WEBVTT - Dave Dederer

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Such Podcast.

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<v Speaker 1>My guest today is Dave dieterwer of the President of

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<v Speaker 1>the United States of America. Dave, it's a thirty at

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<v Speaker 1>the anniversary of your debut album. What do you have planned?

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<v Speaker 2>Not as much as I'd like. We don't play live anymore,

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<v Speaker 2>and we have some nice offers and such, but I

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<v Speaker 2>don't know how much we'll get up to, and we've

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<v Speaker 2>always been I guess you'd have to say laissez faire,

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<v Speaker 2>or you could call it punk rock or you know,

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<v Speaker 2>pickywords wisely, but we just let the music speak for

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<v Speaker 2>itself and hope people respond well. So we don't have

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<v Speaker 2>any kind of blitz scheduled, just try to try to

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<v Speaker 2>do a few things here and there like this. This

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<v Speaker 2>seemed like a good excuse to talk to you if

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<v Speaker 2>nothing else.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, there are two other members in the original band.

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<v Speaker 1>How do all of you get along?

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<v Speaker 2>We get along unbelievably well. Actually, So there's my bandmates

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<v Speaker 2>are Chris Blue, who's the bald guy and the singer,

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<v Speaker 2>a primary singer, and then Jason Finn, the drummer. Chris

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<v Speaker 2>and I have known each other since middle school. And

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<v Speaker 2>Jason and I have known each other since we met

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<v Speaker 2>at a urinal at a gig at Seattle University in

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<v Speaker 2>about nineteen eighty four and I asked him to be

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<v Speaker 2>in another band I had at the time, and somehow,

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<v Speaker 2>over the course of thirty plus years of playing together,

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<v Speaker 2>we've gotten along famously. We don't really hang out with

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<v Speaker 2>each other a lot outside of playing music, but we

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<v Speaker 2>have this symbiosis whatever when we get together in a

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<v Speaker 2>room with instruments, and then we'll get into it, I'm sure,

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<v Speaker 2>but we have these incredibly lucky to have sort of

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<v Speaker 2>complimentary musical talents and also complimentary, for lack of a

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<v Speaker 2>better way to say it, business or professional skills and

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<v Speaker 2>interests that allowed the thing to work really well and

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<v Speaker 2>still work well thirty years later.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but didn't you stop playing with the band a

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<v Speaker 1>little over a decade ago?

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<v Speaker 2>I stopped our heyday was really ninety three to about

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<v Speaker 2>ninety eight, and then Chris quit as he was starting

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<v Speaker 2>his young family, and then at my instigation really around

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<v Speaker 2>three we started up again. That was when we got

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<v Speaker 2>the rights back to all the rights back to the

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<v Speaker 2>masters to our debut record, our hit record, and it

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<v Speaker 2>was a good impetus to get going again. And for

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<v Speaker 2>a few years at that time, I'd gone back into

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<v Speaker 2>proper white collar work as a public affairs account executive,

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<v Speaker 2>and I had two young daughters and you know, wife

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<v Speaker 2>and a big house, and I was trying to do

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<v Speaker 2>all of it. For about two years, I was working

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<v Speaker 2>full time, being a dad, being a husband, and then

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<v Speaker 2>trying to fly out two to four weekends a month

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<v Speaker 2>to play, you know, one to three gigs a weekend.

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<v Speaker 2>And after about two years of the band being back together,

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<v Speaker 2>maybe in six I just said I never actually quit.

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<v Speaker 2>Actually I said I needed to take a break for

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<v Speaker 2>six months. And a mutual friend of ours, Andrew mckaig,

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<v Speaker 2>lovely guy and great musician, he filled in. And then

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<v Speaker 2>they kept going for a number of years, touring without me.

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<v Speaker 2>But yet we all the three of us, kept running

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<v Speaker 2>the business and managing our managing the records we own,

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<v Speaker 2>and you know, so the whole thing kept rolling. I

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<v Speaker 2>just couldn't do it.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, when you reform the group and you're flying out

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<v Speaker 1>two or three weekends, is that more of the vanity

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<v Speaker 1>project or you're making any money?

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<v Speaker 2>We were making money, and the challenge is, as you know,

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<v Speaker 2>as a as a musical artist unless you're you know,

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<v Speaker 2>Trans Siberian Orchestra or somebody in the Wiggles or somebody

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<v Speaker 2>who figures out how to clone yourself. Well, there's only

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<v Speaker 2>one of you, and you can only be in one

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<v Speaker 2>place at a time. So the challenge was, is this

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<v Speaker 2>what I want to hang my hat on for the

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<v Speaker 2>rest of my working life? Is you know, maybe playing

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<v Speaker 2>sixty to eighty shows a year and being gone two

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<v Speaker 2>hundred days a year with kids, And I didn't want

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<v Speaker 2>to do that. So it was it wasn't a vanity thing.

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<v Speaker 2>We were making money and could have made a great

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<v Speaker 2>living at it.

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<v Speaker 1>So okay, a band that is you know, ten plus

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<v Speaker 1>years pass its heyday or around that ballpark, you leave,

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<v Speaker 1>you fly out, you come home. How much can you net?

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<v Speaker 2>We sort of put a floor on what we would do.

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<v Speaker 2>You know, I don't think we would take any gig

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<v Speaker 2>for sort of less than ten k after expenses. So

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<v Speaker 2>if we felt like we were each netting before taxes

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<v Speaker 2>three to four grand a gig, or grossing before taxes

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<v Speaker 2>three to four grand a gig, that it was worth doing.

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<v Speaker 2>And then as it evolved, you know, I bailed out

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<v Speaker 2>at a certain point. But as it evolved, you take,

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<v Speaker 2>as you know, in this industry, you get, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>if you want to route a tour all the way

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<v Speaker 2>down the West coast. For us at that point, it

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<v Speaker 2>didn't work very well because some places you get a

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<v Speaker 2>twenty five hundred dollars guarantee, but then you might also

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<v Speaker 2>get the gig at the Rodeo in Houston that's thirty

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<v Speaker 2>five grand. Right, So the things sort of start to

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<v Speaker 2>average out a little bit and you have to put

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<v Speaker 2>some floor on it to be able to make it work.

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<v Speaker 1>Okay, you've always emailed me about your income. Let's start

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<v Speaker 1>with the basics. Was the original deal with Columbia that

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<v Speaker 1>you get the record back or is that a result

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<v Speaker 1>of some kind of lawsuit or something.

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<v Speaker 2>No, we owned the record. So we made the record

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<v Speaker 2>with our friend Conrad Huno, who had what was locally

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<v Speaker 2>a legendary studio, Egg Studio in Seattle for years, and

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<v Speaker 2>he recorded the young fresh Fellows who were sort of

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<v Speaker 2>an you know, Seattle indie icons. Mud Honey records lots

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<v Speaker 2>of other artists, and he had a label called pop Lama,

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<v Speaker 2>and we just did a handshake deal with him in

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<v Speaker 2>sometime in ninety four, as you know, it all happened

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<v Speaker 2>really fast, Bob. We started. Chris and I had had

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<v Speaker 2>bands for ten years, starting in maybe nineteen eighty two

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<v Speaker 2>or eighty three. We were both from Seattle. We started

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<v Speaker 2>playing Me's. We went to high school together. We weren't

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<v Speaker 2>really friends. Right after high school, I was a year

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<v Speaker 2>ahead of him. The year after he graduated, we started

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<v Speaker 2>playing together, making recordings, and we always had this chemistry.

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<v Speaker 2>It was like it was just on from the first

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<v Speaker 2>time we ever sat down together. We played Deer Prudence.

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<v Speaker 2>He was playing keyboards and I was playing guitar, and

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<v Speaker 2>it was like, this is obviously like magic. So over

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<v Speaker 2>of course of ten years, we had all these bands.

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<v Speaker 2>I was going to school, he was going to college,

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<v Speaker 2>and then he was moving back and forth from Denver.

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<v Speaker 2>I was in Denver, excuse me. He was in New

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<v Speaker 2>York and Boston. We'd both come back to Seattle at times,

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<v Speaker 2>and we always had bands. So what happens fallow ninety three,

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<v Speaker 2>he moves back to Seattle for good. We do what

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<v Speaker 2>we always did. I had a rehearsal studio at the

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<v Speaker 2>time with I Think the Posy's, a great band called

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<v Speaker 2>Flop another band seven year bitch I shared with them,

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<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, okay, we got songs, I got a

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<v Speaker 2>rehearsal studio, let's just start playing. And we started playing

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<v Speaker 2>as a duo, and he has really bad tonight us

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<v Speaker 2>and at the time he's like, I don't even want

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<v Speaker 2>to have a drummer. Let's just play as a duo.

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<v Speaker 2>We started playing shows under these other names. We were

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<v Speaker 2>the Lofies, we were Pure Frosting, we were I can't

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<v Speaker 2>remember what else we called ourselves, and pretty quickly, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>this is we got a following, even before we added drums.

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<v Speaker 2>This is in the fall of nineteen ninety three, and

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<v Speaker 2>people dug us. You got to remember, Seattle nineteen ninety

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<v Speaker 2>three is like people move in here from Phoenix, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>and buying flannel and Doc Martin's and every show is

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<v Speaker 2>like a wall of Marshall stacks and long hair and

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<v Speaker 2>super loud and anks, dridden nonsense. And we get up

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<v Speaker 2>on stage and I'm like dorky, preppy guy in a

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<v Speaker 2>you know, a button down shirt and a grow grain

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<v Speaker 2>belt and saddle shoes, and Chris is this spaz bald

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<v Speaker 2>spas with spray painted gold boots. And so the two

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<v Speaker 2>of us plugged into this one, you know, like ninety

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<v Speaker 2>dollars amplifier with our twenty dollars guitars coming out playing,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, iggying the Stooge's tv I with no drummer.

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<v Speaker 2>So I think we stood out right away. And at

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<v Speaker 2>that point we'd been doing it for a long time,

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<v Speaker 2>and I think we kind of knew what we were doing,

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<v Speaker 2>so boom, it just all of a sudden we had attention.

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<v Speaker 2>And then Jason, who was kind of at the time

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<v Speaker 2>known as the popa Pike Street, Seattle's hipster neighborhood. He's

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<v Speaker 2>kind of like the coolest guy in town. He was

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<v Speaker 2>in another band, Love Battery, who were on Subpop and

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<v Speaker 2>at the time had just been signed to A and M.

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<v Speaker 2>And he'd seen an earlier band Chris and I had

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<v Speaker 2>called go and had the joke was the super cool

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<v Speaker 2>rock guy had begged us for three years like next band,

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<v Speaker 2>you're in, next band, you guys have I'm going to

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<v Speaker 2>be the drummer. I'm going to be the drummer. So

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<v Speaker 2>he's begging us, you know, come on, I got to

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<v Speaker 2>join the band, and Chris and I had these big

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<v Speaker 2>heartfelt do we want a drummer Jason joins us, and

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<v Speaker 2>it's even more magical. It's like the thing Chris and

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<v Speaker 2>I had and then just I'll never forget. The first

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<v Speaker 2>rehearsal was like, Okay, this is a thing, and boom

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<v Speaker 2>it takes off. So early ninety four, all of a sudden,

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<v Speaker 2>like we're packing places within a few months, and we

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<v Speaker 2>went in to I don't think you've had him on

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<v Speaker 2>your podcast, you should. Barrett Jones, who was Dave Grohl's

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<v Speaker 2>good buddy from back East and then his drum tech

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<v Speaker 2>for years. He had a little studio and it's a

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<v Speaker 2>long story, but somebody who liked the band gave us

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<v Speaker 2>three hundred and fifty dollars to make a recording. We

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<v Speaker 2>went in and made a ten song cassette and Jason

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<v Speaker 2>was at the time bartender at the Comet Tavern, which

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<v Speaker 2>is kind of the ground zero for hipsters in Seattle

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<v Speaker 2>than in Now. He started selling it from behind the bar.

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<v Speaker 2>Chris takes off meanwhile, to go play bass in Beck's

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<v Speaker 2>band on the Mellow Gold tour for six months, and

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<v Speaker 2>Jason's selling these tapes from behind the bar just like

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<v Speaker 2>he's selling hundreds.

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<v Speaker 1>Wait wait, wait, just how does he even know Beck?

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<v Speaker 2>He knows Beck. That's a long story. I think they

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<v Speaker 2>may have met because they were mutually acquainted with the

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<v Speaker 2>female singer songwriter Mary Lou Lord with him. That's fascinating, Okay, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>So anyway, Yeah, Beck came up to Seattle once, did

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<v Speaker 2>a gig. Chris jumped on stage as he will with

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<v Speaker 2>anybody anytime, for any reason, and played a harmonica solo,

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<v Speaker 2>and then I think in the next few days after that,

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<v Speaker 2>Chris went down to Olympia and played some slide guitar

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<v Speaker 2>on what became One Foot in the Grave, and then

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<v Speaker 2>Beck had this weird hit out of nowhere as you know, Loser,

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<v Speaker 2>which broke. You know, Beck was in Seattle because Seattle's

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<v Speaker 2>one of the main places where it broke with Marco O'Collins,

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<v Speaker 2>DJ at K and d D and Yeah, Chris moved

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<v Speaker 2>down to la for a few weeks and hears and

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<v Speaker 2>then went on tour with Beck on the Mellow Gold Tour.

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<v Speaker 2>So at a certain point, Jason and I are calling

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<v Speaker 2>Chris like, we're getting these gig offers, you got to

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<v Speaker 2>come back. We're selling these tapes from behind the counter

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<v Speaker 2>at the Commet and it's just kind of going.

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<v Speaker 1>On, Wait, wait, wait, selling the tapes behind the counter.

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<v Speaker 1>Everybody lies if they say they sell one hundred thousand,

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<v Speaker 1>they sold a thousand. But since you ended up having success,

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<v Speaker 1>you can be honest. How many cassettes did you actually sell?

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<v Speaker 2>Hundreds? Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand.

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<v Speaker 1>That's a lot.

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<v Speaker 2>Having anything going on other than Jason b and you know,

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<v Speaker 2>playing it at the bar and people starting to get

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<v Speaker 2>a buzz around it. So so meanwhile Chris is on

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<v Speaker 2>tour and we're calling him and saying, we're getting all

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<v Speaker 2>these gig offers, when are you coming back? And then eventually,

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<v Speaker 2>this is a good industry story, John Silva, Beck's manager

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<v Speaker 2>fires Chris. I mean I think Beck fired him, but

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<v Speaker 2>because this is when Beck was still super kind a

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<v Speaker 2>dour and super serious and basically wanted to be thirston more.

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<v Speaker 2>It was before he got kind of was doing the

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<v Speaker 2>robot in a captain's outfit and stuff, which he eventually did,

0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.280
<v Speaker 2>and being fun. But Chris got kicked out of Beck's

0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.920
<v Speaker 2>band for you know, being having too much fun, like

0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.719
<v Speaker 2>smiling and jumping around on stage. It didn't fit the

0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.600
<v Speaker 2>mo that they wanted to portray. So that was in

0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.160
<v Speaker 2>you know, like I don't know. June nineteen ninety four,

0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:28.000
<v Speaker 2>Chris came back and boom, all of a sudden. I mean,

0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.720
<v Speaker 2>we are packing clubs and immediately like we are selling

0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:35.360
<v Speaker 2>out the Crocodile Cafe mos which is now new. Most

0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:38.360
<v Speaker 2>these are all like four hundred to seven hundred seat

0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:42.320
<v Speaker 2>rooms where within a month or two they're sold out

0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:44.440
<v Speaker 2>and they are like eight hundred people outside trying to

0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.360
<v Speaker 2>get in. And this is not hyperbolic, this is it

0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.600
<v Speaker 2>was insane. It was just it just happened. And it

0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:53.839
<v Speaker 2>was not like the hipsters in Seattle didn't think much

0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:55.880
<v Speaker 2>of us, except for a few people like Kim Thale

0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.480
<v Speaker 2>always loved us. Everybody was telling you Jet that same

0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.600
<v Speaker 2>summer of ninety four, Jason was making Love Battery's major

0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.720
<v Speaker 2>label debut for A and M, and everybody's telling him, man,

0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.040
<v Speaker 2>you got to just stick with Love Battery. You guys

0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.000
<v Speaker 2>are going to do it. Meanwhile, this freight train was

0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.520
<v Speaker 2>just gathering steam, and by the end of that summer

0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.080
<v Speaker 2>we played an as gap. So this is August ninety four.

0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.480
<v Speaker 2>We played an ASCAP showcase the weekend of Bumbershoot in

0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:26.040
<v Speaker 2>Seattle and it was packed and Tim Summers, who was

0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:27.920
<v Speaker 2>an A and R guy at the time for Atlantic

0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.360
<v Speaker 2>who signed Hoody and the Blowfish and who weirdly Chris

0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.720
<v Speaker 2>knew because they had played a gig together with Chris's

0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.400
<v Speaker 2>band and Tim's band, Hugo Largo I think at CBGB's

0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.800
<v Speaker 2>years before. Tim accosted us that night and took us

0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.440
<v Speaker 2>out for coffee the next morning and on there sitting

0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.959
<v Speaker 2>there at Cafe Vita, I think on Pike Street. He

0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:52.960
<v Speaker 2>really was excited about us. He was the first day

0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.800
<v Speaker 2>and our guy to be excited and I'll never forget.

0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.280
<v Speaker 2>He said, you guys are going to be the police

0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.040
<v Speaker 2>of the ninety and Chris just looked at him and said,

0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:08.520
<v Speaker 2>maybe the minute work of the nineties. So from there on,

0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:10.760
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden, like a week later or two

0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:14.360
<v Speaker 2>weeks later, we were in Hits magazine constantly. There was

0:14:14.440 --> 0:14:17.480
<v Speaker 2>just this industry buzz. We didn't even have a manager

0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.760
<v Speaker 2>at the time. We eventually grabbed a friend who was

0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.480
<v Speaker 2>managing seven year bitch, Stacy Slater, and asked her to

0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.760
<v Speaker 2>manage us. And all of a sudden, We're going to

0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.920
<v Speaker 2>do showcases, you know, in LA and New York, like

0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.880
<v Speaker 2>every four to six weeks. Every label at that time,

0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.119
<v Speaker 2>there were seven or eight majors. Every major but Interscope

0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.800
<v Speaker 2>tried to sign us. It was nuts. I was in

0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:40.840
<v Speaker 2>grad school. I was my second year of grad school

0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.120
<v Speaker 2>at the time, and I was, you know, managing all

0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.560
<v Speaker 2>that and then taken off to New York or LA

0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:47.680
<v Speaker 2>every few weeks to do these you know, play at

0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:52.360
<v Speaker 2>the Viper Room or whatever. It was bizarre, and it

0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.040
<v Speaker 2>just kept gathering steam, you know. There was just this

0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:59.360
<v Speaker 2>momentum and Jason eventually he didn't At that time, We're

0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.080
<v Speaker 2>getting back to how we own our first record that

0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:04.560
<v Speaker 2>fall of nineteen ninety four, We're like, we didn't even

0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:06.720
<v Speaker 2>know if we're a band like Jason's in this other band.

0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.120
<v Speaker 2>They've got a you know, major label deal. Can we

0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.160
<v Speaker 2>even make a record together? So we uh made a

0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:16.360
<v Speaker 2>handshake deal with Uno and went into the little pop

0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:18.120
<v Speaker 2>Lama studios in his basement of.

0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:22.280
<v Speaker 1>His Wait wait, wait, wait, wait a little bit slower. Sure, Yeah,

0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.920
<v Speaker 1>the three hundred and fifty dollars cassette tape.

0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:26.480
<v Speaker 2>That you're selling Froggy Style.

0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:31.120
<v Speaker 1>Subsequent to that, there's all this major label action, but

0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:35.280
<v Speaker 1>you decide to cut an independent record instead of making

0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:36.400
<v Speaker 1>a major label deal.

0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.240
<v Speaker 2>I think at the time, it was all happening so fast,

0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.280
<v Speaker 2>we thought, let's just go ahead and make a record.

0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:45.680
<v Speaker 2>And the other thing is we were getting indie. There

0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:47.840
<v Speaker 2>were some other indie labels that were interested in us

0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:52.160
<v Speaker 2>that and we started to get really crappy publishing offers,

0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:56.040
<v Speaker 2>kind of from all corners. And I remember vividly that

0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.320
<v Speaker 2>summer Chris and I sat down and had a long conversation.

0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.840
<v Speaker 2>We're like, let's either just do the simplest thing with

0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.200
<v Speaker 2>people we like, or let's grab for the brass ring.

0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.960
<v Speaker 2>If it starts gets to the point where we really

0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.480
<v Speaker 2>feel like we have the opportunity to take this to

0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:13.440
<v Speaker 2>as many people as possible, let's do it. But otherwise,

0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:15.440
<v Speaker 2>let's just do what we want to do. We don't

0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.040
<v Speaker 2>ever want to you know, we're I was thirty when

0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:20.440
<v Speaker 2>we signed a record deal. We weren't kids, you know.

0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.040
<v Speaker 2>We we knew how we wanted to live our lives,

0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:26.120
<v Speaker 2>and that we weren't you know, we were fully committed

0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.120
<v Speaker 2>to what we were doing, but we weren't gonna cowtow

0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:32.360
<v Speaker 2>to anybody. We liked what we did and believed in it.

0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.960
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so cut that record? Is that the identical record,

0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:48.640
<v Speaker 1>the Columbia Releases or is there any remixing, re recording.

0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:53.240
<v Speaker 2>So that the first record has I'm blanking right now.

0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:55.800
<v Speaker 2>It has four or five songs that are actually from

0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.320
<v Speaker 2>the first session with Barrett Jones that we remixed and

0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:01.800
<v Speaker 2>in some case has added things to and then the

0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.639
<v Speaker 2>rest of the thirteen songs are from the sessions at

0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.800
<v Speaker 2>Egg's Studios. We put that all together as an album

0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.880
<v Speaker 2>on pop Lama. It came out in March of nineteen

0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:14.320
<v Speaker 2>ninety five. Where we are just at this is when

0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.080
<v Speaker 2>we're playing every show we play, there are two to

0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.600
<v Speaker 2>five A and R people there. It's just bizarre. You know,

0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:23.320
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't matter whether we went played in some crappy

0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:24.640
<v Speaker 2>club and Belling.

0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:29.879
<v Speaker 1>Hill, Okay, but everybody's interested. How long is this period

0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.320
<v Speaker 1>of time? And why don't you say yes to anybody?

0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.000
<v Speaker 2>Because we're this period of time from the time where

0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.680
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden we're in Hits magazine is like

0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:45.960
<v Speaker 2>September of nineteen ninety four and we committed to Columbia

0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.720
<v Speaker 2>by the first week in May nineteen ninety five, so

0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:53.119
<v Speaker 2>it's pretty short. I mean, our recording period was pretty.

0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:55.200
<v Speaker 1>Short, okay, And when do you cut the record?

0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:57.199
<v Speaker 2>So We cut the record in the fall of nineteen

0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:01.800
<v Speaker 2>ninety four and it comes out in March nineteen ninety

0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.920
<v Speaker 2>five on poplom and it sold about five thousand copies

0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:06.959
<v Speaker 2>in Seattle within the first month or two.

0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.119
<v Speaker 1>Okay, if everybody was interested, why did you make a

0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.240
<v Speaker 1>deal with Colombia as opposed to anybody else?

0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.920
<v Speaker 2>So, as I said, everybody but Innerscope was interested. It

0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.720
<v Speaker 2>came down to Colombia and Guio Siri and Freddie at

0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.680
<v Speaker 2>Maverick and Madonna, who we met with a couple of times,

0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.480
<v Speaker 2>and we were ultimately choosing between those two. And we

0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:33.280
<v Speaker 2>really liked our and our guy at Columbia, Josh Sarabon,

0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:39.240
<v Speaker 2>and also Donnie Einer. He was you know, he's a

0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.080
<v Speaker 2>legendary figure for many reasons. But what we liked about

0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.000
<v Speaker 2>him was he's very, very direct. He he heard, you know,

0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:49.480
<v Speaker 2>the record was out in March nineteen ninety five. These

0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:51.960
<v Speaker 2>guys are really trying to sign us at this point,

0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:54.040
<v Speaker 2>and he just said, look, you guys, I'll put this

0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.760
<v Speaker 2>record out as is the first week in May nineteen

0:18:56.840 --> 0:18:58.840
<v Speaker 2>ninety five. He said, I will have this record out

0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.919
<v Speaker 2>by July. If you verbally commit now, it'll take us

0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.840
<v Speaker 2>another four to six weeks to finalize the long form contract,

0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.480
<v Speaker 2>but I give you my word, we will set the

0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.440
<v Speaker 2>record up starting now and we'll give you a full

0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.480
<v Speaker 2>push launch by mid July. And he fucking did it.

0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.840
<v Speaker 2>I mean that guy has my respect for lifetime. He

0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.800
<v Speaker 2>committed verbally in early May. He said, we'll put the

0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.520
<v Speaker 2>record out exactly as you want. We actually wanted to

0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:28.040
<v Speaker 2>remix a couple songs and remaster it, and I'll do

0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:29.639
<v Speaker 2>whatever you want. You want to remix it, do it,

0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.760
<v Speaker 2>just get it done. I'll have the record out. And

0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:33.960
<v Speaker 2>you know how long in the physical ERAa it took

0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:36.240
<v Speaker 2>to set up a record. It didn't take a month

0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:38.880
<v Speaker 2>and a half. It took six months to really push

0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.439
<v Speaker 2>it out. So that's how we ended up in Columbia.

0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:44.080
<v Speaker 2>They just they were really direct with us.

0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.000
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, so now you're making a deal with Columbia.

0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:51.680
<v Speaker 1>It's major. You have one step better than garage management.

0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.040
<v Speaker 1>Who is your lawyer making this deal?

0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.680
<v Speaker 2>We had a killer lawyer, David Kottako, thank you very much.

0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.440
<v Speaker 2>At that time it was Cottaco, Guido and Carol was

0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:02.440
<v Speaker 2>the name.

0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:04.800
<v Speaker 1>So how did you get You're in Seattle, they're in

0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:06.280
<v Speaker 1>New York. How did you get hooked up?

0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:10.840
<v Speaker 2>We got hooked up. I have to say that our

0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.160
<v Speaker 2>manager at the time, who Stacey, who's still in the industry.

0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.280
<v Speaker 2>Ultimately no offense Stacy. Once we had a hit record,

0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.480
<v Speaker 2>she didn't really she hadn't been through that. She didn't

0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:24.240
<v Speaker 2>really know how to max out our opportunities.

0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:25.119
<v Speaker 1>But she was.

0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.200
<v Speaker 2>She's my age, she'd been working in the industry since

0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:32.320
<v Speaker 2>she was seventeen. She knew everybody, you know, as we

0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:34.560
<v Speaker 2>went through the courting process. We did not pay for

0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:37.520
<v Speaker 2>a cup of coffee for you know, a year of

0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:42.120
<v Speaker 2>getting flown around and courted and showcasing. So she knew everybody.

0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.359
<v Speaker 2>We met with every lawyer you could mention in the

0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:49.000
<v Speaker 2>top five or ten lawyers of that era. Katako was

0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.200
<v Speaker 2>the guy we hit it off with best. We felt like,

0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:54.000
<v Speaker 2>you know, you want an asshole, but he needs to

0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.160
<v Speaker 2>be your asshole, right, and he felt like our guy.

0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.000
<v Speaker 2>Ken Hurtz was somebody we almost tied, and I have

0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.280
<v Speaker 2>a horrible story about having to tell him we weren't

0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:06.080
<v Speaker 2>hiring him while playing around to golf.

0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:07.879
<v Speaker 1>Well, we'll tell the terrible stories.

0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:12.440
<v Speaker 2>So we were down to Ken and David Cataco and

0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.040
<v Speaker 2>I had made plans to I play golf along with

0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:19.520
<v Speaker 2>pretty much every other sport, and I'd made agreed to

0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:22.439
<v Speaker 2>go play around nine holes with Ken early in the morning.

0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.520
<v Speaker 2>We were in LA for four or five days, and

0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.160
<v Speaker 2>the night before we were at Canter's actually the band

0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.200
<v Speaker 2>and our manager and we all decided we're hiring David.

0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.159
<v Speaker 2>And we just had this huge pitch from Ken and

0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:37.760
<v Speaker 2>his partner. Meanwhile, this is really pre cell phone, right,

0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:42.439
<v Speaker 2>this is and so so we'd make the decision at

0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:44.679
<v Speaker 2>like nine thirty or ten at night, and the onus

0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:46.800
<v Speaker 2>is on me, like, Okay, Dave, you got to tell Ken.

0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.320
<v Speaker 2>I can't reach Ken. Cannot reach him. He's out at

0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:54.119
<v Speaker 2>an event with his wife, his babysitter doesn't know how

0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.239
<v Speaker 2>to reach him, you know, can't really leave this as

0:21:57.280 --> 0:21:59.760
<v Speaker 2>a message. So I meet him at the golf club

0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:01.840
<v Speaker 2>the next day. I think it was Brentwood. I can't

0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.440
<v Speaker 2>remember where he was a member. I meet him. He's

0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.600
<v Speaker 2>just excited. He's walking out, all smiles, and he's a

0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.240
<v Speaker 2>great He was a great guy. He's all smiles. You know.

0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:12.480
<v Speaker 2>I'm on the driving range already warming up, and he

0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:16.440
<v Speaker 2>walks out to the driving range and I got to

0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:19.080
<v Speaker 2>tell him the first thing, like can I'm sorry, we're

0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:23.159
<v Speaker 2>going with David Cottaco. That was the longest nine holes

0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.040
<v Speaker 2>of golf I have ever played in my life. There

0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.560
<v Speaker 2>was It was brutal. He was just steaming and and

0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.879
<v Speaker 2>we got through it. And anyway, Hi, Ken, you're a

0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:36.760
<v Speaker 2>great dude. Sorry it didn't work out.

0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.959
<v Speaker 1>I can't believe that you ultimately played. Okay, the record

0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:44.520
<v Speaker 1>was done. You're dealing with plumb, You're dealing with Donnie.

0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:47.600
<v Speaker 1>Doesn't Donnie want to own the record.

0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:50.600
<v Speaker 2>He wanted us badly enough that we were able to

0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:52.399
<v Speaker 2>cut a deal where he didn't own the record. And

0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:55.320
<v Speaker 2>I think in retrospect, you know, David was a good

0:22:55.440 --> 0:23:00.320
<v Speaker 2>enough lawyer, so they we gave them control of the record,

0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:02.679
<v Speaker 2>and I think he felt like there was a weird

0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.520
<v Speaker 2>confluence of circumstances that allowed to get it back so

0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.600
<v Speaker 2>quickly after it was a hit, which was the deal

0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:14.840
<v Speaker 2>was we got the record back. Basically one of the

0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:17.960
<v Speaker 2>windows of opportunity was five years after the termination of

0:23:18.040 --> 0:23:20.240
<v Speaker 2>the deal, and because we had such a high peak

0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.040
<v Speaker 2>and then Chris decided to quit an absolutely adamant that

0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:28.240
<v Speaker 2>he wanted to be dropped from Columbia immediately so we

0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:30.879
<v Speaker 2>were out of our deal very shortly after having a

0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:33.120
<v Speaker 2>hit record, and then there was a five year timeout

0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.960
<v Speaker 2>on that and that's how we got it back. So

0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:39.040
<v Speaker 2>eternal gratitude to David Kottako for that.

0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:41.960
<v Speaker 1>What about the second record? Who owns that?

