Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast - EP 160: Butch Walker

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Let's talk about the who-knows-who show of the jam scene provocateur circuit. Nick defines sit-in etiquette for those in dire need of it (Hint: don't ask). And what's this about a male stripper? Also! We got legendary producer, Butch Walker on the Interview Hour?! Listen now as Andy fawns over one of his childhood heros as he surveys the narrative landscape of a truly righteous artist. Get your voyeur kicks in now by watching this episode via youtube.  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, "Wash, Rinse, Repeat" on iTunes, Spotify  Get to know Butch a little better: www.butchwalker.com Produced by Andy Frasco Joe Angelhow Chris Lorentz Audio mix by Chris Lorentz Featuring: Brian Schwartz Arno Bakker

Hey, it's Schwartz. Hope you're well. So, I've been getting emails and texts all weekend long from promoters wondering why you're not promoting their shows and rather you're promoting strip clubs. Could you please just focus? There's no reason for you to be promoting strip clubs. Please, you've got an album to promote, you've got shows to promote, you've got your podcast to promote. You also don't need to post pictures of me and say I'm hot because I'm getting a bunch of people

following me. And that's also ridiculous. Promote yourself. Andy Frasco, Andy Frasco and the UN, Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast. All those things are great. That's what you do. You entertain, you sing, you write songs, you record, you play great shows. Really getting strong in interviewing. You are not a shit club owner. You're not Ronnie the limo driver. You just need to focus. Bye. Hey, Hindi.

It's Ma. You remember me, Toots? I took you for a wild spin after I was done spinning on my fucking pole in Hotlanta. You know what else was hot was my fucking pussy. Hotlanta, you should lit that fire up. But I'm going to need my shit back from you. I left my panties. I left my toys.

And I left my heart with you. Can you please give it back to me? Thank you. Bye. And we're back. Andy Frasco's World Saving Podcast. I'm Andy Frasco. My co-host Nick Gerlach here.

Ready to fuck the week up. Are you kidding me? Hell yeah. Are you kidding me? Great job on that motivational Monday this week. Got it out kidding me? Hell yeah. Are you kidding me? Great job on that motivational Monday this week. Got it up by 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Oh, man. Long birthday weekend, buddy. It was just funny. I'm like, hello. It's noon. Noon in Denver. Yeah, it's like 2 o'clock. Everyone's already

finished their Monday. I just got back from lunch. Think about wrapping the day up, actually. Thank you for the motivation. Oh, man. I'm feeling good this week. Getting a lot of work done. Had a great birthday weekend.

The cuckoos are finally out of my house. I can finally go to bed. Those guys fucking party, dude. They do? I just like, you know, all I need is one person to egg me on, and I'll party. Yeah, I've noticed. All week. I even came to your, I've noticed. All week. I even came to your after party this time.

I know. You came for a second. I got pretty worn out by everybody pretty quickly. There's a lot of people at the house. A lot of dudes. A lot of Denver after party dudes. Denver brings the dudes to the after party. All the worst dudes.

My gig on Sunday was the worst dude ever. What happened? He kept talking to me while I was playing. Like he'd be like, Oh, that guy came to me. Oh dude, that guy was talking shit.

And I, I didn't have it. I was like, get the fuck out of here. He was talking shit. He was talking shit. He's like the sax player of that band kicked me out of the venue. He came out of shit.

He came up and touched me during a song and said, Hey, I play saxophone too. I was like, okay. He wanted to play your saxophone you don't get to do that that's he didn't even ask that he just told me he plays and then he did this whole first of all this guy was clearly a psycho person this wasn't like a normal human being okay he's

the kind of guy who like does this yeah and then and then like twice he had the same conversation made twice an hour apart and it was how long you've been playing saxophone i was like i don't know 25 years whatever fucking not it was cool i've been playing for 30 i was like cool didn't ask you know it was really funny because i was like being real rude to him but there's no one else around so it wasn't like for sure he was like talking she's like all you denver people are all the same you don't accept anyone like we are the most accepting people on the planet we bring everyone we don't have to let every annoying 45-year-old white guy who wants to play my saxophone. What are you talking about? Isn't it like germs, too?

Why do you want to mouth-to-mouth? That's a mouth-to-mouth instrument. A saxophone is not like a drum set. You don't get to just put your whole body all over it. Also, who even does that? Rule number one, I actually wrote an article about this for Live for Life music of sitting in is you don't ask you really yeah you don't ask for a sit-in they gotta ask you yeah i think so generally unless it's like their situations but anyway he asked me outside how long have i been playing like who gives a shit then he asked me where i'm

from i go oh i grew up in indiana but i guess i'm from. I go, oh, I grew up in Indiana. But I go, I'm from New York. Okay, cool. Like, that doesn't mean you invented jazz. You know what I mean? Like, you're not from the 50s Harlem jazz scene. You probably are from Schenectady or some shit. You didn't say New York City, I noticed. It's just like, who even cares? Yeah, and he also showed up to my house. That weird guy?

Yeah, he showed up to my house. Some guy invited him over to my house. And he was being a dick to me. I'm like, bro, you're at my house. He didn't know you were... That weird guy? Yeah, he showed up to my house. Some guy invited him over to my house, and he was being a dick to me. I'm like, bro, you're at my house. He was a dickhead. And he had some... His tall friend that was with him was the worst, too. Oh, yeah?

He was like, can my friend... I was like, just go away from me. Just stop asking me stuff. I will speak to you if I want to speak to you. You know what I mean? I hate that shit. You are spicy today. Well, I'm just trying to have fun.

I don't get to play a lot of fun gigs like that. Yeah. Where I don't have to learn any music, and it's just like Sunday night, and we're all just hanging out, blowing some tunes with DJ. The band was really cool. Yeah, DJ, Jeremy, y'all killed it.

You guys are just harshing my whole mellow, you know? Fucking assholes. Do you want to do a motivational speech of how you should sit in? Yeah, don't sit in unless someone asks you to sit in. That's like the first rule since you're 12 years old. That was the first thing old guys told me when I was 17 going

places like, you don't ask. That's it. That's a whole speech. Just leave people alone. Thanks, Nick. It's okay to be mad sometimes. God, I fucking love it when you're angry. I don't have to accept every single person in the world because we're in Denver and like musicians. i don't understand that if i walked into an accounting office and i was like let me add some numbers up like they would be like get the fuck

out of here call security but like with musicians you're allowed to like just jump on stage with them like you had 84 people on stage with you at your birthday show yeah yeah too many sit-ins we gotta work on this. Me and Brian were talking about this in the green room, actually. Me and management, we had a sit-down during the show. What did he say? I just think it was too much. People want to see Andy Frasco.

They're here for the Andy Frasco experience. I think 30% of the show is you chilling by the drum set going like this while some guy you know from Boulder just shreds. I've never seen before. People are so excited for special guests. I know, but like, are they?

Yeah. Are they just excited that you're talking in the microphone? Yeah, you're right. Maybe they're just excited to see me play. If you're writing good songs, play the song. I'm not saying have zero sit-ins, but it looks like a circus of them. It looks like Cirque du Soleil,

like the very last number. Did you like the stripper? I'm just waiting on people to come out in stilts. What about the stripper sit-in? The stripper was a good sit-in because that's something different that you don't see every day. Not a guy shredding over fucking Ain't No Mountain High enough. We get it. You know what I mean? Let Sean take a solo once in a while.

You got like a bunch of guys in your band. Anyway, yeah, the stripper though, I liked him. Yeah? He was cool. Do you feel like we had a good birthday weekend? Yeah, you definitely did. I talked to the stripper for a while. He was like a really nice guy.

What did he do? What was his vibe? I knew nothing about the stripper. Just a nice guy who was just like... He thought that he didn't... He's like, is this a weekly thing? Like, you know, strippers, they live in this world where everything's weekly and like a special.

Like there's Tuesdays. You know what I mean? They don't... Like people don't go there and play shows really, I guess sometimes. So he was like just fascinated by the whole music thing. And he asked, and I was like talking about some song I was working on with another producer that was down there. He's like, you're a songwriter.

I was like, yeah, kinda like I'm not cool, dude. Like it's just weird to like be around someone who doesn't. Was he nervous to strip in front of 500 people? I think... I don't know. A little, but he liked it. It was different. He said, I'd do this every...

Anytime. I liked when he took the curtain call after. That was great. After he stripped. I like how after he was done, you hugged and thanked him like he sat in. You're like, thanks, bro. Like he was like a trombone player playing one of the horn parts. It was so just normal the way you thanked him.

I feel good about your birthday weekend. It was such a great birthday bro thank you so much it was good i thought i came to the after party it was fun i realized the women you hang out with are much cooler than the men you hang out with hold on what all your girlfriends and by girlfriends i mean friends that are girls yeah okay we're not gonna get the whole that old fucking thing in this week are way cooler than the dudes you're friends with why i feel like most of the girls oh god you're none of your friends are gonna like me anymore after this but i don't really care um all the girls you hang out with are like i'm cool like there's that one kate yeah she's cool she's like i do photography and i'm like a cool, fun person. All your friends or girls are like that. And the dudes are like, let's get drunk. You know what I mean?

I have two different personalities. I have all my artistic... All my artistic stuff are with women. They keep me sensitive. They keep me artistic. Then anytime I want to black out, it's all my blackout dudes. I feel like it's like, you know how people have the devil

and the angel on their shoulders? The devil's all your dude friends and those angels all your woman friends. I love it. Yeah, it keeps me balanced. Your dudes are like a lot of your dude friends are funny with me at the after party. They all think I'm like just like sitting there writing comedy stuff. They're like, what are you doing judging us all right now? So you can make fun of us on the podcast. I was like, no, but now I am. Here we are. Here we are on Tuesday making fun of us.

