Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob left Set's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Brent Smith, frontmans to the band Shinedown. Brent,
Speaker 1: good to have you on podcasts. So I've got to ask,
Speaker 1: Shinetown has nineteen number one rock tracks. Why are more
Speaker 1: Americans not familiar with the music of Shinedown. Well, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because I think it's changing. I think more Americans, actually,
Speaker 1: I think the entire world is getting more and more
Speaker 1: familiar with us. But I mean, we've been a band
Speaker 1: for two decades now and we've gone through We're always
Speaker 1: going down these very unique roads with our career. We've
Speaker 1: always built the band around the audience and growing the audience.
Speaker 1: But if I'm being totally honest with you, the touring
Speaker 1: last year was some of the biggest that we've done
Speaker 1: in the last two decades. The band is consistently growing
Speaker 1: every year, and the band is consistently going to more
Speaker 1: countries every year. It is expanding, it is getting bigger.
Speaker 1: But that's all credit to the fan base. Okay, So
Speaker 1: who is a Shinedown fan? Anyone from anywhere, at any
Speaker 1: time can be a Shinedown fan. But I'm asking different.
Speaker 1: You know, you're in touch, you know, with your audience.
Speaker 1: What do you think they're Who are they, what are
Speaker 1: they like, what's their personality, what are their desires, etc.
Speaker 1: I think that they I mean, listen, as the main
Speaker 1: lyricist in the band of two decades, I've been talking
Speaker 1: about mental health for the better part of twenty years,
Speaker 1: even before it was in headlines and people were talking
Speaker 1: about it in media. You know, politicians were bringing it up,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. You know, it's two thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty three and mental health is a made your
Speaker 1: topic now, but it's been a major topic my entire life.
Speaker 1: So I think to answer your question, you know, a
Speaker 1: Shine Down fan is somebody that, more than anything, I
Speaker 1: think they're tenacious. I think that they're humble. I think
Speaker 1: that they at certain points in times in their life,
Speaker 1: they have to understand that it may take a minute
Speaker 1: to figure out who they are, and that's completely okay.
Speaker 1: We're all a work in progress, and I think growth
Speaker 1: is a big part of what we do as a
Speaker 1: band and our connection with our audience, whether they've been
Speaker 1: there from the very very beginning or they're just finding
Speaker 1: out who we are. There's such an intensity between the
Speaker 1: relationship of the band and the audience because they know
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do, especially in the music on record,
Speaker 1: but also the live performances are an experience. One of
Speaker 1: the main things I do a shine Down show is
Speaker 1: we intro first two songs. After that, I asked the audience,
Speaker 1: if this is your first time seeing shine Down, raise
Speaker 1: your hand, don't be shy, and continuously eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the audience, no matter where we are, continues to raise
Speaker 1: their hand, which shows us that it's growing. But then
Speaker 1: I tell everybody to look to the left and look
Speaker 1: to the right and know that the person next to them.
Speaker 1: You may have not met each other until tonight's show,
Speaker 1: but that's all gonna change now. So everybody turned to
Speaker 1: your neighbor. I want to see you high five in
Speaker 1: each other, shaking hands, tell everybody it's awesome to see
Speaker 1: him at the show, and that kind of breaks the
Speaker 1: ice with everyone and it just becomes this experience. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's you know, there's a lot of stuff there. Let's
Speaker 1: start with the mental health component. So how did you
Speaker 1: get motivated to address that? I think I got it
Speaker 1: motivated to address it because growing up I was a
Speaker 1: bit I don't want to say necessarily that I was ostracized,
Speaker 1: but I was not the cool kid. I was also
Speaker 1: the weird kid. You know. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: very sports driven family, and I was always artsy. I
Speaker 1: was always I mean, I started writing songs when I
Speaker 1: was ten years old, and you know, for for me,
Speaker 1: I think that what I had to understand about, you know,
Speaker 1: who I was is I had to be honest that
Speaker 1: I loved music. That um, it was a part of
Speaker 1: who I am. I remember, like my mom and my dad,
Speaker 1: as I got older, you know, I started to try
Speaker 1: to tell them what I wanted to do and what
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. And when you have this dream
Speaker 1: or this desire to be something that maybe they've never
Speaker 1: seen before, or maybe it doesn't run in the family
Speaker 1: or what have you. It was just important to me
Speaker 1: anyway to be able to express who I was and
Speaker 1: the vision that I had. You know, when you're fifteen
Speaker 1: years old and you start writing songs, and these songs
Speaker 1: are the lyrics, and these songs are extremely deep, and
Speaker 1: it takes a lot to kind of go there. And
Speaker 1: my parents would like grab these journals and look at
Speaker 1: it and stuff like that, and they would just be like,
Speaker 1: what is going on, like where's all this coming from?
Speaker 1: And it was just a part of who I am.
Speaker 1: If I answered that question and write I think I
Speaker 1: got no. No, Okay, that's all. That's all very interesting
Speaker 1: and we'll get back to some of the what you're
Speaker 1: seeing there. But you say in your lyrics and the
Speaker 1: image of the band, you're very focused on mental health.
Speaker 1: Is that based on personal experiences, have you contemplated suicide,
Speaker 1: attempted suicide? What's going on there? So the mental health
Speaker 1: of everything in the band and why it's important to
Speaker 1: us is that we've lived through it on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: I have a substance abuse addiction that a lot of
Speaker 1: people know about, and you know, it's kind of out there.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate this this interview right now because you're
Speaker 1: going you're going at me with some pretty heavy material.
Speaker 1: It's making me really kind of center myself here and
Speaker 1: think about this. I want to do everything in my
Speaker 1: power to the best of my ability and the band
Speaker 1: the best of our ability, to bring the suicide rate
Speaker 1: in America and the rest of the world down because
Speaker 1: we've lost so many family members, we've lost so many friends.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about even when I was a teenager.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of kids. And even when I got
Speaker 1: older and left home and went out to pursue what
Speaker 1: I do now, you would get the phone call that
Speaker 1: this person passed away, my friend from here passed away.
Speaker 1: How do they die? They killed themselves, And it just
Speaker 1: seemed like it was it would pile on and it
Speaker 1: would get worse and worse and worse. And so the
Speaker 1: music that we talk about, it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I name the band shine Down. I name the
Speaker 1: band shined Down because it's the yin and the yang.
Speaker 1: Everything that's good has a little bit of bad, and
Speaker 1: everything that's bad has a little bit of good. There's
Speaker 1: a balance inside of it all, and sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to fall into a hole to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get out of it. So there is always there's this
Speaker 1: empathy in our music about triumph, about triumph and about
Speaker 1: overcoming and about being strong and going after that. But
Speaker 1: there's also those moments in the song where it just
Speaker 1: feels like sometimes like you don't understand why certain things
Speaker 1: are happening to you. And you know, growing up, I
Speaker 1: know that kids today and adults today, everything that social
Speaker 1: media brings to you, everything that's put on a platform.
Speaker 1: Everything that's exposed. Everyone has an opinion, you know. That's
Speaker 1: constantly motivating everyone. And my son just turned fifteen years
Speaker 1: old and I always tell him, I say to him, remember,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the phone, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the Internet, you're in control of the device. The device
Speaker 1: does not need to be in control of you. And
Speaker 1: you know, listen, It's just something I think that I was.
Speaker 1: I was born with this part of me that, however
Speaker 1: I was feeling, I have to write it down. Whatever
Speaker 1: I experienced growing up, the scenarios, the situations that I've
Speaker 1: been in, all of those things that are very very
Speaker 1: hardcore factors for me. I put them in these songs.
Speaker 1: And the mental health aspect of it is goes back
Speaker 1: to what I said earlier, which was we're all a
Speaker 1: work in progress. It's the reality. I don't want people
Speaker 1: to think just because in a rut or just because
Speaker 1: one moment in their life they're having a hard time,
Speaker 1: that it's going to be like that forever. I also
Speaker 1: don't want them to think that they can just slide by.
Speaker 1: You've got to figure out a way to overcome. You
Speaker 1: have to build adversity into your core, into your being.
Speaker 1: Into your soul and that takes time. And I just
Speaker 1: don't want people to give up on themselves more than anything.
Speaker 1: And I don't want people to give up on this planet,
Speaker 1: in this world, because it's an amazing place, but it
Speaker 1: can also be very devastating. Like this is not an easy,
Speaker 1: this life that we all lead. It's not necessarily always
Speaker 1: easy to navigate. So I try to create this soundtrack
Speaker 1: for people that keeps them on their road. And if
Speaker 1: they want to change directions on their road, that's totally fine,
Speaker 1: but just don't give up going down those roads. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You're from Lochsville, Tennessee
Speaker 1: or that area, totally what the environment was for you
Speaker 1: growing up? So the environment was very country, even though
Speaker 1: the University of Tennessee is there. It was very kind
Speaker 1: of backwoods, very good old boy, good old girl type
Speaker 1: of you know upbringing. You know, we all had four
Speaker 1: seasons that was nice, you know, lakes and mountains. It
Speaker 1: was a beautiful place to grow up and live. But again,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, being the weird kid didn't bode for me.
Speaker 1: All always so good, you know, I was in sports.
Speaker 1: My dad was a part of the school system, and
Speaker 1: my mom worked for the banking system and probably the
Speaker 1: one person in my life that gave me my work ethic.
Speaker 1: My drive comes from my mother's mother, which is my
Speaker 1: grand an who I talk about all the time. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, I was pretty much raised by the three
Speaker 1: of them and my other grandmother who passed away before
Speaker 1: the first record from Shinedown was able to be released.
Speaker 1: But it was a good upbringing. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a cool town for what it was. You know. I
Speaker 1: went through high school, never went to college or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I was out of the house at eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. But I had a pretty pretty normal upbringing,
Speaker 1: nothing through out of the ordinary. Oh okay, how well
Speaker 1: did you do in school? And did you have friends?
Speaker 1: I was terrible in school at the stuff I didn't
Speaker 1: care about. If I cared about it, I was really
Speaker 1: really good at it, so music and art. I did
Speaker 1: great at math and arithmetic, and you know, English and
Speaker 1: some of the other things I didn't do as well.
Speaker 1: I did pretty good when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: I did good in sociology though in psychology I was
Speaker 1: good in that, And yeah, I had friends. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you an interesting thing from elementary school to middle school,
Speaker 1: all the same kids. We all like I went to
Speaker 1: school with all the kids in elementary school, that I
Speaker 1: went to school with all the kids in middle school,
Speaker 1: and then we all went on to high school together.
Speaker 1: And everybody was cool with each other in elementary school,
Speaker 1: and then everybody got kind of mean in middle school.
Speaker 1: It's always middle school, like that's when everybody's like everything's changing,
Speaker 1: your body's changing. It's always a wild, kind of weird
Speaker 1: time for any kid. And then the interesting thing was
Speaker 1: for me, I went to a different school that I
Speaker 1: was zoned to my ninth grade year, so I actually
Speaker 1: didn't go to the school I was supposed to go to,
Speaker 1: and I got kicked out of the school that I
Speaker 1: did go to, so I had to go back my
Speaker 1: sophomore year to the school that I was zoned to
Speaker 1: go to. Why'd you get kicked out? I just I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say something, and some people are gonna be like, really,
Speaker 1: but this is the only way I know how to
Speaker 1: say it. I found myself. I got kicked out because
Speaker 1: I found myself, Okay, a little and what I'm a
Speaker 1: little deeper. Yeah, well, I guess the way I was
Speaker 1: doing everything that I could to be the good kid
Speaker 1: from my parents and my mother and my dad, and
Speaker 1: because they were just wonderful, great people, and you know,
Speaker 1: they got this kid that they don't necessarily know what
Speaker 1: they I was not easy to raise, let's just put
Speaker 1: it that way, and so my parents wanted me to
Speaker 1: have and I got bullied a lot and got beat
Speaker 1: up a lot, and I had to kind of Middle
Speaker 1: school was tough for me. I was one of those
Speaker 1: very awkward moments in life where my body was changing,
Speaker 1: and it just was one of those things where every
Speaker 1: day I go to my I remember my eighth grade year,
Speaker 1: every day was you know, I had to kind of
Speaker 1: fend for myself. It wasn't pretty. So you asked me
Speaker 1: about did I have friends. I had friends in elementary school,
Speaker 1: and then I had friends in sixth grade. But by
Speaker 1: the time I got to seventh and eighth grade, I
Speaker 1: just became like a punching bag. And so my mom
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna take you to a different school,
Speaker 1: like let's let's let's start over, let's try something else.
Speaker 1: So we go to to this other school and I
Speaker 1: had a huge gross spurt over the summer of my
Speaker 1: eighth grade year, so I got really tall, and I
Speaker 1: had a terrible acne when I was in eighth grade,
Speaker 1: and so I actually was one of the first two
Speaker 1: hundred people in North America to take a drug called acutane,
Speaker 1: and I was one of the youngest to take it.
Speaker 1: But it worked because I had a severe acne and
Speaker 1: it worked and it cleared my cleared my skin up.
Speaker 1: And so mind you, I grew, I got a little
Speaker 1: bit better looking. I was on the football team and
Speaker 1: the wrestling team. But I just remember one day just
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, and this was in the middle of
Speaker 1: the school year. I was like, this isn't who I
Speaker 1: I am. Like this this is just not who I am.
Speaker 1: And like I was into punk rock. I was having
Speaker 1: to kind of um hide what I was listening to.
Speaker 1: I couldn't really bring it into the house. You know,
Speaker 1: nothing against my parents, they just didn't understand, you know,
Speaker 1: like what was going on with their kid. You know,
Speaker 1: there was somebody in our in our family that had
Speaker 1: a music background. So I kind of like came out
Speaker 1: of the blue. And so I changed and I got
Speaker 1: defiant and I got hard to deal with, and I
Speaker 1: stopped caring about like what people thought, Like I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be me. It didn't mean I was like
Speaker 1: a punk kid and I was mean or I was
Speaker 1: violent or aggressive or anything like that. It just I
Speaker 1: wanted to come out of my shell, you know. And
Speaker 1: I didn't want to wear khaki pants, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to wear like a button down shirts and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I wanted to wear white T shirts. I
Speaker 1: had a chain wallet, you know. I wanted to wear
Speaker 1: you know, baggy jeans. You know. I wore air walks
Speaker 1: instead of like nikes, just things like that. And I did, however,
Speaker 1: rubbed the principle the wrong way too many times and
Speaker 1: I got kicked out. And then that made it to
Speaker 1: where I had to go to the school I was
Speaker 1: already zoned for. But when I went to my sophomore year,
Speaker 1: what was kind of interesting about that was I had
Speaker 1: been gone for a year, so like they remembered this
Speaker 1: kid that was kind of chubby and short and had
Speaker 1: really really bad acne. All of a sudden, I came
Speaker 1: back to this school and I had grown two and
Speaker 1: a half feet, and you know, I looked completely different,
Speaker 1: Like people didn't know it was me when I went
Speaker 1: back to school. So it kind of was like I
Speaker 1: was able to have a bit of a do over.
