Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. You can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting
Speaker 1: apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt,
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, stay longer, Ready, Phil, you got
Speaker 1: it on? Well? How you even know when it actually started?
Speaker 1: I'll figure that. Make sure to introduce everybody. Stick of
Speaker 1: my dad telling me about God. Tell your dad how
Speaker 1: to read? Come on, who does that podcast description? Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, that's what I'll tell him. Steve's answer to
Speaker 1: you is reading the podcast description like everybody. You can.
Speaker 1: You can learn how to spell it and everything. All right, everybody.
Speaker 1: Joined today by comedian and commentator Trey Crowder. Yeah you might.
Speaker 1: You might know him as you might know him as
Speaker 1: the liberal redneck or Chattanooga Phil chat Charlie. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to that in a minute. Also also by
Speaker 1: our beautiful lovely engineer Phil Krin's here nest is here? Okay,
Speaker 1: chattan Uga Charlie. You were you're you're fixing talking about
Speaker 1: chattan Nuga Charlie. Yeah, you asked if I had been
Speaker 1: any TV shows and said, I played this guy Chattanooga
Speaker 1: Charlie and Veronica Mars. I was like, you know, quite
Speaker 1: a stretch. Obviously they had to show my range, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I know a guy from Tennessee they could do this, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and another while I get to that in a minute,
Speaker 1: but you said, so, like, what kind of character was it?
Speaker 1: And so John Mullaney, this great comic, had this whole
Speaker 1: bit making fun of law and Order, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I love how they always go to interview some bartender
Speaker 1: and this guy like refuses to stop stacking by boxes
Speaker 1: to discuss the horrific murder that has occurred, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And I said I was one of those guys like
Speaker 1: it was. It's set in like southern California, but it's
Speaker 1: a Southern themed restaurant owned by Chattanooga Charlie, and there's
Speaker 1: been a series of bombings and so like I'm sweeping
Speaker 1: up peanuts while talking about these terrorist attacks or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that's pretty much it. It was a lot of fun, though, Oh,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say after and I normally don't read
Speaker 1: comments like this because you know, I'll get fired up
Speaker 1: or whatever. But when those episodes came out. I saw
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the internet being like, I
Speaker 1: thought this episode was pretty good, but like that Chattanooga
Speaker 1: Charlie guy. I don't know what that accent was supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But that's not that is not Tennessee. I
Speaker 1: hope he realizes that. Good luck to him in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was terrible. People think that my accents fake all
Speaker 1: the time, like all the time. You know, well, I
Speaker 1: can imagine living in la and oh, I mean out
Speaker 1: there for sure, but out there, like yeah, people will
Speaker 1: compliment me on it. They'll be like, oh, I love
Speaker 1: that accent. I mean, if it's real, Like if that's
Speaker 1: your real accent, I don't know if it's because like
Speaker 1: so I think you're a methodist. That's exactly what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in Hollywood. Maybe they're like, oh, maybe he's prepping
Speaker 1: for a role as a possum detective. But uh, but
Speaker 1: I'm talking about on the internet and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: people just don't I don't know, they don't buy it.
Speaker 1: But this is all Clay County, Tennessee. You're right here.
Speaker 1: This is just what it is. When you when you tour,
Speaker 1: when you tour for you for stand up, you tour
Speaker 1: as the liberal redneck. No, I just tour as Tray Crowder.
Speaker 1: So yeah, when your commentary, like you have your commentary bits,
Speaker 1: is well, how I became familiar with you. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's true for most people, and like, uh, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be like, you know, I purely identified
Speaker 1: as a character or whatever, like, because I was doing
Speaker 1: stand up for six years in Knoxville and around the
Speaker 1: South before I ever put those videos out, and I
Speaker 1: was always just Tray Crowder on stage. So I kept
Speaker 1: doing that. So when you start doing your commentary video
Speaker 1: as you kind of launched that character, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a character and that it's like me cranked
Speaker 1: up a little bit or whatever. But I had a
Speaker 1: I had been doing a bit about that on stage
Speaker 1: at the time, like basically just talking about how everybody
Speaker 1: thinks my accent means a certain thing because that's the
Speaker 1: only thing they ever see this accent portrayed as in
Speaker 1: the media or whatever. So I wanted to balance the
Speaker 1: scales by being just as crazy and redneck in public,
Speaker 1: but saying a bunch of superliberal stuff that should throw
Speaker 1: people off or whatever, and I would do that on stage.
Speaker 1: It worked. It worked in like Southern clubs and everything
Speaker 1: like it was working, and I told my friends, I
Speaker 1: think I want to do a like an internet video
Speaker 1: series based on that idea, and everybody's like, you totally
Speaker 1: should do that. It sounds like a great idea. And
Speaker 1: then uh, finally I got around to it, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that blew up and sort of allowed
Speaker 1: me to go full time and everything, and it's what
Speaker 1: most people know me for. But have you have you
Speaker 1: seen the curb your enthusiasm where Larry You know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't like ever have to talk to anybody, so he
Speaker 1: gets he loves in LA and he does like to
Speaker 1: talk aboys some one day he gets himself and to
Speaker 1: make America great again. Hat. Yeah, like nobody where he
Speaker 1: goes don't says anything to him. Yeah, so he's sitting
Speaker 1: a restaurant, no one sits by him. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that he finally gets to live his dream of having
Speaker 1: zero social interaction. It definitely would be would be useful
Speaker 1: out there, but but I only every time I see
Speaker 1: somebody in one of those hats in LA, they're usually
Speaker 1: like doing the talking for everybody else, Like they're in
Speaker 1: a gas station up by the clerk just like going
Speaker 1: in on you know, inflation or whatever. But I just
Speaker 1: wanted to clarify the commentary that we're speaking of his
Speaker 1: stuff that's on Instagram and I put them on all
Speaker 1: the social media okay side YouTube. Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like Twitter to tell you what it is. First off,
Speaker 1: news commentary, Yeah, common current event. I'll take like something
Speaker 1: that just happened, and then I'll do a little like
Speaker 1: comedic rant about it. And I always, dude, try to
Speaker 1: like actually put jokes into it so it's not just
Speaker 1: like Soapbox Center or whatever, because like I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a comedian. I want them to be funny and
Speaker 1: I have this is my real accent, and I'm a progressive,
Speaker 1: so like, I mean there you go. You know, well,
Speaker 1: like people at first, like people are like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the South that you know who
Speaker 1: are also like me, who when they see it, their
Speaker 1: reactions like, oh, finally somebody who like both sounds and
Speaker 1: thinks the way I do. Right. But and then the
Speaker 1: people in like the rest of the country, like on
Speaker 1: the coast and stuff, they're like, well, this is neat.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this was a thing. You like, you're
Speaker 1: like seeing a unicorn, you know, like it's a novelty.
Speaker 1: You know what I was trying to today when I
Speaker 1: was driving around driving my kid in school, I was
Speaker 1: telling about who's coming out on the show, and I
Speaker 1: got to talk about I had to explain the terms, right.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, this guy is like the
Speaker 1: liberal redneck, and I said, I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of what's the opposite of a liberal redneck and to
Speaker 1: be that I come up with us. Remember William F. Buckley,
Speaker 1: It's like like the very austere British conservative guy, and
Speaker 1: there's like that's the opposite of a little redneck would
Speaker 1: be William F. Buckley Junior. You know that the best
Speaker 1: I come up with conservative barraste might be a little
Speaker 1: bit more understood. Kids. I'll try it when I get
Speaker 1: home for dinner night. I'll try it. H speaking of
Speaker 1: my kids kind of man, we were in um we're
Speaker 1: in so we went down to Baja for spring break
Speaker 1: and we're coming home, like I see this thing that
Speaker 1: I see like a like a there's a guy standing
Speaker 1: in there. There's something like just so distracting where he's
Speaker 1: like a fit, thin dude, but he's got one of
Speaker 1: those he's got like you know when you get like
Speaker 1: a like a big beer gut that just hangs real
Speaker 1: flat down over your belt. Yeah, and that realized those
Speaker 1: fanny pack made to look like a big hairy like
Speaker 1: fanny pack made it look like a big hairy gut
Speaker 1: hanging out of your T shirt. Classic dude. I kept
Speaker 1: being like, what is that? It doesn't match his skin.
Speaker 1: They call that a dumb lap. No, they oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you're belly dun lapped over your belt. I
Speaker 1: like that, but man we um. Yeah, we had a
Speaker 1: great time. We did a lot of spearfishing down in Baja.
Speaker 1: And then I had something um like, if you look
Speaker 1: at the fishing regulations in Mexico, which is always confusing. Um,
Speaker 1: they got, so you don't need any license to fish
Speaker 1: from the beach. Okay, so any saltwater fishing from the beach,
Speaker 1: no license. There's a license for fishing from the boat.
Speaker 1: But I actually got checked in Mexico by like the
Speaker 1: Baja version of a game warden and got a warning
Speaker 1: because he said you need a fishing license. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to get through this conversation because I don't speak
Speaker 1: ship for Spanish, and he knew like some English. So
Speaker 1: he was trying to help me out. It's like, you
Speaker 1: need a fishing license, man, because I'm fishing from the shore.
Speaker 1: But then there's a third category that I think they
Speaker 1: added it in recently, is so there's fishing from the shore,
Speaker 1: there's fishing from a boat, and then there's fishing underwater.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're a spear fishing You mean underwater? Right
Speaker 1: underwater from the shore. You need a license? Huh I
Speaker 1: got off on a warning. Did you recognize you? No?
Speaker 1: Definitely not. Uh. Okay, people got it right in here.
Speaker 1: We need to do so we need what should where
Speaker 1: are they supposed to send these uh to meat eater
Speaker 1: at the meat eater dot com. Normal spot. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: do normal spot, and but they should title it chettikett. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we know what to look for. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: we have a call for submissions. We're doing a show
Speaker 1: all about etiquette, which really to call Chettikette because we
Speaker 1: use our etiquette guy Chester to help us wade through
Speaker 1: etiquette problems. We get all kinds of etiquette things anyways,
Speaker 1: like recently the guys that play leap frog with their
Speaker 1: tree stands on the same tree on State Land where
Speaker 1: they always moved their climber above the other guy's climber
Speaker 1: and all that etiquette questions or like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you take your There's a guy that takes his brother
Speaker 1: in law hunting at a spot, but then his brother
Speaker 1: in law, his sister, and his brother in law get divorced,
Speaker 1: and the brother in law keeps going to the spot
Speaker 1: and he feels like how could that because they got divorced,
Speaker 1: so you can't go to the spot anymore. Shit like
Speaker 1: that etiquette questions, chetica questions. You got to send us
Speaker 1: a shitload of chetika questions. How did Chester become the
Speaker 1: etiquette guy? I don't know. I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 1: I think I think largely because etiquette sounds because Chatticotte
Speaker 1: is funny. Yeah, that's usually how they go around. Like
Speaker 1: there's no real reason other than we were talking about
Speaker 1: etiquette one day and someone made the joke about Chetticutte
Speaker 1: and he's like, he's a very ethical kind Yeah. Oh
Speaker 1: you know how it was too is we were we
Speaker 1: were talking about boat launch etiquette, right, Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions about boat launch etiquette, and Chester, having
Speaker 1: been a fishing guide, had a lot of opinions about
Speaker 1: how to how one should get their boat in the
Speaker 1: water in prompt fashion when add a crowded boat launch,
Speaker 1: and so someone made the Chatticott joke. So it's not
Speaker 1: like he's particularly credential necessarily. It's just that Cheticott sounds funny,
Speaker 1: and jannice E tikuittunny j Yeah, it sounds like another
Speaker 1: disease bad casey. Oh. Also it's late. We got to
Speaker 1: throw a birthday wish to Carter Hudson, who just turned
Speaker 1: eleven the other day on St. Patty's Day. Whenever someone
Speaker 1: on this podcast swears he the uh, Carter's dad has
Speaker 1: to explain to his wife why it's okay that he
Speaker 1: listens to his show that has cussing in it. Loves
Speaker 1: the show. He didn't quite read that right. He says
Speaker 1: that everything that you do, the kid also does. So
Speaker 1: the kid's like, well, if Steve's cussing on his show,
Speaker 1: I can cuss two and his dad has to explain
Speaker 1: that that's okay. Oh, there's value. We're really really cleaned.
Speaker 1: Um it up. I think big times. It's the show
Speaker 1: is laughing. Well, it's just I also edit bear grease
Speaker 1: and there's some very different sensorship rules. He's got a
Speaker 1: guest that says, I don't know what the hell I
Speaker 1: was hearing. It'll be like I didn't know what the
Speaker 1: baby was here? Yeah? What Sam? Pretty much? So happy
Speaker 1: birthday to to Carter Hudson Nanks his dad Morgan for
Speaker 1: right and in um northing. Speaking of kids, So this
Speaker 1: is so we've been talking a bunch about the book
Speaker 1: you've been working on, which isn't out yet, but we
Speaker 1: have a new kids activity book, Catch a Crayfish Count
Speaker 1: the Stars, availed for pre order now. Now. We announced
Speaker 1: this book on Amazon. There's if you scroll away, beep
Speaker 1: down on Amazon. It's a ranking of all books being
Speaker 1: sold at Amazon at any given time. When we announced
Speaker 1: that Catch a Crayfish Count the Stars was up for
Speaker 1: pre orders, I'm holding my hand right now. I'm holding
Speaker 1: the facts simile of it in my hand right now.
Speaker 1: Fun Project Skills and Adventures for Outdoor Kids. It shot
Speaker 1: up to number three. Really yeah, that whiney bastard, uh
Speaker 1: the King's kid he was still talk about talk about
Speaker 1: chopping down the apple tree. What's he got left? Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like? What like if you're
Speaker 1: playing like a long media game. What's left? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: already blew through the Netflix documentary and all the book tours.
Speaker 1: He did it all. He's like, it's so bad. I
Speaker 1: don't have to work. I live in this big palace.
Speaker 1: First of all, my mom, like many people's mothers, died
Speaker 1: and and then and I and I hate all that.
Speaker 1: It's like, what he What's he gonna do? Now? I
Speaker 1: know he's like for a while he was like a
Speaker 1: mental health expert. I guess, goodness gracious, so he was
Speaker 1: still beating us. Well, do you think he put all
Speaker 1: his money in that Silicon Valley bank so he'll he'll
Speaker 1: be just fine. He did so catch crayfish, count the stars.
Speaker 1: So it's a here's the deal. It's a if you,
Speaker 1: if you're raising outdoor kids, do you want your kids
Speaker 1: to feel to have a lot of projects in front
Speaker 1: of them that will foster a sense of understanding for
Speaker 1: the outdoors, a sense of comfort in the outdoors, knowledge
Speaker 1: about the outdoors. It's a great book. A lot of
Speaker 1: it's kind of dangerous. We had to put if you
Speaker 1: read it, there's a lot of language like, no, this
Speaker 1: is very dangerous. It's very dangerous because there's machetes and
Speaker 1: stuff and fires and hatchets and everything in there. So
Speaker 1: there's certain things that you got to do, projects that
Speaker 1: your kids would need supervision on. There's certain things they
Speaker 1: can do on their own. But it's everything arrangement from
Speaker 1: like gardening stuff with understanding how gardening works and plants work,
Speaker 1: all kinds of foraging stuff, fishing stuff. If they're interested
Speaker 1: in hunting for their own food, how to get them
Speaker 1: up to speed on that, building their own sorts of
Speaker 1: weapons like blowguns and frog gigs from natural materials. Basics
Speaker 1: on navigation, navigation with the sun, navigation with stars, all
Speaker 1: laid out and achievable. Little day projects, even a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff about in the home, So things that you
Speaker 1: can do on bad days inside your house when you
Speaker 1: can't get outside, that would really educate kids about ecology, biology,
Speaker 1: um even even some like basic principles of wildlife population dynamics.
Speaker 1: I helped write the piece about how to build a
Speaker 1: PVC bow. There you go, that's easy, cheap and lots
Speaker 1: of hours of fun. My kid killed a cotton tail
Speaker 1: rabbit with one of those PVC bows. My nephew did
Speaker 1: as well. No UM show, it'll show you how to
Speaker 1: do that. It's it's it's a super cool book. I
Speaker 1: listen to this. I heard a friend of mine in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: His two boys who are probably I don't know, nine
Speaker 1: and twelve, nine and thirteen, their project. As soon as
Speaker 1: they get that book, they're gonna work on all summers.
Speaker 1: They're gonna launch their own YouTube channel and make a
Speaker 1: video about doing every single activity in your book. Someone's
Speaker 1: gonna get sued. I might sue these kids at the time.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great, great idea. Oh, I just
Speaker 1: saw someone sent me an article yesterday. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a class action lawsuit a guy's doing against Buffalo Wild Wings.