Well, they brought it on themselves by asking me to. I wasn't actually. I was just observing the party. I love it. I love it when you show up to parties because you always feel like you're like, you shouldn't be there but you are there you know i don't have i am fun sometimes but after parties i don't like that much why not it goes back to dudes again actually like just being like you know the guys in denver just like i don't know they all talk about like just the same thing it was just drugs yeah do them blow

and fucking i don't really like really partying closely to your face. Yeah, I don't want to have my mouth spin in by a guy who's bigger than me. And Jesus Christ. You know, I don't like drugs that much. I don't like being up till six in the morning. I'm already insomniac. Why do that?

Yeah, true. I like to have a morning. I think about that too. Me and Sean, we've had this conversation multiple times. I check out when it's nighttime and he checks in when it's nighttime. Shane. Checking in. I'm like, I'm the day person. I'm the day-to-day person.

He's the night-to-night person. Even you don't really like the after party that much. You're just there because you can't not go. Yeah, I know. I'm not really into just... You're mostly turning down the radio like an old mom the whole time. My neighbor fucking hates me. Over at the Kitchen Island, I would too probably,

but it's just like eight dudes in pullover, woven, you know what I'm talking about, drug rugs. It's all guys I've never seen before in my life. I swear, none of you guys were at the show. I had never seen you ever at any of his things that require you to pay money, but God damn it, are you at the after party? Let's go.

Get a life. Talking spicy. Talking spicy. There's just too many dudes at the after parties, and there's too many after parties. Yeah, you're right. So what do you think? I should not have after parties after shows? Don't let people in your

home. I feel like you're getting too yeah, people are going to steal. You have nice shit. You think people are going to steal shit if I have parties? I would if you didn't know me so well. I mean, one time me and my friend, we used to play frat parties like when I was like 23. Yeah

man, we stole this trophy from a frat at DePaul University. We almost got murdered. What happened? Well, frat boys don't like when you take shit from their big room with all the shiny stuff in it. Really? No, we almost got our asses kicked, and our other friend had like... I like got into...

Were you joking? Like, hey, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, I don't know. Yeah, we gave it back, but we almost got out the door with it. It was just some stupid volleyball trophy. I don't know. They're weirdos. gave it back but we like almost got out the door with it it's just some stupid volleyball trophy i don't know they're weirdos oh yeah because i air bb in my house too so like i keep everything i don't keep everything yeah but that they're not gonna steal because i could be too easy to prove that it was them i i've had this

one girl take nudes with all my jerseys on and i found her instagram account that's not i don't know if i'd be mad at that no No, but she stole one of them. Oh. She stole my Eddie Jones jersey. I guess if you're gonna... You know, the Miami Heat stole them too, I guess, right? Number six, baby.

I love Eddie Jones. Yep. We're gonna have a great week. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling spicy. I gotta play in Atlanta this weekend. Atlanta's tight. Is it indoor or outdoor?

It's an outdoor thing for Sweetwater Music Festival. Sweetwater Brewery? It's not that... Atlanta doesn't get that cold. No? I don't think so. We're playing with Future Birds, Larkin Poe, and Yam Yam. Larkin Poe's the two sisters? Yeah. You know who fucks?

Yam Yam. You ever heard them play? Is that the jam band that opened for you? Yeah. I've heard they're pretty tight. Dude, they are sick as fuck. You all right over there? Yeah, I'm okay. You going to make it? I'm going to make it. I've been nonstop working.

Actually, I haven't been working. I actually took the day off yesterday. I just heard you play that one three-second clip from your song 400 times in a row. I'm trying to make a music video so I save my budget. I could fucking talk about this forever maybe that's why they should i don't want to talk it's pissing me off all right well i made a bit for this week if we want to switch to that what it's so obvious you made a bit i was thinking about how you are a lonely weirdo yeah never has a girlfriend's

always complaining yeah and i was like okay how can i monetize this? How can I, how can I make this benefit me? So what I think you need to do is we need to get you in a celebrity relationship. A celebrity relationship? Yes. Like you need to date a celebrity. First off, I'm not famous enough to date a celebrity. Well, we're just going to start thinking about it now so we can get you in the right mindset. So what, how are this a bit? You have pictures? Yeah. So I just have a couple different kinds of celebrity relationships and the goal, you know, celebrity that

would be, then we can maybe think about some other options. All right. You think making me less lonely is to date a celebrity? No, but I think you dating a celebrity will be good for the brand. Okay? Okay. And that's what I'm about. Who's this? First one? You need an on again, off again thing.

Okay. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift. What I have up here is a picture of Taylor Swift. Oh my God. Here's what's great about her, right? What?

If you break up with her, when you break up with her, cause it'll happen. That's what happens with Taylor Swift. She's going to write a song about you. Okay. Okay. Knowing you,

you'll get a songwriting credit somehow. Brian's good. Dating Taylor Swift is just good for the brand. She'll probably break up with you. Guess what? Here's another thing. She's 30. She's not 16 like everyone thinks she is because that's what she writes songs for.

So she's in your age group. I'd be down to date Taylor. Yeah, she's. I don't think she'd be into a dude like me. No, definitely not. But we're talking about the type of girl date Taylor. Yeah, she's... I don't think she'd be into a dude like me. No, definitely not. But we're talking about the type of girl. Yeah, yeah. These are all...

Okay, what's the next one? I like Taylor Swift. I think I watched her documentary and she works her ass off. She seems very... I've heard she treats her employees very well too. Yeah. Okay, number two. Who's this?

You're the hardest working man in show business. So I was like, who's a hardworking woman that will get that you are completely unavailable emotionally and physically sometimes? Yeah. Tiffany Haddish. She got famous like four years ago and hasn't turned down one thing yet. And I'm not making fun of her, actually. I'm saying that's awesome.

Yeah. I like that. She knows how to strike when the iron's hot. So you just basically want me to be lonely with another workaholic? Yeah. Well, because they'll understand you. Okay. I like that. And she's famous and it will benefit the brand tiffany's fucking a babe and

maybe she'd come on the podcast if you were dating she'd be a great guest she's hilarious girls trip three andy fresco song right now so far you're giving me ideas of who i should date but i think that's that would be like the ideal or taylor swift and. Yeah, yeah, like those are completely unavailable for a B level fucking B level. Okay, what see what's up to the letter thing? Okay, before you show the next picture, I was thinking, what are you best at? What are you most known for? Right? What's your main thing? Interviewer? You're a podcast interviewer. Okay, musician thing. That's going over here. Oprah. One of the greatest interviewers of all time.

I'm not dating Oprah. I know you're not, but what if you could? One of the greatest interviewers of all time. Billionaire mogul. And you like older women. I like older women. I actually, I could fuck with that. I'd be down to date a chick like Oprah.

Who wouldn't? She's the most powerful woman on earth, maybe. I think she wouldn't. Legitimately, she probably has more power than the Queen of England. I just think about that Dave Chappelle skit where he gets Oprah pregnant. I don't remember that one, actually. It's the best skit on the planet.

I gotta rewatch that. He gets Oprah pregnant and he's just basically living at her house and being the baby daddy and doing all these karaoke's with Asian businessmen and shit. Oh, my gosh. I fucking love it. Oprah's great. I think Oprah's still hot. She lives in Indiana.

She's still? Yeah, she lives in this real rich part that's right outside Chicago. Do you think Stedman would be pissed if I was like the pool boy yeah probably he seems pretty serious he seems pretty jealous i wouldn't fuck with stedman he's like six seven and he's huge okay before you show the picture there's another kind of celebrity relationship that you can cultivate that benefit that's actually more beneficial than love and that's a good old fashion beef yeah so i was thinking who's someone kind of like you that you could beef with nathaniel ratliff okay where'd you find this photo of rate lift it's like the eighth one down on google which is exactly why you should be beefing with him you

guys are kind of the same you're singer-songwriters you have a big rambunctious band yeah you're both kind of anything he's a a party, all right? It seems like it. So I should start beef with Rate Lift? Yeah, because that's like in your lane. You got to beef in your lane and you got to beef up. Here's the other thing. Aren't you guys in the same management?

Yeah. They can set this whole thing up. If they do it right, it could benefit both of you. Because that's how beefs work. No, Schwartz would be so pissed if I started beef with his biggest client. No, but you do it together. It's a whole marketing ploy together. Like Tupac and Biggie?

No, not that good. We don't want you to end up dead. That was not a beef. That was a murder. Okay? A beef is like Drake and... Rate-lift frasco beef. Like Drake and Kanye a little bit,

or, you know, rappers do it the best. So you think if I start beef with rate-lift, I could get a girlfriend like Taylor Swift? No, that's just about helping your career i'm just all different a beef is a relationship you know a beef relationships aren't good if you two people hate each other that's still a relationship i've always wanted to start beef with the jam band oh man god that'd be so fun it'd be hilarious i want to be like the jam band how can why am i not the villain of the jam band scene like yeah mean, you keep talking shit like this week by week. But the beefing,

so I'm making fun of millennials, making fun of nerds. They're coming out. I am a millennial and I am a nerd kind of, so I think I have, and I'm definitely a millennial and I can make fun of the corny ones. A beef, I think is just such an effective way.

If he does it right now here's the thing you have the advantage because you're beefing up and it's always better you never beef down yeah it's better to beef up so he would have to do it there'd be a way for him to benefit for it to benefit him but it's harder but it would benefit him beefs almost always benefit both parties look at you just being a little cupid over here so well I just want this podcast to get bigger so I can... Okay, so what about girls that are on my level, though? I can't get to an A or a B. I'm not trying to get my hopes up with a...

Well, we'll just wait till you're Oprah. A Tiffany or a... Let's just wait till you're that famous for you to get a girlfriend. Oh my God. It sounds so lonely. Whatever it takes for me to make more money. Speaking of more money, Repsy,

Repsy.com y'all sign up for Repsy. I love them. They are been the sweetest for us. They've been our, our, our brand ambassador for an hour and a half, a year and a half, a year and a half. An hour and a half.

