Danny Jones Podcast - #25 - The Son of a Pitchman | Billy Mays III

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Billy Mays III is a musician under the name 'Infinite Third',  and the son of American TV informercial icon Billy Mays. Follow Billy: https://twitter.com/infinitethird https://www.instagram.com/infinitethird Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cool. So today's guest is Billy Mays the third. What's up, y'all? What's up, bro? So for everyone listening, tell everyone who you are and a little bit about your background. Hmm. I'm a musician, and I perform locally and somewhat nationally as my career. And I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Oh, shit.

percent that's where he's from from pitts yeah yeah when did you when did you uh i moved to florida when i was like 10 but my dad i moved here with just my mom so i would always go back in the summer the winter all year long nice man yeah all my family still lives there cool yeah me too i love it's it's awesome there it's too cold though yeah it can be um yeah i moved down here when i was 18 for college i went to full sale in orlando which is like a i don't know Yeah, I looked into going there actually way back in the day. So I went for recording arts and entertainment business. Yeah.

And I had a bachelor's degree by the time I was 20, which I find to be kind of useless. But I never had to tell anyone that I had a degree to get work or to do what I do. But it was a good experience. And then I sort of moved over to the Tampa area when I was 20. And I've been here ever since on and off, you know, with a little bit of travel in there and touring. How did you get into making music and doing what you do? I remember, so I think one of the biggest things that hit me, which I thought was like a really good introduction to who you are,

was actually the full sale video that you did. And you talk about the first album you made in 2009, and you talk about like, you know, your relationship with your family and the process of making that album. And did that point in time kind of like, kick off where you are now. Was that kind of like a turning point for you? Yeah, I kind of look at that as the

the launching point. I had actually made other albums that I didn't really release in any capacity. When I was in high school, I was making albums on like the most primitive gear and like eight track digital recorders and guitar and I had no knowledge of what to do. But the one thing that I felt like I did intuitively

was one songwriting like instrumental songs. and to structuring those songs into albums. Like with, I always feel like I've been drawn to the, like the sequencing of tracks on an album. Like, that's something that I'm just, like, super passionate about. And when I'm listening to music, I feel like I'm always taking in the information of why they started with this song and why this track three is really strong and the arc and, you know,

what they say for the end. And I'm always thinking like that, too, for my stuff. So I was always doing that. And then by the time 2009 came around, well, that was a big year for me anyway in life. That was, I had lost all of my gear, all of my music gear, everything I owned in an apartment fire in February of 2009. Wow. In Orlando? No.

Is this when you're going to school? No, not when you're going to school? No. This was, I was, I guess I had been over here for about three years maybe. And I had just gotten an apartment on my own. I was living with my dad for a while. and then I finally got my apartment on my own in kind of the Clearwater area. Okay.

And within two weeks of moving in, my whole apartment building burned down. God, damn. And it turned out to be arson. Really? And my dad thought that maybe someone was targeting him, and we had the same name. Yeah. But it turned out to be... From what we know, it turned out to be...

The apartment that I moved into, somebody had gotten evicted after like 10 years from living there. And people had seen him circling around in the days leading up to it. And then they definitely found that there was accelerant used in the fire. And they never caught the guy. I don't think for all I know. I think he skipped town or something. They were looking for him. He was the person of interest.

But thankfully, nobody was really injured. I think, like, my neighbor tried to save two. much of his stuff and like got burned in his arm just slightly and then his dog also like wouldn't come down the steps oh shit but anyway my my apartment was like kind of the target so i remember i remember you saying you like looked back once you got out and you saw the place literally yeah i literally like you were in there when it caught fire and i'll never forget because i had watched donnie darko that night which involves a big house fire and so i woke up kind of inexplicably around three a m and I ran to the front door, the apartment, and I didn't hear a knock or anything.

I was kind of just like, what's going on? I was, like, in the days. And I opened the door, and my neighbor, who was also a maintenance guy at the apartment, was like, hey, there's a fire. You got to get your stuff and go. And I was like, all right. And I went and got my girlfriend who was there at the time, and I said, hey, grab your backpack. Like, we got to go.

And I didn't grab anything except my phone, wallet, keys, and a digital camera that I had sitting on the nightstand. and I made it By the time I made it back to the door The whole stairs were covered Yeah Like I wouldn't have been able to walk through these flames This was like I thought oh shit

Well now we have to like think about jumping out the window or something But thankfully the maintenance guy was like much more lucid and awake He ran and got a fire extinguisher And Sprayed it just enough to get it down And my girlfriend and I just ran past And by the time we turned around, which was like 30 seconds later, it had already spread all over the roof. And like where we were sleeping was already like, we would have been dead if we hadn't woken up.

You know, like it was the smoke inhalation would have been crazy. So we turned around and we were the first ones out, but we were also the first apartment to really go. And then it took another like, I don't know, 30 minutes or so for the whole place to burn down. Everyone started evacuating. And it was only two floors. So it was kind of small. Yeah. But I remember.

Kind of just being in shock and like kind of laughing at the fact that like some of my stuff was still just in boxes and So it probably just went up in flames like super easily and All at once and I was I called my friend who had built me a custom guitar It was a custom built guitar for my hands and he spent a year making it the year of his life making it and it was sitting right there And I didn't grab it and I he was the first person I called it like 3 a.m. And he was the first person I called at like 3 a.m. And And I'm like, dude, I'm watching the apartment burn down and the guitars in there. And he was like super upset. And I was like, I think I'm going to, like, once they put out the fire, maybe I'll go back up and be able to save it.