Speaker 1: You hear this, Yeah, there's a class action lawsuit against
Speaker 1: Buffalo Wild Wings because their boneless chicken wings aren't wings,
Speaker 1: right to which Buffalo Wild Wings says, our buffalo wings
Speaker 1: aren't Buffalo. Our hamburgers aren't ham Also, are anybody's bummless
Speaker 1: wings wings? I don't think they are. They're all no.
Speaker 1: This guy like I was, this guy's like I was
Speaker 1: led to believe I was eating a boneless wing and
Speaker 1: it's not. Yeah, I think I read somewhere He's gonna
Speaker 1: be disappointing when he finds out chickens don't have fingers either.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Thank you genuinely didn't know that. I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't catch the I didn't guess the finger one
Speaker 1: because they had like that buffalo wings or zero percent buffalo.
Speaker 1: The hamburgers aren't him. That's some others. There's no sticks
Speaker 1: and fish. Good lord, So back to the books. It
Speaker 1: shifts in June. If you order now, um, you'll get
Speaker 1: it in June. But you can order it now and
Speaker 1: hopefully enough for you order it where Harry there gets
Speaker 1: um does it line up that he would have got
Speaker 1: his name because of Harry Potter? Or was he born
Speaker 1: too early for that? M Thank goodness? Order now, Catch Crayfish,
Speaker 1: Count the Stars, Fun Project Skills and Adventures for outdoor kids.
Speaker 1: Order now and you get it later. And there's a
Speaker 1: landing page. I can't remember what crink you put in
Speaker 1: the show notes. There's a landing page, and go to
Speaker 1: and read all about the book. So if you have
Speaker 1: any kids in your life, nephews kids, grandkids, neighbor kids,
Speaker 1: local kids, seem like they were gonna head for a
Speaker 1: life of trouble in crime. H get on this book
Speaker 1: and get them turned around, and it'll give your kids
Speaker 1: a raw edge to him, you know, tough little make
Speaker 1: them tough little shits. Cridinal put the landing page thing
Speaker 1: in there, and I don't know if it's still open,
Speaker 1: but for a while you could go in and like
Speaker 1: sign up and get an early copy. So everybody do that. Oh,
Speaker 1: speaking of this kind of like speaking of kids, try
Speaker 1: you got two kids, two boys? Okay. I was talking
Speaker 1: one day about how I didn't like it that when
Speaker 1: you went to the doctor, a first person comes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they want to weigh or whatever, and then they
Speaker 1: go what's going on? And you tell them some long story, right,
Speaker 1: Like you got two kids. I had it recently too,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, well, this one had this strap symptom
Speaker 1: and then that went away, but then this one broke
Speaker 1: out in these little spots all over him, and then
Speaker 1: that one got that again, and then this one did
Speaker 1: that and that led to both of them to have
Speaker 1: this and now that one's fine, but this one's even sicker. Right,
Speaker 1: And then the doctor comes in and they go, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, right, yeah yeah. And then if if
Speaker 1: it's some kind of specialist thing, like if you're not
Speaker 1: having ever referral. You'll just have to go to two
Speaker 1: other people and tell both of them what's going on
Speaker 1: as well. It's just an endless stream of explaining what's
Speaker 1: going on in various waiting rooms, bigger and smaller waiting areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as it gets smaller, you get more hopeful. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: they'll be here in a second. Right. So someone wrote
Speaker 1: in about what that's all about. One thing it's all
Speaker 1: about and I know this to be true because I've
Speaker 1: seen it before. One thing it's about is you might
Speaker 1: tell them a thing and they got to go study
Speaker 1: up on them on Google. Yeah. Right, So if you like,
Speaker 1: if you go in and say like, yeah, man, I
Speaker 1: got trick and lsis from meeting raw bear meat, they're
Speaker 1: gonna go be like he's got a what and they're
Speaker 1: gonna go study up on Google. So when they come
Speaker 1: in and you tell them, they can act like they
Speaker 1: knew what was going on. Another problem they run and
Speaker 1: do what's this person? Do their physicians assistant? So they
Speaker 1: wrote in about what's actually happened and when all this
Speaker 1: goes on. Another thing that's going on is people change
Speaker 1: their stories all the time. The patience, yep, she said
Speaker 1: the physician's assistant will come in and there's like they're like,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on. You're like, oh, this happened to
Speaker 1: my kid, and they happened to my kid and now
Speaker 1: here he is. And then the doctor come in. He'll
Speaker 1: spin a different yarn, like the parent didn't like how
Speaker 1: it sounded coming out, and so they'll read they'll like
Speaker 1: edit the story. But when I went in, I just said,
Speaker 1: it's really complicated. Can I'll just explain it to the
Speaker 1: main man the main doctor. My case, it was a female,
Speaker 1: but I said I'll explain to them, and they're like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: So I had no idea you could do that. But
Speaker 1: what they're doing is there's it's a thing called locates.
Speaker 1: Did you know about this anyone? They're asking you. There's
Speaker 1: like a little anacronym of stuff they're asking you location, onset, character, alleviate, aggravate, timing, environment,
Speaker 1: severity comes out to locates. They're after the locates. But
Speaker 1: as I pointed out as a piece of medical unsolicited
Speaker 1: medical advice is just say I'll just tell the someone later,
Speaker 1: or you can like making recording and just play recording.
Speaker 1: That'd be great. Then they can go as I was
Speaker 1: saying to your colleague, coming, let me pull it up
Speaker 1: my voice memo to play. This is what I said.
Speaker 1: This is the problem, right, you listen to as many
Speaker 1: times as you want. Um. This is you could have
Speaker 1: even a little googling to the bottom if you want it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I saved you because I know you're gonna be
Speaker 1: go digging into web MD in a minute. UM. When
Speaker 1: I was a boy, When I was a little boy,
Speaker 1: they would have this thing. Every year. They would take
Speaker 1: a UM. They would take one king salmon and put
Speaker 1: a tag in it and turn it loose Lake Michigan,
Speaker 1: And they did have a big fish in Derby. And
Speaker 1: if you were to be so lucky as to catch
Speaker 1: the king salmon that had the tag in it, you
Speaker 1: win boku money. I've never heard this applied to mammals, however,
Speaker 1: In South Dakota harvest a tag kyote get a free
Speaker 1: hunt lifetime hunting license. Correction South Carolina, oh well, you
Speaker 1: saved us a lot of time. On the next episode.
Speaker 1: South Carolina Department of Natural Resources released sixteen more tagged
Speaker 1: kyote statewide recently. Is part of the Kyote Harvest Incentive
Speaker 1: Program programs created in two sixteen mm. So they catch
Speaker 1: some kyotes, they tag them, they release them for per
Speaker 1: game zone, for game zones for kyotes. Anyone who successfully
Speaker 1: takes and reports a tag kyote will be rewarded with
Speaker 1: a free lifetime hunting a free lifetime hunting license. They
Speaker 1: can debt. Here's where's Here's where they sweeten the pot.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're getting up in years and if it's
Speaker 1: not gonna do you a whole hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of good. Right, say you're like forty nine, your star's fading,
Speaker 1: you can you can give it to your kid, gifted
Speaker 1: only that special one, right like the one you win,
Speaker 1: the one you win, you could give your You can
Speaker 1: say I would, I will bestow it upon my do
Speaker 1: I'd like to bestow this upon my daughter and make
Speaker 1: her a free lifetime hunting license. Did you anything? Is
Speaker 1: it opening on rez? I've read that far yet over
Speaker 1: the last seven years, did you see that in there? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. Over the last seven years, one hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve kyles have been tagged and released. Huh so far
Speaker 1: under half? So in seven years under half, it's not
Speaker 1: terribly descriptive. I would have just have given the number.
Speaker 1: I would have given the number, so somewhere between zero
Speaker 1: and fifty six. Yeah, maybe they're just embarrassed of the
Speaker 1: number somewhere under half, yeah, meaning somewhere between undrea are somewhere,
Speaker 1: So somewhere between zero and fifty six. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: it said no one's gotten one yet, people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: get fired up. They're not gonna feel like everyone around
Speaker 1: you is winning. Um. Under half of the tag Kyleot
Speaker 1: has been reported taken. Kyot's tagged in any year are
Speaker 1: eligible for the life lifetime license. For information on the
Speaker 1: Kyote Harvest Incentive Program, you can go to the DNR
Speaker 1: South Caroline's DNR page. What I imagine they're trying to
Speaker 1: get around is they're trying to get around the you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time there was just flat out uh
Speaker 1: bounty programs. I think they're they're striving for the bounty thing,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to gus see it up, gussied up
Speaker 1: in a more socially acceptable way. And it might be
Speaker 1: like a little unsavory to some folks if they were
Speaker 1: saying it's like cold heart cash. Is my guess of
Speaker 1: what's happening there a little bit south of there in Florida,
Speaker 1: a huge correction on Florida mountain lions. Chester should be
Speaker 1: here because it's his fault. Yeah, that's true. We're doing
Speaker 1: an episode and I was throwing research questions to Chester
Speaker 1: on the fly and he was messing them all up.
Speaker 1: The episode was called Spitting and Strutting. We're discussing mountain
Speaker 1: lions being relocated from Texas to Florida. Yanni was present.
Speaker 1: The gist of it was, I spent a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks in Florida, and everywhere I went I got a
Speaker 1: year fold from people about cougar recovery and the debate
Speaker 1: around weather. Many people feel that cougary carvery has gotten
Speaker 1: too successful. There has been too much leaning into and
Speaker 1: making sack or faces on behalf of the species that
Speaker 1: is not regarded to be imperiled anymore. And not only that,
Speaker 1: and they're having a devastating impact on deer. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but people were saying how it's not even the same
Speaker 1: cougar that used to be here because they brought in
Speaker 1: super cougars from Texas and I thought it was just
Speaker 1: seven or eight. Chester got to reading on some crazy website,
Speaker 1: the Mountain Lion Foundation website, which is not like Wild
Speaker 1: Turkey Foundation, you know, it's like, uh not Foundation's Rocking
Speaker 1: mount Elk Foundation, Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It's
Speaker 1: a it's like a animal rights organization. Anyhow, Chester got
Speaker 1: to spewing off about all kinds of mountain lions brought
Speaker 1: down from Texas, which is not the case. They brought
Speaker 1: in a total eight and it actually removed some, which
Speaker 1: really surprised me. Some of the mountain lions that they
Speaker 1: brought from Texas to Florida. So well, at its lowest number.
Speaker 1: We got it right here. If you want a quick,
Speaker 1: little more informed background on this issue, we covered just
Speaker 1: quite well. Panthers used to be distributed everywhere, like everywhere
Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight across much of Canada, Central America,
Speaker 1: South America, from Tierra del Fuego to like you know,
Speaker 1: possibly up into Yukon Territory Mackenzie Delta. Even maybe this
Speaker 1: animals was the most widely distributed mammal in the New
Speaker 1: World I think globally, right, most widely distributed animal Western Hemisphere,
Speaker 1: let's go with that. As they got whittled away through
Speaker 1: poisoning and other predator control things, bowing he's poisoning. You
Speaker 1: wound up where they were kind of existing in the
Speaker 1: wildest little corners, and the only population that held on
Speaker 1: in the east east of the Mississippi. The only population
Speaker 1: that held on was this little isolated pocket of them
Speaker 1: in southwest Florida. So from nineteen eighty six to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, the minimum number of adult panthers, so this
Speaker 1: is adults, not male, not like all males, not all females.
Speaker 1: The limited the minimum number of adult panthers fluctuated from
Speaker 1: twenty four to thirty two. I often use this as
Speaker 1: the greatest piece of evidence against Bigfoot. Go back to
Speaker 1: those years in South Florida when you had twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty mountain lions. They're still getting hit every year on
Speaker 1: the road. So few you have a population of a
Speaker 1: couple dozen, and they're still getting hit every year on
Speaker 1: the roads. But Bigfoot can go five hundred years. How
Speaker 1: many of them exist though, there's gonna be enough to
Speaker 1: make love and reproduce. There's no primate that lives forever. Also,
Speaker 1: maybe Bigfoot knows to look both ways. Well, let mister
Speaker 1: smarty pants, maybe you know about the guy in Montana
Speaker 1: that put a big Foot suit on and jumped out
Speaker 1: in front of a car to incite a Bigfoot sighting.
Speaker 1: It was just struck and killed. That was struck and
Speaker 1: killed by two cars. That good. Why did he get hit?
Speaker 1: It's a dumber than actual bigfoot. From nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety five, the minimum number of adult panthers
Speaker 1: fluctuated from twenty four to thirty two. They brought in eight.
Speaker 1: They put some males in. This is interesting. They put
Speaker 1: some males in. Once they knew that those males had bread,
Speaker 1: they pulled a couple of the mails back out. Another
Speaker 1: correction is this from the This from the the journal.
Speaker 1: This is from Science. Correct the journal Science. There is
Speaker 1: no evidence in breeding is causing physical mail formations and
Speaker 1: negatively affecting recovery. Oh sorry, take all that out, Phil,
Speaker 1: I was wrong. Maybe leave it in. I don't know
Speaker 1: you decide forget what I was just saying. Florida panthers, Okay,
Speaker 1: Florida planthers were suffering from the effects of inbreeding, including
Speaker 1: crypto chidism, low sperm quality. That's what I have, kink,
Speaker 1: no quality, kink tales, pelage, cowlicks, opportunistic infections in atrial
Speaker 1: septal defects. So they brought in to save this couple
Speaker 1: dozen animals. They brought in animals from Texas, eight not twenty.
Speaker 1: Whatever the hell Chester was thrown around, No, I think
Speaker 1: he in total it was like close to forty that
Speaker 1: he added up over years. So now they got two hundred.
Speaker 1: Now they got a minimum of two hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: And now it's starting to cause a lot of consternation
Speaker 1: among people who are feel sportsmen in Florida who are
Speaker 1: feel that they're having access issues, poorer quality hunting because
Speaker 1: of the great deference to this now recovered, this now
Speaker 1: recovered species that they feel is somehow not quite the
Speaker 1: same because it was supplemented with genes from outside. Take
Speaker 1: your pick on that one. Waiting, let's get it. That
Speaker 1: was okay for it. Apology not an apology correction, No apologies.
Speaker 1: Another news bit. I were talking to these I met
Speaker 1: this dude. So every year I go to, Yeah, every
Speaker 1: year I go to I'm mceing this year the TRCP
Speaker 1: Capitol Conservation Awards Dinner, in which TRCP they have an
Speaker 1: annual function in Washington, d C. Where they honor Typically
Speaker 1: they honor someone from the House, someone from the Senate,
Speaker 1: and someone from each side of the aisle, so Democrat
Speaker 1: and Republican House Senate, they honor them for conservation achievements,
Speaker 1: and then they'll usually honor someone from the private sector.
Speaker 1: M seeing that event. I m sed last year and
Speaker 1: met this dude who was working on his project, and
Speaker 1: I told him I helped spread the word about his project.
Speaker 1: When Teddy Roosevelt was in DC, he would walk down
Speaker 1: to the Grace Reformed Church in Washington and Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: He laid the cornerstone of the church. Okay, in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three. That was the year that Augustus Scofier published
Speaker 1: his magnum opus lagid q lanaire and I believe it
Speaker 1: was the first year of controlled flight by the Wright brothers.
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, just check that out, Yohnnie. That
Speaker 1: year he delivered an address at the dedication of the church.
Speaker 1: He Teddy Roosevelt kind of the one of the one
Speaker 1: of the fathers of modern conservation and a guy who
Speaker 1: put in who preserved fifty thousand acres of American land
Speaker 1: for every day that he was in office in the presidency,
Speaker 1: worshiped there faithfully on Sundays during his vice presidency and presidency.
Speaker 1: If he had to skip a service, he would write
Speaker 1: a letter to the reverend of the church saying he
Speaker 1: would be absent. Anyhow, the church is up for sale,
Speaker 1: so what's gonna happen? Soone's gonna turn it into condos.
Speaker 1: But these guys have got this thing, say if Teddy's
Speaker 1: Church dot com and they're trying to get the jingle necessary,
Speaker 1: they need to raise six million bucks over the next
Speaker 1: two years so they can buy the building and resuscitate
Speaker 1: it and keep it as it is www dot save
Speaker 1: Save Teddy's Church dot com. So if that speaks to
Speaker 1: you an honor of UM one of our great wildlife
Speaker 1: conservation land conservation heroes, UM, go check that out. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna get into this. We're we're
Speaker 1: having quite a laugh about golf courses because there's this
Speaker 1: golf course that needs to like move because the squirrels
Speaker 1: are so mean. Do you're about this? The squirrels are
Speaker 1: so mean that it's like driving golfers off trade. Do
Speaker 1: you golf? Uh? Yeah, a little bit? You do? Not good?