0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:46.840
<v Speaker 2>Columbia still owns a second record which did about fifth

0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:48.960
<v Speaker 2>as well as the first record. It has some good

0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:51.160
<v Speaker 2>songs on it that did well, and then we had

0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:55.639
<v Speaker 2>the two other kind of hits or valuable recordings we

0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:58.160
<v Speaker 2>had are on the third record, which was Pure Frosting,

0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:01.560
<v Speaker 2>which they put out after we split up, which has

0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:03.359
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of kind of stuff we were working on,

0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:06.480
<v Speaker 2>but it has the Cleveland Rocks, which was the theme,

0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:10.280
<v Speaker 2>you know, the theme song for the Drew Carey Show

0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:12.600
<v Speaker 2>for seven or eight seasons. And it has our cover

0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.280
<v Speaker 2>of video Killed the Radio Star, which was on the

0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:18.960
<v Speaker 2>Wedding Singer record, which sold really really well.

0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:22.920
<v Speaker 1>Okay, why did he Chris quit the band?

0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:25.720
<v Speaker 2>I think at the time it was a few things.

0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:31.359
<v Speaker 2>You know, the whole ride was pretty intense, and you know,

0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:34.360
<v Speaker 2>he I would you know, it's his story to tell.

0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:36.960
<v Speaker 2>But he always had a fantasy that would sort of

0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:39.240
<v Speaker 2>be the sex Pistols that we'd break up, you know,

0:24:39.440 --> 0:24:43.240
<v Speaker 2>before we even started, that we'd be this kind of colossal,

0:24:44.560 --> 0:24:48.640
<v Speaker 2>colossal success slash failure. I think he also just started.

0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:50.960
<v Speaker 2>He was in his first marriage at the time, and

0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:54.240
<v Speaker 2>his older child was a year or so old, and

0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:56.720
<v Speaker 2>I think he was feeling the stress of that, and

0:24:56.840 --> 0:24:59.960
<v Speaker 2>he'd gone from you know, I'd had sort of you know,

0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:02.560
<v Speaker 2>professional careers in my twenties, but he'd been a guy

0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:05.080
<v Speaker 2>who basically owned a phone pad and a fifty dollars

0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:09.560
<v Speaker 2>guitar and was just making music. Had committed to like,

0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:11.359
<v Speaker 2>I don't care if I have to paint houses and

0:25:11.960 --> 0:25:14.040
<v Speaker 2>count checks in the basement of a bank as a temp.

0:25:14.119 --> 0:25:16.280
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to do this. So he'd gone from that

0:25:16.520 --> 0:25:18.800
<v Speaker 2>to wow, I own a nice house, I'm married, I

0:25:18.880 --> 0:25:21.800
<v Speaker 2>got a kid, And I think he just kind of

0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:25.359
<v Speaker 2>freaked out, and he you know, it was also a

0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:28.480
<v Speaker 2>little bit of a be careful what you wish for,

0:25:28.880 --> 0:25:31.320
<v Speaker 2>and he capped to that to me a few years

0:25:31.320 --> 0:25:35.280
<v Speaker 2>ago over lunch, just like you know, he said, basically, look,

0:25:35.440 --> 0:25:38.040
<v Speaker 2>I was basically ready to quit right as our first

0:25:38.080 --> 0:25:40.600
<v Speaker 2>record became a hit. It just freaked me out. So

0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:42.800
<v Speaker 2>and there's a lot of pressure there too, as well,

0:25:43.040 --> 0:25:45.960
<v Speaker 2>so I think that's why I quit at the time.

0:25:46.160 --> 0:25:51.200
<v Speaker 1>Okay, it's over. Yeah, you know, he's not the first

0:25:51.280 --> 0:25:54.760
<v Speaker 1>person to regret, you know. And Tom Petty Ron Blair

0:25:55.000 --> 0:25:57.320
<v Speaker 1>was the bass player opened a bikini shop in the

0:25:57.520 --> 0:26:01.520
<v Speaker 1>San Fernando Valley. Ultimately, when how we Epstein died, he

0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:02.240
<v Speaker 1>came back.

0:26:02.440 --> 0:26:02.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:06.920
<v Speaker 1>Christine mcviee was living in the UK for ten years

0:26:07.000 --> 0:26:08.760
<v Speaker 1>and woke up one day, So what the fuck did

0:26:08.800 --> 0:26:13.359
<v Speaker 1>I do? So, you know, usually people wake up, you know,

0:26:13.520 --> 0:26:15.119
<v Speaker 1>when no one when the phone isn't ringing.

0:26:15.600 --> 0:26:18.119
<v Speaker 2>I don't you know, we're weirdos, Bob. I mean, I

0:26:18.200 --> 0:26:20.320
<v Speaker 2>think our approach was always like, we're not going to

0:26:20.359 --> 0:26:23.320
<v Speaker 2>do anything we don't want to do. We always, in

0:26:23.480 --> 0:26:26.080
<v Speaker 2>terms of how we've run our business and personal lives,

0:26:26.119 --> 0:26:28.760
<v Speaker 2>we're all about the margin and the bottom line. And

0:26:29.000 --> 0:26:32.440
<v Speaker 2>we all made a reasonable amount of money, you know,

0:26:32.600 --> 0:26:35.080
<v Speaker 2>in the presidents. Chris went on to have a very

0:26:35.240 --> 0:26:38.639
<v Speaker 2>very successful career doing music back you know, he was

0:26:38.800 --> 0:26:40.240
<v Speaker 2>sort of the first person, I don't know if you

0:26:40.240 --> 0:26:42.320
<v Speaker 2>remember Pump Audio, which was one of the first pre

0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:46.360
<v Speaker 2>licensed music companies. Through a variety of circumstances, he ended

0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:49.080
<v Speaker 2>up getting in early on that so we had thousands

0:26:49.119 --> 0:26:51.800
<v Speaker 2>of tracks out being licensed. Then he started a kid's

0:26:51.920 --> 0:26:54.480
<v Speaker 2>music thing. I mean, he's like a poster child for music.

0:26:54.520 --> 0:26:54.880
<v Speaker 2>Two dot.

0:26:54.960 --> 0:26:55.040
<v Speaker 1>Oh.

0:26:55.440 --> 0:26:58.040
<v Speaker 2>He started a kids music thing, Casper Baby Pants, which

0:26:58.080 --> 0:27:01.720
<v Speaker 2>he's now shelved. But he put out I think eighteen

0:27:01.840 --> 0:27:06.000
<v Speaker 2>records in ten years and became this absolute fixture in

0:27:06.560 --> 0:27:09.359
<v Speaker 2>the Puget Sound area, playing you know, eighty or one

0:27:09.400 --> 0:27:13.680
<v Speaker 2>hundred times a year to kids and honestly made a

0:27:13.720 --> 0:27:15.520
<v Speaker 2>ton of money doing that and had a great time,

0:27:15.640 --> 0:27:19.359
<v Speaker 2>and a whole generation of kids from this region loved

0:27:19.440 --> 0:27:22.480
<v Speaker 2>the Casper Baby Pants record. So he's just a real smart,

0:27:22.600 --> 0:27:23.800
<v Speaker 2>hardworking guy, you know.

0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:26.280
<v Speaker 1>Okay, did he ever have a day job?

0:27:27.200 --> 0:27:31.159
<v Speaker 2>He has not had any day job since since the

0:27:31.240 --> 0:27:35.040
<v Speaker 2>presidents started, nor has Jason and I have only by

0:27:35.160 --> 0:27:37.719
<v Speaker 2>choice really for a number of reasons.

0:27:38.280 --> 0:27:44.159
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So Chris says he wants to quit. What do

0:27:44.280 --> 0:27:45.720
<v Speaker 1>the two other guys say.

0:27:46.800 --> 0:27:53.840
<v Speaker 2>Fuck, we knew, you know, we had agreed in late

0:27:54.240 --> 0:27:56.360
<v Speaker 2>ninety seven that we were going to take a six

0:27:56.480 --> 0:27:59.440
<v Speaker 2>month break. Let's have another meeting in two weeks. This

0:27:59.600 --> 0:28:02.080
<v Speaker 2>was a Jason's house here in Seattle on Capitol Hill

0:28:02.080 --> 0:28:04.200
<v Speaker 2>at the time. Chris walks in the door of the

0:28:04.280 --> 0:28:06.640
<v Speaker 2>next meeting. Two minutes later, he's like, we don't even

0:28:06.680 --> 0:28:09.280
<v Speaker 2>need to have this meeting because I quit. I've decided

0:28:09.320 --> 0:28:11.280
<v Speaker 2>I want to call cottacol right now. I want to

0:28:11.320 --> 0:28:14.720
<v Speaker 2>call Columbia. I want out of the deal now. Since then,

0:28:15.160 --> 0:28:17.480
<v Speaker 2>years later he admitted that this was not the best

0:28:17.520 --> 0:28:20.399
<v Speaker 2>way to make this decision. But he's a he's a

0:28:20.480 --> 0:28:24.520
<v Speaker 2>classic mercual, mercurial that's a hard word to say, artist type,

0:28:24.560 --> 0:28:26.800
<v Speaker 2>and you know, he's the person when he decides something,

0:28:27.359 --> 0:28:29.679
<v Speaker 2>he decides it and commits fully. So I knew there

0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:33.359
<v Speaker 2>was no talking him out of it. Was I was

0:28:33.400 --> 0:28:35.440
<v Speaker 2>also burned out. I just wanted to take a break

0:28:35.480 --> 0:28:39.520
<v Speaker 2>for six months and keep going. The weird thing is

0:28:39.680 --> 0:28:44.440
<v Speaker 2>that is that within nine months of us breaking up,

0:28:44.640 --> 0:28:46.760
<v Speaker 2>we started a new band with the three of us

0:28:46.880 --> 0:28:49.880
<v Speaker 2>and Sir mix a lot called Subset, which frankly should

0:28:49.880 --> 0:28:53.160
<v Speaker 2>have been freaking huge, and for a variety of reasons,

0:28:54.320 --> 0:28:57.200
<v Speaker 2>we had tracks out on Napster kind of that that

0:28:57.320 --> 0:29:01.400
<v Speaker 2>were I think, I'm told down loaded heavily in the

0:29:01.520 --> 0:29:04.080
<v Speaker 2>hundreds of thousands, and we made basically a full album,

0:29:04.160 --> 0:29:07.640
<v Speaker 2>but it just didn't ever come together. So weirdly, he quit.

0:29:07.760 --> 0:29:09.520
<v Speaker 2>But then months later we were in the studio with

0:29:09.600 --> 0:29:11.280
<v Speaker 2>the three of us in sir mix a lot making

0:29:11.640 --> 0:29:12.400
<v Speaker 2>new recordings.

0:29:13.080 --> 0:29:16.000
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you're not the only one involved. There's a manager,

0:29:16.080 --> 0:29:18.360
<v Speaker 1>there's Katakau, there's Donnie and Columbia.

0:29:18.400 --> 0:29:24.479
<v Speaker 2>What did they all say they were? I think they

0:29:24.600 --> 0:29:26.720
<v Speaker 2>felt like they'd had a great run with our first

0:29:26.800 --> 0:29:29.920
<v Speaker 2>record and our second record did okay. I think they

0:29:29.960 --> 0:29:33.160
<v Speaker 2>were very happy to take take the spoils from our

0:29:33.200 --> 0:29:37.000
<v Speaker 2>first record and walk away and enjoy that and not

0:29:37.320 --> 0:29:39.000
<v Speaker 2>sweat it too much. You know, they talked for a

0:29:39.040 --> 0:29:41.760
<v Speaker 2>while they didn't want us to use our name. So

0:29:42.240 --> 0:29:44.920
<v Speaker 2>if you see actually in our last video we made,

0:29:44.920 --> 0:29:47.480
<v Speaker 2>which was for video Killed the Radio Star on Jason's

0:29:47.520 --> 0:29:51.320
<v Speaker 2>kick drum, it says the Quitters and you know, they

0:29:51.360 --> 0:29:53.520
<v Speaker 2>didn't want to let us use our name for anything.

0:29:54.840 --> 0:29:57.920
<v Speaker 2>But I don't think they And they tried to, you know,

0:29:58.440 --> 0:30:00.680
<v Speaker 2>threaten to exercise leaving them or you know, sort of

0:30:01.320 --> 0:30:06.560
<v Speaker 2>exclusivity clauses, but they didn't never really put the hammer down,

0:30:06.840 --> 0:30:09.680
<v Speaker 2>you know, it was there was no I think they

0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:12.680
<v Speaker 2>were very happy to have unexpectedly made tens of millions

0:30:12.720 --> 0:30:14.040
<v Speaker 2>of dollars off our first record.

0:30:15.560 --> 0:30:19.680
<v Speaker 1>Okay, why was the second record not as successful I think.

0:30:20.080 --> 0:30:22.240
<v Speaker 2>I don't think it's I think it's a good record

0:30:22.280 --> 0:30:24.280
<v Speaker 2>when I listen to it now. The first record is

0:30:24.440 --> 0:30:28.040
<v Speaker 2>really an anomaly. It's a very weird record, and I'm

0:30:28.120 --> 0:30:30.240
<v Speaker 2>most proud of having made what I think is a

0:30:30.920 --> 0:30:35.520
<v Speaker 2>highly authentic piece of art with real integrity that became

0:30:35.640 --> 0:30:39.320
<v Speaker 2>wildly popular. I mean even sonically our first record, I mentioned,

0:30:40.000 --> 0:30:42.120
<v Speaker 2>you know, some of the tracks are from the first

0:30:42.240 --> 0:30:45.680
<v Speaker 2>session with Barrett Jones on a little half inch eight

0:30:45.800 --> 0:30:49.920
<v Speaker 2>track machine, which is very low fidelity. Conrad's studio was

0:30:50.360 --> 0:30:55.640
<v Speaker 2>sixteen track, one inch I think, and then we transferred

0:30:55.720 --> 0:30:57.600
<v Speaker 2>all of that at one point to two inch on

0:30:57.680 --> 0:31:01.520
<v Speaker 2>a mobile truck. And even just like the tape hiss

0:31:01.600 --> 0:31:04.000
<v Speaker 2>and the tape compression, just the sound of the record

0:31:04.160 --> 0:31:07.880
<v Speaker 2>is unlike anything else from that era. It's a and

0:31:08.000 --> 0:31:11.600
<v Speaker 2>then you know, we're playing these weird, weirdly strong tuned instruments,

0:31:11.720 --> 0:31:16.000
<v Speaker 2>and I mean, it's the first record is crazy. And

0:31:16.080 --> 0:31:17.840
<v Speaker 2>I think one of the problems with the second record

0:31:17.960 --> 0:31:19.320
<v Speaker 2>is then we had to go out and be like

0:31:19.400 --> 0:31:22.320
<v Speaker 2>a loud rock band on tour, and the second records

0:31:22.400 --> 0:31:24.960
<v Speaker 2>more of like a rock band, and that's not really

0:31:26.120 --> 0:31:29.960
<v Speaker 2>I think our Forte was being like, and I think

0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:32.560
<v Speaker 2>of it as like folk music meets the MC five,

0:31:32.720 --> 0:31:36.240
<v Speaker 2>you know, with a little bit of psilocybin thrown in.

0:31:36.480 --> 0:31:40.040
<v Speaker 2>It's It was a little weirder than direct rock music.

0:31:40.760 --> 0:31:44.280
<v Speaker 2>But I just think, you know, lightning strikes not always

0:31:44.320 --> 0:31:47.360
<v Speaker 2>more than once. You know that there are moments in time.

0:31:48.160 --> 0:31:59.520
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Lou Christie. The record comes out July.

0:32:00.160 --> 0:32:02.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, third week of July nineteen ninety.

0:32:02.640 --> 0:32:06.440
<v Speaker 1>Most people have no idea of the Mailstrom of being

0:32:06.600 --> 0:32:09.360
<v Speaker 1>the act at the center of success. So tell us

0:32:09.400 --> 0:32:09.760
<v Speaker 1>about that.

0:32:09.840 --> 0:32:12.760
<v Speaker 2>Oh god, it was. It was amazing. So I'm finishing

0:32:12.880 --> 0:32:15.479
<v Speaker 2>up at that point, I just, uh, while we were

0:32:15.520 --> 0:32:19.160
<v Speaker 2>in the Bob Lang studio in the Seattle area remixing

0:32:19.240 --> 0:32:22.600
<v Speaker 2>the record, I'm sitting in one of the ISO chambers

0:32:22.680 --> 0:32:26.600
<v Speaker 2>finishing my last work on a master's in urban planning

0:32:26.680 --> 0:32:29.720
<v Speaker 2>for the University of Washington. So we're doing that, and

0:32:29.880 --> 0:32:31.800
<v Speaker 2>then a few weeks later, they're like, oh, yeah, you're

0:32:31.800 --> 0:32:33.400
<v Speaker 2>gonna go. You guys are going to do some promo

0:32:33.520 --> 0:32:35.400
<v Speaker 2>tour thing. I'm like, whatever, I guess I'll write my

0:32:35.480 --> 0:32:38.000
<v Speaker 2>thesis after this promo tour is over. So all of

0:32:38.040 --> 0:32:42.400
<v Speaker 2>a sudden, we start getting this news like the advanced stuff.

0:32:42.600 --> 0:32:46.600
<v Speaker 2>There are a few stations, influenced, influential stations around the

0:32:46.640 --> 0:32:49.760
<v Speaker 2>country picked up Lump, which is the first single you

0:32:49.840 --> 0:32:52.120
<v Speaker 2>know off not even off the advanced single, just stuff

0:32:52.160 --> 0:32:54.720
<v Speaker 2>the advanced CD before they even started pushing the single

0:32:55.080 --> 0:32:59.640
<v Speaker 2>in early July, and that included WHFS in the DC area,

0:32:59.720 --> 0:33:03.120
<v Speaker 2>which was a big taste maker in commercial alternative at

0:33:03.160 --> 0:33:06.880
<v Speaker 2>the time. I think ninety nine X in Atlanta. K

0:33:07.120 --> 0:33:09.760
<v Speaker 2>Rock was probably a little bit behind it. And so

0:33:10.120 --> 0:33:13.840
<v Speaker 2>there's a little momentum, which is great. All of a sudden,

0:33:13.880 --> 0:33:15.800
<v Speaker 2>then we go do this promo tour. So for the

0:33:16.000 --> 0:33:20.200
<v Speaker 2>month of September nineteen ninety five, our month of August

0:33:20.240 --> 0:33:23.040
<v Speaker 2>and September, we did a promo tour in the US

0:33:23.160 --> 0:33:27.240
<v Speaker 2>and Europe, and I've apparently was told it was legendary

0:33:27.280 --> 0:33:30.040
<v Speaker 2>at Colombia because we were willing to do anything like

0:33:30.120 --> 0:33:33.400
<v Speaker 2>the day we did in La Among other things, we

0:33:33.520 --> 0:33:36.440
<v Speaker 2>played in the parking lot at Pink's Hot Hot Dogs

0:33:36.520 --> 0:33:40.400
<v Speaker 2>on Librea. We played on the third Street promenade in

0:33:40.480 --> 0:33:44.120
<v Speaker 2>Santa Monica, and we were doing this every day, flying

0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:45.880
<v Speaker 2>from one city to another. We play on the back

0:33:45.920 --> 0:33:48.280
<v Speaker 2>of a flatbed truck, played on the Beach in San Diego.

0:33:49.360 --> 0:33:51.120
<v Speaker 2>The day we did. I always described the day we

0:33:51.200 --> 0:33:53.040
<v Speaker 2>did in New York to try to give people an

0:33:53.080 --> 0:33:54.880
<v Speaker 2>idea of what it was like. I think we flew

0:33:54.920 --> 0:33:58.480
<v Speaker 2>in from Atlanta, Sony Rep picked us up. We got

0:33:58.560 --> 0:34:00.840
<v Speaker 2>in the car at like ten at night at JFK.

0:34:01.320 --> 0:34:06.320
<v Speaker 2>He turns on the radio and what's the huge top

0:34:06.400 --> 0:34:08.919
<v Speaker 2>forty station in the New York area that it's got

0:34:09.040 --> 0:34:12.879
<v Speaker 2>like a Jillian listeners. I'm blanking on it right now.

0:34:13.600 --> 0:34:15.600
<v Speaker 2>He turns on that station. I'm sorry, I can't remember

0:34:15.640 --> 0:34:18.359
<v Speaker 2>it right now. They're playing Lump. He's clear. I'm sure

0:34:18.440 --> 0:34:20.360
<v Speaker 2>he set it up right, you know, down to the

0:34:20.440 --> 0:34:24.279
<v Speaker 2>minute we go to the hotel. We go over to that.

0:34:25.000 --> 0:34:26.680
<v Speaker 2>It's killing me that I can't remember the name of

0:34:26.719 --> 0:34:28.799
<v Speaker 2>the station. We go across the w you know, New.

0:34:28.800 --> 0:34:32.200
<v Speaker 1>York Change after it was wplj NO, and there was

0:34:32.360 --> 0:34:35.120
<v Speaker 1>k Rock, there was Scott Shannon station.

0:34:35.400 --> 0:34:37.640
<v Speaker 2>It was the big top forty FM station at the time.

0:34:37.680 --> 0:34:39.880
<v Speaker 2>So we go across the river to their place at

0:34:40.000 --> 0:34:42.360
<v Speaker 2>you know, like midnight, and there's still a huge audience

0:34:42.400 --> 0:34:44.440
<v Speaker 2>at the time. We go on there for fifteen or

0:34:44.440 --> 0:34:47.200
<v Speaker 2>twenty minutes, maybe with acoustic guitars, go back to the hotel,

0:34:47.480 --> 0:34:50.000
<v Speaker 2>go to sleep. At one thirty, get up, and this

0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:52.399
<v Speaker 2>is when we still would agree to do morning drive time.

0:34:52.880 --> 0:34:56.800
<v Speaker 2>Get up, Go to one rock station, do an interview,

0:34:56.920 --> 0:35:00.200
<v Speaker 2>play three songs live on the air during drivetime. Get

0:35:00.239 --> 0:35:02.919
<v Speaker 2>in the van. Go to whatever the commercial alternative station

0:35:03.120 --> 0:35:06.080
<v Speaker 2>was at the time. Do an on air segment, play

0:35:06.120 --> 0:35:08.640
<v Speaker 2>two or three songs live on the air. Get in

0:35:08.719 --> 0:35:11.560
<v Speaker 2>the van. Go to five fifty Madison Avenue, the famous

0:35:11.560 --> 0:35:14.560
<v Speaker 2>Philip Johnson AT and T Building, which was Sony headquarters

0:35:14.600 --> 0:35:18.160
<v Speaker 2>at the time. Play a full set before lunch to

0:35:19.080 --> 0:35:22.040
<v Speaker 2>all Sony employees and anybody who's walking by in the

0:35:22.200 --> 0:35:25.000
<v Speaker 2>glass lobby of that building, which is sonically a nightmare

0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:29.560
<v Speaker 2>but exciting. Then go upstairs, have marketing meetings. Somebody remembers

0:35:29.600 --> 0:35:31.520
<v Speaker 2>to give us a sandwich at some point, right, and

0:35:31.600 --> 0:35:33.799
<v Speaker 2>this is August, it's ninety with you know, like ninety

0:35:33.840 --> 0:35:36.800
<v Speaker 2>percent humidity. Then we get in the van. We go

0:35:36.880 --> 0:35:39.200
<v Speaker 2>down to Washington Square Park. And this is all if

0:35:39.200 --> 0:35:41.600
<v Speaker 2>you're lucky to do this right, this is a privilege.

0:35:42.600 --> 0:35:44.480
<v Speaker 2>Go down to Washington Square Park. They have a stage

0:35:44.480 --> 0:35:46.560
<v Speaker 2>set up in generators in full pa. We played a

0:35:46.640 --> 0:35:49.320
<v Speaker 2>full set in Washington Square park for whoever happened to

0:35:49.360 --> 0:35:51.640
<v Speaker 2>be walking by. It's like ninety We're right in the sun.

0:35:51.719 --> 0:35:54.839
<v Speaker 2>There's no shade, no nothing. Then that we do get

0:35:54.880 --> 0:35:56.399
<v Speaker 2>to go back to the hotel for like an hour.

0:35:56.719 --> 0:35:58.560
<v Speaker 2>Then we go to some pizza joint and it's a

0:35:58.600 --> 0:36:00.919
<v Speaker 2>meet and greet with at the time, all the people

0:36:01.080 --> 0:36:03.480
<v Speaker 2>run the one stops and the the you know, the

0:36:04.120 --> 0:36:07.320
<v Speaker 2>tower managers and stuff from the Tri State area all invited.

0:36:07.680 --> 0:36:09.880
<v Speaker 2>So we stand around and drink beer and eat pizza

0:36:09.960 --> 0:36:12.439
<v Speaker 2>and make nice with all the people who are gonna

0:36:12.520 --> 0:36:14.920
<v Speaker 2>determine whether we're on the end caps at tower or not.

0:36:15.800 --> 0:36:19.280
<v Speaker 2>And then we the band, pushed the air hockey tables aside,

0:36:19.800 --> 0:36:21.600
<v Speaker 2>set up a little pa and all our stuff that

0:36:21.680 --> 0:36:23.880
<v Speaker 2>we were flying with, and play another full set to

0:36:24.000 --> 0:36:26.759
<v Speaker 2>this you know this crowd. And then we go back

0:36:26.760 --> 0:36:28.440
<v Speaker 2>to the hotel and I don't know, got up at

0:36:28.440 --> 0:36:30.440
<v Speaker 2>six the next morning for another lobby call and went

0:36:30.480 --> 0:36:32.719
<v Speaker 2>and did that again. So we did that every day

0:36:32.840 --> 0:36:36.680
<v Speaker 2>for two months through the US and Europe, and that

0:36:36.920 --> 0:36:41.759
<v Speaker 2>was before we even started proper touring, and meanwhile the

0:36:41.840 --> 0:36:43.520
<v Speaker 2>record was blowing lump was blowing up.

0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:47.560
<v Speaker 1>Okay, couple of questions in retrospect was that necessary.

0:36:48.320 --> 0:36:50.080
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if it was necessary, but I think

0:36:50.200 --> 0:36:53.920
<v Speaker 2>it helped. I mean some of these things, a lot

0:36:54.000 --> 0:36:56.959
<v Speaker 2>of stations were already playing us. You'd have to ask

0:36:57.480 --> 0:36:59.759
<v Speaker 2>what John Leche was, the guy who I think was

0:36:59.800 --> 0:37:02.200
<v Speaker 2>really the architect of the marketing campaign at the time,

0:37:02.560 --> 0:37:06.520
<v Speaker 2>who I'm still in touch with. I don't know how

0:37:06.600 --> 0:37:08.520
<v Speaker 2>much of a difference it made, but I think our

0:37:08.600 --> 0:37:11.080
<v Speaker 2>willingness to work made a big difference. We were always

0:37:11.680 --> 0:37:14.920
<v Speaker 2>on time, ready to go, ready to kick ass, and

0:37:15.400 --> 0:37:18.040
<v Speaker 2>we would you know an example, some of the stations.

0:37:18.400 --> 0:37:20.319
<v Speaker 2>You know, we went to some markets. Like I said,

0:37:20.440 --> 0:37:23.480
<v Speaker 2>WHFS was playing us already. They had set up a

0:37:23.560 --> 0:37:25.800
<v Speaker 2>thing where we played in the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.

0:37:26.520 --> 0:37:29.880
<v Speaker 2>We had no idea we were doing these things, two

0:37:29.960 --> 0:37:31.279
<v Speaker 2>or three of them a day. We show up to

0:37:31.360 --> 0:37:34.319
<v Speaker 2>do that and like three thousand kids shows up, show

0:37:34.440 --> 0:37:36.960
<v Speaker 2>up the songs. I mean, this place, this Amphitheater on

0:37:37.040 --> 0:37:40.959
<v Speaker 2>the Harbor is packed, and we've got this crappy little

0:37:41.040 --> 0:37:44.480
<v Speaker 2>traveling drum kit where Jason's kick drum is a suitcase,

0:37:44.520 --> 0:37:47.239
<v Speaker 2>and Chris and I have these tiny ams and we

0:37:47.360 --> 0:37:50.440
<v Speaker 2>play at full set to other places. We went to

0:37:50.520 --> 0:37:53.160
<v Speaker 2>other stations in August where they hadn't added the song

0:37:53.640 --> 0:37:55.760
<v Speaker 2>and a couple of those we went into their boardroom

0:37:55.920 --> 0:37:59.239
<v Speaker 2>and set up our gear on their boardroom table and said,

0:37:59.480 --> 0:38:01.960
<v Speaker 2>come intherfuckers and have your lunch. We're going to blow

0:38:02.040 --> 0:38:04.520
<v Speaker 2>your minds. And so I think it had to have

0:38:04.640 --> 0:38:07.160
<v Speaker 2>helped to at least some degree. Would I would like

0:38:07.239 --> 0:38:08.879
<v Speaker 2>to think so, because it was really hard work.

0:38:10.000 --> 0:38:13.640
<v Speaker 1>Okay, the human body can only take so much. Most

0:38:13.719 --> 0:38:17.640
<v Speaker 1>of this is regular roadwork. You're playing to thousands, you

0:38:17.760 --> 0:38:21.040
<v Speaker 1>can't calm down. Then the sun comes up. So there

0:38:21.080 --> 0:38:25.960
<v Speaker 1>are drugs involved alcohol. How did you guys manage this

0:38:26.320 --> 0:38:27.759
<v Speaker 1>physically and emotionally?

0:38:28.680 --> 0:38:32.160
<v Speaker 2>I can speak best for myself. I didn't manage it

0:38:32.360 --> 0:38:35.200
<v Speaker 2>very well physically. It didn't really agree with me. I'm

0:38:35.239 --> 0:38:36.920
<v Speaker 2>a guy who wants to be like I mean, you

0:38:36.960 --> 0:38:39.520
<v Speaker 2>can see my skis on the ceiling behind us. I

0:38:39.600 --> 0:38:41.920
<v Speaker 2>want to be out. My bike's right there on the trainer.

0:38:42.680 --> 0:38:45.920
<v Speaker 2>I want to be out skiing or climbing with my friends.

0:38:46.040 --> 0:38:49.520
<v Speaker 2>That was my whole thing, was doing sports and being outside.

0:38:49.680 --> 0:38:52.360
<v Speaker 2>That's my whole life growing up and with my best friends.

0:38:52.440 --> 0:38:55.480
<v Speaker 2>And I also don't have I certainly don't have an

0:38:55.520 --> 0:38:58.480
<v Speaker 2>iron stomach or an iron constitution. So the whole thing

0:38:58.600 --> 0:39:03.000
<v Speaker 2>really disagreed with me. And I think, you know, at

0:39:03.120 --> 0:39:06.239
<v Speaker 2>least it feels like it took years off my life,

0:39:06.320 --> 0:39:08.560
<v Speaker 2>even just doing it for maybe four years for long.

0:39:08.640 --> 0:39:10.759
<v Speaker 1>Well, did you cope with drugs and alcohol? No?

0:39:11.080 --> 0:39:14.000
<v Speaker 2>I would have coped with alcohol, but my body just can't,

0:39:14.280 --> 0:39:17.279
<v Speaker 2>you like, my digestive system just can't handle it. Or

0:39:17.440 --> 0:39:18.680
<v Speaker 2>I would have drunk heavily.

0:39:19.600 --> 0:39:22.360
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's go back. You said you were willing to

0:39:22.480 --> 0:39:25.920
<v Speaker 1>do anything. Do you think that was because you were

0:39:26.040 --> 0:39:30.320
<v Speaker 1>older thirty or you were unique individuals? You were college graduates.

0:39:30.760 --> 0:39:33.160
<v Speaker 1>Why were you willing to do anything and do all

0:39:33.200 --> 0:39:33.680
<v Speaker 1>this work?