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, but all those people that
Speaker 1: I went to school with, now I'm back into school
Speaker 1: with them, I didn't necessarily care to like reach out
Speaker 1: and befriend them or what have you. I was much
Speaker 1: more of a loner and I was much more to myself.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this, the cool thing was
Speaker 1: by the time we got to our senior year, all
Speaker 1: of the people that I went to elementary school with
Speaker 1: in middle school and all that, everybody just kind of
Speaker 1: let their guard down. I remember this very vividly my
Speaker 1: senior year, and everybody was cool with each other. Like
Speaker 1: when we graduated, like we just kind of forgot about
Speaker 1: all of that stuff and we just everybody. We were
Speaker 1: all friends. It didn't matter if you were a jock
Speaker 1: or if you were you know, if you were into sports,
Speaker 1: or you were an academic, or you were popular or
Speaker 1: you weren't popular, or you know, if you were the
Speaker 1: weird kid or whatever. Everybody was just cool with each other.
Speaker 1: So I do remember that being a nice way to
Speaker 1: kind of finish out that part of my high school years. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what was your exposure to music and what drove
Speaker 1: you to write lyrics. It's pretty instantaneous from the from
Speaker 1: the moment I was born. As soon as I could read,
Speaker 1: words affected me in a very very powerful way. And
Speaker 1: then as soon as I heard music and I could
Speaker 1: understand melody that a good friend of mine once told me,
Speaker 1: he said, you don't pick the music, The music will
Speaker 1: pick you. It's what you do with it after that,
Speaker 1: And so language was a big deal for me, and
Speaker 1: poetry was a big deal to me. I started writing
Speaker 1: poetry when I was ten years old. Writing lyrics came
Speaker 1: a little bit later. But the music aspects of things,
Speaker 1: it kind of started with like the Beach Boys I remember,
Speaker 1: and Whalen Jennings and Willie Nelson. That was kind of
Speaker 1: the early stuff. And these were like songs that had
Speaker 1: melody to them, but they also like very clever lyrics,
Speaker 1: especially the Whalen Jennings stuff and the Willie Nelson stuff
Speaker 1: like that was really deep, like the things that they
Speaker 1: were talking about in those songs. And Johnny Cash. I
Speaker 1: remember I found I found Johnny Cash when I was fourteen.
Speaker 1: It really kind of changed my life. And I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to the Beatles until I was twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: I remember the very first time I heard the White Album.
Speaker 1: I was in my mid twenties so, but very early on,
Speaker 1: just language A was a big deal for me. It's
Speaker 1: at this point in time, are you a reader? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not reading like necessarily novels or books of
Speaker 1: that nature. But what I was reading was a lot
Speaker 1: of I was reading a lot of music magazines. I
Speaker 1: was also reading a lot of it. You gotta understand
Speaker 1: something too, Like it was hard for me to go
Speaker 1: into a store, you know, even before I was a
Speaker 1: teenager and get kind of the books that I wanted
Speaker 1: to read, and if you were at a library, you
Speaker 1: could only get so like my mom would only allow
Speaker 1: me to get so many things. And then by the
Speaker 1: time I got to middle school, there were certain things
Speaker 1: that we had to read. When I got to high school,
Speaker 1: that's when I read some of the classics, Like I
Speaker 1: remember remember reading Moby Dick. When I got to to
Speaker 1: high school. I remember all the Canterbury Tales that you
Speaker 1: had to read, which is like some really really heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: But Shakespeare was a big deal. I read a lot
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare. I can't remember a lot of it to
Speaker 1: this day, but I just I remembered I was. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of Shakespeare at that time, and I
Speaker 1: read a lot of Nietzsche because Nietzche is a huge
Speaker 1: part of my life too, just from a and why
Speaker 1: I say that is he had a tormented life. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that my life is tormented. But when I
Speaker 1: read the quote that he penned, which says, without music,
Speaker 1: life would be a mistake, I was like, there's my guy.
Speaker 1: That's that's my guy. And I just kind of went
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole all of his work to just
Speaker 1: kind of see what was going on in his mind.
Speaker 1: Him and Edgar Allan Poe. You know, I loved the
Speaker 1: you know, if you stare into the this long enough,
Speaker 1: the abyss will stare back. It was always those types
Speaker 1: of individuals. What turned John to punk rock? And when
Speaker 1: did you form bands? Punk rock? Was? When did I?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the exact time that had happened.
Speaker 1: I went backwards a little bit. The album that got
Speaker 1: me into punk rock was Appetite for Destruction. And I
Speaker 1: have to set the scene a little bit because I
Speaker 1: was in fifth grade and there was music class and
Speaker 1: on Fridays, the teacher was very kind of open and
Speaker 1: very free and what have you. She was rad I
Speaker 1: can't remember her name, but I just remember like she
Speaker 1: wasn't a normal music teacher for a bunch of fifth graders,
Speaker 1: so she would let students bring in tapes and what
Speaker 1: have you, and you could on Fridays, everybody would to
Speaker 1: listen to different music. So there was like rock and roll,
Speaker 1: there was pop music, there was hip hop. It was
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. And I remember this kid brought
Speaker 1: an appetite for destruction. This was like nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and she was just kind of doing her own thing.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget it. She was just doing her own thing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: like It's so Easy came on and it was just
Speaker 1: like all the other kids weren't even really paying attention,
Speaker 1: but I was like, what did you just say? And
Speaker 1: then like welcome to the Jungle, and then like mister Brownstone,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna listen to the whole record. I just remember
Speaker 1: all the kids were all running around doing other stuff,
Speaker 1: and I was just sitting in front of this stereo
Speaker 1: in this classroom listening to what was coming out of
Speaker 1: these speakers. Because I had never heard anything like it
Speaker 1: in all my life, and a lot of it had
Speaker 1: to do with the language and then so that kind
Speaker 1: of got me into I wanted to know more about that,
Speaker 1: and you know Operation IVY. I remember finding out about them,
Speaker 1: and then Fugazi was next, and then Minor Threat, and
Speaker 1: then the Dwarves were after that, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember Lloyd was in there. But when I found uh,
Speaker 1: when I found bad Religion, like that changed everything too
Speaker 1: once again, very lyrical, like really intense, really thought out,
Speaker 1: really uh like spell like spell bounding. Um, as far
Speaker 1: as you know punk rock is concerned, I think that
Speaker 1: you know Bad Religion, as far as the lyrics are concerned,
Speaker 1: that's the most profound punk rock band on the planet
Speaker 1: in my mind. Okay, so you get turned onto all
Speaker 1: this music? When do you become a performer? Fourteen thirteen
Speaker 1: fourteen um I h. I started playing in a group
Speaker 1: of guys. I remember my very first performance in front
Speaker 1: of an audience was a talent show. Um. I think
Speaker 1: it was sophomore year when I went back to the school.
Speaker 1: I was zoned for me and like three other kids
Speaker 1: got together. I remember the drummer though, was like five
Speaker 1: years older than everybody else and he had a drum
Speaker 1: kid and he had like a garage and he had
Speaker 1: an extra bass and a bass amp, and he had
Speaker 1: like this really old crate amp and a guitar, and
Speaker 1: there were two other kids from school. We didn't really
Speaker 1: know each other that well. I can't remember how we
Speaker 1: actually got hooked up, but I remember we just I
Speaker 1: remember being in that garage at that house, and they're
Speaker 1: like they didn't know how to play anybody's music, Like
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to play any any songs or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So we made up our stuff, and
Speaker 1: I mean it was awful. It was terrible, and we
Speaker 1: were just like banging on this stuff and it was
Speaker 1: very very you talk about punk rock, it was worse
Speaker 1: than punk rock. I think that Henry Rollins would have
Speaker 1: probably punched us all in the anyway, but or he
Speaker 1: might have dug it, who knows, but it was very
Speaker 1: like it didn't matter. It was probably a good thing
Speaker 1: that we weren't trying to play other people's music. We
Speaker 1: were trying to kind of go off of each other
Speaker 1: and see if we could create something together. And I
Speaker 1: remember we wrote this song that was decent enough to
Speaker 1: like hold a melody, and I just remember going on
Speaker 1: stage and having absolutely no fear at all at this
Speaker 1: talent show at our school with these other guys, and
Speaker 1: the other guys were like really nervous, which makes it
Speaker 1: really funny now in my career because I'm terrified every
Speaker 1: night before I go on stage twenty years doing this
Speaker 1: and before the curtain drops, I'm terrified. But I remember
Speaker 1: that specific moment in time, I had no fear whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It's like I wanted it more than anything in the
Speaker 1: world because it was a packed house auditorium. There was
Speaker 1: like three hundred kids in there, and I just went
Speaker 1: for it. And I just remember kind of everybody being
Speaker 1: a little dumbfounded, didn't really know what they were watching.
Speaker 1: They saw this kid walking around school and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I just opened my
Speaker 1: mouth and you know, it probably wasn't great, but it
Speaker 1: was me and it was five. Remember it was primal,
Speaker 1: and I remember it was real. And then after that,
Speaker 1: I towards the back half of like, um my, my
Speaker 1: junior and senior year, I got in a band called
Speaker 1: Blind Thought in Knoxville, Tennessee. Um we did some local
Speaker 1: stuff around the area. The band was kind of based
Speaker 1: out of Farragut, Tennessee, and uh, it did that, and
Speaker 1: then I got into this other band called Dreeve, which
Speaker 1: was actually the first band signed to Atlantic Records. That
Speaker 1: was signed for ten months and then it was dropped
Speaker 1: or we were dropped. And then about two months later
Speaker 1: I was signed to a development deal with Atlantic Records.
Speaker 1: And then that okay, okay, a little a little bit slower,
Speaker 1: my bad. What do your parents say when you don't
Speaker 1: go to college since your father was in the school system. Um,
Speaker 1: I think they knew it wasn't gonna happen. Like I
Speaker 1: think they knew, I don't. Here was the thing about me.
Speaker 1: I was not afraid of hard work. So at fourteen,
Speaker 1: I remember my parents Back in the day in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: you had to sign there had to be an order
Speaker 1: for the state. But I'm trying to remember what the
Speaker 1: year would be, it doesn't matter. Fourteen years old, I
Speaker 1: go to my mom and my dad and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to work. I want a
Speaker 1: job like on the weekends, like during the school during
Speaker 1: the school year and in the summer. I want to
Speaker 1: be able to work at least forty hours. You know.
Speaker 1: I said this at fourteen years old, and they were like,
Speaker 1: do you think you can get a job. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I can get a job if you
Speaker 1: signed this paper. You know, I'd gone to the library
Speaker 1: found out about this paper that you could get from
Speaker 1: the state if your parents signed it, it it would allow
Speaker 1: you to work and this and that and the other.
Speaker 1: You can only do like ten hours a week during
Speaker 1: the school year or something like that, but you could
Speaker 1: still go. I wanted to make my own money, and
Speaker 1: they they did it. And so, you know, so for me,
Speaker 1: the whole thing about college and the whole thing about school.
Speaker 1: You know, the one thing my parents would say about
Speaker 1: me is, you know, as soon as I could get
Speaker 1: a job, I had a job. And then when I
Speaker 1: was when I was sixteen, you know, I just I
Speaker 1: worked as much as I possibly could. And then you know,
Speaker 1: by the time I was eighteen, I was working, you know,
Speaker 1: sixty hours a week, two different jobs. So my work
Speaker 1: ethic was always there. I just didn't want to go
Speaker 1: to school anymore. So I don't think they really I
Speaker 1: was always I always at a job. Okay, so when
Speaker 1: was the dream to become a rock star kindled? And
Speaker 1: did you graduate from my school? So yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my future? Yeah, I mean, but here's the thing. About me.
Speaker 1: The rock star thing has never been me. If I'm
Speaker 1: a rock star or I'm a performer, I'd rather be
Speaker 1: considered that in a lot of ways. Whatever my set
Speaker 1: time is, that's when that switch goes off. But the
Speaker 1: other twenty hours out of the day, twenty two hours
Speaker 1: out of the day, I'm very, very high profocused. I'm
Speaker 1: very you know, centered in, and I'm able to juggle
Speaker 1: a lot of different things. But the I guess you
Speaker 1: would say the performer aspect of me, the quote unquote
Speaker 1: showmanship side of me, is only turned on when it
Speaker 1: needs to be turned on. Okay, so you're in this band.
Speaker 1: How does the band get a deal with Atlantic Records? Well, um,
Speaker 1: talking about Shakespeare, it's kind of Shakespearean in a way.
Speaker 1: So we were we were based out of Knoxville, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and at that time we were we were playing all
Speaker 1: over like we were actually playing regionally, so we weren't
Speaker 1: just playing in Knoxville. We were going out of state
Speaker 1: by you know, anywhere between two hundred fifty three hundred miles.
Speaker 1: You know, we'd go out and play anywhere that we could.
Speaker 1: It was it covers or originals or both. It's all original,
Speaker 1: No covers, nothing. It was all original and we had
Speaker 1: and we did. We had two records come out, both
Speaker 1: were on cassette and both were on compact disc. And
Speaker 1: the drummer befriended a young lady. And the best way
Speaker 1: I can tell everybody this because it's such a unique
Speaker 1: story and I'm kind of in the birthplace of all
Speaker 1: of this right now, the studio that I'm in at
Speaker 1: the moment in Orlando, Florida, because I'm actually in J R.
Speaker 1: R Studios in Orlando. And so basically, the drummer started
Speaker 1: hanging out with this young lady, and this young lady
Speaker 1: had a boyfriend and he was in a band signed
Speaker 1: to Atlantic, and the young lady and I were friends
Speaker 1: as well. And I'm getting to it. Everybody's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: where is it going. But this young lady would turn
Speaker 1: out to be the mother of my fifteen year old son,
Speaker 1: And so the reality is that we were playing all
Speaker 1: over Knoxville, and my son's mother, Ashley, she was engaged
Speaker 1: to a drummer from another band on Atlantic Records, and
Speaker 1: so our drummer in the band that I was in, dreaw,
Speaker 1: he gave her our CD and so the A and
Speaker 1: R of that band, she gave this disc to him,
Speaker 1: and basically this is what happened, and who that was
Speaker 1: was a guy named Steve Robertson, who was the A
Speaker 1: and R of Shin Down and has been the A
Speaker 1: and R for Shine Doown for the last two decades.
Speaker 1: We've also been on Atlantic Records for the last two decades,
Speaker 1: which in this day and age as an anomaly, also
Speaker 1: been with the same manager, Bill mcgafey for the last
Speaker 1: twenty one years. So very family oriented group. And so
Speaker 1: Stevo gets the CD from this young lady who is
Speaker 1: the girlfriend of the drummer of a band that he
Speaker 1: signed and he's working with on Atlantic, doesn't really listen
Speaker 1: to the CD, throws it. This is back in the
Speaker 1: day when like A and R guys would have one
Speaker 1: hundred CDs a day sent to them, because it was
Speaker 1: like twenty years ago. And so one day he's kind
Speaker 1: of going through old stuff, what have you, trying to
Speaker 1: clean everything out this other He comes across the CD
Speaker 1: that he had kind of thrown off to the side
Speaker 1: or what have you. He puts it in and he
Speaker 1: goes to like the third song on the record, and
Speaker 1: I let out this huge note in this song, and
Speaker 1: so he contacts her says, who is this? Who are
Speaker 1: these guys? Where are they from? He then Steve flies
Speaker 1: to Knoxville, we set up a show. He brings Michael Binhorn,
Speaker 1: who if people don't know who Michael Bienhorn is. He
Speaker 1: produced Celebrity Skin for Whole, he did What Hits by
Speaker 1: the Red Out Chili Peppers, he did super Unknown by
Speaker 1: Sound Garden. I can stop there anyway. So he brings
Speaker 1: Michael Biinhorn to Knoxville and we have a showcase. Then
Speaker 1: we go out with him that night, and then basically
Speaker 1: we end up getting a record contract, essentially a demo deal.
