Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - BONUS EP: The Milk Carton Kids

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

A special end of the week treat for all y'all musos out there, we got Los Angeles' own, The Milk Carton Kids on the Interview Hour! Plus! The tour is lovely, dark and deep, But we have promises to keep, And miles to go before we sleep: andyfrasco.com/tour Psyched to partner up with our buddies at Volume.com! Check out their roster of upcoming live events and on-demand shows to enrich that sweet life of yours. Call, leave a message, and tell us if you think one can get addicted to mushrooms: [phone]  Check out our new album!, L'Optimist on all platforms Follow us on Instagram @worldsavingpodcast For more information on Andy Frasco, the band and/or the blog, go to: AndyFrasco.com Check out our good friends that help us unwind and sleep easy while on the road and at home: dialedingummies.com Produced by Andy Frasco, Joe Angelhow, & Chris Lorentz Audio mix by Chris Lorentz Featuring: Arno Bakker

All right. And we're back. Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast. I'm Andy Frasco. Yes, this is a special edition, bonus episode of the podcast. Comes out on Fridays. We're going to try to add a couple more interviews.

We're just going to do straight interviews, small opening, but get straight to the nitty gritty. We have so many interviews stockpiled and I want to try to get them done. I can't believe it's already middle of October and we have so many interviews that I stockpiled through the years. So I'm trying to get them all out before the season ends. So here we are. We have Milk Carton Kids out of Los Angeles Yes, Joey Ryan One of my favorite songwriters I met him at

Sean Eccles' brother, Joel Eccles Used to run like a songwriter round It was like Hotel Cafe in room 5 And on Mondays he would run this round Where there were 6 songwriters All on stage And Los Angeles best songwriters. And I met Joey Ryan and I just fell in love with his songs and fell in love with how he can tell

stories and going into the songs, how he was funny and then going into these serious, beautiful songs. And they kind of paved the way into all the folk singers that I love now, like John Craig, all the folk singers that I love now, like John Craig, Todd Snyder, Glenn Hanser, Damien Rice, all those guys who, you know, Woody Guthrie, the whatnot. I love those storytellers. Those are my favorite. And it paved my way to start listening to that stuff and take songwriting a lot more seriously. So I think you're going to love this one. They're doing a festival. They're starting a folk fest in Los Angeles at the Ford Amphitheater, which is exciting.

I couldn't believe it. I saw on the news there's not a folk festival in Los Angeles, and I'm so stoked that the Milk Carton Kids are making a festival out there. So if you're in the L.A. area, go check it out. The Ford Amphitheater. It's amazing. We got tour dates. If you're listening to this on this Friday, we're playing Boston.

Saturday, we're at Woodstock. Sunday, we are in Portland, Maine. We have two days off. And then the 11th, we're in Richmond, Virginia. The 12th, we're in Philadelphia at the Brooklyn Bowl. And then we're 13th, 14th at the Brooklyn Bowl in Brooklyn, New York. Yes. Then I'm flying my

ass to Raleigh, North Carolina to go see Ben from Big Something get married to his beautiful wife. Alright guys, you're going to love this interview. I'm going to try to do, I'm going to try to get a couple, two interviews a week before the end of the season.

I can't believe it's already October. This is fucking nuts. Do you have any words to say? Floyd's just working on his studio stuff. He doesn't even talk to any of us until the show. Do you have anything to say to the people of the podcast world? I'm not slated for today for the podcast. Oh, you're not allowed to talk?

No, I'm just too busy. I'm booked. Your studio's booked. This is such bullshit. All right. Lord loves the work of man. Don't trust Whitey. See a doctor. Get rid of it. I can always count on my boy Sean.

Even when he's having a rough day with his guitar pedals, he's still our OG fucking guy. Alright, guys. Enjoy Milk Carton Kids and we'll catch you next week with Elle Duncan, ESPN Sports anchor. She does the 6 o'clock on Sports Center. She was so fucking great'clock on SportsCenter.

She was so fucking great. I'm really excited for you to listen to. You don't even have to like sports to hear all the awesome shit talking she was doing. She was like talking about how these sports fans are sending her dick pics and stuff. It's insane. God. People. Enough with the dick pics.

Unsolicited dick pics at least. Hey guys I totally spaced out And forgot to talk about our sponsors During my little opening segment Volume.com If you want to watch any live stream They have great live streams on there Or if you want to stockpile your

Watch our podcast You want to go on live stream, they have great live streams on there. Or if you want to stockpile your... Watch our podcast. You want to go on a binge, maybe a Sunday binge? Go listen to all the podcasts for this season. Head to volume.com. And if you're a creator, head to volume.com slash creator and get yourself on volume.com.

You can make money on there, by the way. You can make money. They got those... I can't remember what the money... There's like a thing on there. It's called... You can tip people. It's kind of like Twitch.

It's like everything. TikTok has that. Make the money. Get your money. They got those. I can't remember the money. There's like a thing on there. It's called you can tip people. It's kind of like Twitch. It's like everything. TikTok has that. Make the money. Get your money. It's good to have your content not just on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. It's good to have all your content and on all these platforms. It just fucking helps. There's fan bases for every platform. You might as well grow your fan base. So head to

volume.com. And they don't make you pay to be on it like Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. They ain't doing that whole shit. I mean, that hasn't happened yet, but that's funny. Paying just to read other people's shit.

No, not silly. I'm not paying to listen to Matt Walsh. Dialed in gummies. Yes. The best. I can't wait to go back to Denver and finally get them into my body again. If you are in the Colorado area, grab some dialed-in gummies.

They're the best. Nick says there's a big word about them, homogenized. Yes, they're homogenized, and they are rosin gummies. Homogenized means that every little bite has the perfect amount of THC in them. So you're not going to be worried. If you take a half a gummy, you're exactly getting half the dosage. Perfect, perfect world, and they taste great.