Speaker 1: Yeah I'm real bad, but yeah I golf a little
Speaker 1: bit lately. It's mostly so I like I started in
Speaker 1: Jackson County, Tennessee, and everybody there's a golf nine haul
Speaker 1: golf course there, and like me and my buddies would
Speaker 1: would golf barefoot and then like cut off t shirts
Speaker 1: and stuff and bring a cooler bear. Yeah, redneck style golf.
Speaker 1: That's the That was my introduction to golf. As I
Speaker 1: got older and moved to cities, and I found out
Speaker 1: that golf is like a fancy people game and they
Speaker 1: got a bunch of like rules that they really really
Speaker 1: care about. It kind of took a lot of the
Speaker 1: fun out of it for me. I didn't enjoy it
Speaker 1: as much anymore. So now I've got to like top
Speaker 1: golf or something and just you know, drink some bears
Speaker 1: and hit some or whatever. But yeah, I didn't like being,
Speaker 1: you know, repeatedly shushed or having to tuck a shirt
Speaker 1: ban or whatever. That I've always been surprised at no
Speaker 1: old professional golfer ever emerged who didn't have the same
Speaker 1: like what informs the fashion sensibility of professional golfers. Like
Speaker 1: with football, you have no choice because you got to
Speaker 1: wear the uniform. But when you see them off field,
Speaker 1: it's a wide spectrum of dress styles right wide spectrum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something about something with golf and forces like a very
Speaker 1: rigid yeah, sense of how one presents themselves of the public.
Speaker 1: I guess, like I said, it's just fancy people stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just it's just the culture of golfer.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's also because like the stuff they wear to
Speaker 1: play it, you can also just wear Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: just the course and you can't do that with shoulder pads.
Speaker 1: You know. That's a good point. You look like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So someone wrote in with a very spirited defense
Speaker 1: of golf courses as ecological refuges. Great point, you can't.
Speaker 1: It's better than having condos there. So he's pointing out,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you what else he's There's this picture.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a famous picture. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: ecologist standing next to these cut banks and one is
Speaker 1: like a crop of one is a annual okay picture
Speaker 1: that you're standing next to a cutaway of a of
Speaker 1: a field where you've got a raw cutaway that's eight
Speaker 1: feet tall, like you just slice the earth, pulled it away,
Speaker 1: and you got to look at a help me out.
Speaker 1: What am I trying to say? A cutaway a soil
Speaker 1: pit side view. There's a soil pit side view of
Speaker 1: perennial grass, and there's a side of the root structure
Speaker 1: of perennial grass, and a side view of an annual
Speaker 1: grass or an annual crop. And holy cow, the like
Speaker 1: a long standing grass, a long standing grassland eight feet
Speaker 1: of room. Amazing, it's so amazing to see this. What
Speaker 1: it like the He has a very spirited defense, And
Speaker 1: I'll point out, I don't like you know, I get
Speaker 1: what he's saying. Man, they got ponds. He counted up
Speaker 1: how many white oaks around their place. It's a really
Speaker 1: good point. Let's just read the whole damn thing. Should I.
Speaker 1: They're they're gonna move an entire golf course because of
Speaker 1: main squirrels. Rules are too mean. There's some main squirrels,
Speaker 1: well that's small feet or or it's some yeah, yeah, tire.
Speaker 1: They squirrels like a noise in my backswine, chittering in
Speaker 1: my backswine. Can It's like they attack the golfers to
Speaker 1: get their snacks. Right, that's aggressive. Let's read it. For instance,
Speaker 1: I work at a small private club near large city
Speaker 1: with a heavy population of fox squirrels. He points out.
Speaker 1: He points out, I'm quoting him, But I'm okay, He
Speaker 1: points out that, back to the quote, they aren't nearly
Speaker 1: as aggressive maybe as the ones down in Florida, but
Speaker 1: we do manage them every winter. Then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say, um, they've managed the squirrels, but their numbers
Speaker 1: continually bounce back with the copious amount of acorns provided
Speaker 1: by the three hundred plus mature white oak trees. The
Speaker 1: property in general has a lot of wildlife for how
Speaker 1: small a property it is and how it's completely surrounded
Speaker 1: by urban civilization. We have mink, kyotes, red fox, whitetail, deer, skunks, raccoons,
Speaker 1: all sorts of rafters, including bald eagles, waterfowl, and a
Speaker 1: whole mess of other rodents that are all over the place.
Speaker 1: Many golf course has become a part of the Audubon
Speaker 1: Society and our safe havens for many species of birds.
Speaker 1: For that, your pipe smaller, he goes on credit him,
Speaker 1: are not like email friends. Yeah, here's why I'm very
Speaker 1: delicate about I can't get you know, the secret of
Speaker 1: why I do really need to tiptoe around the golf
Speaker 1: ish You don't you? I don't think so, Spencer. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I'll tell you later. Okay, really, Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think do I know? Oh? You know?
Speaker 1: Wisconsin just the last I we're gonna talk about. I
Speaker 1: told you we had two and you can cut as
Speaker 1: I do. No, no no know. Wisconsin is circulating a build
Speaker 1: to designate an official state rifle, the Henry Arms all
Speaker 1: Weather forty five seventy lever action. They point out in
Speaker 1: the build that this does not mean you have to
Speaker 1: buy one, though it is strongly encouraged. Yeah, you will
Speaker 1: not get in trouble for not buying one until they are.
Speaker 1: I just love to we gotta have Dug. I want
Speaker 1: to hear what Bubbly Doug thinks about his state. If like,
Speaker 1: in my view, I get it because they MANU it's
Speaker 1: great because they manufacture him there, um, big Boy all
Speaker 1: Weather rifle. Um, it's so it's a hometown manufacturer in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It's a great rifle. But if you said to me, like,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the state rifle of Wisconsin? Well, who
Speaker 1: used to make that? That that slide action thirty OT six,
Speaker 1: I think it'd be something like that, like an old
Speaker 1: like yeah, like seven forty two would master? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: one of those like hardcore. You know old deer guns
Speaker 1: everybody had, you know, like a like a something in
Speaker 1: thirty OT six. Right, That's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody that hunted or killed a deer
Speaker 1: with the Henry old Weather forty five seventy. But it's
Speaker 1: made the Rice Lake based Henry repeating arms. So they
Speaker 1: make and it's a nod toward the you know, hometown
Speaker 1: gun manufacturers. So if you live in Wisconsin and you
Speaker 1: don't have one, you can expect visit from law enforcement officials.
Speaker 1: Traded you like, learn about all these different old guns
Speaker 1: in your riflery class or shoot them now. Now it
Speaker 1: was mostly just like just target practice. Yeah, pretty much
Speaker 1: just was like a twenty two. We didn't like history
Speaker 1: of rifle or anything, although that would have been cool.
Speaker 1: I'm horrifically uh underinformed. They join they're joining nine other
Speaker 1: states who have state rifles. Oh man, that's a whole
Speaker 1: other thing. Okay, we'll talk about the Kansas Trail campan later.
Speaker 1: I've told you didn't want to have more step and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about Burning Man um an hour later. How
Speaker 1: do you do you go to Burning Man? Now? But
Speaker 1: one of my best friends just did this past year.
Speaker 1: It might it sound pretty wild. It gives us license
Speaker 1: to get into this. I want to. I'm interested in
Speaker 1: how you're ranking the remaining topics as to the ones
Speaker 1: that will that you're interested in talking because I got
Speaker 1: a lot to say about Wisconsin's public or Kansas's public
Speaker 1: land trail camp. I don't have a lot to say
Speaker 1: about and trash. Basically, when you go to Burning Man,
Speaker 1: it's a is he defending Burnie Man. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's just kind of how clean they make it exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's explained just how clean it is after Burning Man.
Speaker 1: He was a volunteer there for the Volunteer Fire depart
Speaker 1: He volunteer at the fire department during the Burning Man thing.
Speaker 1: They cleaned it so good. The festival has the undergoing
Speaker 1: extensive cleaning procedure where they cleaned the entire seven square
Speaker 1: miles of m oops moop matter, matter out of place,
Speaker 1: which he said ranges from straw glow sticks to nipple pasties.
Speaker 1: All right, what's a nipple paste picture that you had
Speaker 1: a little sticker you put over your nipple. That's it.
Speaker 1: Whole decoration you got it? Yeah, clothing like it's like
Speaker 1: not the same as being fully. You don't want to go,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have any clothes on you exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like one step there's body paint, right, but that
Speaker 1: you know, that's a hard Yeah, that's a time investment.
Speaker 1: It doesn't leave a lot to the imagination. Then they
Speaker 1: do this. This is this is where this gets interesting. Here,
Speaker 1: this is what the BLM make. Here's what the BLM
Speaker 1: does to determine just how clean the site is. This
Speaker 1: is where this is. This is where this gets downright
Speaker 1: scientific Bureau Land Management. They randomly select one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty inspection sites, with each site being a circle with
Speaker 1: a radius of thirty seven point seven feet. Got it,
Speaker 1: I'm tracking one hundred and twenty times. You take a
Speaker 1: circle about thirty eight feet radius, lay it down, and
Speaker 1: then you have to inspect that circle. But now it
Speaker 1: sounded so scientific until I got to this part. We're
Speaker 1: less than a palmful. Then it devolve, It devolves out
Speaker 1: of science, It devolves out of science land and goes
Speaker 1: and do less than a palm for less nipple pasties
Speaker 1: can be fined within that circle. If you find more
Speaker 1: than a palmful, Yeah, you clean. If you've ever hunted
Speaker 1: or hiked, backpack camped in this location outside of burning
Speaker 1: man right in and tell us how clean it was.
Speaker 1: I'd like to know. Yeah, no, when I when I
Speaker 1: first so, I'm from Tennessee and I went to Bonarou
Speaker 1: when I was in my twenties, you know, big music festival.
Speaker 1: I went to like five of those in a row.
Speaker 1: And when I first have I found out about burning
Speaker 1: my end. I was like, okay, so, like what kind
Speaker 1: of bands are there or whatever? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: well they're not there's no lineup or whatever. And from
Speaker 1: that point on, I was like, I was like, so
Speaker 1: what is the point of it then? And it's like
Speaker 1: an art festival, Like people go there and make like
Speaker 1: art installations, do a bunch of drugs and get wild
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then burn a fffig at the end
Speaker 1: of it, and that's pretty much the whole thing. But
Speaker 1: like those festivals are a marathon. You're filthy, you're tired,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like gross. And if I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to watch like Jay Z and Bruce Springstein,
Speaker 1: you know, and back to back nights, then like I
Speaker 1: got no interest in that, and I wouldn't even do
Speaker 1: the former and in my thirties, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: but in my twenties I was all for it, but
Speaker 1: I never really got Burning Man and I still don't.
Speaker 1: And now it's a bunch of like tech bros and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think on top of that, oh is it? I
Speaker 1: think so they've like overtaken It's what I heard. So
Speaker 1: now everybody goes to Burning Man talks about how it's
Speaker 1: not the same as it was absolutely, just like with
Speaker 1: everything Nuther's Montana or Baha, yeah, bonarys same way. Um,
Speaker 1: where'd you grow up exactly? Clay County, Tennessee. It's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Tennessee is divided into East, Middle, and West Tennessee.
Speaker 1: It's on the northeast part, like northeast border of Middle Tennessee.
Speaker 1: So it's like halfway between Nashville and Knoxville and forty
Speaker 1: miles up on the Kentucky line. What were the what
Speaker 1: were the conditions like when you grew up there? When
Speaker 1: I was like a little kid, like up until I
Speaker 1: was like nine, it was a pretty idyllic and cozy
Speaker 1: little southern town. I felt like, like a nice little
Speaker 1: town and like just using my so there was this
Speaker 1: big textile factory. Oshkosh, bagosh, my overalls, kiss and stuff
Speaker 1: ocos bagosh. They had a huge factory in Salina, and
Speaker 1: that was like the beating heart of the town's e
Speaker 1: common everybody's My great grandma worked there for sixty years
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, that all the kids. Like, if you
Speaker 1: were a kid from Sliea at that time, I pretty
Speaker 1: much guarantee you had like a photo shoot, like a
Speaker 1: toddler photo shoot that was all oshkosh bagosh, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, sitting in a little wooden bucket with some
Speaker 1: overalls on in a little yeah, right exactly. Why don't
Speaker 1: you guys do the side buttons up? Uh, leaping, flopping?
Speaker 1: It depends, you know, a little bit of both, switch
Speaker 1: it up, and people would do both, yeah exactly. But
Speaker 1: and then in my family in particular, like was a
Speaker 1: bunch of small business owners. Grandpa had a car lot
Speaker 1: in a garage, right, we worked on cars and sold
Speaker 1: them and stuff. And my dad had the town's video store,
Speaker 1: Crowder's Video Remember those. Yeah, really dug deep for that
Speaker 1: name because you have the little back corner with a curtain.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it wasn't the curtain, it was a room.
Speaker 1: He was a converted single wide trailer in the back
Speaker 1: room I was forbade to enter, and that's where you know,
Speaker 1: all the boxes were a little bit bigger in size,
Speaker 1: and you know, like you know, somebody from the Baptist church,
Speaker 1: you know, couldn't go in there if there was anybody
Speaker 1: else in the store. Like that was the thing that
Speaker 1: would happen a lot, like people that that back room
Speaker 1: kept the lights on in that grocery. And then that
Speaker 1: video store you get a double wide. There was a
Speaker 1: video store. Yeah, yeah, and uh Crowder's Video, Crowder's Video,
Speaker 1: and that market just dried up. Yeah, as you'll see
Speaker 1: in a minute. As you'll see in a minute, every
Speaker 1: by town we didn't even get to that point. But anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: on the town square, my maternal grandmother had a little
Speaker 1: country diner called Cat's Cafe, And across the square, my
Speaker 1: openly gay uncle and his partner had a Delhi called
Speaker 1: the New Day Delhi, a sandwich place or whatever. And Uh,
Speaker 1: all these businesses are doing, and the whole town or
Speaker 1: the whole downtown's populated by these little businesses and stuff,
Speaker 1: and everything's cool. Then in the mid nineties, as I
Speaker 1: like to put it, the factory left forever and the
Speaker 1: pills showed up for good at the same time, the
Speaker 1: factory being oshkosh, they left. They went to Mexico, like
Speaker 1: literally that that, you know, they moved to that operation
Speaker 1: to Mexico, just packed it up and moved it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was that, Like some of the was that
Speaker 1: some of the NAFTA. Absolutely, And that's got a huge
Speaker 1: it's a huge part of people. There's politics, you know,
Speaker 1: actually that town is rural and every and like redneck
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. You can look it up. For
Speaker 1: a very long time, that county was like a blue
Speaker 1: county in Tennessee because it was like old school didn't
Speaker 1: work in Man Democrats or whatever that type of thing.
Speaker 1: But then NAFTA, the Clinton's factory leaves, town gets demolished
Speaker 1: and it changes a lot, but nothing ever came into
Speaker 1: a place that factory. Really. You know, by the time
Speaker 1: I graduated high school, all my family's businesses are closed.
Speaker 1: You know, my mom is as addicted to pills herself.
Speaker 1: You know, people are sick. Everything just falls apart, and like,
Speaker 1: feel I want to back up to that that place leaving,
Speaker 1: Like how was that perceived by people? Did it feel
Speaker 1: like a betrayal? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I mean I remember.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, again, I was like nine or ten,
Speaker 1: but I can remember my parents, my grandparents like talking
Speaker 1: about it and stuff. I mean I can. I have
Speaker 1: a vivid memory of my grandpa that owned the car
Speaker 1: lot coming into my dad's video store and slamming like
Speaker 1: a newspaper or something down on the counter and saying,
Speaker 1: I swear to God, I'll never vote for another Democrat
Speaker 1: as long as I live because of that. And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a company town, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like I said, everybody worked there and
Speaker 1: or like had somebody in their family that worked there.
