Bear Grease - Ep. 210: On The Road Again

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Join Clay and the crew for a behind-the-scenes view into the MeatEater Live Tour. Steve Rinella, Janis Putelis, and Spencer Neuharth are hitting ten cities across the western United States telling stories, playing music, and even playing games. Get your tickets for the remaining tour dates in Spokane, WA, Portland, OR, and Tacoma, WA here.   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. And way off, you can hear fire trucks coming. And I always remember one of the firemen says, and he said, that's a great idea. But you're going to need to put that fire out.

On this episode, we're going on tour, a Meteor Live tour, that is. We're hitting 10 cities in an epic 13-day bus tour. No, I'm not kidding. And I want to give you a sampling of one of our, shows. On this one, you're going to hear from Steve Ronella, Janice Putelles, and myself, you're going to hear some music and some great stories. Hop on the bus with us as we hit the American West. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. Who else is standing up? Long hair.

Long-haired California hippie. Yeah, I know who you are. We talk about y'all all the time. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant search for insight and unlikely places and where will tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land presented by FHF gear American-made purpose-built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore how are they handling the knife situation tonight I think they're taking them take them and label them I think so okay maybe they'll have more than a good customer service.

Yeah, good customer service. Got to beat 75. 75. 75. 75. Sacramento, 75 knives, one bear spray and three guns. We're in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We've been in California for three days. And the security is checking people at the door. A couple of nights ago in Sacramento, people brought in a bunch of knives. I'm backstage. with Steve Ronella, and I ask him if he gets nervous before he goes out in front of a bunch of people. Steve, how do you feel before these shows? I feel nervous for you, Clay.

Shoot, that's not what I wanted to hear. Do you get nervous at all when you do your monologue? Yeah, man. Do you really? No, I'm real nervous. Do you? Yeah, but it dissipates every time, you know. Yeah.

But, like, when I'm thinking about kind of like how the material is going to go, I can't. can't decide until the day of. Like, even if I set aside a time aside, I can't commit till the day of. So it feels very last minute. Yeah. But if I decided a month earlier, I wouldn't pay attention to my decision anyways. Yeah. So I only get, like, I only get clarity about it at the end.

Yeah. And then I'm real nervous because I hadn't even thought about it until that day. I get nervous right before. I feel real solid until about it. You know, I never really expected to be on tour. I always thought it would be the grand old opera. call and hoping to get dibs on my original guitar ballads, but this ain't Nashville. This is the Meat Eater Live tour. I'd like to invite you along to get a taste of the show. I'm opening up

with a song, and I hope you can't tell it, but I'm as nervous as a cat. And I think it's important to note that I'm wearing a pale yellow pearl snap button-up shirt with two embroidered roosters on the lapel. Misty would call this a bold fashion move. Show is starting. Let's go. It's just a little nerve wracking. You like this gunfighter over me? Yeah, this is killing. Good evening, everybody.

My name's Clay Newcomb. I'm from the great state of Arkansas. We're going to have a great time tonight. Very happy you guys are here. We're going to invite Phil Taylor, the sound man out. And Marco Gill. You guys may know this song. It's called Old Sleufu.

If you know it, you can sing along. Oak Classic. On the mountain top, tell me what you see. Bear tracks, bear tracks, looking back at me. Forget your eye full sports before it's too late. Bear's got a little big and he's headed for the game. Oh, he's dig around the middle and he's caught across the front. He's running 90 miles and now we're taking 30 feet.

to jump he ain't never been caught he ain't never been treated some folks say he's a lot like me second first i saved up my money and i bought me some bees started making honey way up in the trees i cut down that tree but my honey's all gone old slew foot done he made himself and home. Oh, he's big around the middle and he's drawn across the front running 90 miles an hour, take a 30 feet of jump. He ain't never been caught. He ain't never been trees. Some folks say he's a lot like me.

Bill Taylor. Winters are coming and it's 20 below. Rivers froze over so we're going. can he go We'll chase him up the holler And we'll put him in a wheel Shoot him in the bottom Just to listen to the hill

Oh he's big around the middle And he's caught across the front Running 90 miles an hour We're taking 30 feet of jump It ain't never been caught He ain't never been treated Some folks say Opening with music was a solid plan.