And the people who run that place, Keith and the crew, they're just the best. Alright, bye. Enjoy Milk Carton Kids. I ain't one to leave in But if you treat me wrong I'll be gone Gone before the sun goes down

Ain't no coming back now Ain't no coming back around So long Long before the sun goes down All right, let's do this shit, boys. Okay, let me get the cue on. All right. Hey, guys.

How we doing? Good. Good. I like your podcast voice. It's different than your singing voice. And we're back. It's like when you're having sex for the first time with a lady and you're like, hello.

What is that? What is that, Kenneth? I got to tell you something. Joey, I saw you play at Room 5. You're one of the main reasons why I'm a songwriter, bro. Oh, come on. Oh, come on. I swear you're in a songwriter circle with Joel Eccles and someone else, but you blew me away.

I just want to say thank you. I'm so thankful that you are in this group that's getting such high praise because you are one of the GOATs. I love that you met Kenneth because Kenneth is one of the GOATs as well. It's an honor to officially meet you via Zoom. Andy, I have the same experience. It's not like sitting in room five having a light bulb, but I had the same experience as you and was like, I got to start a band with that guy. How'd y'all at at room, at room five?

Yeah, there and hotel cafe, you know, all of those places. It was the same thing though. I'd said like, I had the same thing as you. It was like,

Oh, I got to play with that guy. What'd you see in Joey? Let's, let's just gush about Joey for a second. Then we'll gush about you, Kenneth. Yeah.

I've always wanted to be an inspiration. I never thought I would be, but I can't believe I am. Yeah, well. A brief dalliance with leadership. How'd you meet each other?

I think it was at the cafe. Is that where we first said hello? I was seeing his poster around, you know, at Room 5 and the cafe and all that. Because this was, for the listeners, this was 2009, the era where the only thing that mattered was 99-cent iTunes singles and facebook and myspace promotion well and and if you could get the the closing montage and on an episode of gray's anatomy you were off to the

races yeah yeah exactly and then if you lived in la you know you had to get those hotel cafe spots that actually had people there you know yeah exactly that was the whole game like you were trying to game that and if you could do that then there was some part of your brain that saw even further down the field but those were the attainable things to reach for and so i think joey and i were both doing that at that time and so i'd see his poster around and then but i think marco brought you to one of my shows yeah yeah the first time we met was actually a kenneth show because marco the owner and booker of the hotel cafe to you know made a point to reach out to me and say you gotta come down tonight

because this he called him this new guy kenneth pattengill has a show and you you you'll love he's amazing you're gonna you would love love it. And that ended up being true. And so the second time we met, we met that night and we talked a little bit. And the second time we met, Kenneth came to my show at Room 5, which might have been one of the songwriter rounds, or it might have been just a show that I was doing. I don't remember. But that was the second time we met. And that was when Kenneth said, hey, you got, he said, you got to come over to my house

and hear me play guitar on your songs. And how was that? What was that like for you, Joey? Were you like, kind of like, eh, I don't need to do this. I already have my solo career going on. Or were you open to the idea of collaboration? No, I was open to everything.

And as a matter of fact, I specifically opened to collaboration and I'd been seeking out collaboration my entire solo career. For a long time I played with, kind of as a duo with a great guitar player and singer and songwriter called Yohei Shikano, who's still

working around Los Angeles. I think his band is called My Hawaii and they still play. But I had a little band together and I felt a real kinship with the drummer in the band, Mark Steprow, who then like Kenneth and I, when we got together, we worked a little bit as a trio with Mark, doing some songwriting together.

So I was very open to collaboration specifically, but that like, you know, there was that first day that I, when I went over to Kenneth's house to hear him play guitar on my songs, as he put it, when, you know, instantly kind of realized it was much more than that. And we had this light, you know, we had that light bulb kind of epiphany moment when we first played together and it was, you. And it was different.

Yeah, I could hear that in that first live record too. I mean, one of my favorite songs, Permanent, Joey. It's like, I'm very... That song inspired me. I think you're playing that during the Hotel Cafe years too. Like when you're doing solo stuff. And I remember that song. I was just in awe because

like i never in la you know i was always chasing the rabbits till i grew up in the valley near topanga canyon i was always chasing the rabbits they'll get inside and then i went to room five because my guitar players brothers joe uh joel eccles yeah i went to go see joel and then i saw you play and i was like holy shit this guy could guy, he's funny, he could tell a story and then he could also tug on your heartstrings. And I'm gushing about you, but it's about the songs. And I was just, when I heard you and Kenneth playing together, I'm like, oh my God, this is going to happen.

So after that solo record, were you guys playing a bunch at Hotel Cafe before you said, fuck it, let's just be in a band? Or was it like a match made in heaven or did you not trust him no we did it was immediate yeah Joey

had the whole rest of the year booked under Joey Ryan shows and I had sort of a similar thing and we were like well let's just play each other's own thing except for one there was one at the end of the year he was going on tour with this band the spring standards yo no well the tour was open it we were both me and the spring standards were opening for meg and

dia who were kind of an emo band that was had put out more more of a folky kind of acoustic record. And so they wanted folky acoustic bands to open for them. And so that was that one. Oh, because you could only do it solo. Anyway, I was a little jealous because at that point we had done like 50, 60 shows together during the thing, combining our thing. So we were in New York at the start of that tour and played uh like rockwood music hall or something and then i pulled joey was riding in the sprinter van with that other band the spring standards and i pulled one on my side i said listen i've just been on the

road with joey for like a year he has ibs but he's really really embarrassed about it so if that like anything seems off just like pull over and stop to the bathroom like go give him space but like don't bring it up because he's so embarrassed about it and then Joey got back at the end of the tour I was like how's the trees like he's it was great but they stopped for the bathroom like every 90 minutes is that true? Do you have bad guts, Joey? No. The way you tell it, he doesn't understand it's a prank 15 years later. These poor bastards, they were pulling over every 10 minutes. Maybe he self-sabotaged so you could be in the band with him.