He's like, dude, no, that had a lacquer finish on it that hadn't even dried yet. Like, it takes months to dry. So he's like, if any flame got near it, it probably just went straight up in flames. Oh my God, dude. That's terrifying. Yeah. So what did you do after that? I just sort of

I guess I sort of just started from scratch I mean all your equipment you had you had probably a lot of expensive shit yeah I had a studio and I had like cameras and stuff like that stuff I had built up you know in like over five years or so or more and thankfully

well okay I also lost all my clothes I lost like stupid stuff that you wouldn't consider like I had I had like a pair of sandals that I was wearing when I left and then like the shirt that I was wearing. And then I realized like, I don't have any underwear. I don't have anything. So I think Salvation Army was there or the Red Cross or something.

It was the Red Cross. They were there and they were able to write checks for like 140 bucks to everyone that lived in the complex or in that building. So I went and bought some T-shirts and stuff like that. But I'll tell you what, the as horrible as that was and traumatic. and I was like, I would have panic attacks when I'd smelt fire for like a couple weeks afterwards. There was still like a really... Bring this a little bit closer to you. Oh, sorry.

You can like force it up a little bit. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, like really tighten it. Cool. Cool. Good?

Yeah. Perfect. As bad as that was, it was kind of freeing to not own anything for a bit. Yeah. That makes sense. Like, just like to start clean. A minimalist. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. And I think. It kind of messed with my whole perception of possessions for a while. But obviously, you know, you always build back up and get new stuff. So to answer your question, my dad helped me get back on my feet with like the bare essentials. And for me, that was like some clothes. And I ended up just like staying at my girlfriend's mom's house or something because it was close by like for maybe a few months.

and my dad got me a guitar and an amp like pretty cheap amp pretty decent guitar and like that's all I had I didn't really have like effects pedals anymore so I was it like kind of stripped everything down and like I was super lucky to even have that but it kind of helped me therapeutically just start from scratch and process the the weird emotions about the fire yeah like through music without without trying to, you know, be cool or anything. I was just kind of like making music to have fun again or not to have fun to meditate and to process. Wow. Were you working at the time? Like what were you? Yeah, I was a freelance production assistant.

Okay. And that's how you got into production because your dad kind of like brought you along and chained the ropes and brought you on sets. He kind of just brought me on set one day for a kaboom commercial and was like, introduced me to the production manager who I actually knew from when I was a kid and he was just like put him to work and I was like oh that's awesome I just did what I could and like I didn't even really know how to like paint walls and stuff and that's what they wanted me to do so I had to like learn like really basic things because I went I didn't go to school for that I went to school for more on the music side so that stuff didn't really I but in the same time I learned more about life and work and technology from just getting thrown into it right to figure it out so yeah I was work in freelance production as much as I could at that time and were you doing a lot of um the kind of

in the infomercial world or were you doing okay big time infomercial world and like some more high budget commercials yeah um like all florida based stuff and it's kind of a hub down here for it is commercials so i guess that has to do with it yeah it definitely is after your apartment burns down your dad helps you helps you out getting some new stuff you have no clothes And you're just making music as a hobby. Like now you're doing it kind of like just as like a therapeutic thing to get through that loss. Well, it turns out that I always was doing it as a hobby. But I think this is when it clicked as like emotional practice, like something I need to do rather than I'm just doing it because it's what I like to do.

And it kind of connected my life experiences to my expression. And like that moment was when it kind of looking back, that would be like the turning point of like, oh, now I'm making like real music. Like before I was kind of just doing the activity of making music. And now I felt like I was making like what I would consider art. Right. And that it was connected to the creator more.

So for people who don't understand exactly how it works, can you explain the exact process and how you make music? Like with the instruments and the sampling and all that? Yeah. actually back then I really wasn't doing it this way I was sort of always a one-man band but I don't really know if there even was that good of technology for live looping back then so what I would do is I would kind of just layer the shit out of guitar and it would be as though there were eight guitar players playing at the same time but they were all me yeah so that's how I

started and that's how I like like that's how I got any kind of thing resembling a big sound back then, like in high school even and stuff. Yeah. And so I was like always kind of starting on like a self-taught method that probably wasn't the best way to do things. But I guess I did have a looper back then in 2009. The red, the red Roland. Yeah, I think I did have that one. That was the one everyone had.

Yeah, like the RC 20 or something. I don't know. Maybe I had the RC 50. Yeah. But that was, so what it is is you. you press a button with your foot, and it records what's happening. And then as soon as you press it again,

it just keeps looping that thing. It just keeps playing it over and over again. And you can keep layering over it, and there's all kinds of options of tracks, and depending on what one you have. And now I've, I would say, like, five years after that, boss put out a really special one called the RC 505, which is sort of the standard now for tabletop loopers.

It's all hand-based, and that's kind of what I use now for everything I use for my infinite third sets, which are guitar looping and beats on the spot. I use that. And then for mouth counsel, this other thing that I do, it's really just the RC 505 and a microphone.

And it involves other people and just voices. Okay. And so that's where I've gotten to since 2009. But back then, yeah, I was, I guess I was into more, like, I was getting into more ambient music.

And I guess. I love that, like I told you, when I first met you was I really got an A-Fex-Twin vibe from it. He does the same thing. He'll go, he'll do his massive live sets and he'll just sit in the corner of the stage with his little, with his little whatever it is.

Yeah. And then he just like makes it up, and there's just like, literally there's hundreds of thousands of people in the crowd. He just sitting there just like in his own little world. Yeah. And A-FX Twin is amazing. And there's a couple other producers like that that I would say that I am influenced by Fortette.