I mean, who doesn't like live music, and who knew that Phil could rock the harmonica and sing like that? The heart and soul of the show is to bring the crowd close to the metaphorical campfire of the media crew for the evening and celebrate our way of life. The tour is also about Steve's new outdoor cookbook. Soon after I finish my song, Steve Ronella opens the show with some photos and stories from the cookbook. This one is about when Steve had to haul a roasted pig in a New York cab.

In the book, I tell a story of a particular pig roast that I had in Brooklyn, New York. I was living there with my wife, and we had an apartment, and we had all these people above us, but we had access to this little garden area. and one day me and my buddy who was a chef we wanted to do a Hawaiian luau there and we went out to my buddy's dairy farm north of the city and got all kinds of wood and started building up all of our supplies and we eventually built we dig a pit

seven feet long and three feet wide and we just chisel this pit into this little backyard area and dig dig dig and I would have thought someone would have called the cops based on the hole because I mean it looked like you were going to bury a person in there and we were actually laughing about that and we got the hole down real deep and then it came time for the pig rolls we had 150 pound pigs

standing by it with a bunch of sacks of ice on it and we started just burning all this firewood we had we were going to burn it until we had you know 1820 inches of oak charcoal in that fire well we kind of screwed up pretty soon it looked like um it looked like a scene from from Baghdad bag in the early 2000s. I mean, just black smoke going up through all these buildings.

And way off you can hear fire trucks coming. And at first we don't even mention it to each other. You know, I'm like, man, that don't sound good. And they kind of get more and more around and more and more around. And pretty soon, not only are the sirens close, but we got lots of firefighters coming through the apartment.

And we get in the back, and I'm explaining to the firemen, what it is, you know, what's going on here. And I always remember one of the firemen says, during my explanation, and he seemed like honestly open to the explanation. And he said, that's a great idea. But you're going to need to put that fire out. So we still have this pig.

The next morning we get up and we put the pig in a cab and take it to this other buddy bar's restaurant. And we think that his big old restaurant, like he's got a commercial restaurant. This pig will fit in the, it'll fit in the oven. But it doesn't fit in the oven. So then we've got to start cutting the pig up. We're like cooking part of it till it's like done enough, take it out, put another part in,

get that done enough. Because we're still having all these people over to have this big party. And we eventually get it done. And we had 90-some people come to our pig roast that wasn't really a pig roast. It was just regular in the oven pig roast. And my wife was real pregnant, real unhappy with me. And at this point, I've been scrambling for days with this stupid pig, including making that big fire and getting all smoky, then getting all greasy,

then like partying with all the grease. And I remember climbing in bed that night. And I remember her saying, please tell me, you did not just get in this bed without taking a shower. And I want to point out that the guys that are coming out right now, are showered and clean. Keep you going for Steve. After Steve's opening monologue, Spencer Newhart, our MC calls the whole team to the stage.

We're going to have a little story time. Next we have everybody's favorite hillbilly. He came all the way from Arkansas. Make some noise for Clay Newcomb. And last we have the man of many nicknames. He's the Latvian Eagle, the Latvian lover, Longtongyang. Give it up for Yon. Steve asked us if we'd tell a story about cooking wild game.

Here's Yannis Putellus with a story about a recent family turkey hunt, what they ate, and how they cook their turkey. On the screen is a picture of Yanni's daughter with a big gobbler. And by the way, Yonnie's wearing a coonskin cap. This is my oldest daughter Ina. And man, I was really happy that, this is just last week. I was really happy that we had a couple successful hunts last week. last week because I knew how to give this presentation coming up. And we, I took a lot of pictures.

My girls think I'm professional, uh, photo taker when it comes to dead animals. They're right. And, uh, I thought I chose just an absolutely beautiful picture of my daughter. So I sent a photo someone had taken from the crowd back to my wife a couple days ago. And then she showed it to Anna. Well, let me tell you, I chose the wrong picture, dude. I mean, I got, I know, doesn't like it oh my gosh i got the earful like you've never at this point it's if you're going to show anything of me i need to look at it first okay um but no i'm always gauging how much my girls actually like hunting what like the real reasons are like are they authentically into it are they into it just because they want to um make their dad proud or there's a little bit of

