1: even just having it out there UM is thrilling. I've
Speaker 1: been an actor for twenty five years, so that means
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, I go around, uh, saying what
Speaker 1: other people tell me to say, saying it in a
Speaker 1: way another guy or directs me to say it. Somebody
Speaker 1: else edits. It's produces that they dressed me. They want
Speaker 1: to address me. I realized that it was tricky when
Speaker 1: coming here is like who am I? What do I
Speaker 1: have to say? What is? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And that's what music does, is you're trying to speak
Speaker 1: from your heart. So I think I'm pinballing around to
Speaker 1: anything that comes through me right now. And I think
Speaker 1: after doing a whole bunch of this, I bet you
Speaker 1: that I know a whole lot more who I am
Speaker 1: and where my strengths are and what people are drawn
Speaker 1: to the most, and then maybe uh, you know, at
Speaker 1: some point it's I'll click into that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But right now told me so. I can say from
Speaker 1: experience that listen, Chips are really nice. Guy like he
Speaker 1: he's one of the few guys that he is as
Speaker 1: nice as he seems. We were walking through the airport
Speaker 1: and we've been together on a few occasions doing different things.
Speaker 1: And when people call you Deacon, that's just hey, it's
Speaker 1: great to see you. Thank you for It's weird that
Speaker 1: people have like hey, Deacon, and you're like, that's that's me.
Speaker 1: How are you? Let's take a picture. And I was like, man,
Speaker 1: like a little bit, are you? Like? Man? I wish
Speaker 1: they would call me Chip. I wish they would know
Speaker 1: me as my How does that work in your brain?
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is I don't it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me hearing you say that, because it doesn't even occur
Speaker 1: to me that I wish they called me Chip or
Speaker 1: they called me Charles. I don't care. It brought them joy,
Speaker 1: it brought them a connection. There's something about that character
Speaker 1: that means something to them. Maybe they share they watch
Speaker 1: it with their mom every week, or maybe they share
Speaker 1: that you know, Um, there's something about the music. So
Speaker 1: the like I said, maybe it said I've been doing
Speaker 1: this a long time. So there were people that knew
Speaker 1: me as Chip when I did whose line, and then
Speaker 1: there were people for a long time they just didn't
Speaker 1: know me. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get
Speaker 1: in their face about how they know me. I just
Speaker 1: you know, and it's all pure low. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: when you're walking down Broadway a little too late at night,
Speaker 1: you'll get a whole lot of teak And that's all right.
Speaker 1: That's that's why, that's why we have season five, Bobby.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna look that in the face and go,
Speaker 1: come on, man, my name is Charles. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about that for a second, because I want to go
Speaker 1: full circle and come back to the music. So Nashville
Speaker 1: is about to take season five, and it got pulled
Speaker 1: from ABC and CMT and Hulu. I believe we're doing
Speaker 1: it altogether now with it. Is that right? That's right
Speaker 1: the first time on CMT and then Hulu has it
Speaker 1: the very next day, I believe. So was there a
Speaker 1: bit of time where you were really like Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's gonna get picked up, Like maybe
Speaker 1: I have to go and search for another job. Was
Speaker 1: that to you nerve racking because you had set your
Speaker 1: roots down here with your family. Yeah. And you, you know,
Speaker 1: you were kind enough you had me on in that
Speaker 1: in that interim gap where we were between um, what
Speaker 1: we had lost and what we might find, what we
Speaker 1: were sort of hoping to find. But again, I think
Speaker 1: this goes back to how long I've been doing it
Speaker 1: and how old I am, and how and maybe it's
Speaker 1: just my basic faith has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: it as well. Before I got Nashville, I've been doing
Speaker 1: it all for a long time. And I remember having
Speaker 1: a meeting with my agent and I said, here's my
Speaker 1: problem with me as an actor. Um as I'm content.
Speaker 1: I'm too content. I have this unbelievable family that I
Speaker 1: just love being around. I get to do these good
Speaker 1: arcs on great shows, like whether it was The Office
Speaker 1: or Big Love or Enlightened, and you know, just on
Speaker 1: and on. I've been able to do these things that
Speaker 1: where I was never the star, and I was I
Speaker 1: never really stepped above radar, but I was always that
Speaker 1: guy that people sort of knew, and so I literally
Speaker 1: said to him, my problems is that your problem with
Speaker 1: me is that I'm content. I said, anything else more
Speaker 1: than I have right now would be gravy. And I
Speaker 1: literally said this, and I said, but don't me wrong.
Speaker 1: I love gravy. Gravy is amazing, because I said, And
Speaker 1: it was weird because once I said that, it was
Speaker 1: it was literally speaking it out and sort of letting
Speaker 1: go of the desperation to be that other thing. And
Speaker 1: I had a long time to let go. Sure, when
Speaker 1: I started out, I was gonna be you know, my
Speaker 1: wife worked with Kevin Costner, and I remember sitting across
Speaker 1: from Kevin and hanging out with him, and he could
Speaker 1: not have been kinder. But in my mind I was
Speaker 1: young enough to go, yeah, I could be this. I
Speaker 1: got this, I could be the next that. And you know,
Speaker 1: after a long time ago or not. And you understood
Speaker 1: first of all that very few people are that and
Speaker 1: are that anymore, and the way we are, they don't
Speaker 1: have that. But what I'm getting back to is, so
Speaker 1: when I got Nashville, that was that was you know,
Speaker 1: that's southern gravy. That was everything I ever literally everything
Speaker 1: I ever wanted in the show because it put together
Speaker 1: the music, the writing, the guitar, acting with people like
Speaker 1: Connie Britton and Hayden and just these unbelievable actors. Written
Speaker 1: by Callie Curry t Bone Burnett. Literally, my wife used
Speaker 1: to say, if you wrote down everything you ever wanted
Speaker 1: on the show, you would have missed of this, And
Speaker 1: she's right. So I get to do four seasons of it.
Speaker 1: Then when it goes away, I don't slip right back
Speaker 1: to desperation. Honestly, the first thing I said to was gratitude.
Speaker 1: And I know it's probably a little boring, and you
Speaker 1: want you want, like, oh my god. I went to
Speaker 1: gratitude first because there was no nothing I did out
Speaker 1: of desperation that got me Nashville. It was probably relaxing
Speaker 1: into it that got me Nashville. So I thought, man,
Speaker 1: And now the other thing I thought was that's a shame.
Speaker 1: It's a real shame, because I knew we had new
Speaker 1: writers coming in and I thought we had places to go,
Speaker 1: and I thought we had more songs to do. And
Speaker 1: then the very next thing that happened, the very next breath,
Speaker 1: almost the same breath, is that the Nashville fans started
Speaker 1: being heard and then it was even more gratitude. It's like, damn,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man. It's one thing to lose your
Speaker 1: show and nobody says a word and it just sort
Speaker 1: of goes away. It's another thing to lose your show.
Speaker 1: And there's this outcry and people are really upset and
Speaker 1: really organizing. I mean that's the other thing. You know,
Speaker 1: how fan is now they're not just into you. Their savvy,
Speaker 1: they know that they don't know social media. They know
Speaker 1: getting organized as signed petitions and things. And still if
Speaker 1: nothing had ever come with that, that's a have of
Speaker 1: way to go out with people that love your show
Speaker 1: and your character going nuts. Um. And then there were
Speaker 1: people on the show that I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting picked up and by somebody. And I was
Speaker 1: never that guy, but when it happened, I was like,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, that's really awesome. How did you get the role?
Speaker 1: And were you ever in? It was at a spot
Speaker 1: where you're sitting because I was reading an article by
Speaker 1: John Krasinski and he's talking about he went to New
Speaker 1: York and he was trying to make it forever and
Speaker 1: he didn't make it at g Q, but did this
Speaker 1: great article about how he spent three or four years
Speaker 1: out there, and he told his mom, hamm moving back,
Speaker 1: and she's like, wait a few more months, and he
Speaker 1: said he walked into this room and there were like
Speaker 1: eleven guys that looked exactly like him trying for the
Speaker 1: role of Jim Halpert for the Office. And he was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way, and he said as as his time
Speaker 1: came up, they all went to lunch. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is weird. So he sits there through lunch. They
Speaker 1: come back. One of the guys sits down and he goes, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the show? And he goes, well,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I just don't want to
Speaker 1: see an American version of the greatest show of all
Speaker 1: time run that show. And the guy to being like,
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels or whoever the producer or the Greg Daniels,
Speaker 1: give me Jeff Daniels. Yeah, so Greg dani it was
Speaker 1: Greg Daniels. He was like, I like your honesty. They
Speaker 1: auditioned and he got the role right before he quit,
Speaker 1: and so for me, I'm thinking, man, that's how that's
Speaker 1: how these guys are auditioning. Can you talk about how
Speaker 1: you auditioned or they came to you for the role
Speaker 1: of Deacon. Sure. First of all, By the way, do
Speaker 1: you ever go to YouTube and watch auditions? I do
Speaker 1: sometimes watched, Yes, I have so fully and completely Jim
Speaker 1: immediately and you get to see the other guys do
Speaker 1: it too, and they're they're all fantastic. And that's my
Speaker 1: nightmares that my bad auditions are somewhere up there out there.
Speaker 1: But um, they're also great. But he's just so utterly Jim.
Speaker 1: I don't know when I started out. I guess it
Speaker 1: was the fact I didn't have a plan. B Um,
Speaker 1: there's nothing else, um that I thought I'd be great at.
Speaker 1: So I told you before. I had a desk job
Speaker 1: and the the my boss utterally found me more than
Speaker 1: twice with my face on the desk and slaw, what
Speaker 1: did you do? Oh, honestly, I sold. I sold advertising
Speaker 1: supplies for real estate companies, so like Coldwell Banker, fly
Speaker 1: Swatters and E. R A. Shoe Wrens and Century. No. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember the guy told me that got
Speaker 1: me the job. I needed something to support me while
Speaker 1: I was first in l A and he said, this
Speaker 1: is after. I want a game show. By the way,
Speaker 1: I want a game show that that got me to
Speaker 1: be able to be there for a year. But then
Speaker 1: I need to get an actual job and so um,
Speaker 1: he said, oh, you gotta don't tell this guy you're
Speaker 1: an actor. He wants somebody's really a salesman that wants
Speaker 1: to So I had to go to act. I had
Speaker 1: to act like I really wanted to sell you know,
Speaker 1: your a key chains for for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And this I found my career. Um and and then
Speaker 1: it was about eight months later that I got my
Speaker 1: first talking bit on TV and I was gonna have
Speaker 1: to quit and go do this this show. And that
Speaker 1: was when I got my first taste of people just
Speaker 1: love TV man. Because that boss, I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: real sorry I wasn't honest and upfront and I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie again because it felt gross. I didn't like.