Speaker 1: And then the demo deal was there for about ten months,
Speaker 1: and we were rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing, and eventually,
Speaker 1: after around ten months, the band was dropped. And then
Speaker 1: about two months went by and then I got a
Speaker 1: phone call from Stevo and Steve says, I want to
Speaker 1: sign you again, and I'm like, he just dropped me,
Speaker 1: and he goes, why, I know, I want to sign
Speaker 1: you to a development deal, which I didn't know what
Speaker 1: that meant. And so it was really kind of created
Speaker 1: by Ahmed Urnigan who was the founder of Atlantic Records,
Speaker 1: God Rest his soul, and who was an amazing influence
Speaker 1: on my life on so many levels. So the deal
Speaker 1: was six months essentially Stevo had with me for us
Speaker 1: to start producing and sending the record label actual songs,
Speaker 1: like songs that were starting to show actual growth, like
Speaker 1: actually that there could be something there, because he essentially
Speaker 1: told me, he said, I know that you're in a band,
Speaker 1: and I understand that brotherhood, and I understand what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do and what have you. But you have
Speaker 1: to understand my side of this. I think you're a performer,
Speaker 1: and I think you're a songwriter. I think you're with
Speaker 1: the wrong people. I need to put you in front
Speaker 1: of the right people to see if my hunch about
Speaker 1: what I think you are and who I think you
Speaker 1: are is real. Because I never wanted to be a
Speaker 1: solo artist. I always wanted to create a band. And
Speaker 1: I signed that deal with him, and then three years later,
Speaker 1: Shine Down released its debut album Okay when the original
Speaker 1: band got dropped, did you think your future was over? No?
Speaker 1: I had none of that. The thing was what was
Speaker 1: interesting was this Steve did do something very unique right
Speaker 1: before the band got dropped. He sent me. Granted, I'd
Speaker 1: never been on a plane before, so he goes. He
Speaker 1: I remember, he called me, he goes, have you ever
Speaker 1: been on a plane. I'm like no. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you to Los Angeles because I want
Speaker 1: you to work with two songwriter And I was like
Speaker 1: what and uh. So that the very first time I
Speaker 1: got on a plane. I went out all the way
Speaker 1: from Tennessee to Los Angeles and I worked with John
Speaker 1: Shanks and I worked with Tommy Simms, two wonderful, wonderful songwriters.
Speaker 1: And what I was able to do was, you know,
Speaker 1: work with these guys, and we wrote. Me and Tommy
Speaker 1: Simms wrote three songs together. Me and John wrote two together.
Speaker 1: The unique thing about being with John Shanks was the
Speaker 1: fact that Vinnie Caliuto was a friend of his. We
Speaker 1: were in Henton Studios, and those first demo, those two
Speaker 1: demos of those songs have Vinny Caaliudo playing drums on him,
Speaker 1: which is crazy, um but uh. And then he sent
Speaker 1: me to Nashville. I went, I came back to Tennessee
Speaker 1: with those songs. Steve had him. Then he sent me
Speaker 1: to work with Desmond Child and I wrote a song
Speaker 1: with him and uh, and then you know, I get
Speaker 1: back and that's when the band gets dropped, which was
Speaker 1: very you know, it was interesting. I knew what, you know,
Speaker 1: you could figure out what was happening as I'm saying it.
Speaker 1: But he needed to see if there was something there
Speaker 1: if he put me with some other people, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't like those guys wrote these songs like. It was
Speaker 1: very much like when I got into the room with
Speaker 1: these guys, these were songwriters, but it was like they
Speaker 1: looked at me and they said what do you got?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you got? What are you working on? You know,
Speaker 1: sing me something? So I would just sing off the
Speaker 1: cuff and I would just write like on the spot,
Speaker 1: and we were just you know, writing a song and
Speaker 1: you're just doing it. It was just evolving, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't had that with the band. The band it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you get in a room, it's just bang
Speaker 1: bang bang bang. There's no time to like work out
Speaker 1: melody and work out lyrics. It was all on. Everybody
Speaker 1: had kind of like a thing. You just had to
Speaker 1: whatever was presented to you. That's just what you had
Speaker 1: to work with, and so it was just a different experience.
Speaker 1: So no, I wasn't bummed out when when I got dropped,
Speaker 1: you know, we I was a little it was peculiar
Speaker 1: in a way. It was kind of like, wow, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised it lasted that long. I was, you know. And
Speaker 1: but then he called and he was just like, I
Speaker 1: want to resign you. And then he was like, this
Speaker 1: is what I want to do, Okay, so walk us
Speaker 1: through that. And now he ended up in Florida. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of that was when I say that it
Speaker 1: was trains, planes and automobiles with Steve robertson, it was
Speaker 1: exactly that. I don't know if I was John Candy
Speaker 1: or he was, or who was Steve Martin, But anyway,
Speaker 1: what I mean by that to everybody is we went
Speaker 1: on the road together. Any songwriter he could put me
Speaker 1: in front of he did. He literally for the first
Speaker 1: year from the development deal. I think me and him
Speaker 1: were on the road together probably two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: days out of that first year, and we stayed in
Speaker 1: the same hotel rooms together. We rode the same buses together,
Speaker 1: took the Thame flights, a lot of rental cars, a
Speaker 1: lot of miles on the highway, and he would put
Speaker 1: me in front of anyone that would take a session
Speaker 1: with me, and he worked me. I'd never stopped And
Speaker 1: that lasted ultimately for about two years. And ultimately what
Speaker 1: got me to Florida was Steve because Steve was based
Speaker 1: here in Orlando. He was working obviously with Atlantic Records,
Speaker 1: but they were allowing him to be based in Orlando
Speaker 1: so that he could go out in the field and
Speaker 1: scout music and he could go where he needed to go.
Speaker 1: They didn't feel that it was necessary for him to
Speaker 1: be in New York and so that led us to
Speaker 1: Tony Battaglia. And so when I met Tony Battaglia, who
Speaker 1: was a huge part of the first two albums and
Speaker 1: he's a part of the and he's a part of
Speaker 1: number three two, Tony had called me. It was written
Speaker 1: by myself and Tony on Sound of Madness album. But
Speaker 1: Tony was probably the first songwriter that he saw something
Speaker 1: in me, and he really took me under his wing.
Speaker 1: And so for the better part of I guess it
Speaker 1: was about a year into that signing and then I
Speaker 1: met Tony and then the next year was a lot
Speaker 1: of just working diligently with Tony, and then Stevo would
Speaker 1: get a line on, Hey, this guy is working with
Speaker 1: this guy. This dude's a bass player, this guy knows
Speaker 1: another guitar player, but this dude's a really, really great drummer,
Speaker 1: or this band. It was interesting how it was all
Speaker 1: put together, and it was very organic, and it was
Speaker 1: very much the universe is real. But when I said that,
Speaker 1: Steve was literally doing the definition of what an A
Speaker 1: and R is supposed to do. He was really doing
Speaker 1: artist development. He was networking at all hours of the day.
Speaker 1: He never took any time off, like he was always
Speaker 1: trying to find certain people. So it was like there
Speaker 1: were all these different auditions all the time. So that
Speaker 1: led me to meeting which would essentially be Brad Stewart.
Speaker 1: And Brad Stewart came in when I started to work
Speaker 1: with him on songs and what have you. And he
Speaker 1: had a drummer friend and we were working with him
Speaker 1: for a while, And he had a guitar player friend
Speaker 1: and we were working with that for a while. So
Speaker 1: what happened was that led me to Jacksonville, Florida. I
Speaker 1: was working in Orlando with Tony and then I went
Speaker 1: up to Jacksonville and then made in the Shade Studios,
Speaker 1: which is no longer there, which is owned by Melody,
Speaker 1: was owned by Judy van Zante Ronnie van Zant from
Speaker 1: Leonard Skinner, that's his widow, and in Jacksonville. So we
Speaker 1: were getting studio time there. And so what was happening
Speaker 1: was we were going into the studio and there was
Speaker 1: this really really tall, black haired, you know, really lanky dude,
Speaker 1: kind of intimidating looking, but really but but cool, cool looking,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, but very like interesting guy.
Speaker 1: And that was Jason Todd, and he was listening to
Speaker 1: all this stuff that was going on with you know,
Speaker 1: me and Brad and these other players and what have you.
Speaker 1: And essentially there was a guy, a studio engineer named Pete,
Speaker 1: and Jason knew Pete because Pete was working at the
Speaker 1: studio and he was doing our demos and stuff that
Speaker 1: we were working on. And Jason went to him one
Speaker 1: day after he had heard me singing and things of
Speaker 1: that nature, and he said, I don't care what you
Speaker 1: gotta do, you gotta get me an audition with that
Speaker 1: with that guy. And so he did, and then me
Speaker 1: and him started working with each other. And then that
Speaker 1: became me and Brad and Jason going down to floor,
Speaker 1: going down to Orlando, working with Tony like non stop.
Speaker 1: And then we started putting all these songs together and
Speaker 1: developing all these songs and writing all these songs. And
Speaker 1: you know, Rick Botto came into the fold, and then
Speaker 1: Bob Marlette came into the fold. But I should say
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing of it all was it was
Speaker 1: the three of us at this point in time. But
Speaker 1: I it was like, and it's like this for every band.
Speaker 1: I feel, what is the hardest member of a band
Speaker 1: when you're when you're creating a band, what's the hardest
Speaker 1: position to figure out? I know everybody says a singer.
Speaker 1: It's not a singer, it's a drummer. The drummer is
Speaker 1: the hardest thing to find. And so we auditioned seven drummers,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget there was a young name, young
Speaker 1: young man named Matt Brown. He's known very well and
Speaker 1: like the Florida circuit, phenomenal drummer, incredible drummer. And he
Speaker 1: came in and he had gotten some of the demos
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and to work out this and
Speaker 1: that and the other and so he comes into Maid
Speaker 1: in the Shade with us and what have you, and
Speaker 1: he had some of the material and so he starts
Speaker 1: to play. Granted, the other drummers that we had been
Speaker 1: working with at the time and trying to see if
Speaker 1: it was going to work this and that they were okay,
Speaker 1: but like Matt came in and just like it was
Speaker 1: just a different animal. And so we actually were going
Speaker 1: to offer the gig to Matt. We were all excited.
Speaker 1: We thought he was gonna be you know, stoked and
Speaker 1: everything else. And I remember we met him at a
Speaker 1: barbecue joint called Sticky Fingers and we're like, we want
Speaker 1: to give you the gig and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want it. And we were like, okay, you
Speaker 1: tell us, why do we do something wrong? Did we
Speaker 1: say something? He goes, absolutely not. I think you guys
Speaker 1: are awesome. It's just not my style of music. It's
Speaker 1: just not really my thing. But then he goes, however,
Speaker 1: I have somebody that I think is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: perfect for you, And so I was like, well, who
Speaker 1: is it? And he's like a gentleman by the name
Speaker 1: of Barry Kirch, And so literally about a week later,
Speaker 1: he gave us Barry's number. I started talking to Stevo
Speaker 1: about it. We talked to the band about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, the guys were getting at this point in time,
Speaker 1: like everybody was getting frustrated, and I just was trying
Speaker 1: to tell everyone just calm down, it's gonna be all right,
Speaker 1: Like let's let's give this guy a shot. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what's interesting. Barry was number seven. And what's
Speaker 1: even more interesting is Barry's birthday is the same day.
Speaker 1: He shares a birthday with my dad. And there were
Speaker 1: just all these things that lined up all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like none of these other drummers had anything. It was like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's like seven snake guys. And
Speaker 1: then he's got my dad's birthday. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is interesting, and lo and behold, this brother happened
Speaker 1: to be a program director for Planet Radio in Jacksonville, Florida.
Speaker 1: So who is the who is still the program director
Speaker 1: for Planet Radio in Jacksonville, Florida, which is Chad Chumley.
Speaker 1: So anyhow, Barry comes in, and Barry was completely different
Speaker 1: than everybody else because Barry came in with Holy Moly, man,
Speaker 1: Like I get chills thinking about this actually, because I
Speaker 1: remember when he came in, he knew all facets of
Speaker 1: like drumming, Like he knew how to play jazz, and
Speaker 1: he knew how to play like traditional style, and he
Speaker 1: knew how to play like reggae and all these different things.
Speaker 1: And he funk and like inspired by Prince and all
Speaker 1: these different things. So he added all these wild elms
Speaker 1: to everything. But he was very unassuming and very like
Speaker 1: nice to be here and stuff like that. But when
Speaker 1: he came in and he auditioned it, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a it was a it was a wonderful audition
Speaker 1: because he was kind of like doing a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. But I remember his very his real audition.
Speaker 1: The song forty five on the album Leave a Whisper,
Speaker 1: that is the song that's been heard for the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. The drum take on that song on that
Speaker 1: record is Barries demo drum track. Really, yes, and that's
Speaker 1: his audition that that that drum track is Barry's first
Speaker 1: time playing. And really we showed him the song you
Speaker 1: know and everything, and then we were like, just come
Speaker 1: in here and play it, and we just all looked
Speaker 1: at each other and but that that that drum take
Speaker 1: on leave a Whisper on forty five, that's basically his
Speaker 1: that's his audition, and it was yeah, it was after that. Man,
Speaker 1: he was the guy. Okay, this band is not playing
Speaker 1: out live? Is limit records keeping everybody alive? No, no, now,
Speaker 1: you you have to like Judy helped keep me alive
Speaker 1: during this time. I'm gonna be totally honest with you.
Speaker 1: I had run out of money because and Steve was
Speaker 1: working on it like Steve was because we gotta understand something.
Speaker 1: At that point, we had a drummer, we could record,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, we had the songs
Speaker 1: and everything ready. So it was time to go to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. So we had a budget to go to
Speaker 1: LA and all this. But before that happened, there was
Speaker 1: like an eight month nine month window where like nothing
Speaker 1: was happening except we were just practicing and trying to
Speaker 1: get ready and we were writing songs and songs and
Speaker 1: you know, me and Barry were getting to know each
Speaker 1: other and all these types of things and what have you.
Speaker 1: But I didn't have any more money. So I actually
Speaker 1: had to go home to Knoxville for about two weeks.
Speaker 1: But then I had to do sessions back in Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: So I was driving back and forth from like Jacksonville
Speaker 1: to Knoxville, like, you know, staying at twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: a night Motel six you know this, and then the other.