Just, it takes a lot. lot for me to like really get into an artist that's like kind of like leans more towards like the DJ world because I I feel like they you have like really recognize their vibe that they bring even if they're sampling or you know yeah remixing or whatever they just kind of have their their stamp of what they do so yeah I think I think besides that I was listening to like Sigur Rose um exposures in the sky uh Maguai and bands like that and I think that's I love that opened up yeah magua is one of my favorite bands and i think that opened up that style of like

instrumental music like epic instrumental music for me and so my first album came out in december of 2009 the same year that your apartment yeah well okay well then i guess the the ending of that portion of the story is that i got back on my feet after the fire and i think it was june well no yeah it was June, beginning of June, end of May that I moved into a new apartment finally. And I kind of like was getting back on my feet. In Clearwater? This is in Dunedin. Okay.

So close to Clearwater. And just getting settled in, kind of like building up my collection of items and furniture and stuff like that slowly. And then in June of 2009, my dad just passed away unexpectedly at the age of 50. So that was sort of heavy to like tack on. that moment. It was obviously like, would have been bad on its own. But like the fire was almost like really manageable.

Yeah. And I survived. Yeah. And then, you know, when my dad died, it was, it was sort of like a thing. Like it was like a lot of, a lot of complication just around life

at that point with, uh, even in my work and all that. How old were you? I was, uh, 22. I think I was 22. Fuck.

I think I turned 23. in August of that year. So, yeah, that was, that was like the one-two punch of 2009 that I look back at as one of the most important years of my life, like not just for shitty reasons, because also at that time I sort of solidified what I wanted to do with my life, with music and stuff. And without having much experience or knowledge or wisdom yet, I kind of set out to like finish this album by the end of the year and I was able to do that it's called gently the album's called gently and some of it was being written even before my dad died so I kind of just like kept going

down the you know let it keep avalanching down the hill once once he died it was like all I had to really like focus on that I cared about so I did that and um it was a pretty strong album I still look back at it and I'm like damn there was something special going on because I can't even recreate some of that stuff now it's I don't know what I was doing but I think I was just so focused and zoned in on completing that task not even knowing how important it would be for like the future and like what I was building but so yeah that album kind of like just would you say that that album like reflects that whole year for you like what you're feeling it's like it's like a it's kind of a

pretty deep sounding album like emotionally but it's surprisingly uplifting and yeah um optimistic which I guess you could say is how I felt in 2009 was like surprisingly optimistic in the wake of all that because it kind of like I feel like it kind of woke me up whereas I didn't really know what I was doing with my life so much I kind of had like a vague idea that I wanted to make music and stuff and I was kind of just going along with life yeah and I think when those two things happened it sort of like jolted me to like just reflect on what I want to do and how I want to do that and And I'm thankful for it because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today without going through all that shit. Right.

That, I mean, I can't imagine that moment when you find out that your dad passed away. I mean, it has to feel like it wasn't even real or like you were in a dream or something. Oh, totally. It was just like. Yeah. I can remember the morning. My dad was actually, he had a really bad hip. Not many people know this.

He had a horrible hip and he got his hip replaced twice, the same hip. And his body was like, rigid. It's rejecting it like the first time it just didn't work and then the second time he got a staff infection and like it was pretty messed up and then He had his third hip replacement where they told him this is the last one we can do if it doesn't work you might not be able to walk like fuck So that Monday he was scheduled in the morning to to have this hip surgery and then Saturday night he got in from doing all this traveling to the shoot last minute commercials before he was going to be down for a while and and he got in to Tampa Bay, Tampa Airport. It's kind of a funny thing you can look it up. Is this a video where the plane?

His plane, the wheel blew out on landing and like the suitcases fell out. And he got hit on the head with his own suitcase or like other people's suitcases. And then they even interviewed him, like local news interviewed him coming off the plane because they were like, oh, notable local guy, Billy Bayes was on the plane. And so he has this like really just exesons. exhausted look on his face and I knew I know what he's going into at that time. Oh, yeah. And he called me and we had this long talk. He was just like happy to be alive and he was talking about like we're just going

to get this hip done and then we're going forward with all these business things where I was going to help him with a lot of the kind of the PR stuff with. Oh, really? Basically the website that I run now, Billy maize.org, is probably a version of what I would have made with him had he still been alive was just sort of like collecting his work. You know, that's kind of what it was. Okay. Because nobody was doing that.

and so that happened and then that night I was super anxious not about the plane I thought whatever the plane he got lucky and that happened I remember feeling like super anxious just about

the hip surgery thinking something might go wrong or whatever you're worried about it might not walk again or something yeah totally and then I was telling my girlfriend about it and I was kind of like panicky and I felt like my chest was like, you know how you, when you have anxiety, you're like, you've, I started to get really

worried that I, I had like a problem going on. So I, so to calm down, I think I turned my phone off, which I never did. I turned my phone off for the night and went to bed. We wake up Sunday morning and my girlfriend gets a call from her mom that says, hey, Billy needs to call his mom. She can't get a hold of him. Everything's okay. Just call her. And I'm like, okay, everything's okay. So I call her and she answers the phone crying and basically telling me that they found my dad dead when he woke up or he never woke up that night. And it's funny because he was traveling and he just made it home that night and he finally got home and then died,

which we all look back at as such weird timing. It would have been way worse if he had died in like a hotel room or something. Somewhere else out of state. Yeah. So, yeah, that was kind of just dead. devastating and then I was talking to you know a bunch of phone calls coming in that day and It was just a pretty surreal day. It was had to been a surreal like couple months. Yeah totally. I mean it's a surreal life Right. Right. Yeah, it's

I can remember I had a blackberry at the time. This is my phone and like I had just gotten on Twitter maybe in like March of that year and it was just starting out and it was it wasn't really really like a big thing yet. But it was pretty awesome still to be on Twitter. And I got my dad on Twitter. Oh, really? Maybe a month or two before he died. We actually found someone was doing a parody account.