They've been our sponsor for 30 bucks. For 30. No, sign up for Repsy.com. If you're in a band or if you are a wedding planner, or if you have a independent venue, or if, you know,

you book fraternities, whatever it is, we've gotten so many bands sign up to Repsy through this podcast now we're calling all venue owners and we're calling all wedding planners

and we're calling all people who have event spaces to also sign up so we can have the trifecta bands and venues and let's start

a revolution let's go let's fucking go we're gonna put people out of business independent baby we're gonna put all these people out of business. Independent, baby. We're going to put all these people out of business.

I'm all about that do-it-yourself these days. I'm fucking fired up. I don't need a fucking record label. I'm building my own music videos. When I do this shit myself,

I feel proud of myself. I feel like I didn't just hand off the work to someone else. So sign up for Repsy.com and get in your hands, get dirty, get your hands fucking dirty. You know what I'm saying?

I love DIY too is a great way to say I'm poor. Great way to say is I'm too cheap to hire a publicist. Hey, we're going to get you in a bunch of articles and magazines that'll be eight thousand dollars i'll stick with live for live music and relics i'll just write my own interview thank you yeah you did myself you did that i did do that we got butch walker on the show you know i don't know much butch walker is one of the biggest producers on the planet oh that butch walker yeah he's written he's written songs for fucking everybody yeah in my mind i was here thinking country singer yeah 32 year no that butch is the shit he used to be

he was like my idol when i was working at drive-thru records it was kind of like a drink and true to interview this guy a nashville guy or an la guy or he is he's a southern guy he had a house in la that burned down and he built a new house and that house burnt down his insurance company probably hates him oh he's like fucking the interview he talks about he's like i'm fucking that burned down and he built a new house and that house burnt down. His insurance company probably hates him. Oh, he's like fucking, the interview he talks about, he's like,

I'm fucking over California. Everybody is leaving California in droves. Have you, I've been looking at some stats and like a lot of people are moving away. I think taxes or something

is driving taxes. You know, the people kind of are shitty. Are they though? The people who move there, the locals are great. I mean, all my local people are awesome. Yeah. But some of the times the people who move there, the locals are great. I mean, all my local people are awesome.

Yeah. But some of the times the people who are moving there to be like reality television stars and fucking... Oh my God, just vapid rich kids. Yeah,

just live at clubs all week and fucking... It's just... Those people are fucking... Apparently they're not happy with the local government around there. No.

I don't know that much about it. No. But taxes. I don't get why everyone hates Gavin Newsom. What'd he do? I don't know. I about it. No. Texas. I don't get why everyone hates Gavin Newsom. What do you do? I don't know. I think he's just kind of like a governor, and they're usually pretty shitty.

He's hot. Show a picture of Gavin Newsom. I think he's just a governor of a state, and they're usually pretty shitty people, so they don't like him. But this dude's hot. I thought people liked hot dudes. I can't wait until Bo's porn.

This is like the hottest Governor I think Oh he's a good looking dude Come on How old is he? How old is he? I don't know He does have a little

Fake ass smile though He's like hella I hate politicians Look at that Looks like Adderall He looks like God You know that guy

Looks like he's just grinding He's been grinding his teeth To try to get that position Now he's just permanently On Adderall How old is he? Zoom out a little bit On that Wikipedia

How old is he? He's gotta be 45 Oh he looks older than that really he's like a hot 50s i think he's hot though yeah let me see he's like a san francisco guy right i think he came from the northern part there it is on the right 54 54. 54. 54. Damn. Four kids. 54 looking that hot. What do you think his net worth is?

What did he do? Politician. I don't fucking know. Probably 20 million. Politician in California. So it's probably like 35. But was he like always a politician or did he like do something in business first? I don't know.

Like the Colorado. I'm done with talking about Gavin Newsom. The Colorado governor owned Pro Flowers Did you know that? No That's how he got rich Really? Huckabee? No

Jared whatever Oh I forgot his name I can't remember who cares They all suck Do you have to be hot to be a politician? It helps for sure It helps Yeah

It's like they're basically actors right? But I've seen some like Skeletor-esque politicians. Yeah, but they're old. Yeah. Some of them are just rich. I think either they're hot or rich or both,

but you can't be neither. That's the best thing about music. You'd be ugly as fuck. Can you? I feel like... I mean, in the 70s, not anymore. Yeah.

Video killed the radio star. There's a very famous song Man, in the 70s, there were some ugly-ass motherfuckers, dude. I know, but they were singing, though. They were singing. God, ugly people are more interesting.

I know. Pop people are not interesting. I used to see some vinyls of some 70s songwriters who just had one-hit wonders, and these motherfuckers were ugly as fuck, but they were singing their ass off. I'm like, ah! I'm like, hell yeah.

I'm kidding. They have so much soul because no one's ever loved them. You know what I mean? Yeah. yeah. I'm kidding. They have so much soul because no one's ever loved them. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like constant pain. Nick. I missed you, bud.

I haven't seen you in a couple days. I see you every day of my life. What are you talking about? Every day. I know, but normally you hang out for like four or five hours. The last couple days, it's been like an hour. Yesterday, you were doing something or something happened. Yeah.

And I left. Oh, you brought your nice or something happened. Yeah. And I left. Oh, you brought your nice shoes today. I have lots of nice shoes. God, you look so good today. My sneaker game is pretty good, actually. You look cute today. I'm hot. You're looking good.

Okay, thanks. All right. We're out of here. Butch Walker. Butch Walker. Enjoy Butch. We'll catch you on the tail end. And let's have a great week, guys, right?

Yeah. Don't be annoying, dudes. Don't be annoying. You're fine. You haven't ever annoyed me once in my life. Shout out to... Catch you on the tail end. And let's have a great week, guys, right? Yeah. Don't be annoying, dudes. Don't be annoying. You're fine. You've never annoyed me once in my life. Shout out to... I'm glad that Nick thinks all my lady girlfriends are great. They are.

They're way better than your guy friends. I got amazing girlfriends. I bet so many of your guy friends are going to be so mad at me now. They're like, fuck you, Nick. I was at that party. What a dick. I'm like, yeah, I am a dick, but I'm also right. All right.

Enjoy Butch Walker and more with Nick Gerlach making fun of all my man friends. Man friends. I'll catch you later. All right. Next up on the interview hour, we have Butch Walker. Yes.

Stoked on Butch. Hey, Chris, play some Butch while I'm pimping him out. I'm telling you, this guy was one of my first musical crushes. When I was a kid, he's produced all the records, all American Rejects. He's wrote songs for Pink and Avril Lavigne.

He was in the pop punk scene. Like I said before, he did a bunch of records of all my favorite bands on Vagrant and Drive Thru and Atlantic, Fueled by Ramen. And he has his own career too. We talked about balancing

act between getting a major deal when you're a kid and how you change perspectives to write songs for others and produce songs for others, but still keep that soul of your own music going on. And I really enjoyed the interview, and I think you will too. I geek out a little bit because, you know, Butch is the shit. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the interview our Mr. Butch Walker. For once, once in your life, won't you do what feels right?

Instead of waiting for the next big compromise. Stop running your mouth. Get out of the house. Get yourself downtown and shake it all out tonight. Let's fucking walk her, dude. Let's go, dude. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good, man.

I'm just sitting out here on the West Coast right now. Do you move around a lot or is it? Yeah, you know, I come from a mafia family. So we had, no, I'm just kidding. So we had, yeah. So right now back and forth between Tennessee, which is what I consider to be home. I grew up in Georgia. So we're living about three hours north of where I grew up

in outside of Nashville. Uh, but, um, my kids doing his last year of, uh, middle school at his school out West, because this is the kind of the end of an era, I guess, uh, end of an era, uh, of living 15 years in California and loving every minute of it. But, you know, I, I burned twice, not once, but twice out here. Like physically burned fire, you know, like just devastated our property twice. Hold on, what?

I'm done. I'm done with it. I can't stay here for another one of the West Coast natural disasters, you know. So you've been, you guys, I'm from LA as well. I'm from like West Hills, like Malibu area. Yeah, that's where I lived. You lived in the valley or up in the hills up there? No, I lived in Malibu 15 years, but the first year that we moved out there

when my son was six months old, or he was born, before he was born, we moved out there. And I lived in a house, we lived in a house that was in the canyon overlooking the you know the coast um so it was still right off of the pch but it the canyon just burned out completely in one of the wildfires back in 2007 and it and i was in um i was in fleas old house from the chili peppers i heard about and um he was he was renting to us, and it had a full-on – it was a beautiful place, really private up in the canyon, gorgeous, with a completely massive recording studio as well.

So that was kind of home base, and it all burned to the ground, every bit of it. So when we were out of town from the fires so back back in 2007 what goes through your head when like you lose everything once and then lose it all again well the first time you're devastated because literally everything we owned leading up to that point everything from childhood to that day was gone so uh you know every recording i've ever done every master my you know 50 vintage guitars including the first guitar i ever got uh you know artwork and family heirlooms and war medals and burial flags and you know military families and stuff it just it was just awful and and uh a terrible thing to go through and to try to get over uh but you know 13 years later or

whatever it was this was three years ago another fire came through there and uh obviously obviously we didn't stay uh at the place that didn't exist anymore. So we lived on the beach side after that. And it's like, well, it can't get us here. I can understand up in the canyon where it's wooded and everything, but on the beach side, we should be okay, right? And then of course, not right. Because three years ago, the Woolsey fire decimated you know it decimated all of malibu and then it took out um it took out like you know as just so many homes on

the beach side of the coast of the pch as well as the so um anyway it didn't burn us down it burned it basically decimated half the property down. But it was enough to be like, okay, this is fucking annoying. This is getting annoying. I'm done here. I'm done. This is stupid. And the second time, I was emotionless because I was just like, okay, we spent 13 years rebuilding a life, and half of it just burned down again.

