Bear Grease - Ep. 120: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Nashville Music and Crockett Quiz

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by the usual suspects - Brent Reaves, Misty Newcomb, Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker -  as well as new render guest Andrew Scott Wills, Nashville songwriter and creative force behind Hawken Horse. The crew starts off talking about Andrew’s interest in the American frontier and Mountain as well as what it’s like to be a professional songwriter before he plays a live rendition of “The Ballad of Warner Glenn” a song written by Clay and recorded by Hawken Horse. Afterwards the crew dives into the second edition of the Bear Grease Pop Quiz where they discuss topics like David Crockett’s political nickname, his near death experience in Alabama, and other topics from last week’s episode on Davy. You’ll want to stick around to hear what song the crew closes the show out with. We really doubt you’re gonna want to miss this one… Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. On my shoulder.

Don't worry. It's a flintlock. Well, I would say that we have our first guest on the Bear Grie's render or podcast that is wearing buckskins. Oh, yeah. Appropriate. Very, very stylish. So we have a very special guest with us today.

We have most of the regular crew here. We have Misty Newcomb. Let me introduce and I'll introduce our guests. We have Misty Newcomb here. We have Josh Lambridge. Greetings, everyone. Brent. Reeves of This Country Life podcast.

Yo! Who, Misty, I've learned that Josh and Brent have a secret friendship outside of the render going on. Oh, really? They've been fishing together all day. Brent came and stayed with me last night. We went and they didn't even tell me. And you weren't even invited. I wasn't even invited.

Even bigger deal, I wasn't invited. You tell them all. Our little secret. And Eva made the banana bread. Evan made banana bread for us while we were going. Oh, wow. Oh, it was so good. When's the last time Ava made me and Misty banana bread?

It's been a while. Actually, David takes pretty good care of me. It's cool. Yeah, she's a good one. She's a keeper. So we have the regular crew. And I want to say, too, Gary Believer Newcomb has been. God rest his soul.

Oh, no. Wait. He is alive and well. He is fine. Dad had, he had both his knees replaced. Oh, my. That's why I hadn't been on the render. You didn't know that?

No. We used to be friends. Not before you started hanging out with Brand. I knew it. Yeah, dad had both his knees replaced in early May. And so he's been out, but he's going to come back bigger than ever. Strong. Yeah.

So that's where dad has been. But our special guest is Andrew Wills from Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, Texas. Excuse me, but can Brent please give a proper intro to Andrew and describe his attire? He is Andrew. What are we doing? Andrew's wearing. Andrew's wearing a very, I would say, comfortable yet sturdy pair of lace-up leather boots.

Some dungarees, the folks might say, and a very festive and fashionable buckskin shirt with tassels and tied front. French. Yeah. Yeah. What you call them French? French. French sleeves. Swanky.

I like it. Yeah, very nice. Over top of my... Which is just his normal attire. I mean, that's what he is every day. That's not untrue. Ask my wife. Yeah.

So Andrew and I, we've probably known each other for maybe a year or so. And Andrew is the guy that recorded and helped help me write parts of the Ballad of Warner Glen. That's right. Which is fantastic. Excellent job. Yeah. So you can find that... It's way better than what Clay had.

True. True. No, so the story was, is that I think, Andrew, you had sent an email out to me about your brand and band called Hawking Horse. Right. And you were coming out with an album. That's right. What was the album's name? It was self-titled Hawking Horse was the name of the album.

It was a project that I took on to really kind of capture. the frontier spirit. And I had a couple people say, you need to send that to Clay Newcomb. So I started digging and I was like, whoa. What's a Clay Newcomb? Yeah. Well, I heard the Daniel Boone series when I was driving in Wisconsin during deer season, and I was like, what?

This guy gets it. So that's when I was inspired to send, you know, my album over. Well, and so the album is It's about the American West. You have a song, Jeremiah Johnson. What are some of the other songs about? They're about fur trappers. They're about mountain men.

Very inspired by the movie Jeremiah Johnson. Yeah. Inspired by, you know, The Last of the Mohicans, but also, like, books and famous frontiersmen like Daniel Boone. Davey Crockett. I just put out another album called Longhunter, and it's all inspired by the Kentucky, Tennessee frontier of the late 1700s, and Frontiersmen like Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton,

and a lot of those characters and, you know, amazing stories from that era. But in Nashville, the reason you live in Nashville is because you're a songwriter. That's what you do for a living. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Tell us about that. Yeah, so I have... Wait, let me see.

Hold on. There could be a few things that you could have been that would be more interesting to me. Oh, okay. Number one, commercial fishermen on the Mississippi River. Okay. That would be slightly... That would be infatuated with it right now. That would be slightly more interesting.

On Clay's interesting. Number two. Okay, just commercial fishermen on the city. That would be the only thing. Second on the list. would be a Nashville songwriter. Yeah. So tell me, like, how do you be a Nashville songwriter?

And how do you make money? Yeah. Yeah, so I... Music. How much money do you have? Yeah. Not a lot. I just, I literally on the drive out here,

I realized either my wife or my daughter took the cash out of my wallet. So not much. But, yeah, I love music. I always loved music. I grew up with music. Guitar, I picked up a guitar about 15 and just taught myself how to play. And my first instinct was to write a song.

I wasn't like listening to the radio going, all right, how do I play one headlight? I was wanting to write a song. Exactly how old age is. Exactly. I've exposed myself. But I wanted to write songs, and that's immediately what I started to do. And so it was around that time that my son was born who has some special needs. And we were kind of going through a part of my life where we were like, what are we going to do?