And then we asked that kid if we could just take that account because he had gotten a bunch of followers. Did he have like the Billy Mays handle? He had real Billy Mays. So we wanted to get that because it was already kind of established. Is it still a thing? I think so. You can go on it.

And it's funny because if you look back at the tweets, there's an undefined moment where before this moment, it was just this. kid tweeting what he thought my dad would tweet and then there's a moment where people are crazy it becomes actually my dad like I think I'm still in touch with the dude his name's mark if Mark's watching this we're like connected on social media but like I think we maybe sent him some some swag or something that's hilarious but then like my dad would tweet like kind of goofy things he would just be like it was always like going to L.A. today gonna shoot commercial thank you to all my fans

stuff like that. From a Blackberry, it takes like 20 minutes and type one sentence. And he was a total boomer like just in general about this kind of stuff. Tech-wise he would like he didn't type,

he typed with fingers, you know? He had just pointer fingers. Yeah. And you know, it was amazing that he even was able to get emails from for his work stuff. And he didn't have an agent or anything. Like I think he had an agent

that he worked some of the bigger deals with towards the end like he had the Discovery Channel deal and a few other bigger deals that finally just required an agent. But he was doing so many handshake deals with his commercials. That's silly. Yeah.

So anyway, the Blackberry thing is notable because I actually tweeted within an hour of getting the news that my dad didn't wake up this morning. Because people were following me because of my dad on Twitter. And it was like a pitchman thing that I was on the pitchman show on Discovery Channel. So we had like this little fan base that was growing. Yeah. And I was just trying to be like, you know, the in between because my dad didn't really know how to interact in a quick way. So I would just do that. So on Twitter, I posted that.

And then I see it popping up on the news stations. I was the confirmation that my dad died. And really, it wasn't confirmation because I wasn't verified or anything. So they just started running with and they were using that tweet as verification. You'd see screenshots on my tweet on CNN and all this stuff. And this was kind of like, I feel like it's when we discovered this whole like mass. mass grieving of celebrities was right around this time

because it was Michael Jackson died three days earlier on the 25th, yeah, and my dad died on the 28th. And, like, literally in my last conversation with my dad, he's like, you heard Michael Jackson die? I was like, yeah, that's crazy. And then it became that. And then, like... And the news just, like, just blew it out, like, blew it up.

Yeah. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze. So, like, tweeting you and stuff? Well, no, they were all dead. They were celebrities that died that that summer. And so that's why later on there's a South Park episode called Dead Celebrities. It was the season premiere of one of the seasons where my dad was heavily featured in it. But he had all these celebrities, including Michael Jackson, their ghosts. They're like haunting the kids.

That's so sick. It's amazing. And so anyway, I somehow my tweet made it to Alyssa Milano, who was a big tweeter at the time. Okay. And she basically just said, hey, go give Infinite Thirds, some love. He lost his dad today. And that was like a really nice thing. But I had notifications on.

And it literally bricked my Blackberry for like six hours. I couldn't call anyone. I was at my dad's condo. We had finally made it there. But as that was happening, the way the notifications came in, it wasn't really prepared for that many. And it was like I went from like a thousand followers to like 15,000 followers. Blackberry smoking. Over a few hours.

So yeah, it like, it kind of like made me not able to tell more people like my family and stuff, which is funny. But yeah, that's kind of a funny, like, that's how it, like, that's how it dispersed through the world was through my tweet. Yeah. And that's funny how stuff works. Yeah. So it seems like you and your dad were really close. Yeah, we were super close. Like super like personal and business.

Seems like you helped him out a lot of things. I think that was where it was going. Yeah. I was just like filling the role of while nobody's. really thinking about this stuff and I'm here and I care about it. So I should do that. And he was super on board. And I mean, I did like travel with him. The last time I saw him actually was in LA. Really? The week he died, he went on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien when Conan had a short stint hosting the Tonight Show. I tried finding that. I couldn't find that interview.

Damn. It was him and Anthony Sullivan. They were promoting pitch men. And a couple times before that, he was on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. I saw that. And that was cool. But I told him, I don't care to go for that. But if you ever get on Conan, you got to fly me out because I was like a huge Conan fan. Yeah. And I still am. And the minute he got booked for Conan, he just called me and he's like, hey, I'm getting

you a ticket. Like, we're going. So I went out to L.A., had this great time, met Conan, hanging out backstage and stuff. And that night we were all celebrating that moment. And that was the last night that a lot of us saw him because then we all went our separate ways. and he went and shot all these commercials. So, yeah. We were close.

He was a huge supporter of me doing music and stuff. Was he really? Yeah. Unfortunately, he never really got to hear my good music. Yeah. But he heard some of the stuff that I worked on in the years before that. And he was just like unconditionally supportive of it, you know? And my mom was like that too, and they were divorced since I was like three.

but they both kind of had this like really heavy support just because I was the only child and I feel like I don't know they were just good like that and I lived with my mom growing up so my dad was kind of like this traveling I see him when I see him kind of thing right because he did the home shows home and garden shows that was like his thing he was like a carney basically like going and pitching on boardwalks and traveling home shows yeah he would pitch products he would get a booth at these at these at these Like trade shows or? Yeah, kind of like, like, uh, but just like gadgets like, like, for your home, like you go and you look at refrigerators and stuff, but you also look at like choppers and things like that. So when I was growing up, when I was a baby, he was doing the washmatic, which was a hose that goes in a bucket so you can wash your car on the fly without having a hose nearby and you pump it and it uses like gravity to shoot water at your car. Oh shit. And he was great at the demo. He like learned from the like the veterans how to do this demo. And so there's pictures of him holding me as a baby and like,

oh, yeah, the thing at a train show on like a, on a standalone car door that they bring in to me because they don't bring a whole car and thing. Yeah. So they used to call him bucket Billy. And I remember there's like shirts of him, his says bucket Billy and mine says little bucket Billy.