So it's like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm like, I'll go back and enjoy my floods and tornadoes and old school natural disasters that I grew up accustomed to. Yeah. It's like, why do people spend all this money out there and knowing there could be a chance? Well, that's the thing.

That's the thing is, look, I loved every minute of it, except for those two days in my life out there. I loved every minute of being at the beach. It's like, I grew up fantasizing about living in, you know, at the beach in Malibu. Not like the Malibu everybody like in middle America thinks it is, where it's all dudes that look like Magnum PI driving Ferraris and Hawaiian shirts. It's,'s you know that are all just rich and retired and there is that out there but that's where like some of the best musicians lived growing up i mean that was like neil young and bob dylan still to this day you know uh those guys live out there and um and tom petty and you know these are it was just like my idols all lived out there and i knew that there was a whole side of it that wasn't going to be like this pretentious.

There's definitely like, there's absolutely what nobody will believe, shockingly, is there's a very big blue collar contingency out there of people that grew up second and third generation out there. And they're, you know, they're not living in Kardashian mansions and stuff like that. It's a different thing. So that's a lot of our friends out there. And I love that. And I loved every minute of it. And I love being on the road 200 days a year for the better part of my life.

I just kind of got sick. I got burned out on people and talking about music and and talking shop and everything else in hollywood i you know don't get me wrong it's a it's a wonderful place but i wouldn't want to live there uh and i did i did live there you know uh for a while so it's just not for me it's more i'm more of a i'm more of a a kind of an independent recluse i like to just be by myself and ride my motorcycles and that's another thing that i loved about being out there was i was out in the middle of nowhere where i where the where cars were the minority on the road and i was and bikes that's where you could thrive riding motorcycles every day and even bicycles without

worrying about dying too much uh you know it it was, you know, and whereas in Hollywood, it's like driving in, in a third world country, sometimes, you know, it's like, you got to be real careful. And, and also just the density of people, you know, there's so much and so many people in the business and hustlers and all that. And I just felt like I was past that in my life and didn't need that in my life anymore and never really wanted it to begin with. So that was fun and it was nice to be out there, but it comes with a price. There's a premium, obviously.

You pay a premium to live out there. Yeah. I call it a weather tax. You pay weather tax to live out there because it's fucking 75 degrees all year round and beautiful and sunny and it never rains and that has its drawbacks apparently uh but like it's it's it was a great place to to be in to to raise our kid uh you know just but but at the same time we missed the south we missed

we missed uh you know different walks of life and yeah uh and then of course we couldn't we were literally burned out on it so i we went back and bought a farm maybe it was a blessing you know i hate to see travesty as a blessing but maybe it was a blessing in disguise maybe you're just it was time for you to go back to the south man everything happens for a reason is what they always say so you know everything happened for a reason, and it did. And I'm glad that that happened because I'm happy. I love being out in the country where our little farm is. And, you know, L.A. right now is kind of now just a – I'm just enjoying it as a transient.

You know, I'm enjoying it as a person who knows it's a temporary situation right now but it's the farewell tour of Butch Walker in California breaking up yeah we're divorcing finally yeah I want to talk you know you mentioned something you know about how you never really wanted that type of lifestyle in a sense of the burnt outness the music industry what kept you going to do like to work with all these fucking labels and also do your side you're like your your you know your your show like what kept you going through all this shit i think probably just um my love of music i mean it can be stripped away when you get into the business i believe it or not the thing that can matter the least is the music uh when it comes to getting involved of

the business of it uh so i just kind of i just kind of i've i shy away from that side of it because i realized it made me a miserable person whenever i was looking at billboard charts every day and obsessing about numbers and obsessing about stream sales, whatever you want to equate it to now. And going out to parties and meeting. I mean, I'm coming off as a curmudgeon, but really it's not that at all. I'm very grateful for the time I put in.

But at this point, I just try to stay, it sounds cliche, but I try to stay focused on the music because it's really the only thing that makes me really have true joy is when I get to make music. So when I get to make music with other people on their records, it's like, it's so gratifying and rewarding to help others do that. But also for my own records, I get to do those and I feel like it rekindles. When I do other people's records and get inspired doing that, it makes me excited to get back in the ring and do my own records every year and write my own record and go out and do my own tours, which I have been doing, ironically, most of my life. It's like this producer thing was a lark that happened 20 years ago and just never stopped.

And I'm grateful that it fell in my lap. Tell me about that. How did it start? It started when I did not have the ability or the money or the means to work on my music uh in a professional recording environment you know i had i didn't have the money to spend a two thousand dollar a day 24 track recording studio which is what they were referred to at the time because everything was on tape there was no no computers and it was expensive to do. And I didn't have the knowledge.

So I had to start, I started at the bottom working on a four track, you know, cassette that I bought for $200 at the music store that I was teaching guitar lessons at. So, cause I got, I got like art, I, whatever you want to call it, dealer cost on everything. So, uh, so I bought this four track and I learned on my own how to balance tracks and multi-track on it and record it. And so I started recording my own bands and doing all that. And, um, and then it just, one thing, one year led to another where, and one track led to another where I went from four to eight track and saved up my money and i'd trade that in or sell it and get a 16 track and next thing you know i'm you know

starting to hoard a little bit of gear and i have like a you know just kind of a marginal recording console and a marginal tape machine and and i'm making records on it for people or at least demos you know for people to shop around to get gigs. What year was this? This was all through the 90s. So letters, like, what about your record letters? Well, if you want to fast forward there, that's like 2003 or 4. Yeah, so you have five years.

So give me this five-year area. So this is still. Well, so what happened is I ended up, you know, recording. I finally got wind of this little thing called Pro Tools or computer recording, which was not a big thing until the late 90s. And I traded in my reel-to-reel recorder and my little mixer literally for just a used Pro Tools rig that at the time was a computer recording multi-track recording rig that was very primitive it only had 16 tracks available you could only

record up to 16 tracks on it but I learned it all by driving around the van from gig to gig with our band and reading the manual and how to like how to how to record and I started recording my own stuff at home with it and realized the possibilities with it and how this not only was going to be the future of recording, but it was also going to be helping small artists if they can somehow get a hold of this way of recording. It's going to make them be able to make records that can sound like they go on the radio in their bedrooms instead of just like having to go into a big studio and do it. And that's exactly what I did. I put everything set up in a bedroom in a guest house that I was literally just kind of squatting in and didn't have a dime to my name otherwise. So I was just learning and recording until five in the morning

every night, like Brian Wilson in a robe and underwear and just like with a beard, you know, going through the learning process. And what came out of that was an album that was a record for this little side project I had at the time called The Marvelous Three. Fucking great band. Thanks, man. So that was like, well, and that's what started it. So sorry I tend to go around the block to go across the street with a story.

It's all good. But it's really what happened is that record got heard by a local radio station that was the most influential radio station in the country at the time, besides K-Rock in LA. And 99X and the program director, Leslie Fram, was very influential on that station. And she ended up hearing this song, Freak of the Week, that I wrote and recorded all in this bedroom. And she was like, I want to start playing this on the radio. And I was like, okay. Did you have a deal or anything? Did you have a deal?

No, we couldn't get arrested. Nobody wanted to sign us. How'd she hear about you? So, okay, it was a cool story, actually. There was a guy named Steve Craig who was a DJ on the station, and he hosted a local show where they played only local music late on Sunday nights where the only people listening to the radio were musicians hoping to hear their song played from their demos. And so he had been a big fan of us and would come out to our shows, and he started playing

some of our demos online and stuff. I took him this album on CD. I had a CD-R, and I took it to his cubicle at 99X and gave it to him to get, hopefully, in hopes that he would play it, spin it one time on a Sunday night when no one's listening but musicians. And he got to that song Freak of the Week and listened to it and he got to the chorus and played it and he stopped it

and he picked up the disc and he said, follow me. And we walked into Leslie Fram's office, the program director, while she was in a meeting. He busted in. I owe so much. I owe the whole chain of events to this guy of to where i am now even

is that he walked in and said you you need to hear this leslie and i was like i was like a deer in headlights i was like oh my god you're gonna piss her off this sucks what are you doing what are you doing you know and she was like oh yeah i've heard of you i've heard your you know heard you're really good and a lot of your friends are you know are artists that are playing playing on our station now and uh they speak very highly of you and i'd love to hear it let's hear it and i was like oh my god what the fuck is happening right now fucking crazy and so she so she put on she put on freak of the week and uh well she put on the first song and you know keep in mind that song free the week i didn't give two shits about it because I wrote it as like it was supposed to be an intentional.

This was me during my kind of like very sarcastic and cynical, I'm not going to write a sellout song unless I write a song about selling out. And so that song I wrote about selling out. It was a song that has that line, tell me I sold out, tell me I sold out, go ahead. And that's what the whole hook of the song was and so she got to that song and she played it and she got past the chorus and said i'm gonna start playing this on the radio you know and she said do you have a record deal or anybody interested and i said we can't get arrested everybody's turned us down and she said well don't sign anything yet and that's how confident she was in it and sure enough she played it it got the phones went crazy

it was the number one requested song on the station within a week uh and every station around the country crossed the board added it and started playing it and in all those labels that wouldn't even return our calls and didn't want anything to do with us were offering us blank checks and it was really piss you off? Yeah, well, I mean, there's that whole thing of how do you keep from getting jaded about this business? At the time, I can honestly say I was jaded about it because, you know, there's a whole backstory and a back history that only my, let's call it my older fans might even know of that I had a whole other life before this happened where i had my brush with not so success when i was right out of the box out of high school at 18 i moved to la and my and i was

just the guitar player in the band that we had at the time and it was a hair metal band in the late 80s and i was like 18 19 years old and by the time i was 21 we had a record deal and we got signed to virgin records and we were going to be the next great white hype of that scene and that scene just took a shit immediately because you know music changed people changed we were at the tail end of it and it made perfect sense for that but at the time you know it was frustrating but still as an 18 year old kid you don't under see that you just see like oh they don't yeah i just was doing i was just doing what was popular on the radio at the time being a kid that grew up in rural georgia

and in the mtv age where it was you know bon jovi and guns and roses and aerosmith and all those were dominating radio and mtv and i was excited and that was what i wanted to do because rural america loved hair metal. It loved that shit. It was basically hip hop then. It was like that was considered the dark seedy underbelly in commercial music. What, hip hop? No, hard rock.