Speaker 1: I was like, um, I should have told you I'm
Speaker 1: an actor, and um, I'm gonna After he was like,
Speaker 1: you're good about TV, Like he could he could have
Speaker 1: cared less that I was quitting. I was a lousy
Speaker 1: employee anyway, but he was a thrilled I was gonna
Speaker 1: be on TV. So anyway, Um, what show was that
Speaker 1: that was a thing a long time ago on a
Speaker 1: little cable channel called it was it was Nickelodeon, so
Speaker 1: it was nick at Night and that was called on
Speaker 1: the television, which was sort of like a Ciskel and
Speaker 1: Ebert spoof, except it was TV shows that they would, uh,
Speaker 1: they would make a little mock TV show like My
Speaker 1: five Dads instead of my two dads. And and I
Speaker 1: just had a few roles, a little small roles on it,
Speaker 1: and I got to write a little bit on it.
Speaker 1: It was it was the first thing. But um, I'd
Speaker 1: bring it back to the Nashville. So that so I
Speaker 1: was saying that, um, that's uh. I had been doing
Speaker 1: it for so long that I was always the guy
Speaker 1: I knew. I remember, I was gonna said there was
Speaker 1: nothing else that I was to do. I figured it
Speaker 1: was gonna take six years. I don't know where I
Speaker 1: got that number, but I also knew that I just
Speaker 1: keep doing it as long as I can do it. Um.
Speaker 1: So six turned into more and turned into more, and
Speaker 1: then I was always working. But there was always sort
Speaker 1: of a I don't know, we're definitely have a thing
Speaker 1: where I like to be liked, and when you're an actor,
Speaker 1: that can be able to brutal because it means you're
Speaker 1: always trying to be the good boy. And I can
Speaker 1: remember once it occurred to me that do you know
Speaker 1: that you take a shower and brush your hair and
Speaker 1: get brand new clothes on for every single audition, and
Speaker 1: like I'm going on a job interview. You know, even
Speaker 1: if it was I could probably go playing a homeless
Speaker 1: guy that had been in the streets for three weeks
Speaker 1: and I'd go take a shower and brush my teeth
Speaker 1: and get a hair cut. And I was just always
Speaker 1: trying to be the best guy. And there's so little
Speaker 1: in acting that you can actually take care of that.
Speaker 1: I was trying to take care of every variable I
Speaker 1: could um And it was it wasn't long before this,
Speaker 1: as I just told you that other story, that I
Speaker 1: sort of relaxed into it, like just quit trying so
Speaker 1: much quick caaren so much. And and I think that
Speaker 1: was really important for a like Deacon, because there's nothing
Speaker 1: needy and hepped up about Deacon. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: very very chill guy that's seen it all, been there,
Speaker 1: done it. I don't think I could have gotten the
Speaker 1: role even three years earlier. I wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to sit back it in it in the same way.
Speaker 1: Were you the guy that had in mind originally or
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of guys that you had. Nobody
Speaker 1: had me in mind originally. It was Thank goodness, it was.
Speaker 1: Calie Curry was casting with R. J. Cutler was the
Speaker 1: other producer, and very strangely, Um, Jennie Backrack was the
Speaker 1: casting director. Jennie backracks husband is one of my best
Speaker 1: friends in the world, David Burke. David and I went
Speaker 1: to college together. I did one play in college because
Speaker 1: of in a band. David and I did that play together,
Speaker 1: almost like a two man thing. So all those years
Speaker 1: later she's casting it. Now that to anybody out there,
Speaker 1: that sounds like, oh he's in, it's you're not. And
Speaker 1: that's I could have gotten into that audition. So Jennie
Speaker 1: was very kind and supportive always of me. But um,
Speaker 1: you got it once you're in. All the casting director
Speaker 1: doesn't get you in and support you on the way.
Speaker 1: You gotta earn that from the producers. So I remember
Speaker 1: I knew who Cali crew was. I read that script
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh man, you know, the inside
Speaker 1: head goes, I really want this and and you go
Speaker 1: shut up, man, just calm down, be cool, and and
Speaker 1: somehow that was the stronger voice. And I never went
Speaker 1: to I really want this again. I just I just said.
Speaker 1: What occurred to me is I'd come so close on
Speaker 1: so many things shows you've seen, movies you've heard of
Speaker 1: and not gotten them that I realized that. So what
Speaker 1: I survived. You know, like when you do stand up,
Speaker 1: they say you die on stage. Died last time. I
Speaker 1: died many times during a great set. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: the thing is you don't really die. The next morning.
Speaker 1: You know, you're still eating breakfast, and you know, when
Speaker 1: you get kids, they're still telling you they need new
Speaker 1: shoes or something. So you don't die. And all those
Speaker 1: shows I didn't get, I was like, I'm fine, I'm
Speaker 1: still here, so you sort of let go in that
Speaker 1: way a little bit. And by the way, maybe letting
Speaker 1: go and maybe my lack of drive and my I'll
Speaker 1: take all the time I want is why it took
Speaker 1: me twenty damn years. It's very possible. I just don't
Speaker 1: have that my so that some others have. But in
Speaker 1: an event, so um, when I when I know I'm
Speaker 1: going in there, Yeah, they got other people in mind,
Speaker 1: they got names and were the only one there when
Speaker 1: you showed up. Well, that's funny because um, I was
Speaker 1: except as I showed up there in the waiting room
Speaker 1: was Hayden Panachier and there were no guys are no.
Speaker 1: Obviously she wasn't trying for the deacon role. She was not. No, no,
Speaker 1: thank god, because she would have she would have beat
Speaker 1: me out. Um. Before I went in there, I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what I can. I've been doing this country music.
Speaker 1: I've been writing it, I've been playing it live, I've
Speaker 1: been doing writers rounds, and I know that all these
Speaker 1: guys that beat me out all the time, the same guys.
Speaker 1: You know that. Uh John was talking about that. You
Speaker 1: see those same guys again and again in the room,
Speaker 1: or if they weren't the room, you'd see him later
Speaker 1: in the show. That's it's one of the hardest jobs
Speaker 1: in the world because it's one thing to really want
Speaker 1: a job. If you'd say, there's in the real world,
Speaker 1: there's a job, and you really want to do everything
Speaker 1: you can. You put your your soul, you go and
Speaker 1: you do a meeting and you give your resume, and
Speaker 1: then you don't get it all right, you move on,
Speaker 1: but which you don't have to do in the real world,
Speaker 1: is watch somebody else go do it for twelve years
Speaker 1: and make thirty million dollars to it. And so so
Speaker 1: I had anyway, I've gotten around that and I and
Speaker 1: I just I thought, you know what, I might have
Speaker 1: a chance at this one because all those guys, I know,
Speaker 1: not everybody can play guitar. Did you take a guitar
Speaker 1: with you? Oh yeah, they told us to, they said,
Speaker 1: And I was thrilled by that. I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: they're not going to pretend that these people are musicians
Speaker 1: and singers. That's that's why I might have a shot
Speaker 1: at this one. And um, so there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things real quickly. This is a small piece of the story.
Speaker 1: But I had just recently found a really cool little
Speaker 1: stand from my guitar, pulled it up into nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the guitar stands are big, unwieldy things. So I'm
Speaker 1: walking out the door and I go, I might as
Speaker 1: well bring my cool new stand. And I go to
Speaker 1: this audition and I walk into the building and this
Speaker 1: happens again again in my career, where things that are
Speaker 1: meant to be have meant to be written all over
Speaker 1: them and the little hints from God that this might
Speaker 1: be the thing. And one of those was the very
Speaker 1: place I went to audition with Kadi and r J
Speaker 1: and Jeanie. Was the same building and the same aim
Speaker 1: hallway where I had shot whose line is it? Anyway
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, and I knew that place
Speaker 1: way didn't feel comfortable to you just because you were there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, there's a little bit of ownership. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: years ago I auditioned to play Buddy Holly, and it
Speaker 1: ended up that I got to audition for Buddy in
Speaker 1: the very same theater where I was the house manager.
Speaker 1: I swept up, I tore tickets, made coffee, and so
Speaker 1: it was like auditioning in my living room. And this
Speaker 1: had a little bit of that. So I walked into
Speaker 1: that building already with that little lift in your step,
Speaker 1: like alright, this not everybody has this wind behind them.
Speaker 1: And then I walk in and there's Hayden panic here
Speaker 1: and you know that's the cheerleader, say the cheerleaders saved
Speaker 1: the world. And I know who she is. You know
Speaker 1: clue who I am? And um, we said, oh it's
Speaker 1: nice to meet you, shook her hand, and we all
Speaker 1: both went back to our notes. They were seeing me first.
Speaker 1: She was just doing something before she went in. So
Speaker 1: I went in and um, they were very very warm
Speaker 1: and welcoming, and there was two songs and then I
Speaker 1: first I did a couple of scenes. Then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do two songs. I completely forget the order I did
Speaker 1: the man Um I played an original. I played a
Speaker 1: bleak Shelton song actually, which was what I wouldn't give,
Speaker 1: which is what I really liked, and I thought it
Speaker 1: was right for Deacon and Reino. Um, did you know
Speaker 1: rain I was gonna be Connie at the time in
Speaker 1: the first audition, I don't think. So that's a character
Speaker 1: in your mind that you were thinking too or about
Speaker 1: or with Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and and it jumped off
Speaker 1: the page. Who that character wasn't who these two people
Speaker 1: were in the history they had. By the way you
Speaker 1: ask questions, I don't know when I went. When I
Speaker 1: read your autobiography or when I read other people's autobiographies,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I would have no shot at writing that
Speaker 1: because I have the worst memory, So I would How
Speaker 1: do you know all that? Because you're gonna get sued
Speaker 1: if it's not right you better freaking get it right. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. That's start you'll start remembering once you decided, well,
Speaker 1: I gotta write a book. You got to get sued
Speaker 1: if I'm not right. I could see that You're like.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like, um no, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't think I didn't know at that point,
Speaker 1: because I would have made me a little nervous for
Speaker 1: for for for to be honest. So I sit down
Speaker 1: and I think what I did is I played the
Speaker 1: songs first, and then um, I remember, I pulled up
Speaker 1: my little stand and I put my guitar in it,
Speaker 1: and I went over to do the scenes. And I
Speaker 1: knew this guy. I knew this guy Deacon. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I just got him and I could sit
Speaker 1: back in him and and it came very easy. And
Speaker 1: the thing that I know what I was talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: from this long career, not getting these things I wanted.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's roles that are so good that you might
Speaker 1: end up only getting to play this guy once, and
Speaker 1: that's at the audition. So what I would always say
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna do it my way. I get one
Speaker 1: shot to play this guy right now in this moment,
Speaker 1: I'm the one playing Deacon, and this is how and
Speaker 1: instead of what you know, you always talking about aiming
Speaker 1: for what they want, instead of doing what you are
Speaker 1: going to be great at or what you what you want.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know what they wanted Deacon to look like.
Speaker 1: There was a time. That's all I tried to guess
Speaker 1: that you didn't chase what you thought they wanted. You
Speaker 1: did what you felt was you because honestly, you reach
Speaker 1: us certain point where I was like, you might think
Speaker 1: you want that, You're wrong. You want this. You finished
Speaker 1: the audition, you you play, you sing, you do your scene.
Speaker 1: How long until you actually know from that point that
Speaker 1: you have their old Deacon. Let me take a quick shortcut.