0:39:34.400 --> 0:39:37.600
<v Speaker 2>I think we had decided, Well, Jason, I would I

0:39:37.880 --> 0:39:40.400
<v Speaker 2>try to speak for the other guys. First. Jason had

0:39:40.440 --> 0:39:42.480
<v Speaker 2>been through this with Love Battery, and the whole time

0:39:42.520 --> 0:39:44.600
<v Speaker 2>we're going through it with the Presidency's like, you, guys,

0:39:44.640 --> 0:39:46.440
<v Speaker 2>you don't understand. This is not how it works. You

0:39:46.480 --> 0:39:48.360
<v Speaker 2>don't just walk in and everybody wants to sign you.

0:39:48.880 --> 0:39:50.879
<v Speaker 2>We were out, you know, Love Battery was out beating

0:39:50.920 --> 0:39:53.800
<v Speaker 2>the bushes, you know, put out three records on subpop,

0:39:53.880 --> 0:39:56.000
<v Speaker 2>toured the country twenty times in a van. He's like,

0:39:56.080 --> 0:39:58.560
<v Speaker 2>this is not normal. So I think he was just

0:39:59.080 --> 0:40:02.520
<v Speaker 2>super psyched to get a shot and do it, you know,

0:40:02.760 --> 0:40:05.640
<v Speaker 2>with with a lot of juice behind it. I think

0:40:05.840 --> 0:40:09.279
<v Speaker 2>for Chris and myself, you know, we, as I said,

0:40:09.360 --> 0:40:12.279
<v Speaker 2>like Chris doing his kids music thing, were people who like,

0:40:12.320 --> 0:40:14.400
<v Speaker 2>if you're going to do something, do it right. Actually,

0:40:14.440 --> 0:40:16.480
<v Speaker 2>you know my dad who has passed, that's one of his.

0:40:17.000 --> 0:40:20.360
<v Speaker 2>When I asked my parents as they've gotten older, my

0:40:20.480 --> 0:40:23.279
<v Speaker 2>other my stepdad, mom are still alive, like, what's some

0:40:23.400 --> 0:40:26.719
<v Speaker 2>advice my dad's his number one was whatever you do

0:40:27.239 --> 0:40:29.680
<v Speaker 2>do it well. You know, if you're going to do something,

0:40:30.480 --> 0:40:36.200
<v Speaker 2>give it everything. So we and I also think we

0:40:36.400 --> 0:40:38.920
<v Speaker 2>felt like we can do it on our own terms.

0:40:39.040 --> 0:40:41.600
<v Speaker 2>So we didn't feel like anybody was pushing us. We

0:40:41.760 --> 0:40:44.480
<v Speaker 2>felt like we're making all the choices here. We're not

0:40:44.560 --> 0:40:47.359
<v Speaker 2>going to do anything that we do. We agreed among

0:40:47.400 --> 0:40:49.239
<v Speaker 2>the three of us we're not doing anything we don't

0:40:49.280 --> 0:40:50.480
<v Speaker 2>all three of us don't want to do.

0:40:51.760 --> 0:40:55.600
<v Speaker 1>So okay, tell me about making the videos, which we're

0:40:55.640 --> 0:40:56.440
<v Speaker 1>all over empty.

0:40:56.680 --> 0:40:58.799
<v Speaker 2>The videos were fun, you know. We did the first

0:40:58.840 --> 0:41:02.320
<v Speaker 2>few videos with Roman Coppola, who was just a lovely,

0:41:02.880 --> 0:41:07.279
<v Speaker 2>awesome dude, and he came up to Seattle. We made

0:41:07.320 --> 0:41:09.799
<v Speaker 2>the Lump video in.

0:41:10.120 --> 0:41:12.480
<v Speaker 1>What was the connection? How did you get cooked up

0:41:12.520 --> 0:41:12.759
<v Speaker 1>with them?

0:41:12.840 --> 0:41:16.200
<v Speaker 2>With Roman? You know? Weirdly, it turned out that I

0:41:16.280 --> 0:41:18.960
<v Speaker 2>went to Colorado College just for one year of my

0:41:19.080 --> 0:41:21.120
<v Speaker 2>freshman year, and it turned out that I one of

0:41:21.160 --> 0:41:23.160
<v Speaker 2>my classmates was somebody he went to high school with.

0:41:23.360 --> 0:41:25.560
<v Speaker 2>So we ended up having a weird connection. But we

0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:27.520
<v Speaker 2>had no connection. We just got set a bunch of

0:41:27.600 --> 0:41:29.400
<v Speaker 2>reels and we loved he had made a couple of

0:41:29.480 --> 0:41:31.400
<v Speaker 2>videos at that point. He might have made a Rentals

0:41:31.480 --> 0:41:34.960
<v Speaker 2>video and maybe a Green Day video. I can't remember.

0:41:35.320 --> 0:41:37.319
<v Speaker 2>We just liked his videos the best, and we liked

0:41:37.400 --> 0:41:39.040
<v Speaker 2>him the most, and we talked to him on the phone,

0:41:39.640 --> 0:41:42.080
<v Speaker 2>and it was a great choice. He was a soup.

0:41:42.200 --> 0:41:44.560
<v Speaker 2>We were totally simpatico with him. We were on the

0:41:44.600 --> 0:41:45.520
<v Speaker 2>same wavelength, so.

0:41:45.800 --> 0:41:48.920
<v Speaker 1>Well, you know, you talked to most acts. It happened

0:41:48.960 --> 0:41:51.320
<v Speaker 1>so fast and retrosect. They said, we didn't really have

0:41:51.440 --> 0:41:54.799
<v Speaker 1>any control. It was the director's vision. It's not really

0:41:54.840 --> 0:41:57.640
<v Speaker 1>what we want or wanted. What did you feel?

0:41:58.200 --> 0:42:00.839
<v Speaker 2>I love the videos. I think that the Lump. There

0:42:00.840 --> 0:42:04.080
<v Speaker 2>are two Lump videos, one of which they wanted We

0:42:04.440 --> 0:42:07.160
<v Speaker 2>Columbia wanted MTV to play both. They wouldn't play the

0:42:07.280 --> 0:42:11.480
<v Speaker 2>second one because it had Chris jumping up and down

0:42:11.520 --> 0:42:14.080
<v Speaker 2>on a tiny battery powered amplifier that was set on

0:42:14.200 --> 0:42:16.480
<v Speaker 2>fire in his backyard while we had a barbecue, and

0:42:16.520 --> 0:42:19.520
<v Speaker 2>they thought that was too violent. But the first one,

0:42:19.719 --> 0:42:22.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, shows us in starts with us in the

0:42:22.680 --> 0:42:24.880
<v Speaker 2>swamp in the arboretum, which is kind of in the

0:42:25.000 --> 0:42:29.600
<v Speaker 2>university area in in Seattle, which is like a mile

0:42:29.680 --> 0:42:31.600
<v Speaker 2>from where I grew up and a mile from where

0:42:31.680 --> 0:42:33.959
<v Speaker 2>Chris and I went to middle school and high school together.

0:42:34.680 --> 0:42:37.400
<v Speaker 2>So and then the barge that we're out on in

0:42:37.640 --> 0:42:40.640
<v Speaker 2>Elliott Bay at the end, that's my stepdad's barge or

0:42:40.840 --> 0:42:42.640
<v Speaker 2>was he was in the tug and barge business. So

0:42:42.840 --> 0:42:45.000
<v Speaker 2>they were out there with my stepdad driving us around

0:42:45.120 --> 0:42:49.279
<v Speaker 2>doing our things. So the whole thing felt very you know,

0:42:49.520 --> 0:42:52.520
<v Speaker 2>natural and like us. And then the Peaches video, which

0:42:52.880 --> 0:42:54.600
<v Speaker 2>you know was we fight the Ninjas and the and

0:42:55.320 --> 0:42:58.640
<v Speaker 2>that was great. Roman came to us and he's like, Peaches,

0:42:58.640 --> 0:43:00.600
<v Speaker 2>do you guys have any ideas? And he just had, like,

0:43:00.719 --> 0:43:02.920
<v Speaker 2>what if we're under a tree and has Kansas Peaches

0:43:02.920 --> 0:43:04.879
<v Speaker 2>hanging out? He's like, yeah, that's great, but that's dumb.

0:43:05.400 --> 0:43:07.600
<v Speaker 2>So that's how it starts. And at the time he

0:43:07.840 --> 0:43:11.440
<v Speaker 2>was super into these you know, b movie martial arts movies.

0:43:11.480 --> 0:43:13.239
<v Speaker 2>He's like, what if you guys fight ninjas at the end.

0:43:13.280 --> 0:43:16.520
<v Speaker 2>We're like, like that found sounds awesome. So we spent

0:43:16.560 --> 0:43:19.359
<v Speaker 2>the day with the Hollywood ninjas and got launched off

0:43:19.760 --> 0:43:23.960
<v Speaker 2>ramps and you know, it was it was blast. I

0:43:24.000 --> 0:43:27.680
<v Speaker 2>don't know, he got our sensibility that we were just

0:43:27.800 --> 0:43:29.960
<v Speaker 2>taking the piss and having a good time. And the

0:43:29.960 --> 0:43:33.000
<v Speaker 2>whole thing. I think our take on the whole thing

0:43:33.080 --> 0:43:36.399
<v Speaker 2>as we went through is that ultimately, you know, pop

0:43:36.480 --> 0:43:39.320
<v Speaker 2>culture is a cosmic joke, right. The art can be

0:43:39.360 --> 0:43:42.399
<v Speaker 2>beautiful and very real and very powerful even if you're

0:43:42.600 --> 0:43:45.600
<v Speaker 2>quote unquote goofy like we are. It's you know, I mean,

0:43:45.680 --> 0:43:48.440
<v Speaker 2>listen to the Beatles, Like one in three Beatles songs

0:43:48.520 --> 0:43:51.680
<v Speaker 2>is Goofy. Chuck Berry's the Goofy is motherfucking lyricist of

0:43:51.719 --> 0:43:55.000
<v Speaker 2>all time and he's still the best. But it's it's

0:43:55.200 --> 0:43:58.759
<v Speaker 2>authentic art. But it's still a piss take, you know.

0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:00.520
<v Speaker 2>That's the fun of it. That's that's what rock and

0:44:00.600 --> 0:44:02.680
<v Speaker 2>roll is. It's supposed to be fun, you know, it's

0:44:02.680 --> 0:44:03.840
<v Speaker 2>supposed to be a laugh.

0:44:04.640 --> 0:44:10.120
<v Speaker 1>Oh, okay, you're on MTV. They're banging these videos. Do

0:44:10.239 --> 0:44:11.919
<v Speaker 1>you start to get recognized?

0:44:13.960 --> 0:44:19.560
<v Speaker 2>Got recognized. I'm a pretty normal looking dude, you know,

0:44:19.680 --> 0:44:22.480
<v Speaker 2>I didn't Chris Jason. Already everybody in Seattle knew who

0:44:22.600 --> 0:44:24.919
<v Speaker 2>was at that time. For a few years, I would

0:44:24.960 --> 0:44:29.240
<v Speaker 2>get recognized in Seattle on the Seattle side of the water,

0:44:30.520 --> 0:44:32.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, kind of in neighborhoods where people are younger

0:44:32.800 --> 0:44:35.920
<v Speaker 2>and hipper. I had moved as soon as we all

0:44:36.040 --> 0:44:38.480
<v Speaker 2>got a big publishing check. I bought a house on

0:44:38.560 --> 0:44:42.520
<v Speaker 2>the east side of Lake Washington. And even just going

0:44:42.560 --> 0:44:44.680
<v Speaker 2>across the water to the suburbs, I would like the

0:44:44.760 --> 0:44:47.640
<v Speaker 2>beer guy at the grocery store would recognize me occasionally,

0:44:47.760 --> 0:44:52.839
<v Speaker 2>but very rarely and the only time sort of will

0:44:53.000 --> 0:44:55.440
<v Speaker 2>maybe get there. But our first record was big in

0:44:55.480 --> 0:44:58.600
<v Speaker 2>the US, but it was absolutely mega in Australia. I

0:44:58.640 --> 0:45:01.440
<v Speaker 2>don't know how many times platinum it is now Australia.

0:45:01.520 --> 0:45:03.279
<v Speaker 2>The first time we went was the one time where

0:45:03.280 --> 0:45:05.759
<v Speaker 2>it was weird where they're like we had aliases at

0:45:05.800 --> 0:45:08.439
<v Speaker 2>the hotels, but there would still be forty or fifty

0:45:08.520 --> 0:45:11.120
<v Speaker 2>kids in the lobby freaking out when you'd come through

0:45:11.200 --> 0:45:14.320
<v Speaker 2>and that for my money. I don't know that. I

0:45:14.440 --> 0:45:17.040
<v Speaker 2>didn't like that. I think that would be miserable to

0:45:17.120 --> 0:45:18.120
<v Speaker 2>be that famous.

0:45:18.160 --> 0:45:22.600
<v Speaker 1>I will okay, So now you start working, do you

0:45:22.719 --> 0:45:25.440
<v Speaker 1>start as a headliner, do you open for other people?

0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:26.840
<v Speaker 1>How frequently are you working?

0:45:27.200 --> 0:45:29.720
<v Speaker 2>We went on tours soon as we finished that promo

0:45:29.840 --> 0:45:34.520
<v Speaker 2>tour in September of ninety five, the next kind of year.

0:45:35.320 --> 0:45:37.360
<v Speaker 2>I actually think we overdid it the first year, and

0:45:37.440 --> 0:45:41.279
<v Speaker 2>that's kind of what killed us because between start of

0:45:41.320 --> 0:45:45.480
<v Speaker 2>August nineteen ninety five and the end of August nineteen

0:45:45.560 --> 0:45:49.400
<v Speaker 2>ninety six, we toured the US sort of two and

0:45:49.480 --> 0:45:54.160
<v Speaker 2>a half times, went to Continental Europe or the UK

0:45:54.520 --> 0:45:58.360
<v Speaker 2>ten times, went to Japan for ten days, went to

0:45:58.480 --> 0:46:01.080
<v Speaker 2>Australia for three and a half week, and recorded our

0:46:01.120 --> 0:46:05.880
<v Speaker 2>second record all in a year or thirteen months. So

0:46:06.160 --> 0:46:10.279
<v Speaker 2>we just went out and hammered and Columbia. You know,

0:46:10.400 --> 0:46:13.440
<v Speaker 2>as at the time, major labels really tried to sequence

0:46:13.840 --> 0:46:17.160
<v Speaker 2>the timing of releases so that the band or the

0:46:17.280 --> 0:46:21.319
<v Speaker 2>artists could go from territory to territory and promote things sequentially.

0:46:22.000 --> 0:46:24.960
<v Speaker 2>I think our record, my understanding, was somewhat blew up

0:46:25.080 --> 0:46:28.799
<v Speaker 2>organically in many many territories at once, and so they

0:46:28.840 --> 0:46:31.000
<v Speaker 2>wanted us to be everywhere at once. So I'm not

0:46:31.120 --> 0:46:34.040
<v Speaker 2>sure that we ever fully capitalized like the time when

0:46:34.080 --> 0:46:36.279
<v Speaker 2>we could have been doing our most lucrative touring in

0:46:36.320 --> 0:46:39.919
<v Speaker 2>the US in early nineteen ninety six. You know, let's

0:46:39.960 --> 0:46:41.799
<v Speaker 2>go back to Germany for the fourth time and see

0:46:41.800 --> 0:46:43.640
<v Speaker 2>if we can break that, because the time they were

0:46:43.719 --> 0:46:46.320
<v Speaker 2>the maybe third biggest market after the US and Japan.

0:46:46.560 --> 0:46:50.080
<v Speaker 2>So we we tried to be everywhere on tour. So

0:46:50.160 --> 0:46:52.560
<v Speaker 2>we started in a van and we always headlined. We

0:46:52.680 --> 0:46:55.320
<v Speaker 2>got offers, you know, I'll never we had offers to

0:46:55.840 --> 0:46:59.400
<v Speaker 2>The best offer when we started out was ac DC.

0:47:00.280 --> 0:47:03.680
<v Speaker 2>That was just the most I just still wonder somebody

0:47:03.719 --> 0:47:06.880
<v Speaker 2>would have climbed on stage and actually killed one of

0:47:06.960 --> 0:47:09.799
<v Speaker 2>us by the middle of the second song if we'd

0:47:09.840 --> 0:47:11.960
<v Speaker 2>been out there opening for ac DC. But for some

0:47:12.120 --> 0:47:14.880
<v Speaker 2>reason they wanted to open for us. We other offers.

0:47:14.960 --> 0:47:17.319
<v Speaker 2>Lenny Kravitz wanted us to open for us, but again

0:47:17.400 --> 0:47:18.920
<v Speaker 2>we just decided, now we want to do it the

0:47:18.960 --> 0:47:20.560
<v Speaker 2>way we want to do it. And a lot of

0:47:20.600 --> 0:47:23.239
<v Speaker 2>the time we had our friends' bands come open for us,

0:47:23.640 --> 0:47:26.960
<v Speaker 2>sometimes probably to the detriment of the bill, and they

0:47:27.080 --> 0:47:29.560
<v Speaker 2>get booed, and you know, we had I don't know

0:47:29.600 --> 0:47:31.480
<v Speaker 2>if you know. He is Jesse Dayton, who's like a

0:47:31.600 --> 0:47:36.319
<v Speaker 2>career honky tnker from Beaumont. Originally we connected with him.

0:47:36.400 --> 0:47:38.920
<v Speaker 2>He was friends with the Supersuckers and I love the guy,

0:47:39.080 --> 0:47:41.319
<v Speaker 2>love honky talk music. We had him open for us

0:47:41.360 --> 0:47:45.000
<v Speaker 2>for like two weeks in Texas and Oklahoma, and you know,

0:47:45.320 --> 0:47:47.520
<v Speaker 2>people didn't get it, but we didn't care.

0:47:48.040 --> 0:47:58.560
<v Speaker 1>You know, Okay, you're on the road. Are you partaking

0:47:58.680 --> 0:48:00.000
<v Speaker 1>of the fruits of the road.

0:48:00.080 --> 0:48:04.439
<v Speaker 2>At that point, I'm thirty, I'm married. My stomach can't

0:48:04.480 --> 0:48:07.160
<v Speaker 2>handle heavy drinking, so now I'm just pretty much trying

0:48:07.200 --> 0:48:10.560
<v Speaker 2>to survive. I was a true blue guy to my

0:48:10.680 --> 0:48:11.280
<v Speaker 2>ex wife.

0:48:11.360 --> 0:48:11.759
<v Speaker 1>I was not.

0:48:13.160 --> 0:48:16.360
<v Speaker 2>I was not partaking. Chris was also married, Jason was not.

0:48:16.880 --> 0:48:19.920
<v Speaker 1>Okay, she's your ex wife. How long were you married?

0:48:19.960 --> 0:48:20.800
<v Speaker 1>Why you divorced?

0:48:21.680 --> 0:48:23.800
<v Speaker 2>Been divorced for a few years and married for a

0:48:23.960 --> 0:48:27.080
<v Speaker 2>long long time twenty plus So what caused the divorce

0:48:28.040 --> 0:48:32.560
<v Speaker 2>just didn't work out? I don't feel like it's I

0:48:32.680 --> 0:48:35.000
<v Speaker 2>have a bully pulpit to tell the story. My ex

0:48:35.080 --> 0:48:37.120
<v Speaker 2>wife does not, So I'll just leave it as the

0:48:37.200 --> 0:48:40.320
<v Speaker 2>gracious thing to say, is I just think it nothing horrible, nothing,

0:48:40.800 --> 0:48:42.160
<v Speaker 2>nobody did anything awful.

0:48:42.480 --> 0:48:45.680
<v Speaker 1>Okay, who wanted the divorce? And it's never mutual?

0:48:46.320 --> 0:48:50.440
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's a hard question too. If I had to

0:48:51.120 --> 0:48:53.480
<v Speaker 2>answer that question with my life on the line, I

0:48:53.600 --> 0:48:57.400
<v Speaker 2>would say that ultimately I wanted the divorce, but oddly

0:48:57.560 --> 0:48:59.000
<v Speaker 2>my wife was the one who filed.

0:48:59.200 --> 0:49:04.839
<v Speaker 1>But okay, so you're thirty, you're already married. When did

0:49:04.880 --> 0:49:07.040
<v Speaker 1>you meet this woman and when did you get married?

0:49:07.280 --> 0:49:09.799
<v Speaker 2>We had been together for a long time. We had

0:49:09.880 --> 0:49:12.200
<v Speaker 2>been together since we were twenty five and twenty two,

0:49:12.280 --> 0:49:13.280
<v Speaker 2>and we got married.

0:49:13.440 --> 0:49:14.200
<v Speaker 1>So how'd you meet her?

0:49:14.600 --> 0:49:17.840
<v Speaker 2>Just friend? A friend actually you know, weirdly name dropper story.

0:49:18.000 --> 0:49:20.319
<v Speaker 2>She used to go out with one of my best

0:49:20.360 --> 0:49:23.680
<v Speaker 2>friend's younger brothers and their mom lived on the water

0:49:23.760 --> 0:49:26.800
<v Speaker 2>on Lake Washington in a house that Duff McKagan is

0:49:26.880 --> 0:49:29.719
<v Speaker 2>also an old Seattle homie lives in now and bought

0:49:29.800 --> 0:49:33.320
<v Speaker 2>from their mom years ago. Just hanging out at this

0:49:34.160 --> 0:49:36.279
<v Speaker 2>friend's house was down the street from my house, and

0:49:38.000 --> 0:49:40.360
<v Speaker 2>we met her then. We were friends. We're from the

0:49:40.400 --> 0:49:42.520
<v Speaker 2>same social circle. We're friends for three or four years

0:49:42.520 --> 0:49:43.640
<v Speaker 2>before we started going out.

0:49:44.440 --> 0:49:47.719
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you're going to graduate school. What is she doing?

0:49:48.120 --> 0:49:52.520
<v Speaker 2>She was an artist and had gone undergrad in art

0:49:52.640 --> 0:49:55.520
<v Speaker 2>and went to MFAT in California for a year, but

0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:58.680
<v Speaker 2>then was living in Seattle and working and making her paintings.

0:50:00.239 --> 0:50:03.440
<v Speaker 1>What did she think about all of this with the presidents?

0:50:03.600 --> 0:50:05.160
<v Speaker 2>I think she thought it was fun. I mean, she

0:50:05.840 --> 0:50:08.600
<v Speaker 2>liked going on the parts of it that you know,

0:50:09.320 --> 0:50:12.560
<v Speaker 2>Japan's fun. Oklahoma in December is not as fun, but

0:50:12.880 --> 0:50:15.600
<v Speaker 2>you know, I think she thought it was pretty cool.

0:50:16.120 --> 0:50:17.240
<v Speaker 2>She was an artist herself.

0:50:18.040 --> 0:50:19.320
<v Speaker 1>How often did she come with you?

0:50:20.280 --> 0:50:22.320
<v Speaker 2>Usually to the fun places, like I said, you know,

0:50:22.719 --> 0:50:25.000
<v Speaker 2>to go to Europe, go to Australia, go to Japan.

0:50:25.600 --> 0:50:27.319
<v Speaker 2>So a fair amount of the time, as much as

0:50:27.360 --> 0:50:30.040
<v Speaker 2>we can muster she was working for at the start.

0:50:30.120 --> 0:50:32.279
<v Speaker 2>She was still working full time before she quit, so

0:50:33.640 --> 0:50:35.120
<v Speaker 2>once she quit, she came more often.

0:50:35.880 --> 0:50:36.879
<v Speaker 1>Okay, do you have kids.

0:50:37.560 --> 0:50:40.480
<v Speaker 2>I have two wonderful daughters, twenty two and twenty four.

0:50:41.239 --> 0:50:42.120
<v Speaker 1>And what are they up to?

0:50:42.560 --> 0:50:47.680
<v Speaker 2>They are both recent graduates of Enemy of the State,

0:50:47.760 --> 0:50:54.040
<v Speaker 2>Columbia University, and one of them is still living in

0:50:54.239 --> 0:50:56.799
<v Speaker 2>New York working as a paralegal. She's going to law

0:50:56.840 --> 0:51:00.200
<v Speaker 2>school next year, and the others in New York right

0:51:00.280 --> 0:51:05.600
<v Speaker 2>now visiting some friends and her undergraduate degree is and architecture.

0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:09.960
<v Speaker 2>So younger one graduated last spring and older one a

0:51:10.080 --> 0:51:13.359
<v Speaker 2>year and a half ago, and younger ones just hanging

0:51:13.400 --> 0:51:16.160
<v Speaker 2>out and joining life for the moment and figuring out

0:51:16.200 --> 0:51:16.560
<v Speaker 2>what to do.

0:51:17.080 --> 0:51:22.840
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you mentioned earlier that Columbia made tens of millions

0:51:22.920 --> 0:51:26.520
<v Speaker 1>of dollars. Hey, do you think that was that much?

0:51:27.080 --> 0:51:29.239
<v Speaker 1>And how much did you make? And do you think

0:51:29.320 --> 0:51:31.640
<v Speaker 1>money slipped through your fingers you got ripped off?

0:51:33.160 --> 0:51:35.840
<v Speaker 2>I think there are three parts to that question. One is,

0:51:35.920 --> 0:51:38.640
<v Speaker 2>you know, something people don't talk about that's always interesting

0:51:38.760 --> 0:51:40.680
<v Speaker 2>is sort of you know, in the film business they

0:51:40.719 --> 0:51:44.320
<v Speaker 2>talk about box office, right, what's opening weekend? What is

0:51:44.360 --> 0:51:48.279
<v Speaker 2>a move? What box office? That's ticket sales? Right? And

0:51:48.440 --> 0:51:53.560
<v Speaker 2>then sort of as a side card of that, to

0:51:53.840 --> 0:51:57.680
<v Speaker 2>help us think about it, it's often noted that while

0:51:57.680 --> 0:52:00.320
<v Speaker 2>the music business hasn't always been the biggest media business

0:52:00.400 --> 0:52:03.520
<v Speaker 2>relative to film or publishing, it's been the most lucrative.

0:52:03.600 --> 0:52:06.680
<v Speaker 2>And this is why. Is you take a record like ours,

0:52:06.800 --> 0:52:10.279
<v Speaker 2>which costs Colombia nothing to make, right, it was already made.

0:52:10.920 --> 0:52:13.080
<v Speaker 2>It didn't cost them that much to sign us. They

0:52:13.120 --> 0:52:15.480
<v Speaker 2>gave us a few hundred thousand dollars in advance, and

0:52:15.880 --> 0:52:19.759
<v Speaker 2>they spent you know, our marketing campaign was aggressive, but

0:52:19.840 --> 0:52:21.799
<v Speaker 2>I don't think it was very expensive for them, right,

0:52:21.880 --> 0:52:24.560
<v Speaker 2>So let's say they spent under a million dollars including

0:52:24.680 --> 0:52:28.759
<v Speaker 2>probably you know, sunk costs of staff to sign us

0:52:28.840 --> 0:52:32.800
<v Speaker 2>and launch the record. The record sells. I think it

0:52:33.000 --> 0:52:40.080
<v Speaker 2>ultimately worldwide sold probably five million copies. Let's say that

0:52:40.200 --> 0:52:44.279
<v Speaker 2>are accounted for. So retail price of those, if you

0:52:44.360 --> 0:52:48.680
<v Speaker 2>look at the box office, right, that's seventy five million

0:52:48.719 --> 0:52:52.600
<v Speaker 2>dollars right at let's say average price of fifteen dollars

0:52:52.640 --> 0:52:57.800
<v Speaker 2>a ticket. Now, I'm not privy to the exact numbers

0:52:57.920 --> 0:52:59.879
<v Speaker 2>for their their what they got out of the whole

0:53:00.080 --> 0:53:01.480
<v Speaker 2>all on each one of those, but let's say they

0:53:01.560 --> 0:53:04.600
<v Speaker 2>made six or seven dollars a record. If you can

0:53:04.719 --> 0:53:07.920
<v Speaker 2>make you know, thirty five to forty million dollars on

0:53:08.040 --> 0:53:12.160
<v Speaker 2>a six hundred thousand dollars investment, that's pretty good. So

0:53:12.440 --> 0:53:14.600
<v Speaker 2>the record business and the record business is even better

0:53:14.680 --> 0:53:17.040
<v Speaker 2>now because they don't have to fucking make anything or

0:53:17.120 --> 0:53:20.040
<v Speaker 2>ship it anywhere, right, they don't have to do any

0:53:20.120 --> 0:53:22.560
<v Speaker 2>of that. They just you know, press a button and

0:53:23.080 --> 0:53:26.800
<v Speaker 2>release it on all major streaming services. So, yes, Columbia

0:53:26.840 --> 0:53:28.480
<v Speaker 2>made a lot of money off of us, and that's,

0:53:28.640 --> 0:53:32.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, which is great, and we were happy to

0:53:32.160 --> 0:53:34.480
<v Speaker 2>make that, you know, devil's bargain. We went in with

0:53:34.600 --> 0:53:37.120
<v Speaker 2>eyes wide open. We wanted to be everywhere. We wanted

0:53:37.160 --> 0:53:39.719
<v Speaker 2>to reach as many places as possible. So if you

0:53:39.760 --> 0:53:43.520
<v Speaker 2>look at us, we're getting whatever, sixteen points or eighteen

0:53:43.600 --> 0:53:50.800
<v Speaker 2>points on wholesale, on retail, and you know, we the

0:53:51.000 --> 0:53:54.920
<v Speaker 2>first year where the numbers started coming in. I think

0:53:55.040 --> 0:53:58.759
<v Speaker 2>over a couple of years, I probably made just over

0:53:58.840 --> 0:54:01.080
<v Speaker 2>two million dollars before taxes.

0:54:01.560 --> 0:54:04.279
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you're thirty years old. You manage that money well,

0:54:04.840 --> 0:54:05.680
<v Speaker 1>I like to think.

0:54:05.760 --> 0:54:09.880
<v Speaker 2>So I'm comfortable, and I think my ex wife is

0:54:10.120 --> 0:54:14.120
<v Speaker 2>reasonably comfortable, and I think I did. I mean, I

0:54:14.200 --> 0:54:18.319
<v Speaker 2>had good money manager, bought really nice piece of real

0:54:18.440 --> 0:54:20.600
<v Speaker 2>estate in one of the most expensive zip codes in

0:54:20.680 --> 0:54:23.640
<v Speaker 2>the country and which I sold a couple of years

0:54:23.640 --> 0:54:27.000
<v Speaker 2>ago as part of my divorce settlement, and all those

0:54:27.080 --> 0:54:29.840
<v Speaker 2>things seem to have gone pretty well. And then I

0:54:29.960 --> 0:54:31.920
<v Speaker 2>kept working my ass off. I mean I made I'm

0:54:31.920 --> 0:54:32.480
<v Speaker 2>sure I made.

0:54:33.320 --> 0:54:35.040
<v Speaker 1>I probably might ok wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's

0:54:35.120 --> 0:54:40.640
<v Speaker 1>let's let's park that for a second. The presidents are dead. Okay,

0:54:40.800 --> 0:54:43.400
<v Speaker 1>just for the record, the band is called the President's

0:54:43.520 --> 0:54:45.480
<v Speaker 1>United States of America because.

0:54:47.200 --> 0:54:49.080
<v Speaker 2>So I told you we were playing as a duo

0:54:49.239 --> 0:54:51.200
<v Speaker 2>in the fall of nineteen ninety three and we're the

0:54:51.280 --> 0:54:54.399
<v Speaker 2>low Fis. We were pure Frosting. Oh, we're the dynamic duo.