Oh, yeah. Like hair metal. It was kind of considered the dark, like you were cool if you listened to it back then and you were edgy and whatever. Yeah. And kind of probably how kids equate to listening to hip hop now.

It makes them feel cool. It makes them, you know, and for some reason it's like, it's across the board identification, right? So I identified, I wanted to grow my hair long and have earrings and wear fucking makeup and the whole thing. And that's what I did.

And it literally was dead on arrival. You know, like we didn't have hardly, we didn't make a splash at all. When did you start having that feeling? Like, well, sadly, way too late because we actually attempted to make a second record and we did a second record and actually released it and actually toured on it.

But it was way gone, that scene. It was so dead in the water. And I wanted to try new stuff. It wasn't that I wasn't excited about it. I liked what we did at the time, but I was more excited about all this other music coming out that people were into. I was still a sponge and still a kid and still learning. And so back to the van, we went for 10 whole years almost, like for 10 years years almost for all of the 90s until the tail end of the 90s at 98 whenever marvelous three that was our newest venture our newest project and it was still me and two of the other guys from that band that moved out to la with me in the hair metal days so um just not with the singer i became the singer were you broke in 98 broke as

fuck i mean i was broke i was broke all through the 90s. All through the 90s, we played for like 100 bucks a night. I couldn't get arrested. And we were playing in clubs to most nights, bartenders, and that's it. We did get popular in certain areas, like college towns. We started to do well. But we were doing a different kind of music in the mid-90s anyway. We were doing more of a, you know, it was kind of funky rock, you know, which was very popular in college towns.

And, you know, we could get fans of people like, you know, Blues Traveler and Lenny Kravitz and the Chili Peppers and 311 and stuff like that by what we were doing at the time. But it didn't, musically, it didn't really, it wasn't the be-all, end-all at the end of the day. The three of us realized that we loved power pop and garage rock and punk rock and hard rock and all those elements that we grew up on and loved. We put them into the Marvelous Three, and then that, of course, tell me I sold out. And that's where that came from. And then all of a sudden, when that song blew up on the radio in the late 90s, again, it was another come and go story.

It came and went very quickly. Who'd you end up signing with? We signed with Elektra, which we always jokingly later called Neglectra. And it was a disaster because the lady who signed us was the VP of the label. She quit right after we got signed. And we learned that all over again. Here we were again. Whereas also nobody knew because the internet didn't exist back in the early 90s and late 80s.

Nobody knew we'd already been through this rodeo before. Nobody knew. They thought this was our first record deal and we were a baby band. And here we were, we were 27, 28 at the time, not babies, but still young enough to be considered a baby band. And people were like, I just remember taking meetings and kicking my bandmates under the table because they're like, well, here's what happens when you get a record deal, and here's how it's going to work. And so, so we had already been through that, but our, we had kind of also vowed not to, not to address our, our past band at those meetings, because we didn't want anybody to have any preconceived notions of us, you know,

because that, that, that's what everybody does. I mean, is everybody's going to go like, oh, oh, okay. So you've been damaged goods before. Yeah. And so you have to think about that. And so we didn't want to be damaged goods, but although we were damaged goods twice, because by the time Marvelous 3 had that runaway hit at radio, it peaked at number four or something, top five on alternative radio, MTV, again, videos, doing the whole thing, going around the country, doing the

pie eating contest for the labels and for the record companies and all that shit. And then it just fell on its face. Label didn't hear a second single, let alone a third. They didn't hear the next record. We did another record and a tour on it when it was already just kind of dead in the water. And you got to figure also at that time, we're also swimming upstream because we were doing something that was vastly not popular at the time. It was not popular or fashionable to look like, you know, the Ramones with eyeliner on and skinny ties and tight black jeans when everyone were wearing JNCOs and had dreadlocks and sounded like the Cookie Monster when they were singing. New Metal,

it ruled the world at the time and we fucking hated it. We didn't want anything to do with it. And of course, as time would go, we got dropped and everything like we wanted on that band. But five years later, there's pop punk bands everywhere

on every street corner wearing eyeliner and skinny ties and black tight jeans. And whatever, I'm not saying we didn't create it because we were five years too early and also 15 years too late. That was our figure of speech. But that was one of those things that it springboarded my music production career

because when that song that did hit for a flashing minute with Marvelous 3, all of a sudden labels were calling me, not my label for Marvelous 3, but other labels, of course, were calling and saying, hey, did you produce and wrote that? And I was like, yeah, I did. And they're like, oh, would you do that for this band that we have? Who was the first band? So I think the first thing I worked with was a band called Simple Plan, and it was pop punk, of course.

I worked with them in the studio on a single. There was a band called SR71 that their label had called me, again, wanting a pop punk single. And so the singer had kind of half of an idea, and we finished writing it together, and it became a bigger hit than Freak of the Week did for my own band. And I was like, oh, that's how this works. Okay, it's not about me. I can help other people and still have a lucrative career, hopefully, but like

not worry about the pie eating contests at the radio stations at 6 a.m. every day and that they have the hoop jumping and, you know, all that. So, which I just did not like anyway. Was that ever like an ego punch to you? Like why? Absolutely. Especially with an ego as big as mine was. I mean, it was really hard.

What were you going through that time? I was just very burnt on the, you know, this was by this time, this was our second, you know, record deal and going through the radio station visits and the MTV visits and all the things that you had to do, the politics of it. And I hated the politics of it. And it started becoming less about the music and more about numbers

and more about favors and I didn't like that and so and also I didn't like the fact that I had to you know I just had to pay too much attention to that and I wanted to be I wanted to just be holed up in a studio making records

and then go tour on them and not worry about whether or not you know 50 000 fucking people show up you know i'd rather just go do what i want to do which is a little entitled but at the same time i was i was you know i was realistic about it that i probably would be broke the rest of my life but then when i started making records for other people and realized that i got paid 10 times as much to do something that I did for my own career as an artist, if it hit, I was like, oh, well, this is a good day job because I love it and I love doing it. I love helping other people see their vision through. through. But I also, you know, this will make me, help me afford to make records I want to make for myself and not have to worry about phoning in a single or whatever it is that they think. And I don't even think that I probably would have had that opportunity because most people don't get

a second chance without, you know, assuming another identity or something or, you know what I mean? Incognito. How did your band feel about you making all this money doing the same? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they were probably very frustrated at me and I was an asshole. And since then, we're the best of friends. Me and the two other guys, Jason Slugger,

the best of buddies. But at the time, I was impossible. I was incorrigible to work with and to deal with because of my ego and because of thinking that, you know, my way or the highway, my shit doesn't stink. I know what I'm fucking doing. I did this all, you know, pride bent, just like, you know, I'm going to get mine

because I worked every day and sacrificed everything for this my whole life. Well, you know, get over your fucking self is what I got to say about that to my former self. Were you ever addicted to anything? Adoration. Not substances, no. I mean, I wish I could give you more dirt.

No, give me about... I was boring. I hated drugs. I was very anti-drug growing up, which was the thing. I was very serious about music and very motivated to the point where, but I drank like, you know, I,

but you know, hypocritically, I drank like a fucking walrus, you know, I just didn't, I, you know, I,

I, I'd get hammered and make very bad choices. What were you suppressing back then? You think? Frustration of not succeeding. Frustration of not having what my idea of success was and what was that time that would have been playing in front of people in arenas every night and knowing that i'm i'm a i'm a badass front man i just you know i'm a great showman i deserve to be playing you know not these bands that opened for me that are doing it now. And that's enough to jade you and make you feel insecure as you could possibly be

and lash out at the world about it or lash out at yourself and cover that in drugs and alcohol. And I think we were also imploding as a band. We had already gone through playing 200 shows a year. We were together 15 years, the three of us, and hardly never apart. And through so many trials and tribulations, and we, you know, by the end of it, we were destructive. We were all drinking our asses off on the bus every night and just obliterating our brains and you know depression I think we were sad

it wasn't it just wasn't a hitting it wasn't taking everything we did and people would see us and it would be like you know there's only so many times you could hear I don't understand why you guys aren't bigger without it fucking with your head it's just like somebody coming up

and being like you know oh you're still playing music yeah that hurts don't say that to a musician you should know that motherfucker i'm out of here in these streets and if you don't know it don't say that you know and you know oh i didn't know you were playing music still uh so but like whatever i mean i've heard all of it believe me i've heard it all and and i think that's what helped helped me realize i needed to remap my brain and my heart on how to navigate through the music waters and how i want to how i want to be how i want to be and how i want to be perceived you know and and it just didn't it those things didn't matter anymore and And also having a kid, that was just – obviously, that's the biggest cliche in the world to say that your life changes and flips upside down when that happens and it stops being about you, but that's all true. What year did you have your kid?