competition between the two sisters so are they just doing it because they want to better um their sister. And right after she shot this bird, it's still flopping in front of us a little bit, and she's looking at me, and she's like, man, you really just don't feel that recoil when you're shooting at a real animal. And I thought, man, that's only something that a hunter that's really excited about what just happened says, right? When, like, you shoot a gun and you don't even feel it go off. It's called recoil finally. It used to be called kickback for a long time at our house. Mabel's just about had enough. I just killed a bird now, so Mabel's kind of up on the gun. What I like about this, I don't know folks can see it, but the array of footwear is a

stouther. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Where you got one girl running chucks, and then over yonder, Yanni's boots got, Yanni's daughter's got like three foot tall muck boots out. In Montana, I don't know, it might be like that here too, but in Montana, those kids wearing muck boots 10 months out of the year. I mean, it's just normal attire. But not long after this picture is taking, Mabel and I were off by ourselves a little bit, and she's fading, you know, it's been three days out there, and short nights, long days, lots of hiking, getting drug around by dad through the turkey woods. And she looks at me, and she goes, Papa, I really want a turkey, but I don't want to walk anymore, and I want to go home. And I'm like, baby, baby,

I don't know what to tell you, but you just got to make a decision of what's more important, you know, if you want to just, you know, throw the towel in or if you want to try to get a turkey. Now, we had some turkeys later that we knew where there were some, so I talked her into going out for one more hunt, and here we go. She got herself her first bird, and, you know, turn your meat into food

and take your kids hunting, especially if they're girls. Right on. That was a good story, Janus. The crowd loved it. Now it's my turn. 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 go, 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 Phelps game calls.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. I decided to give a full timeline of the Newcomb history of eating wild game. This is some deep history. Clay, you ready to let it rip? Yeah, I think so. So the storyteller has to wear the Coonskin hat. All right, y'all see this photo up here?

This is my family around 2003. This photo is one of the best depictions in the Newcomb photo album of our socioeconomic status about that time in our life. That when I told my wife that I was using this photo all across the country as the entry point to tell about our family and the way we've eaten wild game, I was promptly scolded. As she said, this is like the most embarrassing photo that we own. But this is my lovely wife, Misty. These are my two daughters, Willow and River.

Misty's actually pregnant in this photo. And we're going to have our fourth son, our third son. and then we'd have another son. But I have a wonderful family. Truly do. And I want to walk you through kind of the arc of wild game in our house. Because I grew up in a hunting family. It was in the cultural background of the Newcombs to be hunters.

But my dad was born in 1948. And that was kind of the ascension of America's economic status. So he didn't want to eat wild game. Like it wasn't cool to eat wild game. and so but he still wanted to hunt and he loved to hunt and he did hunt he was a very serious hunter I grew up just never knowing a life outside of hunting but there was a strange missing piece that we didn't eat a lot of it my dad was very diligent to take care of all the meat and give it away to people which he did but it's kind of weird you know and I always thought it was weird too

and so when misty and I got married I was like we're going to eat wild game and as you can tell by this photo, we didn't have much money. We needed to eat wild game that I was killing. And Phil, go to the next slide. The next slide bumps up about 10 years. This is what people in Arkansas do when you take before, first day of school photos for your kids, grab up all your best animals, line them up, bring the kids in, take a beautiful photo. This is Willow River Bear. and shepherd. The mule is Ellie Mae. It's some wonder that I'm here today after riding that mule, she tried to kill me three times, ran off. The worst thing that a mule can do is run off. It's not bucking or kicking you've got to worry about it. It's when you're on them and they like just

out of control run off. That's what she did. That's Ellie Mae. The two dogs, this dog in the front, this is Newcomb's Ozark Bluff Creek Fern, one of the finest hounds, Devereux Coon of the Ozarks. The dog in the back, his name's Jedi. I was once with a guy named Warner Glen, an old cowboy in Southeast Arizona. Y'all know Warner. One time Mr. Warner, I was with him, was talking to him about his dogs. He says, I ask him a very pointed question. How is that dog? What does it do? And he said, well, he said, Clay, I wouldn't say it in front of him, but that dog's not very good, son. And I wouldn't say it in front of Jay. But Jed's not very good.

So that's Jed, the not very good, Coondog. Sad story started to bring the house down. Fern's dead. She passed away last fall. But these are my children. We raised them on Wild Game. Truly did. I told them from the time of their birth.