Speaker 1: And like all the other businesses, like you know, people
Speaker 1: that work they are bought lunch at these restaurants or
Speaker 1: whatever that type of thing. It all, it all orbited
Speaker 1: around that plant. And yeah, I mean people knew. I
Speaker 1: mean even as a kid, like I knew, like everybody
Speaker 1: knew this is really bad what's about to happen. And
Speaker 1: there was some optimism like well we can replace it
Speaker 1: with something or whatever. But I mean that you know,
Speaker 1: that's twenty five years ago, going on thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: and that you know, there's like a couple minor operations
Speaker 1: have come in and left and whatever else, but nothing
Speaker 1: has really ever replaced it. So it's been there's been
Speaker 1: like double digit level. I mean, I don't know right now,
Speaker 1: but I know for over a decade there was double
Speaker 1: digit levels of unemployment. It was like, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the poorest counties in Tennessee for like years and
Speaker 1: years straight because of them that killed the video store.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So I said, like, right, obviously the video
Speaker 1: store wouldn't have made it a long term anyway, but
Speaker 1: we didn't know that. You know, we didn't see the
Speaker 1: future coming. But it didn't matter because that killed the
Speaker 1: video store. My uncle's Delhi, the my grandma's cafe is
Speaker 1: like that's still a restaurant on the square, but like
Speaker 1: it got rough and she was old and so that
Speaker 1: drove her out of it, and so you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much just ended everything. Yeah, it was pretty rough. So
Speaker 1: I understand why those people like in that place. I
Speaker 1: get why, you know, they don't trust politicians, Democrats in particular,
Speaker 1: I mean, I get it. And I also get why
Speaker 1: that county went so heavily for Trump in twenty sixteens,
Speaker 1: because you know, he was telling them, he was speaking
Speaker 1: directly to that type of stuff and nobody else does
Speaker 1: because nobody cares about those people. And like Republicans Democrats both,
Speaker 1: no one cares about those people poor like rural people
Speaker 1: like they just don't. I mean I do because that's
Speaker 1: where I'm from, but like you know, and so to
Speaker 1: have anybody even paying them any attention at all, I
Speaker 1: think was like attractive, you know, ye in a desperation way.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason I think we're talking about this earlier,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about getting you on Yani, you found
Speaker 1: your stuff and turned me onto it, and uh we
Speaker 1: had we had a laugh watching it. And what initiated
Speaker 1: that was. It's not I'm not the first person to
Speaker 1: make this observation by any stretch, but it was like
Speaker 1: we're talking about, uh, the last thing that will be
Speaker 1: left that the whole country agrees. It's totally fine to
Speaker 1: ridicule and insult, Yeah, is poor white Southerners. I think
Speaker 1: you can always be No one will ever be like, well,
Speaker 1: don't you do that. I was making like jokes about
Speaker 1: that in stand up when I started thirteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's still because even then, uh, it was already starting,
Speaker 1: and I would I mean, I mean, who else is
Speaker 1: there right now? Do you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: you said, like you said, oh, we'll get to that
Speaker 1: point eventually, but I mean, who else is? Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1: Pretty right? Like you can't name another group of people
Speaker 1: that it's okay to make fun of. No, But also,
Speaker 1: like I'm as a comedian, I'm kind of totally okay
Speaker 1: with that. As long as people will allow me, as
Speaker 1: a you know, formally poor white Southerner to also make
Speaker 1: fun of other types of white people, then I'm good
Speaker 1: with that trade off. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Any kind of any kind of white person should be
Speaker 1: fair game, I think for me, because you know we're
Speaker 1: gonna catch it too. I used to like, and I
Speaker 1: don't know what the real answer is, but I used
Speaker 1: to jokingly say that I thought that was because all
Speaker 1: these other groups of people, gradually over the years each
Speaker 1: stood up and we're like, that's not okay, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: talk about us like that, right. But Rednecks were never
Speaker 1: gonna do that because that would imply that they, you know,
Speaker 1: give a damn what somebody else thinks. It would put
Speaker 1: Marry the Cable Guy and Jeff Fox were the out
Speaker 1: of business. It's just like you know, like the world
Speaker 1: tells them's like, hey, they're talking shit about you. Who
Speaker 1: is everybody? I'll tell everybody to kiss my ass and
Speaker 1: then that's the end of it, you know. Like, but
Speaker 1: I find it the southerns have a huge ship on
Speaker 1: their shoulder about pretty much the whole rest of the country,
Speaker 1: like looking down on him earlier. Think y'all were talking
Speaker 1: earlier off mix about somebody else you work with, who Clay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like the South and then there's like devil Country Clay.
Speaker 1: I've been dogging on our colleague Clay a lot because
Speaker 1: he was recently he was pitching this idea that he
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and he had an email where he
Speaker 1: pointed out that he pointed out that in Southern culture,
Speaker 1: you know, music is very important. Yeah, And I said,
Speaker 1: have you been to a lot of areas in America
Speaker 1: where you found music to be unimportant? Right? Have you
Speaker 1: found it to be unimportant in the North? And then
Speaker 1: I sent Then I started looking up musicians per capita,
Speaker 1: and um I pointed out to him that the most
Speaker 1: musicians per capita and Beverly Hills, Right, So I think
Speaker 1: it'd be fair to say that in global culture, music
Speaker 1: is very important. Well, yeah, and yeah he sees he
Speaker 1: sees like he'd be like, I mean, I'm storytelling is
Speaker 1: very important in the South. Well, look, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of Listen, Clay's not even here, but I'm about
Speaker 1: to go to bat for him. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them. I think a lot of the like of
Speaker 1: American music, like you know, has its roots originally in
Speaker 1: the South, and a lot of That's my buddy pointed
Speaker 1: out when I was dogging on Clay about this. He
Speaker 1: pointed out that like if you sort of do a
Speaker 1: music family tree, right, you wind up like like Southern
Speaker 1: blues winds up being like the trunk of the tree,
Speaker 1: is what he's getting. Yeah, I don't think that. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if maybe Clean knows at We'll have
Speaker 1: to get mine talked to him about this. But now
Speaker 1: they are, Yeah, they're musical paper like the most rednecked
Speaker 1: part of my county it's called pe Ridge, right, And
Speaker 1: it's also the part where like what they're known for
Speaker 1: is like they all can just sing like angels, like
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, everybody out there something in the water
Speaker 1: just yeah, like it's like, oh they're red as hell,
Speaker 1: but got pipes. Did you guys mess around outside a
Speaker 1: lot with your kids. Yeah, I'm kind of doing a
Speaker 1: bit about that right now. Like I I've got I've
Speaker 1: got two sons or ten eleven, And I think about
Speaker 1: when I was at age, like I would me and
Speaker 1: my little sisters three years younger than me, Like we'd
Speaker 1: leave in the morning and just you know, be gone.
Speaker 1: I mean literally all day, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and like obviously no cell phones, I'll checking in or something,
Speaker 1: just out like you know, playing in the creek, trying
Speaker 1: to catch crawl daddies or whatever, you know, climbing into
Speaker 1: old storm drains, just kids stuff, you know, but like
Speaker 1: climbing up the pile the piles of scrap material behind
Speaker 1: the abandoned factory, you know, fun stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: uh but yeah, I men't. But today I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not like I went, and I live in California,
Speaker 1: live in Burbank, California, you know, which is very suburban,
Speaker 1: but it's still a city. But I'm just not, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm mortified at the prospect of that. Like
Speaker 1: unless I had some way to like track them or whatever,
Speaker 1: I don't want them out there just running around all day.
Speaker 1: But that's what we did. Yeah, we would, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: all day long in the summertime and stuff would be
Speaker 1: just playing outside. And then uh, when I got older,
Speaker 1: like in high school and everything. I was never a
Speaker 1: big hunter but me and my buddy. The only thing
Speaker 1: of note in Clay County, Tennessee is a man made
Speaker 1: lake called Dale Hollow Lake, which for a long time
Speaker 1: not anymore. Unfortunately that that also left with the factory.
Speaker 1: We were the we were the home of the world
Speaker 1: record smallmouth bass. They did the world even took the
Speaker 1: bass away from us. Yeah, the bass record world record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was on the sign coming welcome to Slige at
Speaker 1: home of the world record smallmouth bass. But like part
Speaker 1: of the local lore was always, and I don't know
Speaker 1: the truth of it, but part of the local lore
Speaker 1: was always there's always these rumors and stuff that the
Speaker 1: dude that it that it had been weighted down with
Speaker 1: like nuts and bolts and stuff, and that yeah, that
Speaker 1: would never happened. Yeah, And so it was always like
Speaker 1: a yeah, it's like the town was divided amongst you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was legit or not. But anyway, so like
Speaker 1: summertime at the every day exactly, Yeah, stolen bass violer,
Speaker 1: but like, uh, now, I don't know off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. Hey, everyone fill here with a quick note.
Speaker 1: Immediately after the show, Trade had some research and found
Speaker 1: out that Selena and Dale hollow Lake still hold the
Speaker 1: record for the smallmouth bass. According to him, he quote
Speaker 1: assumed the universe had taken that from us as well.
Speaker 1: My bad, Thanks Trey, and back to the show. Can
Speaker 1: I tell you a quick story? Yeah? Please? It has
Speaker 1: to do with the South kind of um. There's a
Speaker 1: song by Hank Williams Junior and Whale and Jennings called
Speaker 1: The Conversation, and in it they discuss Hank Williams Junior's mother, Aubrey,
Speaker 1: and first off trying to get Hanklingas Junior to come
Speaker 1: on the podcast. So if you're out there listening, my man,
Speaker 1: please uh. Anyways, like Hank Williams and Hank Williams Junior's mom,
Speaker 1: Aubrey got a divorce or not, and then he got
Speaker 1: remarried right before he died. This all happened really fast.
Speaker 1: He died young and unexpectedly. Once he died. Once he died,
Speaker 1: there became a legal battle over who was able to
Speaker 1: call themselves Hank Williams's widow because he hadn't done the
Speaker 1: legal separation prior to getting remarried, and then he died
Speaker 1: or after he get remarried. So in the end it
Speaker 1: was settled that Aubrey, Hank Williams Junior's mother became officially
Speaker 1: Hank William's widow, and in a settlement, this other woman
Speaker 1: had to stop saying that, and Okay, Aubrey was the
Speaker 1: first one or their Sorry, his first wife was Aubrey
Speaker 1: who he had been separated from but didn't get supposed
Speaker 1: to do like sixty days. I mean, I think he's
Speaker 1: supposed to be separated sixty days before he'd be legally divorced. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out he had only done fifty days of
Speaker 1: separation or something like that and then got married. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then he dies and so they're like, you're that marriage.
Speaker 1: That's not actually his widow because he didn't legally get divorced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I get to be the widow. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that my mama is still technically married to my step
Speaker 1: dad despite the fact that they haven't been together in
Speaker 1: twenty something years. They haven't done it. They just didn't
Speaker 1: do it. They never did it, never got around to that.
Speaker 1: You know, what's a whole thing you still keep you
Speaker 1: still keep in touch with your parents. Well, my dad
Speaker 1: passed away ten years ago pancreatic cancer. But he was
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier my mom getting you know, addicted to
Speaker 1: drugs and stuff when I was younger. So my dad
Speaker 1: most mostly raised us. And my dad was great, super
Speaker 1: close to my dad, but he was not really an outdoorsman.
Speaker 1: He was more into like rock and roll and movies,
Speaker 1: Dave and Lynch movies and stuff like that, you know,
Speaker 1: but I do still his video store would be in
Speaker 1: a David Lynch movie, right. Yeah, he would have been
Speaker 1: so flattered to hear you say that. They're so thrilled
Speaker 1: to hear that someone interpreted it that way. He would
Speaker 1: love that. But but yeah, but my mom, you know,
Speaker 1: she's still kicking and we're like, you know, we're reconciled
Speaker 1: or whatever. Now I wouldn't say we're super close, but
Speaker 1: we you know, I do keep in touch. I say,
Speaker 1: here at the holidays and stuff like that. Do you
Speaker 1: understand what you do mean? Like it? She does. She
Speaker 1: loves it. She loves like the attention and stuff like
Speaker 1: and actually she I gotta give her credit, like she
Speaker 1: is cool about all that. Like I had one of
Speaker 1: my early jokes that I had was like talking about
Speaker 1: where I'm from and how redneck it is or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, and I'd be like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I love football and I hate shirt sleeves and whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't all this ship. And at the end, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, and my mama, y'all, my mama cooks the
Speaker 1: best crystal meth you ever had in your life, right,
Speaker 1: And like, uh, she heard me do that, and she
Speaker 1: sent me a text message. It was like, she's like, honey,
Speaker 1: I did not cook math right space, I sold pills.
Speaker 1: It's different, it's not the same thing. I was like,
Speaker 1: I know, Mama, but I can't you you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work with cooked Joe, Like you gotta talk about
Speaker 1: your home cooking. I can't use pills, you know, taking
Speaker 1: some artistic license. Give me a break. But she's she's
Speaker 1: pretty cool about it all. So what was it that
Speaker 1: when you when you left, was it like in the movies,
Speaker 1: you know, like you um, you know, left with your
Speaker 1: thumb out and got on a hitch hiked out of
Speaker 1: town and never turned back. Not quite, but kind of.
Speaker 1: And also the other thing was I was always like
Speaker 1: the smart kid in my class, which is like, you know,
Speaker 1: bars not all that high. It's like's not crazy impressive
Speaker 1: being the smart kid in this particular school. But I
Speaker 1: didn't know that I had no for of reference. So
Speaker 1: like by the time I graduated high school or whatever,
Speaker 1: like I literally thought I was like redneck Goodwill Hunting,
Speaker 1: you know, like literally because you know, he had a
Speaker 1: rough childhood. He's a super genius and the end of
Speaker 1: that movie's him just hitting the road never to return, right.
Speaker 1: I was like I thought to do with it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought I was Matt Damon in that movie. And
Speaker 1: a lot of my twenties was having to reconciled with
Speaker 1: the fact that I am not, you know, that brilliant
Speaker 1: the way that I thought I was, you know, but
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was kind of like that. And my
Speaker 1: dad also it was very much like that's part of
Speaker 1: like an another thing I've always regretted. I mentioned my
Speaker 1: grandpa had a car lot he before I was born,
Speaker 1: like before my time. He built and raced stock cars
Speaker 1: on like the dirt track circuit in the South. He
Speaker 1: had his whole basement was full of trophies and pictures
Speaker 1: all his like stock car pass and stuff, and he
Speaker 1: was like a gear head, you know, Like my dad
Speaker 1: was real into music. But I never I noticed my
Speaker 1: grandpa never listened to music. And I was sitting with
Speaker 1: one and this like seventy nine Chevy pickup he had,
Speaker 1: right and We're sitting there and I'm probably twelve, and
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, Pap, why don't why don't you
Speaker 1: ever listen to any music? And he just looks at
Speaker 1: me and just revs the engine up real alb bro
Speaker 1: and he goes, that's the only music of man needs
Speaker 1: son and uh so like but anyway, but he had
Speaker 1: the His outlook on me was like, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: to college. You know, You're like you're the you're gonna
Speaker 1: the first one of the family go to You're gonna
Speaker 1: go to college and get You're gonna you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a doctor or a lawyer. You're gonna work at some
Speaker 1: kind of office. You're not gonna be covered in grease
Speaker 1: every day. Like you're not gonna you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like he wanted that kind of future for me, but
Speaker 1: I wish I'd to take him more of an initiative
Speaker 1: to like, you know, learn that kind of thing from him,
Speaker 1: but he never offered and I never asked learned how
Speaker 1: to wrench on cars all that stuff. Yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll like, um, like I'll do little stuff
Speaker 1: like the tires or breakpads whatever I put alternators, and
Speaker 1: it's always just like YouTube and a manual. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't figure it out. It's not that bad. But
Speaker 1: like he just knew. He was just one of those
Speaker 1: guys you know, knew everything about engines and stuff. It
Speaker 1: probably would have changed, I guess, because you know, as cars,
Speaker 1: like modern day cars with the computers and all that
Speaker 1: stuff in him, that probably would have confounded him a
Speaker 1: little bit. But like the old school rides, who you
Speaker 1: know topped to bottom. I can't remember why even brought
Speaker 1: that up. I don't know. We're talking about your family
Speaker 1: and growing up. I know where he's coming from, man,
Speaker 1: because um, thinking back to when you could climb in
Speaker 1: I remember like working on working on pickups when you're
Speaker 1: in high school, you would open the hood and sit
Speaker 1: on the front wheel. Well you'd be like sitting side
Speaker 1: there right, yeah, and everything's just laid out like, well,
Speaker 1: there's the starter, there's this, there's that. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just so simple and now, dude, it's like intimidating man
Speaker 1: wrenched on any kind of thing. Dude, when you left,
Speaker 1: you went to college obviously. Oh right, yeah, well so
Speaker 1: that's the thing again. Act like I'm good Will hunting
Speaker 1: and he was going across the country. I went forty
Speaker 1: miles up the road to Cookville, Tennessee, which is also
Speaker 1: a small town, but to me, it was like the
Speaker 1: major metropolitan area of Cookville, Tennessee, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like Cookville was the town where if you're from Salina,
Speaker 1: that's where you go to get like school closed, if
Speaker 1: you're going to go to the movies, or if it's
Speaker 1: somebody's birthday, so you go to Red Lobster for a
Speaker 1: fancy dinner, you know. Like that's what Cookville was. And
Speaker 1: I also have a cow college there, Tennessee Tech University,
Speaker 1: which is where I ended up going. And I mean
Speaker 1: I loved it at a great time. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't go all that far away. But I already knew
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do comedy, did yeah, Because well,
Speaker 1: like I said, so, I grew up in my dad's
Speaker 1: video store, so like I always wanted to do something
Speaker 1: in show business like movies or whatever. And then when
Speaker 1: I was twelve, and I told this story a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's how I remember it. When I was twelve,
Speaker 1: me and my dad together watched Chris Rock, Bigger and
Speaker 1: Blacker when it aired on HBO, like we watched it live,
Speaker 1: and that's the Chris Rock special where he does this
Speaker 1: whole bit about dads how nobody appreciates dads. It's always mama,
Speaker 1: this MoMA that daddy don't get no credit. All daddy
Speaker 1: gets is the big piece of chicken, right that bit.