0:54:55.000 --> 0:54:58.680
<v Speaker 2>I'll never forget. Chris called me one must have been

0:54:58.719 --> 0:55:00.880
<v Speaker 2>a Sunday morning, because he would have and out Saturday night.

0:55:00.960 --> 0:55:02.320
<v Speaker 2>He's like, I got the name for the band. I

0:55:02.360 --> 0:55:03.880
<v Speaker 2>got the name for the band. I was at this

0:55:04.000 --> 0:55:06.279
<v Speaker 2>party in North Seattle last night and I was just there.

0:55:06.520 --> 0:55:08.200
<v Speaker 2>There were people jamming in the basement. So I went

0:55:08.280 --> 0:55:09.840
<v Speaker 2>down and started jamming with him and there were like

0:55:10.320 --> 0:55:13.480
<v Speaker 2>nine people listening and they were just everybody was super baked.

0:55:13.800 --> 0:55:15.759
<v Speaker 2>And I was just making up a different song name.

0:55:15.840 --> 0:55:18.480
<v Speaker 2>Between every song. I was like, we're the Electric Bunny Rabbits,

0:55:18.520 --> 0:55:20.279
<v Speaker 2>and you know, I was just trying to get a laugh,

0:55:20.320 --> 0:55:22.279
<v Speaker 2>and he's like, finally between I don't know what I was,

0:55:22.520 --> 0:55:25.320
<v Speaker 2>you know, thinking, I just like, between between two jams,

0:55:25.360 --> 0:55:28.320
<v Speaker 2>I was like, we are the Presidents of the United

0:55:28.440 --> 0:55:32.200
<v Speaker 2>States of America. And he's like, all nine stone people laugh.

0:55:32.320 --> 0:55:34.880
<v Speaker 2>So it's great, let's do it. So we thought it

0:55:35.000 --> 0:55:37.719
<v Speaker 2>was great, given that we were this tiny, little as

0:55:37.760 --> 0:55:40.360
<v Speaker 2>I described, these kind of two skinny, dorky guys with

0:55:40.680 --> 0:55:44.880
<v Speaker 2>little instruments and cheap gear and no real show. The

0:55:45.200 --> 0:55:49.800
<v Speaker 2>grandiosity of the name in juxtaposition to you know, the

0:55:50.239 --> 0:55:55.440
<v Speaker 2>the ridiculous tininess and sort of cultured patheticness of what

0:55:55.600 --> 0:55:59.480
<v Speaker 2>we were doing was a great kind of contrast. It

0:55:59.600 --> 0:56:03.040
<v Speaker 2>became a bit of an albatross, but it worked great

0:56:03.239 --> 0:56:05.800
<v Speaker 2>for what we were trying to represent as we were starting.

0:56:05.840 --> 0:56:08.160
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so tell me about it being in albatros.

0:56:08.320 --> 0:56:09.719
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, then you have to go through the

0:56:09.760 --> 0:56:13.520
<v Speaker 2>whole thing where like the first single comes out in Columbia,

0:56:14.120 --> 0:56:17.319
<v Speaker 2>it's somewhat at our insistence is like, no DJs need

0:56:17.440 --> 0:56:19.680
<v Speaker 2>to call the band by their full name the presidents

0:56:19.719 --> 0:56:22.080
<v Speaker 2>of the United States of America every time they call

0:56:22.200 --> 0:56:25.120
<v Speaker 2>it out, you know, and you know, it's just a

0:56:25.239 --> 0:56:28.640
<v Speaker 2>lot of letters and words. There's a lot of characters,

0:56:28.760 --> 0:56:32.960
<v Speaker 2>and it's you know, the president's is a lot easier.

0:56:33.160 --> 0:56:36.719
<v Speaker 2>And although there was a president's already in a funk

0:56:36.800 --> 0:56:38.280
<v Speaker 2>band I think the seventies.

0:56:38.360 --> 0:56:40.880
<v Speaker 1>But did you have to make a deal with the

0:56:40.960 --> 0:56:41.680
<v Speaker 1>other band, No.

0:56:41.760 --> 0:56:43.399
<v Speaker 2>We had no issues with them. I mean, I guess

0:56:43.440 --> 0:56:46.440
<v Speaker 2>our name was different. We did have one really interesting thing,

0:56:46.520 --> 0:56:50.719
<v Speaker 2>actually that's apropos of current political climate and the current administration.

0:56:51.480 --> 0:56:55.640
<v Speaker 2>In the interior sleeve of our first record when it

0:56:55.719 --> 0:56:57.520
<v Speaker 2>came out on pop Lama is a picture of the

0:56:57.560 --> 0:56:59.880
<v Speaker 2>three of us with Bill Clinton, which was a real picture.

0:57:00.000 --> 0:57:03.960
<v Speaker 2>We met him. We played at his rally in Seattle

0:57:04.120 --> 0:57:07.919
<v Speaker 2>on before Black Tuesday, November nineteen ninety four, when every

0:57:08.040 --> 0:57:10.320
<v Speaker 2>dem in the fucking country lost. He came into the

0:57:10.400 --> 0:57:13.440
<v Speaker 2>rally in Seattle and the posies and we and a

0:57:13.560 --> 0:57:16.400
<v Speaker 2>local gospel choir played before and he walked through the

0:57:16.480 --> 0:57:18.800
<v Speaker 2>room and we got the picture. And then when the

0:57:18.840 --> 0:57:21.920
<v Speaker 2>record came out with Columbia, their legal counsel would not

0:57:22.040 --> 0:57:24.800
<v Speaker 2>let us use it because you can't use the president's

0:57:24.920 --> 0:57:27.439
<v Speaker 2>name and likeness for profit. But it turns out maybe

0:57:27.520 --> 0:57:30.000
<v Speaker 2>that's not the case, based on what we're seeing.

0:57:29.840 --> 0:57:33.040
<v Speaker 1>Now, that's for sure. Okay, let's go back to the

0:57:33.160 --> 0:57:40.240
<v Speaker 1>publishing deal. Yeah, how did you split up the writing credits?

0:57:40.680 --> 0:57:45.320
<v Speaker 2>So the writing credits? We figured that out before it

0:57:45.440 --> 0:57:47.960
<v Speaker 2>became an issue, which is one of the smartest things

0:57:48.040 --> 0:57:50.200
<v Speaker 2>we did. And frankly, I will take credit for that

0:57:50.360 --> 0:57:52.920
<v Speaker 2>because I could see what the problem and we were

0:57:53.040 --> 0:57:55.600
<v Speaker 2>lucky to have friends who had been through it. Right.

0:57:55.640 --> 0:57:58.360
<v Speaker 2>We're in Seattle in the nineties. We know all these

0:57:58.440 --> 0:58:02.240
<v Speaker 2>people who are already famous in huge rock stars, and

0:58:02.360 --> 0:58:05.000
<v Speaker 2>some of them are childhood friends. So I was talking

0:58:05.040 --> 0:58:06.919
<v Speaker 2>to all those people, and I was reading every book

0:58:07.000 --> 0:58:09.760
<v Speaker 2>I could get on the music business. So I was like,

0:58:09.840 --> 0:58:12.320
<v Speaker 2>we need to figure this out now. So Chris's clearly

0:58:12.360 --> 0:58:15.560
<v Speaker 2>the main writer, and he's written jillions of songs, but

0:58:16.200 --> 0:58:18.600
<v Speaker 2>it's also true that we brought the songs to life,

0:58:18.640 --> 0:58:21.040
<v Speaker 2>and the only life they'll probably ever have was in

0:58:21.200 --> 0:58:23.760
<v Speaker 2>the in the way we represented them in our Masters.

0:58:24.360 --> 0:58:28.120
<v Speaker 2>So we just worked it out. You know, we basically

0:58:28.200 --> 0:58:31.840
<v Speaker 2>split things forty thirty thirty where Chris gets a little,

0:58:32.200 --> 0:58:34.320
<v Speaker 2>he gets a little more that acknowledges that he's the

0:58:34.360 --> 0:58:38.240
<v Speaker 2>primary writer. So it's a long story, short version. We

0:58:38.360 --> 0:58:41.760
<v Speaker 2>do have some complications now because, for various reasons, we

0:58:41.880 --> 0:58:46.440
<v Speaker 2>didn't register them that way. Jason already had been signed

0:58:46.480 --> 0:58:50.480
<v Speaker 2>to Universal Music Publishing Group in a bad deal with

0:58:50.600 --> 0:58:53.160
<v Speaker 2>Love Battery where they all got to quit their barista

0:58:53.280 --> 0:58:55.840
<v Speaker 2>jobs for a what scened at the time a huge

0:58:55.880 --> 0:58:58.600
<v Speaker 2>advance to sign away the rest of their rights forever.

0:58:59.600 --> 0:59:01.920
<v Speaker 2>So we had to manage that a little bit, but

0:59:03.080 --> 0:59:05.800
<v Speaker 2>we choose we split them the way we chose to,

0:59:06.000 --> 0:59:08.520
<v Speaker 2>and then we have to manage bringing them in and

0:59:08.640 --> 0:59:10.680
<v Speaker 2>then dividing them in the math.

0:59:10.800 --> 0:59:13.080
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so you're saying, if we looked at the registration,

0:59:13.280 --> 0:59:17.000
<v Speaker 1>it may say something, but in reality it's forty thirty

0:59:17.040 --> 0:59:17.680
<v Speaker 1>thirty roughly.

0:59:17.760 --> 0:59:20.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, right around in there. Yeah, And that took

0:59:20.680 --> 0:59:21.040
<v Speaker 2>some doing.

0:59:21.200 --> 0:59:23.240
<v Speaker 1>Took some doing, relative tools, did you.

0:59:23.280 --> 0:59:28.600
<v Speaker 2>Know, personal relationships and Chris Chris wanted to be partly

0:59:28.720 --> 0:59:32.040
<v Speaker 2>felt like he deserved more compensation, but in a lot

0:59:32.080 --> 0:59:34.560
<v Speaker 2>of ways just more recognition too, you know, as being

0:59:34.680 --> 0:59:36.440
<v Speaker 2>the primary songwriter. So it took a lot of it

0:59:36.520 --> 0:59:38.480
<v Speaker 2>took a few deep conversations. Let's put it.

0:59:38.560 --> 0:59:40.520
<v Speaker 1>Well, you said forty thirty thirty, and then all of

0:59:40.560 --> 0:59:41.640
<v Speaker 1>a sudden you said something like.

0:59:41.680 --> 0:59:44.200
<v Speaker 2>That, Well it's like twenty nine and a half. Twenty

0:59:44.280 --> 0:59:44.840
<v Speaker 2>nine and a half.

0:59:44.920 --> 0:59:50.080
<v Speaker 1>Oh, okay, okay, do you own the publishing.

0:59:49.920 --> 0:59:53.439
<v Speaker 2>We own all but the share that Jason controls, which

0:59:53.720 --> 0:59:56.919
<v Speaker 2>he had signed a deal with PolyGram Universal Music Publishing Group,

0:59:57.040 --> 1:00:00.200
<v Speaker 2>still controls it, and we have tried to negotiate with

1:00:00.280 --> 1:00:02.439
<v Speaker 2>them a number of times to just buy it back

1:00:03.240 --> 1:00:04.520
<v Speaker 2>unsuccessfully to date.

1:00:06.120 --> 1:00:11.080
<v Speaker 1>Okay, if there's a licensing deal or anything, does PolyGram,

1:00:12.040 --> 1:00:15.000
<v Speaker 1>whoever the title of the company is today, do they

1:00:15.080 --> 1:00:17.160
<v Speaker 1>have any input or they just get a check.

1:00:17.480 --> 1:00:19.640
<v Speaker 2>They get a check and they've agreed to everything, and

1:00:19.760 --> 1:00:22.040
<v Speaker 2>we it would be nice to have it all right now.

1:00:22.440 --> 1:00:24.800
<v Speaker 2>The share the portions that Chris and I control are

1:00:24.840 --> 1:00:28.360
<v Speaker 2>administered by Cobalt. We've had many different publishing agreements over

1:00:28.360 --> 1:00:31.040
<v Speaker 2>the last thirty years, but we've been with Cobalt for

1:00:31.080 --> 1:00:35.440
<v Speaker 2>a while. UMPG's never had an issue with anything. We've

1:00:35.480 --> 1:00:38.040
<v Speaker 2>wanted the license because if we can get Jason's back,

1:00:38.120 --> 1:00:41.000
<v Speaker 2>then we're completely one stop shop for the debut record

1:00:41.040 --> 1:00:42.960
<v Speaker 2>because control the masters.

1:00:43.080 --> 1:00:46.480
<v Speaker 1>Okay, have you had any offers to buy these songs?

1:00:46.800 --> 1:00:48.080
<v Speaker 3>We have had.

1:00:48.400 --> 1:00:51.800
<v Speaker 2>We have never seriously entertained any offers, but we occasionally

1:00:51.880 --> 1:00:54.320
<v Speaker 2>get offers, and you know, I think we might have

1:00:54.400 --> 1:00:57.000
<v Speaker 2>gotten to this via email that for us, the time

1:00:57.120 --> 1:01:00.880
<v Speaker 2>value equation with money just does and the offers never

1:01:01.040 --> 1:01:04.560
<v Speaker 2>high enough to pay out versus what we make right

1:01:04.640 --> 1:01:07.400
<v Speaker 2>now owning the rights and just taking the income from

1:01:07.480 --> 1:01:08.320
<v Speaker 2>streaming services.

1:01:08.440 --> 1:01:13.320
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so what multiple would you entertain.

1:01:14.040 --> 1:01:18.480
<v Speaker 2>The multiple would need to be It would need to

1:01:18.600 --> 1:01:20.720
<v Speaker 2>be over twenty.

1:01:22.120 --> 1:01:24.440
<v Speaker 1>So if I came, you know, that's hard to get.

1:01:24.520 --> 1:01:26.720
<v Speaker 1>But in the heyday of hypnosis, who may or may

1:01:26.800 --> 1:01:29.680
<v Speaker 1>not have been interested, somebody comes in with a twenty

1:01:29.800 --> 1:01:31.320
<v Speaker 1>three multiple, you're in.

1:01:31.960 --> 1:01:34.960
<v Speaker 2>Maybe maybe the problem is it's pretty easy to do

1:01:35.160 --> 1:01:38.240
<v Speaker 2>the time value. It's easy to look. Okay, let's say

1:01:38.280 --> 1:01:41.560
<v Speaker 2>we do for a multiple of twenty and we get

1:01:42.480 --> 1:01:46.160
<v Speaker 2>million dollars. Okay, we pay taxes on that. We got

1:01:46.280 --> 1:01:49.200
<v Speaker 2>to pay some capital gains tax on it, we got

1:01:49.280 --> 1:01:52.600
<v Speaker 2>to pay various state and federal taxes. We each net

1:01:52.920 --> 1:01:56.320
<v Speaker 2>you know, let's say somewhere in two thirds to three

1:01:56.360 --> 1:01:59.800
<v Speaker 2>quarters of that, our third of that, and Conrad Uno too,

1:01:59.840 --> 1:02:02.480
<v Speaker 2>he owns a quarter of the masters. So we take

1:02:02.560 --> 1:02:04.000
<v Speaker 2>that and then you sort of if you just do

1:02:04.120 --> 1:02:05.920
<v Speaker 2>the math, so like, okay, let's put that in an

1:02:05.960 --> 1:02:08.600
<v Speaker 2>income bearing investment, put it in the market. You can

1:02:08.680 --> 1:02:11.640
<v Speaker 2>take three to five percent a year, right, sort of

1:02:11.720 --> 1:02:15.040
<v Speaker 2>safely while preserving the capital. And that number has just

1:02:15.280 --> 1:02:20.600
<v Speaker 2>never reached what we're each making from publishing and masters

1:02:20.760 --> 1:02:22.920
<v Speaker 2>every year, from the money we're getting from the business.

1:02:22.960 --> 1:02:27.320
<v Speaker 2>It's never even really gotten close. And as Jason pointed

1:02:27.360 --> 1:02:30.800
<v Speaker 2>out the last time we talked about this, he really

1:02:31.000 --> 1:02:33.560
<v Speaker 2>enjoys having a hedge against the markets, right, we all

1:02:33.640 --> 1:02:37.000
<v Speaker 2>have investments in financial markets and or real estate. And

1:02:37.040 --> 1:02:39.040
<v Speaker 2>he's like, well, hey, you know, I'm pretty sure people

1:02:39.040 --> 1:02:41.360
<v Speaker 2>are still going to stream our record during the next recession,

1:02:41.880 --> 1:02:45.760
<v Speaker 2>so it's a way to be diversified. So the multiple

1:02:45.800 --> 1:02:47.520
<v Speaker 2>would have to be pretty high for us all to

1:02:47.640 --> 1:02:48.680
<v Speaker 2>just go yep, we'll take it.

1:02:50.360 --> 1:02:54.160
<v Speaker 1>But also, you're a sophisticated guy. You worked with the Amazon, etc.

1:02:55.880 --> 1:02:58.520
<v Speaker 1>Can you also see in the thirty years since the

1:02:58.680 --> 1:03:04.320
<v Speaker 1>record was a hit that there been more opportunities such

1:03:04.400 --> 1:03:07.680
<v Speaker 1>for monetization that could not have been envisioned. Has that

1:03:08.080 --> 1:03:08.760
<v Speaker 1>been a factor?

1:03:09.640 --> 1:03:13.160
<v Speaker 2>It is a factor, and there are more opportunities for monetization.

1:03:13.320 --> 1:03:16.840
<v Speaker 2>And one of the arguments for selling the asset or

1:03:16.960 --> 1:03:19.320
<v Speaker 2>part of it would be that somebody else could make

1:03:19.400 --> 1:03:22.200
<v Speaker 2>better use of it. Right. Like I said, we're pretty

1:03:22.280 --> 1:03:24.760
<v Speaker 2>laissez fair punk rock. We just basically sit on this thing.

1:03:24.840 --> 1:03:27.760
<v Speaker 2>We don't do much to promote it, and somebody who's

1:03:27.840 --> 1:03:31.240
<v Speaker 2>craftier and I'm not sure it's private equity companies buying

1:03:31.640 --> 1:03:34.840
<v Speaker 2>musical copyrights, but there are certain buyers who are going

1:03:34.920 --> 1:03:38.160
<v Speaker 2>to work the asset. They may be able to Those

1:03:38.200 --> 1:03:40.240
<v Speaker 2>have been the deals that have been more interesting are like,

1:03:40.320 --> 1:03:42.200
<v Speaker 2>maybe sell part of it, but we have an interest

1:03:42.240 --> 1:03:44.000
<v Speaker 2>in the upside if they figure out a way to

1:03:44.120 --> 1:03:46.720
<v Speaker 2>have it make more money from some of these newer avenues.

1:03:46.840 --> 1:03:51.920
<v Speaker 1>Okay, at this late date, overall for the presidents, what

1:03:52.160 --> 1:03:55.760
<v Speaker 1>percentage of the income is from masters and what percentage

1:03:55.800 --> 1:03:56.960
<v Speaker 1>from publishing.

1:03:56.640 --> 1:03:58.960
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of what you'd expect. It breaks down on

1:03:59.120 --> 1:04:02.920
<v Speaker 2>that sort of I'd say seventy thirty to eighty twenty.

1:04:03.840 --> 1:04:07.160
<v Speaker 2>Seventy thirty at most to publishing, probably more like eighty twenty.

1:04:15.240 --> 1:04:22.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay. I realize every year is not identical, but if

1:04:22.120 --> 1:04:25.560
<v Speaker 1>you took an average year and the three of you

1:04:25.760 --> 1:04:29.600
<v Speaker 1>got paid before taxes, is there enough to live on.

1:04:30.680 --> 1:04:34.400
<v Speaker 2>There's enough to live on. Now that I'm a guy

1:04:34.800 --> 1:04:39.040
<v Speaker 2>who has a partner who works, and I'm not paying

1:04:39.120 --> 1:04:42.720
<v Speaker 2>my kids tuition at Columbia anymore, and you know, I'm

1:04:42.800 --> 1:04:46.080
<v Speaker 2>sort of in that contracting phase of my life. I

1:04:46.160 --> 1:04:48.600
<v Speaker 2>think when I was in the expanse of trying to

1:04:48.840 --> 1:04:53.720
<v Speaker 2>raise a family in an upper middle class way, if

1:04:53.840 --> 1:04:55.480
<v Speaker 2>one of us were a solo artist, it would be

1:04:55.600 --> 1:04:58.040
<v Speaker 2>enough for me as an individual, it wouldn't be enough.

1:04:58.120 --> 1:05:01.200
<v Speaker 2>It's a wonderful annuity for me that pays a lot.

1:05:01.320 --> 1:05:04.520
<v Speaker 1>Okay at this moment in time, do you have any

1:05:04.640 --> 1:05:08.240
<v Speaker 1>other income, active income as opposed to investments?

1:05:08.720 --> 1:05:08.959
<v Speaker 2>Nope?

1:05:09.920 --> 1:05:12.680
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so this is it. Okay, let's go back, so

1:05:13.040 --> 1:05:17.840
<v Speaker 1>five years. You essentially get the record, the master back

1:05:18.680 --> 1:05:21.240
<v Speaker 1>in the year two thousand, year two thousand and one

1:05:21.400 --> 1:05:22.040
<v Speaker 1>or whatever.

1:05:21.960 --> 1:05:23.640
<v Speaker 2>Two thousand and three, we got it back two.

1:05:23.560 --> 1:05:29.120
<v Speaker 1>Thousand and three, Different economic landscape, different distribution, etc. What

1:05:29.520 --> 1:05:31.800
<v Speaker 1>do you do now that you have the record?

1:05:32.040 --> 1:05:34.240
<v Speaker 2>Well, first we have a long conversation of do we

1:05:34.320 --> 1:05:36.840
<v Speaker 2>want to just do another deal with Sony and let

1:05:36.920 --> 1:05:39.040
<v Speaker 2>them keep it, which of course they were interested in doing.

1:05:39.640 --> 1:05:43.360
<v Speaker 2>Do we want to you know, get it back ourselves.

1:05:43.440 --> 1:05:45.440
<v Speaker 2>Do we want to talk to other labels? We decided

1:05:45.480 --> 1:05:48.320
<v Speaker 2>because since as I said, we've always taken this fairly

1:05:48.480 --> 1:05:53.440
<v Speaker 2>DIY contrarian let's do it our way approach, well, let's

1:05:53.480 --> 1:05:56.480
<v Speaker 2>do it ourselves. And so we took it back. We

1:05:56.600 --> 1:06:00.320
<v Speaker 2>created our own little label, and we were lucky that

1:06:00.560 --> 1:06:02.600
<v Speaker 2>us getting it back and sort of you know, as

1:06:02.640 --> 1:06:05.520
<v Speaker 2>you would imagine, it took Sony Columbia years to wind

1:06:05.600 --> 1:06:10.360
<v Speaker 2>down their physical you know, inventory and account for all

1:06:10.440 --> 1:06:12.680
<v Speaker 2>of it, and there were a lot of heated exchanges

1:06:12.760 --> 1:06:16.680
<v Speaker 2>where it looked like they were wilfully, wilfully still selling

1:06:16.760 --> 1:06:18.280
<v Speaker 2>it while they didn't have the rights, which I don't

1:06:18.280 --> 1:06:20.080
<v Speaker 2>think was the case. I think it's just, you know,

1:06:20.240 --> 1:06:24.560
<v Speaker 2>as the saying goes, never assume mal intent when simple

1:06:24.600 --> 1:06:28.959
<v Speaker 2>incompetence will explain the problem. So it took a few years.

1:06:29.000 --> 1:06:31.959
<v Speaker 2>But as that happened, the iTunes store launched right, which,

1:06:32.000 --> 1:06:35.400
<v Speaker 2>as you know, was from like four to twenty twelve,

1:06:35.680 --> 1:06:38.320
<v Speaker 2>was the only music store in the world that mattered.

1:06:39.080 --> 1:06:42.680
<v Speaker 2>And at the time we got the rights back, we

1:06:42.880 --> 1:06:45.000
<v Speaker 2>had reformed and we were touring, and we had a

1:06:45.080 --> 1:06:48.160
<v Speaker 2>new management team that included a guy you probably know,

1:06:48.320 --> 1:06:51.040
<v Speaker 2>Mike Tiraney, who was kind of it. He's he has

1:06:51.120 --> 1:06:53.880
<v Speaker 2>my old job at Amazon now actually running music programming,

1:06:54.320 --> 1:06:58.480
<v Speaker 2>but he was he's been at labels, PD easton radio. Everything.

1:06:58.640 --> 1:07:00.600
<v Speaker 1>Just just go back in the hey, hey, who was

1:07:00.680 --> 1:07:01.200
<v Speaker 1>the manager?

1:07:01.440 --> 1:07:03.560
<v Speaker 2>A woman named Stacy Slater, who's oh.

1:07:03.520 --> 1:07:05.280
<v Speaker 1>No, but it sounds like you got rid of her

1:07:05.320 --> 1:07:07.320
<v Speaker 1>at some point now time.

1:07:07.200 --> 1:07:09.600
<v Speaker 2>We were trying to get rid of her. Right as

1:07:09.640 --> 1:07:11.600
<v Speaker 2>we broke up the first time we were we were

1:07:11.640 --> 1:07:13.120
<v Speaker 2>talking to all the people.

1:07:13.240 --> 1:07:15.640
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so she rode the ship to the end. Okay,

1:07:15.720 --> 1:07:16.720
<v Speaker 1>she got a new manager.

1:07:16.840 --> 1:07:20.400
<v Speaker 2>Keep going anyway. So Mike was connected with everybody, and

1:07:20.640 --> 1:07:23.640
<v Speaker 2>at the time he knew somebody at iTunes and we

1:07:23.760 --> 1:07:26.120
<v Speaker 2>were able to get We did a deal with what

1:07:26.280 --> 1:07:28.840
<v Speaker 2>was then Iota that gradually got folded in as part

1:07:28.880 --> 1:07:31.200
<v Speaker 2>of the Orchard, now Kevin Arnold. So we did a

1:07:31.240 --> 1:07:34.360
<v Speaker 2>deal with him for all the other digital distribution, which

1:07:34.360 --> 1:07:36.840
<v Speaker 2>accounted to Bubkas in two thousand and four, two thousand

1:07:36.880 --> 1:07:39.240
<v Speaker 2>and five, and we were lucky we did a deal.

1:07:39.480 --> 1:07:41.840
<v Speaker 2>We were like the last micro label to do a

1:07:41.920 --> 1:07:46.560
<v Speaker 2>deal directly with Apple. Somehow Tyranny knew somebody. We got in.

1:07:46.680 --> 1:07:49.040
<v Speaker 2>We basically had one record on our label. We later

1:07:49.160 --> 1:07:51.919
<v Speaker 2>had two or three more that don't matter that we own,

1:07:52.600 --> 1:07:56.960
<v Speaker 2>and so we had direct distribution to Apple from through

1:07:57.000 --> 1:07:59.640
<v Speaker 2>the whole heyday of the iTunes store, and we were

1:07:59.680 --> 1:08:01.800
<v Speaker 2>just and are you know they were taking their thirty

1:08:01.840 --> 1:08:04.600
<v Speaker 2>percent off the top and we're getting our seventy percent

1:08:04.680 --> 1:08:08.440
<v Speaker 2>on every sale. It was beautiful and that ramped up quickly.

1:08:08.560 --> 1:08:11.920
<v Speaker 2>And what was really interesting was we're still getting statements

1:08:11.960 --> 1:08:16.360
<v Speaker 2>from Sony right. So by by the two thousand and one,

1:08:16.479 --> 1:08:19.519
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and two, we're selling like worldwide, like one

1:08:19.520 --> 1:08:23.960
<v Speaker 2>thousand records a month. Okay, looking at the statements, nothing right,

1:08:24.040 --> 1:08:26.880
<v Speaker 2>and we're getting you know, bupkus on those we're getting

1:08:26.920 --> 1:08:31.360
<v Speaker 2>a buck maybe a year. Immediately with the launch of

1:08:31.400 --> 1:08:34.280
<v Speaker 2>the iTunes store, not only are we you know, we

1:08:34.400 --> 1:08:37.000
<v Speaker 2>own it, so we're getting seventy percent instead of fifteen percent.

1:08:38.240 --> 1:08:41.679
<v Speaker 2>We're our volume. All of a sudden, you're selling like, okay,

1:08:41.760 --> 1:08:44.639
<v Speaker 2>we're selling a thousand records, which is track equivalent maybe

1:08:44.840 --> 1:08:47.799
<v Speaker 2>fifteen thousand tracks a month. Right, all of a sudden,

1:08:47.880 --> 1:08:52.680
<v Speaker 2>we're selling you know, like, you know, tens of thousands

1:08:52.760 --> 1:08:56.040
<v Speaker 2>of tracks a month. You know what that was? The

1:08:56.120 --> 1:08:58.479
<v Speaker 2>bizarre thing was like, I get it, the margin was

1:08:58.520 --> 1:09:02.639
<v Speaker 2>way better, but the vaulme was way higher too, which

1:09:02.760 --> 1:09:04.519
<v Speaker 2>was just mine.

1:09:04.600 --> 1:09:06.240
<v Speaker 1>So what do you what do you think it counts

1:09:06.280 --> 1:09:06.439
<v Speaker 1>for that?

1:09:07.200 --> 1:09:11.320
<v Speaker 2>I think people were it was. You got to give

1:09:11.439 --> 1:09:15.760
<v Speaker 2>credit to Steve Jobs for seeing the appetite there and

1:09:16.120 --> 1:09:19.519
<v Speaker 2>somehow talking the labels in. I don't I was not privy.

1:09:19.560 --> 1:09:21.880
<v Speaker 2>I was not really in the trenches in the digital

1:09:21.960 --> 1:09:24.320
<v Speaker 2>music industry at that time. But I don't know how

1:09:24.360 --> 1:09:27.320
<v Speaker 2>all that went down, But he solved the problem for them,

1:09:27.840 --> 1:09:31.000
<v Speaker 2>and they sort of solved the problem for him. But

1:09:31.520 --> 1:09:34.759
<v Speaker 2>that you know, I think everybody who's had a career

1:09:35.200 --> 1:09:37.639
<v Speaker 2>in at a major label or publisher in the last

1:09:37.640 --> 1:09:40.080
<v Speaker 2>twenty years should like go to Steve Jobs' grave like

1:09:40.200 --> 1:09:42.560
<v Speaker 2>twice a year and put flowers on it. And he

1:09:43.120 --> 1:09:45.160
<v Speaker 2>saved the music industry as far as I'm concerned. He

1:09:45.240 --> 1:09:47.560
<v Speaker 2>just figured out something that was simple, easy to do

1:09:48.479 --> 1:09:51.800
<v Speaker 2>between the hardware and the software. Was any numbskull could

1:09:51.840 --> 1:09:54.360
<v Speaker 2>figure it out. You've got your iPod, you download the songs,

1:09:54.400 --> 1:09:55.839
<v Speaker 2>you put it on there, you take them everywhere.

1:09:56.520 --> 1:09:59.599
<v Speaker 3>You know, it just works as the saying goes okay

1:10:01.760 --> 1:10:06.080
<v Speaker 3>was the adoption. The sales were those up because in

1:10:06.200 --> 1:10:11.360
<v Speaker 3>the physical era, maybe the store didn't have your record. Yeah,

1:10:11.560 --> 1:10:13.400
<v Speaker 3>digitally that's what you think was good.