Speaker 1: And then Judy found out about this and found me
Speaker 1: and said, well, actually she didn't say anything. She just said,
Speaker 1: when's the next time you're going to when's the next
Speaker 1: time you're going back to Knoxville. I was like probably
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. She's like, when are you supposed to come
Speaker 1: back here? And I was like, well, I mean if
Speaker 1: I Judy, it's not your problem. And she was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't ask that, and she was like when what
Speaker 1: do you need to do here? And I told her
Speaker 1: what I needed to do and she was like, how
Speaker 1: long do you think I'm like until they call us
Speaker 1: to LA Probably like six months. It ended up being
Speaker 1: eight months, but I just threw out a number, you know,
Speaker 1: I just did six months, and she was like, she
Speaker 1: handed me a key, and she handed me a like
Speaker 1: a garage door opener, and she gave me a and
Speaker 1: she gave me a like a posted note with a
Speaker 1: number on it, and she was like, this is the
Speaker 1: guest house to my house. This is the gate you
Speaker 1: go in, it's yours. There's no furniture in there. There's
Speaker 1: a stove, there's a microwave and you know, refrigerator, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's a place to stay. And so she housed
Speaker 1: me for eight months rent free, and I told her
Speaker 1: that I would That's a totally different story down the line,
Speaker 1: but I told her. I was like, I have no
Speaker 1: idea how I'm going to pay you back, but I
Speaker 1: promise you I'll pay you back one day. And inadvertently
Speaker 1: when the simple man thing happened. And I call it
Speaker 1: a thing because it wasn't a planned thing. At the time,
Speaker 1: she owned fifty one percent of the Leonards Ginnered catalog,
Speaker 1: and I remember when that got released and she had
Speaker 1: the ownership of half the catalog. I remember looking at
Speaker 1: her going, I told you, I'll pay you back. Okay, amazing.
Speaker 1: So you go to Los Angeles. What's the experience of
Speaker 1: making the first record? Good back? Because a lot of
Speaker 1: people say I was green and if I knew better,
Speaker 1: I would have taken work control. How was it for you?
Speaker 1: It was an absolute blast. It was the most fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, it couldn't have been a better experience.
Speaker 1: We were in Los Angeles. We were raising hell. We
Speaker 1: didn't care. We were twenty two, twenty three years old,
Speaker 1: you know, we were just having the best time it was.
Speaker 1: It was amazing and honestly when we were in when
Speaker 1: we were there, we got super lucky. We worked again,
Speaker 1: going back to going back to Henson Studios. That's where
Speaker 1: we did a bulk of the first record. Bob Marlette
Speaker 1: was the producer. There's three producers on Levea Whisper and
Speaker 1: there's three mixers, so Bob Marlette had the lion's share
Speaker 1: of the album production wise, But then Tony Battaglia is
Speaker 1: on there for the mix and the production of forty
Speaker 1: five and also a version of Burning Bright, and then
Speaker 1: Rick by Otto as a producer on three songs on
Speaker 1: that record as well, and then for the Bob Marlette material,
Speaker 1: Andy Wallace mixed his stuff. So there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on on that record. But the experience of being out
Speaker 1: there with Bob like that was like the bulk of
Speaker 1: everything when we first got out there, and he was
Speaker 1: just great, and he had great engineers and just amazing
Speaker 1: people that we were able to work with because it
Speaker 1: was he Bob made sure that it wasn't like it
Speaker 1: wasn't stuck up, like yeah you're in LA, Yeah you're
Speaker 1: at Henston Studios, but your this is your first record,
Speaker 1: Like this is a celebration, Like you're supposed to ask questions.
Speaker 1: It's okay to ask questions. It's okay if you make
Speaker 1: a mistake. Yeah, the clock's running, but who cares. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like we're gonna get what we need to get.
Speaker 1: And I mean it really was. It was an absolute blast.
Speaker 1: We had a great We had a great time. How
Speaker 1: does McGathy get involved, McGaffey, You have to rewind it
Speaker 1: a little bit. Steve. Oh again, Steve Robertson. I can't
Speaker 1: stress the amount of how important Steve Robertson is to
Speaker 1: this band and to this DNA of who we are.
Speaker 1: He this was right before I think this was right
Speaker 1: about the time, and I know the clock's running right now.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember all the dates. It was probably
Speaker 1: right when we were still in a demo phase. We
Speaker 1: were still writing songs, like the band had just kind
Speaker 1: of got going as far as like we we kind
Speaker 1: of got into a function way with each other and
Speaker 1: we were getting into a rhythm of songwriting, and STEVEO
Speaker 1: was like, I want you to go to New York.
Speaker 1: I want you to take a meeting with I want
Speaker 1: you to meet with a few people. I think there
Speaker 1: was four people I was supposed to meet. But the
Speaker 1: very first person I wanted, a very first, very first
Speaker 1: person I met, excuse me, was Bill McGaffey at one
Speaker 1: nineteen West twenty third Street, New York, New York. I
Speaker 1: remember I walked in and he didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of time. And for people that don't know who Bill
Speaker 1: mcgathey is, he is the rock and roll mogul, like
Speaker 1: he is the real thing. Like you don't get more
Speaker 1: real than Bill mcgathey. And Bill's the last one with
Speaker 1: a soul and Bill, you know, I remember Bill always
Speaker 1: telling me from the from the beginning. He was always
Speaker 1: straight up with me, and he said, remember it's about
Speaker 1: the music one hundred percent of the time. Don't ever
Speaker 1: lie because you got to remember the lies. But the
Speaker 1: thing was, I walk into this. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: Willie walking in the chocolate factory for musicians, like I
Speaker 1: walked in to this. I mean it was indy as
Speaker 1: Indy could get the entire walls, the ceiling, like how
Speaker 1: high the building was. Everything. You walk into this room
Speaker 1: and there's death side by side with each other. They're
Speaker 1: catty corner to each other. There's no falls up between him.
Speaker 1: People are on the phones, The phones are ringing, music's blasting,
Speaker 1: there are gold, platinum, diamond records everywhere. People are yelling
Speaker 1: at each other like they're I mean, it was like
Speaker 1: it was like the New York Stock Exchange. It was crazy,
Speaker 1: you know. And they're they're getting records, they're getting ads,
Speaker 1: they're doing the thing. Man, They're they're they're running the business.
Speaker 1: They're they're really they call it the music business for
Speaker 1: a reason because it's still a business. And it was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to that where it was just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: And so he he comes up and he's very um,
Speaker 1: you knew who he was, Like I didn't have a
Speaker 1: picture of him or anything, but when he walked up,
Speaker 1: I knew who he was because you could just tell.
Speaker 1: It's just the way he carried himself. And so he's like,
Speaker 1: let's go in the back, and we go in the back.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like this conversation we're having right now,
Speaker 1: kind of asking me about certain things, but he looked
Speaker 1: at me. At a certain point in time, He's like,
Speaker 1: and at the whole time we're back there, people are
Speaker 1: yelling for him, and he's screaming, I'm busy, I'm busy.
Speaker 1: I'll call him back. I don't care. Like it's just
Speaker 1: in between me trying to stay on track with our conversation,
Speaker 1: and I had to stop because it was just so
Speaker 1: much chaos. And finally I just looked at him. I said, Bill,
Speaker 1: why should you be my manager? Like I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: meet with all these other people today, you haven't, like
Speaker 1: I haven't really had a chance to ask you anything.
Speaker 1: You're asking me everything and I'm in your world and
Speaker 1: this is really intimidating, man, But why should you be
Speaker 1: my manager? And he knew the label that I was on,
Speaker 1: He knew more about me than I did about him.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he said, Son, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you this right now. I am the only
Speaker 1: person that will be able to get you through that
Speaker 1: Atlantic record system. You can take that with you. I
Speaker 1: gotta go. And then he got up and started yelling
Speaker 1: at people and everything else, and I, like, I came
Speaker 1: in there on my own. I just was and they
Speaker 1: were like so I remember somebody looked at me, you
Speaker 1: can go now. I'm like okay, and I just left.
Speaker 1: But there was something about that moment in time, man,
Speaker 1: where it was so rock and roll and it was
Speaker 1: so like real to me, like what was going on
Speaker 1: and that energy in that room and like they were
Speaker 1: in it, like like I saw it with my own eyes,
Speaker 1: and it was like, this is real. This guy is
Speaker 1: not joking. This guy's real. I called Stevo from a
Speaker 1: pay phone outside of one nineteen West twenty third and said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to any of the other meetings I wanted.
Speaker 1: I want this guy. And then I went back to
Speaker 1: the Guardia and had to wait eight and a half
Speaker 1: hours to get on a plane and come back to Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: And there you go, and the rest is history. Bill
Speaker 1: mcgaffe's a busy guy, started out radio promotion. They have
Speaker 1: multiple locks. He's obviously done a great job for you,
Speaker 1: but can you get a hold of them. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be here for four hours, which if Bob, and I'm
Speaker 1: happy to deal with you. I'm having the best time
Speaker 1: with you right now. Um. I talked to him for
Speaker 1: two and a half hours today, like that guys my
Speaker 1: second father. So you can essentially get him whenever you
Speaker 1: need him at any time. And by the way it
Speaker 1: works both ways, he can get me whenever he needs
Speaker 1: me to Like it's it's twenty years man, and and
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm looking forward to the next twenty you know.
Speaker 1: It's uh, there's a We've been through a lot, man,
Speaker 1: We got a lot more to go through. But no,
Speaker 1: it's even from even from Jump Street man. And I'll
Speaker 1: give you a story real quick, and I'll make it short.
Speaker 1: But that first tour that we did where we went
Speaker 1: out he was managing Three Doors down at the height
Speaker 1: of their career um and we went out there with them.
Speaker 1: And it was only supposed to be for three weeks.
Speaker 1: And this is in two thousand and three, so this
Speaker 1: is twenty years ago, and we were only supposed to
Speaker 1: be on this tour for about two weeks. We ended
Speaker 1: up being on this tour with Three Doors for nine months.
Speaker 1: We went from being the first of four to buy.
Speaker 1: The last two months of that nine month run we
Speaker 1: were main support. I learned a lot from that band.
Speaker 1: I learned a great deal from Brad Arnold about being
Speaker 1: a front man and just respecting your crew and all
Speaker 1: these different things. But I will fast forward here and
Speaker 1: I'll never forget the record to come out. We were
Speaker 1: on the road. We were making some noise, but it
Speaker 1: was a little funky, and I remember he came out
Speaker 1: to where the Stone Pony was. We were playing the
Speaker 1: arena there, the same arena where Jim Morrison got arrested
Speaker 1: for indecent exposure up in Jersey. I think it's I
Speaker 1: think it's gone now. But it was first of four.
Speaker 1: We walked out there. There was eight thousand people, but
Speaker 1: there was only like three thousand in the building. Walked
Speaker 1: out there, and you know, we were the first band
Speaker 1: of the night, and Bill hadn't seen us play live
Speaker 1: in like a few months, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it was terrible. We were a I mean, we
Speaker 1: were awful. And I knew it too. I knew it
Speaker 1: because we had partied the night before and my voice
Speaker 1: was shot and everything else, if all the things that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't do, you know. And we got off stage
Speaker 1: and I find him out in the mezzanine of the
Speaker 1: arena and everybody had gone in to go watch Three
Speaker 1: Doors and he was all by himself. I walked up
Speaker 1: to him, and he looked at me and he goes, hey,
Speaker 1: And I looked at him and I said, please don't
Speaker 1: leave me. I know it wasn't good. I know we
Speaker 1: need to do better. I apologize. I promise you I
Speaker 1: will do better. Please don't drop us, and please don't
Speaker 1: give up on us, and please don't leave me. And
Speaker 1: he looked at me, and he'll tell you to this
Speaker 1: day that he didn't hesitate. But if I was him,
Speaker 1: I would have, like anybody would have, I would have
Speaker 1: taken a little bit longer of a pause. But he didn't.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he goes, I'm not
Speaker 1: going nowhere. Let's get to work. That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm not going nowhere and let's get to work. Okay.
Speaker 1: Was there a turning point or was it just long
Speaker 1: hard work of the ladder, long hard work up It's
Speaker 1: still that. It's still a mountain man. Every every every
Speaker 1: single record, everything we do. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: We had one of the best our touring schedule last year.
Speaker 1: We broke twenty six merch records last year. You know
Speaker 1: for us, you know, we were pushing the envelope. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm gonna say this because it's true,
Speaker 1: Like that's because of all of the foundation that we have.
Speaker 1: And why I say that is it is a thousand
Speaker 1: percent the fan base, but it's also one thousand percent
Speaker 1: you know. Look, it's terrestrial radio in the very, very beginning.
Speaker 1: It's still trestrial radio to this day. Even with the
Speaker 1: consumption the music and the way that we platform everything
Speaker 1: and streaming and all the way digital playlist, all those
Speaker 1: types of things and how you consume the music, it's
Speaker 1: still at the end of the day, if you mean
Speaker 1: what you mean as a musician, as a songwriter, as
Speaker 1: a performer, there's always going to be a ladder, there's
Speaker 1: always going to be a mountain. You have to constantly
Speaker 1: outdo what you've already done. That does not change. You
Speaker 1: have to be willing to go through just unparalleled obstacles
Speaker 1: in this business. Anybody that's listening to this right now,
Speaker 1: you can never phone it in ever, You can never
Speaker 1: ever have the mentality of I've arrived. You might as
Speaker 1: well pack your bags. And the other thing too is
Speaker 1: if you ever fall out of love with it, then quit.
Speaker 1: You can always come back to it once you want
Speaker 1: it badly enough, you know, what I mean, But don't
Speaker 1: let it. You know, I don't think that this industry
Speaker 1: to kill you either. You know, you got you gotta understand, like,
Speaker 1: if this is what you want and this is who
Speaker 1: you are, then drive, get in, get in the vehicle
Speaker 1: and drive. But yeah, there was no magic bullet to anything.
Speaker 1: There's no magic, you know, there's no method. It's just tenacity,
Speaker 1: just unadulterated, pure tenacity. Okay, you're on the road for
Speaker 1: nine months with freet doors down. You know, from the
Speaker 1: outside it looks very glamorous, but from the inside, okay,
Speaker 1: you got the same people you've been hanging with, in
Speaker 1: your case for not that long, but at least, you know,
Speaker 1: for a year or two. And you go on stage,
Speaker 1: you get this incredible reaction, and if you're lucky enough
Speaker 1: you have a bus, it takes a long time to
Speaker 1: come down. You drive to the next city. This is
Speaker 1: why a lot of performers do drugs. So you're now
Speaker 1: having this experience, how do you cope into what degree
Speaker 1: to alcohol and drugs come in pretty much right there
Speaker 1: from the start, it's yeah, man, it's I mean, it
Speaker 1: came in first record, first time we got I mean,
Speaker 1: but it was happening. What I would always try to
Speaker 1: maintain in the studio was that I never went to
Speaker 1: the studio high or drunk. Like if I was in
Speaker 1: there to work and I was in there to work
Speaker 1: on a song, or I was in there to sing
Speaker 1: or do a track, I was always clearheaded. Even in
Speaker 1: the worst of times where I was at the you know,
Speaker 1: kind of in the throes of my addiction, I still
Speaker 1: never walked on stage high and drunk. I might have
Speaker 1: been a little hungover from the night before, but I
Speaker 1: never ever purposely got high and then went on stage.