Speaker 1: As I'm walking out of the room, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I told you this before, but as I opened
Speaker 1: the door, there's Hayden Panet chair by the door, like listening,
Speaker 1: like like comedically, like I love Lucy or something. He
Speaker 1: almost hit her in the head with the door and
Speaker 1: and I walk out and she starts clapping and saying
Speaker 1: because she heard me singing and she liked the songs,
Speaker 1: and she was I'm like, what, who I've never I
Speaker 1: said can you come to all my auditions because this
Speaker 1: is fantastic and and so I'm acting cool and she
Speaker 1: now we really meet, and I said, as I'm ready
Speaker 1: to leave, I I'm just sort of blowing small guy. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll see you on the set. That's what I said
Speaker 1: to her totally, and I was nowhere near getting this job.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, finally when we're on the set
Speaker 1: one day, she said to see on the set, and um,
Speaker 1: but so no, I go home, and I knew it
Speaker 1: went really well. Um, Kellie Curry is a very enthusiastic
Speaker 1: heart on her sleeve person and um, and she also
Speaker 1: doesn't suffer fulls gladly, She's very intelligent, very and I
Speaker 1: could tell there was a connection towards what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I also know how far that I'm not a name,
Speaker 1: and so that they generally networks you want to give
Speaker 1: shows to name, especially a bang on lead like this.
Speaker 1: I've been doing it long enough to know a bang
Speaker 1: on lead and Deacon is exactly that. Um, he gets
Speaker 1: to hurt, he gets to feel, he gets to fail,
Speaker 1: he gets to win. And that was all in the lance,
Speaker 1: so I knew. So yeah, it took a while and
Speaker 1: then I had to go in again, and then I
Speaker 1: had to go in another time, and uh, not a
Speaker 1: lot of people know this, but at one point they
Speaker 1: made an offer to somebody. They called me, my agent calling, well,
Speaker 1: they made an offer and I was like, oh, you're commune,
Speaker 1: they said who? And the guy they said was somebody
Speaker 1: I knew personally and somebody had grown up with actually
Speaker 1: and sort of not followed out to l A, but
Speaker 1: somewhere where somebody where. I was like, I know that guy.
Speaker 1: I know those guys. Maybe it's not just crazy easiness.
Speaker 1: If you can do it, maybe I can do it.
Speaker 1: So they offered the role to him and he said no,
Speaker 1: Well I didn't know that the first day, and then
Speaker 1: the second day I keep reading the trades right, and
Speaker 1: I thought he'd be great, he'd be fantastic, And I
Speaker 1: was a little heartbroken. There's more than a little heartbroken. Finally,
Speaker 1: after a week, I'm going, what the hell and my
Speaker 1: agent calls up and goes, um, yeah, your friend passed,
Speaker 1: Like what, they go, they want to see you again.
Speaker 1: Even after that, there was another two auditions, including a
Speaker 1: stre screen test again for ABC. I'm telling my family
Speaker 1: we would drive right by the ABC building in Burbank
Speaker 1: every day I was taking my girls to soccer, and
Speaker 1: every single day we'd drive by it at least twice
Speaker 1: there in back yeah yeah, well yeah, but I was
Speaker 1: on the one four yeah right, but right, well, Baba
Speaker 1: drives NBC. It's right before, that's right next to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and every single time we'd walk drive by, the
Speaker 1: whole car would say please, ABC, I'm talking. We'd be
Speaker 1: in the middle of a discussion. We'd be going, I
Speaker 1: don't want to when we had chicken last night, let's
Speaker 1: get hit us ABC Hamburgers and and and then uh
Speaker 1: and so I waited and I waited, and finally, um,
Speaker 1: I ended up getting it. And real funny is a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after I shot the pilot, I finally
Speaker 1: gave my friend a call and said, I didn't really know.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't make Hallmark cards for this situation,
Speaker 1: but thank you for passing on Deacon. And by the way,
Speaker 1: he had personal reasons. It wasn't that he didn't love
Speaker 1: the role. He just there was something he had, He
Speaker 1: had other things. He was. He more aheaded than I was.
Speaker 1: And he started laughing. He said, I was so glad
Speaker 1: when I heard you got it. I was just you know,
Speaker 1: meant to be and it still blows my mind. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna ask you who it was, but we what
Speaker 1: do we know him? If he said his name? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah cool. I'll leave it right there. Uh so, okay,
Speaker 1: let's back off in Nashville for a second. Go backwards.
Speaker 1: So my two favorite shows are The British Office in
Speaker 1: the American Office. Those are my two favorite shows. Like
Speaker 1: I love them both. I just I just loved them.
Speaker 1: And so one of my top favorite episode and even
Speaker 1: it's you You're in like whenever they go to the
Speaker 1: convention and working with those guys and working with because
Speaker 1: you're on the office, working with Jim and Michael Scott.
Speaker 1: Michael called their characters than Steve Carrell like talk about that,
Speaker 1: like you get such your role was so funny as
Speaker 1: a straight guy. So they called and said, hey, we
Speaker 1: want you to do this role in the office. You
Speaker 1: walk in. It's a single camera shoot. Had you been
Speaker 1: a part of a single camera shoot before where there's
Speaker 1: no laughter while doing a comedy? I actually had And
Speaker 1: let me back up, Will said, they didn't just call
Speaker 1: and offer me this thing. This is a very interesting
Speaker 1: story on how I got the Office, and by the way,
Speaker 1: the Office opened me up for a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other things. If you went back and look at my resume,
Speaker 1: you would see that The Office was a point, was
Speaker 1: sort of a sea change. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is because it was an industry show. It was beloved,
Speaker 1: it was intelligent, it was done right. So in a sense,
Speaker 1: when you get on a show like that, it vouches
Speaker 1: for you for other shows. The it's a shortcut. They go, oh,
Speaker 1: there was the guy in the office, and they probably
Speaker 1: watched it too, so that gets you another level up.
Speaker 1: And that started opening up things on HBO, and all
Speaker 1: of those things were one of the reasons where they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: he can do that in Nashville. So it all goes together.
Speaker 1: But the funny story about I got that one, let
Speaker 1: me tell you. I was on a single camera comedy
Speaker 1: pilot um that got It got shot for NBC, and
Speaker 1: in that show, it was a complete cattle call for
Speaker 1: these two characters, and I got completely arbitrarily hooked up
Speaker 1: with Rain Wilson. This is years before the years before
Speaker 1: The Office, totally randomly me and him. These two characters
Speaker 1: are androids who solve crimes and this pilot called The Expendables.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a pilot that it was a script
Speaker 1: and they would just put you together. And we're reading
Speaker 1: the script back and forth, and we just started improvising
Speaker 1: and messing around and screwing around, and immediately I saw
Speaker 1: this guy was brilliant and hilarious and very kind, and
Speaker 1: so we just we just clicked and we were having
Speaker 1: a ball with it. You know. It was so silly
Speaker 1: and goofy, and so we went and then we we
Speaker 1: ended up getting it, and more than that, then we
Speaker 1: end up getting Now we're gonna have a it's all,
Speaker 1: it's the whole show is cast. Now we go to
Speaker 1: NBC and it's a big table reading. This is where
Speaker 1: they decided they're going to even make a pilot of it.
Speaker 1: And we're sitting at this long corporate table and he
Speaker 1: and I just sit next to each utterly riffing on
Speaker 1: these two idiot um characters who are androids that soft crimes.
Speaker 1: And by the way of the show, we were naked,
Speaker 1: and you know, just because we were androids, and they
Speaker 1: were just strategically shot. So we end up because it
Speaker 1: went so well, we were so loose and that we're
Speaker 1: making each other laugh at that table. Read ends up
Speaker 1: getting going to pilot. So we shoot a pilot for
Speaker 1: this thing, and um, it's such a tricky line to
Speaker 1: walk and it ended up not really work and we
Speaker 1: didn't get picked up. But there's some very funny moments
Speaker 1: back and forth with he and I, and I knew
Speaker 1: he was destined for great and big stuff and an
Speaker 1: even I get this audition, and when I was a
Speaker 1: huge British office fan myself unbelievable believe we talk about
Speaker 1: sea change. I've never seen anything like that, when anything
Speaker 1: could be allowed to be that quiet and that boring
Speaker 1: for that long, and that uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is the key.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the most uncomfortably awesome show I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in my life. It's cringe e it's you wouldn't
Speaker 1: even share it with some people, like you gotta see
Speaker 1: this most amazing and you'd sit there for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes ago they got it. They're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get this, idiots like it's like, you gotta see this
Speaker 1: video of paint drying hilarious. Yeah yeah, yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: just going I just see paint drying. So and then
Speaker 1: I was a huge fan and I saw it and
Speaker 1: I was like, man, there, I can't even believe they're
Speaker 1: gonna try that. I know a bunch of shows that
Speaker 1: they've done it this way. But and then I saw
Speaker 1: Steve Carrell was going to be the lead, and then
Speaker 1: I saw Rain was and I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: they might be able to do this. So immediately I
Speaker 1: saw the first two, I go, I think they got
Speaker 1: a shot at this. They're finding their own voice. I
Speaker 1: called my agent type, I go, you know, on the
Speaker 1: British one, there's the good boss, the guy that has
Speaker 1: this stuff to gather and everybody Michael wishes he was,
Speaker 1: I bet they end up doing that. When they do,
Speaker 1: you gotta get me in there. And so they ended
Speaker 1: up doing that in season three or at the very
Speaker 1: end of season two actually, and he got me in there,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to meet with them, and uh we
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and go, so I hear you're a
Speaker 1: friend of Rains. Because Rain must have said something nice
Speaker 1: that I was coming in. I saihow let him know
Speaker 1: or maybe saw him as I walked in, and I go,
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, not only that, Rain and I were
Speaker 1: in a pilot together where we played androids that solved crimes,
Speaker 1: and they're they're just dying laughing. You know, you're kidding myself.
Speaker 1: And not only that, I have a DVD of that
Speaker 1: pilot and they're they're like, no, you don't saying. And
Speaker 1: not only that, if you give me this job. On
Speaker 1: the first day of shooting, I will show up and
Speaker 1: put that DVD in here. And I could just see
Speaker 1: all their eyes light up. And they called before I
Speaker 1: got to my car on the parking lot, and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm certain that's how I got that. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of great guys in the town, but they wanted
Speaker 1: that DVD, so they got their DVD and I got
Speaker 1: to play this character, and you're right, he was. He
Speaker 1: was a straight man. And that was another real lesson
Speaker 1: because that showed what it's like to be on something great.
Speaker 1: I had been on a lot of cool things, but
Speaker 1: this was really very, very special. And what it occurred
Speaker 1: to me was that just being on it, people thought
Speaker 1: I was funnier, because if you look, I don't have
Speaker 1: that many jokes. I don't I didn't really. I had
Speaker 1: to really work a lot harder at being funny on
Speaker 1: things that weren't half as good so people would see
Speaker 1: you on and they go, oh my god, you're so funny.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, though, when you say that, like
Speaker 1: I look at that and I and I disagree and
Speaker 1: go your timing of not being funny was equally as funny,
Speaker 1: because to me, humor is not just about saying something funny.