And I was like, I'm going to have to stay home with him right now because he's so bad and he can't go to school or anything right now. So I was like, I guess I'm going to start doing this songwriting thing because I had been in the outdoor industry before. I worked within the backpacking industry. Okay. And I was a buyer. So I had a very practical, I was using my business management degree, and I was, like, doing this. And then suddenly I was like, I guess I'm going to start writing these songs.

And within six months of me starting this, I won a contest. And then I got to co-write with Andy Griggs, who was a 90s, late 90s, early 2000s, country singer. You know that name, Brent? I do. Yeah, he had a couple pretty big hits. Like, you won't ever be lonely and if heaven and some other, he was right at late 90s. And anyway, he's a big, big hunter, big hunter. And anyway, I got the opportunity to write with him and he was, he was a, he's a riot. I mean, he is hilarious. But I got my first radio single with him. And it was just a small market thing. it was pretty cool. Do you tell us the song? Do you watch it?

Oh yeah, yeah. It's called... Is that kind of like asking a cattle farmer, how many cows he has? When you hear a natural songwriter, go, yeah, I had a song on the radio. And you go, what was it? And then he's like... Hotel California. Yeah, yeah, you know.

You may have heard it. Or it's a song we've never heard of and we're like, oh, I bet. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, no, this is a song you've probably never heard of. But it's called Can I Get an Amen? in and he he put that out and it was a you know and I made hundreds of dollars. It was amazing. But I got hooked.

I got hooked. And so not long after that, my wife's job, she was kind of getting over it. And I was like, we could go to Nashville. And so. Where are we all living? We were in southeast Ohio at the time in backpacking mecca. Yeah, yeah, right? The backpacking and turkey poaching mecca.

Yes. Yeah, actually on that, that podcast about the turkey poaching really hit home because I literally had my AC unit stolen off the side of my house. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. Same areas. Dang turkey poachers. Yeah. Yeah.

Poachers. Yeah. But we, so we moved down and I had already built. So your wife had a job where she could work just about anywhere. Correct. And you were like, hey, we can move to Nashville. You're like, I'm a famous songwriter now, honey. I've made hundreds of dollars.

This sounds like something I would do. Totally. I'm just thinking about your wife must just be a really great person. She's a lot better than me. But she was extremely supportive. And so we were like, let's do it. And my son, I think, was like six and my daughter was two. And we're like, let's go for it.

This is a good time to do it. So we moved down and I instantly started, you know, expanding my network and writing with, you know, notching up on who I was writing with and learning a lot. Because I was, I figured out real quickly how green I was. And there was a lot to learn. and I'm very, very blessed. I had some, like, incredible mentors who wrote some incredible songs.

Name drop. We want to hear them. Okay. One of my favorite mentors early on was Craig Bickhart, who he had some hits back in the 80s, like in between dances for, who was that, Pam Tillis or something? Okay.

And then... We're back to Misty. Vera. Yeah. Country music. But then he was part of a band called SKB. It used to be SKO, and they had like, there's no easy horses. And they were on tour with Alabama back in the late 80s.

But he is a fantastic songwriter, and I learned a whole lot from him. But then Rivers Rutherford, who is a legend. I mean, he wrote like when I get where I'm going, he wrote, you know, huge Brooks and Dunn songs. I can't remember everybody else's songs, but I can barely remember my own.

A real good man. Yes, Rick and Dunn? Yes. Tim McGrall, real good man. So when you're a songwriter, yeah.

Okay, describe to me, okay, so your family's moved to Nashville. Right. And you're being mentored and you're actually in that world. Yeah. Getting paid to write songs. Tell me how,

the song world works. Because your hawking horse is kind of like this personal thing that you do. Correct. Your songwriting is much different than that because you're writing stuff not about Frontiersmen. Right. You're like working. And I guess the goal would be to write some number one song that's on the radio.

Exactly. Right. I mean, that's the goal of, I guess, every songwriter. Yeah. In 2015, I signed with Sony. and my calendar was like booked out three months in advance. So I knew like where I was going to be every day, you know, what publishing company, who I was writing with. A publishing company would say, we need a song, so we need a songwriter.

Yeah. And you would just be like a talent they would bring in and they would say, today we're going to write a song about horses. Yeah. And you're like, oh, okay. I mean, really it was on me. We have what's called a hookbook, and it's an idea. We write down, oh, I want to write a song. So you have your own hookbook.

Okay, I am taking note of all this. I have three big plans in my life. Number one, to become a commercial fisherman. Number two to be a stand-up comedian. Number three to be a Nashville songwriter. Of all those things, I am closest to be in a songwriter. Well, absolutely. I mean, technically, you're in.

Are you wanting to move to Nashville? I mean, whatever it takes, I guess. Wow. Okay. Okay. Maybe now with the internet, you could be a Nashville songwriter and just stay at home. Yeah, and stay in that. Did you notice that Misty said, are you on me in a second?

I kind of like it right here where we're sitting there. Okay. So you have a hookbook. Correct. You come to the table with some ideas, but how do they know what kind of songs you're wanting to write? Or how do you know what they want? Well, it used to be in the 80s and 90s.

Three, two, three songwriters would get together and they would throw out ideas. Throw it out, you know, I've got this idea about a pickup truck, and then you throw out the ideas, and then you go, oh, no, that sucks. How about this? And you, you know, you might be throwing,

you might be throwing out ideas for how, half a day in some cases it depends who you're writing with nowadays you're sitting down with an artist and so maybe they're trying to put a certain topic on an album they're working on or they're i need something up tempo or i need so there's a little more unknown pressure it used to be just go in and write the best song that's in the room that day now it's i'm very topical yeah you're a target exactly so It's maybe a little less inspirational to start, but Rivers Rutherford, he always told me, don't write when you're inspired, write until you're inspired. Oh.

