Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - EP 148: Dave Schools (Widespread Panic) Round 4

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

A call from his manager clues Andy into some good news for the band (& some REALLY good news for the German swinging community). We check in with our listenership to see how everyone's doing. And on the Interview Hour we welcome back the Obi-Wan to our Skywalker: Dave Schools! Andy and Dave go deep to talk on the legacy of Neal Casal, and discuss the new compilation album honoring his music and his enduring influence on us all. Dolav joins us to talk sports in a calm, cool, & collected manner. It's EP 148 yo. Follow us on Instagram @worldsavingpodcast For more information on Andy Frasco, the band and/or the blog, go to: AndyFrasco.com Check out Andy's new song, "Friends (A Song About Friends)" on iTunes, Spotify  Stream Highway Butterfly now: https://open.spotify.com/album/5AX09rVNqMNqtzOyRhrLSK Produced by Andy Frasco Joe Angelhow Chris Lorentz Audio mix by Chris Lorentz TW : Discussion of suicide Featuring: Brian Schwartz Dieter, The German Swinger Dolav Cohen Arno Bakker

Hey, it's Schwartz. Good and bad news. Good news is that we're most likely going to go back to Europe in April. Restrictions are loosening. Bad news is you can't do some of the personal stuff you wanted to do. And as a reminder, and now that you know this may happen, please don't set up church visits where you know, where you're pretending to be a priest and holding mass or court, whatever it's called, and please no sex parties. I know that you thought that that was fun last time, but it's kind of disgusting and

also dangerous, and we're still in a pandemic. Thanks, dude. Please get back to me and let me know we're on the same page that you're holding, April. Hello, Andy. My name is Dieter. I'm from Hungary. And now that the travel restrictions are lifted, I would love if you would come to my country and play a party of mine.

Every Friday night, I have a sex party in my house with a bunch of men and women fucking and sucking each other. And I would love it if you guys would just come to my house and play some background music like dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, dos, and really get everybody going as a fucking sucky shadow. So give me a call back. Call Dieter, baby. And we're back.

Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast. I'm Andy Frasco. How's our heads doing? Are we staying out of trouble? Are we taking some time fucking off for yourself? God damn it. Do I got to play the music? Take some time for yourself.

Seriously. Life happens fast. It's already November, people. It's already fucking November. This is insane to me that life is flying by. And if you overwork yourself, you're going to get to December and you'll be like, fuck off. No, I'm just kidding. I'm telling you, man.

Life happens really quick. And it happens quicker when you're staying busy and you're doing a bunch of shit. Maybe you're doing some stuff for everyone else and sometimes you forget about yourself. Well, I'm here to tell you, don't forget about yourself. You got to take care of yourself. I am out here. I'm in Denver, Colorado.

I'm at four days off from the band. And I went home and I'm into interview mode. I interviewed like 10 people this week, which are all fucking crazy big interviews. You're going to be proud. crazy big interviews. You're going to be proud. Your boy Frasco. We're becoming interviewers. That's what's up. Let's go.

People want to talk. But it's nice to do that stuff and get your mind off the music. I've been thinking about music every goddamn day for eight weeks. And sometimes you need to take some time for yourself and do other things. It's okay. You don't have to be completely obsessed with your dreams.

I was talking to Butch Walker, one of my heroes when I was a kid. He was an amazing producer. Wrote songs for Alvin Levine, Pink, and all my favorite pop punk bands and he's an incredible producer. He also has his own band, but he was telling me like, you know,

when you fill your stuff every day with your dream, which is like the double-edged sword, this is what you want to do is fill your head with your dream and be obsessive about your passions and stuff. But when you think about it too much, you start losing the passion and you start not appreciating that you are in your dream. So don't forget to delegate some time for yourself.

And if you're working a nine to five and you fucking hate your job, you better fucking delegate some time off. Shit. If you are fucking miserable in your job or your relationship and you feel like you're trapped, you know, sometimes you just can't just throw the towel.

It's like irresponsible on shit. You just got to make sure you take some time for yourself. It's just, it's too important. Your life is important. Your life is important. And if you're afraid to talk about it, then we need to fight that stigma of worrying what people think about your shitty emotions

and not just your good emotions. We're going to have bad thoughts. We're human. That's why I got Dave Schools. I interviewed Dave. He put out the new Neil Casale record. Dave, he put out the new Neil Casale record. And this interview you're about to listen to is very heavy, very intense, but it needs to come out because we need to fight the stigma that we only are allowed to express publicly our good thoughts. It doesn't matter. We can build this facade on Facebook and Instagram and build this facade as musicians that everything is fine. We're living our dreams. We're focused

on our past. So AKA, that means we should be happy. Or are we? We're going to go through dry spells and wet, not dry and wet spells, but you know what I'm saying. We're going to go through dry spells and wet, not dry and wet spells, but you know what I'm saying? We're going to go through spells of this depression as humans, emotionally. Maybe we've, you know, lowered our dopamine from alcohol and drugs like myself sometimes, or sometimes we've lowered our dopamine because we've given our, our being, our soul to everyone else but ourselves. And what's that going to do? Leave us feeling empty, leave us feeling lonely, leave us feeling not able to talk and communicate to anyone about our feelings because you're going to be, you know, judged. We're afraid to be judged about feeling depressed and feeling a level of dopamine

that we usually get from shows but can't. This is why this Neil conversation is so important to me and so important to Dave and how this record is important. Because the legacy of an artist is important. We need to fight the stigma because the legacy of an artist is important. We need to fight the stigma that sad thoughts aren't normal because they are fucking normal. Stop listening to Instagram. Stop listening to Facebook.

Let's start listening again to our souls, and if we need help, let's get help. I was just talking to my buddy this morning. You know, this guy's always so happy. Always so happy. Always gives me, when I'm feeling low, I hit him up. And he pumps me up and tells me I don't have anything to worry about. This is the first time I really felt like he had a dark cloud on his head.

Because he was afraid to be vulnerable how he felt because everyone he thought everyone's excuse me i got a hiccup i'm drinking this uh turmeric fucking gross ass healthy drink and just it's fucking gross uh but i'm trying to stay healthy but he was saying he's afraid to go to anyone because he doesn't want to be judged or feel like the petty or the pity of being somebody, a burden. That's the word I'm looking for. And that's, we got to stop that feeling because if we're going to keep suppressing and keep suppressing our feelings, we're going to forget who we are. You know, forget who that soul was when was Before we had all these complications of getting older And fucking overworking it

Thinking about everyone else When we were a kid we were thinking about ourselves And we were fucking happy We were happy, we were fucking jolly Swinging, eating ice cream every fucking day I would dream to have that fucking life again We gotta get back to that Inner joy

And the only way we can get back to it is when we feel accepted. So if you have anyone dealing with suppression, like ourselves or your friend or someone who's just always been depressed, we need to start fighting that stigma and having a communication and a non-biased communication about our feelings. That's the only way we're going to make it through this thing. It's too hard out there now with the news and social media and everyone, they're throwing happiness at your face wherever you go. And that's wrong.

And I do it too sometimes. And I apologize if I keep on pushing happiness when you aren't feeling happy. Maybe you're annoyed of me always trying to pump you up, but I'm trying to get us out of this idea that we're only going to talk about the good things because we need to talk about the heavy things. We need to talk about the things that make us a fucking human.

We're living in the clouds all the time And for us to suppress only the bad feelings is fucked up And I don't want that to happen to anyone So we could have a different approach on how we can fight mental illness And how we can fight just being ourselves again Do I have to play the fucking music? Hey boys and girls, everybody. Let's fucking do this. Let's stop being afraid to be ourselves again.

Because we are in this shit together, goddammit. So fucking stay strong. And don't let anyone tell you you can't do anything. Because it's fucking bullshit. Because if people tell us we can't do anything, then we suppress. You can do anything you want This is your life No one else's

So don't forget to fucking love yourself again Because you deserve the love Just as much as you giving love to your grandma Or your depressed mom Or depressed friend You deserve to have that too So let's start having Open communication About all our feelings Okay you deserve to have that too. So let's start having open communication

about all our feelings. Okay, I love you. How's everyone doing? Everyone good, hopefully? After I just lectured myself, really, because I get in these ruts too, where I'm like, fuck. You know, it's all in my head.

It's all just like I'm making trauma in my head to entertain the idea that I'm sad, you know, and I'm just pushing, I'm putting more mayo on the sandwich. And, um, I gotta stop doing that. We just gotta understand that feelings come and go. And we could, if we could just release our shoulders, take a deep breath and realize this isn't going to be forever if I choose to live in the present. We got to live in the present. I got shows coming up next week. Oh, by the way, I was in Denver. Shout out to the Nuggets. Thank you, Nuggets. They gave me tickets to the game, and they put my name.

They gave me a big old welcome home sign at the Nuggets game, and I brought Dope a pod there in town still. It was just nice to know that I have a city that loves me and appreciative to what I'm trying to bring to the community. So shout out, Nuggets. Thank you. I'm not going bring to the community. So shout out Nuggets. Thank you. I'm not going to be a Nugget fan, but... Actually, that's a lie. I am going to be a Nugget fan.