Speaker 1: And my dad's just like losing his mind watching is
Speaker 1: and he's just dying. And that was the first time
Speaker 1: that I was like that in particular. Seems like it
Speaker 1: would be cool, right, but again, I'm a kid. I'm
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere whatever. I started keeping notes
Speaker 1: like for possible, like stand up bits and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to go to college. I wanted to
Speaker 1: get a Greek because I would have been the first
Speaker 1: of my family to do it. I wanted to do
Speaker 1: that either way. But I then knew I was going
Speaker 1: to start comedy wherever I ended up after college. So
Speaker 1: because I knew that in college, I got an MBA,
Speaker 1: not because I have any interest in business, but just
Speaker 1: because I thought it would give me the best shot
Speaker 1: at getting some kind of job where I could like
Speaker 1: pay the bills and not have to do any that
Speaker 1: starving artist bullshit, Like I had no interest in that
Speaker 1: type of thing, you know what I mean. I'd been
Speaker 1: pouring weighted tables enough, like get a good job while
Speaker 1: I was moonlighting as a comic, and so that's why
Speaker 1: I got it. And then that's exactly what happened. I
Speaker 1: got a job working for the US Department of Energy
Speaker 1: in Oakridge, Tennessee. Moved there, started stand up in Knoxville
Speaker 1: doing what for the Department of Energy. I was a
Speaker 1: contracting officer, so like uh, contract specialist eventually and then
Speaker 1: a contracting officer. So like the federal government doesn't they
Speaker 1: don't really do much of anything themselves. Anything they do
Speaker 1: they contract out to like private, private industry. Statement. Well no,
Speaker 1: I mean they just you know, they they have contractors
Speaker 1: for everything, you know, like a federal employee. It's rare
Speaker 1: that they'll you know, do any of the like you know,
Speaker 1: brunt of the work or whatever. There's a contractor or
Speaker 1: a subcontractor or whatever. Well, so I I had like
Speaker 1: a warrant they call it, and I was like I
Speaker 1: awarded and administered those contracts on behalf of the government, right, So,
Speaker 1: like I worked with the contractors and you know, made
Speaker 1: sure they were following the rules, made sure they were
Speaker 1: doing what they're supposed to do, you know, and then
Speaker 1: they got paid and all that type of stuff. Competition
Speaker 1: was a big part of doing a request for proposals,
Speaker 1: and companies submit proposals and you have to put a
Speaker 1: board together and pick the company you're gonna Some of
Speaker 1: these contracts are you know huge, Ye, I'd make a
Speaker 1: lot of money on kickbacks. No, I never got to
Speaker 1: that point. It would have been pretty sweet though, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that was going on. We'd have ethics classes
Speaker 1: and stuff where they'd tell us, you know, stories of
Speaker 1: people who have been caught, you know, like don't do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure people were still doing it. But I
Speaker 1: mean there was other little stuff like somebody's son in
Speaker 1: law company would get a maintenance contract, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. There was still some like good old boy
Speaker 1: type stuff that would go on there. But like, but
Speaker 1: the big dollar contracts, they were like heavily scrutinized, and
Speaker 1: had to be you know, competed in all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So but it was just a I had a top
Speaker 1: secret security clearance and all that. But like one of
Speaker 1: my contracts was the uranium processing facility, so like the
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon were they enrich the uranium you know that
Speaker 1: goes in our nuclear weapons? Uh? And so I I
Speaker 1: would go to all these meetings that were like top
Speaker 1: secret and heavily like heavy security phones outside all this stuff,
Speaker 1: like very very high level of security. But it's my
Speaker 1: ran trying to listen to the water. But like I could,
Speaker 1: like you could have waterboarded me all damn day and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't been able to tell you any of it
Speaker 1: because it because like it just feel like no, I
Speaker 1: really like I really don't know because it's all like
Speaker 1: it's all science and shit. You know, it's like it
Speaker 1: it goes over your head. So if you're like me anyway,
Speaker 1: So I was in those meetings and stuff, but I,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't understand them. They were highly technical
Speaker 1: in nature, and sometimes people would think that it's a
Speaker 1: you know, like it sounds like a kind of cool job,
Speaker 1: but it was just an office job really, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of office spacey in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: When you knew that you wanted to do comedy when
Speaker 1: you were young, did you how did you perceive what
Speaker 1: it was you were growing up around I d're saying,
Speaker 1: I'm getting at I mean maybe, do you mean like
Speaker 1: meaning that until you I didn't fully understand where I
Speaker 1: grew up until I went somewhere else. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Like I didn't know about UM until I was in
Speaker 1: graduate school. I didn't know I'd never met Ivy League kids,
Speaker 1: yeah right, I didn't know about any coffee besides gas
Speaker 1: station coffee. Yeah yeah, right, like all that shit, and
Speaker 1: then you go like, oh, oh, I know, yeah that
Speaker 1: was weird. I got a few growing up I've had.
Speaker 1: I've had stand up bits based on that premise too,
Speaker 1: because I went through a very similar thing. I knew.
Speaker 1: I mentioned Dalhalla Lake in the summertime, tourists from like
Speaker 1: Big Ten country, like Ohio and Michigan, you know, your
Speaker 1: neck of the woods that I just called it that
Speaker 1: it's just like a reference point. I don't know, so yeah, right,
Speaker 1: they have really good sports teams at the college, but uh,
Speaker 1: people from up there, like the Midwest, the north northern
Speaker 1: Midwest that would like to us that was just the North,
Speaker 1: like you know Yankees. Yankees would come down Animal's Country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Devil's Country, right, but of course, you know that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Devil's Country is just you got the South and then
Speaker 1: there's Devil's Country because California is like the devilist of
Speaker 1: Devil's Country and it's not in the North. But they're
Speaker 1: like honorary Yankees in California. But anyway, uh, anyway, they
Speaker 1: would come down there and like go out on a
Speaker 1: houseboats stuff. They'd come to the lake in the summertime
Speaker 1: and it's like a huge reservoir. Oh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big lake. It's also I was always told
Speaker 1: that it was one of the cleanest lakes in the
Speaker 1: country and all this stuff, and it's uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Delhalla Lake is awesome, like unimpeachable, uh to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh so people come out there going on a
Speaker 1: houseboats and stuff like that. Um so because of that,
Speaker 1: we were I think it's like in any place where
Speaker 1: they're a tourist, the locals were very aware. Like we
Speaker 1: all thought that the tourists, you know, thought we were
Speaker 1: all idiots, right, like the local yokels. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean like they like we were the like we
Speaker 1: thought they thought they were better than everybody else or
Speaker 1: whatever else. And what's funny is in retrospect, these are
Speaker 1: like very middle class Midwestern people. These are like, you know,
Speaker 1: this guy's like probably an electrician or something, an electrician
Speaker 1: from Iowa, and we're like, look at this fancy playing
Speaker 1: a sum a bit. They couldn't afford the driving exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we didn't know. You feel like you're like you're
Speaker 1: like townies at Martha's Vineyard or something, right, yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: but like, uh, there's just a And also it's just
Speaker 1: a universal thing in the South. I don't whether you're
Speaker 1: in a like toown or not. Like you're just aware
Speaker 1: that everybody else thinks you're dumb, Like that's the thing
Speaker 1: you think, like the accent makes you dumb and all
Speaker 1: this stuff. And again I was a smart kid in
Speaker 1: my class. I thought I was like smart on a
Speaker 1: global scale. So like I took that very personally, like
Speaker 1: they used to really piss me off, right, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, no that you know, I'm I'm as smart
Speaker 1: as anything. Sons of bitches, you know that don't matter
Speaker 1: how I talk, you know, how do you become aware
Speaker 1: of it though, like at the age of twelve, Like,
Speaker 1: what has taught you that the rest of the world
Speaker 1: thinks that you're not as smart as they are? Like
Speaker 1: are your parents just telling you this? Yeah, people just
Speaker 1: talk about it and again but again especially that's why
Speaker 1: I brought up the tourists, just because that just that
Speaker 1: was just a general like consensus or the way it was.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean is that like the tourists
Speaker 1: or up at the assholes. You know, I think we're
Speaker 1: all dumb. And it's like you just know that from
Speaker 1: a very early age, right, but um, but anyway, so
Speaker 1: I was aware of that, right, But there was a
Speaker 1: whole lot of stuff. So I knew the South was
Speaker 1: like that. I didn't know that my town was different
Speaker 1: from other places in the South, like other cities or
Speaker 1: other places that are not economically devastated or whatnot. Like
Speaker 1: I didn't you were the bottom, Yes, And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. And so like I get and I used
Speaker 1: to this bit like when I was in college or again,
Speaker 1: I started dating this girl who I considered to be
Speaker 1: a rich girl, but literally her dad owned an auto
Speaker 1: body shop outside of Nashville. Right, But like I was
Speaker 1: in the bathroom getting ready for a first date, like
Speaker 1: here's you want chance, fancy? Don't let me damn, you know,
Speaker 1: like I thought, this is my ticket, you know. And
Speaker 1: uh like when I went to her house for for
Speaker 1: Christmas or whatever, you know, I'm in the kitchen like,
Speaker 1: why's all y'all's plates the same? You know, that's weird,
Speaker 1: you know, had glass tupperware. I was like, as I
Speaker 1: live and breathe, you know, like, uh, blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I was like, and I had a few moments like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I'm white trash, you know.
Speaker 1: But because I didn't know that until later. I remember
Speaker 1: being with a bunch of college friends. They're all kind
Speaker 1: of you know, middle class would again rich to me.
Speaker 1: We're riding around going to somebody's house to pick them up,
Speaker 1: and they're from Cookeville, and it's like a nice neighborhood
Speaker 1: with like you know, like big suburban homes, nothing crazy,
Speaker 1: not like full on McMansions, but like, you know, nice
Speaker 1: houses in like a subdivision, right, well kept yards, yeah right.
Speaker 1: And we're going through there and I'm telling my friends,
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, this is insane. I was like everyone
Speaker 1: I was like, there's not a house this nice and
Speaker 1: all of Clay County and this neighborhood's full of them
Speaker 1: or whatever. And one of the dudes was like, are
Speaker 1: you serious about that? And I was like yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I was like, there might be one or two up
Speaker 1: on the lake, but that's it. And he was like, dude,
Speaker 1: that's poverty. And I was like, oh, shitty's right, that
Speaker 1: is poverty, you know. So yeah, I had a lot
Speaker 1: of those, a lot of those realizations we had, Like
Speaker 1: it's so funny, it's without the whole Southern North thing.
Speaker 1: There's like a strikingly similar thing that happened where I
Speaker 1: grew up, where there's some people that around our lake.
Speaker 1: We had like the Chicago people. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: places where they bought cottages around the lake I grew
Speaker 1: up on, and they'd come from four hours away from Chicago,
Speaker 1: and they were into the same stuff, right, They're into whatever,
Speaker 1: playing in the water. They're inefficient, but their ship was
Speaker 1: so much nicer. Right, But again they were working class people,
Speaker 1: but they had like glass tron boats. They had like
Speaker 1: dedicated ski boats with stereo systems. Yeah, so when they
Speaker 1: would stop to like circle around and pick up a
Speaker 1: skier here that they were playing music, which would just
Speaker 1: blow your mind. How you play music out of a boat, right,
Speaker 1: And so they did the same stuff that just did
Speaker 1: it was nice. And if they went fishing, they had
Speaker 1: like a fishing boat, you know, so they were into
Speaker 1: the same junk. But it's just their stuff was nice.
Speaker 1: And you became aware of that was a sort of
Speaker 1: first inkling that there's another way to go about ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could be like the Chicago people down the beach
Speaker 1: everyone disliked. Yeah, even though they liked to do exactly
Speaker 1: the same stuff, right, it's just they did it with
Speaker 1: nice stuff, and that annoyed everybody. Yeah. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you complaining about you wouldn't complain about it being nice.
Speaker 1: You can play about being loud, right, loud music, yeah,
Speaker 1: loud boats, I mean, yeah, a nice boat. Yeah. My
Speaker 1: buddy's dad and one friend whose dad was like the
Speaker 1: highway commissioner. So that's like a good job. That's nothing
Speaker 1: like in my town. Like as far as like the
Speaker 1: kids at school go, like you were, your family was
Speaker 1: considered to have money, Like if your family had money,
Speaker 1: and so I know that basically meant like your parents
Speaker 1: were still married and both had a job, right, and
Speaker 1: that like as being as having money by Salina standards. Right.
Speaker 1: So my one buddy is that was a highway commissioner,
Speaker 1: was like a legitimately good job. And so he had
Speaker 1: a big bass boat, right, But that bass boat was
Speaker 1: our like you know, tube and boat, ski and boat
Speaker 1: whatever else. Like it's just it was just the boat
Speaker 1: used to boat for all the boat stuff, right. It
Speaker 1: didn't have an assortment of boats or specialized boats like
Speaker 1: we were just lucky to have just that one boat.
Speaker 1: When you started doing the well, what was the first
Speaker 1: comedy you did? Like, what was the first sort of
Speaker 1: audience material? So? Um, Like I said, I how do
Speaker 1: you say when you start comedy? Don't know when you
Speaker 1: start writing. I guess he's right. When when you start
Speaker 1: being a writer, I guess in my mind, you start
Speaker 1: getting paid for your work. Okay, I didn't start. I
Speaker 1: mean you get paid gas money or whatever it bar
Speaker 1: shows and stuff. Early on the first time that ever happened,
Speaker 1: I was probably now, I started him saying, I mean
Speaker 1: about eighteen months sin to doing it, I'd get paid
Speaker 1: a little bit. I'd MC at side Splitters in Knoxville,
Speaker 1: the comedy club there twenty five dollars a show, if
Speaker 1: that counts. I didn't go full time until the videos
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier went viral in twenty sixteen, so I've
Speaker 1: been like full time for seven years. I started in
Speaker 1: twenty ten at Splitters, and we're your first jokes about
Speaker 1: poor Southern culture, Yeah, all of them. So you never
Speaker 1: thought that you had to go make up jokes about
Speaker 1: stuff that other comedians were talking about. No, And it's
Speaker 1: kind of worked out because I still, like to this day,
Speaker 1: like for people who don't know they're listening or whatever,
Speaker 1: like hear the liberal redneck thing. The stand up that
Speaker 1: I do has always been and it's still like, you know, culture,
Speaker 1: It's not like straight up political, like I might getting
Speaker 1: us some political stuff, but I also talk a lot
Speaker 1: about just like how I grew up, or my hometown
Speaker 1: or you know, the South in general, how other people
Speaker 1: think of this out. I got tons of jokes that
Speaker 1: make fun of California ever since I moved there, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not just politics. But one thing I found is,
Speaker 1: like people in other plays, because I didn't realize either,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, you're like, you know, you removed
Speaker 1: the North South from it, and similar stuff was happening
Speaker 1: in my hometown. Like I didn't realize that until later,
Speaker 1: but like that holds true for a lot of people
Speaker 1: in a lot of places, meaning like a lot of
Speaker 1: people can relate to that type of thing. Like the
Speaker 1: other day I went to my eye a new eye
Speaker 1: doctor in Burbank, California. He's like a mid thirties Armenian
Speaker 1: dude named doctor Hosseeppen, and he as soon as I
Speaker 1: came in, he was like, I know this is weird,
Speaker 1: but I'm a huge fan. He was like, I grew up.