Speaker 1: I never ever purposely got high, got drunk, and then
Speaker 1: went into a studio and then, knowing that I had
Speaker 1: to do I had a session. But when I wasn't
Speaker 1: on stage, you know, and you know, once my track
Speaker 1: was done or my studio time was done, it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, I immersed myself in that lifestyle. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking to a you're talking to an individual that's
Speaker 1: lucky to be alive from that world. But it's also
Speaker 1: you're talking to somebody that understands that. For me personally,
Speaker 1: I've been cleaned since March first of twenty sixteen. I
Speaker 1: got clean in two thousand and eleven. But I had
Speaker 1: to slip up in twenty fourteen. But the dynamic of
Speaker 1: all of that is what I had to learn more
Speaker 1: than anything, was the fact that there is another individual
Speaker 1: inside of my mind that does not want to hang
Speaker 1: out and party with me. Ultimately, he's trying to kill me.
Speaker 1: You know, I admire people people that go in with
Speaker 1: substance abuse, twelve step programs, rehab, if you need it,
Speaker 1: all those elements, try everything that you can to survive.
Speaker 1: That's how I would say it. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you have to understand that a lot
Speaker 1: of people's rock bottom. Sometimes they don't come back from it.
Speaker 1: I've had some serious rock bottoms. I'm lucky to be alive,
Speaker 1: and I don't take it for granted. But what I
Speaker 1: would say is for me, I had to do it.
Speaker 1: I had to do it inside of myself. I often
Speaker 1: tell people that I didn't do drugs today, I didn't
Speaker 1: drink today. I have no idea what I'll do tomorrow.
Speaker 1: That part of my life I have to do one
Speaker 1: day at a time. But of a really good friend
Speaker 1: of mine, a young lady who is still to this day,
Speaker 1: she's a great friend of mine. Her name is Teresa.
Speaker 1: She said something to me that was probably the most
Speaker 1: profound thing when it comes to my addiction of the
Speaker 1: forty five years that I've been on this earth. She
Speaker 1: said to me, in the throes of my worst, she said,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people that love you. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of people that depend on you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you something. I want you to listen to me me.
Speaker 1: I want she listened me good, I go okay. She said,
Speaker 1: you are way more dangerous when you're sober. When you
Speaker 1: are clear headed and you are focused and you are
Speaker 1: locked in, that is when you are the most dangerous.
Speaker 1: And what she meant by that was the idea that
Speaker 1: being inebriated is that I'm this fun, loving guy and
Speaker 1: that everything's cool and everyone wants to be around me,
Speaker 1: is the complete opposite of what the reality is. You're
Speaker 1: just not meant to be that that other part of
Speaker 1: you that's inside you is not trying to have fun
Speaker 1: with you, it's trying to end you. But when you
Speaker 1: are clear headed and when you are sober, that's when
Speaker 1: you're the most ferocious. And that really it was like
Speaker 1: a light bulb like literally went off. So when I
Speaker 1: think back to the younger days and all of the
Speaker 1: drug use and everything of that nature. And I'm just
Speaker 1: lucky to be a five. And of course with drug
Speaker 1: and alcohol comes sex. Yeah, then were you partaking there too?
Speaker 1: That was the interesting thing about me. Um, No, not really, Um,
Speaker 1: that was ever my jam. It really wasn't. Like. The
Speaker 1: one thing about me is that the women in my life, UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Uh, there's not that many of them,
Speaker 1: and I'm still ninety percent of them. I'm still friends
Speaker 1: with them and I still talk to him. I was
Speaker 1: always monogamous. Um. You know, if I loved you and
Speaker 1: I was in a relationship with you, then you know.
Speaker 1: Me and my son's mother, you know, we were never married,
Speaker 1: but we have a great relationship. We were together for
Speaker 1: a long time and I adore her and I appreciate her,
Speaker 1: and we have a great relationship and we have an
Speaker 1: amazing son. Um and I respect her wholeheartedly. Um. She's
Speaker 1: a huge part of why why I'm here. You know,
Speaker 1: she I mean, if I think back, I mean she
Speaker 1: was the one that handed the CD. She's kind of
Speaker 1: the one that she kind of passed the tor you know,
Speaker 1: passed the torch. You know, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but the women in my life. I have such a
Speaker 1: massive respect for women on so many levels because of
Speaker 1: the women that raised me. And like my mother. You know,
Speaker 1: my mother was the one that taught me to like,
Speaker 1: you know, don't shake hands, you know, like a whimp.
Speaker 1: You know. She was like, you know, when you shake
Speaker 1: someone's hand, whether it's a girl or a you know,
Speaker 1: a male or a female, like you have to be stern.
Speaker 1: You have to look him in the eye, like you know.
Speaker 1: She taught me how to be a gentleman. But she
Speaker 1: also taught me how to be tough, how to stand
Speaker 1: up for myself, how to be who I am, um,
Speaker 1: you know, how to be prideful and what have you.
Speaker 1: But also how to help each you know, help people
Speaker 1: out and and be a good man. You know, my
Speaker 1: her mother, my granny, she gave me all of my
Speaker 1: work ethic. You know. Um she's ninety one years old
Speaker 1: and she's beyond the spitfire. I mean, she's still all there,
Speaker 1: which is amazing because she gives you know, she's she's
Speaker 1: an incredible individual. And that might be a lot of
Speaker 1: the reason why I've just always had an immense amount
Speaker 1: of respect for women. And you know, that type of
Speaker 1: thing like orgies and all that kind of stuff and
Speaker 1: a bunch of women and all that said. Never really
Speaker 1: was my That never really was my thing. So why
Speaker 1: did it end with the mother of your son? We
Speaker 1: just weren't meant to be together, not in that way.
Speaker 1: We have a beautiful son. We co parent together very well.
Speaker 1: She's a beautiful woman inside and out. I adore I
Speaker 1: think she's I think she's amazing. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: we're just not. You have to be an adult and
Speaker 1: look at the situation, and you know we're better as
Speaker 1: co parents than we are together. And you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't change my respect for her, and you know, my
Speaker 1: appreciation for her. And I think it's vice versa. Did
Speaker 1: you want to have a kid or will you freaked
Speaker 1: out about having a kid? No, our son was planned.
Speaker 1: Like I remember the time too. She was like, I
Speaker 1: know you don't want to get married, but I wanna. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was both of us, you know. She was just like,
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to get married, but I
Speaker 1: would really like to have a child, and I would
Speaker 1: really like to have a child with you, So would
Speaker 1: you think about it at least? And she never pressed me.
Speaker 1: It was just like we thought about it and had
Speaker 1: to think about it hard, and you know, so did I.
Speaker 1: We were young, Um, but yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: a conscious decision, you know, from the two of us.
Speaker 1: And would you have any more children? I'm focusing on
Speaker 1: the one. I'm not anytime soon. Um. I have such
Speaker 1: an affection from my my son. You know, my son
Speaker 1: is fifteen years old, and you know, he's six feet tall,
Speaker 1: and he's playing basketball and he's he's so wild and
Speaker 1: awesome and so many different levels, Like I'm blessed that
Speaker 1: I have him, And you know, I would want to
Speaker 1: be able to focus and concentrate on my children. And
Speaker 1: the one thing about my son is that from the
Speaker 1: moment that he was born. And I'm saying this for
Speaker 1: a reason because it's important to know this. You if
Speaker 1: you're going to bring a child into the world, you
Speaker 1: need to be there for them. You need to focus
Speaker 1: on being a parent because it's not their responsibility, it's
Speaker 1: your responsibility. And until he's eighteen years of age, he's
Speaker 1: my responsibility. But you know what, even after that, he's your's,
Speaker 1: my son. So I need to be able to concentrate
Speaker 1: on him. And you know, the younger years of his life.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there as much, you know, not physically, anyway,
Speaker 1: I was there, and I've always been there financially and
Speaker 1: supportive in all of those elements. And I will fly in,
Speaker 1: you know, when I can't, even if I can only
Speaker 1: fly in for like a day or two days, just
Speaker 1: to be with him, I'll be with him. And he's
Speaker 1: never known any different, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: the thing is is that some people might think that
Speaker 1: we have an interesting relationship, and sometimes people will be like,
Speaker 1: you know, you should probably spend more time with your son,
Speaker 1: and I have to politely tell them me and my son,
Speaker 1: and our relationship is between me and my son because
Speaker 1: when I'm with him, we don't talk about the band.
Speaker 1: When I'm with him, we don't talk about me. When
Speaker 1: I'm with my son, it is only him. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing I care about. That's the only thing I
Speaker 1: want to be He's the only thing I want to
Speaker 1: concentrate on. And the other side of that, too, is
Speaker 1: it's not that he doesn't know that I'm in a band,
Speaker 1: but because I've never made it about me from the
Speaker 1: moment he was born, it doesn't really necessarily mean anything
Speaker 1: to him, you know. I want him to have his
Speaker 1: own life. I want him to be able to grow
Speaker 1: up and not have this kind of you know, your
Speaker 1: dad is this or what have you? I keep a
Speaker 1: low profile that going back to the beginning of our
Speaker 1: talk with each other, you know, being a rock star,
Speaker 1: I'm only a rock star or a performer for the
Speaker 1: for the set time. You know, I'm I'm pretty modest,
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm not on tour. What do your
Speaker 1: parents say about your success? Very proud, like like really
Speaker 1: really proud. You know. Um, I think that people should
Speaker 1: understand this too. This one of the biggest songs in
Speaker 1: our catalog. You know. We just released a brand new
Speaker 1: song off of the new record, which is our we
Speaker 1: It's crazy to say this. We just released our thirtieth
Speaker 1: single as a band in the last two decades. It's
Speaker 1: mind blowing to me. And I go back to a
Speaker 1: song called second Chance. And the reason I go back
Speaker 1: to that song is it's a big song in our catalog.
Speaker 1: But that song came from when I found out that
Speaker 1: I got dropped. My parents had found out I got
Speaker 1: dropped from the first record contract, but then I had
Speaker 1: been resigned, and my mom was just like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? You've been resigned and now you're leaving to
Speaker 1: go where. She had a hard time kind of wrapping
Speaker 1: her head around it, and I remember we kind of
Speaker 1: got into it with each other before I, before I
Speaker 1: left for this what would become. You know, I had
Speaker 1: left home because the first band I was signed, and
Speaker 1: I was in Knoxville when I got signed, so we
Speaker 1: did all the work in night. So I was still home.
Speaker 1: I was still there, but now I was gonna leave.
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting the Sunday before I left to
Speaker 1: go to Florida to meet Steve. We used to when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. She would um on Sundays. She
Speaker 1: would go to McDonald's and she get McDonald's breakfast on
Speaker 1: Sunday and we'd have like we'd have pancakes together, and
Speaker 1: you know, we do hash browns and sauces, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It was like our thing growing up
Speaker 1: on Sunday. Remember I woke up on a Sunday and
Speaker 1: I could smell it in the house and I like
Speaker 1: walked upstairs to the to the kitchen and my mom
Speaker 1: had it all laid out like it was just for
Speaker 1: me and her, and she was like we had breakfast
Speaker 1: with me and I was like, yeah, it's very sweet.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, And if I can tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit about my history for just a quick second,
Speaker 1: going back to being a hard kid to raise, I
Speaker 1: also got in trouble with the law in my hometown
Speaker 1: a lot. I was. I was a roughneck. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's important to kind of know that because
Speaker 1: my mom and my dad went through a lot with
Speaker 1: me and they loved me unconditional. So we're sitting there
Speaker 1: and we're having breakfast and we get kind of done.
Speaker 1: I can tell my mom's getting a little emotional. So
Speaker 1: I remember grabbing her hand and men like yeo, okay,
Speaker 1: and she looked at me and she said, I want
Speaker 1: you to get out of here. I want you to
Speaker 1: run as fast as you can go because I have
Speaker 1: no idea what this life you're searching for is or
Speaker 1: what it means, but I know it must mean everything
Speaker 1: to you because you're willing to sacrifice everything for it.
Speaker 1: But you can't stay here. You can't stay in this
Speaker 1: town because this town is going to swallow you up.
Speaker 1: And I remember her giving me permission. She said, whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're going after it, go get it,
Speaker 1: you know, And don't. But but don't you dare stop?
Speaker 1: Go get it? And you know, years later, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in a studio and I remember the first chord rang
Speaker 1: out when we were when we wrote it, and I
Speaker 1: just remember hearing the first couple chords of the chorus,
Speaker 1: and the very first thing out of my mouth was,
Speaker 1: tell my mother, tell my father. I've done the best
Speaker 1: I can to make them realize this is my life.
Speaker 1: I hope they understand. I'm not angry. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that sometimes goodbye as a second chance, and I'm I'll
Speaker 1: get emotional about it, but I have no choice because
Speaker 1: I have to. But you know, she she gave me
Speaker 1: my second chance. You know that's why song. I think
Speaker 1: that song resonates with so many people. Um, but you
Speaker 1: know a mother's love, you know, for their son especially,
Speaker 1: you know what she had to endure to give me
Speaker 1: this amazing gift and to tell me that she goes
Speaker 1: me and your dad may not fully understand, but we're
Speaker 1: with you. We're on your team. Go get it. So
Speaker 1: when did you start to see some money from the
Speaker 1: band and what did you do with the money. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you this. I remember the very first time I
Speaker 1: remember the first time. I didn't have a publishing deal yet,
Speaker 1: and the first single was was Fly from the Inside.
Speaker 1: And me and my producer Dave, we're hanging out here
Speaker 1: right now. We were just talking about Fly from the Inside.
Speaker 1: I'm in the studio right now, the studio that played
Speaker 1: the first single for the very first time on air
Speaker 1: right now. See is how the universe is real. But
Speaker 1: I remember the first single was Fly from the Inside,
Speaker 1: and then it had been played. I mean I think
Speaker 1: it was made it to number five on the mainstream
Speaker 1: rock chart. But I didn't have a publishing deal. This
Speaker 1: is one of another thing with Bill McGaffey. Bill McGaffey
Speaker 1: had all of these like back in the day, like
Speaker 1: two between two thousand and two and two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: publishing companies were given out insane amounts of month money
Speaker 1: to like, brand new bands and what have you. And
Speaker 1: they were doing this because they knew they'd never recoup
Speaker 1: so they could just keep getting the residuals later on,
Speaker 1: which unfortunately is you know, once again going back to
Speaker 1: the music business. Remember, kids, it's a business, so pay attention.