Oh, okay. So get in there, dig in, and you don't quit until you get a... So I... Clay's going to be locking himself in the closet, maybe. I'm taking notes. Okay. I'm taking notes over here. Yeah.

I mean, there's... Thanks a lot, Andrew. Yeah. Get off my property. Clay will be in the barn for the next six weeks. I want to hear the backstory of Feed Jake. You know that song about the dog. Yeah.

From the, I think that was early 90s. That's that really sad. It was so, Feed Jake. He's been a good dog. My best friend right through it all. If I die before I wake, feed Jake. I think about it every day whenever I'm out of town. And I'm wondering if my chickens are going to be alive when I come home.

It's kind of like reverse feed Jake. But anyway, I just, I'm curious how that. that one came about. That's all I could think about when Andrew was talking. I figured you would like that old Tom T. Hall song about who's going to feed them hogs. You ever heard that? How's it go?

How's it go? I'm trying to remember the way it goes, the verse. But he's so this guy is sick and he's laid up in the bed and in the hospital bed. And all he can talk about, Tom Tee says, all he can talk about is who's going to feed them hogs. I understand. It is great, man. Brent, if you could sing, you would probably have, like, the ultimate... Hookbook.

Yeah, I mean, you know... Are we assuming that Brent can't sing? That's what I'm saying. Brent can't sing. Oh, I don't know. I don't believe it. I think Brent can sing. Okay, so now you're living in Nashville.

Do you have to live in Nashville to be a songwriter? You kind of do. Okay. Asking for a friend. You kind of do. I tried for a while not to live there. Okay. But you can't avoid it.

You got to be present to win. Collaboration and creativity really flows when you're like eye to eye with people. One of my first champions in that town, Alex Torres, he told me, I remember calling him up and I hadn't moved there yet. And I was really like, should I uproot my family and move down to Nashville? And I called him and I was like, hey, you know, should I do this? And he just deadpaned. He was like, if you have to ask the answer is no. You only come here if you've got to come here.

Yeah. And that hit me. I was like, pack the bags. Settle up. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So is it true? Okay, maybe I heard, I don't know where I heard this, but like when you go to Nashville

and you go to a restaurant and someone waits on your table and they're like a 20-something person, there's a pretty good chance that they're in Nashville trying to make it in the music scene somewhere. I would say that's very accurate. I mean, it's like a mecca. Like Hollywood. For people to show up. And a lot of people, I mean, the vast majority of people would go there and have their dreams

crushed. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. By the March. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of makes it a, if you're like Chris Stapleton or whoever, it kind of makes it a pain to go out to eat because everybody's trying to sneak a CD in your sandwich or thumb drive,

dropping a thumb drive. Stapleton was that guy. Absolutely. He was. Man, it's like the lottery. Like, you know, the lottery, absolutely. Yeah. They let some people win.

and so it gives all the people that don't win inspiration that they're going to win the next time. I don't know who's controlling this, but it sounds like a rigged system. The best analysis is kind of like baseball, and there's like the minor leagues is like most of the songwriters, and then somebody gets called up, you know,

and... Is it always the best guy? No. For real. Yeah, I mean, there's... There's tons of... There's tons of... There's tons of...

There's tons of... of ridiculously talented people out there who will never be found. Yeah. Yeah. How's it like a coon hunt, Grant? The best dog don't always win. It's a guy that knows the rules. Or gets lucky.

Our good friend Willie didn't win. Willie Nelson couldn't make it in Nashville. He had to go back home. He went down to Texas and became Willie Nelson. It's true. Yeah. He wrote crazy. He wrote crazy like a mile from my house in a building that's not even there anymore.

Goodlettsville and he he gave up and headed down there and became Willie. He did all right. The red-headed stranger. So I won't put these words in your mouth but you were like I write songs every single day.

Right. Is that true? Oh yeah. So I mean you just like You just crank them out. Are you talking about lyrics and music? Oh yeah. Which comes first? It depends on the day. Really? For me, for me, the lyrics are the most important part.

Especially being in Nashville, it's a song town. And so historically, wait a minute, what's the other kind of town? Well, that's more of a, like to me, L.A. is more of a beat town.

Like it's, they come up with... Nashville's your place. Okay. You never struggle with words, so... Nashville's your town. Okay, okay.

Yeah, it's... To me, lyrics are usually first because it's the idea. But every once in a while, somebody comes in with a cool lick and you're like, ooh, let's write something to that. So sometimes it's the other way. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence.

Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll tell you what gets to be about lyrics. You can't speak Spanish by any chance, can't? No, I can't.

Bad gum it. listen to songs in English rhyme versus they rhyme listen to a song in Spanish I can't find two words in that it sounded like when you get to the end of a beat when it's when it's supposed to rhyme with the sentence before I can't find anything have you explored this a lot I have asked everybody I know Spanish songs rhyme let's just go Salinas biddy bitty bum bum I don't know about that at all it's that it's the way Paravai la bamba We may have gotten off track here How many songwriters do we get in here? You have one in your presence all the time Okay, how many real songwriters do we have?

I have five original songs, some that you've never heard. Well, yeah, everybody's got to have a season. Have you made hundreds of dollars? It's like a form letter, the ballot of. fill in the blank. Yeah. Yeah, Josh, and that's okay. I need to know about this.

It works. How many songs have you written that start off with the ballad of? The ballad of. What? How many songs do you think you've written, Andrew? Definitely over a thousand. Wow.

Probably 1,400. If you write every day, you're writing a song every day? Yeah. All right. Do you have like a goal? Like, I'm going to. complete a song today. Yeah, I almost always.

Like, I usually get five songs a week. Really? Yeah. Now, are you under contract with somebody to do that? Yeah, I mean, I have been. I've written for three different companies, and it's funny because the contract says you need to turn in 1,200% or songs or 36 third percent, you know, songs per year. But if you're only doing that, you're not in the game.