I think he had a master plan here, Kenneth. I never knew you were jealous of that one, Kenneth. And you shouldn't have been because we... Oh, no. I'm joking. I know. One of the main things I remember about that tour is the... So it was through the Midwest in the winter. And the Spring Standards van, the window broke and it wouldn't roll back

up. And I was sick in the back of the van with like a cold or a flu or whatever. So I've got a fever and I'm sweating and shivering in the back of the van. And it's minus 10 outside. We're going through Minnesota or something and the window won't go up. So it's minus 10 in the van as we're going through minnesota or something and the window won't go up so it's minus 10 in the van as we're driving down the highway and it was that was one of the worst days of my entire life yeah i'm glad i wasn't there yeah they still stopped about five times other than that that was a fun tour those were fun days because like you know that was when and, you know, then Kenneth and I did it. But those were in the days when you would just rent a car at the airport and just go and sleep wherever for months at a time and just be happy if you could make 50 bucks, you know, gas money and get and have somebody, you know, buy you a meal. and have somebody buy you a meal. Yeah.

When has that changed? When we start making money, we realize there's a different side of this vagabond life. You guys are always... The side where Joey's angry if they don't have the right flavor of kombucha in the green room. That's you. You're the kombucha from Madonna I got my own things too

I got my own things too but don't put the booch don't put the booch on me I wonder is it the money or is it the aging I think it's less to do with the money I think it's you get older and you're just like yo I can't sleep on a couch

I think it's the age for sure for me it's you get older and you're just like, yo, I can't sleep on a couch. I think it's the age. For me, it's the age. Your body hurts more. Because also to set the record straight, we haven't made that much money, you know? Yeah, it's pretty amazing how you can get all these Grammy noms and still feel broke, you know? Mm-hmm.

So tell me about Kenneth, tell me about your upbringing. Were you in a band before? You grew up in LA. You said Eagle Rock? Yeah, I grew up in LA. I played the cello from age four. Like a little tiny guy. And then, yeah, I won the

Battle of the Bands with my little band. My brother played bass in it which by the way kenneth recently broke out the video of his high school band in battle of the bands and it's like shockingly good like i really like i appreciate that you were inspired by my song in the in the room five days. But I think Kenneth, like if we had video of those days and put it up against Kenneth's, uh,

battle of the bands playing like Santeria in 1997. Um, I think, I think he would win the battle of the bands against me in 2009. That's funny. Were your parents musically talented like did they put pressure on you

to be a great musician or did you put pressure on yourself oh um no they did it kind of the right way basically when I was that young

my older brother started the cello and my mom started the cello in solidarity so that the pressure they put on us

didn't feel like, like, you know, parental pressure. It was kind of like, we're all doing this together. And still like, then I just rebelled against practicing and playing the cello through my

entire youth, which was obviously a mistake, but it is what it is. But no, she did that. My grandparents were musically gifted. But I have two. My mom's dad, no, my mom's mom was like a concert pianist that studied at Eastman.

And then my dad's dad, he was like a self-taught parlor piano player, but he like avoided World War II service because he was so good at the piano that he was stationed in Seattle and the general, whatever war general was in Seattle, was like, homies got to stay back and play piano in the officer's club. Like you can't take them to war. Oh my God. Lucked out. Yeah. It seemed like it looked out. Yeah. So those are probably the genes that came down, but then, yeah, it was like, you know, I'd had a, I had a rock band. We'd play like, you know, we'd play Keggers, high school Keggers in East LA and all that and all that yeah it's were you trying to be like a emo band or like a reggae band what was it like what were you trying to get like a deal with like

vagrant or oh i still i would trade everything right now to be in a reggae band um yeah yeah i wasn't playing that back then no like um well, well... By the way, we have a killer version of Michigan that's a reggae Michigan that we play at every sound check. Yeah, that's true. Why don't you ever pull it out? Because it's offensive. It's culturally offensive.

Just two white boys from LA playing reggae. You're like, slightly stupid already did that. We're okay. That's true. I was born in 1982. So my first concert was like Guns N' Roses at Irvine Meadow Amphitheater.

And then I saw Rage Against the Machine 15 times throughout the early 90s. And I would go to I would hop in a car with my brother and go see stuff on the Sunset Strip. And I learned to play drums along to, you know, just listening to Dookie on repeat for, you know, three years while I'd like bang away at the drums. So I was trying to, I was trying to be all of that or something. I, you know, I was also just being a kid, but that was all the stuff. And we had no

filter in our house. So like I said, all of those experiences were widely available to me, but they all kind of set the stage. But then somewhere in high school, it turned into Duke Ellington and Tom Waits. And then I only listened to them for five years. So then that obviously changed everything. And then... What was it in Tom Waits that changed everything?

Oh, just... I talk about this a lot when I produce records, too, because the spot that I'm always going for, which is both very attainable but also unattainable but i think is the right like way to set a compass is that it's like you're going through life and everything's here and then you hear tom waits for the first time and it's not like everything changes but all of a sudden the world just looks like this

right and you start to hear everything a different way and you you like the way that you're writing you're you know what it just changes the gravity and to me like that's the thing there's no like there's no small style things that do that that's just like when you get exposed to a different worldview when you like learn about a new culture and all of a sudden you're like oh people can be fascinated interested with this and so to me like the way that it ends up informing the process of making a record is that like um i love when i'm making a record with somebody and it starts to feel like something that like maybe the whole world

won't change but a kid might hear this and all of a sudden go oh music's not that it's this and like it changes their direction and just kind of changes the stream a little bit to me like if you're going for that it means that you're like you're like fleshing out the bigger, you know, the bigger parts of your identity, the more raw parts of like what you are and what's truthful about that and what can be intoxicating on a human level. Um, so that's what I mean about the Tom Waits stuff. It's like, I didn't then like pop out of the closet wearing a top hat and talking about midgets or something, but like living, yeah, living, living in a van, you know, in a van down by the river, in a sense. Totally.