07. He was born in June of 07, and this was right before the fire that just devastated it. And here's the thing. After that, I was like, okay, first six months of having a kid, this is like – it's very tumultuous, right? So there's a lot to take in, and you're learning as a new parent what to do and as a couple how to navigate this. And you're just like, okay okay i don't have anything to

say musically now so by the time the fire happened i was riding high on money from my producing and writing career exploding what year was that when you started making big dough like that probably oh four oh three oh three i mean it could have been before that even but i'm trying to remember when that was because i worked with those few artists and then avril that was the first big big that was the big big one that was where it was like okay this is you know i had a number one at pop which which is a lot better. I mean, the difference is staggering, you know, when you have a big hit at pop radio as opposed to rock radio or alternative. Those are much smaller formats. And I didn't even, I was never considered myself a pop guy or like that I would even be able to do that. It was just, I got, it got thrown to me and i said great let's try this i want to try this this

sounds this sounds entertaining let's try this and it worked and then all of a sudden everybody called and it was like you know katie perry after that and then pink and and all these people and then and then more rock bands and so it was just like one after another i was straddling pop and rock uh while you're starting your solo career Because this is like when you started doing all your solo records. That was around 01 or 02 when I started with a solo record. And yeah, so it would have been around that time. But by the time I had gone in to start working on writing for my third solo record, I didn't have anything to say it was uh it was a record

called sycamore meadows i think and um no no it was my fourth record because what no no that was later um that was 2010 2011 oh the less glad tonight's yeah yeah yeah yeah there was that i did that was that was oh thanks That was the record after Letters. Now that I think of it. Sorry, foggy. You felt like you didn't have anything to say in that record? No, it was not that. It was a record after that.

It was the record after that called Sycamore Meadows, which was named after the street that I lived on where the house burned down and basically my life started over. But that record didn't happen for the longest time because I didn't have anything to say all of a sudden I had money I had comforts I had two of everything I had fucking bikes art watches all this stuff that like I never had growing up never could afford and I just went crazy and you know redneck rich is what I you know did you blow all your cash during those years or

no no no no not necessarily but definitely the fire was a massive devastation financially because um i learned a valuable lesson about uh in about keeping uh equipment insured up to date um and and things like that. But no, it was more just, I just didn't have anything to say because I felt like I was too comfortable. And a lot of the best art comes from strife and comes from heartache and struggle and all that, no matter what.

So I didn't feel like i had much to say so i couldn't write anything that i was excited about so after the fire happened the floodgates opened and i just like that record just poured out of me but like before that i didn't have a single song during that time were you writing for other people or yeah yeah and how are those songs doing for the other acts good good good that was a good time for me still i was you know working on a pink record and i was working on um god what else was i working on there was a bunch of other stuff going on then too um maybe dashboard confessional maybe a couple i was working at a drive-thru records uh during those years i before i became a musician i was at drive-thru records uh during those years i before i became

a musician i was at drive-thru and fuel by ramen and i felt like you were like the guy all those bands all those bands wanted a fucking butch walker fucking record dude well that's that was definitely my wheelhouse you know uh and and there was there was some sort of different there was a difference in um writing for other people as there was some sort of different there was a difference in um writing for other people as there was uh writing for yourself so explain that to me that's what i wanted to really get into like which songs you say for yourself versus the songs you give out well um it it's not even a give it giving songs out thing uh that that rarely happens where somebody just records an outside song you've got. Oh, really?

Yeah. Most of the time, especially in that era, it was a lot of, it had to be collaborative and you had to be actually in the room with the artist, even if they didn't do anything. If they changed a word, they got half the you know it was just one of those things um and how it worked coming up and i just remember uh i remember one anr guy for one band that i did uh there was a pop punk band um well and well bowling for soup was the name of the band. Yeah, I know them. And I love those guys. And I had good success with them. But I remember their A&R guy telling me, and he's a great guy, but I just remember him saying to me one time,

and he was not the only person that said it, but they would be like, why do you give away your best songs? I don't understand why you give away your best songs. And I was like, God, that sounds so A&R guy. It's true, dude. understand why you give away your best songs and i was like god that sounds so a and r guy because it's because but but no i said i said with without trying to sound offensive or or pretentious sometimes there's a difference between a good song and a hit song and i just wasn't interested in writing hit songs for myself i wanted i wanted to I wanted to get a catalog and that sounds, I can't come off without sounding pompous saying this, so I'll just go ahead and do it. Well, it's just saying that, oh, I want to be known as an artist. But that is true. I wanted to put myself on the map out there

and explore being able to write a song that would just crush you with just a piano and a vocal. And there was no songs on the radio with piano and vocal at the time. It just didn't happen. Things had to be way too exciting and way too accessible and way too broad or gimmicky. And I was good at that because I was very cynical. So I wrote some funny shit, you know,

I wrote some funny shit throughout know i've i've wrote some funny shit throughout life um and proud of it but like it sometimes you know you sometimes you just don't feel like waking up and being funny you know i wake up and have fucking problems just like everybody else does and mental issues and and i need to write about that sometimes. Sometimes I want to write about some weird quirky thing that happened with this weird quirky person that only I will be able to relate to. Yeah.

You know, that happened 20 years ago or something and put that on a record. But you can't do that with somebody else. I can't walk into a writing session with somebody that sold 10 million albums and say like, hey, I've got this idea. And it stems from this weird situation with this person that I met years ago. And it was a weird thing that only I'm going to relate to.

But you should sing it because it sounds good. That's not going to happen. You know, it's got to be more broad. And also, you know, it needs to be from their perspective, really. I don't want to be an idiot and come in and be like, oh, I know everything about your life. So here's a song that you should write, that you should sing, because every word relates to you. That's arrogance, and that's not necessarily ever going to work. So sometimes you have to let the artist lead with that when you're writing with them, the other artists.

You've got to let them lead so you can figure out what is going on in their life and what is going on in their head and what they should write about and what their fans might identify with, not what you would identify with. I remember working with Avril Lavigne one time when I was – it was the first time. It was the first time. And that was when she had just come off of making this record that was the first album that had sold 10 million copies and climbing at the time. And so she was starting to come up with songs for the second record. And that's when I got called in. And again, this happened because of word of mouth. It happened because the guys in Simple Plan were opening for her own tour,

and they said, you should work with Butch Walker. Yeah. And she was like, oh, really? Okay. You know, she didn't know me at all. And my buddy Evan Taubenfeld as well, who was her guitar player at the time, was telling her, you should work with Butch Walker. And she was like, really?

Okay. And so when I went to work with her in New York, and we worked on three songs, and this goes back to that whole thing of being in the room with somebody when you write with them and how it was working at the time. And her management was very adamant, which she's no longer with that management now. But at the time, that manager was very adamant, which she's no longer with that management now. But at the time, that manager was very adamant and being overprotective with her

because of the previous record and the lawsuit with The Matrix, who wrote all the big songs on the record with her. And so he was like saying, because I was just some young upstart that didn't have any rep at all yet. So like, they could boss me around

and tell me what to fucking do. Was that those Simple Plan records? Didn't do like super oh compared to pop yeah so they felt like yeah well i didn't do a full i just did a song for a soundtrack with them okay and you know there that wasn't like a big song or anything of theirs but it was it was enough to make a splash in that pop punk world and so with avril she wanted to keep making records that were like that on the second record and so when I went in they were telling me the management was like don't even think about trying to

write on these songs because you won't get a piece of it or any credit and I was like okay so I guess I'm just here to turn knobs and produce okay no problem I'm very very appreciative of the opportunity to get to work with a 10 million selling artist in the studio but the the songs needed to be finished written. They weren't

complete. They weren't written. So I helped her finish one of the songs and wrote the bridge, lyrics and melody, and then produced it. And, you know, after all that time, uh, well, a bunch of time went by and the, she came back to me months and months later after she'd been working with a lot of people. And I just thought maybe those would just be demos that would get brushed under the carpet and never see the light of day. And that would have been, that would have been that. And, uh, she said, well, so far the label thinks the songs you and i did are the best ones and and they want the song that you did with me to be the first single and i was like oh okay cool and it was the first single and it went top 10 on pop radio but the we went into it eventually

did when the record came out but before that came out we she asked if i could get together with her again so i flew out to la i was living in atlanta still and i flew out to la and i had some i had this song idea for myself that i've been writing on piano a ballad very heady ballad um you know kind of more i would say in the more like like leonard cohen yeah ben folds almost kind of uh you know, situation. And I had some lyrics written down on a hotel napkin, and I brought them into the studio, and I played it for her, and she loved it and wanted to do it. But when I got to the chorus, the chorus didn't have –

it was very wordy, very verbose. I don't think it would have related to anybody but me, you know? The chorus didn't have, it was very wordy, very verbose. I don't think it would have related to anybody but me, you know? And I could see her cock her head sideways and be like, I don't get it. And that was when I had the epiphany of like, I saw 10 million young teenagers' heads cocked to the side behind her when she did that. I was like, oh, that means your fans won't get it either. So we, so to her, and to her credit, you know,

she helped co-write the chorus to it, which was a big chorus. And of course I did get writing credit on that song. I got half 50-50 of it. And it was the, ironically, the song that went to number one. It was the only number one on that record. So what'd you learn from that process? I learned, first of all, that you, no song is off limits. I mean, like I said, it's not about keeping the best songs for yourself. If I would have done that song even verbatim and put my

vocal on it, no one would have taken that seriously. You know, I was like, I was already too old anyway, in my thirties, you know, to do like some, to do a song that sounds like it's appealing to, you know, a younger demographic or whatever. It would have been trying too hard. And it didn't matter to me. It was just like, no, let's, you know, let's make this yours. Let's make this yours. And so that was a valuable lesson to me because I also had a manager at the time, personal manager for myself, that was telling me not to give it away and telling me not to work with other artists

and discouraging me from writing and working with other people because they thought that it would be career suicide. They thought that I would be giving suicide they thought that i would be giving away my best stuff and and it was like you don't understand this is not big picture management big picture would be like oh this is gonna let this is gonna allow me to grow as an artist and be the artist i want i've always wanted to be because i'll be able to fucking afford it yeah you know exactly and what year was this That would have been like early 2000s.