Speaker 1: It's also about sitting back and letting funny happy, letting
Speaker 1: funny happen, and then hopping back in at a point
Speaker 1: even if you're not funny, knowing when that point to
Speaker 1: hop back in was know what, You're right, You're you're right,
Speaker 1: You're right. I was very funny, you were. I thought
Speaker 1: it was amazing, Like it's really one of my favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: I mean, and then Michael Scotten's up in him by
Speaker 1: himself having the party. Oh that's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: lines is Jim and I do uh an inside joke?
Speaker 1: He goes, huh part of joke. Not a fan of
Speaker 1: that show. That's so crazy. Yeah, did you crack a
Speaker 1: lot during that? Well, you know what, I was actually
Speaker 1: pretty good at maintaining for the joke itself. But then
Speaker 1: when when normally you would say cut because we're out
Speaker 1: a dialogue that you'd be a fool to cut on
Speaker 1: Steve or on Gen or any of them. So that's
Speaker 1: when they would try a couple of other things. And
Speaker 1: and those are the ones that sometimes you would you'd
Speaker 1: lose it a little bit. But look, I was just
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, I was uncool when I went
Speaker 1: to the office. I had been doing this a long time,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't cool enough to be cool. I was
Speaker 1: too much of a fan. It was like I'd want
Speaker 1: a damn radio contest to go be on a show
Speaker 1: that you love. Um. I was doing my best to
Speaker 1: be good, but I have to admit, those are some
Speaker 1: cool kids to be hanging around. It's like a high school.
Speaker 1: And in retrospect there probably yeah, he was a little
Speaker 1: bit uh you know, excited to be there. I bet
Speaker 1: they would, but they couldn't have been kinder. I spent
Speaker 1: you know, most of the time with with John, with
Speaker 1: Ed helms Um, and we had a We had a
Speaker 1: great time. It was one of the hardest lines I've
Speaker 1: ever said in my life was when I'm offered the
Speaker 1: job to take over it, uh you know, the Scranton branch,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, actually, I have agreed to a
Speaker 1: job that I'll be taking at Staples. And I remember
Speaker 1: first reading that in my script, the line that basically
Speaker 1: kills you off the show, and I was like, Ah,
Speaker 1: what would happen if you just refused to say that?
Speaker 1: What if I had just said, well, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: accept your The producer like, oh damn, So let's let's
Speaker 1: go back for a second to whose line, because I
Speaker 1: watched whose line? And you know, I remember, uh, all
Speaker 1: of you guys like Wayne and drewid hosted and Wayne
Speaker 1: and I mean, you can go through the whole cast.
Speaker 1: But I just didn't know how that was shot, Like
Speaker 1: would you guys just call up a nail at every
Speaker 1: time half hour? And no? No? That See, that's the
Speaker 1: thing is the level of First of all it was
Speaker 1: people always wonder how could it be so good at it?
Speaker 1: It was perfect. I was like, you guys are improving
Speaker 1: in are nailing every second every joe. So everybody would
Speaker 1: think with improv that it wasn't really improvised. They were
Speaker 1: always sure that we were given the topic, are the topic.
Speaker 1: We were never given the topics. In fact, I contend
Speaker 1: that it would be way harder to act like you
Speaker 1: were thinking of something off the top of your head
Speaker 1: than to actually think of something off the topic. And
Speaker 1: something else I'll say is if you go back and
Speaker 1: look at the transcripts, that's not like something you would
Speaker 1: write if you're gonna You know, Greg always talks about
Speaker 1: somebody heard he was on an improv show and watch
Speaker 1: and said, why not prepare something funny? It was was
Speaker 1: that guy's take you you can't really do that. Now.
Speaker 1: What the trick was that nobody really thought of was
Speaker 1: they just wouldn't air the crap. They wouldn't, you know, say,
Speaker 1: you would take for a long period of time for
Speaker 1: whose line. Yeah, you would take like maybe three hours,
Speaker 1: maybe three and a half hours. Sometimes I think it
Speaker 1: would be like that. I don't know, because you never
Speaker 1: you never came down. You would even you would even
Speaker 1: stop during commercial breaks. They would they would put the
Speaker 1: commercial break in there. But while they were doing that,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like we were towling down and just drinking water.
Speaker 1: We had to keep that audience going. So we keep
Speaker 1: giving each other crap or just you know, giving Drew
Speaker 1: a hard time, or the director would come out and
Speaker 1: Ryan would throw something at him. And so it was
Speaker 1: like Colin who was on the show when I was on.
Speaker 1: I was, I was one of the fourth chair guys.
Speaker 1: It was Um, Wayne Brady and Ryan Styles and Colin
Speaker 1: Mockery and then the fourth chair would rotate and between
Speaker 1: a bunch of different, you know, great people, and it
Speaker 1: was it was great to be on that. But that
Speaker 1: meant I remember when I got I was on the
Speaker 1: British one, and then I wasn't on for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Who hosted the British Clive Anderson who was the British one,
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, it was it was just a
Speaker 1: little bit of a different ball game. In fact, that
Speaker 1: started off as extremely British. It was a radio show.
Speaker 1: Bobby started off in in England as a radio show.
Speaker 1: So they would improvise just like we are sitting at
Speaker 1: mix and create these things. And then they decided to
Speaker 1: make a TV show out of it, and still very
Speaker 1: British and still in that more British way, was very
Speaker 1: cerebral and very verbal, so they would almost stand right
Speaker 1: where they were. That's why the stage was probably so small. Um,
Speaker 1: and then you started hiring Americans like Ryan and Colin
Speaker 1: who would look like a velociraptor walking across this strager
Speaker 1: or I remember Ryance was just a baby deer being born,
Speaker 1: and that some of that way more physical stuff. And
Speaker 1: then the Americans, you know, the British invasion came this way,
Speaker 1: the American invasion of whose line went that way, and
Speaker 1: then the whole show came here to the States. And
Speaker 1: when it came back to the States, it was not
Speaker 1: lost on me that here's these three guys that are
Speaker 1: on every week. Andrew and and these guys my friends.
Speaker 1: Ryan was my biggest supporter. He told those producers all
Speaker 1: the time, you gotta get chipped on, and that meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me. But I knew that when I
Speaker 1: got on the show, it wasn't just a matter of
Speaker 1: being funny. I had seen other people as in that
Speaker 1: guest role, and I noticed that the ones that worked
Speaker 1: didn't defer, didn't act like a guest at the party.
Speaker 1: They acted like they belonged there as much as anybody.
Speaker 1: And the way to do that is to throw a
Speaker 1: few elbows and smack somebody else comedically in the face,
Speaker 1: because it's like walking into your house. I would defer
Speaker 1: a little bit, and you know, but um, I realized
Speaker 1: that that didn't work there, So you just had The
Speaker 1: first job was to act like you belonged, and then
Speaker 1: once you act like you belong now you're just improvising,
Speaker 1: and they want you to do that too, because it's
Speaker 1: just like tennis with people that are putting the ball
Speaker 1: right back on your racket, and they want you to
Speaker 1: put it right back at them, very very hard. So
Speaker 1: you know, it was just a matter of at first
Speaker 1: of all, they're the funniest guys. I know, which you
Speaker 1: feel because I have Pierre's friends, very close friends that
Speaker 1: I think are so much better than me at what
Speaker 1: I do, and we do the same thing. Like one
Speaker 1: of my buddies has the biggest hip hoptional in the
Speaker 1: country is named Charlemagne. I have a friend named Kennedy
Speaker 1: who was on MTV uh she does Fox. She one
Speaker 1: of my best friends. She's so smart, and we will
Speaker 1: go to dinners together. It's like our little like group.
Speaker 1: It's our group. We talk all we stay close, we confide,
Speaker 1: we go to advice. But I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much brighter and quicker and funny that I just felt
Speaker 1: so much pressure and I want to be as good
Speaker 1: as they are. At the same time, I just respect
Speaker 1: them so much. Did you feel that with those guys like, Wow,
Speaker 1: these guys are so good. I've got to get to
Speaker 1: that level, or do you just feel like I'm part
Speaker 1: of the group. It was. It was when I was
Speaker 1: in England that I felt I didn't know what the
Speaker 1: group was and I didn't know how good they were
Speaker 1: when I first got it, so that was not an issue.
Speaker 1: And then when I was I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: they're bringing it, so I gotta bring it. And then
Speaker 1: I did, and then I started seeing how good that
Speaker 1: people I was with were, and and it made me
Speaker 1: think about them more. And when I started thinking about it,
Speaker 1: I got less good and so I fell off for
Speaker 1: a while. But when I got back on, I didn't
Speaker 1: go to that place again. Now, I have to admit,
Speaker 1: and the reason is, in any given moment, uh, what
Speaker 1: you don't have is you're rarely on stage with those
Speaker 1: peers of yours I had. I would sit in four chairs,
Speaker 1: we'd all stepped to the end of the line, and
Speaker 1: they would tell a joke and it would kill and
Speaker 1: somebody else to do another joke, and then I would
Speaker 1: step forward, and every once in a while I would
Speaker 1: get the biggest laugh in any given moment, any of them,
Speaker 1: any of us can kill. And we would realize that
Speaker 1: on tour. We would tour with the larger groups, like
Speaker 1: ten of us would go out in Las Vegas every
Speaker 1: Super Bowl, Drew would bring like ten people to the
Speaker 1: MGM Grand and at the beginning of the night they
Speaker 1: would give all the applause the last people out, where
Speaker 1: the people that everybody knew the most. You would end
Speaker 1: with the biggest names, and the applause would gradually grow
Speaker 1: so that by the very and the very people they
Speaker 1: knew the most got the most applause. What we what
Speaker 1: we always notice is at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: the applause was based on what kind of show you had,
Speaker 1: so it would it could totally change up. The first
Speaker 1: guy introduced might have just been on fire and he
Speaker 1: would get the biggest and people go crazy at the end.
Speaker 1: And so we did know that on any given night,
Speaker 1: anybody can can win the day. And and honestly, it's funny,
Speaker 1: it's it's not you would think it would be way
Speaker 1: more competitive. It's not. It's thrilling when somebody across from
Speaker 1: you says something hilarious and it's not competitive. With my friends,
Speaker 1: it's like, man, I just want to be that good.
Speaker 1: Oh I look at them and go there that I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can ever be that good? But
Speaker 1: aren't they completely good in different ways? For some reason
Speaker 1: they come to me too and go, hey, can you
Speaker 1: help me with this? And I'm just blown away that
Speaker 1: they're like, why do you need my help with thing? Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is with comedy and when this thing we're doing,
Speaker 1: and you guys too, you're different things in the stew,
Speaker 1: like Ryan's a carrot and and you know Collins a
Speaker 1: potato and I mean that literally for both of them. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm like, but but so I would never say how
Speaker 1: can I be more potato e? Or how can I
Speaker 1: be more carroty? I know that I had a different role,
Speaker 1: and it's funny. Once you start to understand what your
Speaker 1: role is, then you get to really be that thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I forget who said that somebody's famous and
Speaker 1: learn what you are then go be that um And
Speaker 1: we ended up getting to do that, and then they
Speaker 1: rely on who your characters. Drew, for example, would always
Speaker 1: know he was the guy that would be the butt
Speaker 1: of the joke, and and he played that. That's not
Speaker 1: always an easy play to character to play because you
Speaker 1: can act to hurt in an audience is like oh
Speaker 1: or you or just that, you know. So everybody had
Speaker 1: their role and they made me honest to god, that's
Speaker 1: probably the real answers. Those friends of mine. They made
Speaker 1: me feel funny. So I have a clip hered of
Speaker 1: how down from whose? Line? So? What does it? Mike
Speaker 1: set me up here? Just the music. That was my
Speaker 1: favorite bit on the show. So what was who? What was?