But in some ways, all of a sudden, it was like I went from the world I lived in to being like, oh, you can do an entire record that sounds harder than any record you ever heard and there's not a single symbol on it? That's a different way of looking at life. That's cool. Yeah. I agree.

Damien Rice was that for me when I first heard O for the first time. That O record. Yeah. Not a lot of symbols. He recorded it himself. It was like, oh yeah, there's a different way to bring intimacy without just yelling. That was hugely inspiring. He recorded that whole record on that roland vs 880 ex yeah oh yeah and like he was and he was in a rock it's kind of like similar because he was in a rock band

juniper and then he said screw it when he was 30 he's like fuck this i'm going to do my own thing it's kind of the same path. What about you, Joey? Who inspired you when you were a kid? Oh, when I was a kid. Well, I think I have a different sort of musical path than most people I run into that have become musicians. Because I didn't know that I wanted to be a musician. I didn't actually know that you could be a musician. I didn't actually know that you could be a musician. I didn't know that that was a thing.

Where are you from? From L.A. Oh, no shit. I'll clap to that. Let's go. That's my boy, Joey. There was a real disconnect for me that I'm still struggling to understand. And for a long time, people asked if I had a musical family.

I would say, you know, not really, because my parents weren't professional musicians. But my mother was a folk singer in Berkeley in college and had a folk duo that played in the coffee shops in Berkeley. And my dad taught me the guitar. the coffee shops in Berkeley. And my dad taught me the guitar. And my mother's grandfather had his own orchestra in Washington, D.C. for 40 years. And that's how he, like, it was the Johnny Shaw Orchestra. And he was a violinist and led the orchestra. And that's how he made a living. And so I don't know why, despite all the music that was in my house and in the family, you know, my mother used to sit us down and make us listen to, you know, like needle drops of classical music and get and

and like, guess the composer, you know, of like, the, you know, whether it was Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms or whoever, which was a game that her dad used to play with her. And I grew up in L.A. where all the musicians are. And like, you know, one of my favorite, probably the band I listened to the most as a kid and young and teenager is Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. And Graham Nash's daughter was in my class at my school, and he came to pick her up from my house in eighth grade from my birthday party.

And it never occurred to me that you could be a musician. I loved his music, and there he was in my house. And it just wasn't a thing. the, I played the clarinet in the school orchestra, and I learned to play the guitar from my dad. And I just, I don't know, I thought that school and sports were the things that, you know, you should focus on and pay attention to. And I loved listening to music, and I just never thought about it as a career. It was like it wasn't a possibility. And so I went to I had this phase of like that. Kenneth, you know, Kenneth is a lifelong phase of sort of wanting to be around music and be in music, which for me started in college. So I started I had a college band. I never had a high school band. And then in college, I was in UC Berkeley, but not

music Berkeley. And we had a group of friends who loved, you know, just jamming, jamming on two chords all day long, you know, with there was a drum kit in the in the house and a bong on the table. And that was all the fuel we needed. And then eventually that turned into a band, and we started playing keggers like Kenneth did, but the college keggers. And even still, and I started writing songs. When I started having breakups, I started writing sad songs on my bedside. But even then, I was like, I'm just going to keep going to school. I thought I would go to graduate school. I was applying to graduate schools and everything. And then my friends that I had the band with

had an intervention with me, like legit, like sat me down and said, Hey, like, obviously we're not doing this band with in like as a serious thing. And we're all going to go do other things when we graduate, but, uh, you, we think your songs are good and you, you should like really try and do it. You should like, you know, not keep going to school. You should go back to LA and like, try and be a singer songwriter because these songs you're writing are good and um that was that was literally the first time it ever entered my mind that you know the that such that i might do such a thing and uh was it rebellion against your parents because they want they did it for so long like this i don't want to be like my mom and dad because they did it for so long.

You're like, fuck this. I don't want to be like my mom and dad. To not do music? Yeah, at first. Kind of like you're in your head. They didn't do music professionally at all. I rebelled against the formal music training that I was forced to do, basically on the clarinet.

And I didn't like it. But no. No that none of it felt rebellious i don't know i don't know maybe you're maybe you're on to something there but he misrepresented the story a little bit which like his dad taught him the guitar but his dad was a shrink like he wasn't no yeah when i say my dad taught me the guitar like he taught me how to play house of the rising sun one time that was not he didn't have like yeah and his mom was in a band like at college before joey ever knew her like in yeah didn't play music or anything she that's right but i learned right but i learned to play guitar and I played my first shows on her guitar, but she never played the guitar in front of me that I remember. But she had the guitar from the 70s sitting around the house still.

Was it intimidating to have a dad as a shrink? Yes. It seems like that would be fucking hard as a kid. He's always just psychoanalyzing like every move you make. Yes. And it's worse than that because he's not, he wasn't psychoanalyzing, but what he was, was a, he was a forensic psychologist, which sounds a little bit more exciting than it actually was, but mainly he, he would just interview people for eight hours and get their life story and the story of whatever psychological injury they had. And so basically his job was to be a human lie detector and to spot holes in people's stories. So when you're 14 or 15 and you're trying to like lie to a person whose job it is to spot inconsistencies in your story it's very fucking frustrating

to make you a better liar no honestly it just made me give up it just made me tell the truth i was like the truth is a better way oh my god that would be so intimidating if my dad just knew my bullshit right away. Just knows. And then it's his job to also not let you off the hook. So it's a little bit frustrating because when he can tell that you're bullshitting a little bit, he homes right in on it. And he's like, tell me more about that thing.

And you're like, that's the thing I was trying to gloss over. Probably made you a better songwriter for fine--tuned details though yeah maybe what about your parents kenneth what were they like oh they're chill my dad's a doctor and my mom's a physical therapist but then like i said she played the cello with us and then she's the only one that kept playing the cello so now uh 35 years later she's like a cello teacher she teaches kids how to play the cello um yeah there weren't very many rules in our house and uh and it was pretty chill grew up in northeast la you know all things being equal pretty good. We were up in northeast LA. You know, all things being equal. Pretty good time.