2002, 2003? Well, it would have been before Letters because I toured with Avril on her tour for that record on the Letters album. Yeah. I toured as the opening act, which was ironic as well because here was this middle-aged dude out there playing to a 12-year-old, screaming their heads off.

Literally, I could say anything on the microphone. Did they get it? Did the kids get it? They loved it. Yeah. They loved it. That record was so fucking good, dude. They loved it.

But I was up there just kind of doing the—I was going full tilt with what was already an over-the-top the top front man going way more over the top because I'm in an arena and I'm the opening act without any production or lights or anything. And I've got to like make an impact. So was Avril pissed that you're going over the top like that? Oh God, no, she loved it. She was great. And she was awesome about like, I mean, she had me come out during her set and sing, we'd do a blur cover and you know it was always it was fun no no not at all she was proud of me

and happy for me and wanted me to be successful uh in any way that I could and and I think frustratingly her and and you know my friend pink as well I've toured stadiums with her in europe being the opening act they both wanted me to to skyrocket to some sort of next level um but i kind of always knew it would probably stay small why because um i think because i chose to i chose to still make more, I guess, whatever you want to call the word introspective records, you know, I didn't want to, I just still wanted the, the records to, to be, be these like unfashionable storytelling moments and whatnot. And it was, um, it, you know, I'm not, but at the same time, I'm, I'm not looking at gift horse in the mouth.

I was very, very proud to get out there and make new fans because I'll tell you this right now. My mentality was if I can play to 100 Avril fans that are teenagers, maybe by the time they're in their 20s or 30s even, a few of those would have come with me for the ride. And that's exactly what's happened. Like every show I play, it's everybody from people my age,

your age, all the way down to like, you know, a lot of people in their 20s who said, my first concert was you opening for Avril or Pink or whatever, and I've been a fan for life since. And that was my whole thing was that I was more proud of is like, if I could just keep 1% of those people, that would be enough for me. It'd make me feel good,

like I'd definitely accomplished something without it just being an empty blessing of just another opening act. When did you start realizing that? Later in your life or during that process of touring with Pink and touring with Avril and stuff? later in your life or during that process of touring with pink and touring with avril and stuff um probably probably when i did the avril tour first because that would have been early on in my solo career when i still had stars in my eyes i definitely on the first solo album was definitely

chasing still chasing the marvelous threes thing and trying to fit in in that world and that demographic. And in hindsight, that was a bad idea because you can't catch lightning in a bottle twice usually. It's really hard. And I wasn't doing it sincerely, I didn't think. There's a lot of people that like that record, but it didn't feel sincere to me. And letters felt very sincere.

But I also had stars in my eyes. And I also thought, especially this is when I first had any money and success helping other people make their records and write and produce. And I was like, well, I'm going to get out there, and I'm going to go for it as an artist. And I can still be huge. I know I can still be huge. And so I think I was just delusional still about that.

So for that Let's Go Out Tonight record, you felt like... I felt like that was the turning point. That was the point where I was like, okay, this is the most, let's call it the most fashionable at the time record that I had done where I really, it was a fun record, man. Oh, super fun. And I love that record.

Um, but at the time you had bands like, you know, jet and the darkness and all these are, yeah, the hives, the vines, all these early aughts bands that there was a lot of bands and a lot of

English bands, lots of English bands that were like digging into that sound of like mark boland t-rex uh yeah exactly glammy almost i was like oh shit you mean this is cool to do now oh i'm well that's my wheelhouse i'm gonna turn that shit up and i just and and i turned i turned the knob all the way up on it i mean we went full glam full bowie full t-rex yeah full moth the hoople all that on it and realized i am who i am and maybe i'm not going to be and i definitely was not an industry darling you know at the time were you were you also wasn't as young as those bands so it was like that was also another thing of like maybe i need to like i need to be more realistic

here and not think that i'm going to be able to go out and tour with the fucking hives and be neck and neck with these guys that are 21 years old and I'm already pushing 40, you know? Yeah. Wow. So what about, were you self-financing these records or did you have a label during these times, these couple records? I had, I had labels. They were, they were, they were all independent labels. So the money wasn't really a thing. Luckily, I think they felt like the value they had in me was this guy has his own studio

and can produce the shit out of a record, I think. So they save a lot of money by not having to pay me to make a record. But they paid for things that mattered like videos and stuff. And by the way, a lot of small labels for artists that you know of today still don't get hardly any budget for making records. Yeah, man. I just interviewed LP. You know LP?

Mm-hmm. She's great. She had the same story, man, where her career, there was like this parallel with her solo career versus writing. And she just kept on, on like couldn't get a break with these labels to give her enough attention was that you feel like that was the same with your records you feel like if they would have marketed them differently or did you feel that's just like i think there's a marketing aspect yes i think people there's a very there's a very narrow

uh playing field uh and it changes every year. Like as far as like, oh, what's the hot thing right now? You know, what's the hot look right now? What's the hot sound right now? There's all that. So if you're not going, if you're not diving all the way in, then you have a lot harder chance at pulling it off. But I also had a lot harder chance doing it because I was not an unknown.

Like I was not, everybody. Like I was not, everybody wants a shiny new penny, right? And I don't say this in a jaded way. I say it in a way that it's just the truth. Like in a youth obsessed culture and business in America, people want a shiny new penny every day. They don't want damaged goods or used goods or somebody who's been through this before or, you know what i mean it's like nobody wants that and also as a producer nobody wants to um as a someone who's succeeded as a producer and a writer shit try being the anomaly there that like that they're going to allow to be to to be this huge solo artist or whatever when they already are established as a producer it doesn't happen that often no totally you don't get like one of the only are there's

like there's a very there's very few dr dre being one of the biggest you know but like that's all brother too oh and and absolutely phineas who's who's now making a mark as a pop artist, which is great. He's a great guy, too. I like that guy. And I love her. I love what they've done. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's minimalistic art, and it's awesome. It may not be for everybody, but I get it.

But, man, it needed to happen in the world of like you know pop records sounding like a drunk barbie doll in a vegas lobby at 5 a.m you know that's what those records just started sounding like and you know auto-tuned barbie dolls it was just weird and it's like all of a sudden this girl comes along and is like nah fuck y'all yeah that's true. Check it out. Here's one instrument on the recording and me whispering. It's awesome. It's awesome. I want to know, the new age music industry, LP was talking about how they're not giving as much percentages to songwriters as they used to.

Is that a thing? Well, here's the problem, especially in pop music, which, and I don't really do pop music that much anymore because, except for with my friends that make pop music, which, and I don't really do pop music that much anymore, because except for with my friends that make pop music that I love, and I would love to be able to always make records and write a song with them for their record, and it never be some sort of political nightmare like it can be in the industry, where that world, especially in the pop music world, now there's like 20 writers on a song. I know, it's crazy.

Nashville too. Yeah, but it's like, is the song better? Is it any better than the songs that came out in the 70s, 80s, 90s? I mean, some would argue that they're not as good. Is everyone just trying to get their cut? Because they've watered it down so much to songs being like you know i don't know my humps my i mean that's old but like i mean that's still that's that's fucking ridiculous right i mean it's like and did that take 10 people to write that you know yeah and uh and uh and i'm and i'm just thinking to myself i'm old-fashioned so uh you know maybe a little bit of a get-off-my-lawn guy by saying this, but I

grew up having to know how to write a song from beginning to end and come up with the music and the melody and the lyrics and the music, the beat, everything. Whereas now, it's that world, they delegate each one of those chores to a different person, which is so strange to be like, I'm the beat guy. Cool, I'll see you later. And they'll get 1% of the song. And then they'll be like, I'm the top line person. And the girl will come in and sing something that's like the hook,

the melody hook. And then she'll say, see you later. And then she'll get 2% of the song. And it's like, this is not the way i grew up writing and making music and although i enjoy adapting and and and you know learning and and my craft every time i make a new album for somebody i just can't get my head around that i can't get my head around coming in and i don't know what you know it's weird when they when i've actually been asked that you know going into a writing session they're like so do you even bother with lyrics and melody when you co-write on a song?

And I'm like, that's all I know. It's like a flip. It's like, fuck you. Like, really? I was like, you could literally get a laptop and program a beat on it yourself, and it would sound like the radio because it comes prepackaged with software

that's already got all the sounds in it comes pre-packaged with software that's already got all the sounds in it that are currently getting upgraded every day and updated to sound like the radio at that current moment um so it's not that hard to do that my son is 14 and can make beats and can do that stuff and it sounds like the fucking radio yeah but but uh you know i just feel like lyrics and melody with at the risk of sounding jaded, and I apologize if that came off that way because I'm not trying to be. I'm more just saying it's really about, to me, I think something that can save someone's life

is a lyric and a melody. I think that that's the most important part of a song. The guitar riff is cool. That's great. Yeah, I love writing those. I love coming up with those all day long or a cool piano motif or something like that or a cool drum groove.