I preached to them that Wild Game was the rocket fuel of planet Earth, the healthiest, most sustainable, most intelligent way to live your life. Life was to eat wild game. I preached this to him, like literally just on the pulpit at my home for a decade. They didn't know any better. They would go to people's houses and smell beef cooking and be like, what smells so gross? You know, they'd be like embarrass us and stuff like this. Tell them about your repertoire, Clay.

Well, the Big Five. Yeah, so we raised them on the Big Five. The Big Five was all ground meat and it was chili, tacos, burgers, spaghetti, and meatloaf. Those kids, if you stretch those out, man, you can get like a month's worth of meals and we ground everything. I mean, I ain't scared to grind a backstrap. I mean, I did it so much. We were young. We had careers, jobs, families.

My wife worked. My wife has a Ph.D. to this day. She was in college back on that last photo. So she was a working woman. We needed easy food. But so the arc of the story kind of peaks about, right? here in this photo. About 2013, I think you guys, of all people, will identify with what I'm about to say. About 2013, this guy right here, Steve Ronella, came in to my world, not because

he was a friend, because I just watched him, I listened to him, was influenced by him, and this is not like supposed to be cute or funny, it's just the truth. He told the world that Eat and Wild Game was cool and that we were actually the smart people. And it kind of goes back to like what I had heard my whole life that like this is not what the cool kids are eating. I stood on the pulpit of my home and was like, this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to live. And then meat eater came along and validated the whole thing. And I was like, I told you guys we were cool this whole time. I really give a lot of credit to Steve. He changed the game. He changed the narrative on hunting. And it won't. I mean, it truly was something remarkable. And now we're all

a part of that story. Go ahead and flip to the next slide. Okay, these, yeah, we've been showing some pictures of the kids. This is Shepherd. This is my youngest son, a great kid. Go to the next, go to the one before it. This is River, my daughter. She killed that bear with her bow. And then the picture before this, this is Bear John Newcomb, my son. But, uh, is that the neighbor's fence? It was real close to the neighbor's fence. That's right. Thank you guys. The next section of the show is probably the highlight of the evening, at least for me.

We're going to have a Bard Al-Hooten contest. The winner gets the genuine Coonskin hat that Janice and I have been wearing. This hat was made from a combination of Steve and my Coonhides and were out west. and, you know, these are great people, but my expectations for great owl hooters are low. Very low. If we were in Mississippi, it'd be different. Let's see what these folks have got.

The winner gets the Coonskin hat. All right. Everybody have a good intermission? All right, we're going to, we're going to have our Al-Hooten contest. Now that I know that this is the native range of the borrowed owl, I'm expecting a lot. It's expanding its range.

Expanding its range. So the way this is going to work is if you are a bona fide bardal hooter, I want you to stand up. I mean, like if you'd like to compete. But don't stand up if you're just trying to be cute. I mean, there's like 900 of us in here, you know, and I would love to just go through and hear every one of y'all barred out hoot. But so what we're going to do, surely you guys knew this was going to happen.

If we could just turn the lights up just a little bit so that I could see everybody. There we go. There we go. All right. So what we're going to do, I'm going to have like, probably like eight or ten of you stand up. You're going to Al Hoot. I'm going to pick two of you to come up to the stage, and we're going to have a grand finale up here. I want you to give a full sequence of a barred owl, you know.

So Bard Al Hooters stand up. Who wants, who's ready? We got a guy right here? Who's ready? We've got a guy right here, right here. We got a guy right here, orange hat. I'm having a hard time seeing up top. We got somebody right here.

All right, here we go. Hey, guys, y'all got to help me keep track of who's good. I like the guy up front because he wiped his hands down his pants when he stood up. He's ready to go. All right. We're going to start right here. Give me your best. Start us off.

Loud as you can go. It's really hard to hear, but these people are making their best al-hoots. I teeter on embarrassing them, but I have to uphold the integrity of America's greatest turkey shock gobble mechanism. I got to be honest. Okay, okay. That was cute. You can sit down.

Right here. Right here. Remain standing, though, unless I tell you to sit down. Sorry, buddy. Okay. Okay. Good volume, good passion. I like it.

Right here. Oh, good tone, good trill. Throwing down the trail. He saved that little trill. Are you the guy that has the meat eater? You have a meat eater on your back? Oh, dude. He's like a plant.

Okay, right here, big guy. No, that's the restaurant dude, I think. Yeah, that's the pokey guy. Yeah, right here. Mmm. That's pretty good. I like that. Stay standing, stay standing.