Speaker 1: Hold down? Holdown? They start playing this and you just
Speaker 1: had to make up a line. And if you went first,
Speaker 1: it was the hardest because you had no time, right,
Speaker 1: you had to just think of it quick, and you
Speaker 1: usually first, right, I was first, Yeah, I'm um. So
Speaker 1: it was tricky, although sometimes I liked first the most
Speaker 1: because you've got a song you had to continue on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get big on I'm sitting here with Bobby and
Speaker 1: we're sitting in the chair, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: then make it comes the woods. I see a Harry Bear.
Speaker 1: He's gonna chase me. Now, he's gonna be a blaster
Speaker 1: and I can't run that fast, but Bobby can run
Speaker 1: faster or something something like that. And uh, they weren't
Speaker 1: all that good, um, you know. But the thing was
Speaker 1: you would get to gather your thoughts as quickly as
Speaker 1: you could. And the good thing about going first is
Speaker 1: when you went second, what would happen all the time
Speaker 1: is that person in first part would steal your best
Speaker 1: rhyme with steal your best joke and so um god,
Speaker 1: people loved how down um? And those are some of
Speaker 1: my favorite things. Two and it's funny real quickly. No,
Speaker 1: you didn't even ask. One of the funny things that
Speaker 1: people that try music improv and something even like howdown is,
Speaker 1: they forget the concept of a punch line. So that
Speaker 1: if if you're doing a song um about about um
Speaker 1: this podcast, the line is UM gonna be um the
Speaker 1: last the punch line would be podcast alright, so, or
Speaker 1: maybe I'll make it Bobby Bones, um zona. But I'm
Speaker 1: not here alone. I'm sitting in my chair beside Bobby
Speaker 1: Bones and beside Bobby Bones. Right. So what people would
Speaker 1: do is they mess up in what every amateur does
Speaker 1: is they go, um, I'm here with Bobby Bones, but
Speaker 1: that's okay because I am not alone. And it's like, wait,
Speaker 1: that didn't pay off. That that was the rhyme that
Speaker 1: you wanted to set up. The thing the feeling of
Speaker 1: resolution when you say the thing that clinics um. You know,
Speaker 1: you get what I mean. It's not it's not like
Speaker 1: your name is some huge punch line, but it's the
Speaker 1: It's the more satisfying way to do it. Otherwise you
Speaker 1: say the thing and then anybody can come up with
Speaker 1: the thing that rhymes with Bobby bones and it doesn't
Speaker 1: really point to anything. So um, there was one I did,
Speaker 1: um and sometimes you would have to actually have a
Speaker 1: a punch a punch line itself. And these jokes. I
Speaker 1: did one about Colin. It was about drinking, and um,
Speaker 1: I talked about his His mother drank when she was pregnant. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's the truth. When they took her her blood, her
Speaker 1: her blood was a d proof. Um. The doctors felt
Speaker 1: so bad. They didn't know what to do. But if
Speaker 1: your baby looked like Colin, then you'd be drinking too,
Speaker 1: was was you know? And and and it's not. That's
Speaker 1: the thing is it's not the funniest joke in the world.
Speaker 1: But number one, it rhymed in the right order, and
Speaker 1: the punch line came at the end. And number two
Speaker 1: they just watched you think of it. That's always the
Speaker 1: magic of it, and it is a little bit like
Speaker 1: magic that um it seems like a magic trick, which
Speaker 1: is why sometimes it's even more exciting in person. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been to a vive improv show,
Speaker 1: but you know how you watched magic on TV. There's
Speaker 1: always somewhere in the back of your head, well yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on TV. Yeah, but if you're sitting there, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're sitting somebody did it. I was over at
Speaker 1: um Tin Ruth the other night and this guy came
Speaker 1: by doing card tricks and he did that thing. I
Speaker 1: wrote my name on a card and he put in
Speaker 1: his and I was like, if that had been on TV,
Speaker 1: but it was right in front of me, So that's
Speaker 1: improvs Like that, it freaks you out. I had friends
Speaker 1: that would come to the Groundlings Stater did it and
Speaker 1: they just didn't believe it was improvised. Actually I was
Speaker 1: not a Groundling because I was I took all their classes.
Speaker 1: It was like you start with basic, Intermediate, Lab, Advanced,
Speaker 1: did all that got into the Sunday Show. Did when
Speaker 1: in the Sunday Show would be like the JV and
Speaker 1: it's from the Sunday Show. You're generaling this Sunday Show
Speaker 1: about six months or maybe a year, and from that
Speaker 1: they get the new ground Links. So I was there
Speaker 1: almost a year and a half, two years, taking all
Speaker 1: these classes and getting high and hirh get in the
Speaker 1: Sunday Show, did one Sunday Show and I got Buddy Holly,
Speaker 1: and I moved to London, say even to London to
Speaker 1: the stage show Buddy Holly. Yep. So was there anyone
Speaker 1: that you were training within the ground Lings that ended
Speaker 1: up being a big deal because they put out a
Speaker 1: lot of famous people. Yeah, I was actually right before
Speaker 1: a lot of them. I was sort of in between. Um.
Speaker 1: Uh Phil Hartman had been just a few years and
Speaker 1: John Lovett's right, what geniuses You're right, especially I mean
Speaker 1: especially Phil. I mean anybody at the Groundlings would say
Speaker 1: that he was auto unique and born to be on
Speaker 1: that SNL stage because he could play all those characters,
Speaker 1: but all those things, so many of his earlier characters
Speaker 1: happened right there on the Groundling stage. And he was
Speaker 1: actually um a mentor towards uh um Julia um Sweeney
Speaker 1: who it's patch, she was there too, And then right
Speaker 1: behind me was Will Ferrell. When I went off to London,
Speaker 1: Will came in right after and was joined was in
Speaker 1: the Groundlings and Will Farrell and Chris Ktan and Cherry Oh, Terry,
Speaker 1: and I mean it really wasn't training ground for us
Speaker 1: to now. I mean that's where they went to find yeah,
Speaker 1: because it there was there were a few of them.
Speaker 1: There was one in Chicago, there was one in l A.
Speaker 1: There was one, but that was really one of oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I couldn't do justice to the actual list.
Speaker 1: You would have to go look at it and you'd
Speaker 1: be blown away because it wasn't just improv at the Groundlings.
Speaker 1: Most of it was sketch work. You would That's what
Speaker 1: actually brought me there when I first went to l A.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was so respect you doing stand up
Speaker 1: because I've tried it. I went out when I first
Speaker 1: went to l A. And you can't just jump in
Speaker 1: a movie or jump in a TV show, but you
Speaker 1: can jump up on a stage with a microphone. They'll
Speaker 1: let you do that every Wednesday at certain places. So
Speaker 1: I remember going to the comedy store on Sunset Boulevard
Speaker 1: wrote this horrible little five minutes, and I remember getting
Speaker 1: up and I had a guitar and I had a
Speaker 1: couple of funny songs to sing, and um. I remember
Speaker 1: the first reson I learned is you gotta be talking immediately,
Speaker 1: because I was silent and I was setting up my
Speaker 1: mic and my head was down and getting everything ready,
Speaker 1: and I look up and it's been dead silent for
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. And I was so scared. I remember my
Speaker 1: knees knock and my mouth was foamy. I was freaking out,
Speaker 1: and I in my horrible five minutes and I got
Speaker 1: off and I went into the bathroom. And this was
Speaker 1: one of the most pivotal things for me ever, was
Speaker 1: I went into that bathroom at the comedy store and
Speaker 1: I looked into the mirror, and I was just so
Speaker 1: furious with myself, just furious because it was instantly clear
Speaker 1: to me that as I walked off the stage, even
Speaker 1: before I got to the stages, this is what you
Speaker 1: want to do for a living, not stand up perhaps,
Speaker 1: but standing in front of people and performing. You want
Speaker 1: to do this for the rest of your life. And
Speaker 1: you're gonna let two strangers that you will never see again,
Speaker 1: half of whom are in the bag. You're gonna let
Speaker 1: them petrify you like that. You're gonna let them freak
Speaker 1: you out like that? So how did that change you?
Speaker 1: I went back a week later with the same middling
Speaker 1: material and did it again, and it wasn't even a
Speaker 1: little scared. It was. It was so it was so
Speaker 1: binary and on off switch because I was way more
Speaker 1: afraid of me and what it was. It was a
Speaker 1: perception perception thing. I perceived the whole thing differently. I
Speaker 1: didn't perceive that I need it to be great right then.
Speaker 1: I perceived that I needed to not give and not
Speaker 1: be afraid of them, not just I needed to be
Speaker 1: able to breathe on stage. So I just got up
Speaker 1: and I just stood there and and and then I
Speaker 1: was able to do it a couple of other times,
Speaker 1: and it quickly became clear to me that it wasn't
Speaker 1: my thing. I'm not that solitary a guy. I'm a
Speaker 1: more um social person and I'd like interacting and and
Speaker 1: also not knowing anybody. It was a really bad way
Speaker 1: to uh did network. I wasn't meeting anybody. Um and
Speaker 1: a couple of comics I met, I would feel like
Speaker 1: we'd be talking and have a conversation and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's cool and he's funny man and then like
Speaker 1: an hour later, I go that dude was trying out
Speaker 1: his whole act on me. He get up there and
Speaker 1: say all those same bits and if you laugh during
Speaker 1: the conversation and like, oh man, I didn't know my
Speaker 1: friends sometimes and they don't even know I got you stuff,
Speaker 1: but like and they didn't laugh. And that's what we do.
Speaker 1: We have to find a training now, because here's the
Speaker 1: difference is that I can sit in my room and
Speaker 1: for us when we do the reging and it's a
Speaker 1: whole different show. I can sit do around, I can
Speaker 1: pla guitar, and I can practice. I can practice uh
Speaker 1: chords and and fingering and muscle memory. And then you
Speaker 1: can't practice on stage. You have to get up and fail,
Speaker 1: and you have to be confident that you're going to fail,
Speaker 1: and then it's okay, well you're never going to make
Speaker 1: This is why I'm so impressed with what you do,
Speaker 1: because I'm I've often thought of what if I went back. Now,
Speaker 1: I have points of view, now, I have things I
Speaker 1: might like to say. I might be able to do that,
Speaker 1: but I know you gotta suck for a while, or
Speaker 1: you gotta be um find your material. Even the best
Speaker 1: comics go into little clubs and and there's some now,
Speaker 1: some of the bigger ones, I think Chris Rock and
Speaker 1: the others where everybody has to put their cell phone
Speaker 1: in the back. And because you know that all these
Speaker 1: comics they got great with that to suck for a while.
Speaker 1: It's the ten thousand world. They got great by being
Speaker 1: bad for ten And you how do you do that?