Were you getting laid a lot? Were you bringing chicks home to the house a lot? No. Why are you laughing, Joey? It's just a funny question. Yeah, yeah. No, I had a high school girlfriend. The first time I got laid was with my girlfriend,

who then I dated for four years. So there wasn't a lot of that. I mean, there was a lot of that, but it wasn't like promiscuity. No, it was pretty... If I look back on my life from this point, I would say it's pretty, if I look back on my life from this point, I would say it's like, it looks like a bucket list of crazy things. But then also, the whole time, it feels pretty even keel and reasonable. We live a crazy life.

I imagine you feel this way. When I think about the last 10 years, all the crazy venues we've played, the people I, you know, like two weeks ago, we ran into Mavis Staples. And then I remembered, oh, Mavis Staples is like my friend. Like she sees me and she knows my name and we catch up. That's a, that's a weird life. feels like very relatable or kind of normal to me and i think that's you know the same that feels true even if i think back to like 1994 when i got locked in the burger king bathroom at 3 a.m on sunset and labrea after going to a no effects show at the roxy like that's clearly not a thing that happens to most people but then like i got out of the bathroom fine and we made it home and all things carried out. Yeah, the reason why I asked that is... Oh, sorry, Joey, what were you saying? No, you go, you go. The reason why I asked that is I feel like

we all grew up in LA and I feel like we grew up a little too fast. We grew up earlier in our lives. We were going to those shows at the Key Club. We were going to those shows at the Whiskey at Go-Go at 16. I mean, if we lived in Lawrence, Kansas, I don't think we'd have that opportunity, maybe. Totally.

You know what feels to me like the trippiest thing? It's like, what the hell happens to the kids now? Because they get a hold of their parents' phone as soon as the parent gives up. Whenever the parent gives up is whenever the kid meets the entire universe in all of its disgustingness. Right. And like, that was like, I was talking to our sound engineer this morning who has gone back to college. He goes to college and he was telling me about what he was doing.

He's getting a psychology degree. and he was telling me about what he was doing. He's getting a psychology degree and he was saying he was reading a chapter on some guy who did this seminal study in the 60s where they got a bunch of kids in a room and then they got the kids to look at this clown on the other side of the glass and then an adult came in

and beat the shit out of the clown and left. Oh my God. And the experiment is what would the kids do and after the adult left the kids went into the room and tried to beat the shit out of the clown they were just like copying their parents behavior and like that and that that study was like one of the starts one of the like american starts to trying to change depictions in media, like reduce the exposure to violence for children, you know, various things that would happen. And when he was talking about it, I was like, yo, if that happened, these are like eight, nine, 10 year old kids. I was like, if they did that

experiment in 2023, not in 1960, like the kids wouldn't rush in to beat the shit out of the clown. There'd be a bunch of kids that are like you can't beat a clown there'd be other kids that like would be anti-violence there'd other be other kids like we're like kids are much more worldly and smarter and whatever and it probably in other ways makes you grow up too fast and there's some you know there's some weird fallouts or weird um weird impacts but But I think all things being equal, growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, when celebrity was kind of mono and MTV,

you'd see everything sort of flash through MTV that was culturally relevant. And you opt in for the things that are, you know, that your parents expose you to. Like, I think all of that growing up fast actually was pretty positive. I think the amount of work I've done in therapy to identify any kind of negatives are pretty minimal. I grew up. What did you grow up?

I grew up slow. I was on the street. Yeah? Were you a good student? Yeah, yeah. I just went to school and played sports. And

yeah, I didn't go to the key club in the Roxy. What did that... What What did you play? What sports did you play? As a young kid. Andy's humoring you. Yeah, he doesn't care.

You don't care. I don't care. What sweet little sports did you play? Did you have a good time? No, because I was an athlete and I played basketball growing up. I didn't play music until I was an athlete and I played basketball growing up. I didn't play music until I was 19. So I really take my work ethic through the Kobe Bryants of the world and the Shaquille O'Neals. They taught me how to actually focus on something and not just be a space cadet and have all these other things in my head. What about you, Joey?

100%. So when I was 12, I quit everything and just played tennis. So when I was 12, I quit everything and just played tennis. And so tennis, like all other sports, but I think especially tennis is like just all about repetition. You know, it's highly technical. There's tons of drills and conditioning and like it's all about repetition and, you know, drilling and drilling and drilling. And so my sense of work ethic and what it takes to become excellent at something comes from that. And that is, I think, one of the many ways

in which Kenneth and I turn out to be different from each other. Oh, yeah. I don't have that. I wish I had that. And it's also like you picked a sport that's very individual and solo you could have been on a team you know instead you picked a solo a solo sport yeah and do you think that's what it was it benefited us too why do you think it was a bad decision um well i didn't actually i it was only a few years that i that i uh competed in like junior tournament circuit and by the time i was 16 i was burned out on it but i loved being on uh like a team a tennis team so i think the individual side of it, I wasn't actually suited to. So obviously the

training is all individual, but I loved being on our high school tennis team, which was very like, like, uh, you know, good, like a really good team. And, uh, I don't know, I might've had more fun if I had done a team sport. I don't know. Who's the bigger alpha between you two? It depends. We have different ways of controlling a situation. It actually might be why we're better together or not.