I don't find that. So that was the product that I knew him for as a baby. But then when I was closer to becoming a teen, maybe like 11, 12, he was doing the salsa master, which was basically a food processor that you'd crank with your hands. It was a great product.

And I think it's still around, and his demo was just making salsa all day. And so I would hang out when he would come to Pittsburgh for the home show. That would be like the most time that I would spend with him. And I'd like bring my friend and he would buy us all these like X-Men toys or whatever we were into at the time,

wrestlers or Star Wars or whatever. And we'd go on like a spree because he was just like trying to make up for not being around. Yeah, yeah. And we'd play in the hotel and swim. And then during the days, we would go and hang out at the home show and, like, hang out under the booth, like, playing with toys and stuff. No shit.

Because it wasn't that much space. Yeah. So it's kind of, like, ingrained into me what he did. Wow. It's cool as hell. And you could, like, try the salsa. That was, like, part of, that was how you get people to come to the booth. Okay.

Free salsa. So in between, we would just, I know, we would just eat this salsa. It was amazing salsa. It was amazing salsa. He'd make, like, a spicy one and a mild one. And my dad, legit made. really good salsa. Really?

Yeah. And it was probably from making it so much with that. Oh my gosh. So that was like, that was the time between the home shows and then he lived in Florida in Clearwater. We would come down and visit him in the summer sometimes for like a couple weeks. Okay. And so that was the time that I saw him.

It wasn't really like shared custody. It was like my mom raised me and then my dad, I would just see him when I could. Thankfully they always got along. Oh, that's good. Yeah. But yeah. So then we were close. We were, I guess what happened was then when I was 18 and I came down for college.

It was kind of like the handoff. And now he was going to try to make up for some of the time that he didn't get to spend with me. So I moved in with him after college. And really, it's like for the last five years of his life, we finally got to become like friends and like, you know, best friends. And so I'm thankful that I got that time with him because I think about it. I'm like, you know, I didn't really know him that well. I knew I didn't know him as an adult and I got that time because I moved down here. So what was it like living? Was he like a baller or what was his house like?

He kind of like he thought he was like I look at some of his financial decisions and I just think that. That wasn't a good one. If I get money like that, I'm never going to do that. Like what? Like he would like he would like he bought a pretty, by the time he made it, I think I'm guessing it was about five years before he died and it's the house that I moved into. It was like kind of a mansion like in Odessa, of Florida. He had it built and it was a super nice house. It was like Florida style house. I don't know if I like the architecture so much, but it had like a movie theater in it. And what? Yeah, like a like a eight seat movie theater and like just cool shit like that. But I think his his like his stupid investments was that he would he would lease cars. So he would always have like four cars at a time

in the time. And this only lasted a few years. He would have like a Bentley. and a range rover and an escalade and like a BMW and like different purposes. Yeah, he would lease them and it was like such an expense and like looking back, it's probably why, you know, there was no huge fortune for me to, for me to take when he died. But then again, I think it was just his thing of like,

I would love to see a Billy May's Cribbs episode. Dude, it would have been awesome. He was, he was so poor growing up and like just lived in McKee's Rocks, Pennsylvania, which is like a, noteworthy town for like you know not good things and so I think he hustled so much and then when he finally got that money he he just wanted to like just enjoy it kind of prove it and live it up yeah and like enjoy it and and I think he just loved showing up at a place in a Bentley right like then also being this down-to-earth dude he'd like let people check it out and I remember at his he got remarried

when I was in high school and he had a Rolls Royce at the time he had a phantom and that was like he had like i think back then he only had like two cars at a time but the phantom he had was probably the sickest car he ever had yeah um i remember at his uh rehearsal dinner for the wedding they're coming out of i think it's called magianos down at uh yeah yeah yeah so they he were coming out of there and they the valet pulls up his rolls royce and everyone starts to realize who it is and he was like pretty famous at the time he spends like way too much time signing autographs for these kids on this on his Rolls Royce fandom like signing it on them and like letting them get in and like

letting letting their parents check it out and like it just became this big scene and everyone's like rolling their eyes like all the family and stuff like oh here he goes dude that's awesome so the shit like that would happen all the time but i think he enjoyed sharing like like hey this is what it's like you can just like when you have luxury and then he would like try to help people out and yeah it's super let them experience it too that's amazing you've uh done your part to kind of like from that point in 2009, you kind of like made a decision that you're going to obviously make a huge turning point,

but you kind of like carried out his legacy or you kind of like, it seems like you took the ball from there and you ran with it, in your own way, you know, with the music, like with that new album. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I think I do find crazy, probably things that people wouldn't really understand unless you, like, have my memories and stuff. But like I feel crazy, like unexpected parallel vibes of his life at this age and my life now. Really? And how I always thought, no, I'm not going to become a pitch man.

I'm not going to be, I'm not going to do what he did. I'm more of an artist, musician. Yeah. You know, he was an artist and a performer in his own way. Yeah, totally. It was like, super interesting. Yeah. And like he wrote a lot of the commercials as well.