So everybody's just writing four or five days a week, cranking them out. Wow. And so you write a bunch of songs that never see the light of day anywhere. Absolutely. So it's just they're just trying to funnel through as much, and one will ping with an artist. Right. So you're writing songs for some of these country artists that are trying to make it

into the mainstream, which, like, Like, I mean, I'm speculating here, but you're not necessarily, you're not trying to be like a country music star. I have not, no. You would be if they asked you, but that's not like the goal. Yeah, that's not the goal. You're a songwriter. Yeah, that's what I'm passionate about, is the writing. And so a home run for you would be for a Luke Combs or somebody to somehow hear one of your songs and be like, I want to record that.

Absolutely. And that would be like massive one. That might actually be like a world series. That would be the world series. Yeah. 100%. I mean, that would be the world series, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I, uh, it's funny. It's, I was telling some of the other day, you write, say you write a thousand songs, five songs will make you 99% of your money

you make in your whole career. Wow. It's, so that's, like gold mining. Yeah, it is kind of, prospective. Is it the law of averages?

Like, if I write in a, enough songs, surely one of them is going to be a hit? Yeah. And the funny thing is, just because those other 995, make sure I'm doing my math right, songs, that doesn't mean they're not hits. That's what's funny. They just didn't get the shot.

Yeah, or they haven't got, there's just a lot of songs in that town. And then there's back catalog. I mean, for goodness sakes, if you're, like, say, Jason Aldeen and you're looking for songs, yeah, you're looking at new stuff, but what if there's like this old Wayland song that was never cut? Oh, yeah. Well, that would be pretty cool.

So there's literally decades of back catalog in that town that are amazing. Tom T. Hall songs or Don Williams. It's amazing. Who has access to the hookbook? I'd kind of like to hear about the other side of it. So you're supplying who,

where does the demand come from? Well, the artist. who like say it's like Monday and I look at my calendar and it's like all right I am writing with this artist say I'm like my buddy Tristan Mores who's a Texas country artist and I'm like okay he usually writes this kind of stuff so I'll I'll be thinking oh what's a good idea for Tristan because I have him coming up on my books next week so then we'll go in and I'll throw out some ideas and he might have one the dream is for the artist to walk in with an idea because you know they're already into it.

So as a songwriter, you're like, please let them be excited about something. Because now, otherwise, I've got to sell an idea that I have. And just hope it connects with them. Well, I want to hear you play the Ballad of Warner Glen. Yeah, man. So this song, so we didn't really finish our full introduction, but Andrew wrote me about this Hawkinghorse album that was coming out, about the frontiersman the west, the fur trappers.

And he seemed like a cool guy. And that's right when I had had this ballad of Warner Glen, like mostly finished. But I said, hey, would you take this song and do whatever you want to it? But record it for me professionally. Yeah. And he was like, absolutely. And it just felt like it was right up his alley to do it.

and he helped me become a registered songwriter. What organization? You're with ASCAP, right? ASCAP. Yeah. Yep. It's official. All right.

So for people who haven't maybe hadn't been following along, we did a big series on Warner Glen. Warner Glen is now 87 years old. He lives in Southeast Arizona. We did a video project with Warner. He's an incredible man. And I've spent some time with him on a couple different trips and came back from Southeast Arizona

and was inspired to write a ballad about Warner Glen and then I turned it over to Andrew and he helped me with some of the lyrics on the chorus mainly and just put some magic on it. So sing it for us, man. Yeah, I didn't have to change too much. The lyrics were pretty fantastic. Yeah, they were pretty fantastic.

Andrew said. You should say he'd drive a bulldozer. Way down south on the border of Mexico with rattlesnakes, cactus and banditoes. Dirt and spurs, feed the hounds and let them go. As a boy, Marvin taught him where the big Tom's rove. An open country where the jaguars wrong. Open country full of a different kind of gold

A 16-hand mule saddled up before the sun glows Nobody told him this wretched life is a hard road to ho hiding a rising sun behind the chair of cow was foes He's mounted and mooting for an all-day mule back stroll An open country where the jaguars roam Open country full of a different kind of gold A lion track in the dirt seven miles in But where'd he go

Got a pack of white walkers that are philosophers like the row Working across the dirt like a farmer works his rows up the canyon around the rock chasing the ghost of a shadow through open country where the jaguars roam open country full of a different kind of gold open country will be lost if no one knows but this wild country's where the jaguar wrong they'll only catch him if he crosses the plateau Chase him over the rim rocks An old hook

A baz's him in a hole It's no lie And he seeks But the wildness He can't control Who I'm talking about Is Warner Glen And his mou-mo-chum-o

Excellent Oh man That's awesome in person That is cool man how did that feel just watch him do that song? That's really cool. Yeah.

Really cool. Man, that sounds good. Thanks, guys. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah. Yeah, so that song, if somebody didn't have any context, it possibly could be confusing.

Warner Glen is a dry ground mountain line hunter. And that's why there's, you know, If you know about Warner Glen, this song makes a lot of sense. Marvin is his dad who's long passed away, but Marvin taught him where the big Tom's Rove. That's in the beginning.

He lives in the Chiracawa Mountains. Warner Glen owns, I'm pretty sure, 17 mules, and hardly one of them is under 16 hands tall, which is really tall for a mule. Warner Glenn's 6'6, he needs a big mule. Big guy. He runs a pack of mixed Walker dogs. And my favorite line in there is he's got a pack of white walkers that are philosophers like the row. Because these dogs are at the pinnacle of the hound hunting world for their ability to trail game because it's the toughest conditions there is for trailing game, which is dry and hot.