I'm like an alpha from 20% 80 you know joey like it takes a lot to get joey riled up but if you get him he's right there at the end he you know he pops before before it all goes to hell yeah i've only ever seen him back me down like three or four times but when we got there, it was like, it was like the bad side of your dad coming out, you know, where you're like, Oh, give me that moment. Give me that moment. What happened? Oh, the one that I can remember the most was,

do you remember on Joe Henry's lawn, Joey? I don't remember what that was about. I remember something happened and Joey, like, it was like a, it was like a snake popped out of a hole that had been there for years and nobody noticed the hole and all of a sudden this hulking snake was there and i was like i think he's gonna hit me yeah kenneth thought i was gonna do physical violence to him yeah were you poking the bear no kenneth were you poking the bear no you know what it's like i don't know if you how i don't know if you've had this and you i assume everybody has this in their

life but um it was another one of those moments where you realize basically most bad things in life just come from bad communication yeah i think that if i remember right during that iteration we were we were in the midst of booking a tour and there were all sorts of like personal considerations involved it wrapped up everything the m are equal individual ambitions for the band the personal toll it took on our personal lives and like the margins we were watching there whatever and i think that something about that tour wasn't going right and i was like leading the conversation and and exacting my influence on the whole situation you know selfishly to try to get what i needed or wanted whereas like a more mature older older me would have sidebarred and told Joey,

like, here's what's going wrong. Here's what I need. We need to come up with a plan. Instead, I think I was doing it in real time with all the people that worked for us, and I must have blown through some boundary of Joey's that he knew I knew and that I was flagrantly violating. And I think he kind of went ape shit is what I remember. I think it was the booking of a tour. I remember Jackie Nalpant was on the phone and Levine. I think that's basically right. I mean, you know, it's, it's one of these marriage kind of fights where it's like, whatever it was about wasn't really what it was about.

Cause I don't actually even remember what it was about, but the way you're saying it kind of sounds about right to me. And I just want anybody listening to know that when Kenneth, that if somebody, that if I go ape shit, it's like, if you were watching it from like 15 feet away, you'd be like, that's a very calm person over there. Why does everybody think he's going apeshit? Oh, anybody would have been scared in this circumstance. My version of apeshit only comes through in like a certain look in my eye that Kenneth could see.

I wasn't like, you know, flailing about. My wife gets mad at me because she says that she never gets to see me lose control. It's like she never gets to see me lose control. It's like, she, she never gets to sit like, uh, she's, she, at one point she was like, I'm never going to see you like get drunk and like, you know, dance around at the bar. Like if you, like, if I get to, if I get to, if I ever get too drunk, which I don't anymore, but even if I ever did, I just sort of, uh, I just sort of go, wow, I think I'm too drunk.

And then I go vomit and fall asleep. What did you learn from your relationship between you and Kenneth that you took with your wife? About relationships. That is a great question. My relationship with Kenneth is so different from my relationship with my wife that it's hard for me to actually, I don't know that I've ever, I don't know that I've ever thought about that. Which is shocking, actually. Because like, this is like kind of your first real, Kenneth was kind of, did you have a relationship during the early years with Kenneth? Or was Kenneth kind of your boyfriend? No, actually, when

Kenneth and I met, I was engaged to my now wife. Oh, okay. So you've always... Five years. It's pretty wild. It's like... I like i think about like you know communication

you know kenneth you brought a great point up like maybe how we communicate with people maybe that's what we forget how to communicate with people especially the people we love like you too like you and joey like we forgot communication do you think that was kind of the roots of you going to therapy kenneth or why did you go why did you decide to go to therapy? Oh yeah. Well, I went to therapy recently sort of, um, in the context of my marriage. Yeah. I needed to put some points on the board so that everybody knew I was, you know, doing the, like, um, doing, uh, you know, all the work that I should be doing. But that sounds so transactional. It was also about time.

I should have been doing this for the last 15 years, but I was never doing it. And now I'm a devotee. But that part about communication, I think that the, the tricky part is that like, um, youth is a real sneaky son of a bitch.

Yeah. And kind of, and can kind of fuck everybody up. Cause so much of communication I find is like, um, uh, my experience my primary experience with relationships my entire life both all the romantic ones i've had my now marriage and the one with joey is that like the the single biggest component for me that has impact is how... I guess it's a function of ego, like the continuum of ego and how much of your life revolves around you.

And what that can do to change your perception of the people around you and what they need from you and what you need to give to them and what you need to learn from them. you need to give to them and what you need to learn from them. And if I think about the point in 2009 that I arrived at with Joey Ryan, I can think of like a clear 10 year narrative of like the person that I kind of had to be to get there. This person that was trying to make a solo career in music in the 2000s in Los Angeles. And like what stupidity and craziness that you know like that entails and um i don't think that you have to be a selfish

like egocentric person but you have to be like intensely interested in your own expression and what you're doing you know there's there's a part of having to believe in yourself that's complicatedly wrapped up in like the way that you view you and the amount of bandwidth you have for the rest of the world and if i had to do it all over again i would try to find a healthier line to ride between like how much attention do you need to pay to yourself and your aspirations and what you need to express and and like at what cost is that coming what what other parts of the world are you silencing and not seeing because you have to have that in front of you but when i think about that like i feel like i very naturally came upon that, that that was my big burden to bear in youthfulness, is that you feel like the whole world hangs in the balance. When you get older, you look back and you go, wouldn't have mattered how that shit turned out.

But back in the moment, it's literally life and death. literally life and death. And that certainly has been the key to my relationship with Joey and the key to my presently successful marriage is being able to have some control over how much space you need in the world and how much attention you've got to consider to the people that are also in your world and how that functions and how that is i mean the worst one with joey was one time i decided we were on a week-long tour and i decided to give him the silent treatment we had like six shows in seven days and i decided i wouldn't speak to him because clearly that's the healthy thing to do

and to my credit he didn't notice for three days that I wasn't speaking to him which clearly was also part of the problem but then once he noticed I rejected the story once he noticed that might have been one of the most foul things that anybody's ever done to him because it really got under his skin. And then the next three days. Didn't you ever notice? Didn't you ever think about or notice that that was just me giving you space? truly and but then once he noticed then i had the upper hand because boy was i under his skin but then i couldn't hold out so then we had like this knock down drag out fight while driving into newport folk festival 2014 where you know we finally started talking about whatever was bothering both of us that led to such stupid behavior. And we only got like, you know,