All right, let's address this. I will be a Nugget fan for every other game besides the Lakers. If they play the Lakers, you're my enemy for 24 hours, or if it's a series, you're my enemy for a week and a half. I hope you don't take that personally, but I will root for your boys. Joker, I love it. I saw that motherfucker and his brothers back Joker up, which was tight. I was at that game where Joker pushed down a Laker and I actually was on the Nuggets side. So call it what it will, but I will call it, I am turning into a Nuggets fan, But you can't take my loyalty from the Lakers

So let's go You got Frasco's vote You got him So stupid We got some shows coming up next week Birmingham, Alabama On the 17th Tickets aren't that good

Every time, you know, some cities You play during the week Or you play during the weekend, it some cities, you play during the week or you play during the weekend, fucking sold out. Play during the week, no one shows up. And I get that nine to fivers and stuff. But come on out, come see your boy. This is the last time I'm playing in Birmingham for a long time. And then I'm in Asheville, North Carolina at the salvage station on the 18th. That shows something pretty good. I don't really go to Asheville that much. I've been trying to go more,

but I'm proud of that, that people are buying tickets to that show. Atlanta, Georgia on Friday. Can't wait to go to Atlanta. I love Atlanta. I'm going to try to hit a Hawks game. And then the 20th, I'm in Nashville, which I can't wait,

because I'm going to be there for like four days, three days after. I'm going to interview some people and I'm also going to meet the Titans, the Tennessee Titans. I got my buddy who works for the industry, got me tickets to see the Titans. So I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to the men's national game on the 23rd in Nashville for soccer. They're setting me up on like a little sports tour then i fly to la to go see my parents can't wait to see them and we might be doing a dance party

november 27th um before we start our final two weeks of tour damn this thing flew by i'm telling you like i said before life flies so make sure you love every second of it. Speaking of life flying you by, Repsy.com. Yes. You think like, wow, what kind of transition is that? But when you're working on your grind, you don't think about the show six months from now.

You know who will think about those shows six months from now? Repsy.com. Yes. Boys, girls, bands, comedians, DJs, jugglers. Maybe you could... Yo, yo. Damn, you should put a category on for miscellaneous entertainers like jugglers, hula hoopers and shit. Sign up your art to Repsy.com. hula hoopers and shit. Sign up your art to Repsy.com. It's a win-win. They're going to help you find gigs. They're going to help you get some frat parties too. I heard the frat party's been

playing a pretty popping. So I want to get on one of those. Hook me up, Repsy. Hook me up. Yeah, sign your band up. I talk about this every week, but it's so important. You know, your agents, even if you're in a band, you have an agent, they're working their ass off on all 10 of their clients, not just you. So it might as well get another guy in the corner to fucking help you. You could say no to the gigs if you want. And if you have an agent, they're not taking a cut. And if you do, if you do have an agent, they're not taking a cut. And if you do, if you do have an agent, they're not taking a cut. If you don't have an agent, take a little cut, whatever. Let's get the help. Let's get these bands. I think right now, small, it's hard. It's going to be very hard for small bands right now because all the big bands are going to take over the small cap rooms

and just play for it because, you know, shows all all around the world all around the genres aren't selling that good so the bigger bands are going to take less risk and just like pack out and sell out three nights at a 500 cap instead of doing one night at a 1500 2000 so you might as well get all the help you can get so sign up to repsy.com, get your band out there. And, um, they're good. And then they're good Southern Southern boys and girls. So they're real honest and they'll try their best to get you some shows. So that's it. Repsy.com. All right, guys, there's a big interview. Dave round four. I, uh, Nick lost the fucking hard drive and I had to fucking do this interview again. And you know, it's very hard to, And, you know, it's very hard to, you know,

I don't like to ask people too much about their traumas. And, you know, Dave is so, you know, as our relationship gets stronger, he's just getting more open with me. And, you know, it's like, so I ask him a little more deeper questions. And he was, you know, he was vulnerable. And he you know, it's like, so I asked him a little more deeper questions and he was, you know, he was vulnerable and he was vulnerable again. And it's gotta be hard to, you know, open up the closet again and talk about that stuff. But I really feel like he's, you're going to love this interview. He was honest, talked a lot about Neil, talked a lot about him and how hard it is to tour. There's a lot of knowledge nuggets in this episode, so I think you're going to love it.

So before I end my little monologue, stay happy, stay inspired, give yourself some time. Don't let anyone tell you you can't do anything because you can. Do whatever the fuck you want. We could be trapped in our heads. Take the microscope away and realize, look how many people around you that are there for you. And if they're not, I'll talk to you.

A therapist will talk to you. You're never alone with your thoughts. If you can't afford therapy, then there's programs where you could get backline.org. Pretend, just tell them,

or backline.care, sorry, and need shelter who, Mickey was on the show last week. They're going to help you. You know,

you can't, you don't know what's going to happen if you don't ask. You know, what's that saying? You can't, I don't,

what is it? A closed mouth doesn't get fed or something. I don't You know, what's that saying? You can't. What is it? A closed mouth doesn't get fed or something. I don't fucking know, but you know what I'm saying. So find the help you need. Let's all fucking live long lives. Let's all live fucking badass lives. Let's all live lives that we are comfortable with and strong with.

Because at the end of the day, fuck everyone else. No one's going to feel the emotions you feel because it's your emotions. So let's start owning them, the good and the bad. Okay, enjoy my boy, Dave Schools, my mentor, and I talk again for round four. Have a great day, and I'll again for round four and have a great day. And I'll catch you on the table.

All right. Next up on the interview hour, we got our dude, Dave schools from widespread panic, bass player of widespread panic. Also an amazing producer. I'm not just saying that because he produced the last two of our records but he is working on a neil casal tribute record that came out on friday it's amazing and i know how much it means to my boy dave this record and how much neil meant to him in this interview we go through everything everything. We go through the stigma of mental health. We go through the process of making a record like this, even through quarantine, and making his legacy, Neil's legacy, what it should be and what it deserves to be.

So, Chris, play a little bit of that Neil record and enjoy my interview with one of my mentors and brothers on the road of life, Mr. Dave Schools. But I don't see you crying. It can't be that bad for you. If I don't see you crying and falling too fast. Finding out the hard way. It's tough to make a good thing last. I'm recording. Round seven of this same

conversation. Yes. You're at space camp right now? At space camp. Oh my God. What are you doing out there? Oh, well, this is our studio. Really? Did you meet Jason Reed when you were at Prairie Sun? Yeah. It wasn't our you met him he was

helping um he basically took over kitaro's home studio and we call it space camp hold on you got a laboratory we have a laboratory a nerdatorium as it's called dave you never told me this what this is awesome we've been so busy we haven't had a chance to sit down and talk. I know. Tell me about this. Why did you want to get a studio rocking? Because we can do whatever we want here. Oh, yeah.

You see this ARP behind me? Yeah, what is that? That's a... Tell me what it is, Jason. It's the voice of R2-D2, an early 70s semi-modular synthesizer. Made by A-R-P synthesizer made by ARP. Now Space Camp has the voice of Dave Schools. Let's fucking go. Let's do this, dude.

Bravo. Bravo. Are you going to be producing records from here? Already are. Which ones? Tell me. We finished up the Farmer Dave and the Wizards of the West record, which is in mastering now. It's called Second Summer.

That was kind of the first thing we did here. We just did eight tracks for Greg Loyacano of the Mother Hips with Scott Hirsch producing. That was the first full, like, you know, four-piece tracking session. Yeah. Sounds great. Presently, we are finishing up the Alex Cooford record we started at prairie sun about a year ago holy crap so what's the difference of like having your own space and like being a producer playing in your own space versus like trying to find like the sounds in a different. What do you like better? I like paying rent to a landlord far better than paying for hours in a recording studio.

Because here we can control the time frame. Yeah. We can control everything. Yeah. We even have a vocal booth on wheels that we can roll around the main room. How big is the main room? Oh, it's an aircraft hangar holy shit dave is this by your house are you is it close to your house three miles from my house maybe eight miles from jason's house oh my miles something like that

you got to be the happiest fucking guy right now you get a studio pretty happy like yeah it's amazing well you'll have to come check it out i mean no it's it it might be too peaceful of a vibe for andy frasco in the un you know it's out here in sonoma county amongst the apple orchards yeah you know it's it's very peaceful guitarro left his new age peaceful vibe in here. We hear the sounds of crystals twinkling in the corners of the room, but we like to make some fucking noise here. Jason designs pedals that make noise. We ram noise into artists' music, whether they like it or not, because noise is the best part.

So maybe, I don't know i mean you'd certainly feel at home barefoot and around here tell you that hey tell me about who's kataro i don't know anything about this kataro is a japanese musician who is best known for sort of creating uh symphonic new age music in the 80ies, very keyboard oriented, very orchestrated. Um, and he just, he lived out here in, in Sonoma County for a while,

um, working in the woods here, making music. And he'd go and tour the world with oftentimes with, uh, orchestras. Wow. But he,

he left and he went back to Japan and the woman that bought the property isn't a recording engineer. She doesn't collect cars. Yeah. So there's this amazing place that Katara basically built with his own two hands. Um, and just tons and tons of gear,

a beautiful Yamaha grand piano. Um, and you know, Jason and I, he wants some of his gear back. Some of it, we don't know what the fate of it will be, but we have plenty and we're integrating fully. And it is just, you know, Jason's an Ableton genius and a Pro Tools genius.

And he loves to rip apart analog things and circuit bend them or fix them or make them noisier. Have you recorded here before? Me? Yeah. Personally? Yeah, personally. I did cut.

I was the bass player on that Greg Loiacano session. Oh, my God. Sick. Man, Dave, you're a fucking producer, bro. I love. No, but for real. It's just like I love seeing this side of your life. You know, a lot of people see you just on stage, like, and I see the joy that you have

in the studio. You know, it's like, what do you, what do you like in more of these things? Oh, I mean, barring the schlep, the travel, I'll, I'll always love playing on stage. Yeah. Always. Yeah. You know, it's, it's being the bass player for widespread panic is what I've done my whole life.