Did he really? Yeah, that was like, because I mean, it was his pitch being distilled into like these little presentations. So he was big on the wording of it and the demos. Mm-hmm. So I always. tried to like distance myself from it like right after he died i was like no i'm not going to go into that world because like a couple people thought oh you should you should fill his shoes and like be a pitch man

and you know try to take over for products and stuff and like some people have asked me to but nothing's really ever like excited me enough to do it but then i realized like i'm i do all this independent touring and i've built up my little merch set up and my my setup is essentially what he did i I play music and that's my demo. And then after the set, I'm selling merch and trying to like get to the next city, which is exactly what he did, except that his demo and his merch were the same thing. It was like he's literally demonstrating the product. Right.

It was kind of all in one where mine's a, mine's a little bit more removed. Like it's more a performance and then you buy. But that's kind of what his was too, I guess. So it makes me think that a lot of the times when I find myself alone in a city touring and like playing some weird show, some weird basement show or something, I think, man, my dad was right in a situation like those reasons. Yeah. Some festival or not festival, like a convention that, like, didn't really turn out the way he wanted.

He's just trying to make it to the next one, hope that it goes well. And, like, it kind of makes me feel connected to them, you know? Definitely. Did you already have the name Infinite Third by that point? Or how did it, when did you come up with that name and how did you come up? Actually, in 2009, I was going by a different name, and it was, like, so, I look back and I just hate it. Because I think I was so, I was so caught up in my. feelings rightly so I was just like oh yeah for sure I was just like holy shit like I'm just

feeling this and it's like grief and you know so somehow in my haze of 2009 I came up with the name soft words traverse and it did and it was just like so dumb and like I don't like but I think it was just like I look back at a lot of that time as sort of like foggy even though the music was really on point like I feel like my life was kind of like foggy and I didn't really know who I was yet, like who I was becoming. Well, and it was just a transitional period. So I went with that name for that first album. And I think not even a year later,

I realized that's not the name I want to go with. And like, I, um, I was, I had this tattoo. I had this infinity symbol tattoo. And I have a third symbol, you know, for the third. And I think I was just like sitting somewhere and I committed to like infinite third. Like that should be the name. And it kind of gives off like a duality of what I feel in me.

And it also is kind of confusing and doesn't make sense, like logically, like infinite third. So that's what I wanted in a name was something that was like a little intriguing, but also like had personal meaning. It seems like you built in a lot of meaning to it. Yeah. It has like so many meanings built into it. Yeah. Well, there's like there's somebody came up to me recently and said that there's,

there actually is like an infinite. Like I always thought the third interval in music makes sense. because it's like the beginning of the minor interval, like zero to three in the scale, gives a certain vibe. So I thought, yeah, people could take that and run with that thought. But somebody told me that there is like a concept of an infinitely recurring third interval, which I guess there could be anything with music. Right.

She went into this whole thing about like, you got to look it up, you got to check it out. And like, I've even had people play on it in press, like, reviewing my live sets or my albums where they thought it was some sort of like physics. term and like and then it dawned on me that like my music with the looping was set up to sort of always have infinite possibilities okay okay forever so yeah a loop is infinite i like yeah and like i can keep progressing it and i i improvise so many of my sets that i don't want to play the same thing twice too much you know i wanted to always be a little different and let it be for that moment and not just something i'm like doing karaoke with yeah i always thought because you painted the

three on your forehead that it was like a third eye. Well, yeah, I mean, there's bad in it. Yeah, that works too. Take mushrooms and do whatever. Yeah, I mean, one of my albums, if you look it up, I was just revisiting it, actually. It's a six-part collection of albums called The Exploratory Sessions. And you can find them on my band camp. They're all kind of like, whatever, they're all just super guitar-based, like Spacey guitar.

improvisations that I then curated into these albums that like sort of each one has its own little concept yeah and I started like revisiting like how that all went down and it was it was my first time like really diving into mushrooms really and yeah yeah and it was a basically like five days at my apartment um with a whole setup and with like a tv set up with like a VHS player that like glitches and like I was I don't know I was I was I guess I I was like trying to like, you know, expand my mind or like I was being invited to expand my mind. And I basically just recorded and live streamed. I have, I live streamed it on Ustream back then.

Really? You would have U stream. And then I remember how stupid it was is that there, it would be this like relaxing music that I'm live streaming. And then like ads would just randomly interrupt it. And you couldn't pick when they happened. So like really looking back, I would like never do that now. I would never want like a live stream to just be. interrupted.

Right. Like in the middle of my set, just like stopping the music at a random point. Play a commercial. Yeah. So it was basically just three to five days of me, not eating like huge doses and mushrooms, but just like a steady flow of it. Yeah, to keep it going. Eating some healthy food and like.

Yeah. And I didn't intentionally do it, but it was all recorded and it was all live stream. So I took the recordings and started going back through them over a course of, I don't think they actually came out until like 2014. and this was probably 2011. So it took about three years to come back around and say, man, there's a lot of good stuff here. How can I present this?

So I presented it as a six album collection called The Exploratory Sessions. So it took place over six days, you said? Yeah, about, I think it was about five days, three to five days on and off. And you were just streaming for hours. On shrooms the whole time? I guess. I don't know. I feel like when you do mushrooms, like at least when I do,

like it's sort of just I just need a little bit and it kind of like sets me off in a direction and like I feel like you just kind of like teeter on the brink of reality I'm more of a micro dose guy

and not like tripping ball that's what I would do I feel like I would be like too scared to go through that fucking door yeah I mean yeah I've had some bad experiences have you

in the past yeah but not nothing like where I did anything crazy or just mental like where you did too much you think no not too much Just like the wrong heads. I always felt that when you do psychedelics, there's always a moment.

At least for me, this has been true. To really have the euphoric clarity that can come with that. I always feel like I have to go through this period of accepting death. And even if it's just like the concept of death. And so maybe my mind gets all anxious and heavy and think I'm going to die or realize that I'm going to die one day or whatever version of that. And then like through those clouds there's like this huge clarity, but you kind of have to like get through it.