Speaker 1: But the very first time I got any real money
Speaker 1: was a publishing check. But because Bill was like, you're
Speaker 1: not signing these publishing deals because the catalog is too
Speaker 1: strong right now, not for a debut album. And I
Speaker 1: remember he got all kinds of hell for this because
Speaker 1: people were like, what are you doing. You can make
Speaker 1: so much money off this right now. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to be a part of this band's career.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to cash in right now. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to look at longevity, so they don't need to sign
Speaker 1: a publishing deal right this second. So because I had
Speaker 1: the writer's portion of the song, and I had fifty
Speaker 1: of the song because I wrote all the lyrics, you
Speaker 1: have to understand I've never ever dealt with anything like
Speaker 1: this before. I'm twenty three years old. And the very
Speaker 1: first check, and this is in two thousand and very
Speaker 1: very beginning of two thousand and four. Leave a Whisper
Speaker 1: came out in May two thousand and three, I believe
Speaker 1: May twenty seventh is when the record came out. And
Speaker 1: this was like roughly I think February of two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, and I got a check for seventy seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and I did not know what to do,
Speaker 1: Like I just remember like calling my mom and being like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to explain this, mom, but
Speaker 1: I have a check. But I've never seen a number
Speaker 1: on a check this big. And she was like, well,
Speaker 1: what is it, like a couple of thousand, a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand dollars. I'm like, it's seventy seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and like she dropped the phone. I remember it was
Speaker 1: a clunk, and I'm like mom, and she was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm here, she said. It was just one
Speaker 1: of those things where it's like, you know, she was
Speaker 1: like it's how much? And you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: God bless her. You know, she worked at a bank
Speaker 1: my whole life, so like the very first thing she did,
Speaker 1: she was just like, we've got to open you up
Speaker 1: a money market account all he says. She was just like,
Speaker 1: you've got She was like please. And my mom was
Speaker 1: so rad about all that. She helped me so much
Speaker 1: in the very very beginning with all that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the first like real check I ever got,
Speaker 1: and I just did not know what to do with it,
Speaker 1: but because of my mother, I was able to I
Speaker 1: invested it. So thanks mom. Okay, but you've been at
Speaker 1: this for over twenty years now, have you saved most
Speaker 1: of the money or have you spent it in that
Speaker 1: you which you did spend what did you spend it on?
Speaker 1: I mean in the first I mean, I do remember
Speaker 1: this because I don't want to bore you with all
Speaker 1: the details of like necessarily you know the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of everything. I mean, this is what I'll say
Speaker 1: to everybody out there. If you want to be successful
Speaker 1: financially in the music industry, write your own songs like
Speaker 1: That's what I'll tell you. And you need to learn
Speaker 1: how to play live. Like you get those two things
Speaker 1: going for you, you're gonna be okay. And the other thing,
Speaker 1: you gotta have tenacity. And don't worry. You can learn
Speaker 1: how to have tenacity. It's a skill. You have to
Speaker 1: get good at it. You know, what do they say,
Speaker 1: you know, ten thousand hours and then ten thousand more.
Speaker 1: But I'll let you know, one of the most ridiculous
Speaker 1: nights of my life with having that kind of money.
Speaker 1: On the first record, I remember we were our schedule,
Speaker 1: we were touring. We did like twenty two months straight
Speaker 1: on leve A Whisper. And when I say twenty two
Speaker 1: months straight, I'm not talking about like we would have
Speaker 1: like two months off and then go out for three months,
Speaker 1: and then we'd have like a couple of weeks here
Speaker 1: and then you know, we go back out for another
Speaker 1: two weeks and like that. I'm talking about twenty two
Speaker 1: months straight like times. I mean, I think the longest
Speaker 1: we ever did. I remember one time we had nine
Speaker 1: shows in a row. Like it was just crazy, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're young and you can do it and you
Speaker 1: know this and then the other, but like you can't
Speaker 1: sustain that. Nobody can. And I remember we had just
Speaker 1: been out and this was like the back end of
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, so the record came out and
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, so this was probably November
Speaker 1: of two thousand and four, and we're in Houston, Texas,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't had a shower, and like, I think
Speaker 1: it was something. It was nasty, man. I mean it
Speaker 1: was like two weeks I hadn't had a shower, and
Speaker 1: I was so like we we were able to get
Speaker 1: a hotel, I remember, because we had two days off.
Speaker 1: So like I took money because I had money at
Speaker 1: this point in time, and so I said, I remember
Speaker 1: I took like ten grand and I like for the
Speaker 1: for those two days, and I bought everybody in the
Speaker 1: crew hotel rooms. We stayed at a super super nice
Speaker 1: like Hyatt or a Hilton, and um, you know, the
Speaker 1: bus was in there and took care of that. All
Speaker 1: I wanted that night was a steak I just wanted
Speaker 1: a steak dinner. That's all I wanted. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to be alone. I remember that, And so I went
Speaker 1: to this. I asked the I asked the the front
Speaker 1: desk clerk. I said, is there like a really nice
Speaker 1: steakhouse around here in walking distance? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a There's a place called Houston's, like about five
Speaker 1: hundred feet from here. It's right over there. So I
Speaker 1: walk over to Houston's. I don't remember what kind of
Speaker 1: what day of the week it was, so I walk in.
Speaker 1: I'm not showered yet. I'm just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: getting off the bus, this and that and the other.
Speaker 1: I go in and it's a nice place, and this
Speaker 1: young lady at the front kind of like is a
Speaker 1: little wild eyed because I don't I look pretty rough,
Speaker 1: and she goes, can I help you? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I just want to sit in the back. I just
Speaker 1: want a table on my own. I won't be a bother.
Speaker 1: I just want to steak dinner. Please, will you seat me?
Speaker 1: Because everybody was dressed up in fancy and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason. Man, she was cool with me and
Speaker 1: she let me sit in the back. So going the
Speaker 1: back had a cool waiter. The waiter came up to
Speaker 1: me and was like, what do you want to drink?
Speaker 1: And I was like, wine, like red wine. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't drink red wine. I drank Yeagermeister and Jack
Speaker 1: Daniels and you know, just liquor. But I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm in a nice place. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to I want to steak dinner and I want some
Speaker 1: red wine. You know, just a redneck on paydays what
Speaker 1: we call it um and uh remember this is two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. So I had a great server. So
Speaker 1: I said, show me, like, what's a good bottle of wine?
Speaker 1: He was like, I'm gonna give you a bottle of
Speaker 1: opus opus one. For some people that are listening to this,
Speaker 1: they'll know what opus one is. Um. So he brings
Speaker 1: it to me. It was like a I think it
Speaker 1: was like a two thousand or something like that. But
Speaker 1: I remember the bottle that he gave me. The first
Speaker 1: bottle was at the time, it's a six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: bottle of water, a six hundred bottle of wine. And
Speaker 1: I was like cool, and he just opens it. So
Speaker 1: I take that bottle of wine out, and I take
Speaker 1: another bottle of wine out, and I had a steak dinner,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, feeling full, very drunk. And
Speaker 1: what I noticed, though, when I leaned back in the
Speaker 1: booth that I was in, is that they had this
Speaker 1: corridor of these two giant glass It was like a
Speaker 1: corridor in the center of the restaurant and it was
Speaker 1: filled with bottles of wine. So like their wine cellar
Speaker 1: was like in the center of the restaurant. And so
Speaker 1: I asked the kid that was the waiter. I was like,
Speaker 1: can I go in and look at those wines because
Speaker 1: there's a really really big bottle of wine in there
Speaker 1: is a I am I seeing things And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like a we call that a magnum bottle. It's
Speaker 1: like it's it looks almost like cartoonish, but it's a
Speaker 1: real bottle of wine. It was a nineteen eighty bottle
Speaker 1: of opus one. It was seven thousand dollars. And so
Speaker 1: I walked in and I'm in there looking at it,
Speaker 1: and the kid that let me in there, and so
Speaker 1: here's this like I look like a bum. I look
Speaker 1: like a homeless person in the middle of this nice
Speaker 1: restaurant because you could see through the wine thing or whatever,
Speaker 1: and all these people are looking in because there's this
Speaker 1: whino in there, literally, and so the manager runs in
Speaker 1: and he's like, get out of here. What are you
Speaker 1: doing in here? And so the waiter runs and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, that's my patron or that's my that's
Speaker 1: my customer. And he's like the managers like what and
Speaker 1: he's like, no, no, he's with me. He's with me.
Speaker 1: He just bought like this, like he's with me. And
Speaker 1: I looked at the manager and I was like, how
Speaker 1: much is this bottle of wine? This big bottle of wine?
Speaker 1: And he was like, sir, you need to leave the restaurant.
Speaker 1: And he's like no, like how much does this bottle
Speaker 1: of wine? And he was like I'll go look, I'll
Speaker 1: go how about that, I'll go look, but you need
Speaker 1: to get out of here. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take the bottle with me. He's like, you're gonna leave
Speaker 1: the bottle right there. So he walks out, and the
Speaker 1: the kid that's my waiters like, you gotta go. And
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, I'm gonna get my bottle of wine.
Speaker 1: And I take this bottle of wine. It's like a giant,
Speaker 1: it's like a baby, It's huge. And so I walk
Speaker 1: it out and I walked. I'd already paid my bill
Speaker 1: at this point in time with the server, and so
Speaker 1: I go up to the front where the manager is
Speaker 1: checking out to see how much this bottle of wine is.
Speaker 1: And he looks at me and he goes, it's seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and so I give him my credit card
Speaker 1: and I was like, put it on this and he
Speaker 1: laughs at me. And he's got all these like really
Speaker 1: hot girls around him and stuff, little hostesses and this
Speaker 1: and that and the other, and he's trying to be
Speaker 1: you know whatever, and he basically runs the card and
Speaker 1: it's approved and he goes and you just see his
Speaker 1: face drop, and I'm like, is there a problem, Like no,
Speaker 1: and he hands me the ticket and I take the
Speaker 1: ticket and I sign it and I throw the bottle
Speaker 1: over my shoulder and I walked to the doors, and
Speaker 1: I turn around and I yell the line from Scarface
Speaker 1: to the entire restaurant, say good nights of the bad Guy,
Speaker 1: and then I walked out. Well that's an amazing story.
Speaker 1: I could talk about that for ten minutes. But how
Speaker 1: many houses do you own and how many cars do
Speaker 1: you own? I don't own a house and I don't
Speaker 1: own any cars. I had a house in Thousand Oaks, California,
Speaker 1: from two thousand and eleven to two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: and then I sold it because of those times that
Speaker 1: I was there. Of the five years that I was
Speaker 1: in the house, I was only inside the house maybe
Speaker 1: seven months, seven or six or seven months. I sold
Speaker 1: it to a family when I went on tour in
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, and I haven't had a home since.
Speaker 1: So I live in hotels and I rent cars everywhere
Speaker 1: that I go because I'm not in a location long
Speaker 1: enough to merit owning a house, because I move constantly.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm on the road. Going back to the
Speaker 1: beginning of our conversation, you know I'm probably on the
Speaker 1: road even off cycle. I'm on the road around two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty days out of the year because I'm
Speaker 1: constantly doing business for the band. I'm constantly taking meetings
Speaker 1: and doing certain things, and I'm networking with other you know,
Speaker 1: procedures and different things that we're setting up for the
Speaker 1: band and different timelines and touring, and so I'm constantly moving.
Speaker 1: I'll eventually figure out where I want to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: put roots down and what have you. My son will
Speaker 1: need to be a little bit older, so I know
Speaker 1: kind of where he's gonna be and where he's gonna go.
Speaker 1: He wants to go to the NBA. He's a hell
Speaker 1: of a basketball player. We're gonna see what happens with that.
Speaker 1: But you know, it doesn't really make a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense right now, and I'm on the road so much.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I am a I am the definition of
Speaker 1: a modern day gypsy without I don't steal, though, I
Speaker 1: love you gypsies. What credit card do you use? Uh?
Speaker 1: The card that I use the most is my American
Speaker 1: Express Platinum. That's the one I use the most. Have
Speaker 1: they solicited you first Centurion card? Yes, it's it's not
Speaker 1: a myth. It's not a myth. It is a real thing.
Speaker 1: And you just said it's not worth the price it's
Speaker 1: just I mean, it's just it's more of a status
Speaker 1: And here's the thing about it. I'm gonna get in
Speaker 1: so much trouble, Um, American Express. I love you, I
Speaker 1: love you for all that you do. You're you're a
Speaker 1: great company. I'm I'm not even joking, um, but I
Speaker 1: gotta say this, the Platinum card is going to give
Speaker 1: you a hundred times more benefits than the Black card.
Speaker 1: There's I mean, it's a status thing, the Black card.
Speaker 1: And the thing about it is is, if you want
Speaker 1: to get down to the brass tacks of it, the
Speaker 1: Platinum card is going to give you way more benefits,
Speaker 1: especially owning an LLC, being in a band, with all
Speaker 1: the flights and the hotels and all those different types
Speaker 1: of things. I mean, you just get exorbitant amount more
Speaker 1: points on the Platinum card than you would on the
Speaker 1: Black card. It just doesn't make any sense. Okay. So
Speaker 1: you know the world has even changed musically since you've
Speaker 1: been in the landscape. So what do we know? Streaming
Speaker 1: dominates many artists or anti streaming. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: negativity about labels. Rock used to be the dominant format.
Speaker 1: It's not the dominant musical style. Now, what do you
Speaker 1: think about all this? I think that whoever wrote that
Speaker 1: isn't a touring musician and isn't somebody that makes music
Speaker 1: for a living and write songs for a living. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be offensive. I'm just being honest. The
Speaker 1: reality of that is sometimes that type of ideology comes
Speaker 1: from journalists that are getting fed certain stats from other journalists,
Speaker 1: from other conglomerates. What I would tell you is this,
Speaker 1: anytime you have an opportunity for your music to be heard,
Speaker 1: say thank you, thank you very very much, because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the evolution of the music
Speaker 1: industry is not going to stop. Like it's just not
Speaker 1: going to So you have a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the streaming era that we're complaining about streaming,
Speaker 1: and these young kids today, and you know, this younger
Speaker 1: generation doesn't know anything about what it takes to make
Speaker 1: a record and put it on a CD and and
Speaker 1: have all these what about all these stores? And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. They have no idea what a CD
Speaker 1: is because they didn't grow up in that era. They
Speaker 1: have no idea what it is. That's not their fault,
Speaker 1: first of all. And so you sound like you sound
Speaker 1: bitter to these, to this younger generation, when you're acting
Speaker 1: like that, you gotta get on their level and understand
Speaker 1: that once again, ladies and gentlemen, it's a business. It's
Speaker 1: called the music business for a reason. And so what
Speaker 1: you gotta do is you have to learn how to maneuver.
Speaker 1: We often talk and shine down about the brick wall.
Speaker 1: If you run head first into a brick wall, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you the brick wall will win. You got to
Speaker 1: figure out how to negotiate with it, how to go
Speaker 1: around it, go under it, go You know, there are
Speaker 1: other ways to look at the obstacles in front of you.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this. We were the number
Speaker 1: one album the first week that Planet Zero came out
Speaker 1: on six different charts on Billboard, and one of those charts,
Speaker 1: we were the number one record on vinyl. And you
Speaker 1: know the other side of that too, is we are
Speaker 1: a physical selling band. We signed seventeen thousand covers of
Speaker 1: Planet Zero before the album came out. Well, how did
Speaker 1: we do that? We signed seventeen thousand covers because we
Speaker 1: sold seventeen thousand covers in a pre sale before the
Speaker 1: record came out. Because we gave everybody an option if
Speaker 1: you want to sign copy of this record, if you
Speaker 1: buy it now, you'll get a signed copy. And we
Speaker 1: actually had to cap it because we could have kept going.