1:10:13.560 --> 1:10:16.800
<v Speaker 2>I think that. And then there was obviously I've never

1:10:17.360 --> 1:10:20.040
<v Speaker 2>been able to really understand how much piracy there was

1:10:20.160 --> 1:10:22.160
<v Speaker 2>in the nineties and into the two thousands, but I

1:10:22.280 --> 1:10:26.680
<v Speaker 2>know I can say based anecdotally that you know, at

1:10:26.720 --> 1:10:29.080
<v Speaker 2>our peak, we would hear, hey, I was just in

1:10:29.360 --> 1:10:33.280
<v Speaker 2>like the Philippines or you know, Columbia, and wow, your

1:10:33.360 --> 1:10:36.840
<v Speaker 2>record was everywhere, Like yeah, I don't think we got

1:10:36.880 --> 1:10:40.240
<v Speaker 2>anything for that, So God knows how much piracy there

1:10:40.439 --> 1:10:43.519
<v Speaker 2>was in the you know, the the industry only has

1:10:43.600 --> 1:10:48.520
<v Speaker 2>itself to blame. They released music on high quality, unencrypted

1:10:48.600 --> 1:10:53.360
<v Speaker 2>digital format for years, right, like pretty easy to copy that, Okay.

1:10:53.720 --> 1:10:57.240
<v Speaker 1>Tell me about the transition from sales to streams.

1:10:58.520 --> 1:11:01.760
<v Speaker 2>Sales to streams just was gradual, and it was kind

1:11:01.800 --> 1:11:03.840
<v Speaker 2>of I saw it from all sides because I was

1:11:03.880 --> 1:11:08.200
<v Speaker 2>at Amazon Music during that really where that transition took

1:11:08.280 --> 1:11:11.080
<v Speaker 2>off kind of. I was at Amazon Music from twenty

1:11:11.160 --> 1:11:15.240
<v Speaker 2>twelve to about twenty seventeen, which is and we conceived

1:11:15.280 --> 1:11:20.479
<v Speaker 2>and launched the Prime Music and Music Unlimited. Then, you know,

1:11:20.800 --> 1:11:27.760
<v Speaker 2>I think Daniel Leck got it done somehow. I don't

1:11:28.040 --> 1:11:30.200
<v Speaker 2>you know that's there. There's a whole story there that

1:11:30.320 --> 1:11:32.240
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure you can have people on the show who

1:11:32.320 --> 1:11:34.000
<v Speaker 2>can tell better than I can, and I'm not sure

1:11:34.000 --> 1:11:34.400
<v Speaker 2>I can.

1:11:34.280 --> 1:11:36.479
<v Speaker 1>Tell you a lot. But that's not really my question.

1:11:36.760 --> 1:11:40.559
<v Speaker 1>My question is, as it goes to streaming, your income

1:11:40.720 --> 1:11:42.559
<v Speaker 1>go down up or stay the same.

1:11:42.720 --> 1:11:47.200
<v Speaker 2>It's gone up just because because I think more just

1:11:47.320 --> 1:11:52.080
<v Speaker 2>the digital music market grew, right. It's every market has

1:11:52.160 --> 1:11:55.000
<v Speaker 2>kind of an S curve growth, right, It's slow and

1:11:55.080 --> 1:11:57.439
<v Speaker 2>then it ramps up and it's in the steep part

1:11:57.479 --> 1:11:59.519
<v Speaker 2>and then it's now it's leveling off right where at

1:11:59.520 --> 1:12:01.800
<v Speaker 2>the top half half of the S curve now, So

1:12:02.000 --> 1:12:06.240
<v Speaker 2>I think we are seeing more income. But I can't

1:12:06.280 --> 1:12:09.479
<v Speaker 2>tell you if the iTunes store was still dominant and

1:12:09.680 --> 1:12:12.599
<v Speaker 2>just the digital music market had grown. But I don't

1:12:12.600 --> 1:12:14.720
<v Speaker 2>think the digital music market would have grown if we'd

1:12:14.760 --> 1:12:16.960
<v Speaker 2>stuck with ninety nine cent MP three's. I just think

1:12:17.000 --> 1:12:18.320
<v Speaker 2>there were that was a.

1:12:18.400 --> 1:12:20.800
<v Speaker 1>Moment in time, just like we have a moment in

1:12:20.880 --> 1:12:24.519
<v Speaker 1>time for eight tracks, cassettes, et cetera. Right, But leaving

1:12:24.680 --> 1:12:29.880
<v Speaker 1>that in the rear view mirror conventional wisdom, forget about

1:12:30.080 --> 1:12:33.920
<v Speaker 1>knowledgeable people or people who work for these companies. You

1:12:34.080 --> 1:12:38.320
<v Speaker 1>hear it every minute of the day. Spotify is ripping

1:12:38.479 --> 1:12:41.920
<v Speaker 1>me off, They're not paying me, blah blah blah. What

1:12:42.240 --> 1:12:44.960
<v Speaker 1>is your experience with the presidents?

1:12:45.360 --> 1:12:49.080
<v Speaker 2>Yes, Spotify is not ripping anybody off. And Spotify can't

1:12:49.120 --> 1:12:50.880
<v Speaker 2>come out and say you have a shitty deal with

1:12:51.000 --> 1:12:54.519
<v Speaker 2>your label. They can't defend themselves because they'll piss off

1:12:54.560 --> 1:12:58.600
<v Speaker 2>their most important partners. I mean, the whole thing is,

1:12:58.880 --> 1:13:02.280
<v Speaker 2>don't I don't even know why or how. And in Spotify,

1:13:02.360 --> 1:13:05.080
<v Speaker 2>even on their own, they don't disclose everything. But if

1:13:05.120 --> 1:13:07.800
<v Speaker 2>you dig into their website, they pretty much tell you

1:13:07.960 --> 1:13:11.000
<v Speaker 2>exactly how they do business if you want to know

1:13:11.120 --> 1:13:14.000
<v Speaker 2>if you're an artist or a label. So it is

1:13:14.200 --> 1:13:17.559
<v Speaker 2>hard math obviously, if you have one hundred let's say

1:13:17.560 --> 1:13:20.240
<v Speaker 2>that you only had one hundred Spotify paying subscribers, and

1:13:20.240 --> 1:13:23.200
<v Speaker 2>they're each paying ten dollars a month. If you're trying,

1:13:23.320 --> 1:13:26.160
<v Speaker 2>you can't pay a penny rate, right because one month

1:13:26.240 --> 1:13:28.880
<v Speaker 2>those hundred people might stream five songs each, but the

1:13:28.960 --> 1:13:31.360
<v Speaker 2>next month they might stream one hundred songs each. So

1:13:31.479 --> 1:13:34.120
<v Speaker 2>there is some very tricky math to how it all

1:13:34.200 --> 1:13:37.320
<v Speaker 2>works out, and at least so far, it hasn't gone

1:13:37.360 --> 1:13:39.360
<v Speaker 2>the way of the black boxes, you know, some of

1:13:39.400 --> 1:13:42.280
<v Speaker 2>the pros where you're not sure. I think the math

1:13:42.400 --> 1:13:46.800
<v Speaker 2>is pretty clear and fair, and I just don't see

1:13:47.640 --> 1:13:49.960
<v Speaker 2>I don't get it. I mean, I get that somebody's

1:13:50.040 --> 1:13:52.800
<v Speaker 2>resentful because things aren't the way they want it to be.

1:13:53.000 --> 1:13:57.920
<v Speaker 2>But too bad. It's not Spotify or Amazon Music or

1:13:57.960 --> 1:14:01.240
<v Speaker 2>Apple Music that's screwing you. It's most likely, in most cases,

1:14:01.280 --> 1:14:03.520
<v Speaker 2>you have a bad deal with your label or your distributor,

1:14:04.800 --> 1:14:07.639
<v Speaker 2>or no one is listening. Well, there's that's a whole

1:14:07.720 --> 1:14:10.280
<v Speaker 2>other thing. And as I've said sort of started. You know,

1:14:10.360 --> 1:14:12.439
<v Speaker 2>from the start of the digital anybody can make a

1:14:12.479 --> 1:14:14.720
<v Speaker 2>good sounding record in their bedroom now, right. You used

1:14:14.760 --> 1:14:16.960
<v Speaker 2>to have to have a lot of money to have

1:14:17.120 --> 1:14:19.800
<v Speaker 2>a board and a tape machine and outboard gear that

1:14:19.960 --> 1:14:23.240
<v Speaker 2>it took to make a good sounding recording. I'm using Carmela,

1:14:24.120 --> 1:14:26.680
<v Speaker 2>my engineer friend's laptop right now. You can make a

1:14:26.800 --> 1:14:29.479
<v Speaker 2>killer sounding record on this Mac laptop with just the

1:14:29.720 --> 1:14:34.240
<v Speaker 2>like a one in out right and this microphone that

1:14:34.320 --> 1:14:36.519
<v Speaker 2>I'm talking on right now. You can make a major

1:14:36.600 --> 1:14:43.040
<v Speaker 2>label quality record. But just you know whatever. You know, look,

1:14:43.200 --> 1:14:46.040
<v Speaker 2>Marvin Gay would have been a superstar in like fifteen

1:14:46.200 --> 1:14:50.720
<v Speaker 2>sixty eight, seventeen sixty eight, nineteen sixty eight, twenty one

1:14:50.880 --> 1:14:55.080
<v Speaker 2>sixty eight quality. You know. Not everybody's that good, you know,

1:14:55.400 --> 1:14:58.600
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's that's the reality is. And I'm a

1:14:58.640 --> 1:15:02.120
<v Speaker 2>big believer in the market, the wisdom of the market

1:15:02.240 --> 1:15:05.040
<v Speaker 2>that the cream does actually rise to the top. You know,

1:15:05.160 --> 1:15:08.600
<v Speaker 2>people know what they like. It's yeah, you still have to.

1:15:08.600 --> 1:15:14.360
<v Speaker 1>Be good, Okay. So you know, there are many avenues

1:15:14.520 --> 1:15:21.360
<v Speaker 1>of remuneration. There are certainly streams, there's subscriber streams. I

1:15:21.360 --> 1:15:23.720
<v Speaker 1>don't want to get for paid not paid streams on

1:15:24.479 --> 1:15:29.040
<v Speaker 1>Spotify it's irrelevant. But there's streams on Pandora that are

1:15:29.240 --> 1:15:34.400
<v Speaker 1>radio streams. But there's other places where people license music.

1:15:35.479 --> 1:15:40.560
<v Speaker 1>A what percentage of your revenue is purely from the

1:15:40.680 --> 1:15:45.120
<v Speaker 1>traditional streamers Amazon, Apple, you know? And how much is

1:15:45.240 --> 1:15:47.000
<v Speaker 1>these other areas and what are they?

1:15:47.600 --> 1:15:51.679
<v Speaker 2>That's a great that's a good question because we've beat

1:15:51.760 --> 1:15:53.960
<v Speaker 2>our heads against this wall for twenty years since we

1:15:54.040 --> 1:15:58.200
<v Speaker 2>got the rights back. We don't get a ton of film,

1:15:58.320 --> 1:16:00.960
<v Speaker 2>TV AD licenses. We've had a couple of good ones

1:16:01.000 --> 1:16:02.920
<v Speaker 2>in the last two years. Last summer we had Bush

1:16:02.960 --> 1:16:06.320
<v Speaker 2>Beer licensed Peaches for a peach flavored beer, which I

1:16:06.479 --> 1:16:09.000
<v Speaker 2>don't want to drink. I don't think I don't think

1:16:09.040 --> 1:16:11.320
<v Speaker 2>it was in my market. You'll take the check, yeah,

1:16:12.040 --> 1:16:17.040
<v Speaker 2>But we don't get a lot of licenses of that nature,

1:16:17.200 --> 1:16:19.639
<v Speaker 2>and we've never been able to figure out why. We've

1:16:19.720 --> 1:16:22.160
<v Speaker 2>gone through all the options, and anybody who's in the

1:16:22.240 --> 1:16:23.960
<v Speaker 2>industry will know what I'm talking about. You there are

1:16:24.000 --> 1:16:26.040
<v Speaker 2>people who want an exclusive, and I say, they'll go

1:16:26.080 --> 1:16:28.040
<v Speaker 2>out and pitch your stuff to everybody and they'll get

1:16:28.080 --> 1:16:31.839
<v Speaker 2>you placements. That's never worked for us. Chris, my bandmate's

1:16:31.880 --> 1:16:34.280
<v Speaker 2>done more of this. He's found that it's always opportunistic,

1:16:34.400 --> 1:16:36.080
<v Speaker 2>so you just got to be out there. So we

1:16:36.240 --> 1:16:39.599
<v Speaker 2>just very occasionally get stuff. But I have to say

1:16:40.200 --> 1:16:44.080
<v Speaker 2>depend unless it's a weird year, one in three or five,

1:16:44.680 --> 1:16:48.400
<v Speaker 2>like ninety five plus percent of our stuff is just streaming.

1:16:48.479 --> 1:16:49.160
<v Speaker 2>It's straight up.

1:16:49.400 --> 1:16:49.560
<v Speaker 1>You know.

1:16:49.640 --> 1:16:52.000
<v Speaker 2>We've had a few anomaloust things here and there. The

1:16:52.560 --> 1:16:54.080
<v Speaker 2>for a while it looked like as you know, like

1:16:54.160 --> 1:16:56.479
<v Speaker 2>Guitar Hero and rock Band were like, whoa, these are

1:16:56.560 --> 1:16:59.400
<v Speaker 2>big checks for like three years and then that went away.

1:17:00.120 --> 1:17:06.360
<v Speaker 2>So I keep waiting for the you know, the nineties,

1:17:07.280 --> 1:17:11.439
<v Speaker 2>the nineties John Hughes style nostalgia film She's Lump, where

1:17:11.439 --> 1:17:13.240
<v Speaker 2>they're going to give us a two million dollar check.

1:17:13.479 --> 1:17:16.920
<v Speaker 2>Use that is the title track. But you know, we

1:17:17.080 --> 1:17:19.559
<v Speaker 2>haven't figured out how to tap into that vein as

1:17:19.640 --> 1:17:22.280
<v Speaker 2>much as i'd like to. Chris has with his own music,

1:17:22.400 --> 1:17:23.320
<v Speaker 2>but we haven't.

1:17:23.880 --> 1:17:29.040
<v Speaker 1>Okay, who actually does the business for the presidents?

1:17:29.680 --> 1:17:32.120
<v Speaker 2>We do it. I mean I get the emails. I

1:17:32.160 --> 1:17:34.400
<v Speaker 2>mean sometimes they still come to Sony if it's a

1:17:34.560 --> 1:17:40.439
<v Speaker 2>master license for our debut record, because because people will

1:17:40.479 --> 1:17:43.040
<v Speaker 2>think that you'll have the CD and it says on it,

1:17:43.200 --> 1:17:45.240
<v Speaker 2>but there Sony's great about you know, we have our

1:17:45.280 --> 1:17:48.280
<v Speaker 2>contacts there, they'll email me. So I do most of it.

1:17:48.400 --> 1:17:51.640
<v Speaker 2>Jason does some. Chris is very happy to let us

1:17:51.720 --> 1:17:55.759
<v Speaker 2>do it. Jason, Chris and I both did go to college.

1:17:55.840 --> 1:17:58.960
<v Speaker 2>Jason didn't. Although Jason is one of the smartest people

1:17:58.960 --> 1:18:01.320
<v Speaker 2>I've ever met in my life. He absolutely brilliant guy.

1:18:02.640 --> 1:18:06.560
<v Speaker 2>So we have plenty of you know, capability and horsepower.

1:18:07.200 --> 1:18:09.160
<v Speaker 2>We do it. We have a business manager, we use

1:18:09.200 --> 1:18:12.160
<v Speaker 2>Summit Business Management down in the Greater LA area, who

1:18:12.240 --> 1:18:15.320
<v Speaker 2>we were introduced to through our friend weird Al who's

1:18:16.240 --> 1:18:19.719
<v Speaker 2>a brilliant, brilliant business person. And we always have a lawyer.

1:18:19.800 --> 1:18:22.360
<v Speaker 2>Our lawyer mostly has been Ed Pearson, who was at

1:18:22.360 --> 1:18:25.040
<v Speaker 2>Warner Chapel for years and up in Seattle for the

1:18:25.120 --> 1:18:28.040
<v Speaker 2>last ten or fifteen years representing Maclamore and Head and

1:18:28.040 --> 1:18:31.960
<v Speaker 2>the Heart and a bunch of artists. So we generally, well,

1:18:32.080 --> 1:18:34.439
<v Speaker 2>we'll have a lawyer and we have a good business manager,

1:18:34.560 --> 1:18:38.120
<v Speaker 2>and that's enough really for us. We don't need a manager.

1:18:38.280 --> 1:18:41.400
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's go back to the beginning. So you grow

1:18:41.560 --> 1:18:42.799
<v Speaker 1>up exactly where.

1:18:43.000 --> 1:18:45.880
<v Speaker 2>I grew up in the Seattle area, in the northeast

1:18:46.000 --> 1:18:48.360
<v Speaker 2>part of the town called Laurelhurst, which is like a

1:18:48.600 --> 1:18:52.360
<v Speaker 2>you know, when I grew up there, it was stay

1:18:52.439 --> 1:18:57.880
<v Speaker 2>at home moms, university professors, professionals. You know, it's a

1:18:57.960 --> 1:19:01.479
<v Speaker 2>nice neighborhood near the University of Washington.

1:19:02.080 --> 1:19:03.719
<v Speaker 1>And what did your parents do for a living?

1:19:04.360 --> 1:19:08.720
<v Speaker 2>My dad was a PR guy. Actually he went his

1:19:08.840 --> 1:19:11.479
<v Speaker 2>family business is a great story. But my grandpa and

1:19:11.600 --> 1:19:16.000
<v Speaker 2>my uncle ran a fur brokerage business, but my dad

1:19:16.120 --> 1:19:19.360
<v Speaker 2>chose not to go into that business, and he started

1:19:19.600 --> 1:19:23.080
<v Speaker 2>a PR firm right after the World's Fair in Seattle.

1:19:24.240 --> 1:19:26.800
<v Speaker 2>That's this guy Jay Rocky, who was a legend here

1:19:26.880 --> 1:19:29.400
<v Speaker 2>who got the World's Fair on the cover of Life

1:19:29.479 --> 1:19:33.800
<v Speaker 2>magazine twice. And they started a PR firm in the

1:19:33.880 --> 1:19:36.280
<v Speaker 2>early sixties and they ran that for years till my

1:19:36.360 --> 1:19:39.120
<v Speaker 2>dad retired when he was sixty five. So he was

1:19:39.160 --> 1:19:39.920
<v Speaker 2>a words guy.

1:19:41.280 --> 1:19:44.479
<v Speaker 1>Okay, how long has your family been in America?

1:19:46.880 --> 1:19:49.200
<v Speaker 2>Four to five generations?

1:19:50.120 --> 1:19:51.280
<v Speaker 1>Do you know why they came?

1:19:51.880 --> 1:19:55.519
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's some of them on my dad's side of

1:19:55.600 --> 1:19:59.920
<v Speaker 2>the family. My paternal grandfather was German and they were

1:20:00.120 --> 1:20:04.720
<v Speaker 2>part of US diaspora of crafts people who went from

1:20:05.560 --> 1:20:08.840
<v Speaker 2>Germany sort of the you know alsace lran like the

1:20:09.320 --> 1:20:13.320
<v Speaker 2>the western part of Germany in the mid nineteenth century

1:20:13.400 --> 1:20:18.160
<v Speaker 2>to Tsarist Russia to a particular river valley to be

1:20:18.400 --> 1:20:22.320
<v Speaker 2>craftspeople for the czar and there there I've read a

1:20:22.360 --> 1:20:26.719
<v Speaker 2>book about it. They sort of then dispersed to northern

1:20:26.880 --> 1:20:29.719
<v Speaker 2>US and Canada, and a lot of them in Texas

1:20:29.760 --> 1:20:32.360
<v Speaker 2>as well. You know, if you drive around Texas there Flugerville,

1:20:32.360 --> 1:20:34.880
<v Speaker 2>there are German place names everywhere. So they moved to

1:20:35.760 --> 1:20:41.280
<v Speaker 2>Saskatchewan or Alberta, my great great grand my great grandfather

1:20:41.479 --> 1:20:45.400
<v Speaker 2>on my dad's side, and then eventually to Montana. And

1:20:45.520 --> 1:20:49.400
<v Speaker 2>then my paternal grandfather, who was quite a guy, moved

1:20:49.400 --> 1:20:51.879
<v Speaker 2>to Seattle sort of before the start of the depression

1:20:51.920 --> 1:20:53.840
<v Speaker 2>and worked his way up from nothing to being the

1:20:54.080 --> 1:20:58.400
<v Speaker 2>owner and president of this big for brokerage house. And

1:20:58.520 --> 1:21:02.479
<v Speaker 2>then yeah, mom's side mostly Irish, Irish Catholic. You know,

1:21:02.720 --> 1:21:04.320
<v Speaker 2>I don't know how they ended up over here.

1:21:06.200 --> 1:21:06.360
<v Speaker 1>You know.

1:21:07.360 --> 1:21:10.960
<v Speaker 2>Another side of the family was French, and weirdly this

1:21:11.160 --> 1:21:17.200
<v Speaker 2>is on my dad's side. My grandparents were originally from

1:21:17.720 --> 1:21:20.040
<v Speaker 2>like five miles away from each other in France and

1:21:20.120 --> 1:21:23.439
<v Speaker 2>Germany in that Alsace Lran region, which is just bizarre.

1:21:24.120 --> 1:21:27.280
<v Speaker 2>So they came through Yeah, any homesteading in Minnesota.

1:21:28.280 --> 1:21:31.320
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you say your parents were divorced. How old were

1:21:31.360 --> 1:21:32.599
<v Speaker 1>you when they got divorced.

1:21:32.880 --> 1:21:34.880
<v Speaker 2>I was eight when they split up.

1:21:35.360 --> 1:21:37.000
<v Speaker 1>Okay, how many kids in the family?

1:21:37.479 --> 1:21:43.200
<v Speaker 2>Myself and my sister Claire, who's a writer, and she's older, younger,

1:21:43.520 --> 1:21:45.880
<v Speaker 2>she's two and a half years younger than I am,

1:21:45.960 --> 1:21:47.760
<v Speaker 2>and she's way more famous than I am.

1:21:47.880 --> 1:21:51.800
<v Speaker 1>Now it's okay, But what's it like when your parents

1:21:51.880 --> 1:21:52.880
<v Speaker 1>divorced when you're ead?

1:21:54.160 --> 1:21:57.400
<v Speaker 2>I think it sucked. I don't think at the time

1:21:57.520 --> 1:22:01.479
<v Speaker 2>I was able to really process that. I think I'm

1:22:01.520 --> 1:22:05.880
<v Speaker 2>incredibly lucky that my dad, my mom, and my stepdad

1:22:06.439 --> 1:22:10.320
<v Speaker 2>whom my mom, they're still together and they got them

1:22:10.360 --> 1:22:13.680
<v Speaker 2>getting together as part of my parents splitting up. Are

1:22:13.800 --> 1:22:17.360
<v Speaker 2>all like I thought this was normal, But they are

1:22:17.479 --> 1:22:23.320
<v Speaker 2>all like kind reasonable, rational people who don't lose their tempers,

1:22:23.800 --> 1:22:26.640
<v Speaker 2>you know. I mean, I just I didn't know how

1:22:26.720 --> 1:22:29.080
<v Speaker 2>much I hit the jackpot with my family until I

1:22:29.120 --> 1:22:33.800
<v Speaker 2>got older and saw friends, families and more dysfunction. So

1:22:34.040 --> 1:22:37.840
<v Speaker 2>somehow it was okay. I think, you know, there was

1:22:38.240 --> 1:22:40.439
<v Speaker 2>maybe if anything was missing, it was maybe a chance

1:22:40.520 --> 1:22:42.679
<v Speaker 2>to actually get pissed off when I was that young

1:22:43.240 --> 1:22:44.760
<v Speaker 2>and sort of expressed.

1:22:44.400 --> 1:22:46.800
<v Speaker 1>Me Okay, but you're your parents are divorce in a

1:22:46.880 --> 1:22:50.439
<v Speaker 1>totally different era now, it's all you know in terms

1:22:50.479 --> 1:22:52.760
<v Speaker 1>of back dead. A lot of times the kid lived

1:22:52.840 --> 1:22:55.720
<v Speaker 1>with one parent, usually the mother. You know, there's not

1:22:55.880 --> 1:22:58.120
<v Speaker 1>the co parenting there was. What was it like for you?

1:22:58.680 --> 1:23:01.560
<v Speaker 2>We lived mostly with my mom and stayed in the

1:23:01.600 --> 1:23:03.920
<v Speaker 2>same house that we'd been in, and my dad after

1:23:04.000 --> 1:23:06.479
<v Speaker 2>a year or two moved into super cool house boat

1:23:06.560 --> 1:23:08.160
<v Speaker 2>that my sister and I own now kind of like

1:23:08.200 --> 1:23:11.920
<v Speaker 2>Sleepless in Seattle, down on Lake Union in Seattle. And

1:23:12.760 --> 1:23:15.280
<v Speaker 2>he had some other partners in his life, but never long.

1:23:15.439 --> 1:23:19.479
<v Speaker 2>You know, he never remarried. And we would spend you know,

1:23:21.080 --> 1:23:23.240
<v Speaker 2>one to three days a week with him in the winter,

1:23:23.439 --> 1:23:26.600
<v Speaker 2>like every weekend we went skiing with him. Summertime, we

1:23:26.760 --> 1:23:29.080
<v Speaker 2>go hiking, go to the mountains with him for weeks

1:23:29.120 --> 1:23:32.320
<v Speaker 2>at a time, and so we saw both of them often.

1:23:32.360 --> 1:23:34.479
<v Speaker 2>We didn't split fifty to fifty. We really did live

1:23:34.520 --> 1:23:34.960
<v Speaker 2>at my mom.

1:23:35.120 --> 1:23:38.320
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you have a bad day in school, would you

1:23:38.479 --> 1:23:39.200
<v Speaker 1>call your father?

1:23:39.680 --> 1:23:43.320
<v Speaker 2>I'd call my mom. My mom was my emotional support.

1:23:43.479 --> 1:23:45.960
<v Speaker 2>My dad was a very loving, supportive guy, but my

1:23:46.080 --> 1:23:48.040
<v Speaker 2>mom was definitely my primary parent.

1:23:48.560 --> 1:23:50.400
<v Speaker 1>And what was the story with your stepfather.

1:23:51.040 --> 1:23:55.840
<v Speaker 2>My stepfather, interestingly, is younger. My mom is eight years

1:23:55.840 --> 1:23:58.240
<v Speaker 2>younger than my dad was, and my stepdad is eight

1:23:58.320 --> 1:24:01.200
<v Speaker 2>years younger than my mom, so he he only sixteen

1:24:01.240 --> 1:24:04.240
<v Speaker 2>years older than I am. And he was a pretty

1:24:04.280 --> 1:24:06.200
<v Speaker 2>young guy when he and my mom got together. He

1:24:06.240 --> 1:24:08.840
<v Speaker 2>would have been in maybe twenty four, my mom would

1:24:08.840 --> 1:24:12.280
<v Speaker 2>have been thirty two. And he just turned out to

1:24:12.320 --> 1:24:14.519
<v Speaker 2>be an awesome guy. Just I mean, the whole thing

1:24:14.600 --> 1:24:17.400
<v Speaker 2>on paper is just a fucking disaster if you think

1:24:17.400 --> 1:24:21.000
<v Speaker 2>about it. It should have been horrible, but somehow everybody

1:24:21.280 --> 1:24:27.639
<v Speaker 2>was thoughtful and tolerant, and it was in some ways

1:24:28.200 --> 1:24:31.000
<v Speaker 2>I benefited because I saw even more. We ended up

1:24:31.000 --> 1:24:33.640
<v Speaker 2>doing things through what my stepdad wanted to do that

1:24:33.720 --> 1:24:35.479
<v Speaker 2>I never would have gotten to do, which.

1:24:35.400 --> 1:24:37.320
<v Speaker 1>Was and would your stepdad do for a living?

1:24:37.640 --> 1:24:39.599
<v Speaker 2>He when he and my mom got together, he ran

1:24:39.680 --> 1:24:42.600
<v Speaker 2>He was the production manager for Conley Water Skis. He

1:24:42.800 --> 1:24:45.040
<v Speaker 2>was just a kind of crafty. He had gotten an

1:24:45.120 --> 1:24:47.960
<v Speaker 2>economics degree for the University of Washington, and then he

1:24:48.080 --> 1:24:49.880
<v Speaker 2>was a guy. He's one of those people who just

1:24:50.000 --> 1:24:52.880
<v Speaker 2>can't sit still and is always doing a project. So

1:24:52.960 --> 1:24:54.640
<v Speaker 2>he was the guy who figured out how to you know,

1:24:54.800 --> 1:24:57.120
<v Speaker 2>make a water ski press out of nothing, out of

1:24:57.160 --> 1:24:59.960
<v Speaker 2>a hydraulic machine, and or figure out how to make

1:25:00.120 --> 1:25:04.080
<v Speaker 2>a new mill to cut wood. And then he bought

1:25:04.120 --> 1:25:06.400
<v Speaker 2>a piece of property on Stuart Island, which is one

1:25:06.439 --> 1:25:09.000
<v Speaker 2>of the San Juan islands that doesn't have ferry service.

1:25:09.840 --> 1:25:12.040
<v Speaker 2>And he had grown up his dad was a builder

1:25:12.200 --> 1:25:16.000
<v Speaker 2>or a you know, a carpenter, and so he had

1:25:16.040 --> 1:25:19.320
<v Speaker 2>grown up building houses. So we built a house in

1:25:19.400 --> 1:25:21.839
<v Speaker 2>the summers on Stuart Island over a couple of summers.

1:25:21.920 --> 1:25:23.960
<v Speaker 2>And to do that, we had to build a little

1:25:24.040 --> 1:25:26.559
<v Speaker 2>barge that we towed behind our motor sailor to get

1:25:26.600 --> 1:25:29.120
<v Speaker 2>the wood to the island. And so we did that,

1:25:29.360 --> 1:25:31.160
<v Speaker 2>and then all these people saw the house that he

1:25:31.240 --> 1:25:33.519
<v Speaker 2>built and were like, this is really cool. Can you

1:25:33.560 --> 1:25:36.760
<v Speaker 2>build me one of these? And somehow Larry, my stepdad,

1:25:36.800 --> 1:25:40.559
<v Speaker 2>at some point was in Harbor Town on Puget Sound

1:25:40.600 --> 1:25:44.040
<v Speaker 2>and he saw like a forty five foot tug old

1:25:44.120 --> 1:25:46.920
<v Speaker 2>old wood tug log towing tugboat for sailings, just like,

1:25:46.960 --> 1:25:48.519
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to quit my job and buy that and

1:25:48.600 --> 1:25:51.760
<v Speaker 2>start a business. Than he did, and it was it

1:25:51.840 --> 1:25:54.640
<v Speaker 2>was incredible for me because he eventually turned into be

1:25:54.720 --> 1:25:58.880
<v Speaker 2>a pretty big you know like sand and gravel moving

1:25:58.960 --> 1:26:01.800
<v Speaker 2>operation with barges and tugs. But the first four or

1:26:01.840 --> 1:26:04.560
<v Speaker 2>five years, every summer we would build a house on

1:26:04.640 --> 1:26:07.519
<v Speaker 2>Stuart Island and we did the tug and barge work

1:26:07.600 --> 1:26:09.519
<v Speaker 2>to get the materials over there. And I would get

1:26:09.600 --> 1:26:11.960
<v Speaker 2>up every morning and put on my boots, my shorts

1:26:12.000 --> 1:26:13.800
<v Speaker 2>and my tool belt and go like getting a skiff

1:26:14.320 --> 1:26:16.559
<v Speaker 2>and take the skiff to the job site and dig

1:26:16.640 --> 1:26:19.920
<v Speaker 2>holes or pound nails all day. It was I look again,

1:26:20.000 --> 1:26:22.160
<v Speaker 2>looking back on that, I'm like, seem normal at the time,

1:26:22.240 --> 1:26:24.240
<v Speaker 2>But holy shit, was I lucky to get to do that.