10% of the way into the communication before arriving at Newport, where both of our families had flown in on mass to share a beach house for the weekend. We're so proud of you. This is going to be a big gig for all you guys. You're like, fuck this guy, fuck this guy. Fuck this guy. So basically, we made it to Newport. It's going to be our last gig. Yeah. Anyway, we hopped

out of the car and immediately kind of both turned political and played nice to get through the gig. And then we either didn't speak for many months. I think I canceled all the shows we had for the rest of the year. We were on ice and had to figure out how to get back from it. But literally, a bad miscommunication could have been totally solved differently just if I had better communication skills.

had better communication skills and in the many moments leading up to that kind of thing expressed you know what was going on and asked for help like something that i just don't think would happen now because i'm 10 years older and know some shit that i don't know back then but that's that's crazy to think about to me those you know, do you think we have to deflate ego to actually listen? Oh, definitely. You know, I think the other thing is that it's wonderful to be on the other side of that. I spent so many years I've been

talking about this a lot because it's changed my life, is that I spent so many years on stage in a certain state of mind. I was constantly occupied with what i thought the audience thought of us um i was hyper focused we just play on one microphone and kind of the biggest variable in our four elements is my guitar and so i was constantly like trying to mix our band by moving the guitar closer and and further back because i was trying to attain this

this like state of perfection or something that held meaning for me and i was worried about executing the guitar the way i wanted and the way that people would perceive that and then covid happened and we couldn't play shows and 15 months went by and then joey and i got back on stage and the first time i got back on stage with him i noticed that i didn't wasn't thinking about any of those i was just listening to my friend and kind of like feeling joy about singing with him and making music with him and all of a sudden like this attention that I had been paying for 10 years here was completely different.

All I was paying attention to was to this small thing here. I was so much happier. And that was a year and a half ago now. And it was the greatest gift given to me because I find myself, when I'm self-conscious or when the pressure's on or something, I feel myself like trending back towards those things. And all I have to do is like, no, just like play these little songs with this guy and sing with him because that's all that it is.

It doesn't need to be anything different than that. That's what's carried you this whole way. That's what's magical about it. And just remember that and give yourself over to that. declaring that like an actual gift that I received from the universe, like a magic trick. All of a sudden it was all this stuff. And then you don't need to be concerned with that anymore. Just be present, be content, do the thing. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Why is it so hard to be present?

That's what it's like. We're always thinking about the bigger picture, the bigger picture, the bigger picture. Why can't we just like fine tune, just focus on what makes us happy? We always thinking about the bigger picture the bigger picture the bigger picture why can't we just like fine-tune just focus on what makes us happy we always think about all that other shit like you guys are brothers i feel like this is like a therapy session i love this thank you for letting me talk about this with y'all joy is it hard for you to communicate as well or is it was it always hard to communicate with kenneth or is it it was easier for you to tell him how you feel? Joey's very repressed.

I don't really say how I feel very often. I'm not a big feelings guy, which is something I'm working on in therapy. My therapist always, she asks me, if I say something that happened, she'll ask how I feel about it. And then I usually give an answer that is addressing what I think about it, and then she'll let me get to the end,

and she'll go, yeah, but like, you know, I can see that you're processing it and all of those things make sense, but like, just if you could get back before all of that processing, how do you feel? That question hardly even makes sense to me, which is funny for, I guess, a songwriter. I like getting my feelings out in the form of poetry set to melody. So I don't say how I feel before i think about it quite a lot you know i have to think about it quite a bit before i uh say how i feel and and sometimes i've actually always held that up as like a um positive trait you, to be able to, like, not necessarily act, you know, emotionally or to be more rational or whatever. And I think sometimes that's true. But I've also learned,

you know, just by getting older that some, you know, that emotions are no less valid than your rational thoughts. And they, you know, they, they are also there to, you know, they're telling you something there. You have them for a reason and they're important and they need to be

acknowledged. And so, so I'm working on that side of things. He's like a robot struggling to recite the lesson he was told to tell the humans. Yeah, it's very, no, it is. It's very hard for me. It's very against my nature. But what you said just now, Andy, was that, you know, we are like brothers or seem like brothers.

And I think that that is true. And like, to me, the way that I was raised, it was like, our family, our family unit was very kind of insular. And like, there's like a big divide I've noticed for me psychologically between people that are like family. I mean, like people that are family and people that are not. And I think for me, the biggest like evolution and the way that my marriage with my wife and my relationship with Kenneth have sort of existed in relation to each other and then informed each other and then and then uh informed each other is that um at a certain point

um you know kenneth became you know family right me and i think uh because there was always that divide there in that wall there i think to some degree may i had had different expectations for what the communication was supposed to be between two people who are like friends and working together compared to people who are like family, which means that there's something unconditional, permanent, and like just taken for granted about it like there's there's a little something different there and i think it was a a shift for me at some point some years ago to to recognize and allow the idea that like actually our relationship is a family kind of relationship

and it's more than what a friendship is or a business relationship and a creative partnership. And that like, actually, we're family. And when I realized that, then, from my perspective, that changed a lot of things about the way that I was able to communicate, but not just communicate, like sit from my direction, but also to receive communications from Kenneth, you know, in a totally different context and lens. So yeah, that was easier for me to do with my marriage because to me, that's like what a marriage is like by definition, that's what you're saying is that we're going to become family. But, but yeah. So yeah, to go back to your previous question you know what that's fucking growth baby that's family, I love it