Speaker 1: It's just we didn't have the physical time to keep
Speaker 1: signing records. Because all four of us, seventeen thousand, it
Speaker 1: took us. Like it took us, we had to send
Speaker 1: I remember we had to send them to each other
Speaker 1: because we weren't all together at the time before we
Speaker 1: got on the road. But that's what I mean. I'm
Speaker 1: using that as an example because there are ways to
Speaker 1: sell your music, you know, there are ways to do
Speaker 1: these things. And the thing that we look at with
Speaker 1: the stream services are we go to them and say
Speaker 1: to them, we would love for you to think about
Speaker 1: us for all your playlists. We have a record coming out,
Speaker 1: we have a new single coming out, We've got a
Speaker 1: new video coming out. Terrestrial radio I cannot say this enough.
Speaker 1: And it's not because I'm in the birthplace of one
Speaker 1: of the greatest radio stations in North America. But the
Speaker 1: point being is that rock radio, but just terrestrial radio
Speaker 1: in general, has been there for us from the beginning.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're one of the only bands in
Speaker 1: the United States that has crossed five different formats multiple
Speaker 1: times in the last twenty years. When Casey Casum signed
Speaker 1: off the air, probably one of the most famous American
Speaker 1: DJs in the history of radio after thirty nine years
Speaker 1: of being in radio when he signed off the air
Speaker 1: because it was the number one song in the country
Speaker 1: on the Hot one hundred was second Chance. So we
Speaker 1: know what it means to cross formats to You should
Speaker 1: not have boundaries. It shouldn't be about your music. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: be put into a box. Don't let nobody, don't let
Speaker 1: them put you into a box. Like the dynamic of
Speaker 1: the fan and the artist, that's a relationship that has
Speaker 1: to be There has to be respect involved in that.
Speaker 1: But to the people that talk about how if streaming
Speaker 1: ruined the business or it ruined the model, maybe you're
Speaker 1: being lazy, maybe you're not looking at it the right way,
Speaker 1: Like nobody owes you anything. They really don't. We can
Speaker 1: all talk about it. In this industry. I hear it
Speaker 1: all the time. How people just talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not making any money, and you know their music
Speaker 1: is worthless and it's disposable, and why should I even
Speaker 1: record music? Well, then quit quit because there is somebody
Speaker 1: that will take your place. Somebody wants it more than
Speaker 1: you do. And I just we've curated this fan base
Speaker 1: that is every single year continuously growing, and that's because
Speaker 1: we self physical records. In my opinion, we let the
Speaker 1: fans talk to us about our merchandise, from our sweatshirts
Speaker 1: to our hats, to our hoodies, to our you know,
Speaker 1: all of the merchandise that we present, to the music,
Speaker 1: to the way that they interact with us, our websites,
Speaker 1: our platforms, all the streaming services. You know, I could
Speaker 1: go down the list. I don't want to be, you know,
Speaker 1: given everybody favorites and what have you. But YouTube and
Speaker 1: Apple Music and Deezer internationally and Spotify, she Zam, Pandora.
Speaker 1: We're part of the four billion stream club in Pandora.
Speaker 1: They just gave us a plaque like three three months ago.
Speaker 1: I'm still baffled by that. You know. It's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of success here and it does generate revenue. And
Speaker 1: believe me, we have a system of what we do
Speaker 1: in this band that did not happen overnight, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to what we do live like we're responsible
Speaker 1: for seventy seven. Crew members now include and that's not
Speaker 1: like that's truck drivers, that's bus drivers, that's all the techs.
Speaker 1: That's tour managers, production managers, lighting, pyrotechnics, video aging. It
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on. It is a machine.
Speaker 1: It is a machine that is built by It's built
Speaker 1: by the love of the show. It's built by the
Speaker 1: love of the music. Yes, the music is very important,
Speaker 1: but there's all these different aspects of how this industry works.
Speaker 1: And I get passionate about it and I get very
Speaker 1: very hypersensitive to it and focus because I want people
Speaker 1: to understand, especially the younger generation, don't don't limit yourself
Speaker 1: and don't come up with excuses like, oh, it's this now,
Speaker 1: or it should be this, or it should be that.
Speaker 1: There are kids that are being born right now. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna have any idea ten years from now like
Speaker 1: what it was like to either listen to music or
Speaker 1: sell music or any of that. And that's you have
Speaker 1: to evolve. There's a great line in the movie Moneyball
Speaker 1: where Brad Pitt says, adapt or die. You don't have
Speaker 1: to sell out, you don't have to sell your soul.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stop making the music that is
Speaker 1: truly who you are. But if you want to be
Speaker 1: in this industry, you have to learn to adapt and
Speaker 1: you have to figure out what works for you. And
Speaker 1: you don't have to be a part of the industry
Speaker 1: if you don't want to. You know, I have this
Speaker 1: conversation about TikTok. I think it's amazing what TikTok does.
Speaker 1: Like all of these kids out there that just have
Speaker 1: insane imaginations and it's just awesome to watch and they're
Speaker 1: so creative and it just blows me away, and like
Speaker 1: take the music and take you know, they'll take all
Speaker 1: these different songs. I love how the younger generation they
Speaker 1: don't care about an expiration date because it doesn't exist
Speaker 1: for them. They don't care like when a song came out,
Speaker 1: Like look at Kate Bush with Stranger Things that rekindled
Speaker 1: her existence, you know what I mean. Think about Metallica.
Speaker 1: Not that Metallica isn't working, you know, hard every single year,
Speaker 1: but look what happened on Stranger Things with Master of
Speaker 1: Puppets and opening up a big door, a huge door
Speaker 1: to another generation of fans that should be embraced. And
Speaker 1: I just love that the younger generation They don't care
Speaker 1: if something came out in nineteen seventy five. If it
Speaker 1: sounds good and it's awesome, that's all they care about.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's awesome. Okay, people just
Speaker 1: say we do have the Internet, and it led to
Speaker 1: a lot of things you just talked about. But to
Speaker 1: what degree do you and the band interact with your
Speaker 1: fans on these varying platforms and how important do you
Speaker 1: think that is? I think it's important if you want to.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about us. We always try to have
Speaker 1: at certain times a bit of a mystique because everything
Speaker 1: is out there now there are everything is out there
Speaker 1: to the public, and some artists choose to just be
Speaker 1: every single second, every part of the day, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm doing, this is what's happening, you know, and
Speaker 1: they kind of put their entire lives on display. We
Speaker 1: I feel like, have a really really good balance and that.
Speaker 1: But we're very involved with our social media. We're very
Speaker 1: involved with our digital campaigns and what we do and
Speaker 1: how we interact with our audience, not only in North
Speaker 1: America but also just around the globe. So we're also
Speaker 1: constant learning, whether it's from Facebook or snatchap or TikTok
Speaker 1: or Instagram or I mean, there's so many different platforms
Speaker 1: that we use now. And that's another thing too, there's
Speaker 1: just so many of them. You just want to do
Speaker 1: your best to be authentic. Like that's our biggest thing
Speaker 1: is we're like, I'm not gonna go like I do
Speaker 1: tiktoks if I think they're cool or it's something that
Speaker 1: I would do or I find it fun. But well,
Speaker 1: I go and like do something silly and like do
Speaker 1: a dance and make myself you know why, I poke
Speaker 1: fun at myself. Sure, I don't care, you know, as
Speaker 1: long as it's authentic to me and it's something I
Speaker 1: would do. Now, if I look at something, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. I'm not gonna do it. You know.
Speaker 1: That's kind of how you have to look at it.
Speaker 1: But I think that it's bad. I think that it's awesome,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's a badass that we have
Speaker 1: this kind of communication with our audience because some people
Speaker 1: might say that what takes kind of the mystique out
Speaker 1: of it, doesn't it not necessarily everybody's different, and it's
Speaker 1: all how you want to curate, how you want to
Speaker 1: curate your social platforms. I mean, there's there's no handbook
Speaker 1: to social media. There's really not. You can see a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff on YouTube and they'll tell you about
Speaker 1: algorithms and all those things, and I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: juxtaposition there and you don't want to be desensitized to
Speaker 1: those platforms. And I'm sure you can get in there,
Speaker 1: and you can, as I would say, you could mister
Speaker 1: beast it if you wanted to. But there's only one
Speaker 1: mister Beast, you know, and he's brilliant at what he does,
Speaker 1: but his entire life is as an algorithm on YouTube.
Speaker 1: That's why he's got one hundred and thirty nine million subscribers.
Speaker 1: But that's not that's not my gig, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I think one of the smartest things
Speaker 1: that we did for our social media was the fact
Speaker 1: that we're on a record label that has over two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty artists and we actually work with two
Speaker 1: different record labels. We work with Atlantic Records and then
Speaker 1: we work with promotion with Electure Records under the Warner
Speaker 1: Music Group. And about four and a half, I guess
Speaker 1: it's been five years ago now, I hired a young
Speaker 1: lady named Morgan Townsend and who she was. She didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily know what she was getting herself into because I
Speaker 1: didn't know what she was getting herself into. But going
Speaker 1: back about five years ago, with social media and what
Speaker 1: have you had management companies and you had the labels,
Speaker 1: and they have a digital department and they have somebody
Speaker 1: there that does digital. But when you have two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bands, you're only going to be able to
Speaker 1: concentrate so much uncertain bands or certain artists. And it's
Speaker 1: not even about the genres, because it's it's limitless when
Speaker 1: it comes to that when you're on a label and
Speaker 1: you've got all these different genres of music. Same thing
Speaker 1: with a management company, you have all of these different
Speaker 1: artists one person. It's just too much work. So what
Speaker 1: we decided to do was go out and try to
Speaker 1: find somebody that would be willing to kind of come
Speaker 1: in and learn with us. And it was basically, what's
Speaker 1: the job description. You're gonna take this band, and you
Speaker 1: and this band are going to figure this out together
Speaker 1: for what works for this band. We're gonna learn how
Speaker 1: this what works and what doesn't work. I often tell
Speaker 1: people sometimes what works for Shining Down is probably not
Speaker 1: going to work for some other band, and what works
Speaker 1: for that band, it probably won't work for us. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times too, when people describe other bands
Speaker 1: to me, I'm appreciative of that. When they're trying to
Speaker 1: I guess you would say, give me an analogy, but
Speaker 1: I also have to tell them, I appreciate you giving
Speaker 1: me the analogy. I'm not in that band, I'm in
Speaker 1: this one. So when we hired this young lady you
Speaker 1: know who is our we gave her a tie, We
Speaker 1: had to create a title. She's she's our social media
Speaker 1: media manager and she's the director of Digital Media for Shiningdown.
Speaker 1: But we had to learn how to do all that
Speaker 1: stuff together. And she works with the label like one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time. She works with management one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time, but she's hired by the band.
Speaker 1: So I would tell anybody out there with social media,
Speaker 1: take a certain amount of money and focus bringing somebody
Speaker 1: in that can literally manage your social media, because I'll
Speaker 1: tell you right now, it can be the difference if
Speaker 1: you have a strong social media game in your success,
Speaker 1: especially you know twenty and twenty three and beyond at
Speaker 1: least right now. Okay, But on your new record, there's
Speaker 1: all this commentary about social media the Internet. We're talking
Speaker 1: about keeping people off the social media sites, keeping certain
Speaker 1: actors off of it because they consider them to be
Speaker 1: bad actors. And I'm not talking about people on stage
Speaker 1: or screen and screen time, etc. So how do you
Speaker 1: know we just heard all the stuff about social media.
Speaker 1: Where exactly are you guys at on this Well, we
Speaker 1: wrote Planet Zero the record in the middle of a pandemic,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of a pandemic, it was not
Speaker 1: something that everybody. I mean, we didn't wake up in
Speaker 1: February of twenty twenty and be like, you know, it
Speaker 1: would be fun, let's shut the world down, and we
Speaker 1: watched the chaos that ensued inside of that. And granted,
Speaker 1: we don't need to be going on and on about
Speaker 1: that anymore because that was then and this is now.
Speaker 1: But you asked me a legitimate question. I want to
Speaker 1: give you a legitimate answer. You know, we had no
Speaker 1: choice on this record but to write about what was
Speaker 1: going on. We tried to have a crystal ball method,
Speaker 1: if you will, in the beginning of writing this record,
Speaker 1: because we looked at each other and we were like
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna and we started writing it in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and it was let's write like it's three years from now.
Speaker 1: Let's do it that way. Well, just we'll act like
Speaker 1: this isn't even happening, But it was happening all around us.
Speaker 1: I arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, with Eric, the producer
Speaker 1: of Planet Zero, and the mixer and the engineer of
Speaker 1: the record, our bass player who also did the last record, engineered,
Speaker 1: mixed it, and produced it. We built a studio in
Speaker 1: eighteen weeks because we didn't know when we were going
Speaker 1: to be able to get into a studio to start recording,
Speaker 1: so we just took eighteen weeks on his property and
Speaker 1: built a studio from the ground up. And while we
Speaker 1: were doing that, we're also watching the news. You couldn't
Speaker 1: stop but look at your device. You know, everything that
Speaker 1: was going on, the social injustice, the you know, the
Speaker 1: plague of COVID nineteen and everything that was going on
Speaker 1: with that, the divisiveness. It didn't help that it was
Speaker 1: an election year, this time in human history, where people
Speaker 1: should have been banding together. In America, we had the
Speaker 1: most i mean polarization I've ever seen in at the time,
Speaker 1: the forty four years that I've been alive. So trying
Speaker 1: to write a record on good faith of all these
Speaker 1: different elements that you know, we're trying to act as
Speaker 1: if this stuff isn't going on around us was virtually impossible.
Speaker 1: And I just remember Eric looking at me when I
Speaker 1: got to South Carolina in June. He said, it feels
Speaker 1: like we're on planet zero. That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1: And Planet zero was the first song written. And I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about with you know, the language
Speaker 1: and the record and the dynamic of s and things.
Speaker 1: You know, the last song on the album, which is
Speaker 1: a song called what You Wanted, and it talks about
Speaker 1: it has that lingo in there like it didn't subscribe
Speaker 1: and all these different types of things, and you know,
Speaker 1: the course of that song is like goodbye, so long,
Speaker 1: see you later, good night. Did you get what you wanted?
Speaker 1: You know? Is this what you wanted? And that you
Speaker 1: got to remember that was written in the midst of
Speaker 1: everything that was going on in not only the United
Speaker 1: States but the entire world. And we're a band that
Speaker 1: has to talk about what we know, the situations that
Speaker 1: we're in front of in the scenarios that we're being presented,
Speaker 1: and once again, how do you overcome it. You have
Speaker 1: to talk about what it is and what it means
Speaker 1: and what's actually going on, but you also have to
Speaker 1: dissect it and make sure that everybody's looking at everything
Speaker 1: with the wool not being pulled over their eyes. And
Speaker 1: there's so much symbolism in the record, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth in the record. And I remember one
Speaker 1: of the earliest songs that was written on Planet Zero,
Speaker 1: aside from Planet Zero, the song and What You Wanted,
Speaker 1: Those were two of the songs that were actually written first,
Speaker 1: but I remember I think it was right after we did.
Speaker 1: I think it was right after What You Wanted. My
Speaker 1: favorite song on the record was written, and that's a
Speaker 1: song called a Symptom of being Human. And the symptom
Speaker 1: of being human in a lot of ways is a gift.