1:26:24.439 --> 1:26:27.280
<v Speaker 1>So how many tug boats and how many barges did

1:26:27.320 --> 1:26:27.880
<v Speaker 1>he end up with?

1:26:28.240 --> 1:26:31.160
<v Speaker 2>He eventually ended up with at the peak of a

1:26:31.240 --> 1:26:34.160
<v Speaker 2>couple of boats and a few barges. And his specialty

1:26:34.479 --> 1:26:37.360
<v Speaker 2>was sand and gravel. And because you know, where you

1:26:37.400 --> 1:26:39.599
<v Speaker 2>have a big waterway like Puget Sound, it's way less

1:26:39.720 --> 1:26:43.599
<v Speaker 2>expensive to move that via a barge than via trucks,

1:26:43.640 --> 1:26:46.000
<v Speaker 2>right if you can put thousands of yards on a barge.

1:26:46.479 --> 1:26:48.960
<v Speaker 2>And then he built this crazy conveyor that could shoot

1:26:49.000 --> 1:26:51.280
<v Speaker 2>material way way way up on the beach, and it

1:26:51.400 --> 1:26:54.479
<v Speaker 2>was unique. So he would and he eventually got to

1:26:54.479 --> 1:26:56.720
<v Speaker 2>the point where he could just park his barges and

1:26:56.840 --> 1:26:59.040
<v Speaker 2>lease it and other people would deliver the material. He

1:26:59.120 --> 1:27:01.640
<v Speaker 2>had this kind of slick set up for getting the

1:27:01.800 --> 1:27:04.400
<v Speaker 2>material way up onto the beach or up onto a

1:27:04.520 --> 1:27:07.240
<v Speaker 2>job site. And he did that for years, and he

1:27:07.360 --> 1:27:09.439
<v Speaker 2>sold business about ten years ago.

1:27:10.720 --> 1:27:14.160
<v Speaker 1>How far is Stuart Island from downtown Seattle.

1:27:14.320 --> 1:27:18.920
<v Speaker 2>Stuart Island is the most northwesternmost point in the contiguous

1:27:19.000 --> 1:27:23.080
<v Speaker 2>forty eight states. So you'd drive, you know, seventy miles

1:27:23.120 --> 1:27:25.599
<v Speaker 2>to anacordis and then you'd have to take a ferry

1:27:25.720 --> 1:27:29.120
<v Speaker 2>to San Juan Island, the biggest ferry service island, which

1:27:29.160 --> 1:27:30.920
<v Speaker 2>takes two or three hours, and then take a skiff

1:27:31.080 --> 1:27:33.400
<v Speaker 2>twenty minutes to Stuart Island.

1:27:43.080 --> 1:27:45.160
<v Speaker 1>So what kind of kid are you growing up? You

1:27:45.240 --> 1:27:47.840
<v Speaker 1>have friends? You don't have friends? Good at school? Not

1:27:48.000 --> 1:27:48.639
<v Speaker 1>good at school?

1:27:49.400 --> 1:27:53.360
<v Speaker 2>I had I was I was never the boss. I

1:27:53.600 --> 1:27:55.880
<v Speaker 2>was always part of a crew. I guess, you know.

1:27:55.960 --> 1:27:59.960
<v Speaker 2>I played sports, so my friends were sporty, sporty kids

1:28:00.160 --> 1:28:02.719
<v Speaker 2>and probably smart kids. I think I was good in school,

1:28:02.960 --> 1:28:05.880
<v Speaker 2>you know, I was usually like in grade school. I

1:28:06.040 --> 1:28:08.200
<v Speaker 2>was always you know, like going up a grade or

1:28:08.240 --> 1:28:12.040
<v Speaker 2>two to read and our grades. I went to public school.

1:28:12.080 --> 1:28:14.479
<v Speaker 2>Through fifth grade, and we had a gifted program. I

1:28:14.520 --> 1:28:17.840
<v Speaker 2>think I was in the gifted program. And then I

1:28:17.920 --> 1:28:21.040
<v Speaker 2>went to I had a really really bad fifth grade teacher,

1:28:21.200 --> 1:28:24.160
<v Speaker 2>and my parents decided that and I was getting in

1:28:24.200 --> 1:28:26.160
<v Speaker 2>a little trouble at the time. I had shoplifted a

1:28:26.200 --> 1:28:29.519
<v Speaker 2>few times, and my parents moved me and actually two

1:28:29.520 --> 1:28:32.280
<v Speaker 2>of my best friends. We all moved to a private

1:28:32.320 --> 1:28:34.880
<v Speaker 2>school in Seattle in sixth grade and I went there

1:28:35.000 --> 1:28:35.960
<v Speaker 2>through high school.

1:28:36.960 --> 1:28:39.200
<v Speaker 1>Was that boys only, No, it was co ed.

1:28:39.280 --> 1:28:41.599
<v Speaker 2>It was a school called the Bush School, which had

1:28:41.680 --> 1:28:44.040
<v Speaker 2>been girls only and had gone co ed in the

1:28:44.120 --> 1:28:47.280
<v Speaker 2>early seventies. And I got really lucky there. I look back,

1:28:47.320 --> 1:28:49.280
<v Speaker 2>I got, you know, a lot of life is luck.

1:28:49.800 --> 1:28:52.080
<v Speaker 2>I ended up at this school that was super progressive

1:28:52.160 --> 1:28:55.519
<v Speaker 2>and had all these aquarian age teachers who were high

1:28:55.600 --> 1:28:57.640
<v Speaker 2>minded and wanted to do stuff with the kids and

1:28:57.680 --> 1:29:00.479
<v Speaker 2>take us out in the woods and you know, share

1:29:00.520 --> 1:29:03.240
<v Speaker 2>their passions with us, and that would just happen again

1:29:03.320 --> 1:29:05.960
<v Speaker 2>a moment in time. That school, for that seven or

1:29:06.000 --> 1:29:08.040
<v Speaker 2>eight years, I got really lucky.

1:29:08.680 --> 1:29:10.840
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so what year are you born in. I was

1:29:10.920 --> 1:29:14.160
<v Speaker 1>born in sixty four, so you're born in sixty four.

1:29:14.720 --> 1:29:18.200
<v Speaker 1>World's Fair is in sixty two. You know, we have

1:29:18.479 --> 1:29:22.879
<v Speaker 1>the blow up of the Seattle scene in the early nineties.

1:29:23.400 --> 1:29:27.519
<v Speaker 1>We have the Seattle pilots before that, who leave. Let

1:29:27.560 --> 1:29:30.480
<v Speaker 1>was talking about this earlier, you know, in the seventies.

1:29:30.560 --> 1:29:32.400
<v Speaker 1>You know, you drive in the West, you're out of

1:29:32.479 --> 1:29:35.120
<v Speaker 1>cell service. I mean there was no cell service. You

1:29:35.200 --> 1:29:39.400
<v Speaker 1>were totally disconnected. Now you're connected everywhere. So it sounds

1:29:39.520 --> 1:29:42.080
<v Speaker 1>like a dumb question, and maybe it's all you know,

1:29:43.120 --> 1:29:46.479
<v Speaker 1>But what was it like growing up in Seattle in

1:29:46.560 --> 1:29:49.120
<v Speaker 1>that time? Let me give you a different experience and

1:29:49.160 --> 1:29:51.320
<v Speaker 1>maybe it might help you Know, I'm growing up fifty

1:29:51.360 --> 1:29:54.719
<v Speaker 1>miles from New York City. There's New York City media,

1:29:55.520 --> 1:29:58.960
<v Speaker 1>all the TV shows, and music is coming from Hollywood.

1:29:59.080 --> 1:30:01.640
<v Speaker 1>You could you know, what's it like living in the

1:30:01.680 --> 1:30:02.840
<v Speaker 1>Pacific Northwest.

1:30:03.120 --> 1:30:07.360
<v Speaker 2>That's a great question, and I I would answer that.

1:30:08.080 --> 1:30:12.200
<v Speaker 2>So it was a beautiful place. You know, as my

1:30:12.360 --> 1:30:14.519
<v Speaker 2>partner Jenna and I talked about it all the times.

1:30:14.600 --> 1:30:16.320
<v Speaker 2>You grew up here as well, like you drive around

1:30:16.320 --> 1:30:18.720
<v Speaker 2>now and there's trash everywhere. There was you know, it

1:30:18.880 --> 1:30:22.800
<v Speaker 2>was clean and people were kind and respectful to each other.

1:30:24.000 --> 1:30:27.000
<v Speaker 2>It was not very crowded. Yet nobody knew about it

1:30:27.080 --> 1:30:28.680
<v Speaker 2>and I mean, one of my ways to answer that

1:30:28.800 --> 1:30:32.920
<v Speaker 2>question is I went to Brown University for junior and

1:30:33.000 --> 1:30:35.639
<v Speaker 2>senior year of college, so I transferred there and I'd

1:30:35.640 --> 1:30:37.160
<v Speaker 2>taken a year off, So I guess they went there

1:30:37.200 --> 1:30:40.040
<v Speaker 2>in the fall of nineteen eighty five, and you know,

1:30:40.680 --> 1:30:42.559
<v Speaker 2>as you said, we weren't connected. I mean, I remember

1:30:42.640 --> 1:30:46.040
<v Speaker 2>people like the first day that late fall it snowed,

1:30:46.520 --> 1:30:49.519
<v Speaker 2>and someone's like, oh, yeah, you're well, you're used to this.

1:30:49.720 --> 1:30:52.439
<v Speaker 2>It's like, you know, they thought Seattle was fucking Alaska, right,

1:30:53.600 --> 1:30:56.880
<v Speaker 2>no idea, like, no, it maybe snow's an inch once year.

1:30:57.200 --> 1:31:00.320
<v Speaker 2>And then that the real moment was so listen to

1:31:00.400 --> 1:31:03.160
<v Speaker 2>a fair amount of jazz growing up. My mom liked it,

1:31:03.280 --> 1:31:05.240
<v Speaker 2>and then I, as I started to play guitar, I

1:31:05.360 --> 1:31:07.880
<v Speaker 2>really liked jazz and listened to it a lot. And

1:31:07.960 --> 1:31:10.360
<v Speaker 2>so I'd listened to like, you know, Miles Davis or

1:31:10.439 --> 1:31:13.040
<v Speaker 2>Joe Pass or this New York City music in Seattle,

1:31:13.080 --> 1:31:17.040
<v Speaker 2>and I dug it. And I'll never forget the Thanksgiving,

1:31:17.120 --> 1:31:19.000
<v Speaker 2>the first joy I was there. I had bought this

1:31:19.160 --> 1:31:22.760
<v Speaker 2>crappy Vovo wagon and a friend invited me to go

1:31:22.840 --> 1:31:25.160
<v Speaker 2>to Thanksgiving at his house in Brooklyn with his family

1:31:25.280 --> 1:31:27.680
<v Speaker 2>and So I drove four of us down, you know,

1:31:27.800 --> 1:31:30.679
<v Speaker 2>down nine ninety five down through Connecticut into the city.

1:31:30.760 --> 1:31:33.120
<v Speaker 2>And as you know, that drive, like if you can

1:31:33.200 --> 1:31:34.920
<v Speaker 2>imagine what it's like if you grew up in Seattle,

1:31:35.000 --> 1:31:37.559
<v Speaker 2>it's like N ninety five is like twelve lanes wide

1:31:37.600 --> 1:31:40.120
<v Speaker 2>as you come in north of the city. We come

1:31:40.200 --> 1:31:43.840
<v Speaker 2>in and we drive basically all the way down you know,

1:31:43.960 --> 1:31:47.560
<v Speaker 2>Broadway right. We went the full length of Manhattan, and

1:31:48.120 --> 1:31:51.240
<v Speaker 2>I will never forget pulling into Times Square and it

1:31:51.320 --> 1:31:53.479
<v Speaker 2>was late, it was probably ten thirty or eleven at night.

1:31:53.840 --> 1:31:56.639
<v Speaker 2>I'll never forget pulling up and right in the heart

1:31:56.680 --> 1:31:58.240
<v Speaker 2>of Times Square to a stop light, and I had

1:31:58.280 --> 1:32:02.240
<v Speaker 2>my window down, and I was like, oh, that's what

1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:06.040
<v Speaker 2>I've been listening to, Like that ride symbol. That's when

1:32:06.080 --> 1:32:08.360
<v Speaker 2>you listen to, you know, any jazz from the six

1:32:08.560 --> 1:32:11.360
<v Speaker 2>fifties or early sixties, that's the sound. That's why they

1:32:11.400 --> 1:32:13.800
<v Speaker 2>were making that sound, because that's the sound of this city.

1:32:13.880 --> 1:32:16.519
<v Speaker 2>You know. Another thing I thought, you know, as we

1:32:16.640 --> 1:32:19.280
<v Speaker 2>were coming down nine ninety five, growing up in Seattle,

1:32:19.320 --> 1:32:22.360
<v Speaker 2>it's like you'd see McDonald's commercials or like a Buick

1:32:22.400 --> 1:32:25.800
<v Speaker 2>commercial in National Geographic, or a Schlitz commercial and you'd

1:32:25.840 --> 1:32:27.639
<v Speaker 2>look at the people in the ad and go, who

1:32:27.720 --> 1:32:30.200
<v Speaker 2>the fuck are these people? These are not the people

1:32:30.680 --> 1:32:34.679
<v Speaker 2>that I'm around ever in the Pacific Northwest. I don't

1:32:34.840 --> 1:32:37.760
<v Speaker 2>know what this is. And I, you know, forty five

1:32:37.840 --> 1:32:40.439
<v Speaker 2>minutes before the jazz moment in Times Square, I remember

1:32:40.600 --> 1:32:43.200
<v Speaker 2>being in that traffic twelve lanes, eight lanes wide and

1:32:43.320 --> 1:32:47.120
<v Speaker 2>just going, Oh, these are the people who buy the

1:32:47.200 --> 1:32:49.600
<v Speaker 2>Schlitz and the Buick, and this is what this is

1:32:49.640 --> 1:32:52.560
<v Speaker 2>all about. This is you know, this is this is

1:32:52.640 --> 1:32:56.920
<v Speaker 2>the market that I've been seeing. So it was lovely.

1:32:57.000 --> 1:33:00.559
<v Speaker 2>It was provincial. You know, That's that's really the big

1:33:00.680 --> 1:33:03.519
<v Speaker 2>downfall with digital media and the Internet is the loss

1:33:03.560 --> 1:33:04.520
<v Speaker 2>of provinciality.

1:33:05.120 --> 1:33:09.440
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so you have the revolution and music in nineties,

1:33:10.120 --> 1:33:14.760
<v Speaker 1>early nineties to mid nineties. Then Microsoft blows up Amazon

1:33:15.040 --> 1:33:17.560
<v Speaker 1>just before the turn of the century. How has that

1:33:17.800 --> 1:33:19.880
<v Speaker 1>changed Seattle? What is Seattle like now?

1:33:20.439 --> 1:33:23.360
<v Speaker 2>It's so radically different. And you know, my dad died

1:33:23.840 --> 1:33:26.240
<v Speaker 2>three and a half years ago, and I used to

1:33:26.320 --> 1:33:28.960
<v Speaker 2>talk to him about it about how wow this is.

1:33:29.240 --> 1:33:31.040
<v Speaker 2>You know, we're sort of stuck in the middle. We're

1:33:31.120 --> 1:33:33.840
<v Speaker 2>not dense enough yet to have all the benefits of

1:33:33.960 --> 1:33:38.800
<v Speaker 2>being a you know Brooklyn or a European city, but

1:33:39.040 --> 1:33:41.160
<v Speaker 2>we've lost that thing where I can just drive my

1:33:41.280 --> 1:33:43.280
<v Speaker 2>car an hour in any direction and lay out my

1:33:43.320 --> 1:33:45.880
<v Speaker 2>sleeping bag on the side of the road. So we're

1:33:45.920 --> 1:33:49.040
<v Speaker 2>sort of stuck. And my dad, he was interesting. His dad,

1:33:49.160 --> 1:33:51.599
<v Speaker 2>my grandpa was a big civic booster. He was involved

1:33:51.640 --> 1:33:55.599
<v Speaker 2>in putting the World's Fair together, and big civic leader.

1:33:55.680 --> 1:33:58.360
<v Speaker 2>And his response was like your grandpa would just he'd

1:33:58.439 --> 1:34:00.600
<v Speaker 2>look around and be pleased as punch. This is what

1:34:00.760 --> 1:34:04.120
<v Speaker 2>he and all those guys were working toward tirelessly, you know,

1:34:04.280 --> 1:34:06.559
<v Speaker 2>for fifty years, was to put Seattle on the map.

1:34:07.280 --> 1:34:11.360
<v Speaker 2>So it's cool that we're on the map, Seattle Metropolitan

1:34:11.360 --> 1:34:16.200
<v Speaker 2>Seattle is sort of unrecognizable because of the influx of

1:34:16.360 --> 1:34:21.040
<v Speaker 2>wealth and wealthy singletons and double income no kid people

1:34:21.080 --> 1:34:23.240
<v Speaker 2>who have no allegiance to the city other than that

1:34:23.400 --> 1:34:27.479
<v Speaker 2>maybe Amazon's you know, they're doing. They're working at one

1:34:27.640 --> 1:34:29.400
<v Speaker 2>or more of the fang companies. They're going to do

1:34:29.479 --> 1:34:31.679
<v Speaker 2>two years at Amazon, then they're going to go to Netflix,

1:34:31.760 --> 1:34:35.160
<v Speaker 2>then they're going to go to Google. So we don't

1:34:35.320 --> 1:34:39.560
<v Speaker 2>have that sense of identity like we did, but you know,

1:34:39.800 --> 1:34:42.120
<v Speaker 2>there is a vibrancy there's live music every night of

1:34:42.160 --> 1:34:44.719
<v Speaker 2>the week. There's all sorts of stuff going on. There's,

1:34:45.439 --> 1:34:47.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, a good tax base, there's the benefit of

1:34:47.800 --> 1:34:50.200
<v Speaker 2>having your property value go up, all that stuff, So

1:34:51.600 --> 1:34:54.479
<v Speaker 2>you know, you can't really fight. I'm a little bit

1:34:54.520 --> 1:34:56.920
<v Speaker 2>of a There was a famous columnist in Seattle for

1:34:57.000 --> 1:34:59.880
<v Speaker 2>the Seattle Post Intelligencer, EMMITTT. Watson, and he was an

1:35:00.040 --> 1:35:03.720
<v Speaker 2>advocate for quote unquote lesser Seattle. He considered himself the

1:35:03.800 --> 1:35:07.519
<v Speaker 2>mayor of lesser Seattle. He was he was always grouching about,

1:35:07.720 --> 1:35:10.840
<v Speaker 2>you know, losing the old flavor. But you know, I'm

1:35:10.840 --> 1:35:13.519
<v Speaker 2>sure they said the same thing during the gold Rush boom,

1:35:13.640 --> 1:35:15.760
<v Speaker 2>you know, when people were headed to the Klong Dyke.

1:35:15.880 --> 1:35:18.920
<v Speaker 1>You can't Okay, I'm gonna ask a dumb question, but

1:35:19.040 --> 1:35:22.040
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people have not been to the Pacific Northwest.

1:35:23.360 --> 1:35:27.280
<v Speaker 1>What would you say the difference is between Seattle, Portland

1:35:27.360 --> 1:35:28.640
<v Speaker 1>and Vancouver.

1:35:30.320 --> 1:35:32.639
<v Speaker 2>Seattle. But we were just talking about this. Carmela, who's

1:35:32.680 --> 1:35:35.320
<v Speaker 2>here engineering the session, lived in Portland for ten years.

1:35:36.640 --> 1:35:42.360
<v Speaker 2>I think of Portland as simultaneously what Seattle was like

1:35:42.520 --> 1:35:44.720
<v Speaker 2>twenty five years ago and what it could have been

1:35:44.880 --> 1:35:50.040
<v Speaker 2>if we'd been a little bit better at urban planning Portland.

1:35:50.680 --> 1:35:56.120
<v Speaker 2>You know, Portland for example, has like an amazing culinary scene,

1:35:57.200 --> 1:36:00.599
<v Speaker 2>and now Portland's I think struggling catching up because as

1:36:00.960 --> 1:36:04.160
<v Speaker 2>they get better at cost of living goes up, property

1:36:04.240 --> 1:36:06.200
<v Speaker 2>values go up. Like if you ever go to Portland,

1:36:06.240 --> 1:36:08.519
<v Speaker 2>go try to go to a show at Mississippi Studios

1:36:08.560 --> 1:36:11.120
<v Speaker 2>in the Mississippi neighborhood, which is kind of in the

1:36:11.240 --> 1:36:13.920
<v Speaker 2>north northeast part of the city. That's one of those

1:36:13.920 --> 1:36:17.479
<v Speaker 2>neighborhoods you look at, like went there where Elbow, Grease

1:36:17.520 --> 1:36:19.599
<v Speaker 2>and sweat Equity could do it, which they haven't been

1:36:19.640 --> 1:36:21.280
<v Speaker 2>able to do it in Seattle for thirty years. It's

1:36:21.320 --> 1:36:23.960
<v Speaker 2>just too fucking expensive, right, you can't be an artist

1:36:24.080 --> 1:36:26.439
<v Speaker 2>and like, you know, live in a squad, which you

1:36:26.520 --> 1:36:30.599
<v Speaker 2>could forty years ago. So Portland's sort of twenty years

1:36:30.640 --> 1:36:33.200
<v Speaker 2>behind us and twenty years ahead of us. Vancouver is

1:36:33.200 --> 1:36:36.240
<v Speaker 2>another world because I think being a crown country, all

1:36:36.280 --> 1:36:39.080
<v Speaker 2>the y two k influx of wealth from Hong Kong

1:36:39.200 --> 1:36:44.160
<v Speaker 2>and or you know, mainland China, they've been way better

1:36:44.320 --> 1:36:49.560
<v Speaker 2>at embracing urban density. It's much more of a futuristic

1:36:51.000 --> 1:36:54.840
<v Speaker 2>kind of urban environment. Although I have to say their

1:36:54.880 --> 1:36:59.400
<v Speaker 2>brilliance was Stanley Park, the big park that sticks north

1:36:59.439 --> 1:37:02.320
<v Speaker 2>of downtown is one of the most along with Central Park,

1:37:02.400 --> 1:37:04.680
<v Speaker 2>is probably the most brilliant piece of civic planning of

1:37:04.720 --> 1:37:08.400
<v Speaker 2>all time to preserve the most beautiful spot right in

1:37:08.439 --> 1:37:12.080
<v Speaker 2>the middle of your city. So, yeah, Vancouver is it's

1:37:12.240 --> 1:37:14.280
<v Speaker 2>like a I don't know, I've spent quite a bit

1:37:14.320 --> 1:37:17.479
<v Speaker 2>of time there. It's like friendly blade runner, I guess

1:37:17.720 --> 1:37:18.640
<v Speaker 2>is what I call it.

1:37:19.200 --> 1:37:23.120
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's go back. So you're growing up, when do

1:37:23.200 --> 1:37:25.800
<v Speaker 1>you start playing in the instrument? What music are you

1:37:25.920 --> 1:37:26.439
<v Speaker 1>listening to?

1:37:28.640 --> 1:37:31.880
<v Speaker 2>One of my earliest memories is musical. I was in

1:37:32.120 --> 1:37:35.200
<v Speaker 2>the car with my mom. We had a white Ford

1:37:35.280 --> 1:37:39.800
<v Speaker 2>Galaxy five hundred, and I have one of my earliest,

1:37:39.880 --> 1:37:43.280
<v Speaker 2>most vivid childhood memories is getting in the car in

1:37:43.400 --> 1:37:45.360
<v Speaker 2>the backseat, no kids. You know, I was probably three

1:37:45.479 --> 1:37:48.040
<v Speaker 2>or four five at the most, and as you know

1:37:48.120 --> 1:37:49.800
<v Speaker 2>back then, you turn the ignition on and if the

1:37:50.120 --> 1:37:52.720
<v Speaker 2>radio was already on, the radio would come on and

1:37:52.880 --> 1:37:55.439
<v Speaker 2>it was some like I don't know what it was,

1:37:55.920 --> 1:37:58.200
<v Speaker 2>I just remember that. If I think back, I think

1:37:58.240 --> 1:38:00.320
<v Speaker 2>it had to have been like Otis Redding or Wilson

1:38:00.360 --> 1:38:02.800
<v Speaker 2>Pickett or something. But it came on and it was

1:38:02.920 --> 1:38:05.800
<v Speaker 2>some like super high energy, kind of soul music, and

1:38:05.920 --> 1:38:07.800
<v Speaker 2>my mom turned it off, and I just remember having

1:38:07.880 --> 1:38:10.160
<v Speaker 2>a massive tantrum, like, turn it back on, turn it

1:38:10.200 --> 1:38:12.479
<v Speaker 2>back on, turn it back on. So from a very

1:38:12.560 --> 1:38:15.600
<v Speaker 2>early age, I really really liked music. We didn't have

1:38:15.640 --> 1:38:19.280
<v Speaker 2>a piano in the house. Neither of my parents nor Larry,

1:38:20.200 --> 1:38:23.880
<v Speaker 2>my stepdad, played an instrument, but everybody liked music, all

1:38:23.920 --> 1:38:26.439
<v Speaker 2>three of my parents and Larry kind of moved in,

1:38:26.560 --> 1:38:28.800
<v Speaker 2>and he's a little bit younger, right, so his record

1:38:28.800 --> 1:38:32.160
<v Speaker 2>collection was from like the late sixties early seventies. So

1:38:32.320 --> 1:38:35.360
<v Speaker 2>my mom's listening to Bob Dylan on repeat in the house.

1:38:36.160 --> 1:38:38.679
<v Speaker 2>Larry moves in, and all of a sudden, my friend

1:38:38.840 --> 1:38:41.800
<v Speaker 2>Eddie Hewletts comes over and sees led Zeppelin four. We're

1:38:41.840 --> 1:38:44.720
<v Speaker 2>in like fifth grade, and he's kind of a cool dude,

1:38:44.840 --> 1:38:46.800
<v Speaker 2>ended up being a real fixture on the Seattle punk

1:38:46.880 --> 1:38:50.040
<v Speaker 2>rock scene. He's like, hey, deater, chick this out, you know,

1:38:50.120 --> 1:38:51.840
<v Speaker 2>and he pulls it out of the sleeve, puts it

1:38:51.920 --> 1:38:54.479
<v Speaker 2>down and puts black Dog on, and I just I'm like,

1:38:55.000 --> 1:38:57.840
<v Speaker 2>holy shit, that's what I want to do. So from

1:38:57.920 --> 1:38:59.880
<v Speaker 2>that age, I really wanted to do it. And then

1:39:00.000 --> 1:39:03.160
<v Speaker 2>and I didn't start playing imber until I was in

1:39:03.280 --> 1:39:06.759
<v Speaker 2>eighth grade. There was a guy in my class, Matt Bowman,

1:39:06.800 --> 1:39:09.840
<v Speaker 2>who was brilliant ended up going to Yale a year early.

1:39:10.560 --> 1:39:14.479
<v Speaker 2>He's a business guy now. He was like a keyboard prodigy. Actually,

1:39:14.520 --> 1:39:17.120
<v Speaker 2>when he was in ninth grade, Roger Fisher was leaving

1:39:17.200 --> 1:39:21.280
<v Speaker 2>Heart and asked him to join his band. So he

1:39:21.479 --> 1:39:24.000
<v Speaker 2>was really good, and so we put together a band

1:39:24.200 --> 1:39:26.760
<v Speaker 2>in eighth grade. Sagittarius. Bob was the name of.

1:39:26.760 --> 1:39:28.479
<v Speaker 1>The Wait wait, wait, wait, way you left out when

1:39:28.520 --> 1:39:29.880
<v Speaker 1>you picked up an instrument, So.

1:39:29.960 --> 1:39:32.680
<v Speaker 2>Eighth grade that this band was for me. So we're

1:39:32.680 --> 1:39:35.320
<v Speaker 2>going to have a band. Sagittarius. Matt, the brilliant piano

1:39:35.320 --> 1:39:36.720
<v Speaker 2>player is going to play well.

1:39:36.840 --> 1:39:38.519
<v Speaker 1>So you're gonna have a band. And at that time

1:39:38.600 --> 1:39:41.120
<v Speaker 1>you would not do not have an instrument.

1:39:40.760 --> 1:39:43.360
<v Speaker 2>No, don't have an instrument. So somebody has to play bass.

1:39:43.479 --> 1:39:46.320
<v Speaker 2>So two or three of us rent or buy basses

1:39:46.360 --> 1:39:50.360
<v Speaker 2>and start taking lessons. I don't get the gig, but

1:39:51.040 --> 1:39:53.639
<v Speaker 2>I take the bass back and I rent an acoustic guitar.

1:39:54.000 --> 1:39:56.720
<v Speaker 2>And the only lessons I've ever taken really were the

1:39:56.840 --> 1:39:59.760
<v Speaker 2>next one or two years. This great guy rest in peace,

1:40:00.120 --> 1:40:02.720
<v Speaker 2>Chuck Bennett, who was kind of the first call casuals

1:40:02.880 --> 1:40:06.360
<v Speaker 2>jazz whatever guy around town. He was my guitar teacher,

1:40:06.400 --> 1:40:09.000
<v Speaker 2>and I just started taking guitar lessons and you know,

1:40:09.120 --> 1:40:11.519
<v Speaker 2>trying to play with my friends in the neighborhood and stuff.

1:40:11.560 --> 1:40:15.479
<v Speaker 2>And they didn't really maybe have a proper band until

1:40:16.080 --> 1:40:19.880
<v Speaker 2>senior year in high school. Was probably the first real

1:40:20.080 --> 1:40:26.080
<v Speaker 2>band I had. But you know, just music was I mean,

1:40:26.320 --> 1:40:28.120
<v Speaker 2>once we start talking about music, we're going to need

1:40:28.160 --> 1:40:30.439
<v Speaker 2>another three hours because that's getting okay.

1:40:30.479 --> 1:40:34.120
<v Speaker 1>But just to stay on this point, you have a

1:40:34.280 --> 1:40:37.840
<v Speaker 1>band in high school, is it playing gigs? Are you

1:40:37.960 --> 1:40:38.679
<v Speaker 1>getting paid?

1:40:39.200 --> 1:40:43.320
<v Speaker 2>I think that band my senior year, Sandino and the Leftists,

1:40:43.520 --> 1:40:48.040
<v Speaker 2>I think we played one gig at my school and

1:40:48.760 --> 1:40:51.800
<v Speaker 2>probably didn't get paid. And then the next year I

1:40:51.840 --> 1:40:53.840
<v Speaker 2>went freshman year school, all of a sudden, I was

1:40:53.880 --> 1:40:59.760
<v Speaker 2>in a band there in Colorado College, and weirdly was

1:41:00.120 --> 1:41:03.559
<v Speaker 2>the same drummer who had been in Sagittarius in eighth grade.