Yeah. Really? Since I was 19 years old. I mean, that's basically my entire adult life. Um, but to quote our recording engineer friend, Rick Vargas,

who likes to refer to himself as a recording enabler. Yeah. I like the production. I like enabling people i like you know i mean every artist is different in so many ways yeah so many ways some of them want their hand held some of them just want somebody to approve of their ideas now some of them want their ideas bounced back and and fixed in a lot of ways or shown how to make a professional sounding recording. And I really get a lot of joy out of meeting all these different artists,

trying to like get their vision over the finish line. Sometimes it's easier. You know, you're a hustler. You have definitive ideas about what you want out of a song and you will get that, you know, and you'll get it across the finish line. Other people really don't know, and they play games with themselves. They play games with other people. Sometimes they need a little bit of a whip crack, you know,

to get their ass in gear. But they're all just artists, you know, and to me that's joyful to watch somebody who's capable of writing a song, hear it emanating from the speakers in the studio or cranking it up on the bigs out in the tracking room and watching everybody just dance. Yeah. Thrilled with the sound of an idea that came from someone's head. Well. You know how that feels. Yeah.

sound of an idea that came from someone's head well you know how that feels yeah what do you remember your first moment of being that artist and hearing yourself in that in a studio like what was what was that record where were you what studio it was probably the first widespread panic record um john keen's studio and it was he's so good John Keene is so good and this was like 1988 or 89 yeah and just hearing that intro of the song chilly water you know when the drums come in and they get the psychedelic guitar wash comes in it's like wow you know it's very different than the record I made with my high school band at the singer's uncle's house, which was cool, but there was no real production. It was capturing a band. And sort of the same thing with the very first Widespread Panic 7-inch.

Yeah. It was with a different producer, and it was no less amazing to hear it on the playback, but no, to hear what John Keene did with capturing sounds and then elevating them, knitting them together and like understanding like what the band was about. Totally. To hear that wash out of the speakers was pretty darn amazing. What'd you learn from John? So like, you know that,

because as a producer now, it's like you take a lot of the advice that you learned when you were the kid turning into like from garage band into this full production type of record? What did you learn from John to get musicians to settle their shoulders a little bit to let that happen? The fine art of dry sarcasm. Like what?

What would he do? Well, it's just bedside manner. I mean, he would never fluff anyone up but there would be times you know where some chord would go by and we'd never recorded the song we'd only played it in bars yeah and he'd go what chord was that sounds like c minor demolished yeah you know or one time we were like really excited we had this super long song and we're like, John, we've, we're going to like record this song. And he's like that one, that song's like, songs like 15 minutes long and like, yeah, but we found a way to shorten it. Just give us a shot.

Let us record it. And so we went and we played it. We're super excited. Finish the take. The last note dies out. And we're like, John, what'd you think? And you hear this long pause and then the talkback turns on. You hear, it was 13 minutes long.

And then the talkback just turns off. Or the first time he tried to make us play with a click track. What was that like? We tried and we just stopped. And you hear Mikey Hauser go, John, this click track is speeding up, slowing down. And you hear the same like long pause and then click, sigh. It's a machine, Mikey.

It doesn't speed up or slow down. And far filthier things that I can't really tell even though it's your podcast I don't think John would appreciate it but bedside manner yeah you know like like I don't know you know every producer every engineer has their thing yeah um when the hard-working Americans were making the first record a lot of times Neil Casale would do some production work. You know, if I was like cutting a baseline, he'd be the guy that I was like super psyched about sitting at the console. And I'd finish and he'd go, okay, that's great.

Bring your stuff. You know, that meant you're done. Pack up, get the fuck out. And I loved that. I don't know who he got it from. It could have been anyone. Could have been Rick Rubin. Could have been Jim Scott. bring your stuff you know that meant you're done pack up get the fuck out and i loved that yeah i don't know who he got it from it could have been anyone could have been rick rubin could have been jim scott could have been georgio marauder i don't know neil's been in the room with so many great producers too right well i know that one story this guy tim hockenberry who was the singer in

the mickey hart band yeah called me up i was at tri doing something for bob weir like why is tim hockenberry calling me what the hell and he goes hey i'm doing this session at for rick rubin and uh i can't tell you who it's for but rick rubin's producing it and i think a friend of yours is here neil casale i'm like doesn't surprise me one bit, you know, that Neil would play for Rick because Jim engineered records. Jim Scott engineered records for Rick Rubin and Jim Scott trained Neil to be the amazing studio floor guy. Yeah.

Neil could get the take on the floor and then go in and record all four stacks of harmonies like that. Boom. What do you think he taught him to learn that? I think he taught him to just don't overcomplicate things. Serve the song. Yeah. Serve the song on the floor take simply. You know, that's what the great session player guys do

they bring their personality in without ego which is like a real balancing act yeah to serve the song i mean you're pretty much you're always going to be able to tell when it's just like keltner playing drums or you know or bob. Yeah. There's, even if it's the simplest thing, there's personality there so they don't sweat it. They're free to simply play what props up the vibe of the song best. And Neil was great with rhythm guitar. Yeah. And he was great with really patient, he was patient,

but his timing was flawless. He was like a, like a rudder on a ship yeah the timing how hard is it how you know like you've seen a lot of session guys you could tell which ones are good and which ones are not like it feels like all the good ones understand that you know like the time stuff absolutely i mean you're not going to find any bad ones. They don't last. They just get, they fall through the cracks for whatever reason. But the greatest ones have this ability to instill confidence in the artist. You just signed to Big Machine or something like that, you know, and you're just a young singer-songwriter that someone believes in, and you come into this session in Nashville,

and here are these guys that, like Gene Chrisman and Dave Rowe or whoever, might have played with Waylon Jennings and Chris Christopherson and Johnny Cash and Jerry Reed. You're just a crumpled up little scared shrinking violet until one of these guys said something that just breaks the ice. It just makes you feel like, oh, okay. You know, they've done this before, but that's session elevation. That's what Dave Rowe calls it, session elevation. Have you had an experience of that with your bands?

Where like you had to get a session guy or something and and then to break the ice or you've always had to know we wind up just giving them a bottle of booze or a joint and they come in and go oh this is crazy yeah we want you to play crazy i mean we just do everything ourselves i mean i sure i've worked with session guys mostly in nashville and they're total pros. Like I said, they wouldn't be on the list, and you wouldn't go hunting them down if they weren't excellent. Do you think that's the reason why you recorded this Neil record we're about to talk about in Nashville?

Well, we didn't record it in Nashville. Where'd you do it? It was done, the first 15 songs were done at Jim Scott's place in Santa Clarita. That's where I fucked up. I thought the whole, when you got, with that sign, with like that sign that had all the people you're recording, like you did one act a night. That was in Santa Clarita? That's Byers Studio. That's Jim Scott's recording Wonderland.

So you have, and he has that. Yeah. He puts your name up in lights. If you were to come there and say, welcome Andy Frasco and the UN and the thing would be blinking and you'd feel, that's the first thing you'd see when you walk in as your eyes drift from the Dolly Parton pinball machine up to your name in lights.

And immediately you'd feel great. And you'd feel like you belong there. That see, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about yeah did you build that environment in this studio well this studio is a little different i think when you drive through wonderland of sonoma county and yeah past an apple orchard into this little pocket canyon where we are it's a different thing man you just you feel at ease and at peace yeah it's i love it i mean it's the greatest feel in the world it's my i love studios yeah you know any studio i'll find something good in any studio unless it's just like a complete technical shit show yeah And we get nothing done.

Then I'm pissed and I'm never going back. Is there a magic? I think it'd be magic. It's kind of like when you're performing in new venues and venues you love. When you play at new venues or when you record at new studios, it just feels like you're more present because you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what type of sounds you're going to get. So you guys recording in Santa Clarita, this blows my mind.

I thought people were just coming from Nashville. You had all these Nashville acts fly to Santa Clarita to do this Neil Casale record. Yeah, that was part of it. It was Billy Strings and it was aaron lee taschen uh marcus does marcus lives in nashville doesn't marcus lives in nashville so yeah we had some people come from nashville but we had people also coming from upstate new york wow we had people just driving up from la people driving down from the bay, you know, the whole purpose of trying to do it there was we've all heard compilation records and tribute records.

And they're like a Whitman sampler. Yeah. There's no real what I call sonic continuity from song to song. You know, one guy might have recorded it in his bedroom on GarageBand. And the next guy might have rented out the electric lady land in new york city with a with an amazing batch of session guys yeah um and it's a real challenge for the mastering engineer put that together and sometimes it just sounds too disparate it's not a doesn't pull you into the whole experience and when we were conceiving this record we didn't think it was going to be 41

songs it's crazy we thought it was going to be like 20 songs maybe three records you know and uh and we were doing that song a day billy strings and circles around the sun were the first guys and after that first day we're like this is great and the next day i think leslie mendelson came in and and so on and so forth then we took a little break we came back and we did did Jesse Aycock and Lauren Barth and Victoria Reed. And then COVID started getting weird. And the last session we did before Jim and I decided to scuttle them because Newsom had just locked down California, basically. Yeah. Was Marcus and Kraz.

And so that was track number 14 or 15 and then it was like just on hiatus for a couple of months but if we could get everyone at jim's no matter whether they were super rockers or tender female balladeers jim has his studio the way he likes it and he is a Grammy award-winning sonic craftsman yeah he captures sounds and and has his thing that he does and so immediately we had 15 songs that all sounded terrific now once COVID shut everything down then it was a couple months really no one knew what was happening we were all in the same boat you were you were brilliantly dancing our cares away as it were thank you um a great way to lighten the load as it were because everybody felt burdened in one way or another but after a few months people started loosening up yeah and you know someone like warren haynes was like well

i feel pretty good about going to the carriage house i know the engineer we can get the place cleaned up the way that we all feel confident i'll get joey russo over there and danny lewis and john ginty uh and cut the track free to go and then send those tracks to Jim who mixes them. So that's the way it worked. Yeah. After, after COVID, there were maybe three or four more tracks that were done at Jim's with the original intent.