So that's happened with me a lot is that like I've had to first break through the fear and then sort of like realize that there's like a clarity on the other end. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think I've ever had any like super bad experiences. But I think there's always like a little bit of a teetering unlike. Like if you're going to fall over it on the other side of the fence. Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of.

Like, I hear people that get stuck in that, in that fucking state. Well, I do think that, um, some people do huge doses of these types of things and it triggers, like, psychosis. And, you know, but it's something that they already dealing with or already have in their, you know, lineage or something. So I do think that that happens. But that's why I'm like, I feel like I'm super careful about it. And I try not to. I don't take it lightly. Like I, I, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've,

set it up as like a ritual if I ever do it like I try to do it in like at parties or anything like that right I'm not into that but I like to kind of treat it as like a spiritual experience yeah for sure and thankfully I've stuck with that for the most part I won't just take it if someone would give me something like that at like a festival or something I can't do that I've always been way too much I've always been too much of a pussy to try it like if I smoke too much weed I freak out like I'm tripped like if I eat like a like an edible or brownie or something I've had like I'll look in the mirror be like this it's got to be what shrooms are like. I think there is some overlap, you know,

in like, in some really good weed. Yeah. Yeah, they're close. I'm going to try them soon. I'm going to definitely try them soon. Yeah,

I would just, I would just stay hydrated and, okay. Yeah. And listen to some infinite third. You'll be right. Actually, people have hit me up instead of,

my music has guided them through, like, bad trips and stuff. Really? Yeah. That's probably like the best compliment. Like, I've forgotten all kinds of things about,

like, obviously people doing, it like for their yoga classes or whatever putting on my music and then sometimes being like taking shrooms and doing yoga no no no no no no just doing yoga different ways that people have put on my music in like odd settings oh yeah yeah yeah music's been played at like childbirths what really at home births and uh I always found like the couple people who have reached out and said hey I went on a journey and

like thankfully your music kind of anchored me throughout the trip and I'm like yeah I guess that's kind of what it's for you know it's like yeah it's it's it's instrumental and stuff in the way that it is for a reason and it like has a certain abstraction for a reason it's not just like dance music or right even though there are beats sometimes and stuff it's not the purpose has always been like catharsis okay meaning like kind of going through like a transformational emotional experience yeah my shows I do set out to kind of go through that for myself and in turn it kind of like lets other people feel that in the right it with you yeah yeah And so I do have people come up to me after shows, and it's like they say that they had some, you know, crazy, sort of like transformative moment emotionally during the set. And I, and it's weird because when that happens, it's usually I also had that same kind of experience while I was playing. Like I was in a bad mood or I was like scared of something going on and like the music kind of like let me be free of that. So I do find this weird. shamanistic quality of my music.

Like I wouldn't say that I'm a shaman. I feel like that would be sort of arrogant to say. But I think that I have to facilitate my music. I'm not just performing it usually. I'm trying to facilitate something for everybody. It's not just mindless music. Yeah. So I try to be super

mindful about it. Yeah. Like I don't want to just you know, puke all over everybody. And just push buttons, yeah, make noise. Jerk off, you know. It's a it's an intentional thing for me. And it's not always perfect. And it's not always exactly what everybody needs, but more often than not, it is what somebody needs at that time.

And that's also because it's what I need, I think. Yeah, that's super fucking cool. I wouldn't really want to make it if it didn't have meaning like that. Right. Yeah, for sure. It keeps me, it's how I knew that it should be like my career and that it doesn't make sense that somebody would make a career out of like abstract, experimental, ambient music.

Right. Because you're not going to get like super rich probably. off it. Yeah, I don't know. But then I realized over time that, like, it's not really about the genre or about the specifics. It's more like people.

This guy's fucking us so hard. Oh, the lawnmower. Fucking blower. That's all right. Yeah, fuck, it's okay. It's okay. We'll treat it as like... Incidental.

Well, now that we're mentioning it, but you don't know what they're here. I got to figure out something. I don't know. We'll figure something out. Honestly, I should sample that. Yeah. I was going to say it's part of the moment.

We're just going to live with it. Anyway, I think what I was trying to say was that I slowly realized over time, like I don't want to limit myself mentally to say that I make some obscure music. When I really, all that matters with any kind of art is that you're connected to it and you care about it and you grow it like a garden, not just the fucking product. So I find that I'm being, I'm realizing more and more that it almost doesn't matter as long as I believe in what I'm doing, it's going to work and people are going to connect with it. So, like, I've been able to make way more money than I thought I would from, like, that's why I don't do as much of the stuff that I don't want to do.

Right. And I do more, like, gigs and shows that are my music. But I've had to get through a lot of periods of risk, financial risk of, like, I don't want to take this, like, really, like, you know, intense gig that I would make a lot of money on, but it would just kind of drain me for weeks. Yeah. I had to start saying no. of those, the easier money or the more the more guaranteed money and say no, I think a show is going to come up and like I had to get through a lot of periods of, you know, borrowing and, you know, just doing what I can to get by.

And then now I feel like I'm, it's my career. It's a huge mental struggle. It takes like a lot of, a lot of courage or a lot of balls to trade, you know, most people just trade their dreams for securities and like, this is going to be more, you know, I'm going to make more money. I'm going to be able to raise a family, pay my more. mortgage if I if I do this and just dabble in this yeah it takes so much like nope not that's why so if you people do it dive into the thing that they love doing that makes no money you know it's it's a

yeah it's not even it's not even really like the way the the way the world's set up and the way capitalism is set up like it's almost like it's already things are stacked against you and some things are stacked against people more than others and some people have more stacked against them and others. So I feel that I had a lot of a leg up just by getting to see my dad's rise and learning from him, getting the little bit of post-mortem support from him financially, which was like enough to invest in some gear. Yeah. Like, you know, whatever. There was that, but it wasn't like a trust fund. Right. And so I definitely have those kind of head starts. But I also feel like I didn't take the easy route of like just making, trying to make music that's commercially viable.