1:41:04.640 --> 1:41:07.000
<v Speaker 2>We reconnected, and the guitar player in that band I

1:41:07.120 --> 1:41:10.080
<v Speaker 2>gradually learned, you know, started playing whenever I could, and

1:41:10.560 --> 1:41:12.719
<v Speaker 2>you get in bands with people like the guitar player

1:41:12.800 --> 1:41:16.519
<v Speaker 2>in that band had been in a band that really

1:41:16.600 --> 1:41:19.680
<v Speaker 2>played in the Bay Area, were college freshmen and made

1:41:19.760 --> 1:41:22.200
<v Speaker 2>records and stuff, so he actually knew kind of how

1:41:22.280 --> 1:41:25.719
<v Speaker 2>to because it's not about really about playing your instrument,

1:41:25.800 --> 1:41:28.200
<v Speaker 2>it's understanding how all the pieces fit together and how

1:41:28.240 --> 1:41:30.800
<v Speaker 2>to listen to other people. That's really what music is about.

1:41:31.400 --> 1:41:34.680
<v Speaker 2>So then gradually and actually the guy I really had

1:41:34.720 --> 1:41:37.960
<v Speaker 2>a band there, moved back to Seattle, took a year

1:41:38.040 --> 1:41:40.519
<v Speaker 2>off of school, and my best friend Kermit Rosen and

1:41:40.680 --> 1:41:43.000
<v Speaker 2>I had bands for a couple of years in what

1:41:43.240 --> 1:41:46.400
<v Speaker 2>was really like the immediately pre grunge scene in Seattle,

1:41:47.080 --> 1:41:50.080
<v Speaker 2>and we're getting better again. Then I went to Brown

1:41:50.479 --> 1:41:54.639
<v Speaker 2>and I resuscitated this funk band that had fallen apart

1:41:54.640 --> 1:41:57.920
<v Speaker 2>when someone graduated. And the other guitar player in that

1:41:58.040 --> 1:42:00.840
<v Speaker 2>band was the guy whose house I went for Thanksgiving,

1:42:01.160 --> 1:42:04.439
<v Speaker 2>Matt MOONISTERI. He became a well known trad jazz guitar

1:42:04.520 --> 1:42:07.320
<v Speaker 2>player in New York. He was already a he was

1:42:07.360 --> 1:42:10.960
<v Speaker 2>from Brooklyn, but somehow became a bluegrass banjo prodigy in

1:42:11.120 --> 1:42:13.920
<v Speaker 2>like junior high in high school, and he was a

1:42:14.040 --> 1:42:16.960
<v Speaker 2>serious musician, and he was the guy who taught me

1:42:17.000 --> 1:42:19.439
<v Speaker 2>how to play music. We played you know, James Brown

1:42:19.840 --> 1:42:25.120
<v Speaker 2>and current you know, CAMEO funk music, R and B music,

1:42:25.560 --> 1:42:28.599
<v Speaker 2>and he was a task master and he could really play.

1:42:28.680 --> 1:42:30.519
<v Speaker 2>And he was the first guy, and he was a

1:42:30.600 --> 1:42:32.240
<v Speaker 2>bit of a hard ass. He was the first guy

1:42:32.280 --> 1:42:33.840
<v Speaker 2>who just sat me down and said, no, that's not

1:42:33.920 --> 1:42:35.760
<v Speaker 2>good enough. You're going to sit here with me and

1:42:35.920 --> 1:42:38.519
<v Speaker 2>tell we use this metronome and you can actually play

1:42:38.560 --> 1:42:42.280
<v Speaker 2>this in time and make it groove. And he good

1:42:42.400 --> 1:42:44.360
<v Speaker 2>enough is not good enough? Has to be fucking awesome.

1:42:45.000 --> 1:42:48.360
<v Speaker 1>So why did you go to Colorado College? Why did

1:42:48.400 --> 1:42:50.519
<v Speaker 1>it not work out? And then how did you end

1:42:50.600 --> 1:42:51.160
<v Speaker 1>up at Brown?

1:42:51.880 --> 1:42:55.519
<v Speaker 2>Oh? You really? I was enrolled at four schools in

1:42:55.840 --> 1:42:59.920
<v Speaker 2>four years I went. I applied to a bunch of

1:43:00.080 --> 1:43:02.920
<v Speaker 2>school we actually I only applied to Colorado College in Berkeley.

1:43:04.080 --> 1:43:07.000
<v Speaker 2>I got into Colorado College and Berkeley. I decided to

1:43:07.040 --> 1:43:09.240
<v Speaker 2>go to Colorado College because I had some friends there

1:43:09.280 --> 1:43:12.040
<v Speaker 2>and I just wanted to go climbing, honestly, and they

1:43:12.080 --> 1:43:14.439
<v Speaker 2>had you know, they have the block program where you

1:43:14.520 --> 1:43:15.800
<v Speaker 2>go to school for three and a half weeks. I

1:43:15.880 --> 1:43:18.000
<v Speaker 2>just wanted to go climbing for five days every month.

1:43:18.520 --> 1:43:21.200
<v Speaker 2>And I had friends climbing friends from Seattle. One was

1:43:21.280 --> 1:43:24.479
<v Speaker 2>already there and one was going So that was Colorada College.

1:43:24.520 --> 1:43:26.439
<v Speaker 2>I got there, I'm like, this is I don't see

1:43:26.479 --> 1:43:28.880
<v Speaker 2>the point of moving fifteen hundred miles to be with

1:43:29.200 --> 1:43:31.640
<v Speaker 2>like eighteen hundred other kids. This is just not a

1:43:31.680 --> 1:43:35.599
<v Speaker 2>big enough thing for me. So I reapplied to Berkeley.

1:43:35.720 --> 1:43:38.720
<v Speaker 2>They let me back in, and then that summer my

1:43:39.160 --> 1:43:41.160
<v Speaker 2>Kermit and then I started a band, and like a

1:43:41.240 --> 1:43:42.920
<v Speaker 2>week before I was supposed to go to Berkeley. This

1:43:43.080 --> 1:43:46.280
<v Speaker 2>is cal Berkeley, not Berkeley College of Music. I flaked

1:43:46.320 --> 1:43:49.439
<v Speaker 2>out and decided not to go. We kept our band

1:43:49.520 --> 1:43:52.400
<v Speaker 2>going the next year. We wanted to keep playing music.

1:43:52.479 --> 1:43:54.439
<v Speaker 2>So Kermit and I he had gone to uh.

1:43:54.439 --> 1:43:56.600
<v Speaker 1>Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait this being is

1:43:56.640 --> 1:43:57.640
<v Speaker 1>in Seattle.

1:43:57.280 --> 1:43:59.920
<v Speaker 2>Or yeah, yeah in Seattle. Back in Seattle.

1:44:00.120 --> 1:44:02.519
<v Speaker 1>Wait wait how long did you go to Colorado College?

1:44:02.560 --> 1:44:02.880
<v Speaker 2>One year?

1:44:03.840 --> 1:44:06.599
<v Speaker 1>Okay, one year, you go back to Seattle. You say

1:44:06.640 --> 1:44:08.479
<v Speaker 1>you're going to go to Berkeley. You don't go to

1:44:08.560 --> 1:44:12.320
<v Speaker 1>Berkeley because you have this band. Continue with your education.

1:44:13.320 --> 1:44:15.080
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Yeah, I've got the band, and Kermit and I

1:44:15.160 --> 1:44:18.719
<v Speaker 2>are working at this communist pizza restaurant in the university

1:44:18.800 --> 1:44:22.840
<v Speaker 2>district and playing music. Keep playing music. The next year.

1:44:22.880 --> 1:44:25.160
<v Speaker 2>We want to keep playing music in Seattle go to

1:44:25.280 --> 1:44:29.120
<v Speaker 2>the University Washington undergrad for a year, and that also

1:44:29.280 --> 1:44:32.160
<v Speaker 2>felt like I was an English major. I was always

1:44:32.280 --> 1:44:34.400
<v Speaker 2>the one or two of the kids in the front

1:44:34.479 --> 1:44:37.160
<v Speaker 2>row actually engaged going to office hours, and it didn't

1:44:37.160 --> 1:44:39.920
<v Speaker 2>feel that exciting. My girlfriend at the time went to Brown.

1:44:40.680 --> 1:44:44.479
<v Speaker 2>I really liked her, and I thought I need a

1:44:44.520 --> 1:44:46.600
<v Speaker 2>bigger challenge, so I only applied to one school. I

1:44:46.680 --> 1:44:50.639
<v Speaker 2>applied to Brown, and I got in and just went how.

1:44:50.560 --> 1:44:52.960
<v Speaker 1>Long did it you go to Brown? Did it continue

1:44:52.960 --> 1:44:54.479
<v Speaker 1>with the girlfriend? And for how long?

1:44:55.840 --> 1:44:59.200
<v Speaker 2>It mostly continued for the next two years and maybe

1:44:59.560 --> 1:45:02.720
<v Speaker 2>half a year year after that, but it didn't. It

1:45:02.800 --> 1:45:03.599
<v Speaker 2>didn't last forever.

1:45:03.760 --> 1:45:05.879
<v Speaker 1>Well, but you know, when you go to a school

1:45:06.240 --> 1:45:09.360
<v Speaker 1>in the middle, how do you make friends? How does

1:45:09.400 --> 1:45:09.800
<v Speaker 1>it work?

1:45:11.479 --> 1:45:14.000
<v Speaker 2>Well? I knew her and so I had her friend

1:45:14.120 --> 1:45:17.240
<v Speaker 2>group pretty quickly. Somehow I ended up connecting with some

1:45:17.360 --> 1:45:21.400
<v Speaker 2>other transfer students that I hit it off with. That

1:45:21.520 --> 1:45:23.160
<v Speaker 2>was one guy who became the bass player in the

1:45:23.200 --> 1:45:26.040
<v Speaker 2>funk band Dimensioned and was a climber, so we'd like

1:45:26.160 --> 1:45:30.240
<v Speaker 2>totally hit it off on the all fronts. Another guy,

1:45:30.400 --> 1:45:33.439
<v Speaker 2>Andrew Stevens from Columbia, Missouri, who ended up working for

1:45:33.560 --> 1:45:35.680
<v Speaker 2>Richard get part for years. Was just a really he

1:45:35.880 --> 1:45:41.160
<v Speaker 2>transferred from Vassar. Just a fucking hilarious smart guy. You know,

1:45:42.120 --> 1:45:46.160
<v Speaker 2>so I hit it. I'm pretty you know, I'm pretty gregarious.

1:45:46.640 --> 1:45:47.880
<v Speaker 2>I'm not a shrinking violin.

1:45:47.960 --> 1:45:52.280
<v Speaker 1>Oh okay, since you go to Colorado, which is certainly

1:45:52.360 --> 1:45:57.040
<v Speaker 1>different from Seattle, But what do you learn other than

1:45:57.080 --> 1:45:59.960
<v Speaker 1>your eye ninety five experiences? And I'm not talking about

1:46:00.160 --> 1:46:03.439
<v Speaker 1>classroom What do you learn going to Brown that is

1:46:03.479 --> 1:46:06.240
<v Speaker 1>different from what you already know so much?

1:46:06.360 --> 1:46:08.280
<v Speaker 2>And this is all going to resonate with you as

1:46:08.320 --> 1:46:11.080
<v Speaker 2>an East Coaster who moved to the West coast. You know,

1:46:11.280 --> 1:46:12.960
<v Speaker 2>as you said, what was it like growing up in

1:46:13.040 --> 1:46:16.040
<v Speaker 2>the Pacific Northwest? I remember just the first week at Brown,

1:46:16.160 --> 1:46:19.040
<v Speaker 2>Like you know, if you're a Western kid at least

1:46:19.120 --> 1:46:21.439
<v Speaker 2>at that time, Like when you meet people, it's like

1:46:21.520 --> 1:46:23.799
<v Speaker 2>what music do you like? Oh, let's go throw the frisbee?

1:46:23.960 --> 1:46:26.400
<v Speaker 2>What do you like to do? You meet kids at

1:46:26.400 --> 1:46:29.479
<v Speaker 2>an Ivy League school, they're like, where'd you prep? Does

1:46:29.520 --> 1:46:31.360
<v Speaker 2>your dad know my dad? On the street or on

1:46:31.439 --> 1:46:35.360
<v Speaker 2>Capitol Hill. It's like, oh, okay, this is a whole

1:46:35.479 --> 1:46:38.400
<v Speaker 2>different game. This is a game I have no interest

1:46:38.479 --> 1:46:41.439
<v Speaker 2>in it. And to continue to answer your question. That

1:46:41.720 --> 1:46:44.000
<v Speaker 2>was the big value of living there. Two years was

1:46:44.040 --> 1:46:49.160
<v Speaker 2>about all it could take. But I got that view of, Oh,

1:46:49.240 --> 1:46:51.760
<v Speaker 2>these are the people who buy Schlitz and buicks. Oh

1:46:51.840 --> 1:46:53.519
<v Speaker 2>these are the people who are going to run the country.

1:46:53.600 --> 1:46:56.280
<v Speaker 2>These people I'm going to school with, for better or worse,

1:46:56.360 --> 1:46:57.639
<v Speaker 2>are the people who are going to be on Wall

1:46:57.720 --> 1:47:00.840
<v Speaker 2>Street and Capitol Hill in five years, ten years, twenty years.

1:47:01.280 --> 1:47:05.600
<v Speaker 2>So it was a real window into how the oligarchy

1:47:05.800 --> 1:47:09.240
<v Speaker 2>actually functions in the United States. It was a real

1:47:09.320 --> 1:47:10.840
<v Speaker 2>eye opener. I'm really glad I did it.

1:47:10.920 --> 1:47:14.920
<v Speaker 1>It turned out, Okay, you graduate, do you immediately go

1:47:15.080 --> 1:47:17.800
<v Speaker 1>back to Seattle? And why No.

1:47:18.040 --> 1:47:21.840
<v Speaker 2>I knew I wanted to be an high school English teacher,

1:47:22.160 --> 1:47:26.320
<v Speaker 2>and I sent out, you know, not emails letters to

1:47:26.560 --> 1:47:29.439
<v Speaker 2>forty or fifty schools, and my only requirement was the

1:47:29.520 --> 1:47:33.799
<v Speaker 2>school be west of the Mississippi, I'll be totally honest.

1:47:34.320 --> 1:47:36.360
<v Speaker 2>And I ended up at a school in Denver, Kent

1:47:36.479 --> 1:47:38.840
<v Speaker 2>Denver School, private school in Cherry Hill.

1:47:38.920 --> 1:47:41.240
<v Speaker 1>So just because we're this far, where does the euro

1:47:41.400 --> 1:47:42.439
<v Speaker 1>paramour end up?

1:47:43.360 --> 1:47:47.040
<v Speaker 2>She ended up kind of continuing she was an anthropology major.

1:47:47.200 --> 1:47:49.320
<v Speaker 2>She ended up in flag Staff at a museum there,

1:47:49.360 --> 1:47:54.120
<v Speaker 2>and eventually going to grad school in anthropology. And actually

1:47:54.160 --> 1:47:57.160
<v Speaker 2>she's been back in the Boston area for twenty five years.

1:47:57.200 --> 1:47:59.719
<v Speaker 1>So what broke up the relationship pure distance.

1:48:00.120 --> 1:48:02.560
<v Speaker 2>I think just a it just was not She's a

1:48:02.600 --> 1:48:05.800
<v Speaker 2>great person, and honestly was you know, just was not

1:48:05.920 --> 1:48:06.559
<v Speaker 2>the time of life.

1:48:06.640 --> 1:48:09.360
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So you go to teach and you're teaching where

1:48:09.439 --> 1:48:09.720
<v Speaker 1>and what?

1:48:11.000 --> 1:48:14.040
<v Speaker 2>Teaching at Kent Denver School in suburban Denver, and I

1:48:14.160 --> 1:48:17.439
<v Speaker 2>was there two years. I taught English and coach soccer

1:48:17.520 --> 1:48:18.160
<v Speaker 2>and basketball.

1:48:18.439 --> 1:48:18.920
<v Speaker 1>High school.

1:48:19.920 --> 1:48:21.880
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, high school. I had middle school too. Middle school.

1:48:21.960 --> 1:48:24.599
<v Speaker 2>Middle schoolers crushed me, but the high school part I enjoyed.

1:48:24.920 --> 1:48:26.320
<v Speaker 2>Middle schoolers had my number.

1:48:33.960 --> 1:48:37.839
<v Speaker 1>So, okay, you're a teacher for two years, you stop?

1:48:38.040 --> 1:48:41.479
<v Speaker 2>Because I decided after two years there, I did want

1:48:41.520 --> 1:48:44.200
<v Speaker 2>to move back to Seattle. I missed. I was just

1:48:44.320 --> 1:48:47.400
<v Speaker 2>having this conversation with my younger daughter because she's trying

1:48:47.439 --> 1:48:48.800
<v Speaker 2>to figure out what to do with her life, and

1:48:48.960 --> 1:48:51.080
<v Speaker 2>I knew I wanted to be in a community where

1:48:51.400 --> 1:48:54.400
<v Speaker 2>I knew all kinds of people right all ages, where

1:48:54.400 --> 1:48:57.840
<v Speaker 2>I had a deep connection culturally and family wise. So

1:48:58.320 --> 1:48:59.719
<v Speaker 2>I just thought, I'm going to move back to Seattle.

1:48:59.760 --> 1:49:02.680
<v Speaker 2>I'm back to Seattle, and I ended up not the

1:49:02.720 --> 1:49:05.040
<v Speaker 2>one thing I was sure I wasn't gonna do was

1:49:05.160 --> 1:49:08.080
<v Speaker 2>teach at my alma mater. I got back that summer

1:49:08.360 --> 1:49:10.439
<v Speaker 2>and the head of the upper school, who I'd stayed

1:49:10.479 --> 1:49:12.280
<v Speaker 2>friends with, called me, is like, I got a pregnant

1:49:12.320 --> 1:49:14.960
<v Speaker 2>English teacher, you want a job. So I ended up

1:49:15.120 --> 1:49:20.599
<v Speaker 2>teaching English and for another three years and coaching soccer,

1:49:20.760 --> 1:49:23.280
<v Speaker 2>and I did took kids out climbing and you know,

1:49:23.400 --> 1:49:25.840
<v Speaker 2>doing stuff in the woods, and that was great. It

1:49:25.960 --> 1:49:29.120
<v Speaker 2>was really fun three years. So I taught for three

1:49:29.200 --> 1:49:31.120
<v Speaker 2>years and then it was onto the next phase.

1:49:31.240 --> 1:49:32.519
<v Speaker 1>Well what was the next phase?

1:49:33.240 --> 1:49:36.920
<v Speaker 2>The next phase was sitting around thinking, Wow, I'm getting

1:49:36.960 --> 1:49:40.000
<v Speaker 2>better at being a teacher. But one of the big

1:49:40.040 --> 1:49:42.920
<v Speaker 2>problems with being a teacher is if you're an ambitious person,

1:49:43.760 --> 1:49:48.080
<v Speaker 2>you're inevitably going to become an administrator. And being a

1:49:48.160 --> 1:49:51.200
<v Speaker 2>teacher is really really fun, and I think being an

1:49:51.240 --> 1:49:55.360
<v Speaker 2>administrator at a private independent school is maybe less fun,

1:49:56.000 --> 1:50:00.200
<v Speaker 2>pretty hard. You're answering to parents, students, faculty, staff, and

1:50:00.320 --> 1:50:02.559
<v Speaker 2>everybody's kind of pissed off at you all the time. Right,

1:50:03.160 --> 1:50:04.800
<v Speaker 2>So I sort of saw the writing on the wall.

1:50:04.880 --> 1:50:08.120
<v Speaker 2>So I actually made kind of a real conscious decision, like, Okay,

1:50:08.920 --> 1:50:11.559
<v Speaker 2>I've enjoyed doing something where I feel like I'm kind

1:50:11.600 --> 1:50:15.280
<v Speaker 2>of hopefully contributing to the positive side of the karmic

1:50:15.360 --> 1:50:17.280
<v Speaker 2>balance sheet every day. What else do I care about?

1:50:17.800 --> 1:50:20.160
<v Speaker 2>So this is like nineteen eighty nine, and this was

1:50:20.200 --> 1:50:24.400
<v Speaker 2>the start of the influx of chain of out Californians

1:50:24.439 --> 1:50:27.360
<v Speaker 2>and other in Seattle. And I loved the natural environment

1:50:27.439 --> 1:50:29.360
<v Speaker 2>here and grew up out on the water and in

1:50:29.400 --> 1:50:30.760
<v Speaker 2>the mountains, and I thought, well, I want to get

1:50:30.800 --> 1:50:35.320
<v Speaker 2>involved in, you know, natural resource issues. So I spent

1:50:35.400 --> 1:50:37.519
<v Speaker 2>a year applying to law school, because what do you

1:50:37.600 --> 1:50:39.200
<v Speaker 2>do when you're a fucking English major. You go to

1:50:39.280 --> 1:50:42.000
<v Speaker 2>law school, right, You're not going to go back and

1:50:42.040 --> 1:50:45.720
<v Speaker 2>get a PhD and in you know, bioengineering. So I

1:50:45.840 --> 1:50:49.880
<v Speaker 2>did that, and I got all my acceptances and rejections,

1:50:49.960 --> 1:50:52.080
<v Speaker 2>and my dad and I were in Sun Valley skiing

1:50:52.160 --> 1:50:53.720
<v Speaker 2>for a couple of weeks in the spring, and I

1:50:53.800 --> 1:50:57.960
<v Speaker 2>remember after dark going over and sitting on the stopped

1:50:58.040 --> 1:51:00.280
<v Speaker 2>chairlift at the bottom of warm springs and looking up

1:51:00.280 --> 1:51:02.160
<v Speaker 2>at the hill and going, I don't want to be

1:51:02.240 --> 1:51:04.639
<v Speaker 2>a lawyer. What am I doing? So then I spent

1:51:04.720 --> 1:51:08.679
<v Speaker 2>another year working doing some public affairs stuff and applying

1:51:08.720 --> 1:51:11.559
<v Speaker 2>to graduate school in urban.

1:51:11.560 --> 1:51:13.160
<v Speaker 1>So wirebin planning.

1:51:14.080 --> 1:51:16.519
<v Speaker 2>It seemed like the other land use planning seemed like

1:51:16.560 --> 1:51:19.439
<v Speaker 2>the one other professional degree that I could angle my

1:51:19.560 --> 1:51:22.160
<v Speaker 2>way into with an English degree and where I could

1:51:22.280 --> 1:51:25.200
<v Speaker 2>get involved in these natural resource issues that I wanted.

1:51:25.280 --> 1:51:27.800
<v Speaker 1>Well, needless to say, you didn't continue on that path,

1:51:28.560 --> 1:51:31.840
<v Speaker 1>but before you stopped, was it a good experience in

1:51:31.960 --> 1:51:32.759
<v Speaker 1>graduate school?

1:51:33.720 --> 1:51:36.040
<v Speaker 2>It was great. I loved it. I was in the Yeah,

1:51:36.080 --> 1:51:40.840
<v Speaker 2>I was the University Washington graduate school. I was in

1:51:40.960 --> 1:51:43.400
<v Speaker 2>the land use planning track. I was actually writing my

1:51:43.479 --> 1:51:46.200
<v Speaker 2>thesis on what at the time was a fairly nascent

1:51:46.880 --> 1:51:51.960
<v Speaker 2>subject area, which was green or environmentally conscious golf course

1:51:52.040 --> 1:51:54.640
<v Speaker 2>design and management, which in nineteen ninety three was not

1:51:54.760 --> 1:51:57.120
<v Speaker 2>really a thing. Now it's kind of pro forma. So

1:51:57.280 --> 1:52:00.360
<v Speaker 2>my timing was great. I was super excited. So when

1:52:00.439 --> 1:52:02.400
<v Speaker 2>we were, you know, a year and a half later,

1:52:03.200 --> 1:52:07.519
<v Speaker 2>contemplating Columbia's offer, I was actually a really hard decision

1:52:07.560 --> 1:52:09.559
<v Speaker 2>for me. I was like on a path that I'd

1:52:09.600 --> 1:52:12.840
<v Speaker 2>struggled to get on, really had taken some work, and

1:52:13.000 --> 1:52:15.760
<v Speaker 2>I was ready to go do it. And I just

1:52:15.880 --> 1:52:18.679
<v Speaker 2>kind of eventually the advance was big enough. I basically

1:52:19.240 --> 1:52:22.519
<v Speaker 2>made a very calculated mercenary decision, like I can live

1:52:22.640 --> 1:52:25.400
<v Speaker 2>like a grad student for another two years on this advance,

1:52:25.960 --> 1:52:28.840
<v Speaker 2>and the industry's buzzing, and I think something's going to happen,

1:52:28.960 --> 1:52:30.120
<v Speaker 2>so I guess I'll go for it.

1:52:30.400 --> 1:52:33.479
<v Speaker 1>Okay, the band is over.

1:52:34.080 --> 1:52:34.640
<v Speaker 3>What do you do?

1:52:37.200 --> 1:52:39.840
<v Speaker 2>Well? The band is over. We did the thing with

1:52:39.920 --> 1:52:41.640
<v Speaker 2>sir mix a Lot for like a year and a

1:52:41.680 --> 1:52:44.320
<v Speaker 2>half subset, which I really thought was going to be massive.

1:52:44.360 --> 1:52:47.519
<v Speaker 2>It was so good. Mix a Lot is you gotta

1:52:47.600 --> 1:52:50.040
<v Speaker 2>have him on your show. He is the most fascinating,

1:52:50.680 --> 1:52:55.360
<v Speaker 2>brilliant dude. You know he is. He's a he's so smart.

1:52:56.520 --> 1:52:58.000
<v Speaker 2>And that band was you know, me and Chris and

1:52:58.120 --> 1:53:04.160
<v Speaker 2>Jason Keys drums, bass, guitar, mix and one of his sidekicks,

1:53:05.040 --> 1:53:08.160
<v Speaker 2>out of Sight another rapper, and the recordings are out there,

1:53:08.680 --> 1:53:11.960
<v Speaker 2>they're on YouTube, and it was. The shows we played

1:53:12.479 --> 1:53:14.840
<v Speaker 2>were like, I mean the Presidents at their heyday, Like

1:53:14.920 --> 1:53:17.840
<v Speaker 2>playing at the Crocodile and Seattle was insane. This was

1:53:18.040 --> 1:53:21.240
<v Speaker 2>like an order of magnitude. I have never seen an

1:53:21.320 --> 1:53:24.200
<v Speaker 2>audience like these, you know, maybe the thirty or forty

1:53:24.240 --> 1:53:26.719
<v Speaker 2>shows we played. And Mix a Lot was just a master.

1:53:27.160 --> 1:53:28.840
<v Speaker 2>He could just hold the audience in the palm of

1:53:28.920 --> 1:53:32.439
<v Speaker 2>his hand, just for ninety minutes. But it just didn't

1:53:32.760 --> 1:53:35.360
<v Speaker 2>come together. Whether it was timing with the sound or

1:53:35.479 --> 1:53:38.519
<v Speaker 2>our management situation or whatever, it just never got any

1:53:38.600 --> 1:53:42.680
<v Speaker 2>traction organically. It was just on fire. So we did

1:53:42.760 --> 1:53:50.439
<v Speaker 2>that and then I kind of started getting I talked

1:53:50.479 --> 1:53:53.240
<v Speaker 2>to E Music was interested in me doing a solo

1:53:53.360 --> 1:53:55.400
<v Speaker 2>deal with them. That's when they were just starting out

1:53:55.439 --> 1:53:58.400
<v Speaker 2>as an electronic music label, not really a you know,

1:53:58.760 --> 1:54:01.840
<v Speaker 2>a streaming service. I never forgot to have a meeting

1:54:01.880 --> 1:54:04.400
<v Speaker 2>with Sandy Pearlman, who made some of my favorite records.

1:54:05.600 --> 1:54:08.200
<v Speaker 2>I didn't really I did make some solo recordings that

1:54:08.280 --> 1:54:11.000
<v Speaker 2>I still have, you know, sitting around in a box somewhere.

1:54:11.160 --> 1:54:14.519
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't that excited about it. Spent some time you

1:54:14.600 --> 1:54:17.439
<v Speaker 2>asked if we got screwed, spent some time leading our

1:54:17.600 --> 1:54:20.599
<v Speaker 2>auditing of Sony Music and EMI. That was some work

1:54:20.680 --> 1:54:23.639
<v Speaker 2>for a while, and eventually kind of just realized, wow,

1:54:23.720 --> 1:54:25.679
<v Speaker 2>you know, that was a good chapter in my life.

1:54:25.760 --> 1:54:27.960
<v Speaker 2>But I like, the reason I like to work is

1:54:28.040 --> 1:54:30.120
<v Speaker 2>because I like to learn, So I'm going to keep

1:54:30.240 --> 1:54:33.000
<v Speaker 2>doing stuff. So I eventually sort of gravitated back toward

1:54:33.440 --> 1:54:37.080
<v Speaker 2>this public affairs stuff i'd been doing, which was around

1:54:37.840 --> 1:54:41.560
<v Speaker 2>natural resource issues and civic stuff and social justice, and

1:54:42.360 --> 1:54:48.160
<v Speaker 2>ended up back I'd helped in nineteen ninety three start

1:54:48.240 --> 1:54:52.040
<v Speaker 2>this company called Pyramid Communications, which became a big public

1:54:52.080 --> 1:54:54.520
<v Speaker 2>affairs firm in Seattle, and they're still around. Actually the

1:54:54.560 --> 1:54:58.360
<v Speaker 2>first two employees were me and Nicole Vandenberg, who for many, many,

1:54:58.400 --> 1:55:02.280
<v Speaker 2>many years has run Pearl Jam philanthropic efforts and kind

1:55:02.320 --> 1:55:05.360
<v Speaker 2>of co manage them. And so I went back to

1:55:05.440 --> 1:55:08.200
<v Speaker 2>that company and ended up working there for a few

1:55:08.280 --> 1:55:12.600
<v Speaker 2>years and in the meantime on the side. Because I

1:55:12.720 --> 1:55:15.360
<v Speaker 2>was an artist and I've sort of managed the president's

1:55:15.360 --> 1:55:19.480
<v Speaker 2>stuff and I could put two sentences together, I without

1:55:19.600 --> 1:55:22.520
<v Speaker 2>trying became I guess you'd say, a thought leader around

1:55:22.560 --> 1:55:24.960
<v Speaker 2>digital music because I get invited to be on panels

1:55:25.040 --> 1:55:28.600
<v Speaker 2>or to moderate panels at Digital Music Form West or

1:55:28.640 --> 1:55:30.520
<v Speaker 2>East or any of these, you know, all these events,

1:55:31.200 --> 1:55:33.440
<v Speaker 2>and I'd meet people and get invited to be on

1:55:33.560 --> 1:55:37.000
<v Speaker 2>advisory boards. And I got invited to be on advisory

1:55:37.040 --> 1:55:40.520
<v Speaker 2>board of a venture backed company in Seattle called Melodio,

1:55:40.960 --> 1:55:42.920
<v Speaker 2>who had been one of the first to try to

1:55:43.040 --> 1:55:47.839
<v Speaker 2>do MP three downloads to you know, direct to digital phones.

1:55:48.680 --> 1:55:52.520
<v Speaker 2>And I joined the advisory board, and after a few

1:55:52.600 --> 1:55:54.160
<v Speaker 2>years they kept trying to hire me, and at the

1:55:54.320 --> 1:55:56.600
<v Speaker 2>end of two thousand and six, I jumped ship from

1:55:56.640 --> 1:56:01.200
<v Speaker 2>the public affairs thing, went there, helped run that company

1:56:01.360 --> 1:56:04.160
<v Speaker 2>for like four four and a half years. We helped

1:56:04.480 --> 1:56:07.320
<v Speaker 2>we sold it to Hewlett Packard. I did two years

1:56:07.320 --> 1:56:10.160
<v Speaker 2>at Hewlett Packard, which is a whole episode of The

1:56:10.240 --> 1:56:15.240
<v Speaker 2>Office that is another conversation. And then my kind of

1:56:15.480 --> 1:56:18.480
<v Speaker 2>key hire earnout ended there and I ended up at Amazon.