Speaker 1: You suck for a long time, but you suck and
Speaker 1: you get better and you get better until you hit
Speaker 1: it and then you accord it. Then you're done. You
Speaker 1: gotta start sucking again. Yeah, that's the weird part about
Speaker 1: it all, because well, I'm gonna do the comedies a
Speaker 1: shell in March or April the next year, like a
Speaker 1: special special that we haven't announced it. But it's like
Speaker 1: we've been building and getting better and getting better, and
Speaker 1: I know as soon as we do the special, all
Speaker 1: that material is dead because you've done it. It's not
Speaker 1: like a song where you can hear it thirty times.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a real debate on that. There
Speaker 1: goes back and forth. There's a there's a book I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta give you a fantastic book I just read.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm I can remember Steve Martin would do
Speaker 1: this some of the because I'm huge Steve Martin, like
Speaker 1: one of Steve Martin did something remarkable in his career
Speaker 1: that I have seen no one do, and that is
Speaker 1: retire at the top of his game and not tell anybody.
Speaker 1: He was just the greatest and was like I quit.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell anybody quit. He just quit. But he
Speaker 1: but he people knew his jokes. Well, that's the thing
Speaker 1: this this book. I was reading Judd Apatow's since he
Speaker 1: was really young. Wasn't just a stand up, but he
Speaker 1: would interview all these stand ups, so he has interviews
Speaker 1: with his kids. He would have them. Yeah, exactly, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember this. It's crazy in the head or
Speaker 1: something like that. I'm getting the title wrong. In any
Speaker 1: event um, there was a debate within there with some people.
Speaker 1: To Jared Seinfeld, I guess it is one of the
Speaker 1: few that says you don't have to retire anything. People
Speaker 1: don't mind hearing that joke again if it's funny, but
Speaker 1: I i'd be in your camp. I would feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: they've heard this one. That's the worst. I start to
Speaker 1: feel like, oh, they already know where does it go?
Speaker 1: And I needed to get better and man, maybe that's
Speaker 1: a personal thing with me like you. But even if
Speaker 1: it is a personal thing, you gotta you can't fight it.
Speaker 1: You get is get But how do you what is
Speaker 1: your thing like when you're on stage? If when something
Speaker 1: wouldn't work, that's the thing I realized, when something wouldn't
Speaker 1: work in improv we can you know, we always get
Speaker 1: to go what I just made it up? Don't judge me.
Speaker 1: You know it's not so easy, is it? Um? And
Speaker 1: the other thing is if something if I said something
Speaker 1: that wasn't funny, I got three other guys to go. Really,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you're gonna go with and the audience
Speaker 1: would die laughing at how bad the thing I said was.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Do you embrace the suck
Speaker 1: when it goes bad? Or what do you do? You
Speaker 1: know that it's the loneliest place in the world before
Speaker 1: you go out there, there's no one to lean on,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere to fall back. It's it's when you miss,
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't miss a lot, and I do you
Speaker 1: have to you have when you miss, it's awful. When
Speaker 1: you hit, it's the most amazing thing. So you really
Speaker 1: play for the amazing nous. But we cross to your
Speaker 1: head after a miss interception. You have to be the
Speaker 1: quarterback that throws in. You gotta be Aaron Rodgers, the
Speaker 1: thirst three picks in the game and gets back up
Speaker 1: and continues. And if you don't have that mentality, it's
Speaker 1: just not for you because you will throw a lot
Speaker 1: of interceptions. Yeah, you know, it's it's very That's something
Speaker 1: that's very common with improv is. I used to say
Speaker 1: that you have to rip out the rear view mirror
Speaker 1: because every second you're looking in that rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: that thing that you could have made funnier twenty seconds ago,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go right into a brick wall. So and
Speaker 1: take that out and you move forward. But I'm even
Speaker 1: talking about that thing where you tell a joke and
Speaker 1: it gets sort of a go anyway that I know
Speaker 1: the next thing. Just move, Just move, just go to
Speaker 1: the next thing. And there are jokes that I've I've
Speaker 1: worried about and that I wonder and I don't ever
Speaker 1: share my act any you know, because I just wait
Speaker 1: for But there was one joke that I told in
Speaker 1: particular that I tried it out because what happened. I
Speaker 1: had a weekend off, which is awful for me. I
Speaker 1: don't like to have weekends off. And so I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to theater down in uh Franklin and
Speaker 1: I'll do two shows back to back. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to work just new material. And so the problem was
Speaker 1: some of the critics and blogs and press wanted to
Speaker 1: cover it. And I was like, oh, great, I can't
Speaker 1: just go work new material if people are gonna come
Speaker 1: out and watch it. But I still had the two
Speaker 1: shows and I wanted to throw some new stuff in.
Speaker 1: And I had written this joke this day, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I don't know if I should try it.
Speaker 1: And the joke was it was and it's already happened.
Speaker 1: It's not me and and I don't ever just sit
Speaker 1: after a joke and wait, like more of my stylists
Speaker 1: tell the joke, and I'm moving, I'm quick, I'm quick,
Speaker 1: I'm quick, I'm quick, and sometimes they missed, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1: But the joke was, you know, finding an uber driver
Speaker 1: is like, I've been an uber. I think I would
Speaker 1: not stop talking. I think I would not stop talking.
Speaker 1: And I was like finding a good uber drivers like
Speaker 1: finding um a good woman. Because I've been single a
Speaker 1: long time. I had I had let up into all
Speaker 1: this singleness joke. They have apps for that too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they I tried him. It's like finding a good uber
Speaker 1: drivers like finding a good woman. Either talk all the
Speaker 1: time that either don't stop talking or they don't let
Speaker 1: you do but stuff. And I just sat and I
Speaker 1: let and I let them, and I let the crowd go.
Speaker 1: I let the crowd go, and then they started it.
Speaker 1: And there's never a more vulnerable moment than when you
Speaker 1: say that either don't stop talking or they don't let
Speaker 1: you do butt stuff talking about an uber dry and
Speaker 1: it was a really hard spot for me just to
Speaker 1: sit and wait. Well, that's that's fascinating because so much
Speaker 1: what you do on the radio, you don't get to
Speaker 1: learn the timing of it all. It's a completely it's
Speaker 1: two different things. So you wouldn't have a clue that differing,
Speaker 1: but you would. You were wise to know that that
Speaker 1: required math. They had to do the math on Wait
Speaker 1: a second, that is he's talking about an uber and
Speaker 1: then they get and it's just so absurd exactly what
Speaker 1: let me ask you, I haven't seeing the app They
Speaker 1: get there faster when the jokes are like that. My
Speaker 1: problem was as some of my jokes would be one
Speaker 1: way and then I would do the absurd one. And
Speaker 1: if they're not expect you know, Steve Martin, you knew
Speaker 1: the absurd one was coming, was Stephen right? You know
Speaker 1: the absurdance coming, So they're faster to it. But if
Speaker 1: you're not dealing pitches like that, then they it takes
Speaker 1: them a second longer to catch. Is that a lot
Speaker 1: of them or is that very That one is unlike
Speaker 1: any other, and it's it's a very vulnerable feeling sitting
Speaker 1: and waiting because as I sit there and waited, I
Speaker 1: just waited and if nobody laughs, you're you're isolated, and
Speaker 1: then you just go to the next joke. But they laughed.
Speaker 1: Do you ever watching Andy Kaufman. That's my hero, It's
Speaker 1: my hero any conference my hero, like David Letterman is
Speaker 1: my real life hero of my lifetime. Like I was
Speaker 1: able to watch Andy Kaufman, to me, is the most brilliant.
Speaker 1: The name was a comic performer that I have ever seen.
Speaker 1: I just went down the Andy. I went down that
Speaker 1: rabbit hole the other night on YouTube was watching Jerry Lawler. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a great Jerry Lawler interview about that whole thing
Speaker 1: I did. The wrestling thing that Andy did, that he
Speaker 1: would wrestle women. For those who don't know, Andy was
Speaker 1: the woman's wrestling champion. No woman could beat him wrestling.
Speaker 1: And he finally said that this Jerry Lawler, and nobody
Speaker 1: would nobody would have him wrestle guys up north. But
Speaker 1: there's this guy down here I think it was in
Speaker 1: Memphis actually, and Jerry Lawler said exactly, said I'll wrestle him.
Speaker 1: So they went down and Jerry Lawler put a pile drop,
Speaker 1: put two pile drivers on him, then supposedly broke your
Speaker 1: neck and he put on that and back in the
Speaker 1: day when you were watching it live, you were honestly
Speaker 1: never you were you thought it might be a put on.
Speaker 1: But then you go, no, no, no, I think this
Speaker 1: is real. And that was the joy in the in
Speaker 1: the beauty of Andy. But on what I'm relating it
Speaker 1: to is I would think going back to that and
Speaker 1: watching him stand in front of an audience that hates
Speaker 1: him or isn't getting it, that would give me, that
Speaker 1: would give me strength to the next time I went on,
Speaker 1: I would choose to be braver. I would want to
Speaker 1: be able to stand there. I remember even one of
Speaker 1: my first auditions. I had an audition to play um
Speaker 1: Prince Charming and some show at some big, big theater.
Speaker 1: This is in the Los Angeles. I had not auditioned
Speaker 1: for anything, and I could feel those nerves creeping in again,
Speaker 1: and I knew I didn't want to do this job
Speaker 1: and I probably wasn't going to get it. We had
Speaker 1: to audition in front of everybody. Everybody was all in
Speaker 1: the room when you auditioned and read before, like the table.
Speaker 1: I can fame that long table where they all sit there,
Speaker 1: and I didn't. They said they wanted you to read
Speaker 1: a piece like a monogue. I didn't have a monologue.
Speaker 1: So I stood there and I and I said, um,
Speaker 1: I do not have a monologue today, So for my audition,
Speaker 1: I will be reading from the classic Louis Lamore novel Hondo.
Speaker 1: It's like it was. It was exactly that, and I
Speaker 1: knew that. I knew I wasn't being original, but I
Speaker 1: also knew it was going to take a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of balls to just stand there and read until they
Speaker 1: stopped me. So I just opened up and it's dead silent,
Speaker 1: and you hear a little rustling and go Hondo walked
Speaker 1: into the noonday sun and I just began. And they're
Speaker 1: just sitting there a letting me read and read and read.
Speaker 1: And I was doing it on purpose, for cou frominesque
Speaker 1: reasons of internal strength. Man, I bet you were developing
Speaker 1: as a yes, I'm the boss at this moment it
Speaker 1: um and and to prove it, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go for your approval at all. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stand here and be disapproved by you, and and
Speaker 1: and sit in that for a little bit. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it's funny because uh, it's the same way
Speaker 1: we both makes sense. We love the British Office. It's uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable. I don't know why I love that. I'm
Speaker 1: comfortable because it's it's a risk. I think that's why
Speaker 1: I love it. It's a really risky thing to do.