But the reward to me is when you get the real part of the song, which when you strip all that other shit away and you play it around a campfire 10 years from now with 10 people around it, is that song going to move them or not? Yeah. Because at that point, all you got is a lyric and a melody. Yeah. Maybe an acoustic guitar to accompany you yeah that's it's so it's it's kind of like it's it's beautiful in a way that you learn this deep deep into when you're in your 20s and some

people don't learn these things like i started i've been in a band for 15 years you know i've been doing 250 shows a year in this jam scene and just hustling, hustling, hustling. And everyone says, it's all about the songs. It's all about the songs. How do you work that craft and how do you like not stay jaded with all the other business stuff so you could write the best music you can in 2021? Yeah. Well, how do you, I mean, I think perspective and you have to give yourself some space to get perspective, to not burn out, and to come in excited and fresh every time. Is that hard for you to do? out several times because of just having just having too much music in my life too much just too much in my ears too much um it can be a lot it can be it can be very frustrating to uh and man

people will be like oh you know you're you're lucky look at your job you know and i'm like i am lucky but i'm not lucky not lucky if the well dries up and there's no inspiration and I can't come up with anything to help me or you or anybody or my family, you know? It's like, there is absolutely, that's a scary moment. And I stopped, you know, after working seven days a week, 365 days a year on music for years and years and years,

a long time ago I made a promise to myself when I started burning out. I was like, okay, I'm not working on weekends anymore unless I have to. I'm going to take the weekends off, especially, you know, I've got a kid. Yeah, can't be working all the time. I want to see my kid. He's my favorite person in the world and um and so there's definitely that where i'm where i'm definitely wanting to give myself perspective and headspace to clear the air and i'll go out and just ride my motorcycles all weekend and listen to nothing, listen to silence.

And then when I come in on Monday, I can put on something and listen to it and go, oh, okay, that's terrible. Or I can put something on there that I did and go like, oh, that's great. It just gives you perspective because you don't have any perspective if you just don't stop, if you lose it. And that's the same thing with working late, late, late hours

and working till the morning. That's not for me at all. Like I get up and I'm very lucid in the mornings. I come into the studio, I work. And then if I'm working with an artist, it goes till, you know, it goes till quitting time, which is, you know, any job. I'm done by 5 or 6 p.m. because we've worked an entire day and didn't stop for breaks or basketball games or, you know, watching TV or anything. No,

no, none of that. It's like, there's a, there's an eight hour window, a five to eight hour window where it's just on. And I love that. And then at the end I can stop, go home to my family and, and watch a movie and eat dinner and not think about what I did that day at all. And then come in the next morning and have perspective. And I feel like that's the best way to have quality control. And so delegation is perspective too, in a sense. Cause like if you're delegating your time, so you could have a full life and not just too overbalanced with just one side of your life, I feel like you can make better art. Yeah, it's true. You can definitely, definitely appreciate your job more and be your most creative. And I think your heart is more open and your emotions are more sensitive and in touch with

what's going on with the song, with the music, with the people. You're working with everything when you're just not burned out. Yeah, true. You know? Yeah. That wall closes. Thank you for your time, bro. I'm not just going to smoke up your ass.

You've been one of my favorite artists since I was like fucking 10 years old and you are the goat and you're the, one of the best producers out there. I'm serious. And like, thank you. You know, I'm in this jam scene now where I don't really get to,

uh, geek out about the people that infect that affected my life when I was younger. Cause you know, everyone's listening to fucking fish out there and shit. And I just want to say thanks for being on my show and um i got one last question i'll let you go back to your uh uh glorious life um what do you want to be remembered by butch walker love to be remembered for someone who made music and and hopefully positively impacted people's lives enough to want to pick it up and where i where i'm going to leave it off you know i would

love to inspire people to make music and do this job that i've been so great grateful to to have you know i mean it's it's incredible to be able to go through life uh eating and breathing music and still coming out the back side of 52 loving it so i hope that more people i hope that i can just you know maybe influence a few people to want to do the same because we need art because, you know, the world without it sucks. Well, I can't speak for everyone else, but you've done that for me, buddy. So thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you so much, man. Have a great day. Keep kicking ass. Good luck in Nashville. You know, Chris Carraba produced two of my songs off my new record he lives in Nashville now he moved to Franklin

or he lives in Franklin love that guy yeah yeah he's right down the road from me there you're in Franklin out there close by yeah cool

yeah not far yeah good luck hopefully I'll see you in Nashville buddy and if not just keep kicking ass and stay happy bud

you deserve it thank you pal I appreciate it have a good one later you too see ya alright Butch Walker fuck yeah I don't know you guys don't really know my thank you pal I appreciate it have a good one later you too see ya alright

Butch Walker fuck yeah I don't know you guys don't really know my my you know I talk a little bit about my pop punk and

you know pop love when I was in high school and middle school but this guy was the guy who did all that produced or wrote songs for

Wildflowers All American Rejects The Academy Is Say Oh Sin. Dude, it just keeps going. Andrew McMahon, Something Corporate. That was one of my favorite bands. Matt Nathanson.

I mean, this guy's been everywhere. Avril Lavigne, Pink, Donna's Hot Hot Heat. I mean, those are all the bands I grew up with, and he built their sounds. You got to give that guy some fucking credit for keeping that fucking energetic and keeping his heart right. So shout out to Butch. All right, catch you on the count.

Woo! Oh, yeah, baby. Oh, my God, Daddy, that was such a good interview. You've changed me. People listen to this. Millions. We got 7 million listeners last week. Is that good? No, that'd be funny though. Man, our numbers are getting so big. It's crazy. Really? Yeah. Every week it's gone up. Every week it's gone up. Have you noticed I almost never ask you about numbers. I told you before, Joe Angel Howe is the numbers keeper. He won't even show you? No. I get why.

He doesn't give me the password, nothing. I get why. So how do you know they're going up then? He just tells you? I'm like, give me a screenshot of the numbers this week. He's like, okay, if you're nice. It's going up? Yeah, every episode's going crazy big.

I wonder how it's spreading. I wonder who's telling. YouTube hasn't. It's doing okay. I think that's something that's going to take a minute. People like listen to us on audio. I wonder, it's doing okay. I think that's something that's going to take a minute. Um, people like listen to us on audio. I wonder how it's getting around. I don't know if people were just telling their friends about it or what,

or speaking of, um, speaking of great marketing, screwball whiskey. Oh yeah, baby guys, grab yourself some screwball whiskey. I would,

I would have one here, but we drank it all. Yeah. We drank it all the party. Um, it was great. Organic tastes like organic whole foods, peanut butter inside alcohol. Yeah, we drank it all at the party. It was great. Organic. Tastes like organic whole foods peanut butter inside

alcohol. Yeah, it does, actually. So we're doing a contest. Screw Frasco. If you have any pictures of me all hammered up, go and hashtag that. Or if you want to make fun of me or anything you want, this is your moment to just

talk all the shit you want about my, uh, my habits. So go to screw frasco, hashtag screw frasco, and then hat at screwball whiskey. S K E R B A L whiskey. All right. I'm ready. I'm ready for a great fucking week. I'm just going to fucking smash this. I'm already in fucking work mode. I'm just feeling good. Where are you playing this weekend? I'm playing in Tampa opening for the Black Pumas. Oh, you're doing the Gasparilla. Yeah.

And then, um, I love Gasparilla. Yeah. Go there. I love Tampa. Yeah. And then I'm flying to, uh, flying to Nashville. Um, Vince Herman's having heart surgery. Oh, that sucks.

It sucks. And I'm scared for him. So I'm flying there to be his nurse. Well, he's having surgery, so. That's good. So I'm going to fly there for four days and feed him chicken soup and sleep on his couch and stuff

and be his buddy because, you know. Yep. I love him. That's totally something I would do for somebody, too. I would totally do that. Yeah, you've came to an after... I saw you be miserable at an after party. When my friends need help, I'm the first one they call.

Especially if it's emotional. I don't even think Vince called me to ask. I'm like, I'm coming. I'm like, fuck you, Vince. You're not going to say no because I'm flying out there. And Anders lives... Anders Beck from Green Sky lives really close to him. I forgot he moved out there. Yep, they all live in the same neighborhood.

The Bluegrass Street. We're all going to have dinner and get Vinnie Herman back to shape. I forgot he moved out there. Yep, they all live in the same neighborhood. The Bluegrass Street. We're all going to have dinner and get Vinnie Herman back to shape. Every Bluegrass band was on the same street in Nashville. Did you know that? Yeah.

It's required. Kitchen Dwellers got a lot of views. People love that band. Maybe we should start some fake rumors about them. What if we started beef between two Bluegrass people?

Oh, you don't want to be in the beef. You want to get two other people. I kind of want to see that too. What if we just started making fun of two, not people. Oh, you don't want to be in the beef. You want to get two other beef. I kind of want to see that, too. What if we just started making fun of two, not making fun of, but like making stuff up of two bands saying they said things of each other?

Maybe we should do like a Final Four bracket tournament of beefs and their fans can vote on it. Ooh, I like that. But it's not about who's better. It's just a beef. I like it. And the winner gets Arby's beef and cheddar. Ew.

I'm just kidding. Guys, let's have a motivational speech. Andy talking only. Stay safe out there. Keep following weird fucking dreams. Be the person you want to be. You are a queen. You are a queen.

Be the person you want to be. Follow the weirdest dreams you have. Get kinky. Tell your husband or wife You know what? We're going to double down And we're doing It's anal Thursday

And we're just going to make love with each other Via anal And let's fucking get it Okay Nick, are you ready to have a great week or what? Come on, buddy Give me some motivation Give me some optimism, baby

We're going to have a great week I'm very excited about my life Woo! When we start crying When do we start crying At the end of our podcast I think I can get you to cry Don't do it this week I'm vulnerable

Why you're always vulnerable Shut up Okay goodbye I'm Andy Frasco That's Nick Gerlach And we hope you have a great week And catch next week With Nick McDaniel's Nick Gerlach and we hope you have a great week and catch next week with Nick McDaniels

Nick Gerlach and me Andy Frasco alright Nick I love you bye you tuned in to the World Saving Podcast

with Andy Frasco now in it's fourth season thank you for listening to this episode produced by Andy Frasco 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 brain. And after a year of keeping clean and playing safe, the band is back on tour. We thank our brand new talent booker, Mara Davis. We thank this week's guest, our co-host, and all the fringy frenzies that help make this show great. Thank you all. And thank you for listening. Be your best, be safe, and we will be back next week.

No animals were harmed in the making of this podcast. As far as we know, any similarity, instructional knowledge, facts, or fake is purely coincidental.