Yeah. But most of them were remotely recorded and some of them over, you know, used five studios. Dan, how, how hard was it sonically to get the mixes all rocking to make a record jim is he's great and as long as the the whoever the remote engineer was

recording at the right bit rate you know jim's like just capture the sounds honestly yeah you know i'm not going to tell you to use some kind of some other engineer set up on micing drums or this particular mic on vocal. Use your engineering skill, record as best you can and send me the tracks and I'll mix them as best I can. So it really worked. There were only a couple of artists that wanted their mix and we still heated them up a little bit.

And of course, Pete Lyman being a fantastic Grammy award-winning mastering engineer, did just an amazing job of stringing 41 songs together. Yeah. It was insane, really. 41 fucking songs, Dave. It's also, in a sense, where how do you even pick a song when all that whole catalog is so good like that feels like there's so much pressure on i don't know maybe just me just as your friend looking at this task you're going on on making a record for one of

your close friends and showing the music that is neilale. Like there's gotta been so much pressure of making it perfect. How, how was your mental stability through this whole record process? I gotta tell you, it was, it was great. You know, the only thing that I worried about was if the people who are closest to

Neil, that were the sort of production team, executive and, and producers, it would be Gary Waldman and Michelle August and myself and Jim Scott. And also the label guy, Kevin Calabro from Royal Potato Family, Missy Colazzo from The Orchard, the distributor. Everybody involved had known Neil. In fact, I probably was the one that knew Neil for the least amount of time out of all those people. So what worried me as the thing began to come to an end was, are we avoiding grieving?

We're so busy and there was so much great fellowship. watching the circles around the Sun guys, Jesse Aycock, Lauren Barth, Brent Rademacher, you know, people who had played in all kinds of bands with Neil, friends with Neil, neighbors. They got their chance to have fellowship and grieve, and, you know, that's all part of it is talking about somebody. Sharing memories. Getting angry, if need be, because suicides can make you angry. Yeah.

Very, you know, it's harsh. There's a lot of harshness. But Jim and Gary and Michelle and I were so busy putting it all together. You know, people were dealing with the logistics of travel, these artists and, um, you know, picking songs. Sometimes they pick songs for the artists.

Other times artists were having arm wrestling matches over songs that they wanted to do. I love that. Um, you know, and, and so that was my main worry. And I remember Jim Scott calling me as things were in the hands of the engineer.

And he's like, what are we going to do now? What do we do next? Finally cry. So, you know. Yeah. You know, it's, I know that for some people, they really have been unable to listen to the record. Even if they did a song for it so heavy um it's really heavy but to me it's joyful maybe i'm more pragmatic about death than others

i don't know what's your take i know that i have a i have a hard time grieving um and it'll come out sideways sooner or later. You know, I might push a grandfather clock down a flight of stairs rather than have a good cry, but that's just me. Yeah. Has it always been like that? Was it hard when your bandmate passed too? Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, it's so shocking. Yeah. You know, there's like a, it's almost like I have PTSD in light of somebody passing in a surprising way. You know, like if there's a long runway, like a landing strip for someone to pass, like your grandma. Yeah. You know, having a couple of strokes and becoming less able to care for herself over a year or two and then passing away it's like it's not pleasant yeah but everybody's pretty much prepared by the time the inevitable happens a suicide or a

shocking death a tragic unexpected surprising death it's just to me it's like i accept the news like when chris robinson called me, I was in Nashville. I just had a great day with Vance Powell and Billy Strings hanging out, talking about mental health, in fact. And I got back to my hotel room and Chris Robinson called and he told me that Neil had taken his own life. And nothing more needed to be said. You know, I wasn't, I was in disbelief, but I didn't disbelieve the news. Yeah. You don't understand?

Yeah, I hear that. And, and then, you know, this other part of me takes over where it's like, okay, I got to call people now. How hard was that? So I was on the phone for a couple of hours. That's hard, man. It's really hard. You know, it's hard to call someone like Dwayne Trucks, who was in a band, and I watched him and Neil Bond, and I watched them empty their wallets at record stores,

and I watched the arguments about trying to find the kind of restaurant that satisfies Southern meat-eaters like me and Dwayne, and little fancy boys like Neil and Jesse Aycock, who were looking for vegetarian rabbit food. Oh, and maybe some chai tea. Always accommodating, Dave. Always accommodating. But it's got to be tough.

It's got to be. Yeah, it's hip. It's hard. Yeah. I mean, have you had to ever be the guy that carries that news onto someone else? I haven't. That's why it's like I already have a hard time with my feelings,

and when bad things happen, it's hard for me to even have eye contact with people because intimacy is is like i hold people's emotions so heavy and when people are sad and and um i just i feel that stuff too and it's just like i don't want i i think you know if we're gonna get therapy on it i think i just don't want i i think you know if we're gonna get therapy on it i think i just don't want people to see me weak and we we think a stigma of crying is that makes us feel weak you know and it shouldn't it should be just a release it should be but there's also a thing about what's wrong with us that we need to make sure others are happy to be happy yeah you know when you say you hold other people's bad stuff or it it it makes it you know it makes me

sad when my wife is sad yeah but really i should just be like i'm can i if there anything i can do to help you feel better let me know yeah i shouldn't like we shouldn't be forcing our emotions to be a reflection of those around us yeah care about yeah that's a humanity thing i mean it does it it smacks of empathy which is great yeah but also you know in my experience with therapy i had a hard ass who would be like so what's wrong with with you when you feel like you have to go around fixing everybody? Well, it's, you know, and eventually you come to, I come to the conclusion that I depend on other people's happiness for my own. And that's not a good thing. You know, the deeper we go into this Gordian knot of how to fix ourselves or how to at least talk about what's wrong with ourselves,

it's deep, convoluted. You can't get a hot knife to cut through the knot. You just have to work it out. Yeah. Do you think that's why you wanted to go full steam ahead on making this record for his legacy? Possibly. I mean, I certainly helped avoid the grief for a year and a half.

But at the same time, this had been an ongoing thing with Neil and I where I was like, I was so taken with his last solo album. It's called Sweet in the Distance. Tom Monaghan produced it. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. And I think it really flipped a lot of people into being Neil Casale converts rather than that guy who plays with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals or the guy that's in the Chris

Robinson Brotherhood or the guy that shreds and hardworking Americans. That record was the first Neil Casale solo record I heard. And so for years I was bugging him. I know you're writing songs. Where are they? Let's hear them. So literally for two years, maybe even three, before he took his own life,

I had like 14 or 15 demos in various stages of development from, you know, a bedroom iPhone demo with an acoustic guitar all the way up to what sounds like it could have been, you know, a Tom Monaghan studio or somebody's studio, JP's studio in Ventura. Yeah. A demo. And I'd be like, let's do it.

I don't have to produce. Can I play bass? I don't have to play bass. Can we co-produce? What about if I got Circles Around the Sun to be the backup band? Wouldn't that be cool? And he's just, he was not confident about it.

I think he had been burned a lot. He had 14 records as a solo artist. He was a prototypical Americana singer-songwriter. Fadeaway Diamond Time came out in, I want to say, 92 or 94. And that's the record he made with basically Jackson Browne's band. Scott produced it. And, you know, time and time again, he never, in his his own mind knocked it out of the park as a solo artist was he hard and i wanted to he was very hard on himself and most people wouldn't have

gotten that ever he never would have allowed people to see that unless they were very very close but he was so good he didn't have to like you never saw him like picking himself for not being perfect you saw this confident guy you know if you hired him to be a session guy for one of your songs you'd be like that guy's really good really unique and an utter professional yeah you know he might be found inside his own head, walking circles in the parking lot going, ah, could have done that better. Ah, should have done that. But everyone else is like, bravo guy.

Yeah. Fantastic. So to get back to your question, I mean, I was, I was after him to work with him because he, he was no longer in the hardworking Americans. He had to leave the hardworking Americans because the scheduling was difficult with Chris Robinson Brotherhood traveling around the world. And hardworking Americans just wanted to do two or three weeks here and there. It was surprisingly hard to book. What, hardworking Americans?

Was hard to book. What, Hard Work in America? Was hard to book? Because everyone was everywhere? Yeah, I mean, everyone was everywhere, but Neil was playing a lot with Chris in the Brotherhood, so it became difficult. But yeah, I think when Gary asked me to co-produce this record, finally a chance to work with neil even if it's final yeah you know what i mean yeah so wow and and everybody needed it it was it was fantastic

before covid we really had this like bubble i call jim's the happiest place on earth you could see magic mountain from the the barbecue pit out on the roof of the place. My parents live like 30 minutes from there. Oh really? Yeah, Westlake. You understand what the happiest place on earth means. Yeah, in Valencia it's so funny that a studio like that is because it's very like

Pleasantville style. houses all looking the same. They got magic. everyone's like and then there's this like underbelly of fucking amazing studio where there's like all these dudes you know that's that's what i love that's the shit i love the underground thing it's well it's it's it's in a light industrial park next to a place that makes orthopedic inserts for shoes. I'm not kidding. I love it. And there's like some sort of gym where you can watch like, you know,

burly dudes and ponytail girls going in and out of the gym all night long. But that's far away. I mean, to me, the funniest thing about Santa Clarita is the town called Newhall. It's really part of it. It's where Newhall Ranch was, which is where they filmed all the old cowboy movies. Oh, really? And there's this little downtown area called Newhall that, I guess it's a city unto itself, but they have a cowboy movie walk of fame with like, I guess there's like stir spurs

and pistols instead of stars. But you know, it's like John Wayne and Tom Mix, and you're just trying to find a restaurant, and you're stepping over all these famous cowboy movie stars. Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you this. It might be a little too deep, and it might just let me know. When you found out Neil died,

how long did it take you until like you reopened his demos say it again when you found out neil passed away how long did it take you for you to even like re-listen to the demos you know or were you always listening to the demos that's got to be hard because then those are like his complete vulnerable moments, like his new tunes, you know? Well, you know, I,

I can't, I don't think I've, I haven't listened to him yet. Yeah. There's a couple that we released. Jim put a mix on a couple of them and we released them while we were making highway butterfly. But really I, you know, let me get sideways and answer that question.