Speaker 1: It is and also you talk about his timing and
Speaker 1: his commitment, um, it's he was fully fully invested. And
Speaker 1: I just honestly, I don't regret much, but I do
Speaker 1: regret looking back that I didn't more fully commit to
Speaker 1: some of the comedy I was a part of. That's
Speaker 1: who the great ones are, that's your Chris Farley's And
Speaker 1: you know it's always it's always the darkest people that
Speaker 1: are the brightest shiners. Well that's true. But which is
Speaker 1: weird for you because you are the happiest and not
Speaker 1: like me into a hole, Chip and I go into
Speaker 1: a hole until the time to come out and do
Speaker 1: my thing, and I'm not super social. And I see
Speaker 1: you and people, and you talk to people and you
Speaker 1: hug people, and I do until I don't. But you
Speaker 1: are always on, Which is weird for me to see
Speaker 1: someone who can do all of this and still maintain
Speaker 1: like your creativity. You know. I there was a time
Speaker 1: in my acting classes where I remember, look, I haven't
Speaker 1: had this easy upbringing. If I could, if I wrote
Speaker 1: a book, there would be things. There would be my
Speaker 1: parents divorce and growing up without my dad right there,
Speaker 1: Um my dad uh and his second wife lost a
Speaker 1: son to crib death, and I was I was still
Speaker 1: a young guy. Um there there's that stuff was brutal
Speaker 1: and hurts and still hurts. So that's all in there.
Speaker 1: But I remember, even in acting going seeing these people
Speaker 1: with these really these stories and going, man, I somehow
Speaker 1: wish my life was a little more messed up and
Speaker 1: I'd have more to draw on. But I stopped that.
Speaker 1: I grew, I grew out of that. I am not
Speaker 1: believe me. I got my dark places on, my tough,
Speaker 1: my sad moments. I don't know if it's any less
Speaker 1: than a whole lot of people. I some times, I
Speaker 1: gotta be honest, I feel very very blessed, very very fortunate,
Speaker 1: and I feel not a responsibility that I have to
Speaker 1: put a fake face on. But when somebody comes up,
Speaker 1: it requires so little for me. It requires so few
Speaker 1: calories fame or these TV things. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: long level. Like if you're trying to get a rock
Speaker 1: out of your yard right and you have a little stick,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna do it. But if you have this
Speaker 1: long and long two by four right, and you stick
Speaker 1: it under there, and you got a good level, you
Speaker 1: barely gotta pull at the end of it, and you
Speaker 1: can move a big old boulder. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: what it is. When I'm out there. Oh I gotta
Speaker 1: do is say it's nice to meet you. Thank you, really,
Speaker 1: thank your mom. For me and you know, take a picture.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't feel like a lot to me. In fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Psychically, emotionally, it feels like more
Speaker 1: energy to me to hold that off somehow, to put
Speaker 1: my to give a stiff hand, to keep my head down,
Speaker 1: to avoid it feels like it would take a whole
Speaker 1: lot of effort for me. It's not avoidance because when
Speaker 1: I'm out, like, I appreciate anyone that does anything that
Speaker 1: I do, it comes listens, but it's I stay in
Speaker 1: my room until I want to go out. It seems
Speaker 1: like you're out and you're very social all the time. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I'm home. I'm home a whole
Speaker 1: lot um the things I go to. You when you
Speaker 1: do a ton of charity events, you go to things,
Speaker 1: and you're I mean, you're out in the world, probably
Speaker 1: more than I am. If we were really going to
Speaker 1: compare schedules you're talking about when you're off the clock.
Speaker 1: You mean, I just feel like I have two modes.
Speaker 1: Hide in my room and then when I'm out, and
Speaker 1: when I'm out, I'm appreciative and I love everybody all
Speaker 1: the time. But I have a really well, I just
Speaker 1: want to be by myself a lot. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the family changes that. You know, that's fair, and you
Speaker 1: do have a family, Yeah, when when when you do,
Speaker 1: when you have whatever you have, you're gonna you're going
Speaker 1: to go to your daughter's UM pageant. You know, You're
Speaker 1: going to go to your son's UM scout meeting. And
Speaker 1: there's gonna be other fathers and there's gonna be other people.
Speaker 1: And I'm not always super in my comfort zone in
Speaker 1: those in those moments, but I can't choose that other thing,
Speaker 1: and um, and I really don't want to look. It
Speaker 1: goes again to I've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 1: I'm just grateful. I don't know how long I have
Speaker 1: doing this. We saw how fragile it is. It almost
Speaker 1: went away right there. And when it's gone, I don't
Speaker 1: know how long people care about my singles or what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Um, I've had twenty years to sort of
Speaker 1: not be bothered. It's like it's not even please, It's
Speaker 1: like I don't mind. I mean, whose line was fine,
Speaker 1: I'd be in line, it would nobody say anything for
Speaker 1: like a week, and then I'd be in line at
Speaker 1: the bank and somebody just tapped my shot and go.
Speaker 1: You're very funny and you can't pay for that, and
Speaker 1: so so yeah, I think I just I'm making hay
Speaker 1: while the while the sun shines, and I do enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I love it. Mike. How long
Speaker 1: we into this? Okay, well we're about to wrap. This
Speaker 1: is the long we did for three hours? Like I
Speaker 1: really felt like we get here for three hours and
Speaker 1: just talk. I do want to say the first time
Speaker 1: I saw you, I was a huge married with children fan.
Speaker 1: And when you came in, and when you came in
Speaker 1: as Kelly's boyfriend, um Lonnie Tott. Yeah, that's the first
Speaker 1: time I ever saw chip past on television. There you go,
Speaker 1: and you were Kelly Bundy's boyfriend. What you have a mechanic?
Speaker 1: Were you? What was your job? You know what? I Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I was. I was the heir to the
Speaker 1: top fortune. They actually made tater totts, and so I was.
Speaker 1: I was the dumb son of a rich really dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really good looking. I made I made Kelly look smart,
Speaker 1: which was which was the trick? And that thing, by
Speaker 1: the way, I think I bet I knew something. I
Speaker 1: bet I was on something before that that you knew.
Speaker 1: Do you remember were you a Cheers fan? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched yours obviously. Young. Do you ever remember an
Speaker 1: episode where um give me pitching myself? I was? I was.
Speaker 1: That was the very first thing I did, which was
Speaker 1: mind blowing because it was like through the looking glass.
Speaker 1: It was literally like looking at a painting, or it
Speaker 1: would be like looking at that dogs playing poker, painting
Speaker 1: your whole life, right, and then one day you're sitting
Speaker 1: at the table with the dogs looking out. That made
Speaker 1: no sense, but you know what I mean, I'm stepping
Speaker 1: to the other side of that was mind blowing. But
Speaker 1: it was a really fun episode where cliff Um buys
Speaker 1: a video camera and he and he gets into this
Speaker 1: idea that he and Norm are gonna start filming people's
Speaker 1: events because so many events happened at the bar, they
Speaker 1: will start videotaping I'm on a big old VHS tape
Speaker 1: and they will make some money while they're they're in
Speaker 1: the bar anyway, so let's video tape their events. The
Speaker 1: very first one they do, it's a giant family reunion
Speaker 1: and they've got this thing on their shoulder and these
Speaker 1: cool things are happening, and suddenly they realized that they
Speaker 1: don't have a battery. There's no battery and he didn't
Speaker 1: get a battery, and so it's just a dead camera.
Speaker 1: And so they decided what they're gonna do iss that's
Speaker 1: all right, Nomi would is gonna pretend that way shooting
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And then later we tell him we
Speaker 1: lost the tape in the mail that you know we sent.
Speaker 1: We sent the tape and it just won't arrive. So
Speaker 1: the whole episode is them pretending to tape and he goes,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen anyway, It's just a family reunion, and uh,
Speaker 1: of course bigger and bigger things happened, and the grandfather
Speaker 1: stands up and goes, I've never told you all this,
Speaker 1: but I want you didn't know I love you. I
Speaker 1: love every one of you. And he's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: not my fault. He didn't tell his family love them.
Speaker 1: And then later I was like the second thing where
Speaker 1: I'd come busting in the door and dressed in full
Speaker 1: military garden. I'm like Grandma Grandpa through thirty hours on
Speaker 1: the MAX Happy Anniversary, like, oh, Terry, we thought you
Speaker 1: were dead, and they're pretending to film it. And then
Speaker 1: the best one of all is the grandmother who's been
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair. The entire episode says I want you
Speaker 1: to all know that you've given me the strength to
Speaker 1: do this about it and they're, oh my god. So
Speaker 1: I guess you don't remember. But if if you saw
Speaker 1: that was that was the real first big thing that
Speaker 1: I did. It was their last season. It was it
Speaker 1: was a thrill. So yeah, so here's and back to today.
Speaker 1: So search Charles Eston and this is called this town
Speaker 1: is ours. It's out now right lo, the good town Son?
Speaker 1: So in every single Friday for how long are you
Speaker 1: putting these songs out? Like do you have in your
Speaker 1: mind what you can do? Now? I think that's number
Speaker 1: nine and m yeah, I gotta I got a bunch more,
Speaker 1: and each I like more than next of They're all
Speaker 1: very very different. I look, let's I'm gonna aim at
Speaker 1: a year. That's crazy to even go twenty five is crazy,
Speaker 1: to go fifty two, Like that's right, I probably won't
Speaker 1: make it. And but but but if I say twenty
Speaker 1: it's like, so what you made two albums? You made
Speaker 1: a double album. That's a lot. That's still a lot.
Speaker 1: I know. Um, Look, I love writing, I love doing
Speaker 1: and more than anything, if we've come down to one thing,
Speaker 1: unifying threat of all this, I don't mind failing if
Speaker 1: I don't make it through a year. I didn't make
Speaker 1: it to a year. It's just it's a nice round number.
Speaker 1: If there were ten months in a year, I'd probably
Speaker 1: say that. But um, I know I have over thirty. Um.
Speaker 1: And and for me, it's it'll mean the music's out there,
Speaker 1: It'll mean I have a body of work. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: fifty damn years old and two days I'm fifty one.
Speaker 1: What day is it? Three days? Oh? You can cut
Speaker 1: that out if we're not on the right day. Um,
Speaker 1: but what am I gonna wait from? I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: out an album, put out twelve songs, and wait another
Speaker 1: eight ten months, put on another twelve. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know. Is it gonna. Am I
Speaker 1: gonna knock Barber streisand off the starts? No? So I'm
Speaker 1: just putting out the songs and and and I already
Speaker 1: they're streaming, and already people are you can put on
Speaker 1: play left like I mean it is you. You're doing
Speaker 1: a thing where I think people are starting to appreciate
Speaker 1: you as an artist, which is hard to do. If
Speaker 1: you're coming for more, people know you doing something else,
Speaker 1: which is your acting. I think this takes that on immediately.
Speaker 1: That's right in the face. I mean, if I could,
Speaker 1: if I could do that for any amount, and if
Speaker 1: it's nowhere near fifty two. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: wrote a ma all, I co wrote them all. That's
Speaker 1: just that's saying something I mean. So it's I'm I
Speaker 1: gotta be honest. I'm I told you old I am.
Speaker 1: I'm at the foot of a mountain again and I'm
Speaker 1: looking up and I'm just starting to climb. And that's thrilling.
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those guys that want to be
Speaker 1: I've worked hard long enough. I'm done with it. I
Speaker 1: I love this, and I love the fact that you
Speaker 1: and I sitting right here don't know what will come
Speaker 1: of this. We don't know what will come of it
Speaker 1: in a month or a year, um any of it.