1:56:19.040 --> 1:56:20.200
<v Speaker 1>How'd you end up at Amazon?

1:56:20.680 --> 1:56:25.000
<v Speaker 2>I ended up at Amazon because an old friend, Chris

1:56:25.080 --> 1:56:27.280
<v Speaker 2>de Vore, who I knew from way back to like

1:56:27.400 --> 1:56:31.600
<v Speaker 2>middle school, as an entrepreneur in Seattle, and his brother Andrew,

1:56:31.640 --> 1:56:34.960
<v Speaker 2>who I also knew from childhood, is senior counsel there.

1:56:35.040 --> 1:56:37.440
<v Speaker 2>And I was having lunch with Chris, and he's like,

1:56:37.640 --> 1:56:39.240
<v Speaker 2>you got the other hiring on the music You got

1:56:39.320 --> 1:56:40.800
<v Speaker 2>to talk to my brother. And so I talked to

1:56:40.880 --> 1:56:43.520
<v Speaker 2>Andrew and he put me into the you know, the

1:56:44.000 --> 1:56:47.240
<v Speaker 2>the grinder of the Amazon hiring process, and you know,

1:56:47.480 --> 1:56:50.640
<v Speaker 2>six months later, I ended up getting hired to do

1:56:50.800 --> 1:56:52.920
<v Speaker 2>a job I didn't really want to do at the time,

1:56:52.960 --> 1:56:55.520
<v Speaker 2>which was I got hired to run the licensing team

1:56:56.080 --> 1:56:59.200
<v Speaker 2>to negotiate with the labels, and did that for about

1:56:59.200 --> 1:57:02.440
<v Speaker 2>ten months. And when I joined, we had no plans

1:57:02.480 --> 1:57:05.200
<v Speaker 2>to launch a streaming service, which was a surprise because

1:57:05.240 --> 1:57:08.080
<v Speaker 2>they don't tell you anything when you're interviewing. But in

1:57:08.160 --> 1:57:11.240
<v Speaker 2>the ensuing six months we wrote you know, some of

1:57:11.320 --> 1:57:14.600
<v Speaker 2>these epic legendary Amazon six pages and got approval to

1:57:14.720 --> 1:57:17.960
<v Speaker 2>launch Prime Music. And then as we're getting ready to

1:57:18.000 --> 1:57:20.240
<v Speaker 2>launch Prime Music, it donned on everybody, oh, we have

1:57:20.440 --> 1:57:25.000
<v Speaker 2>no music programming or editorial function whatsoever. So I sort

1:57:25.000 --> 1:57:27.600
<v Speaker 2>of put my hand up and wrote the job description

1:57:28.360 --> 1:57:31.000
<v Speaker 2>to lead that, and led that for the first few

1:57:31.080 --> 1:57:33.840
<v Speaker 2>years and hired the you know, the initial group of

1:57:34.000 --> 1:57:37.440
<v Speaker 2>music programmers and editorial people. And that was a whole

1:57:37.520 --> 1:57:41.680
<v Speaker 2>other adventure that who you know, who knows my kids

1:57:41.760 --> 1:57:46.160
<v Speaker 2>ask you know, who knows what should I do? I'm like,

1:57:46.360 --> 1:57:47.920
<v Speaker 2>you know, if you told me when I was twenty

1:57:47.960 --> 1:57:51.040
<v Speaker 2>three teaching English that ten years later I'd be selling

1:57:51.240 --> 1:57:53.200
<v Speaker 2>millions of records, and then told me ten years later

1:57:53.240 --> 1:57:55.600
<v Speaker 2>I'd be working for Hewlett Packard, like I wouldn't have

1:57:55.680 --> 1:57:58.360
<v Speaker 2>believed any of it, Like, how the hell did this happen?

1:57:58.760 --> 1:58:02.320
<v Speaker 2>And I'm risk averse. I'm not a risk taker.

1:58:03.000 --> 1:58:04.320
<v Speaker 1>Tell me a little bit more about that.

1:58:05.360 --> 1:58:10.520
<v Speaker 2>I'm a fairly self contained, you know, left brain to

1:58:10.720 --> 1:58:15.080
<v Speaker 2>a fault, kind of hyper rational linear thinker. I'm not

1:58:15.280 --> 1:58:18.320
<v Speaker 2>a look before you leap, and I look back on

1:58:18.440 --> 1:58:20.640
<v Speaker 2>what I did, and I'm like, I have no idea

1:58:21.200 --> 1:58:23.160
<v Speaker 2>how and why I made these choices, but they were

1:58:23.200 --> 1:58:26.360
<v Speaker 2>all deeply considered at the time, and I don't know.

1:58:26.800 --> 1:58:27.960
<v Speaker 2>It's a mystery to me.

1:58:28.120 --> 1:58:31.560
<v Speaker 1>Well, you talk about these old friends, Are you a networker?

1:58:31.640 --> 1:58:33.520
<v Speaker 1>Are you the type of person who keeps contact with

1:58:33.640 --> 1:58:34.200
<v Speaker 1>old friends?

1:58:35.120 --> 1:58:37.760
<v Speaker 2>And the older I get, the more I really just

1:58:37.880 --> 1:58:41.040
<v Speaker 2>try to double down on my half dozen closest friends,

1:58:41.200 --> 1:58:44.440
<v Speaker 2>you know. And those are all from high school, honestly,

1:58:44.600 --> 1:58:48.480
<v Speaker 2>really or before, mostly people that I spent time doing

1:58:48.480 --> 1:58:51.120
<v Speaker 2>stuff in the woods with, you know, skiing, climbing, mountaineering

1:58:51.200 --> 1:58:54.120
<v Speaker 2>and that kind of stuff. Those are still my best friends.

1:58:54.360 --> 1:58:55.839
<v Speaker 1>So how does it end in Amazon?

1:58:58.720 --> 1:59:01.440
<v Speaker 2>It ends at Amazon. I did five years on the

1:59:01.560 --> 1:59:05.040
<v Speaker 2>music team and kind of reached a point where there

1:59:05.160 --> 1:59:08.760
<v Speaker 2>wasn't the right job for me there and they needed

1:59:08.840 --> 1:59:11.880
<v Speaker 2>somebody to do BIZDV on the Echo Alexa team to

1:59:12.000 --> 1:59:15.680
<v Speaker 2>do deals with the outside music services. So the last

1:59:15.760 --> 1:59:17.760
<v Speaker 2>four and a half years, I went to the Alexa

1:59:17.840 --> 1:59:20.880
<v Speaker 2>team and I did deals, you know, with to bring

1:59:21.120 --> 1:59:24.920
<v Speaker 2>Apple Music and Apple Podcasts to Echo Alexa, etc. So

1:59:25.480 --> 1:59:30.520
<v Speaker 2>talking to all those Pandora, the obvious partner Spotify, and

1:59:30.720 --> 1:59:32.680
<v Speaker 2>I did that for four and a half years, and

1:59:32.960 --> 1:59:35.240
<v Speaker 2>the last year I was there, I spent I wrote,

1:59:36.240 --> 1:59:39.840
<v Speaker 2>infinitely rewrote one of these six pages on finding ways

1:59:39.880 --> 1:59:45.480
<v Speaker 2>to monetize advertising revenue from sports broadcasting cast over Alexa

1:59:46.280 --> 1:59:49.560
<v Speaker 2>and kind of after iterating a million times, kind of

1:59:49.600 --> 1:59:51.840
<v Speaker 2>reached a dead end with that in terms of whether

1:59:51.960 --> 1:59:54.840
<v Speaker 2>our team could push it through or not. And at

1:59:54.880 --> 1:59:59.200
<v Speaker 2>that point, I'm fifty seven or whatever, fifty eight, and

1:59:59.240 --> 2:00:02.120
<v Speaker 2>I knew I wasn't gonna work at Amazon past sixty

2:00:02.240 --> 2:00:04.520
<v Speaker 2>at the most. And it was just the right It

2:00:04.640 --> 2:00:07.920
<v Speaker 2>was either leave or go to another part of the company.

2:00:08.000 --> 2:00:09.840
<v Speaker 2>And then you really got to double down for a

2:00:09.920 --> 2:00:11.960
<v Speaker 2>few years to prove yourself again.

2:00:12.160 --> 2:00:14.120
<v Speaker 1>So it's just the right time, Okay, Is that the

2:00:14.200 --> 2:00:15.520
<v Speaker 1>last day job you've had?

2:00:16.400 --> 2:00:17.919
<v Speaker 2>It is the last day job, okay?

2:00:19.480 --> 2:00:23.480
<v Speaker 1>Interacting with people at Amazon, it you essentially worked there

2:00:23.520 --> 2:00:26.440
<v Speaker 1>for ten years, and you were referencing this earlier people

2:00:26.520 --> 2:00:28.200
<v Speaker 1>worked for a couple of years they go to Netflix.

2:00:28.280 --> 2:00:29.840
<v Speaker 1>Whatever you hear that.

2:00:29.920 --> 2:00:30.240
<v Speaker 2>It's a.

2:00:31.840 --> 2:00:35.160
<v Speaker 1>Cutthroat is not the right word, but you know, a

2:00:35.360 --> 2:00:39.000
<v Speaker 1>harryd lifestyle. They're working you, you know all the time.

2:00:39.080 --> 2:00:43.680
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of pressure, not many human concerns.

2:00:43.760 --> 2:00:48.240
<v Speaker 2>What was your experience, my experience. I loved my experience there.

2:00:48.440 --> 2:00:51.120
<v Speaker 2>I loved you know, it's a culture of writing for

2:00:51.200 --> 2:00:53.120
<v Speaker 2>the most part. Now some of this has changed. When

2:00:53.120 --> 2:00:55.800
<v Speaker 2>I joined, there were eight or ten thousand corporate employees.

2:00:55.880 --> 2:00:58.000
<v Speaker 2>Now they're like one hundred and twenty five thousand, right,

2:00:58.160 --> 2:01:01.360
<v Speaker 2>So I would say the culture is got maybe a

2:01:01.400 --> 2:01:04.560
<v Speaker 2>little bit less rigorous. But when I got there one

2:01:04.640 --> 2:01:06.480
<v Speaker 2>it was kind of an eye opener because the soft

2:01:06.560 --> 2:01:09.000
<v Speaker 2>skills that I have that I have worked for me,

2:01:09.160 --> 2:01:13.160
<v Speaker 2>like being charming and gary less and being social, weren't

2:01:13.160 --> 2:01:15.560
<v Speaker 2>worth shit. It was like, put up a shut up

2:01:15.720 --> 2:01:18.520
<v Speaker 2>and write it down. You know, these six pages you write,

2:01:18.680 --> 2:01:22.520
<v Speaker 2>single space, ten point font, tiny margin, write out what

2:01:22.640 --> 2:01:25.160
<v Speaker 2>you want to do. Fortunately, I like to write. I

2:01:25.200 --> 2:01:27.560
<v Speaker 2>grew up in a family of writers, and so I

2:01:27.800 --> 2:01:32.080
<v Speaker 2>loved that intellectual rigor. I totally thrived on that. Also,

2:01:32.720 --> 2:01:35.120
<v Speaker 2>particularly the first four or five years I was there,

2:01:36.160 --> 2:01:38.760
<v Speaker 2>I did not I would have to say, every single

2:01:38.840 --> 2:01:41.040
<v Speaker 2>person I worked with I felt was smarter than I was.

2:01:41.560 --> 2:01:43.800
<v Speaker 2>And that is fun to work with people where you

2:01:43.880 --> 2:01:46.680
<v Speaker 2>feel like you have to raise your own game every day.

2:01:46.880 --> 2:01:50.000
<v Speaker 2>And that's people three levels below me to Bezos, who

2:01:50.040 --> 2:01:52.000
<v Speaker 2>I only had one business meeting with, and he was

2:01:52.040 --> 2:01:53.320
<v Speaker 2>so fucking smart it was scary.

2:01:53.800 --> 2:01:56.360
<v Speaker 1>You know, Well, since you have this experience and you

2:01:56.480 --> 2:01:58.440
<v Speaker 1>realize he was smart. What was that meeting?

2:01:59.240 --> 2:02:01.920
<v Speaker 2>The meeting was it's the final review before we launched

2:02:01.920 --> 2:02:04.000
<v Speaker 2>Prime Music. A few months before we launched it. It

2:02:04.120 --> 2:02:06.280
<v Speaker 2>was his final sign off, So it was him and

2:02:06.400 --> 2:02:09.640
<v Speaker 2>most of the SVP team and then like maybe five

2:02:09.720 --> 2:02:11.320
<v Speaker 2>of us from the music team. And since I was

2:02:11.440 --> 2:02:14.360
<v Speaker 2>leading music programming, I was there to share our music

2:02:14.440 --> 2:02:17.440
<v Speaker 2>programming strategy. And what I remember from the meeting that

2:02:18.560 --> 2:02:21.760
<v Speaker 2>I can share is, you know, you may have heard

2:02:21.800 --> 2:02:24.360
<v Speaker 2>about these meetings there. They're like grad school seminars. You

2:02:24.440 --> 2:02:27.280
<v Speaker 2>come in the room, it's a very dense document. You

2:02:27.440 --> 2:02:30.000
<v Speaker 2>sit in silence for at least an hour and read

2:02:30.040 --> 2:02:33.640
<v Speaker 2>it and annotate it. And so you do that and

2:02:33.960 --> 2:02:36.040
<v Speaker 2>then you start discussing it and marking it up and

2:02:36.160 --> 2:02:37.960
<v Speaker 2>if there are problems with it, Like I was in

2:02:38.040 --> 2:02:42.000
<v Speaker 2>meetings where people are where the SVP or senior leaders,

2:02:42.080 --> 2:02:44.960
<v Speaker 2>Like on this page, page one, this you know revenue

2:02:45.040 --> 2:02:46.680
<v Speaker 2>number is this, and then you cite the same number

2:02:46.720 --> 2:02:48.720
<v Speaker 2>on page four. It's not a different number. So fucking

2:02:48.760 --> 2:02:50.400
<v Speaker 2>fix that, and then we'll come back and have the meeting,

2:02:50.480 --> 2:02:53.440
<v Speaker 2>because why should I trust anything in this document? Anyway,

2:02:53.480 --> 2:02:57.360
<v Speaker 2>our document was okay within the first five minutes of

2:02:57.400 --> 2:02:59.840
<v Speaker 2>the meeting. You know this how complicated this stuff is,

2:02:59.880 --> 2:03:02.160
<v Speaker 2>like the functionality that you can do in a digital

2:03:02.240 --> 2:03:05.240
<v Speaker 2>service versus the penny rate you're paying, and sort of

2:03:05.280 --> 2:03:08.640
<v Speaker 2>the trade offs there and all the negotiation involved, and

2:03:09.000 --> 2:03:11.480
<v Speaker 2>how complicated it is for me, even when I was

2:03:11.560 --> 2:03:13.960
<v Speaker 2>working in it full time, Like I have to be

2:03:14.080 --> 2:03:16.880
<v Speaker 2>doing that part of the job all day every day

2:03:16.960 --> 2:03:20.800
<v Speaker 2>to stay conversant in all the details. And Bezos is

2:03:20.880 --> 2:03:23.160
<v Speaker 2>not a music guy. He doesn't he's not into listening

2:03:23.240 --> 2:03:25.520
<v Speaker 2>to music. He thinks the music business sucked, or he

2:03:25.640 --> 2:03:27.920
<v Speaker 2>did for a long time when it was a sales

2:03:28.120 --> 2:03:31.520
<v Speaker 2>or an acquisition based business. Within the first five minutes

2:03:31.560 --> 2:03:34.040
<v Speaker 2>of the meeting, he asked this question that was so

2:03:34.480 --> 2:03:38.840
<v Speaker 2>inside baseball based on product functionality versus the rate we

2:03:38.920 --> 2:03:41.760
<v Speaker 2>were paying. I just I was like stupefied. Like my

2:03:42.000 --> 2:03:44.800
<v Speaker 2>jaw dropped. I was just like, how the fuck did

2:03:44.880 --> 2:03:46.840
<v Speaker 2>you do that? This is somebody who doesn't even pay

2:03:46.880 --> 2:03:49.400
<v Speaker 2>attention to the music business. And he went like right

2:03:49.480 --> 2:03:51.680
<v Speaker 2>to the heart of the kind of the nexus of

2:03:51.760 --> 2:03:55.040
<v Speaker 2>where the cost met, what the challenges, what we could

2:03:55.040 --> 2:03:57.440
<v Speaker 2>do in terms of what we delivered to customers. It

2:03:57.520 --> 2:04:01.640
<v Speaker 2>was it was mind blowing. It was like watching It's

2:04:01.720 --> 2:04:03.760
<v Speaker 2>like you're running one hundred meter dash and you're watching

2:04:03.840 --> 2:04:06.320
<v Speaker 2>Carl Lewis or Ussein Bolt next to you. It's just like,

2:04:06.680 --> 2:04:10.400
<v Speaker 2>clearly some people are genetically more gifted in as far

2:04:10.480 --> 2:04:11.240
<v Speaker 2>as intelling.

2:04:11.000 --> 2:04:14.760
<v Speaker 1>Okay, when you work for Amazon, is it a nine

2:04:14.840 --> 2:04:17.480
<v Speaker 1>to five job? Is twenty four to seven job?

2:04:17.880 --> 2:04:21.280
<v Speaker 2>It's twenty four to seven. And that's the fun of it, Like,

2:04:21.440 --> 2:04:23.520
<v Speaker 2>you know, for me work because I've always wanted to

2:04:23.600 --> 2:04:27.720
<v Speaker 2>have jobs. I'm making rabbit ears where I'm into it.

2:04:27.840 --> 2:04:29.520
<v Speaker 2>I mean, if you're not into it and you're not learning,

2:04:30.080 --> 2:04:34.440
<v Speaker 2>I've never really cared about title or career achievement. If

2:04:34.520 --> 2:04:37.680
<v Speaker 2>I'm learning and I believe what I'm doing is sort

2:04:37.720 --> 2:04:41.720
<v Speaker 2>of karmically positive and I feel like I'm reasonably well paid,

2:04:41.800 --> 2:04:44.560
<v Speaker 2>then I'm happy, And oh my god, talk about learning

2:04:44.680 --> 2:04:47.840
<v Speaker 2>and also, I you know, different teams are different. The

2:04:47.960 --> 2:04:52.800
<v Speaker 2>music team has incredible retention at Amazon. Steve Boom is

2:04:52.880 --> 2:04:56.520
<v Speaker 2>an awesome dude. He's a great human being and a

2:04:56.800 --> 2:04:59.560
<v Speaker 2>very strong and powerful business leader, which is not always

2:04:59.600 --> 2:05:02.760
<v Speaker 2>the case. Ryan Reddington, who now mostly runs the business

2:05:02.840 --> 2:05:05.760
<v Speaker 2>now that Steve's been promoted, exact same thing, like the

2:05:05.840 --> 2:05:10.000
<v Speaker 2>most down to earth guy, super smart, super humble, actually

2:05:10.080 --> 2:05:11.880
<v Speaker 2>cares about the people who work on his team. So

2:05:12.080 --> 2:05:15.720
<v Speaker 2>I think the music team at Amazon, in particulars has

2:05:15.800 --> 2:05:18.000
<v Speaker 2>been I know a ton of the people I hired

2:05:18.040 --> 2:05:20.320
<v Speaker 2>ten years ago are still there, which is, you know,

2:05:20.920 --> 2:05:21.600
<v Speaker 2>not the norm.

2:05:22.760 --> 2:05:25.480
<v Speaker 1>So does every musician in Seattle know each other.

2:05:26.680 --> 2:05:32.160
<v Speaker 2>Of a certain generation? For sure? Like my generation? Definitely

2:05:32.440 --> 2:05:34.200
<v Speaker 2>there's I mean, we all, okay.

2:05:34.040 --> 2:05:38.000
<v Speaker 1>Sir, mix A lot stayed in Seattle. Duff McKagan went

2:05:38.080 --> 2:05:40.280
<v Speaker 1>to La Guns n' Roses. How do you end up

2:05:40.360 --> 2:05:41.880
<v Speaker 1>playing with Duff mccig.

2:05:42.440 --> 2:05:46.320
<v Speaker 2>So, Duff and I grew up in adjacent neighborhoods, and

2:05:46.520 --> 2:05:50.040
<v Speaker 2>I met him in seventh grade. And when I went

2:05:50.200 --> 2:05:56.480
<v Speaker 2>to private school, the friends that I had from grade school,

2:05:56.480 --> 2:05:59.360
<v Speaker 2>I went to the big feeder public middle school that

2:05:59.360 --> 2:06:01.240
<v Speaker 2>I would have gone to, which is so good that

2:06:01.320 --> 2:06:03.600
<v Speaker 2>I didn't go there because by seventh grade I would

2:06:03.640 --> 2:06:06.960
<v Speaker 2>have been stealing cars with stuff and the other juvenile

2:06:07.000 --> 2:06:10.240
<v Speaker 2>delinquents there because I was into that. I would have

2:06:10.320 --> 2:06:13.600
<v Speaker 2>been all into it. So he became friends with, you know,

2:06:13.640 --> 2:06:15.600
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of my grade school friends. So I knew

2:06:15.680 --> 2:06:18.080
<v Speaker 2>him in like junior high and high school. He went

2:06:18.120 --> 2:06:20.480
<v Speaker 2>to Roosevelt High School, which is my neighborhood high school,

2:06:20.880 --> 2:06:23.640
<v Speaker 2>and we weren't friends, but you know, everybody knew each other.

2:06:23.760 --> 2:06:26.200
<v Speaker 2>We were at the same high school class. And then

2:06:27.520 --> 2:06:31.520
<v Speaker 2>he and I re met the first time the Presidents

2:06:31.520 --> 2:06:33.520
<v Speaker 2>played a show that wasn't a showcase in LA it

2:06:33.640 --> 2:06:35.760
<v Speaker 2>was in the La Times. It was kind of funny

2:06:35.760 --> 2:06:38.600
<v Speaker 2>because he and I didn't really know each other as kids. Mean,

2:06:38.680 --> 2:06:41.040
<v Speaker 2>we you know, we're at the keegar at little Hurst

2:06:41.080 --> 2:06:47.480
<v Speaker 2>Park together and had mutual friends. But yeah, we're playing

2:06:47.560 --> 2:06:49.680
<v Speaker 2>at the Whiskey and I look up in the balcony,

2:06:49.760 --> 2:06:51.680
<v Speaker 2>you know, in the green rooms up there by the cocony,

2:06:51.720 --> 2:06:53.760
<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, I'm like fuck because he had, you know,

2:06:53.880 --> 2:06:55.920
<v Speaker 2>he'd he bought this house in Seattle, like a half

2:06:56.000 --> 2:06:57.840
<v Speaker 2>block from my mom's house, and I'd seen him when

2:06:57.880 --> 2:06:59.880
<v Speaker 2>he was still drinking heavily and stuff, and I was

2:06:59.880 --> 2:07:02.360
<v Speaker 2>just like, see him come out to his car and stuff.

2:07:02.400 --> 2:07:04.280
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, I don't really need to stop and say hi.

2:07:04.920 --> 2:07:07.200
<v Speaker 2>But this point he's sober. It's nineteen ninety five and

2:07:07.280 --> 2:07:10.280
<v Speaker 2>he's up. I'm like, oh, that's tough. And we finished playing.

2:07:10.360 --> 2:07:12.440
<v Speaker 2>We walk up to the green room door and I

2:07:12.520 --> 2:07:14.760
<v Speaker 2>walk over to Duff. I'm like, hey, duff' stave dietere.

2:07:14.800 --> 2:07:16.320
<v Speaker 2>You know, like, you went to school with my cousin Mark,

2:07:16.360 --> 2:07:19.200
<v Speaker 2>and you're best friends with Brian, you know McCarty who

2:07:19.240 --> 2:07:20.840
<v Speaker 2>was you know, we have all these friends in common.

2:07:21.000 --> 2:07:23.920
<v Speaker 2>He's like, oh, fuck yeah. And he was so funny.

2:07:23.960 --> 2:07:26.160
<v Speaker 2>He's like, you know, he has a period of his

2:07:26.240 --> 2:07:30.600
<v Speaker 2>life where he doesn't remember everything, and I'll never forget

2:07:30.640 --> 2:07:32.680
<v Speaker 2>what he said. He said. I looked at that. I

2:07:32.760 --> 2:07:34.360
<v Speaker 2>saw it in the La Times to Day and I

2:07:34.440 --> 2:07:36.400
<v Speaker 2>saw that you guys were from Seattle and how old

2:07:36.440 --> 2:07:38.960
<v Speaker 2>you are, and I was like, fuck, I must know

2:07:39.240 --> 2:07:42.920
<v Speaker 2>one of those guys. So he and I just kind

2:07:42.960 --> 2:07:45.120
<v Speaker 2>of hit it off. And then in the late nineties

2:07:45.160 --> 2:07:47.360
<v Speaker 2>he was living in Seattle full time for a few years,

2:07:47.440 --> 2:07:50.080
<v Speaker 2>so we had a couple bands together. We had this

2:07:50.240 --> 2:07:53.360
<v Speaker 2>kind of mellow duo The Gentleman, and then he had

2:07:53.400 --> 2:07:55.480
<v Speaker 2>this hard rock band loaded, and I played in that

2:07:55.640 --> 2:07:58.840
<v Speaker 2>band a little bit, and then he, you know, was

2:07:58.960 --> 2:08:03.440
<v Speaker 2>I think it was a benefit for I'm going to

2:08:03.480 --> 2:08:07.280
<v Speaker 2>get this wrong, Randy Castillo, somebody from some eighties metal band,

2:08:07.720 --> 2:08:10.120
<v Speaker 2>and that was when he and Slash and Saurim got

2:08:10.200 --> 2:08:12.480
<v Speaker 2>back together and that led to Velvet Revolver. And he

2:08:12.560 --> 2:08:15.360
<v Speaker 2>hasn't been in Seattle as much since then. I think

2:08:15.400 --> 2:08:16.480
<v Speaker 2>he's around most of the time.

2:08:16.560 --> 2:08:16.680
<v Speaker 3>Now.

2:08:16.960 --> 2:08:18.160
<v Speaker 2>I haven't seen him much lately.

2:08:18.440 --> 2:08:20.760
<v Speaker 1>So to what degree are you still playing music?

2:08:21.680 --> 2:08:24.720
<v Speaker 2>I'm playing more than ever and totally into it. It

2:08:24.840 --> 2:08:27.480
<v Speaker 2>was for like in the mid two thousands when I

2:08:27.560 --> 2:08:30.280
<v Speaker 2>stopped touring, I was really trying to be a great

2:08:30.400 --> 2:08:33.280
<v Speaker 2>dad and a good provider and a good husband, and

2:08:33.400 --> 2:08:35.560
<v Speaker 2>I just there are only so many hours in the day,

2:08:36.120 --> 2:08:39.200
<v Speaker 2>and I'd still play the guitar all the time. But then, like,

2:08:39.560 --> 2:08:42.640
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, it's a few different things. Maybe eight

2:08:42.720 --> 2:08:46.480
<v Speaker 2>or nine years ago, I got invited to an industry

2:08:46.600 --> 2:08:50.040
<v Speaker 2>thing at a n arm They had like an industry

2:08:50.160 --> 2:08:54.560
<v Speaker 2>legends and rockstar jam thing, you know, at the hotel there,

2:08:55.200 --> 2:08:56.920
<v Speaker 2>and I did that a couple of years I'm like,

2:08:57.080 --> 2:08:58.480
<v Speaker 2>I'm in the industry and I used to be a

2:08:58.520 --> 2:09:00.240
<v Speaker 2>rock star. I should be able to do that. Hey,

2:09:00.320 --> 2:09:01.960
<v Speaker 2>do you guys mind if I join you? And that

2:09:02.160 --> 2:09:05.120
<v Speaker 2>was fun. My kids started playing music in high school.

2:09:05.280 --> 2:09:07.760
<v Speaker 2>One of them, a younger one, Lolo, plays the drums,

2:09:07.840 --> 2:09:10.080
<v Speaker 2>and Una, older one played bass, and they're in the

2:09:10.160 --> 2:09:12.640
<v Speaker 2>jazz band. And we formed a little jazz trio and

2:09:12.720 --> 2:09:16.680
<v Speaker 2>we started playing gigs. We probably played fifty gigs in

2:09:16.800 --> 2:09:19.640
<v Speaker 2>a year and a half before Una graduated from high school.

2:09:19.800 --> 2:09:21.920
<v Speaker 2>And then I just started. I'm in a band, a

2:09:22.080 --> 2:09:27.280
<v Speaker 2>kind of like dad band of friends here in suburban Seattle.

2:09:28.000 --> 2:09:30.800
<v Speaker 2>In another band, Megacat. I haven't been playing with as much,

2:09:30.920 --> 2:09:32.680
<v Speaker 2>but I've got a couple of records out on a

2:09:32.800 --> 2:09:36.120
<v Speaker 2>subpop imprint, and that band's getting a lot of buzz

2:09:36.240 --> 2:09:38.400
<v Speaker 2>right now, so much so that they're so busy I

2:09:38.440 --> 2:09:41.680
<v Speaker 2>can't do all the gigs. It's like weirdo instruments like

2:09:41.800 --> 2:09:45.520
<v Speaker 2>krungbin meets the banana splits or something. I don't know

2:09:45.600 --> 2:09:49.520
<v Speaker 2>how to describe it. As killer in a band Bowie

2:09:49.600 --> 2:09:53.440
<v Speaker 2>Rex and his Boogie Army all late seventies through early

2:09:53.520 --> 2:09:55.480
<v Speaker 2>post punk, which is me and a bunch of other

2:09:55.640 --> 2:09:59.320
<v Speaker 2>Seattle pros. It's me and drummers Mike Musburger who was

2:09:59.360 --> 2:10:02.440
<v Speaker 2>in the Posy and the Fastbacks. Other guitar players Tim

2:10:02.480 --> 2:10:06.800
<v Speaker 2>Degiulio who's in Duff's band right now. Just a killer

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<v Speaker 2>band of local season pros. So I'm playing as many

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<v Speaker 2>gigs as I can play. It's like being a kid

2:10:12.440 --> 2:10:14.000
<v Speaker 2>in a candy store again, just for fun.

2:10:14.880 --> 2:10:15.600
<v Speaker 1>How many gigs?

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<v Speaker 2>Is that? It was too many? Last year I actually

2:10:18.360 --> 2:10:20.520
<v Speaker 2>had to back off. I just backed off on Mega

2:10:20.600 --> 2:10:23.000
<v Speaker 2>Cat a little bit. Last summer. I had two or

2:10:23.040 --> 2:10:25.720
<v Speaker 2>three gigs a week for like three and a half months,

2:10:25.920 --> 2:10:29.360
<v Speaker 2>and it was cutting into my recreation time with Jenna,

2:10:29.440 --> 2:10:33.000
<v Speaker 2>who still has a full, full time gig. So we

2:10:33.560 --> 2:10:35.640
<v Speaker 2>need to be out on our bikes and doing stuff

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<v Speaker 2>out in the woods and running.

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<v Speaker 1>And Okay, I think we're gonna put a bow on

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<v Speaker 1>this chapter. As you said, you know, we could go

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<v Speaker 1>deeper into music, but I think this is a good

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<v Speaker 1>stopping point. We've covered the basics. Dave. I want to

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<v Speaker 1>thank you so much for taking this time to talk

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<v Speaker 1>to my audience.

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<v Speaker 2>As an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate it.

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<v Speaker 1>Till next time. This is Bob left six

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<v Speaker 2>Sh