Because what I realized in talking to people was we all seemed to have a puzzle piece. I've said this a bunch. I'm going to go ahead and say it again. We all had a puzzle piece that he wasn't happy. But it was just a puzzle piece. It was a piece of a jigsaw puzzle but when everybody started talking and put their pieces together the puzzle became more and more complete and we began to see a picture of a person inside his own head who he was nothing like what he presented to the rest of the world. It was this sort of confident, handsome ladies' man, bearded, bespeckled, red corduroy pants wearing. He was hot.

Super psychedelic guitar player. He was hot. I mean, I got to tell you, I had this fantasy that me and him would be like pinching nurses' asses in the old rockers' guitar home in our wheelchairs, asses in the old rockers guitar home in our wheelchairs listening to exile on main street and black sabbath and aerosmith really loud in our jet-powered wheelchairs come over here darling stop uh you know i i wanted to like continue making music with the guy for the rest of my life yeah but we realized and he also he left a very lengthy manifesto. Yeah. How long was it?

That's very difficult. 24 pages. Oh, fuck. There's part will, part biography, part apology, part wishes, you know, for everyone. It was very difficult to read, but it was necessary. It was very difficult to read, but it was necessary. But to get back to your question, it wasn't hard to listen because I was working, trying to get MC Taylor a couple songs for him to choose from, to do one. But the thing that I think will answer your question was those puzzle pieces.

There'd be a line or two in almost every song there was a melancholy bittersweetness overall to his recordings but every now and then one line would drift through and we'd be in the control room and I'm going to go ahead and use Lauren Barth because this line is so on the nose in the song Lost Satellite. There's a line that says, give me enough rope to hang myself by. And that would, you know, we're in the control room. She's cutting the track. She sings that fucking line. And Jim and I and Gary, we can't even look at each other because suddenly it's a puzzle piece snapped into the puzzle that is Neil Casale.

And that, you know, that's the hardest thing is hearing those lines come through. No matter who's singing it and no matter whether they're doing an up-tempo version of the song, they're there. They're part of Neil. And when the picture emerges, and it's hindsight's hindsight you know it's posthumous this guy we all thought we knew was depressed was troubled tried to move you know divorced his wife that it was the worst mistake he ever made made a decision to scuttle his solo career because he didn't think he was getting anywhere with it he literally thought that he was going to do better as a working musician serving the art of other people whether it's as a session guy or in the cardinals or hardworking

americans or chris robinson brotherhood and i don't think anyone ever got a full picture of that process that was in his head until they read the manifesto, they took in what he did, and they began to pick these puzzle piece lines out of his poetry. Yeah. That's the heaviest part about it, man. What did you learn about depression and being vulnerable now in retrospect? You know, he had secrets.

I knew that about him, but the secrets he chose to reveal were like, Hey, man, what the fuck? You actually played in Blackfoot? Really? Yeah, really. Or, man, the Jayhawks are a great band. And Neil would say, Oh, I played on one of their records. I played bass on one of their records. You were the bass player for the Jayhawks are a great band, then Neil would say, oh, I played on one of their records. I played bass on one of their records.

You're the bass player for the Jayhawks. What the fuck? But, you know, as far as like, it did get deep sometimes in the back lounge between him and me. Once, once I think we began to trust each other and he'd talk about his divorce and how difficult it was and certain other things. But I never had an idea that when the phone rang and Chris Robinson was calling that that's what it was going to be. But another thing that happens, and I don't know if you've been through anything like this with the loss of a friend by whatever means. But when they're gone, for instance, I scrolled back through my text messages with Neil. And I scrolled back to the last big conversation we had, which was after Jeff Austin committed suicide.

And we were having a conversation, and I had said in the text thread that I was always of the opinion that suicide was an incredibly selfish act. And then I said to Neil, but I was telling that to my wife, and she said, but what if the person was so depressed and delusional that they thought the best thing they could do for their family was to alleviate the burden by taking themselves out of the game? And when I told Neil that, you know what his text response was? What? I get it. He said, I get it.

You know, and it's like, so with hindsight being 2020, there's a little red flag. If I had had better tools, maybe I could have said, tell me more. You know, and I knew something was bugging him. Every one of us knew. But there were all these external things that we could see that are just kind of hand in hand with being a traveling musician. There's a girlfriend giving him a whole lot of grief. You know, there's the makeup of the Chris Robinson brotherhood is in flux.

That's never easy to deal with. Yeah. So we see these things, but that's, those are probably just catalyzers to the main problem, which is an age old problem of maybe it's, I don't matter. You know, he talks about, I'll reference the song Lost Satellite again. He talks about in the manifesto satellite again he talks about in the manifesto feeling like he's out on the outer orbit looking in at everyone and he talks about the last show of the chris robinson brotherhood in europe and everybody's celebrating and he's in the dressing room weeping you know we don't see these things and, and, uh, we need to, to do better.

That's why I love that meme about a checkup on your friends, check on your friends. Yeah. Do you afraid, do people check on you, Dave? Yeah, people do. And I think it's, I think it's important. I try to check on people too. And it's, it's maybe not necessarily the ones that seem to have the most problems because maybe those folks that are talking about their tough times are working through them in a positive way. It might be that person you know that always seems to be totally skating and happy.

Maybe that's the person you got to check up on. Yeah, it's true i saw that meme where it's like this is what depression looks like robin williams you know all these guys chris farley you seen that thing where it's like they oh they're all happy smiling yeah yeah yeah we call that a game face game face that's the that's the hardest thing i mean and musicians become professionals at that everyone thinks like living on in a van living in a bus is, you know, the life. But it's a hard thing, right? It's fucking hard.

And, you know, any person that jumps on the bus for more than a ride from one city to the next, we'll find out by the third show just how hard it can be. But really, you know, I mean, it's not hard on us. We make it look like it's the most fun thing on the world because sometimes it is yeah that's why we keep doing it i mean uh i think it was ronnie milsap who famously said you don't pay me for the performance you pay me for the schlep to get there and to get home from it yeah it's so true and listeners correct me if it wasn't ronnie that said that but that's what i've heard and i think it's brilliant because. And listeners, correct me if it wasn't Ronnie that said that, but that's what I've heard.

And I think it's brilliant because Mickey Hart and I used to talk about how hard it is to make, for instance, our wives understand why we would go out on the road and leave a stable, loving family behind for possibly months at a time. of time and and mickey would say it didn't matter whether it was the grateful dead playing in the stadium or the mickey heart band playing at the old rock house in st louis in front of 500 people yeah what happens on stage when a band is playing it's like it's the hit of the greatest drug you've ever had when you make a connection with each other and it involves an audience and they get it too, it could be a, it turns a bar room into a stadium. No, it's like the home team just hit a grand slam and won the game. It feels that good. And so it's hard to make people understand that.

But at the same time, it's tough because we are leaving a loving family and a stable life behind. And what's even harder sometimes, and this is something that Warren Haynes and I talked about, is getting home because it can be a pain in the ass and exhausting to be out on a four, six, eight week tour. But there are those moments of joy and you're with your brothers and everybody's kind of suffering

together and having great moments together yeah and and then you get home and the roller coaster stops the sounds of the state fair have faded into the past yeah and the muscle memory kicks in like for me back in the 90s it hit me hard one time. I was sitting in this beautiful, comfortable, stupid, lazy chair with my feet up and this dog in my lap that was snoozing away. I was about to like watch Seinfeld or something. You know, everything was in place. I had my snacks, I had my drink, I had my cigarettes. Still smoking side. And I felt nervous and i felt anxious

and i couldn't figure out the fuck was going on and then i suddenly looked at it was like oh it's like 7 30 this is my body remembering what i have to do to like get ready to go on stage just muscle memory holy shit yes and so i could think about people that i think i got lucky in that case and that i made that connection like a bolt of lightning oh this is just muscle memory okay it's okay i don't have a show to play i'm off i got four weeks off yeah and i can sit here with my feet up and watch as many episodes of seinfeld as i want yeah but other people are like pair of all the good times gone man let me let me you know let me do something let me dip into my stash yeah and for whatever reason dipping into their stash kills

them yeah at home and that's awful and and some people, I call it a lifestyle exit. Other people say it's an overdose. Other people say it's an intentional overdose, which would therefore make it a suicide. But we don't really know. I mean, especially in these days when there's fentanyl that might be in that Coke you want to do. Yeah. But I think it's important along the lines of destigmatization, which I think is really the most important piece in what we're talking about, that it's not just life on the road.

Sometimes it's life at home. Yeah. Because we lead a double life. And look, every time I talk to you and I see those cool glass bricks behind you, it's like, that's your home. You go there, that's your nest. You should always feel like you're safe and you can rest and you can party if you want. But that's not what it is for everyone. It's a part of your musical life, coming home and leaving.

I used to get so upset about leaving because my dog would see the suitcase come out and she knew. Yeah. And she would literally lay in front of the door to the garage, which opened inward. Yeah. And belly, all 90 pounds of loving yellow lab saying please don't go yeah you know i can't imagine if it was kids you know my dog makes me feel bad yeah saying please don't go or my wife saying i'm gonna miss you that's tough yeah you can see why people would show up three sheets to the wind for the first gig no because they had to like

run that gauntlet of sadness just to leave and go do their their jobs yeah and that's where i always feels like the first three days everyone just like forgot that we were all brothers you know because they had that you know in our band too It's always that first two days where everyone don't want to dive into the present moment just yet, you know? I get it. It's hard. It's hard for me to be comfortable in my own house. I understand it. Yeah.