Speaker 1: He was like, I grew up in a poor immigrant household,
Speaker 1: and he was liking so much of what you say.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, right. And another time this dude come up
Speaker 1: to me after a show and he was like, hey,
Speaker 1: so I grew up my whole life in Cuba and
Speaker 1: I never knew it until listening to your set just now,
Speaker 1: but apparently I was a redneck. I guess, he was, like,
Speaker 1: because all that stuff you were saying like totally applied
Speaker 1: to me too, So like you know, um, it's a
Speaker 1: more universal experience than a lot of people realize or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that's like the high, that's the high mark of
Speaker 1: art though man rights when you know, you you convey
Speaker 1: a particular experience and then it, you know, it resonates
Speaker 1: with people who haven't lived that same one. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: reflect on their own stuff. It makes them reflect on
Speaker 1: their own things and feel better about it, or they
Speaker 1: laugh about it or right, you know. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't remember the exact material, but yes, it was talking
Speaker 1: about just my very first set was all about like
Speaker 1: and also at the time because I was really nervous
Speaker 1: and everything, and also I probably had a couple of
Speaker 1: drinks because I was nervous. So I get on stage
Speaker 1: and like, so all of those things means like my
Speaker 1: accident was like way thicker, you know, I'm up there,
Speaker 1: like I'm from clay Knty, Tennessee, you know, like it
Speaker 1: just just belting out yeah without Maine in two and
Speaker 1: so it probably played because I was talking about how
Speaker 1: redneck my hometown was. I remember I talked about moonshine,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember any of the jokes. It was
Speaker 1: talking about, like, you know, something about punching off makes
Speaker 1: you want to punch a horse, you know, or whatever
Speaker 1: else like somebody as we know the party's gonna turn
Speaker 1: up is when some old boy hols the moon shine
Speaker 1: out or you know, shit like that, pretty like honestly,
Speaker 1: pretty U like blue collar comedy tour e type of
Speaker 1: type of stuff, honestly. And then as I kept going,
Speaker 1: I started and now I started talking about more like
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, social commentary. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd have bits about like i'd make fun of the Bible,
Speaker 1: or I make fun of the Confederacy, or I get
Speaker 1: into racism or homophobia or that type of ship, but
Speaker 1: always mixed with you know, the other stuff, the lifestyle
Speaker 1: stuff too. And now I'll talk about you know, I
Speaker 1: talk about my wife a lot, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: So like trying to cover a lot of the bases.
Speaker 1: Last night I was writing some kids materials. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I just like, like, I don't want people to like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to just do the one thing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I'm okay with people knowing me
Speaker 1: primarily from one thing, but like, I want to do
Speaker 1: more than just the political stuff. Like I men, one
Speaker 1: of the guys I work with a lot started a
Speaker 1: new podcast this year that's just us two hill billy's
Speaker 1: talking about fancy people shit. Right. It's called putting on
Speaker 1: errors and it's like not, it's not political at all,
Speaker 1: And I mean we have a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1: I think it's funny. You know. I try to like
Speaker 1: find places where fancy and trashy people overlap, like you know,
Speaker 1: cousin banging or you know, or like getting drunk on
Speaker 1: a boat or nading a logger or you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Different. That's really that's a great little couple there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cousin banging and getting drunk on boats. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: well more do you want? You know, the boats are different?
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, exactly know what you talk about doing
Speaker 1: a kid humor? Man, it's like can and I just
Speaker 1: want to spend it back. We gotta go way back
Speaker 1: a little bit because I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: ask the question when you but we didn't never get there.
Speaker 1: The uncles, no, when you when you're like a kid
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, I'm gonna do something in show
Speaker 1: business and even instead you said you were starting to
Speaker 1: write down things and you thought you could make fun
Speaker 1: of But my question is what in your head? What
Speaker 1: was going on when you're like, oh, I'm funny enough
Speaker 1: that I could present or were you like always kind
Speaker 1: of class clowney, Like what gives somebody something in their
Speaker 1: head with They're like, oh, I'm funny enough that I
Speaker 1: can produce jokes. I like a lot of people laugh,
Speaker 1: like a lot of kids from a broken home situation. Whatever.
Speaker 1: I was funny, Like I was a smart kid, but
Speaker 1: I was also if I wasn't like class clowney, but
Speaker 1: I was funny. My friends would tell me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you should be comedians some day or whatever. Like people
Speaker 1: would say that. And again, I cannot stress enough the
Speaker 1: inflated opinion I had of my own mental capabilities intellectual
Speaker 1: and creatively and everything. So like I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally do that, you know. And I and I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying this. I really was aware even then.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like Cassie, I'm still gonna
Speaker 1: have my accent right because I can't help it, but
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be dumb and that'll be wild. I'm
Speaker 1: ain't facetious. But like I was aware. I was aware
Speaker 1: even then that it would be like a thing, sure
Speaker 1: that I would have a thing without even trying to
Speaker 1: have a thing, just by virtue of who I am
Speaker 1: as a person, you know, Like I thought about that
Speaker 1: even then, um so, but don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: was still very nervous. Like so, by the time I
Speaker 1: get out of grad school and moved to Knoxville, I'm
Speaker 1: twenty three, and it was like I was very much like,
Speaker 1: all right, if you're gonna do it, do it like
Speaker 1: it's either now or never. You've been keeping your little
Speaker 1: notes and saying all this shit for years, but either
Speaker 1: do it or don't. And so I signed up for
Speaker 1: an open mic. I stacked the deck in my favor,
Speaker 1: like a lot of first timers do. I brought a
Speaker 1: bunch of co workers and stuff with me. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: people their first time, they end up doing that, you know,
Speaker 1: they bring friends with them, and so it kind of
Speaker 1: pumps up the response you get. And then I just
Speaker 1: got the bug, and I don't think I missed a
Speaker 1: I don't think I missed an open mic after that
Speaker 1: for like two and a half years or something. That
Speaker 1: first night, now, because I had my friends in the crowd, like,
Speaker 1: it went well. I you know, it wasn't long before
Speaker 1: I bombed, for sure, but by that time it was
Speaker 1: too late. I was just fully in it, you know, man, dude,
Speaker 1: That's like one of the things that like learning Spanish.
Speaker 1: UM pretty much that learning Spanish and doing a learning
Speaker 1: Spanish and learning how to do um, and I'll never
Speaker 1: do it. I'll never do either learning Spanish learning how
Speaker 1: to do stand up. I think it'd be like really
Speaker 1: interesting man like saying bad hating to me, like I
Speaker 1: lost my arms and legs and ship. I would probably
Speaker 1: get into that. Yeah, usually something bad has happened to
Speaker 1: I wouldn't no, no, that wouldn't be my line of humor.
Speaker 1: But I'd be like I would walk away from certain
Speaker 1: other activities. Well, yeah, I would walk away. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would move away from certain activities, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I gonna learn Spanish and do stand up. I funny,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I have started
Speaker 1: and then ultimately stopped learning Spanish in my life. So
Speaker 1: I do absolutely. I've like picked it up so many times.
Speaker 1: I've had you know, both duo lingo and was that
Speaker 1: Rosetta stone or whatever? Um, I've yeah, and like I'll
Speaker 1: start to pick it up and everything, and then I
Speaker 1: just stopped. For me. I I've always equated learning Spanish
Speaker 1: like learning to play guitar. For some reason, It's it's
Speaker 1: like something you ought to do. Something something that seems cool.
Speaker 1: It's like real easy to not keep up with, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like it seems cool, you
Speaker 1: pick it up and then like next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh damn, oh yeah, I don't do it
Speaker 1: so far away exactly right. Yeah, I've done that so
Speaker 1: many times that when we go to Mexico, Steve actually
Speaker 1: thinks I have decent Spanish. Oh yeah, I got. I
Speaker 1: used to. I got to a point where I could,
Speaker 1: like I could read Spanish pretty like pretty well, you know,
Speaker 1: like I could uh, but I couldn't. I never was
Speaker 1: able to like uh, and I could speak a little
Speaker 1: bit of it, but I never could a native Spanish speaker.
Speaker 1: Talking was always its way too fast. I could never
Speaker 1: parse it, you know. But now I got next to nothing.
Speaker 1: It's my second most favorite country, next to America. Mexico.
Speaker 1: In Mexico, yeah, I go there a couple of times
Speaker 1: a year, and every time I go there, I come
Speaker 1: home feeling just humiliated. So I haven't picked up much anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, living in living in southern California is
Speaker 1: like that too, you know. I mean It's like I
Speaker 1: told my said, that was another time I said, as
Speaker 1: though that they have sole proprietorship over that land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's my like, my, that's where I go to
Speaker 1: feel like a dick for having out learned Spanish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was one of the times when I moved.
Speaker 1: When we first moved to La I was like, this
Speaker 1: is great, I'll finally pick up Spanish. Right seven years later,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, oh uh my Yamo Trey, Like
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't have it at all, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's everywhere out there. Um uh. I won't get
Speaker 1: back into like some of your career stuff, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to come in. You're talking about trying to write
Speaker 1: kids stuff. Yeah, well not like not four kids, because
Speaker 1: that's most comics have kids. They have material about their
Speaker 1: kids and I never have. But it's like a starting path,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, it's it's like it's a path
Speaker 1: you go down. Dude, I'm not a comedian. It's a
Speaker 1: path you go down. And I think it's like a
Speaker 1: decision you make. Okay, please a lab break. I'm literally
Speaker 1: last says I'm gonna start doing jokes about my kids,
Speaker 1: And it's like a path you go down, right, It's
Speaker 1: a path you go down. Yeah, but you also can't
Speaker 1: help it. I made it. I just made a bet
Speaker 1: with my daughter for ten bucks that she bet me
Speaker 1: that she broke her toe, and then she didn't. I said,
Speaker 1: you didn't break her toe? She said, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: So she gets the X ray she didn't break her toe,
Speaker 1: and I said, you one me ten bucks. She says, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing the beat because I didn't realize I
Speaker 1: hadn't broke my toe right home. That's like, it's the
Speaker 1: whole point of that, that whole thing. That's why like
Speaker 1: that that that was the whole conversations about that. So
Speaker 1: they do stuff that's funny. But then if you if
Speaker 1: you deal in that trafficing that, you become like a dad.
Speaker 1: You become a dad comedian. Yeah, definitely, you're like my
Speaker 1: wife boy, the old ball and chain, right, that's the
Speaker 1: old badle ax. Yeah, that's part of I think that's
Speaker 1: part of why I've never done it. But I think
Speaker 1: another reason for me is, like I'm not saying all
Speaker 1: of them, but I feel like a lot of comics
Speaker 1: that have kids, when they talk about kids, it's some
Speaker 1: version of like, you know, oh, they've sapped my life essence,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like they drain your youth,
Speaker 1: they kill your dreams. Right, it's like some versions just
Speaker 1: I've just never I've just never really felt that way,
Speaker 1: and so like I just I don't know, I didn't
Speaker 1: see the angle. I'm making a bunch of jokes and
Speaker 1: you know about how much I think it rocks to
Speaker 1: have kids. Yeah, that's a good thing though, because I've
Speaker 1: talked to I've talked to some comedians I like about this,
Speaker 1: where I've tried to explain it to them. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it resonates with them, but I would. I've
Speaker 1: said that you you approach stand up from a position
Speaker 1: of strength, because the like sort of the stereotypical stand
Speaker 1: up thing is like, oh the old battle acts. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, no one at work takes me seriously, oh
Speaker 1: my kids whatever, you know, no one, I don't get
Speaker 1: laid right, But to do comedy from yeah, comedy from
Speaker 1: a position to strength, it's hard, but it's good. Like
Speaker 1: comedy from a position of of of of comfort, yeah right, comfort, happiness,
Speaker 1: like feeling good about yourself and then do comedy. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: And that's part of the because I do think it
Speaker 1: makes it somewhat novel because that's usually how to go.
Speaker 1: The stuff I was kind of working on my side
Speaker 1: or thinking about, is it's all positive about having kids,
Speaker 1: like it sort of talks about everybody says all these
Speaker 1: negative things about it, and then I tell why, you
Speaker 1: know why I think it's positive, which is hopefully you know,
Speaker 1: makes it different and it's fresh. But yeah, but I do,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do self deprecate, but I also like,
Speaker 1: you know, um, like another part of my opial I
Speaker 1: think is literally sometimes just like big work, it's like
Speaker 1: the sounding kind of smart thing like sometimes like crowd
Speaker 1: Connecticut or something, I feel like they're laughing, is like
Speaker 1: do you hear that? It seems smart but it sounded dumb.
Speaker 1: I love that, like uh, And so that's because I've
Speaker 1: also taught there's this uh, this media company that I've
Speaker 1: worked with before, like doing some pilots and stuff. They're
Speaker 1: like a vice type of outfit, but it's not vice,
Speaker 1: and they're The guy that works here told me once
Speaker 1: it's the reason He's like, the reason we love you
Speaker 1: is because your pretension proof, right, He was like you
Speaker 1: He's like he's like he's like, you're never gonna come
Speaker 1: across to our audience as preachy or pretentious because your
Speaker 1: Southern because of in the unspoken part is like because
Speaker 1: of how dumb you sound, right Like it makes you
Speaker 1: immune to that, Like you could be just as you know, superior,
Speaker 1: acting as you know, just as sanctimonious as anybody, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna sound all dumb while you're doing it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they done so on other Southerners though they
Speaker 1: have They have people read the same speech. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: They have people with different accents give the same speech,
Speaker 1: and then people rate how well they knew the subject matter.
Speaker 1: And the Southerners are like, damn, guy eated he's talking
Speaker 1: about that. I did not know that was an actual study. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've got a bit about that, or that exact thing
Speaker 1: about how if you say the same thing to people
Speaker 1: in different accents, it'll impact them in different ways. The
Speaker 1: British person is gonna be more impressive, exactly right in
Speaker 1: in a Southern mail, it's gonna be less. It's gonna
Speaker 1: he's gonna be The material he gives is gonna sound
Speaker 1: less legit. Can you give us an example? Uh So?
Speaker 1: The example I'm using right now is like, even if
Speaker 1: you pick a famous quote that sounds smart on its
Speaker 1: own like like John Lennon's life is what happens when
Speaker 1: you're busy making other plans. Right, like you said somebody
Speaker 1: in a French accent. You know, life is what that beens.
Speaker 1: We you're busy making us plans, people are like, you're
Speaker 1: so right, so we should have sex right now, right,
Speaker 1: Like I just want to have sex all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I don't even know why. You know Australian accent. Oh
Speaker 1: might watch what happens you're busy making other plans. People
Speaker 1: are like, he oh, yeah, well that's a party. This
Speaker 1: guy likes the party. I could just tell But if
Speaker 1: you say it in my accent, that's what happens when
Speaker 1: you're busy making other plans. People are like, oh no,
Speaker 1: he's not gonna tell us his plans. He I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear this guy's plans probably involved truck nuts
Speaker 1: and taky torches. Let's get out of here. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but I did in other literal studies, I'd like to
Speaker 1: check those out. We're talking about it. You had a
Speaker 1: bit for a while. You had a bit for I
Speaker 1: want to talk with the inception of the liberal redneck.
Speaker 1: You had a bit for a while where you do
Speaker 1: sort of that it would be like that same joke
Speaker 1: he was talking about when you're talking about like having
Speaker 1: a liberal perspective coming from a rural Southerner. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then you started doing it for real? Exactly what was
Speaker 1: it the guy you going on it? Well, when did
Speaker 1: you start to do this free standing without all the
Speaker 1: without all the build up. You know, there's actually a
Speaker 1: very specific that I know exactly what it was because
Speaker 1: I had that bit for a little while. I told
Speaker 1: my comic friends, I'm thinking about making a series, an
Speaker 1: internet series based on that idea. Every one of them
Speaker 1: was like, that's a really good idea. You absolutely should
Speaker 1: do that. But at the time I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, man, I have to like
Speaker 1: save up money and buy a nice camera. I have
Speaker 1: to learn how to edit. I'm theed lighting. It'll have
Speaker 1: to can't look like an amateur, you know. I thought
Speaker 1: there was like a barrier, you know. I thought I
Speaker 1: had to do better, like in terms of that. And
Speaker 1: then one day, in like the spring of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: North Carolina had passed that anti trans bathroom law they
Speaker 1: had right at the transgender bathroom law. You guys remember that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you remember, I can't remember, they passed a law
Speaker 1: prohibiting trans people from using but you had to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom of your biological birth gender or whatever.