Speaker 1: If nothing comes of it, the music's all out of it.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile you're walking around. Every single song is a
Speaker 1: lottery ticket. I don't care if somebody here's one cuts it,
Speaker 1: and you know it does an unbelievable version of it
Speaker 1: that I could never imagine. Um, any there's I don't
Speaker 1: even know what's going to happen. All I know is
Speaker 1: that I can only be in control of what I'm
Speaker 1: control of, and that is making this music and sending
Speaker 1: it out there. And Nashville starts back in November. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: I believe they said the beginning of January, and I
Speaker 1: start back tomorrow. I shoot my first scene to January.
Speaker 1: Why do I think November? Um, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: was there was talk of December, but it wasn't my talk.
Speaker 1: Well that's also not November. Twice you just couldn't wait.
Speaker 1: It's January. You were thinking of Thanksgiving and gratitude. That
Speaker 1: the gratitude that I have for you for sitting in
Speaker 1: a bedroom here at my house. Hey we have Do
Speaker 1: you have cushy chairs that rock? This is cushy. This
Speaker 1: is the most comfortable interview I have ever been in.
Speaker 1: This sincerely, the fact that I'm still await this is
Speaker 1: so comfortable. I appreciate it. Hanging for an hour and
Speaker 1: just talking like this is my favorite thing to do,
Speaker 1: Like just get down, learn understand. I like this podcast
Speaker 1: because it's it allows you to what what was the version?
Speaker 1: You get a different version of it's like, um, slower,
Speaker 1: you can you can go down paths and abbey way
Speaker 1: that you normally wouldn't have time for want to. I
Speaker 1: could take you on a boring and ordote or anecdote
Speaker 1: or two that we would add to cut from. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just how stories is. So that's why I like
Speaker 1: listening to them too, And so you're gonna get that
Speaker 1: next level. So thanks Nashville back in January, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. We're watching and the music's out there for
Speaker 1: it starts again stars Charles that's his performer name and
Speaker 1: his hashtag every single Friday. Let me say one more
Speaker 1: thing about Nashville. We we didn't get too much. Um.
Speaker 1: This will be about the show. Okay, I'm really this
Speaker 1: is not like going to c MT and these new writers.
Speaker 1: This is not like a tact on extra year to
Speaker 1: a show that by all right, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: That's what it feels like it could be. No, that's
Speaker 1: that's what it might have been and could have been.
Speaker 1: I totally get that, honest goodness. As much as I
Speaker 1: love the show, I wouldn't have wanted to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to tackle on and out a year
Speaker 1: beyond what it is. Uh, this is at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I sat the beginning of my Mountain. Again, this is
Speaker 1: a new thing. These writers have a new take on
Speaker 1: this show. But when I say a new take, it's
Speaker 1: almost there. It will take not look even this right
Speaker 1: what we're doing right here as a more lyrically paste
Speaker 1: and you can wander and meander and and touch on
Speaker 1: some things that you couldn't on on Well, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you you can't do, because you do whatever you
Speaker 1: want on your show. But I just generally mean in
Speaker 1: the format of radio broadcast radio, well, what's the exact
Speaker 1: same thing with network TV. You have to you have there,
Speaker 1: there's things you have to do, there's masters, you have
Speaker 1: to serve, you have to flip a truck or two,
Speaker 1: you have to uh, you know, fall off a building
Speaker 1: or two. There's and these things that Um, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: real pleased for the four years we had and very grateful.
Speaker 1: But in this other setting, whether it's CMT and these
Speaker 1: new writers, I think that we can go back to
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that not only was initially drew
Speaker 1: people to the show, but I always think it was
Speaker 1: the real heart of the show. Anyway, we were sometimes
Speaker 1: competing in an arena that we weren't wasn't our strength,
Speaker 1: It wasn't our forte to compete with a show um
Speaker 1: that can be so um incredibly. I'm uh. There's so
Speaker 1: many things that go on on some of these shows,
Speaker 1: on these network shows, and we were doing that too.
Speaker 1: But I thought the thing and that's what makes them great,
Speaker 1: But that's never was what made us great. What made
Speaker 1: us great, what what attached people to us and made
Speaker 1: him not let go, was those tiny little moments, those
Speaker 1: little looks between Deacon and Rain or that or that
Speaker 1: little sad moment between you know, whether it was Juliet
Speaker 1: or something like that. As those moments of connection and
Speaker 1: those those more real moments, I think we're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to get to do a lot more of those,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing is gonna be able to breathe
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's gonna it's like an old time lemonade,
Speaker 1: that lemonade stand that we first were for a little bit.
Speaker 1: We ended up having to make a lot more lemonade
Speaker 1: at a much bigger scale, quicker pace. Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, I don't I'm not disrespecting what we did,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying that this the nature of the
Speaker 1: Beast was that you had to do a network television
Speaker 1: show at a network television pace. Yeah, and and we
Speaker 1: loved getting to do it, and they were fantastic while
Speaker 1: we got to do it. But it's like, oh, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna get to do now? Well, is there
Speaker 1: anything you want to say? Because we rather that Connie
Speaker 1: only signed up for half the season. I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to comment on any of that because that that leads
Speaker 1: to her storyline, and all that all I can do
Speaker 1: is comment backwards and and you know, I mean, how
Speaker 1: much uh she was the day I met her. This
Speaker 1: is the worst line in the world. But it was
Speaker 1: truer than a Kobe. So I said, I said, there's
Speaker 1: a million reasons I'm excited to do this show, and
Speaker 1: you're a couple of hundred of them. I was a
Speaker 1: huge Friday Night Lights fan. She is going to be
Speaker 1: there tomorrow when I go to work, and she's been
Speaker 1: there every day until now. And I could not act.
Speaker 1: I could not bring that up. No, no, no no, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I would have drive out here going I couldn't. Don't
Speaker 1: even ask. Yeah. I have also become personal friends with
Speaker 1: Connie and man, what a strong And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't even say a strong woman, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to disrespect women. Right, She's just one of the strongest
Speaker 1: people and one of you have a conversation and you
Speaker 1: just kind of fall into it with her. I completely agree.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what more than that. Throughout all
Speaker 1: these years of what we've been doing, one of the
Speaker 1: one of the true north of the show was Callie Curry.
Speaker 1: Whenever she would direct her, whenever she would write an episode,
Speaker 1: I always could feel the whole thing come more back
Speaker 1: towards true north, Like on your compass of what the
Speaker 1: show is best at, what it's meant to be, Connie
Speaker 1: is that as well. Connie Um would always have a
Speaker 1: clear vision of what this should be and what we
Speaker 1: were doing, and Um she was for me. I give
Speaker 1: her so much credit for anything I've ever been able
Speaker 1: to do on the show because she's an absolute truth
Speaker 1: detector or maybe that's a nice way of saying a
Speaker 1: bullshit detect her big time and with me too, like
Speaker 1: she's called me out on She's passionate and she's very
Speaker 1: much here's what I am and that's it. And also
Speaker 1: even in terms of her acting, it's just real. She's
Speaker 1: just talking. I remember, I think it was first season,
Speaker 1: but I realized that if you're talking to her in
Speaker 1: a scene, and it's very hard not to add your
Speaker 1: little things that you think are gonna make you look
Speaker 1: cool or make the line sound really good. And so
Speaker 1: you create this little primrose path that you might walk
Speaker 1: down for how the scene will play the best. But
Speaker 1: that's not being in the moment, and that's not being real.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how she's going to react to
Speaker 1: something I said, So how can I know how I'm
Speaker 1: gonna react to her reaction? So it forced you to
Speaker 1: let all that go, because the second I didn't let
Speaker 1: it go, if I ever said something her truthfulness would
Speaker 1: make me sound so damned phony that I'd go, let's
Speaker 1: try that again. Stop, I can't do it that way,
Speaker 1: and I would just And so remember one time, this
Speaker 1: was it in a nutshell that we did. We were
Speaker 1: doing some scenes and she did all her coverage and
Speaker 1: it was my turn, and it was feeling good. It
Speaker 1: was fine. And uh and finally, um, we had a
Speaker 1: great director too, but he worked back and he's going
Speaker 1: to the back to the video village and and we're
Speaker 1: about to stay action again. I just leaned over to her.
Speaker 1: I go, I just wasn't bend it all the way,
Speaker 1: and I said, just give me something, give me something,
Speaker 1: give me not say something, make me be better, you know,
Speaker 1: real quickly, and she smiles. She goes just talk to me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, m damn it, yes, yes, exactly that.
Speaker 1: It's so obvious, but it's so brilliant. And so we
Speaker 1: did that take and she says her thing, and I
Speaker 1: just talked to her and it's like that that again
Speaker 1: and again that. But it takes somebody uh strong, uh,
Speaker 1: both mentally and you know, mostly every other way to
Speaker 1: remember that and to hold their guns and always be that.
Speaker 1: It's back in January. Uh, Chips got songs every Friday
Speaker 1: for the next ten years. He's claimed it here. He's
Speaker 1: going to do this for ten years, every single day.
Speaker 1: It's every single Friday until it's stupid. And I don't
Speaker 1: know it might already be, but until I think it's stupid.
Speaker 1: I think it's like I told you privately, was I
Speaker 1: think as an artist, you're showing something here that people
Speaker 1: didn't know you were, and so you're consistently putting out
Speaker 1: new music. You're showing that you are Okay, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: deacon on Nashville, you're this, here, that, but you're also
Speaker 1: an artist and play live shows and you you know,
Speaker 1: for people to be able to see versatility is tough
Speaker 1: because they start to put people in rolls and you're
Speaker 1: doing something that's kind of hard for people to understand
Speaker 1: it first. But I think people are finally getting it now.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one more thing, the real already though.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's been so cool because you've seen this
Speaker 1: and now I've finally seen it after all these years
Speaker 1: of playing here in a round town and around the country.
Speaker 1: I played shows now for the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and as I'm singing a song I love, I see
Speaker 1: it on their lips. It's the coolest thing ever. It's
Speaker 1: the cool thing ever. Yeah, so it's nuts. So already
Speaker 1: I wind all right, there is Chip Veston or is
Speaker 1: it makes me call him off the microphone, Charlie. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being here on the Bobby becaust dude. I
Speaker 1: hope you had fun. This is a lot of fun
Speaker 1: for me to sit back and and and talk it out.
Speaker 1: Thank you, man. Mike Wanna, we never went to we
Speaker 1: got lost. Anything you want to ask the ship before
Speaker 1: we go. Just thanks for talking about Holdown. That was
Speaker 1: my favorite bit ever. I was geeking out a bit. Yeah, alright, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. I appreciate it, alright. Hashtag every single Friday
Speaker 1: again Charles Eston. And he's got new music every Friday.
Speaker 1: And there's a light out there already. And he's also
Speaker 1: on the road a lot playing You, and Claire are
Speaker 1: playing You and all. We're in New Jersey on I
Speaker 1: don't know when this airs, it'll it'll be up tonight,
Speaker 1: but it'll be up forever. So he'll be in New
Speaker 1: Jersey soon and they're probably again again. All right, thank
Speaker 1: you guys, and we'll talk to you soon.