And so they're chasing the ghost of a shadow, which is cool. And then so the chorus talks about jaguars though. And that part of the world is the only place in America where the range of the jaguar goes into America. And if you watched our film on the media YouTube channel, you would see that Warner Glenn was the first person to ever document a live jaguar in America. His dogs, and I believe it was 1996,

and then he did it again in the 2000s. his he was lion hunting for mountain lines which are a lot of mountain lines out there and his dogs bade what he thought was a mountain line and he goes into the dogs and it's a jaguar and he has his camera with him and he takes a photograph and it's the first photograph ever of a jaguar not dead now there's a bunch of old photos of dead jaguars the first first time they're like yep there's a live jaguar and it was before trail cameras were real prominent and such And yeah, there's a painting right there. You can buy that painting.

I'm pretty sure the last name of that painter is McWilliams. But I've got the Jaguar that... DeLoss. DeLoss. That's what it says on the paint. Not McWilliams. And you can buy that. He's similar.

That's the guy he bought the paint from. Yeah. McWilliams paint. Yeah, down in southeast Arizona. But so when you're in that country, though, it's like Jaguar country and that's kind of the lore

and Warner Glenn's 87 and he's seen two you know and most people live there the whole lives and seen zero his dad always wanted to see a jaguar

and never did his dad Marvin never because of jaguar oh yeah that's incredibly rare and so that's why the chorus

talks about jaguars but the main thing is is their lion hunting and then he had a mule. I had to pick a mule name because in his book, Warner Glenn has a book, and in his book, he was given a mule name Muchomo from a rich, wealthy Mexican rancher who he and his dad went

down into Mexico to catch lions off this ranch that were, you know, catching cattle and horse cults and stuff. And the man liked Warner so much that he gave him his finest. Well, as the story went, I'm pretty sure this wealthy rancher said, Warner, you can have any one of my horses that you want. Some version of, he offered

him a horse. And Warner said, you know what? I really don't want any of your horses, but I'd like that mule machoombo. And so the rancher was like, really? You want the mule? He's like, have at it, bud.

And so Warner took mochomo and he became this like incredible mule and so that's why i love orner glen he chose the mule over the horse mm-hmm how about banjo what's that how about banjo oh dude oh boy let's not even go there okay it's not time to release the information i'm just waiting but let me say this i've been riding banjo all over these mountains for the last week it's true am got any offers of 10 grand? Oh, next year, should I be desirous of selling him? He'll be worth 10 grand.

Excellent. Wow. He's a fantastic mule. He's beautiful, and he's doing very good. I might even like him better than Izzy. Come on, now. She's out there. She's going to hear you say that. Yeah.

She's kind of a piece of work. She is a piece of work. But anyway. He's a pain. That was cool, Andrew. So where can people find that song? Oh, you can find it anywhere you stream music, download, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon. Add it to your playlist.

Yeah. Guess who gets the money? Me and Andrew. There you go. All right. Maybe we may make hundreds of dollars. Maybe if we made hundreds of dollars, I will quit meat eating. Move to Nashville.

Everybody, everybody, me, you know. Download the music. Download it, download it. I listen to that song all the time, and I've not seen a paycheck yet. So tell me, not by choice either. Clay loves that song. He loves listening to it in the car. It's the only song he's got on his playlist.

I can always tell when Clay's messed with my playlist, because that comes on first, it's like, all right, that's enough. Well, no, for real, you need to go check out Hawking Horse. Yes. Hawk and Horse, you have a lot of songs. My favorite one is Jeremiah Johnson, I think. Oh, yeah. I love that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love that song, too. I can watch that movie every day, and I listen to that song a bunch of times. It's good. Yeah. What? I've never seen it.

You never seen you ever see it? Wow. Some things you just don't tell, brother. That's sad, yeah. I should have kept that to yourself. Well, that's incredible. Well, hey, the reason. Before we get into, can he tell us about this rifle?

Yeah, quickly, because we've got, we've got, we've got a, A lot to do here. There's a lot going on today. Beautiful rifle. Yeah, tell us about the rifle. Well, this is a 45-caliber Kibler Woods Runner. And it's their, Jim Kibler is a gun builder out of Ohio. And he makes these C&C rifle kits.

And they go together like Legos. I mean, this is, I'm not some amazing woodworker. I just put this together But anyway, this is my new baby And I plan on taking a deer with it this year It's a full flint lock Yeah, it's a flint lock So it actually has a rock, a piece of flint

That makes the spark that ignites the powder Yep, black powder only Wow And it's a can Would you describe that as a Kentucky long rifle style gun? Absolutely it yeah Yeah This is called a woods runner

So it's a little more nimble For running through the woods Yeah, it's a beautiful gun. But yeah, it's a Pennsylvania, Kentucky Long Rifle, either one of those names. Yeah. Well, so on Instagram, Andrew is Hawkinghorse. And he posts, it's kind of like an educational in a way channel about the frontier. Like he posts a lot of art and a lot of pictures and he'll have information about, I mean, like I learned stuff following.

It's good stuff. And a hawk and horse on Instagram. A lot. But that's why he's kind of big into Flint lock and all this stuff. It's actually a hawk and horse band. That's correct. Hock and horse band. Got you.

No dots, no underscores. Yeah, check it out. Check it out. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did,

and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. So the reason I wanted to have Andrew here today was because we're talking about Davey Crockett. And if you're new to the podcast on the render, we talk about what happened a week before on the actual bear grease podcast.

And guys, guess what? You're all in trouble because we have another quiz. I knew it. I knew it. I heard it. We have another quiz. Big time quiz. Yeah, the last quiz seemed to do, it was, I felt like that it helped me gain control of my podcast again.

because I then know if you guys are paying attention because sometimes I'm like, how was the podcast last week? And y'all are like, oh, it was great. And I'm like, what was it about? Pop quiz. Here's what happened on the way home from fishing this day. Me and Josh had you on it.