Speaker 1: So like a trans woman who is now a woman
Speaker 1: would have to go to mend room or that law
Speaker 1: or whatever. So anyway they had made that law. I
Speaker 1: saw this video that was going viral amongst the right,
Speaker 1: so like I saw people and I went to high
Speaker 1: school with sharing it on Facebook. And it was this
Speaker 1: preacher in North Carolina who was mad as hell about
Speaker 1: this whole thing. He's like preaching fire and Brimstone out
Speaker 1: in the woods for some reason, you know, yelling at
Speaker 1: his phone and not being funny at all, not a
Speaker 1: dick joking site, just like just nothing, but but just
Speaker 1: you know, fire and brimstone, shocking all about the horrors
Speaker 1: of these animals in the bathroom with our baby girls
Speaker 1: and whatever else. And this video had like fifteen million
Speaker 1: views on Facebook, right, And when I saw that, it
Speaker 1: was like a lightbulb went off. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: if that guy, if that thing is like the thing
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make fun of, then like I don't
Speaker 1: need any that fancy shit, like in fact, that would
Speaker 1: be a mistake, like I should just do it exactly
Speaker 1: the way that he does. I should just go out
Speaker 1: and yell at my phone, right, and now it's like
Speaker 1: the simplest thing in the world. But like I hadn't
Speaker 1: looked at it that way until I saw that guy,
Speaker 1: and then I realized. And after I realized, I went
Speaker 1: out and I made the first one. The first one
Speaker 1: was about my home state of Tennessee, trying to make
Speaker 1: the Holy Bible the official state buck right, and it
Speaker 1: got like seventy thousand views or something, which I was
Speaker 1: over the moon about. I was complete anonymity at this time,
Speaker 1: Like I was blown away by that. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely onto something. I'll keep going. I made the
Speaker 1: second one. The second one was about the transgender bathroom law,
Speaker 1: and it ended up getting like tens of millions of
Speaker 1: views and went like crazy viral and changed my life
Speaker 1: literally overnight. So wherever that preacher is, I hope he
Speaker 1: knows it, like this was all his fault, mysterious ways.
Speaker 1: I'm right, buddy. So when when you had that and
Speaker 1: it took off, but you still would do normal, like
Speaker 1: you didn't just totally that then become your comedy bit
Speaker 1: though stage. Yeah, you had to keep it separate. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I do keep it separate. But I'd like to say,
Speaker 1: and I've been you know, I've been touring post going
Speaker 1: viral for seven years now, and so I feel pretty
Speaker 1: comfortable saying that, Like, if people like those videos, I
Speaker 1: think they'll like my stand up too. And I also
Speaker 1: think that maybe people that don't like those videos or
Speaker 1: don't want to hear just a bunch of political stuff
Speaker 1: would also still like a lot of my stand up
Speaker 1: because I'm still the same guy, right, So like I'm
Speaker 1: still like scratching a lot of the same itches or
Speaker 1: touch you know what I mean. I'm still like in
Speaker 1: the same ballpark just by virtue of just being who
Speaker 1: I am. But no, I do not like rant about
Speaker 1: politics on stage as a stand up. I do, like,
Speaker 1: you know, more traditional stand up material about whatever subjects
Speaker 1: has you're there's a difference between you could have political
Speaker 1: differences right with your friends you grew up with. But
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have if you're gonna do political differences
Speaker 1: and then get tons of audience, right, I could see
Speaker 1: that causing friction. Do you have friction with people you
Speaker 1: grew up around? Yeah, I mean, I really hate to
Speaker 1: say this, but I mean some of them, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's just broken now. There was like friction at first,
Speaker 1: and gradually it's nothing ever happened. It was never like,
Speaker 1: you know what we're done, Nothing like that ever happened.
Speaker 1: But I just at a certain point you realize, like
Speaker 1: I ain't heard from or talk to him in a
Speaker 1: really long time, and like that's also on me, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But it got not with all
Speaker 1: of them. A lot of my friends are like, they're
Speaker 1: like me. They're either a political or they're more you know,
Speaker 1: they like lean left. A lot of the other Salina boys,
Speaker 1: you know, the group of buddies I grew up with them.
Speaker 1: I'm still tight with. But some of them, yeah, it
Speaker 1: got weird. But if I ran into them at Christmas
Speaker 1: or whatever, I know that it would be cool, Like
Speaker 1: we'd you know, hug it out. Might be slightly awkward,
Speaker 1: but it would be okay. But like we almost never
Speaker 1: used to talk politics at all ever. And one of
Speaker 1: the times that just happened. I had rented a house
Speaker 1: bottom Dalhalla where everybody went out there, brought their kids
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And one of the guys I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like he comes up to being out of nowhere, like
Speaker 1: we're staying there drinking beer, looking at a fire on
Speaker 1: the lakeside or whatever, and out of nowhere. He's like,
Speaker 1: he's like, tray, you know me, man, He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like I worked my job, I pay my taxes or
Speaker 1: raise my kids, like I'm a you know, I'm an
Speaker 1: upstanding member of society or whatever. And it's like and
Speaker 1: he is, He's an all American family man, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I know, buddy, And he
Speaker 1: was like, I just don't understand why you think I
Speaker 1: ought not be able to have a gun right. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I don't think that, buddy, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's like, what do you mean. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I've never said I don't know why
Speaker 1: you think. I think he just found out that I
Speaker 1: was like liberal and then assumed I wanted to take
Speaker 1: everybody's guns or whatever. And I was like, I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, you helped me move my grandpa's guns
Speaker 1: to my house, Like where you think? Like wh you
Speaker 1: think happened to it? But I told him, I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, I I've never thought that was like,
Speaker 1: I just think that, you know, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people in this country or dangerous or unhinged
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they shouldn't have a gun, and maybe
Speaker 1: we should try to find better ways to keep guns
Speaker 1: out of those people's hands. And he was like, well, hell,
Speaker 1: I agree with that, and I was like right. I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, so we pretty much are
Speaker 1: on the same page, right, you know, but like you
Speaker 1: just assumed that it wasn't the case, because I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of people do that. If someone self
Speaker 1: identifies as being on the other side of the fence
Speaker 1: politically from you, people tend to like automatically assign them
Speaker 1: to the far end of that special you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, And it works in both directions, and most
Speaker 1: of the time that's not that's not the case. Like
Speaker 1: those people do exist, and I could do without either
Speaker 1: one of them, you know, the extremest on either end.
Speaker 1: I'm not not a big fan of. Most people are
Speaker 1: not really that far separated from each other on most
Speaker 1: of like the big things I think, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the centrist, the centrist redneck isn't funny. No, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not a centrist at all. I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: I think that if you were, it's not funny, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just has to be. That says a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you get it. Yeah, no, it doesn't. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't need to do the whole. I don't need
Speaker 1: to do the whole. I don't agree with you on
Speaker 1: everything because I pointing out the people. I don't agree
Speaker 1: with anybody and everything, right, including my mom and my wife.
Speaker 1: That's also so, I don't agree with anybody and everything.
Speaker 1: But I think I like you're that'sh it's funny. I
Speaker 1: like your I mean appreciate I could watch uh it's funny.
Speaker 1: It pains me that no one there might be a
Speaker 1: lot to it. It pains me that that very few
Speaker 1: people from the right of the political spectrum can do
Speaker 1: that kind of humor. M there's probably like a scientific
Speaker 1: explanation for it. There's some that can. They've done it,
Speaker 1: like the right has very like some comedians have very
Speaker 1: effectively made jokes about the excesses of the left. But
Speaker 1: even like you're looking like Bill Maher right, he's from
Speaker 1: the left, right, but he's very good at making jokes
Speaker 1: about the excesses of the left. So they've been able
Speaker 1: to do that. There's it's like, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: just a lack of there's not that much really funny
Speaker 1: news commentary coming from the right. It's just they don't
Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with because it's like they if
Speaker 1: you have a right like a perspective from the right
Speaker 1: looking at commentary is much more likely to go what
Speaker 1: world coming to? Yeah, that someone needs to pay that's what,
Speaker 1: and they're less likely to do like, holy shit, dude,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? And then joke about it. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's what that was gonna be My
Speaker 1: response to that. It does seem like that's more of
Speaker 1: the default state of their commentary is more I a
Speaker 1: geared towards like vitriol and that sort of thing. That's
Speaker 1: a hot tip for comedian for right wing comedians. Just
Speaker 1: figure out how to do funny news commentary at night
Speaker 1: and you probably get a big show. Uh yeah, you
Speaker 1: know there's something like, uh, well, nah, he's not he's
Speaker 1: not straight up right. When I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: think one of the funniest dudes on earth is you know,
Speaker 1: Tim Dillon, and he's kind of you don't know, Tim
Speaker 1: Dillon he's so funny and he's like he but he's not, like,
Speaker 1: he's not super right wing. He's sort of got his
Speaker 1: own thing going on politically, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain. I just uh, he's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, he's got a huge podcast and stuff lately.
Speaker 1: So I just thought that, you know, he might be
Speaker 1: a reference point people know. He's like a he's a
Speaker 1: d He's like a very long Island d like New
Speaker 1: Yorker guy. He's like a like a tough talking kind
Speaker 1: of conservative dude. But he's also a gay man. And
Speaker 1: so it's like, but he's just I'm just saying he's
Speaker 1: not a lefty and he's super funny. So like and
Speaker 1: Nick de Polo, I haven't you know, he's been a
Speaker 1: comic for forever. I always thought he was super funny.
Speaker 1: I know he's very conservative. Like there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: some Dennis Miller turn conservative. I was always a huge
Speaker 1: fan of his. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know there's some when I'm watching yourself though, man,
Speaker 1: I'm always like I'm like, uh, I always have this
Speaker 1: thing in my head. I'm like, that's a good point,
Speaker 1: and um, I'll think, like if if you're talking about
Speaker 1: something that I'm not totally on board with your perspective
Speaker 1: on it, I'm listening, I'm like, damn it, that's a
Speaker 1: good point and someone would have to really think of
Speaker 1: a good way to get around that one. I got
Speaker 1: nothing here. Really, I really appreciate all the stuff you're saying,
Speaker 1: because that's like I try to you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going for a lot of times, Like
Speaker 1: even if you disagree with me, you can like at
Speaker 1: least have to acknowledge part of where I'm coming from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like really, um, it's really funny, fun
Speaker 1: compelling arguments and then you kind of you know it too.
Speaker 1: Is like I guess for me, right, you know, for
Speaker 1: me being a Yankee, I guess maybe in some way
Speaker 1: I'm as guilty of the ship that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: the like stereotypes and stuff. You man, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, like you know it, it's it's somehow in
Speaker 1: my head. It's um. Maybe I'll like I'll never get
Speaker 1: over the surprise of like the joke in the first place. Yeah, right, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the joke in the first place. If you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear someone you know as like you're there with with
Speaker 1: your sort of background vocabulary, way of expression, accent on
Speaker 1: a rant with a camo hat. I feel like, let
Speaker 1: me let me guess how this guy feels about the
Speaker 1: best feels about the bathroom is well, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean that's like I mean that right there is the
Speaker 1: whole sason, you know what i mean. I'm just like
Speaker 1: I could just I can hear it before you start,
Speaker 1: and then you like it winds up being like not
Speaker 1: at all you want you're going to hear. I mean
Speaker 1: that is kind of like my whole thing right there,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like that, what how you
Speaker 1: just laid that out? I feel like that's it's kind
Speaker 1: of putting it in a nutshell the videos at least,
Speaker 1: because I mean, yeah, it's none of it would like
Speaker 1: have worked the way that it does if people weren't
Speaker 1: thinking that or thinking the same thing, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm very aware of it, and I and I get it.
Speaker 1: It's just like that's the thing too when it comes
Speaker 1: to South and stereotypes, I'm always like I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to say that they don't exist, like stereotypess this for
Speaker 1: reasons like a lot of those people are you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff is real. It's just that
Speaker 1: we don't have a monopoly on it. It's like you
Speaker 1: said earlier, I don't remember if we recording yet or not.
Speaker 1: Walmart got brought up and oh and you and you
Speaker 1: were like, we got those people up here too, and
Speaker 1: like right, like that, well, let me let me do
Speaker 1: it right, because Yanni's not guilty of doing that. I
Speaker 1: did that right. So what Clay, our colleague Clay who
Speaker 1: tell about earlier, has a UM. He has a very
Speaker 1: good podcast called Beargreas Podcast, and in it he's exploring them.
Speaker 1: He's from Arkansas, and somewhere he found that like for
Speaker 1: some long span of years, Arkansas was the most maligned
Speaker 1: state in the Union, not even over Mississippi. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it got beat by West Virginia or something. West Virginia.
Speaker 1: For a long time, Arkansas is the most maligned thing.
Speaker 1: And he's talking about the um sort of the persecution
Speaker 1: complex of yes of hill people, country people in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And when he's laying this out to me, he was
Speaker 1: get into how there's when when you get into the
Speaker 1: complexity of it, though, he goes you know, not many
Speaker 1: people would guess that this world class art gallery. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it. You know, Crystal Bridges.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you would know that Crystal Bridges, this
Speaker 1: world class art galleries in Arkansas. Right, and he goes
Speaker 1: and you might not know the Walmart all right, And
Speaker 1: I was laughing with I was laughing at being like,
Speaker 1: I feel that that is on the other side of
Speaker 1: the art, right, that's not coupled with Crystal Bridges just
Speaker 1: totally exports Arkansas, Yeah, totally, yeah, like as a total
Speaker 1: So when you came here talking about our Walmart conversation,
Speaker 1: we were laughing about me and Clay's sort of public
Speaker 1: debate about yeah, what what in the popular imagination when
Speaker 1: people think of Walmart and sort of how it's treated
Speaker 1: in the comedy world. Right, if you're gonna if a
Speaker 1: comedian is gonna do a Walmart joke, Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be about sophisticated business practices, right, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be about revolutionizing yeah, supply chain innovation. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like you're limiting edge logistics. I'm a new bleeding edge logistics.
Speaker 1: Bet about Walmart, it would be a wild angle to take,
Speaker 1: but they U. Yeah, well it's not just like comics
Speaker 1: doing bitsy. I mean there's like, you know, people of Walmart.
Speaker 1: Like it's like, you know what I'm talking about, Like,
Speaker 1: so there's a sub bredded. I think there's an Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's like they just post pictures of people of Walmart
Speaker 1: and the y in their natural habitat, you know, the
Speaker 1: the chipsisle or whatever like and you know, so I
Speaker 1: mean it's just like it's a thing. You know, it's not.
Speaker 1: But anyway, you said that we're talking about that. I
Speaker 1: said something about it and Jannest was like, well, to
Speaker 1: be fair, like we got those up here too, And
Speaker 1: that's all I'm saying. It's like, especially since I started
Speaker 1: traveling as a comedian, everything going all over the place.
Speaker 1: Like if you drive from Spokane, Washington to Seattle, Washington,
Speaker 1: which I have done, like the topography and everything is different,
Speaker 1: but like culturally speaking, you start seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: very familiar stuff if you're from the rural South, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, the same thing between San Francisco dichotomy. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like you know the whole Like there's the man out
Speaker 1: self identify as Rednecks, but there's you know, redneck adjacent
Speaker 1: people and pretty much every state in this country, I mean,
Speaker 1: eastern Washington on the rednecks proud of it, no doubt, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know some of them are, like some of them are, yeah,
Speaker 1: proud of it. And I think like the way country music,
Speaker 1: Nashville country, like radio country music has gone in recent years,
Speaker 1: is added to like the sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: having that as an identity strongly wherever you're from, like
Speaker 1: if you're from Maine or wherever, you know, but like
Speaker 1: redneck and proud, you know, because it's become more of
Speaker 1: a like just like a cultural identification or something the
Speaker 1: country recent years. Yeah, right exactly. But yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: only genre of music that I'll that like, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have like favorite genres. I have like artists
Speaker 1: that I like and whatever, but like radio countries, only
Speaker 1: when I take like personally you know what I like,
Speaker 1: I uh, I don't know, I can't stand it, like
Speaker 1: I like, well, like the stuff that is on the radio,
Speaker 1: not like yeah, you know, like not what they call Americana, right,
Speaker 1: which Americans like Stargill Simpson, Jason Zwell, Tyler Childress whatever.
Speaker 1: And I've always thought like as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: Americana is just country music. That's good, right, So they
Speaker 1: can't call it. They can't call it country, have to
Speaker 1: call it something else. But uh but yeah, like the
Speaker 1: last time I went downtown in Nashville, because I grew
Speaker 1: up going to Nashville all the time and I still
Speaker 1: go every year and do shows and stuff. But the
Speaker 1: last time I went downtown the real touristy part Broadway,
Speaker 1: Second Avenue, Honky Talking, right, I was in town with
Speaker 1: this camera crew. They're all California people, and they wanted
Speaker 1: they wanted to go Honky talk, like they specifically wanted
Speaker 1: to go downtown, and I was like, I don't want,
Speaker 1: you know, but I was like the the local guys.