Who else? Orange hat, go for it. Mm. I hear some real talent down in there deep. Didn't quite show up today, but it was good. Right over here. That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Who else is standing up? Long hair. Long hair. California hippie. Yeah, I know who you are. We talk about y'all all the time. The guy rips a terrible owl hoop, but Steve liked it. Just what I thought.

All right. That was not bad. It was good. Is you wearing flip-lops? That was good. That was good. All right. Now we chiseled down to the final two, and the audience will choose who's best.

All right. So the way this works now is this will be like. like an applause o meter. We're going to hear them both individually hoot. Okay? And this is when you bring out the big guns. You got big guns. Now's the time. You get one chance. I mean, this is like, you got one chance. What's the M&M song, you know? Like, one shot, one opportunity. She's everything you wanted. Mom's spaghetti. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. You're on the same though. Come on up here, man. What's your name? I'm Shar.

Sharr. All right. What's your name? Nick. Sharr and Nick. So, hit me with your best. Hold your applause until we hear both of them. You got one shot. Do not miss your chance. You know your opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

Steely-eyed. All right. Ooh, who, who, who, who-who. It's pretty good. All right. Who's voting for? Mr. King's here. Aplaus. That don't look good.

All right. All right. How about for Nick? Nick. Oh, wow. Overwhelming. Overwhelming. Sounds like Nick won it.

Good job, man. It was good. Nick, congratulations. You get a good skin hat and you got to wear it the rest of the night. Good job, guys. Thank you. Thanks. I'm really proud of all of you for your Al Hooting.

Wow. That was a lot of fun. a little embarrassing for the hunting community, but a hat tip to the bold souls that hooted. As we close down the evening, we do a Q&A from the audience, and Spencer has a question for me. All right, we're moving on.

This question just came in. It's for Clay. What wild animal would you like to domesticate to keep as a pet? Well, I've domesticated and had in hand many of the animals that live in my state. Give me some examples. The best animal story that I've got is we had a deer.

We raised multiple white-tailed deer. There was a time in Arkansas when it was legal to have up to six hand-caught animals from the wild in the regs. Each family could have six. We raised several. We had one name Roadrunner. It was a little buck. I've got four kids. All my kids were probably between four.

and 12 when we had roadrunner. He lived in our home. I mean, literally was like a dog. He would come in and out. The older he got, the further he would range from the house. He had a green collar on his neck. There came a time when he would be gone for hours at a time

and then come back and all this. One afternoon, fall afternoon, it was muzzleloader season. I went deer hunting about 250 yards from my house. I sat on the ground nestled up. by a big white oak tree, had my muzzle over my knee. There's a deer trail running down in front of me. And, you know, right at prime time, I see two deer coming.

And, you know, I go, here we go. And as they get closer, I look in its roadrunner leading a wild buck that he had picked up somewhere. It was a small buck. It was like a forked horn. And I don't know if the wind shifted, but the wind was hitting me. right in the back of the neck, just paralleling this trail. And I just laid there dead still with a muzzle order across my knee.

I wanted to see what was going to happen, and my wind is cutting this trail. Roadrunner hits my wind. I mean, this animal is like lived in my home. It knows me. It literally, this sounds crazy. It happened just like this. He literally turned up wind, started bleating, and walked straight to me, and I never moved. And he started licking my face.

And I never moved. And the wild buck, he hits my wind and just freaks out, you know, stomping his feet and bobbing his head. And he took a couple of steps towards me. And, you know, you could just see what he was saying. He was like, don't do it, man. And finally the buck, the wild buck flags and runs off. And I'm like, deadgumet Roadrunner. And we just walk back to the house.

You know, it's over, you know. It's like, what am I going to do? We walked back to the house, me and a roadrunner. Now, Clay, the question was, what wild animal would you like to domestic? I have big plans, big plans to have a pet to have a pet timber rattlesnake. Like, not a joke.

We just did a big snake podcast on Bear Grease, and I met a guy. And anyway, I need a timber rattlesnake. Don't tell my wife. Thanks to everyone who came to the live show. I really hope that you had a great time. And thanks to everyone who bought Steve's new outdoor cookbook. I'm still waiting on that call from Nashville,

but until then, we'll see you on the Bear Grease Render next week. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease in this country life. 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. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.