What was that? 1.7.5. Oh, yeah. Oh, y'all are studying. You were spitting out some info, Jack. It was like drinking with them from a. fire hose from my ears. Okay, here we go.

The first person to answer, just blurt it out. Blurt it out. You can even cut the question in half. Each correct answer gets a point. Incorrect answers are minus 0.5. Oh, I like it. Incorrect answers are minus 0.5. And whoever wins gets the rifle.

BAM! And his guitar. I'm going to shoot a hole in that guitar with it. All right, here we go. Question number one. How quickly did Crockett marry Elizabeth? Under three months. After Polly, his first wife.

Three months goes to Josh Lambert Spilmaker. I feel like this quiz. That's where we cut it all. Disproportionately favors the impulsive. You too, I cannot deny it. The impulsive are going to get minus points. they get it wrong. Wasn't that one of the beatitudes?

Blessed are the impulsive? Yeah. I don't think that was on there, Josh. I don't remember that one. I think you read the book of Josh. That was a, okay, so that was the way the podcast started off was talking about his wife dying. Yeah, boy, that was sad. It was.

And then he, within three months married, we don't know the exact date that Polly died. I don't think that's like in the record. Well, it wasn't in the book. books that I read. It probably is on a headstone somewhere. We don't know exactly when she died the day she died. But we do know that he got married on March 15th. What was December the 14th? What was that?

Could be a question on the quiz. Well, that's my answer right now. There's nothing, nothing happened on December 14th of note in the last 200 years. But it was very pragmatic. And that's where we went. And that's when Robert Morgan brought up this idea.

idea of pragmatism being a value of the American friend. June the 11th, 1815, Polly died. Negative. That's what it says. Okay, well, and Crockett married Elizabeth two months before that. We've got a major scandal. Bump, bum, bum. I still get my point.

You still get your point. We're going to have to get to the bottom of this. Let's not do that now. We're going to have another episode now, folks. Yeah, yeah. But pragmatism. Misty, you were going to say, something about pragmatism.

I want to say something. Go ahead. Let Misty go ahead. Let Misty talk. No, it's all right. You go ahead. I'm trying to remember what I was going to say about pragmatism.

I'll tell you what I was going to say about it, too. I counted eight times it was used in one paragraph. Pragmatism is pragmatic. It's very pragmatic. It was used eight times. I counted them while we was driving down the road. I was hoping that was going to be a test question. But that's all I had to say about it.

That's all. So you didn't have. I thought it was good that it was, it came up over and over. It did. Came over and right. Well, that's why those folks were living, man. It had to be that way. But what I thought, you know, Robert Morgan was talking about how a lot of, there was a lot of idealism, though, in the South.

Right. And that, I'm trying to remember, was he saying idealism was an American? Because you said it's uniquely American, and he said it's not unique, but it is a, but it is a. American. Right. Well, he, but then he contrasted the north and the south and the civil war. And he talked about, yeah, in the civil war. And he talked about how the south was, was, that was part of the reason some believe they lost the war was they were, they were more idealistic, less pragmatic. And so the South would have been kind of excluded from the pragmatic American thinking that, that was what he was saying. So, yeah. I like that quote he said when you guys were talking. Robert Morgan said something to the effect of nothing is the end of the world. Yeah.

I actually have that quote written. Yeah. That hit home. I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. That's the American way right there. Yeah. And the idea that the actual geographic size of America gave us so much opportunity.

And then that became part of the national character was opportunity. and it all goes back to land, which in human history, it almost always goes back to land. Like, who's got the land? And do you own it? That's like the story, I mean, even all the way back to the Garden of Eden

and Adam and Eve, the land and the people. And in America, coming from this really overcrowded Europe that was settled from shore to shore, for the most part, They came to this huge place, which in the American ideal was a wilderness. But my friend Taylor Keene, a couple years ago, he was the first one I remember saying it to me. He said, the idea that America was a wilderness is a farce.

It wasn't. It was a robust civilization. But to the European, it looked like wilderness. To the Native Americans, it looked like a great civilization. Yeah. You know, and so that's a whole other story. But basically, we came in and had all this room to grow, room to mess up, room to become wealthy. And so, I mean, it's really a part of the American story is the land, which is wild.

And the more I dig into American history, the more I realize how wild it is that there's not like five countries inside of what is now the continental U.S. It totally would have made sense. I mean, that's what the South tried to do with the Civil War was to make their own country. Yeah. I mean, and it's a wonder there wasn't, you know, of Spanish. I mean, it was so broken up. So many people had stakes in it.

And the fact that it became from Atlantic to Pacific, the same nation is wild. Well, this one big hunk of ground, it is three countries. Mexico and, you know, it's in Canada. And that's why I said, you know, what is now the continental U.S. Right, right, right. It is part of the challenge that I think America is facing right now is all of these, you know, that it's not just geographic spread, but the diversity of ideas and the diversity of. And one of the challenges that we give our students every year in one of our classes is to, you know, think about the U.S. in terms of different countries and how would you put it together?

And some people do it just by geography. But a lot of the students say, well, it's more about ideals. and they try to group people by ideals. And our school has a hybrid been to it. And so kids are actually coming from all over the U.S. And there is like a – there was a big famous article about 10 years ago, the nine nations of North America. And it's challenging because it's not geographically split.

It's really more split off of a set of ideals. Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. Okay, question number two. What topic did host Clay Newcomb ask the render members to ask him about? New Jersey is in Alabama. The point goes to Andrew Willis. That was good.