Why is that, do you think? It's that anxiousness. It's that, oh, I have built a life on such a high dose of dopamine from the shows and from the stimulation I get of having a beer with the fans and doing soundcheck and driving six hours and doing accounting in the van. I don't know how to chill out i think that's that's a great thing and and the other thing i want to ask you is because knowing you and seeing what's happening with your band which is the greatest thing that we

all hope for thank you buddy i think the industry term is blowing up hell yeah possibly even blowing the fuck up let's go boom i'll clap a late clap i want to ask you what are you gonna what what is your intent what are you gonna do when the pain of the shenanigans of your show catches up with you what's gonna happen and how will you deal with the morning after the crowd surfing the funnest night of the the whole tour when you're like oh my god i can't move what what am i going to do how do you deal with that you know what this just happened to me i always thought i was invincible until i my you know i was trying to sell tickets and I'm like, if I sell this out, I'll jump through a table. And I did like the Buffalo thing and I broke my thumb and I realized, yeah. And I played on it for a month, not telling anyone. Cause you know, I'm proud that I'm too proud to fucking

hold any vulnerability in my body for anyone to feel bad for me. And, uh, I realized like, yeah, I am not going to be able to do this type of thing forever. me. And I realized like, yeah, I am not going to be able to do this type of thing forever. I've been going to bed, Dave. You would have loved this. Brian, it was Chicago. He showed up. It was week eight of the tour,

but he showed up with Schwartz. He showed up and like late night, he's like, oh, you know, Frask was probably doing his thing. He caught me in the green room just sleeping. He posted that. I saw that. Couldn't believe it.

But for those of you who don't know, Andy and I share a manager, Brian Schwartz. No applause. No applause. But, like, it's got, like, when you're first, like, when you you're blowing up dave was it hard to go home um no it was when we were first blowing up it was great to go home because for once i could pay my share of the phone bill oh yeah or the power bill i mean that to me that was one of the hardest things was you know looking at my roommates who were like doing whatever they could to get by. Yeah.

And go, well, here's the rent, but I bought this really good pot, so I can't pay my share of the power bill. That stuff was tough. So for a while it was, I just want to be able to pay my long distance bill. a while it was i just want to be able to pay my long distance bill um youngsters sorry yes there used to be a thing called a long distance bill which was usually pretty inflated if you're a guy on the road using a pay phone to call see if your girlfriend still loved you oh my six weeks on the road what a wild time to tour you had to use a pay phone to see if to keep in touch with people have you played the belly up in Solano beach yet? Yeah.

So we used to play there and that's just the place. Cause the memory sticks in my head of we'd pull in in our van and we'd load in and someone would always be late to sound check. Cause they were outside in this phone booth. That was like the only phone booth, the place in this sort of mini strip mall. There's like a pizza joint or whatever. Yeah.

And then, but after soundcheck, it was like a mad scramble to see who could get to that one phone booth and call home. But some people had a reason to call home. Yeah. Like they might've had a young child. Mike Hauser had, he was the first one to have kids. And so I can remember him leafing through, and this was on the bus. This was much later. Looking at pictures of Polaroids of his kid is feeling homesick.

But yeah, that mad dash to get to that payphone. And I actually wasn't in a hurry because I took, it was a 14 week tour. We were on. 14 straight weeks? 14 straight weeks around the country. In a van? Mike Watt would be proud of us. No, this one was in a bus.

I think we might have been on a bus. No, it was a van. It was a van and a truck. And when we hit the Southwest, I started breaking up with the girl I'd been living with for like three years. Or she started, I don't know. I didn't know we were breaking up until we got all the way up to Seattle. We had a day off. I'd just gotten a long-distance prepaid phone card from AT&T.

Yeah. I was like, I'm a big man. So I like picked up the black phone in the hotel room and dialed the, I punched in my code number and some fucking dude was at my house at like two in the morning. They answered. He didn't answer. I got to hear him in the background. It was just me and her.

And I was like, okay, this is. And then we proceeded to finish breaking up all the way across the northern part of the country. I think the last gig was maybe in New York City. And so I got back home, death of winter. All the stuff, she owned all the stuff. Like there was a mattress with no sheets, my records, and the heat was turned off.

She had absconded with her boyfriend and uh that was a hard winner but yeah that was a long distance breakup and that was tough dude that's gotta be the worst like you're in an argument like well i'm gonna be in nashville in eight hours i'll call you then and like exactly there's. There's no cell phone. No. There's no texting. No. You know, there's no email. There's no nothing like that. This was like 1991 or 92.

Oh my God. And, you know, it was just. So there'd be these long swaths of. It's kind of like when someone's not talking to you on purpose. Except there's no way to talk to each other. Yeah. I mean, you could like. Sooner or later, there's going to be a truck stop, but truck stops have usually used to have a bank of pay phones, but they'd be filled with truckers, you know?

It's like, excuse me. You don't want to break up with your girlfriend with like 10 truckers there, you know? Well, believe me, they'd feel you. Yeah. But trying to get one of them off the phone so you could continue breaking up with your girlfriend no they're not gonna let you have the phone okay so break up i gotta ask you this though okay so that type of thing but now like looking back now you see how addicted we are to our phones you kind of miss those times man i really miss them ever since neil died um that was a tough year

because there was jeff austin and berman and then neil and a lot of people began putting into their feed uh this is a problem you know i think uh william tyler or or mc taylor either reposted each other's or one of them wrote something was really like on target about this is happening too frequently um and i realized that my instagram feed was turning into an obituary column and i uh so i just went off of it i went off it for a month it was sort of a test leave and it was hard it really is you know um i've gone off it a couple of times i saw that documentary the social dilemma oh my god and and so yeah i went off was like, I'm leaving for another, I think I made it four or six weeks. But it's gotten so bad.

I feel bad looking at it. I'm always happy when I see like live video of friends. Like if I see you jumping through a table and not breaking your thumb, I'm like, all right, look at that. You're killing it out there. You know, it's like, look at some of the stuff that Jesse, the photographer of Billy Strings, puts up. I'm like, that is gorgeous. Look at that. You know, like him giving all those guitars to his old school. Yeah, I just saw that.

Did you see that? Holy shit. That's how you do it right. Yeah. You know, to me, that is the most positive thing to help with one's mental health. You know, people are always like, do you think Billy's going to lose it? He's blowing up so fast. I'm like, I think Billy is loving it because he escaped from shit that would crush most of us.

Oh, yeah. And he did it by playing music and putting his heart and soul into his talent and making it bigger and bigger and putting it out there so for him to go give every student in that little townships school an acoustic guitar and to tell them this is the thing this was sometimes my best friend yeah that's that is alleviation of potential trauma yeah he just gave every one of those kids a friend to talk to that's fucking you know i mean it's beautiful and uh so i was talking to my wife about this i find my the thing that's pissing me off now about the phones is i find myself i'm like scrolling like, oh, I need to respond to this email that I got.

So I'll close Instagram and something happens to a short circuit in my brain where I push the Instagram icon again instead of the email icon. I'm like, wait a minute. How am I back here? What? I'm like Groundhog fucking day or something. Yeah. So, and she's saying the kind of the same thing. It's like, oops, I just opened Instagram. I didn't mean to. I'm like and she's saying the kind of the same thing she's like oops i just opened instagram i didn't mean to i'm like let's move the icons on our phone and see what happens

because then you'll find yourself pressing like i never remembered my phone number on a touchtone phone right or someone's phone number i remembered the pattern. So when you punch one of these icons on your smartphone screen, your finger is just going to someplace that it goes all the time. Whatever you use the most. Muscle memory. If it's your Facebook app, yeah, muscle memory. So if you don't want to delete it, just move it. Slide it over to page two. You know, you'll find yourself opening something like guitar tuner

or some other app that slides into that same spot but at least you're breaking this automatic muscle memory thing yeah i mean if i was to delete my instrument count brian schwartz would kill me yeah it'd be like you're a fool yeah um yeah it's like a necessary evil for us to do what we do these days yeah and especially when you're promoting a record like neil casal's record literally that's right uh you know and it drops it drops this friday which will be last friday by the time this yeah podcast airs but november 12, the digital and the streaming hit the streets. And yeah, I'm going to absolutely use the 60,000 followers I have to let them know this

thing's available and they ought to hear it and listen to it. What do you want people to come out of after listing this record? I want them to appreciate the skill and the craft of Neil Casale as a singer-songwriter. And I want them to possibly go on a journey and listen to his records. On his Spotify page, we're building, every time we'd release a new single, we'd put his version up in tandem. So there's a growing Spotify playlist under the Neil Casale account that will have Billy Strings and Circles doing all the luck in the world.

And then you'll hear Neil's version. Oh, I love that idea. It's like, this guy's got a legacy. Let's, let's do it. But the other thing is it's bringing awareness to the Neil Casale foundation,

which we put it together with a two-prong approach, one of which is obviously to make more people aware of Neil's talent and his gift as a songwriter. The other thing is to get musical instruments into the schools where Neil grew up. into the schools where Neil grew up. So we've got Fender, D'Angelico, Roland donating, just like Billy Strings did,

giving these kids something to use their imagination with, a friend. And then finally, the big mission of the Neil Casale Music Foundation is to support mental health care. Music cares. We gave them a large donation after the Capitol Theater Remembrance Concert of Neil back in 2019. We'll donate to Backline.org. We'll donate to Nucci Space in Athens. Who knows what we could do, but the initial sales of the record

and donations, merch for the foundation go to those things. And we're learning. I think we're all learning. You know, a lot of these backline.care has been around maybe two years.