I fucking love it Joey, see we're communicating this is good because Kenneth is producing these songs these very intimate songs you write Joey how hard is it to communicate oh maybe he's not doing it the direction you want on your songs or what not

don't Kenneth don't you take the final lead on a lot of these on this record yes by decision and prior to that no and I would file that into the category of everything that we just talked about is that we didn't have the somehow

didn't have the communication skills to like help formalize many of the tendencies that we had so like some of our earlier records there would be places where we would get like hemmed up because we were co-producing and there was a certain implication of like what those responsibilities are and what the decision making is, but it was more complicated than that. Not to cut you off, but this goes to that 80, 20 thing you were saying before,

where it's like in the vast, in the broad swath of existence, like, you know, it's, it's more of our natural state for like Kenneth to take is sort of, you know it's it's more of our natural state for like kenneth to take a sort of you know to run point on things and then the and then at some point if we get there like i like to you know exert my myself in the situation uh and i feel like that's maybe what you know maybe that's how the creative

process goes because it's not the answer to your question and is no it's not hard for me to collaborate with a person who's got you know tons of great ideas all the time and interested in making you know a great recording of a song that i care about whether i started the song or whether he did um and it's also not hard at some point if there's some some aspect of the production or whatever that i care about to you know to say that too uh so no i think our, you know, our working relationship creatively actually has always been

very functional to me. And it's never more so than on this last record. And I think defining the role that we're going to be in the role of producer was a big part of that. So, actually, all this sort of personal emotional communication stuff Joe Angelo and Chris Lawrence. We need you to help us save the world and spread the word.

Please subscribe, rate the show, give us those crazy stars, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you're picking this shit up. Follow us on Instagram at World Saving Podcast for more info and updates. Presco's blogs and tour dates you'll find at andyfresco.com. And check our socials to see what's up next.

Might be a video dance party, a showcase concert, that crazy shit show, or whatever springs to Andy's wicked brain. And after a year of keeping clean and playing safe, the band is back on tour. We thank our brand new talent booker, Mara Davis.

We thank this week's guest, our co-host, and all the fringy frenzies that help make this show great. Thank you all. And thank you all for listening. Be your best. Be safe. We will be back next week. No intervals are apt to make enough of this podcast.

We know any similarity, but we'll call it facts of Vegas. We're going to go into depth now. Hi. Hi, Lindsay. Okay, sorry. This is my wife who's on recorded Zooms all day, and now that I'm on

one, she's just walked in totally violating the Zooms. Although it has been an hour, and I'm going to have to go in a moment. Yeah, I got one more question after this, but continue what you're saying, Kenneth.

And then, um, well, what I was saying was, um, Oh, that we do feel that way about this album. And this'll be,

uh, maybe a controversial take, but I do mean it. There's a, there's a magic on our first album and maybe our second album that we both recognize and like, but I do think that our entire recorded history as a band is kind of marked by untapped potential. I don't think we ever made a record that lived up to our lives shows, or we never really made a record like you know when i think of the

miseducation of lauren hill to me i'm like i could spend a year listening to that album and going deep and and and inhabiting in a way because of what i think is all of the dna that she put into that record that's worthy of that when i think of of Milk Carton Kids records, I think we've done a very successful job of a snapshot in time that if it's something that resonates with you, it'll get you off to the races, but maybe it's not worthy of that much time or thought. It's just not as robust as some of the great albums of history, the things that have like really moved and, and changed me. Um, but I think that for the first time, Joey and I found some way to engage on a level where we could attempt that.

And I don't think that we had necessarily achieved it, but like all of our previous records, we would make live in the studio for three days and and they were just a capture of a ship in motion. And the times that we've slowed down enough to try to intentionally make an album, I think we haven't quite erected something that nuanced and full. And I think this time we got closer than we've ever gotten um and so like that feels like an interesting and fun and new part like point of departure for our our um artistic collaboration and i think it's like closer to what our live show has been for many years and i'll tell you what the like the place where the most friction has ever happened is as joey and i over thousands of iterations continue to define and redefine what a milk

carton kids show is and what it means artistically and what it means musically and because there's so many repetitions it doesn't have to be something that you can like you necessarily have to talk about and execute it's something that you can just do and and you can you know it's like sports that way you can have literally physical reactions you can make micro adjustments based on the way that it went in cleveland and it's a slow thing that's evolves and like is impacted by all the things around that health of the people doing it, what's going on in the world, blah, blah, blah. But I think that our live show has always been a pretty elevated artistic expression. And this is the first time I recorded music has ever

even approached catching up to that. And I think it's new and validating space for us, because I think we're capable of it. But we never really, I mean, we started the band in 2009 and I immediately moved to New York. Yeah. We would spend 120 shows on the road, but the minute that the work required of us was done, we would get on an airplane and go to different sides of the country and speak as little as possible. Yeah, I hear that. It's evolving. Keep evolving. Keep growing as musicians. Keep trying to figure out how to emulate that live magic. That is that magic that makes you guys who you guys are. I'm really excited that you

are evolving and keep growing. So thanks for being on the show. Joey, keep rocking. Kenneth, keep fucking shit up. Let's go, baby. Keep doing the thing. And good luck out there. And I'll see you down the road, guys.

Enjoy yourselves. Thanks, Izzy. Great to talk to you. Take care, buddy. I feel better now. All right. Fuck yeah. I'll send you an invoice. Later, guys. Later. Bye, buddy. I feel better now. All right. Fuck yeah. I'll send you an invoice.

Later, guys. Later. Bye, guys. You tuned in to the World's Heavy Podcast with Andy Fresco. Thank you for listening to this episode produced by Andy Fresco, Joe Angelo and Chris Lawrence. We need you to help us save the world and spread the word. Please subscribe, rate the show, give us the crazy stars, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you're picking this shit up. Follow us on Instagram at world saving podcast for more info and updates.

Prescott's blogs and tour dates you'll find at andyfrescott.com. And check our socials to see what's up next. Might be a video dance party, a showcase concert, that crazy shit show or whatever springs to Andy's wicked brain. a showcase concert, that crazy shit show or whatever springs to Andy's wicked brain. And after a year of keeping clean and playing safe, the band is back on tour. We thank

our brand new talent booker Mara Davis. We thank this week's guest, our co-host and all the fringy frenzies that help make this show great. Thank you all. And thank you for listening. Be your best, be safe and we will be back next week. No animals were harmed in the making of this podcast

as far as we know. Any similarities, interactions, or knowledge, facts, or fake is purely coincidental.