That was good. Yes. Okay, so there's only so much you can talk about. Crockett goes down to Alabama. He's married to Elizabeth. He goes down to Alabama, and he gets incredibly sick. He's traveling with two guys. just Tennesseans.

And he gets so sick, probably malaria. And they think he's dead. And now, it would be interesting to get the real story of, like, how do you think a guy's dead to the point that he's alive when you leave him, that you're leaving him.

I mean, it's almost like two of, some of your best friends going fishing without you and not even telling you that they went. But, especially when your life goal is to be a commercial fisher. If you're a commercial fisherman,

he ain't fly fishing. That's true. So these guys that are like his neighbors and such take his horse back to Elizabeth and is like, I'm sorry. And I don't think it was scandalous.

There was no talk of like they were shysters because they took his horse back to his wife. They literally thought he did, yeah. Right. And so I don't know if, I don't know what circumstances drove them to not nurse him or take him. We don't really know because he just talks about it in his autobiography. And so takes the horse back to the wife and says, he gone. And she goes, I don't think he's dead.

And perhaps they told her, we think he's dead. Like when we left him, he was really sick. Pretty certain. And basically he tries to walk. home and he's on the side of the road in Alabama and two Indians come by and they take him when he's sick he's dying okay this fast partner after these guys left him and they take him to the nearest home of a white person and just this random house and these Native Americans drop crockadoff and they say here's a dude somebody broke your white man yeah yeah

Okay, I think we need to come up with a pack here, guys. If you are ever out in the hunting with Clay, leave the mule. He's gone. Bring him back, all right? They're alive. We'd like to go ahead and add that body back just so that we can double-chat, confirm. Especially if there's any sense of uncertainty about it. Let's just go out and bring him back.

Is he breathing? I don't know. So Crockett. Grab the horse. Crockett goes into this house and they give him, they have, have some kind of bottle of medicine, and there's a name for it. Some kind of an elixir. Some incredibly powerful elixir, yeah.

And they give him, like, the whole bottle, and he's supposed to just take a little bit of it. And he stays unconscious for five days. Man, let me tell you. He's unconscious for five days. Loddenum. Was it Loddenham? Yeah.

It's got opium in it. That's it. That's it. Yeah. It's like, oh, wow. Yeah, it's like taking some hydrocodone. That's exactly what it was. And then he's unconscious for five days.

And then finally comes awake, stays with him for two weeks, and then goes back to Elizabeth. And she had already sent a guy out to go check on him. So when he's coming back, the guy's going out. And she's like, you're alive. But I thought it was interesting talking about how common that that was back in those days for people to just think Leave the human bring the horse home

Yeah just for people to think someone was dead because there was just no communication and it was just so common for people to die and so I mean that happened so many times it happened with Boone and it happened all over

and the idea that thinking someone's dead and them not being dead and showing back up can you think of a more a scenario with the possibility for a more strong human response.

Right. To just, I mean, like somebody could die and you get like an emotional response of, oh, he's dead. Someone could get lost. You know they're alive, but they're found. It's like, well, we never thought he was dead. He was just gone for a while. Somebody dies. It's like game over.

It's the lowest of lows to the highest of highs like that. And then they come back. You could probably write a song about that. Yeah, probably. You should. I'm already thinking about it. That's in the hook book. He's scribbling something on his palm right now.

But then, and then even taking that back to the pinnacle of the Christian faith, which is Jesus died three days later, came back. But he legit died. He did. He did. It wasn't fake. And so that's just interesting. It was interesting to me.

So thank you for reminding me. That was, Andrew. Thank you for reminding me. The score is one, Andrew one, Josh Spillmaker 1, Stoll maker 1, Brent 0, Misty 0. I would like to get a half a point

because Andrew said it Alabama, but I said near death experience in Alabama. No, Misty said it quicker. Okay, we're moving on. Question number three. In Crockett's, let's see, okay, in Crockett's first term in office,

what nickname did he pick up that he used for the rest of his life? Cainland. Gentleman from the Cainland. Gentleman from the Cair. Bams! goes to Misty Nook. I don't even remember that. You picked it right.

You picked his pocket. Gentleman from the cane. I'm over here like the dude from the cane. Gentleman from the cane. That's it. So that was a... Misty's on the books, y'all. Andrew 1, Misty 1, Josh 1, Brent Zero.

That was a... I thought that was a cool story. And it was the... It became... It was early in his life. He was young. it was his first time in public office. This guy really literally came off the American frontier

all of a sudden is put in this place of proper men inside of a political system that still, even though it's on the American frontier, is quite aristocratic. I mean, we like to think, and this is where Crockett's influence in America is seen so strong, is that all these Europeans came from Europe.

And I mean, what do you think you see a picture of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, they look like Europeans. Yeah. I mean, they're wearing the European clothes. They got the European hairstyles. They were breaking away from that, and their ideals were very different. But still, there was a big tinge of kind of this aristocracy and the rich folks lead, and there was the common man that would never have the ability to, like, make this jump.

And if you weren't a landowner, you didn't have any. power. And so Crockett coming from the frontier. And remember, he's the first one, really. And he's standing up before the Tennessee State Legislature. And this old guy, who we don't even know his name anymore, he is enforcing, reinforcing to the world that this commoner shouldn't be here. So, I mean, it's really showing the ideals of Europe. And he says, the gentleman from the cane, totally belittling him. It would be like saying the hicks from the sticks, these guys. Crocket comes back the next day, wearing as a joke a rough, and stands up and introduces

himself as the gentleman from the cane, charms the whole place, makes this guy look like an idiot and for the rest of his life, he called himself the gentleman from the cane. Now, that he was playing chess. Well, then boys, was playing check. That was a good analogy. Yeah. I thought that was cool. Hoo.