Yeah, two years. It really happened right after Neil's passing. That's when everyone really ramped up. dot care has been around maybe two years yeah you know yeah two years uh happened it really happened right after neil's passing that's when everyone really ramped up the right backline because there's been an unfortunate avalanche of this and i don't know if it's just because information gets passed around more quickly yeah days? Or is it really, does it seem like it's happening a lot? Well, you know, you've been in the scene. Has this been happening a lot? I mean, I have to go back to how many things were ruled accidental overdoses

that possibly could have been suicides? Yeah. You know, when I think about what I called earlier a lifestyle exit, someone whose official cause of death is a heart attack, but maybe their lifestyle brought the heart attack on earlier than it should have been. Where do we draw the line? It's just, it's just a statistic, a cause of death, but really if someone is torturing themselves or they're in mental anguish, uh, they're using, they're stressing, that all has a physical effect. So I think the destigmatization of this and then the support of all these groups are going to learn a whole lot more.

Oh, yeah. You know, like you said, it's like I don't want anyone to hold, I don't want them to worry for me. You know, we want to be the guy that's on stage entertaining. Yeah. And I'm not ever going to break anyone's bubble when they're like, oh, the life you lead is so glamorous. I'm like, okay, it is.

I won't talk to you about, you know, that toilet in that club after, after a long night or, you know, people on a bus with poor aim. Yeah. You know, it's just like. Hey, you don't see that side. You don't smell the urine on the bus. Exactly. Yeah. you don't see that side you don't smell the urine in the bus exactly yeah but i'd rather have them think that that our lives are fairy tales and that it's glamorous and and that they should come to the show and and see something they're not going to see but once or

twice a year um i'd rather that but at the time, it would be really nice to have some resources to lean on when things are, are getting rough and for it to be like, why were you late for bus call, Andy? Well, I had to talk to a counselor because I wasn't feeling great. And they're all like, man, great job. Yeah. As opposed to that sort of patriarchal, what are you weak,-kneed, limp-wristed pussy? Yeah, exactly. You know, what we need is that support, you know, because they're going to support us everywhere.

If you like, you know, in your wrestling matches with the big something guys, if you got knocked out, I would fully expect your band members to pick your ass up, throw water in your face, say, good job, now let's get back and finish the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, as opposed to like, you let that guy knock you out andy please yeah what's going on that's got to end yeah and you know gary goldman he we he was a comedian i did that score for for the big something in um judd apatow and he was telling that to you, six, six. And he was forced to play football and he didn't want to play football.

He had a scholarship at Boston College and he went scared shitless because he felt like everyone's like, oh, don't be a pussy, Goldman. Go go out there and use your your body. I'm like. We need to destigmatize that emotions are real and how we feel is important you know that's right whether you're male or female because i think that you want to split it into the genders and all the rainbow between the two yeah traditional genders everybody has an experience yeah where because of their sex or their sexual orientation

or the fact they don't want to do the girly girl thing or the manly man thing, they've been subject to ridicule. And that creates a scar. And if we don't deal with it, we carry it on into life. And who knows how it comes out sideways always. If we don't deal with it, we carry it on into life. And who knows how it comes out sideways. Always. After the last year and a half, what I have learned is that every single person has some triggering traumatic event in their life.

And when we're locked down and we're literally bullied and fed fear by the president and the news for a year. by the president and the news for a year. And then there's the racial chaos and the just non-humanitarianism that we were exposed to. That is like putting yourself in a pressure cooker. So when things started to open up and I'd see friends that I hadn't seen in a year and a half, I'd see their thing coming out sideways in crazy ways. And it's like, wow, you know, we need to, we need more fellowship.

We need to be together and remember that it's all okay. As long as we have our friends around, we got some music that we can make. Can't wait for everyone to listen to the record just came out on Friday. Go listen to it. Don't do it for me. Don't do it for Dave. Listen to the art that is Neil Casaleal right buddy that's right highway butterfly the songs of neil casal let's do five lps or three cds or just one long streaming playlist you're so crazy because i knew

neil is such a huge vinyl head you guys really did the vinyl up for this one didn't you well we're working on it. It's going to be a little late because we're perfectionists, but that's what Neil deserves. So go ahead. Blame me. I'm the producer. That's part of the gig.

We're blaming Lady Gaga. Fuck you, Lady Gaga. I heard what happened. They're giving out all the independents, the vinyls. They're not giving the independents their... You don't have to talk about this, but I'm angry about this because I'm in the same position. They're not making our vinyls because they need the big, big money vinyls to come out first. It's bullshit.

I've heard that. I've seen the memes. I don't know if it's true, but everything over the last year and a half, all those ships piled up outside the port of LA, Everything over the last year and a half, all those ships piled up outside the port of L.A., just an unstable media in and of itself, having to deal with human hands, and everybody's under a lot of pressure. Sorry, folks, but yeah, please buy the CD, listen to it, and thanks for letting me come on your show and uh you know if you need any more comedy or you need like a heavy to come on stage and like you know get put shang in his place or or you know ko floyd and take over the bass duties yeah you know i'm your man and i think sean will back me up i think beats will too dave this is an invite i've been waiting for this moment for six years bro or five years let's go i'm honored i

know i know i know at least one of your songs oh well the one that you helped me make keep on keeping on i i reminded richmond that we literally wrote that song at space bomb in richmond and it's one of the it's a powerful heavy song we wrote that in that studio and that's why i think that studio has some special spells and i think that has some like voodoo magic it's space bomb space bomb is one of the best things richmond has going now and i'm glad we got to work together there it was a highlight well we're gonna do it again we're gonna make a record once i get off um january i was thinking of uh i don't want to tell it on there i want to surprise people but i'll let you know. Let me know. I'm here for you.

I love you, Dave. Thanks for everything. Thanks for being just fucking my friend, dude. I love you. Thanks, Andy. I love you, too. I love you, too. Well, go have fun in your little studio and make a fucking record and tell the homies,

Jason, I love you, dog. Keep rocking, big daddy. Make my boy happy, okay? He's going to do it. He's waving at you from the machine room. All right. All right, bud. Love you.

Have a great day. All right, Andy. Bye. Later, bud. Ah, Dave. That was the best. God, he's the fucking best. Round two.

It's hard to talk about that stuff. I'm going to keep repeating that. It's hard to talk about that stuff. Be vulnerable twice. We did that conversation. This one got even heavier. This one, he heavier. This one was, he was really opening up and it's just hard to,

it's hard, it's a hard thing to even digest and for him to make a record to honor the legacy that is Neil is, you know, that's why he's my mentor. All right, guys. I'll catch y'all in tail end.

Maybe with Doloff. Maybe I'll FaceTime Doloff to see if he's got a sports and there you have it thanks dave for uh getting uh deep in that uh in that conversation um for the second time this week god damn it oh man can't believe nick because all that that you know this interview was wonderful as well um but uh there's always something when you're first time asking the questions to, you know, the guy. It was like one of my mentors, Dave, and, you know, he cuts it straight with me. And it was a beautiful conversation.

And, you know, doing it again, just as it was very beautiful. So I'm going to, Nick, what the fuck? That's all. That's all. That's the last thing I'm going to Nick. What the fuck? So that's the last thing I'm going to do with Nikki. Dolove wanted me to FaceTime. He wanted me to, he's been talking shit about the Lakers and I think we need to clear it out on the air. I'm going to FaceTime him right now.

See if he's here. I'm off in Denver. I, uh, and doing interviews all week. Oh, Dolav. Where you at? I'm home.

I can't hear you. Hello, hello. Hold on. It's got to work. Yeah, you're not on. Oh, now you're on. Sorry, I fucked up. You're live on air, Dolav.

Hello. What the I fucked up. You're live on air, Dolav. Hello. What the fuck is up? Oh, you know. Working. Chilling. You look cute. I got my Russell Westbrook because I knew you were about to talk shit. This is your segment, Sports with Dolav, live. I brought the Laker gear

because I knew you were about to talk shit. First off, your Jazz ain't doing that good. They're getting lucky. We're fucking killing it. No, we're not lucky. We lost a couple road games, tough losses in Florida, but we're fucking killing it.

We're number two in the West. Number two. Where are you at? Number eight, nine, ten, twelve, fifteen. Shut the fuck up. We are fifth, motherfucker. We won. You're not fifth.

You're not fifth. Look it up. I'll look it up right now. You're not fifth Look it up I'll look it up right now You're not fifth you said that last time Look at the fuck up big dog We are fifth We lost a couple shitty games Standing Y'all are trash I'm going quicker than you are

Oh we're eighth Oh shit What are you guys seven and three Oh come on we're eighth. Fuck. Oh, shit. What are you guys, seven and three? Oh, dude, we're... Oh, come on. We're six and five. We're two games down. First off, I'm here to clear the air

that Dolov won't even root for his boy, even when he's not even playing for him. We had a tough game against the Hornets, and you're praying like a little hoe. I never do that. I love you. I love you, but I do not like the Lakers, so I enjoy when they lose, even though it hurts you.

But it's just a good feeling. Like, I went to the dentist earlier. We were talking after I went to the dentist, and my dentist is a big lakers fan and he like he legit watches everything and he's like was so mad when you guys got westbrook and right when i got there he's like oh you must be so stoked you know i haven't seen him in a while he must be so stoked about the nba season i was like yeah because the lakers suck he's like not even the jazz doing well but the lakers suck is why you're happy. I was like, yeah.

Oh, fucking Hayden Ho. The only thing, you know, you're so supportive with everything else I do. My music, my podcast, my dance parties, even teaching me how to live. Dole lived with me for the first fucking, what, six months of the quarantine? Three months. Three months. Fuck. Felt like five years, though.