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I'll go with you. And we
Speaker 1: get down there and they're like, uh. I just get
Speaker 1: in there and I have a couple drinks. I'm looking
Speaker 1: around and it's like to me, I just see all
Speaker 1: these people that are like like cosplaying as my cousin
Speaker 1: Kenny Ray or something like that, like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like they go down to go to redneck
Speaker 1: fantasy camp or something, you know, and like it just uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll just I'll get my red up
Speaker 1: as it where I'll get annoyed. The last time I
Speaker 1: got kicked down, I got kicked out of a bar
Speaker 1: down there because they started playing Courtesy of the Red, White,
Speaker 1: and Blue, and everybody's singing along while this dude and
Speaker 1: a cut off camo shirt like white it stands on
Speaker 1: the bar, and waves of American fly back and forth
Speaker 1: across everybody else and all this stuff. And I started screaming.
Speaker 1: This is no longer true. I've since found out, but this,
Speaker 1: at one point was true. I started screaming at the
Speaker 1: top of my lungs. Toby Keith is a registered democratister Democrat,
Speaker 1: and they kicked me out for it. But uh and
Speaker 1: you were lying anyway, now he was He's not, you
Speaker 1: know you are. You're right. I was lying because I
Speaker 1: said he is a registered Democrat and that's not. He's
Speaker 1: not anymore. But around the time, that's emblematic of himself.
Speaker 1: That is, You're right, it's true. What do you call it?
Speaker 1: Um blue dog? Uh? No, when something's that, like a
Speaker 1: small thing is emblematic of something larger, microcosm, microcosm of
Speaker 1: the American soulf and held it. Yeah, you're right. Man,
Speaker 1: I want to come see you do a show sometimes.
Speaker 1: I'd love it. Yeah, Montana's I am. Yeah. You go
Speaker 1: to tray Crowder dot com check it out. Also got
Speaker 1: a special on Amazon right now. You can find there
Speaker 1: as well, which we watched. It was funny shows coming
Speaker 1: up Montana. I was actually about to say, I need
Speaker 1: to get on to my agent about this. Montana is
Speaker 1: one of only like four or five states left in
Speaker 1: America that I have not done stand up in. Have
Speaker 1: you done Alaska? That's one of the other ones. Alaska, Montana, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: North Dakota. I've been to far I got Maston Fargo
Speaker 1: on accident. On accident, I sort like we somebody else. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: the elevator doors open, we're holding pizza. We're going back
Speaker 1: to our tail round to record a podcast. Elevator doors open,
Speaker 1: just pandamon them pepper spray. Ever, some dude runs by
Speaker 1: bleeding from the nose and a wife beater like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get the hell out of there. We're like,
Speaker 1: we start coughing, throwing up and stuff or you know,
Speaker 1: almost thrown up. It was wild, And then the hotel
Speaker 1: was really weird. Is they It's almost like they wouldn't
Speaker 1: even acknowledge that it had happened. Like like, after we
Speaker 1: try to talk to him, we're like like, we're not like,
Speaker 1: we're not trying to complain, We're not gonna file charges
Speaker 1: or so anybody or whatever, but just like just what
Speaker 1: was that about, you know, And they're like, we, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I really shouldn't speak on that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to tell you or whatever. Like
Speaker 1: they just wouldn't. They just wouldn't even acknowledge that this
Speaker 1: incident had occurred. So I still don't know the details
Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, I got I got inadvertently macedon Fargo.
Speaker 1: The show was fun though, South Dakota is one of
Speaker 1: them though, so yeah, but I'd love to come back
Speaker 1: to Montana and do a show up here. I just
Speaker 1: even when I got here, just driving around, I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to send my agent an email about making
Speaker 1: that happen. Yeah, tell us. I just realized there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of people here, right, Yeah, more and more, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know. I don't know, man. I
Speaker 1: feel like like music, you're you're surprised by um, you're
Speaker 1: surprised by the musicians that come through here. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean because because you know, relative to the relatively low population,
Speaker 1: you're surprised by the musicians, but you're not often surprised
Speaker 1: by well me and Crean saw Chappelle. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: there's not like it's not like a big stop. It's
Speaker 1: not like a big stop for like, it's not a
Speaker 1: big comedy stop. Right, Maybe that's changing. Maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I feel it's a big comedy. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's like a new club that someone from California moved
Speaker 1: here to open. I don't remember what it's called. I've
Speaker 1: never been there, but it last best coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: then there's a little problem where I don't go out
Speaker 1: that heard that I mean other than not out I know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. That's one of the things. One of the
Speaker 1: upsides that I had in mind for having kids, like
Speaker 1: I told you other trying to think of like the
Speaker 1: positives having kids or whatever, is that kids are like
Speaker 1: a cheap code for getting out of shit and like
Speaker 1: canceling plans, like no one's ever gonna question you can
Speaker 1: get out of whatever you want to get out of it.
Speaker 1: As you get older, like getting out of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: like way better than going to stuff, and when you
Speaker 1: got to go to something, when you got to go
Speaker 1: to something, you don't want to go to these one
Speaker 1: of your kids exactly that way, you can come exactly
Speaker 1: focus on them, talk to them, pay attention to them,
Speaker 1: and then leverage them as why you gotta go, why
Speaker 1: you gotta go, why you gotta get out of there? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Love it? Yeah, I love it. It's a great thing.
Speaker 1: It drives a real wedge in my marriage that I
Speaker 1: don't like to do stuff. Yeah, I don't like to
Speaker 1: go out in public. Right, Yeah, I mean my wife's
Speaker 1: the same way. But I tell you, I mean you're
Speaker 1: probably travel even more than I do, I guess or not, right,
Speaker 1: like in a super public way with it. We kind
Speaker 1: of hold up. Yeah, right, we totally hold up. But
Speaker 1: is that But is that why because you travel so
Speaker 1: much when you're back here you just don't want to
Speaker 1: do nothing? Or also you just can't go out? No,
Speaker 1: it's older, I get yeah, right, I just don't want
Speaker 1: to do it. I just don't. I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I just don't like engaging that much. You know, it
Speaker 1: gets a problem I got to work through totally or not.
Speaker 1: We could also just not which is probably what you
Speaker 1: just gonna get yourself one of them red hats. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about people. Oh yeah, brother, I feel like, man,
Speaker 1: I never knew it could be so fun to go out.
Speaker 1: I knew it a lot more fun. I need to get, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to get a Biden hat and go out.
Speaker 1: No one will talk to me. Do we still enough
Speaker 1: time to take and tell me why all soulinders are
Speaker 1: just born good storytellers? Oh yeah, this is good to
Speaker 1: explore your prejudice. Yeah, his prejudice or you better at it.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know, I don't want to I want
Speaker 1: to start any kind of uh, you know, regional dispute
Speaker 1: or anything. But got in supremacy of storytelling supremacy. But
Speaker 1: it's definitely like a thing. And like I got this one, buddy.
Speaker 1: He's just a good old boy. His actual like his
Speaker 1: nickname is Porno. Actually nickname's Regulars, Like you know, Porno
Speaker 1: ducks Sunshine, right, But anyway, Porno's like he's like a machinist,
Speaker 1: you know, works in a factory. Good dude, everything pretty
Speaker 1: damn country from my hometown and all this, and he's
Speaker 1: just like but he's not any kind performer is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And but he's just like just a natural
Speaker 1: masterclass storyteller, do you know what I mean, Like he'll
Speaker 1: just anytime he's done anything, like if you ask him
Speaker 1: about it, you know you're in for a good time,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like the fair he came
Speaker 1: to visit me in Knoxville from our hometown. This man
Speaker 1: at this point in time I'm talking about, he was
Speaker 1: probably thirty two, thirty one, thirty two, first time he'd
Speaker 1: ever driven on the interstate, right, And so like I
Speaker 1: knew that was gonna be funny when he got there, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Man, he comes through just like all out
Speaker 1: of whack. It's like sweating and like god, damn something,
Speaker 1: Oh he's animals out here, you know whatever. And then
Speaker 1: it's like tell me all about it, porno, you know,
Speaker 1: And then he does, and it's always tremendous. As for
Speaker 1: why that is, I wish I had an answer for you,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, some things are just like
Speaker 1: ingrained culturally, I guess. Like and also we're big and
Speaker 1: I mean this in a I mean this in a
Speaker 1: good way where like we're big bullshitters. Yeah, do you know,
Speaker 1: like just naturally like I'm agreeing because I understand that
Speaker 1: you're saying that in a positive light. Yeah, right now,
Speaker 1: abellish things for either you know, comedic or dramatic effect
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's just like that's also a big thing culturally.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody's like a little bit fool of ship,
Speaker 1: but in a fun way, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know, that helps him telling a story if
Speaker 1: you're the type of person to do that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And when I married a gal from the South, from
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and when I got introduced to the South,
Speaker 1: I feel like I would go and visit just feel like,
Speaker 1: this is great. I'm just gonna listen to people talking,
Speaker 1: laugh my ass off, yeah now because the accident, because
Speaker 1: the stories are good and I'm laughing, it's great. So
Speaker 1: I was entertained by it. So when you went to
Speaker 1: Michigan for the first time, were you like, fuck, these
Speaker 1: people were boring? Oh yeah, that's a good way of
Speaker 1: putting it. Did you think they were great storytellers? Uh? No, No,
Speaker 1: but I didn't think. I didn't think they were boring
Speaker 1: or anything. I mean, my first first time I ever
Speaker 1: went to Michigan was up that old day job. I
Speaker 1: spent a week in Michigan at a training thing with
Speaker 1: other people. They worked for the Department of Defense, So
Speaker 1: it was like a pretty like buttoned up affair, do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? But I remember one time
Speaker 1: I don't know the specifics of it. We were broken
Speaker 1: up into a group. We're having to decide on something.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree. One girl said one thing, another girl
Speaker 1: said the other, and I said, quoting old brother where
Speaker 1: art Thou? I said, well, I'm with you fellers right,
Speaker 1: like just playing around, And I could tell that they
Speaker 1: both just thought I was just saying that, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like they had no idea it was.
Speaker 1: I was quoting a movie or doing a bit or whatever.
Speaker 1: They were just like, okay, that doesn't help, but all right,
Speaker 1: But but yeah, no, I don't know. I like, I've
Speaker 1: gone to appreciate the Midwest because I think that, like, um, well,
Speaker 1: because I also like why, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know where you're from originally, but you're talk about getting
Speaker 1: introduced to the South, Like I feel like you guys
Speaker 1: in particular, like your whole thing, Like this is gonna
Speaker 1: sound so dumb, but I can remember I can remember
Speaker 1: being surprised also to find out that like hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing and all that type of stuff was so big
Speaker 1: in other parts of the country too. Like as a kid,
Speaker 1: I thought that was all South shit. Yeah, right, like
Speaker 1: because it was such a huge thing there, and I
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't a thing everywhere, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was like like a Southern thing, but obviously it's not.
Speaker 1: And so I'm saying, like, it's just I just feel
Speaker 1: like there's a whole lot of overlap, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like cultural overlor in terms of interest and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna sound different, but still you know, it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be too alien to you. I wouldn't think a
Speaker 1: lot of you can definitely find a lot of common ground.
Speaker 1: I would think, you know, sportsman for sure. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh but yeah. But are people in Michigan good
Speaker 1: telling stories? I don't. I don't know. Yeah, right, I think, Well,
Speaker 1: let me here's the way of putting it. Here's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wrap her up. I gotta tell you
Speaker 1: one last story. Me and Ronnie Bang okay, missile, Me
Speaker 1: and another very Yankee person. We were down in South
Speaker 1: Carolina one time. We're with some guys, we're working up
Speaker 1: a custom load for a rifle. So you go out
Speaker 1: shoot a couple rounds okay, and you go back into
Speaker 1: the reloading bench and mess around and the amount Like
Speaker 1: he was losing his mind because the going in, getting
Speaker 1: the ice tea and talking and everybody sits down. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: and he's like, holy shit, man, this should take twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: He was the thing. Yeah, the world and he like
Speaker 1: he went on rant yeah afterward about he went on
Speaker 1: a rant about what in the world, you know. I
Speaker 1: think he attributed it to there's no sense of needing
Speaker 1: to um. He at treated that there's no sense of
Speaker 1: needing to get like the wood cut and the crop
Speaker 1: in right because the cold's coming. Yeah no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: winter is not coming. I'll say. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he just cut though this cut would later now is
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to go anywhere because the snow
Speaker 1: life definitely does move at like a slower pace like
Speaker 1: legitimate layers, like I feel like a lot of rednecks
Speaker 1: lost Southern people, will you know, take half an hour
Speaker 1: or forty five minutes to say goodbye, to like leave
Speaker 1: a place. Show Man's like, well, better get out of here.
Speaker 1: You know, and then they stand up and they're like
Speaker 1: you talp the page lately, you know, just start a
Speaker 1: whole new thing, and then, you know, and then end
Speaker 1: up in the driveway standing by the truck having a
Speaker 1: whole separate conversation for ten fifth table minutes. Get in
Speaker 1: the truck, roll the window down to keep talking, you know,
Speaker 1: highly pull out on Yale on their way out the
Speaker 1: guns from Birmingham, Alabama. Whenever we try to leave your house,
Speaker 1: it'd be a three hour affairs off for us, four
Speaker 1: different dishes or something, and you know to take well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna drive up and blow away. There's Midwest comics
Speaker 1: that do best bits about the Midwest Goodbye, and it's
Speaker 1: very similar. Well stay right there, yeah, yeah, like start
Speaker 1: by putting your coat on, then stay at the door
Speaker 1: and have another beer, and then you have to stay
Speaker 1: longer because you gotta let that beer wear off, and yeah,
Speaker 1: so on, so on and so forth. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It is, like I do think there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of cultural overlap really between the because also
Speaker 1: it's like that's all as far as like the coast
Speaker 1: coastal elites and all that stuff, you know, the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Also is that's flyover country? Do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: there's it's all the middle part of America that you know,
Speaker 1: the coast looks down their noses at or whatever, and
Speaker 1: there's just I don't know, there's a lot of I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of common ground there or should be,
Speaker 1: but I think it's probably the Southerners who would hold
Speaker 1: it up because you know, the whole Yankee thing. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, man, tell people how to find you pretty
Speaker 1: much just by name, which is spelled round because I'm
Speaker 1: white trash. It's a t r a E Crowder. How
Speaker 1: are they supposed to spell it t r e y generally?
Speaker 1: Oh tr a e r a E Crowder dot com
Speaker 1: or just that's how people can find your shows. That's
Speaker 1: find my shows and the special But any social media
Speaker 1: you use, it's also I'm also just Trey Crowder on there,
Speaker 1: except for Instagram because of some bitch scoped me. So
Speaker 1: I'm official Tray Crowder on Instagram. But the rest of
Speaker 1: them are just Trey Crowder, so pretty much just called
Speaker 1: scoped scoped. Yeah, I said scooped, scooped, Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I know, I was asking you scooped you you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, like contact information online, you dex them
Speaker 1: docks docks. Yeah, yeah, docs. I thought I thought sculped
Speaker 1: was getting I mean, I kind of feel like that
Speaker 1: maybe works better. Really start having Well that's what it is.
Speaker 1: If he gets scooped, Like as a journal somebody beat
Speaker 1: you to the story or whatever, you get scooped. And
Speaker 1: that's I think why I said that. But I didn't
Speaker 1: even really think about it. But scoped, I like scoped better.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's act like that. I was called unawares right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't see it coming. Yeah, like even happened to Trump.
Speaker 1: You had to do the real Donald Trump because someone
Speaker 1: else picked up is yeah. Thing all right, man, Some
Speaker 1: people find you there if you're if you're if you're
Speaker 1: a big left and you'd like to laugh, we'll check
Speaker 1: them out. If you're a super right wing guy and
Speaker 1: you want to be all pissed off and laugh, check
Speaker 1: them out. Yeah, either way, were welcome either way. A
Speaker 1: lot of rightway people come to my shows because they
Speaker 1: get drugged there by their spouse or whatever. And usually
Speaker 1: usually at the end of the show they're like, I
Speaker 1: didn't agree with the damn word you said. But you
Speaker 1: are funny. Though I like to give you that, I
Speaker 1: think you'll dig as redneck. Anyway, Thank you guys for
Speaker 1: having me. This was great. Appreciate it man, good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming. All right, all on, see your gray
Speaker 1: shine like silver in the sun. Right on, all right,
Speaker 1: all alight on, sweetheart, we're done. Beat this damn horse
Speaker 1: to death to take it the new one and ride.
Speaker 1: We're done beat this damn horse today, so take your
Speaker 1: new one and ride on.