Okay. Final question. It's a tie. It's a tie. It's a three-parter. What words did David Crockett have his portrait artist, John Gatsby-Chadman? Go ahead. Go ahead.

Bam! Paint! What a go! The stock of his gun. Andrew Wilts comes in. What a gun. You son will win a Kentucky long ride. Shoo!

And a guitar. I was nervous. He was looking hard to bring those things back on. So now Andrew can make a living and feed his family. I'm relieved. I just got that. Go ahead. Go ahead.

So that was, yeah, that was Crockets. That was Crockets. That was his, just what he said. And he wanted that written on the, written on his gun. What did y'all think about? Well, I had somebody communicate with me that they didn't understand what Crocket's Blunder was. They thought that I was saying that Crocket's Blunder was him opposing the Indian Removal Act? No.

I felt like I made it clear. You actually said that was Crocket's Blunder. Crockets Blunder was. Because I thought you did make it clear, and you actually restated it. It was him going on the book tour. Kind of for getting, forsaking his duties as a congressman and instead going on a book tour to

pursue. Maybe that guy didn't finish the podcast. Because it was clear that the Indian Removal Act, the opposition to that hurt him politically. Right. But that I think it was his most noble, one of his most noble moments, which was very, at the time would have been like pretty highly,

progressive. That's probably the wrong word. Today you hear progressive and it brings political connotation. I just mean he was ahead of his time. But it really was like a civil rights move. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It would have been. And I learned this today that there were some Native American chiefs that were communicating with him, like thanking him for opposing it. Really? Yeah. So he actually did have some connection to that community, you know? but yeah that was pretty big so one of my favorite parts um just just not anything really deep but i we got a really good chuckle out of him when he's on the campaign tour getting up and reciting his opponent's complete campaign speech can you imagine chef and i did too i mean that was that was

genius absolute genius yes yeah i was i was actually driving a bunch of boys of basketball practice and we were listening to this. And they thought that whole section, him knocking on the door with a wooden broom. I mean, they laughed. I would have thought you would have thought that was inappropriate. I did think it was inappropriate,

but he didn't do anything. I mean, he didn't. You thought it was funny, didn't you? I think it's the first. It's the first farmer-daughter joke in history. He wrote it. He did a do as a comedian. Yeah.

Oh, he was. That's it. I mean, he was full of, He was full of it. Full of it. Yeah. It. He was full of it.

Yeah. And then he, he was just, it's so, it became so common in America for us to have like this fulxy, backwards talk. Uh-huh. Well, he was the first one to do it. Yeah. I mean, and then, and you see that when Robert Morgan talked about his influence on Lincoln. Yeah, that's what I was going to bring up. Yeah.

That was pretty major. And I wouldn't have necessarily made that connection. When he started laying out the connections, I was like, oh, yeah, I can see it real clearly. Well, it was not a template for a commoner backwoodsman to be able to step on the political stage. Yeah. And Lincoln, you know, Crockett dies in 1836. And then Lincoln is, you know, obviously president in the 1860s. Mm-hmm.

and he's an older man when he's president. So their lives, I don't know when... They would have overlap. They would overlap. So I'm not sure when Lincoln was born. But you see a generation of influence. It's like all of a sudden there was a space. Yeah.

And that's the way society and culture works is that someone pioneers a space, like a cultural space for somebody to do something. It's like, oh, I didn't know that I could be a politician. Oh, I didn't know that this kind of... talk and connecting to society worked. And so that's how Lincoln stood out was that he was this, he was from the frontier and he stood out. And so anyway,

1809, Laroo County, Kentucky. Oh, wow, he was 1809. So they were left a lot. That was great. Andrew, why don't you close us down by playing the ballad of Davy Crockett? Love it.

Of course, of course, I'm going to sing. Do you need to know that you've got perfect pitch? That was mosquito. Or tendonitis. Tetanitis. Which one is it in your ear? Tinitis.

One of them. Tinnitus is usually an injury associated with tennis. With tennis. Oh, no, it's from fly fishing. All right. There we go. Born on a mountain top of Tennessee Greenest stayed in the land of the free

Raised in the woods so he knew every tree Killed him a bar when he was only three Davey Davy Crockin King of the Wild Frontier Fought single-handed Through the Indian War Till the creeks was whipped and peace was in store

While he was handling this risky chore, he made himself a legend forevermore. Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. He went off the Congress and served his spell. Fixing up the government, the laws as well. He took over Washington, so I hear tell. He patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell. Davy, David Crockin, king of the wall. wild frontier when he come home his poll of the ticket's done why the western march had just begun so he packed his gear and his trustee gone

he lit out a grinning to follow the sun davy davy crockin king of the wild frontier all right here's the last one here we go he heard of houston and austin's been so to the texas plains he had to go The freedom was fighting another foe, and they needed him at the Alamo. Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. That's some foreshadowing. If that would have been in Spanish, would none of that right. See. Thanks a ton, Andrew. Absolutely.

Thanks for having it. Enjoy the new raffle. Oh, I'm excited. A big win for you. And I hate to move in on your scene there in Nashville and start writing songs, but, you know. A man's got to do what a man's got to do. Come on down and make hundreds of dollars. Today I make hundreds of dollars writing songs.

I'm out of here. Excellent. Well, we have one more episode of Crocow. I'm excited. And it's almost like its own thing. It can stand alone. It can stand alone. 100%.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. All right. Excellent. Thank you all. Thank you all so much.

Everybody listened to this country life and thank you for the folks that are. Yeah. This country life. Yeah, man. It's going well. See you Friday. Every Friday morning. Every Friday morning.

Excellent. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it would. was a sleeping bag, and there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors,

where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast Guaranteed human