It did. We got to know each other well, and Danny came. That was a fun time. That was the best time, man. That was like a college experience. It really was. I didn't have a college experience. Yeah.

So it felt like that. It felt like being in college with your best friends, you know, as your roommates. As 30-year-old men. 30-year-old men. We had our routine, man. like that i felt like being in college with your best friends you know as your roommates and as 30 old men 30 old men we had our routine man we um we'd make you'd make breakfast making breakfast you taught me every morning i do all my cameos in the morning yeah we had like i did like 20 cameos don't have made breakfast i i did all the dishes you taught taught me how to do dishes. Dishes. And then every week, it'd be the same routine. We'd work on content for the shit show.

We'd bust out the shit show. We'd make the sketches, bust out the shit show. Then Friday, we'd do our hikes. We'd do our hikes with Kunj. With Kunj. And Saturday was the dance parties. And then Sunday was Aloha beach recovery day. We do it all over again.

And that's maybe that's why we were so happy. Cause we had a routine. We had an awesome routine and friends, all the Denver home, all the Denver home. He showed up. Shout out. Did you see my name on the,

on the nugget screen? That was fucking bad. I still pod and Andy Frasca. I love it. Shout out to Nick. Andy's changed, man. He's a Nuggets fan now. Fuck no, dog.

Okay, I'll clear the air with this too, Denver. Okay. I appreciate all the gifts. I appreciate all the love. I will root for the Denver Nuggets. See, like this, because I'm loyal. Dolov, you should take this advice.

Okay, actually, Dolov, like this, because I'm loyal. Dolov, you should take this advice, okay? Actually, Dolov, take this fucking advice as well. Denver, I will be there for you. I will go to the games when I'm off. Everything. I'll support the fuck out of the Nuggets. But the minute they play the goddamn Lakers, it's war.

Just for 24 hours. And you will see me, Denver, in all Laker gear on January 16th. Yes, I'll say it again. January 16th, Ball Arena. I will be there. Trying to sit on that. Ball Arena.

Trying to sit on that. You hear that? I'm going to try to sit on that. That wood, baby. That wood. I'm going to try to get on that wood. Yeah, that. That hardwood? Oh. We to get on that wood. Yeah, that. That hardwood?

Oh. We'll get on that court side. No, I'm not famous enough in Denver to get. Not yet. Not yet. You'll get there, though. Sulkin was telling me he's got a season ticket. Dude, Sulkin's got the sickest tickets.

Yeah, I got it. I told him one of these days I'll try and come out for the Jazz Nuggets game. I got to go out with him. I haven't talked to Jeremy or the Denver crew. I've been just in this tour. I got to be a better friend. If you're home for a few days, you should talk to him. I'm going to go say hi to Scott, DJ Sleepy.

I'm going to go say hi to Jeremy. Sleepy. Sleepy. Kunj is a little sick I know Kunj got the COVID He feels better he said But I worry about him Because he's got all that stuff in his body

He's strong Shout out to Kunj Stay strong out there buddy We love you Let's go Kunj Fight that COVID But you got to get one of your fans To send you a custom Love you. Let's go, Cooch. Fight that COVID. Fight that COVID. But you got to get one of your fans to send you a custom Andy Frasco Nuggets jersey.

And then you can wear that. I'll rock that. Maybe one of those rainbow ones. They've got dope jerseys, too. They've got great jerseys. I love that dark blue jersey. It's sick. I like the rainbow jersey. It's sick.

Rainbow ones. Old school. And yeah, I mean i mean you got yokich on your fantasy squad i had him last year fucking fucked some fools up dude marquee my boy the label i'm like i was kind of like damn go get what are you gonna do because he was the laker he gave us a championship i'm like also like joker is scary and his brothers are out in the games have you seen his brothers the joker that's just fucking hilarious. Phyllis with that WrestleMania fucking meme. I take the Joker brothers, dude. I don't know.

Those guys are scary as fuck, like mafia shit. Like shit was going down wherever Joker is from. You know, like that shit. Those guys look like they work a junkyard and just put bodies in that shit dude it's crazy yeah give her the update we uh our our dolov cohen our fantasy sport analyst is going to give us a quick update on the fantasy jam yeah who's all in them give us a quick do it let's do it who we got who's. Who we got? Who's winning? Who's losing? I mean, so the NBA Fantasy Jam Band League

has so many fucking dudes. 16 fucking dudes. It's 16 teams. There's at least like 18 to 20 fucking dudes on there. Oh my god. E-Man and fucking Jack Brown joined up this year. They're on a team together.

They're undefeated. Ernie, finally, after so many years of mediocrity. He's been shitty fantasy. Now he's kicking. He's got it. For so many years. Only three weeks in, but he's 3-0. Never give up the guy.

If he's under you, you're... This is so competitive. I'm playing him this week. That's why I'm playing him this week. Dolav is the most... Everyone on the podcast, Dolav is the most competitive fantasy sport guy on the planet. Football, everything.

All right. So Ernie's in third. I'm playing him this week, so I got to bring him down. All right, you will. Down a notch. He's got some dudes on his squad. We got Taz and Frasco, both a two and one. Taz Frasco, my son.

And Yale. Doing the fantasy basketball from the colleges of Yale. Yeah, respect. I don't know who Justin is. I forget what band he's in, but the Jizza. Slow try, I think. That fool was balling last year

and he's balling again. That's always the guy I'm worried about. He's legit, man. He's legit and he's balling again. That's always the guy I'm worried about. He's legit, man. He's legit, and he's got people on his bench like Clay and shit. Yeah, my team, Jazz 2022. We're fucking taking it two and one. We're going to take Ernie down this week. It's pretty tough, though.

This league is hard. There's so many fucking people. This league is hard. It's all about drafting. Yeah, and if you didn't have that high draft pick, like you got second pick and you got Jokic, it's tough. You know what time it is. Coming for that ass!

My favorite player in the whole league is Chris Logger. Let's go. Chris Logger's in the league. Shout out Chris Logger. I got to see him a few weeks ago. He's the man. It was so good to see him and catch up. He's trying. He's trying out here. He's the man. It was so good to see him and catch up. He's trying.

He's trying out here. He's getting some of his bandmates to try and help him out, figure out how to set his lineup. I traded for Russell Westbrook, and everyone's all pissed. And Westbrook hasn't been doing that great. He hasn't. But Chris Lager has Steph Curry, who dropped a 50-piece McNuggets last night. Nug-nugs.

He's legit. He's actually got a good team. He's got Holmes, too. Who's in last place? Everyone wants to know who's in last place. Last place, unfortunately, for our boy, Big Dick Nick. Oh, Nick McDonald's at the fucking lowest. World-saving shih tzu

Is just in last place Zero wins Also Nick Greeley From Yeah his band He's got his own little thing He's a big shit talker Sixers fan

Him and Taz got into it this morning I love the group text You fucking pussy He was not backing down to it this morning. I love the group text when they're both talking. You fucking pussy! You know, Nick, like, talking to an 18-year-old kid. You fucking pussy! I love this shit. Not backing down this morning. Mad respect. Taz wasn't backing down. Respect to Taz.

He's stuck with the Knicks. He's sticking with the Knicks. Yeah, respect. They're both 0-3, you know. Dolav, thank you so much for being on the show. My pleasure. It was nice catching up with you this morning, too. Yeah, yeah.

We got to... We'll see each other real soon. Thanksgiving? Yeah, I'm coming down. Come out? My mom? I'm going to try to bring my mom from Israel. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, yeah. Shout out to your mom. Green card! Let's go! Let's fucking go! Let's go!

Mom got that green card. Green card. Let's go. Let's fucking go. Let's go. Mom got that green card. Hell, yeah. Green card. Ching, ching. We back in America, baby. You know who else got their green card back? Yelmer, our old drummer. Let's go.

Yelmer's back in America, too. Let's go. Yelmer. Yelmer, big dog. Shout out to Conscious Neal's. Just had a birthday. We love you, Neal. Yeah, I love you guys.

I got to catch up with you guys. I got so many people to catch up with. So many people. Same, man. It's so hard, but it's important. It is important, guys. Stay in touch with your friends, with your family. Hit them up, even if it's just a text. Say you love them. Miss them. I love you, Dolov.

And we talked about you. I gushed about you on the last podcast at the end. And yep, you're my dude. And Nick will never take your place, okay? Just know that. Fuck Nick, dude. Losing your fucking hard drive. Fire that fucking guy.

I'm going to fire that guy. I am giving him, I'm taking it way more easily than I normally would, Dolove. You, respect. You got to be more hard on that Yeah, fuck that guy He's so nice Alright, this is the end of the show This is the motivational speech from Dolav

I've been getting pessimism all fucking tour I need Dolav to pump these people up To have a great week, what do you got? This is it, guys The week is not over It's just beginning, the year is not over. It's just beginning. The year is not over. It's just begun.

You're going to fucking kick some ass in life, in fantasy, in whatever reality you want to fucking kick ass in. Fuck the COVID. If you got it, beat that shit. If you don't, don't get it. If you do, you're fucking strong. You can do it.

Stay strong. Wear your condoms. You're running out of adjectives. Come on, you got this. Come on. The jazz got this shit. Fuck the jazz. Fuck that.

Lakers are going all the way. I'm beating your ass in fantasy. I'm beating your ass in everything. Let's fucking go. I love you. Goodbye. I'll talk to you after this podcast. Bye, buddy.

Have a great day, everybody. You tuned in to the World's Heavy Podcast with Andy Fresco, now in its fourth season. 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 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. Fresco'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 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 helped 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 similarity instructional knowledge facts are fake is purely coincidental