Speaker 1: And why I call it a gift is on every
Speaker 1: record you hope to get one gift. You don't always
Speaker 1: get a gift on a record. But what a gift
Speaker 1: is is a song that writes itself. It comes out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. You didn't wake up that day expecting to
Speaker 1: write this song with these heartfelt lyrics and this crescendo
Speaker 1: of sound, it just happens. And that's exactly what occurred
Speaker 1: with A Symptom of Being Human. And the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about it was inside of all the chaos that we
Speaker 1: were watching on television and on our smartphones, and we're
Speaker 1: trying to dissect everything that was going on. We're trying
Speaker 1: to build a studio and we're trying to think about
Speaker 1: what kind of record we're gonna make and are we
Speaker 1: going to piss people off? And we've never talked about
Speaker 1: this type of stuff, and we've never done this before,
Speaker 1: and we've never been political, and we've never talked about
Speaker 1: these things. What are we doing is it's the right thing.
Speaker 1: So many things that we're just coming to a boiling
Speaker 1: point and then all of a sudden, this song falls
Speaker 1: into our lap and it's literally an example of the
Speaker 1: human spirit. It could not be a more honest and
Speaker 1: heartfelt song about being a human being and about living
Speaker 1: on this planet and having the gift of being alive
Speaker 1: right now because you're not promised tomorrow, and you know,
Speaker 1: A Symptom of being Human is exactly that. It talks
Speaker 1: about the uncertainty of tomorrow. It talks about the uncertainty
Speaker 1: of oneself. It encompasses this time in human history where
Speaker 1: everybody is now talking about mental health. Where it used
Speaker 1: to be about diet and exercise. Now it's about survival
Speaker 1: of the human spirit. It's about really the survival of
Speaker 1: our species. Because during the pandemic suicide rate, this is
Speaker 1: the most disturbing thing about it. In two nineteen, at
Speaker 1: the end of the year, one thing I should tell
Speaker 1: your listeners is that shine down. We've for the last
Speaker 1: decade we've been ambassadors for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention,
Speaker 1: and the projection at the end of twenty nineteen was
Speaker 1: that the year twenty twenty was on record and hopes
Speaker 1: statistically to be the lowest number, to be the lowest
Speaker 1: percentage of suicide in North America in twenty twenty in
Speaker 1: over a decade, like they were projecting for for the
Speaker 1: rate to drop drastically in twenty twenty, and then the
Speaker 1: pandemic hit. November of twenty twenty. The stats were released
Speaker 1: and I don't have the exact numbers, but I do
Speaker 1: remember this that men and women aged fourteen to forty five,
Speaker 1: it was the highest percentage in the last decade, so
Speaker 1: it was completely reversed. What was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: lowest percentage became the highest percentage in over a decade.
Speaker 1: And that was part of why Symptom was such an
Speaker 1: important song and how it was about, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's okay to struggle. It's okay. I know it feels
Speaker 1: like it's never gonna end. I know it feels like
Speaker 1: there's no tomorrow. I know it feels like everything is
Speaker 1: just crashing around you. You have to hold on. You've
Speaker 1: got to hold on. I'm not saying that you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have to put the work in. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that it's not going to be difficult to get out
Speaker 1: of that hole that we talked about at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know where sometimes you got to fall in a
Speaker 1: hole to figure it out. But the world didn't quote unquote,
Speaker 1: people didn't quote unquote ask for a pandemic to happen.
Speaker 1: It just happened. Now you got to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to give everybody back their spirit. Now you got
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to build people up. And
Speaker 1: the most powerful way to do that that I know
Speaker 1: of is with music. Because where I come from, music
Speaker 1: is medicine. And that's why I just feel it's you know,
Speaker 1: that song is extremely important. Okay, you know you've talked
Speaker 1: about the new album. Underneath this is the p word politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now you have a luxury. You didn't go on a
Speaker 1: plane for your first two decades. Basically, Now you've been
Speaker 1: all over the world many times. Okay, now we live. Okay.
Speaker 1: In terms of my experience with Tennessee, which is relatively limited,
Speaker 1: I've been in Nashville, I've been to Memphis. Both in
Speaker 1: Tennessee couldn't be more different, right, I know some people
Speaker 1: from Knoxville. I have not been to Knoxville. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is, yes, there is red and blue, there
Speaker 1: is VACS, there is anti vax, there is Twitter. We
Speaker 1: should have certain people shouldn't be on there, certain people
Speaker 1: should be on there. Since you and an addition, perception
Speaker 1: is that rock fans lean right, modern rock fans is
Speaker 1: supposed to people fans of classic rock whatever. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: what do you see since you're out there and what's
Speaker 1: going on? What I see, honestly is the best way
Speaker 1: I can say it is this because this is how
Speaker 1: I feel and how I view it all. It goes
Speaker 1: back to your smartphone, because that's kind of a part
Speaker 1: of us now in our society, And anybody can argue
Speaker 1: with me if they want to, but I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just the reality for the people that can afford it,
Speaker 1: and it's very affordable now because it's a part. Like
Speaker 1: there's so many people that I know that they will
Speaker 1: literally go into an absolute panic attack if they forget
Speaker 1: their phone or they like they dropped it or they
Speaker 1: left it somewhere or they busted or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've watched people like people that I've known for years,
Speaker 1: like if something happens through their smartphone and they lose
Speaker 1: it or they forgot it or it's not with them,
Speaker 1: they will freak out. So why am I saying that?
Speaker 1: And why am I? You know, what does that have
Speaker 1: any relevance to do with rock and roll? And to
Speaker 1: the right? And you know, whether you're a Democrat or Republican,
Speaker 1: red or blue or liberal or what have you, I
Speaker 1: will tell you this right now. For me personally, I
Speaker 1: think that there should be three parties. I don't think
Speaker 1: there should just be two parties. I think two parties
Speaker 1: it's kind of ridiculous at this point anyway. I think
Speaker 1: there should be a third party. Will that ever happen.
Speaker 1: I have no idea, and I'm talking about in North America,
Speaker 1: but that's my opinion because it's just it's intense on
Speaker 1: both sides. And the thing about it is, what I
Speaker 1: would tell you is this, if you get outside of
Speaker 1: your phone, if you get off of certain social media
Speaker 1: and take a break and go out into the real world.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the real world where and you're talking
Speaker 1: about Tennessee, Memphis, Knoxville, Nashville. Those three places are actually
Speaker 1: more similar than you think because a lot of Nashville, Knoxville,
Speaker 1: in Memphis, a lot of the same minded people. You'd
Speaker 1: find him in Colorado. In Colorado, you'd probably find him
Speaker 1: in Maine. In Maine, I bet you. I'm gonna say it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna probably not necessarily sit well with certain people
Speaker 1: because they won't believe me, but I'm gonna tell it's true.
Speaker 1: People in Maine you would probably find that the way
Speaker 1: that they look at politics is ride in line with
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Florida. Oh here's the thing
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at. When you go out into the
Speaker 1: real world and you get off of this constant news feed.
Speaker 1: Remember how back in the day news would come on
Speaker 1: three times, and that's all you got. And they would
Speaker 1: just tell you the news, and like at three o'clock
Speaker 1: they would give you the news, and then at like
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock they give you the news, and sometimes five o'clock,
Speaker 1: at five o'clock they give you news. They give it
Speaker 1: to you again at eleven and a lot of places
Speaker 1: the five o'clock news was the same as the eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock news. It didn't change that much. You have a
Speaker 1: constant filter, a constant iv of just carnage. How bad
Speaker 1: is it, Like, let's get every bad. It's nothing can
Speaker 1: be good. We can't have anything that's good. It's got
Speaker 1: to be bad. And it's just it's clickbait a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, they're looking for likes, they're looking
Speaker 1: for they want you to hit the button. So if
Speaker 1: from the political side of things, when you go out
Speaker 1: into the real world, people aren't trying to destroy each other,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not. I don't see that. I don't
Speaker 1: see people, you know, actively trying to mess with one another.
Speaker 1: I don't actively say and I'm I've gone all over
Speaker 1: the world. I will continue, God willing, you know, to
Speaker 1: go all over the world for as long as that
Speaker 1: I'm meant to be here. But that is a focus
Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily have to become political. And I
Speaker 1: often tell people this too in society. We live in
Speaker 1: a country where it's a democratic republic and it's it's
Speaker 1: laid out a certain way for a reason, and everybody
Speaker 1: has an opinion about it. Now, do I think that
Speaker 1: certain amendments should be updated, Yes, I do think that
Speaker 1: they should some of them, but a lot of them
Speaker 1: are in that constitution for a reason, to not have
Speaker 1: full on anarchy, to not have full on just chaos.
Speaker 1: And the best thing that I can tell you is
Speaker 1: I believe that human beings are inherently good. I truly do,
Speaker 1: because I've seen it with my own eyes on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. If you're looking for chaos, I guess you
Speaker 1: can find it anywhere. But in the last three years,
Speaker 1: what I've noticed, in what I've seen is that everyday,
Speaker 1: people that make up the majority of this planet. I'm
Speaker 1: not just talking about America, I'm talking about the majority
Speaker 1: of the planet. There are more of us than there
Speaker 1: are of them. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: political figures should be put in office by the people
Speaker 1: to represent the people You're not God. That's not the
Speaker 1: way it should be looked at. And I'm not for
Speaker 1: career politicians. I don't think that, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: in the Senator of the Congress, you can you know
Speaker 1: you get in when you're thirty five, that you need
Speaker 1: to stay there until you're a hundred. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying a lot of things that a lot of
Speaker 1: people feel. I'm trying to explain also too, it's not
Speaker 1: just about rock and roll. It's not just because somebody
Speaker 1: is into rock and roll music. That person could be
Speaker 1: into hip hop music. That hip hop music person could
Speaker 1: be into country music. You know, music is our saving grace,
Speaker 1: if you will, It's what keeps us all, it's what
Speaker 1: glues us together. So isn't it interesting and the human
Speaker 1: history that the universe and Mother Nature tested everybody? Because
Speaker 1: I can tell you right now you're talking about the Internet.
Speaker 1: The Internet everyone wants to say is undefeated. I can
Speaker 1: tell you that is not true. Mother Nature is undefeated.
Speaker 1: She proved that, and she's proved it time and time again.
Speaker 1: And isn't it interesting how the universe and Mother Nature
Speaker 1: gave human beings an opportunity to see what we would
Speaker 1: do in these last three years, and everybody has to
Speaker 1: kind of look at each other and go, what did
Speaker 1: we do? What have we done? And what are we
Speaker 1: going to do now? And that's the biggest question. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to music, that's what joins us together.
Speaker 1: So you take two years and everybody says, stay away
Speaker 1: from each other, don't go anywhere near one another, stay away,
Speaker 1: you want to do your part, stay apart. It's just
Speaker 1: very interesting how life unravels sometimes and unfolds at the
Speaker 1: same time. We don't know how long we're here, but
Speaker 1: while we're here, I think we should do everything that
Speaker 1: we possibly can to be together and to celebrate together
Speaker 1: and to push forward together. That's ultimately what I see
Speaker 1: in people. It's not about red or blue. It's just
Speaker 1: about being human and being respectful. Okay, so you've had
Speaker 1: this incredible career in excess of two decades, you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of success. Looking forward, what would you like
Speaker 1: to accomplish or what mark would you like to leave? Bob,
Speaker 1: we were having such a good time and now you
Speaker 1: want to get all dark, like you're talking about the
Speaker 1: end of stuff. What I want to leave I haven't
Speaker 1: even begun. I think that for me and I know
Speaker 1: for the band. When I look at it all, I
Speaker 1: want to see all the guys that I'm in a
Speaker 1: band with. I want to see them fulfilled. I want
Speaker 1: to see Eric and Zach and Barry. I want to
Speaker 1: see them all four of us. I mean, because we
Speaker 1: are in a band together, I want us to be
Speaker 1: honest with each other, because we've always been honest with
Speaker 1: each other. That's one of the reasons why we've been
Speaker 1: a band for as long as we have. The reason
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this up is because it's important, because it
Speaker 1: comes down to the band. Your happiness depends on your
Speaker 1: mental health, your communication with each other. You know, because
Speaker 1: as time changes two decades, one guy might want one
Speaker 1: thing in the beginning, another guy might want something different.
Speaker 1: Ten years down the line, another guy might. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, It goes back and forth. It's constantly evolving.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to continue to make the
Speaker 1: best music and the strongest music and the best songs
Speaker 1: that we possibly can. I want to continue growing the audience.
Speaker 1: I want to continue having the opportunity and the blessing
Speaker 1: of being able to travel the world. There's yes, You're right,
Speaker 1: I've We've been all over the world to a lot
Speaker 1: of different places, but we've not been everywhere. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of places that we want to go to,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of places that we want to
Speaker 1: play for, and a lot of people we want to
Speaker 1: play for that we haven't had an opportunity to yet.
Speaker 1: You know, all of us have kids that are growing up.
Speaker 1: You know, Zak has two young boys, Barry's daughters, Stella
Speaker 1: is approaching being a teenager. You know, we're all family men,
Speaker 1: and we love our families. We we care about them.
Speaker 1: I gotta give a lot of credit to to the
Speaker 1: women in this in this band and the wives, because
Speaker 1: they really do get it. They really do understand what
Speaker 1: it is we do gone for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: It's we're at a certain point in our career now
Speaker 1: where we can bring them out for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: which helps out a lot. But we just want to
Speaker 1: continue being successful. We're never ever gonna there's never gonna
Speaker 1: be a top, They'll never ever be a ceiling with us.
Speaker 1: I don't think it exists. We've always looked at it
Speaker 1: the same way. Everything that we do together. It's like
Speaker 1: looking at a mountain, and if you're looking at the
Speaker 1: mountain and it's just you and you're staying to yourself.
Speaker 1: There's absolutely no way I can get to the top
Speaker 1: of this. You're probably right, not by yourself, but if
Speaker 1: you do it together, you're probably limitless. And you know,
Speaker 1: each mountain you climb together, you take a minute when
Speaker 1: you get to the top, and you high five, you
Speaker 1: give each other a hug, you say a good job,
Speaker 1: and you go find a bigger mountain. And that's why
Speaker 1: we're here. You know, things could change, things could evolve.
Speaker 1: I think we all want to watch our kids grow
Speaker 1: up and become young adults and have families, and we
Speaker 1: want to be there for them too. But ultimately, I
Speaker 1: don't think I can stress it enough. How lucky we
Speaker 1: are to do what we love for a living. My
Speaker 1: granny always used to say, if you find something you
Speaker 1: love that you want to do for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, and you'll never work a day in your life.
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard work, but I live for it. I love it,
Speaker 1: and that in and of itself is a gift to
Speaker 1: be able to do what you love for a living.
Speaker 1: So I just want to keep grinding and on that note,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to close it for today. We
Speaker 1: certainly could go on for much longer, but we'll let
Speaker 1: the audience take a break at this point. So, Brent,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk to me in my audience. It was
Speaker 1: an absolute pleasure and a massive, massive honor. Thank you
Speaker 1: so so much. This is one of the best conversations
Speaker 1: I've had in the longest time. I had a blast,
Speaker 1: and I love talking to you too. Okay, till next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sense