Right. Just for the dollar. Mine really hasn't been, and only until recently do I see that it could be, there is a path for me to be abundant with it financially. But it's hard work. It's like you've got to convince people why that, like why it's good or why it's worth listening to or why it's worth booking for your gig or your festival. And I'm sure that's hard because a lot of people don't get that type of music and, you know, it's hard for the person booking and stuff to relate to shit like that. Well, thankfully, I'm getting better at showing it and explaining it and collecting the right videos. And, yeah, I think it's...

Especially doing it live, I'm sure it helps. Yeah, but I think it's kind of see it and understand what's going on. That's what I was going to say is that I think it's because once people see it or experience it, then it's kind of like unquestionable what it is. but it's really hard to describe. Like, oh yeah, it's this guy just like, you just play in the song. Pressing a bunch of buttons with this guitar. And then, like, it's also really emotional.

And, like, people sit on the floor with them sometimes. And, like, it's all really, like, sounds weird. But once you're there, it's just like, it makes perfect sense. And, you know, there's no reason to question it once you see it. But that's the hard part is, like, just getting out there more and more so people experience it. Yeah. And you're also, I mean, you're also super fortunate that you didn't have,

you know, a lot of people have parents that are just like, don't waste your time doing this. You've got to go do this. This is going to make you money. You need to go fucking join the Navy or go work at a bank. Go to college. So you can actually be a functioning human. You know what I mean?

A functioning part of society. Well, my dad was more practical about that. He would like, he would kind of say like, yeah, you still got to get this degree. And like, yeah, maybe one day you'll be able to do stuff with music. But I hear where he was coming from. I was just a kid, you know. I wouldn't think that I could have done it back then either. But literally.

know that like his death was the thing that triggered me into being able to really do it seriously but my mom was just she still is she's like she's like the number one fan and she just always even back in high school like I would play music really loud in the next room over she just said I love it I love to hear really yeah so yeah so I was really lucky to have parents that didn't just shut it down oh hell yeah yeah and I did have like friends that kind of like shut it down, like ignored it or like thought that it was stupid, but thankfully once you get out into the world, like a lot of people will like move away from where they're from or something and like you kind of find people that like get you in a new light. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing where like you can kind of like

reinvent yourself. I think that kind of happened for me when I moved to Florida. I was able to start reinventing myself but it took a long time. Hell yeah. Have you ever thought about like collaborating with other artists like I think one of the first things I mentioned you earlier was like this hip hop artist from st p like it would be so cool like to hear like you know what i mean like samples and loops like with you know collaborating with these vocalists that come on well i do it all the time really um mouth council is strictly collaborative okay it's never just me okay so explain exactly what mouth council so mouth council is um i mentioned it earlier the loop station that i used the rc 505 by boss um it before that existed i had started doing this thing where i would

I'd be playing music myself and then like somebody would be around like a friend or something and they'd start singing along and I'd be like I'd want to include them so I would just like hand them a microphone and then loop what they were doing along with my loops and it was like fun

it was like including them instead of just me playing out of them and then as that went on maybe I did it with like two friends and at one point it was just like hey let's do the thing where we just like we loop our voices and so we started kind of like having fun with that with like a really primitive looper that just did one thing like start and stop so there were no effects or anything cool that I could do yeah and I would just keep layering over it um so it turned into this thing where some friends would come over and we'd like sit around and loop I would loop all their voices and we would all just kind of like do goofy things and it'd become maybe like somewhat musical so once that RC 505 came out I was like I need that like they announced it I was like that's what I need for this

activity and I got on like the waiting list for the pre-orders and I think I got it like the month that came out really and so I just dove into it and I was like let's do this and one of my friends one of the original friends who did that with me at one point he doesn't even remember saying it he was like I love that I love when we do that it's like it's like some sort of mouth counsel and I was like that's what we should call it he doesn't even remember saying it but like that I know that that was where the name came from one little comment so you had never seen anybody do anything like this before. Oh, people loop, you know. But in the way you do it in like a circle

where if you pass the microphone. Honestly, it was just a really natural thing. It wasn't even that intentional. It just kind of happened and it was like people would naturally want to sit in a circle. It was like sitting around a campfire or something. Yeah. People want to do that. It's so fucking fascinating. I mean, I've seen videos of

like, I've watched like little clips of it before. Never really like captured me until I watched the full process of what happens and what it sounds like. Frickin amazing, man. So back then it was a little still pretty primitive. I would just kind of, we would do it and like hopefully it would turn into something cool. And like it kind of fit in as like a cool thing it shows in between bands or something.

I started doing that. And then I think some point maybe like I would say four or five years ago, probably five years ago, I got really good at the pedal just from using it so much. I got intuitively good at it and kind of realized like this is a real thing that I'm doing. Like I should I should like focus on this and make it. project and I turned it into the mouth council like officially more and more and I would brand it and I made a logo and stuff and Still that's that's what I do is like I look at my musical path as like half infinite third half mouth counsel They're two completely different offerings, but they're kind of the same and that they're opposite

They're infinite third is like me looping with myself and like super internal and like introverted and then mouth council is me looping with everyone else and Right. The audience is the performer. Yeah. And I love that. Like when I'm on a stage, I get to bring people up on the stage. And I just always trust that somebody is going to want to be the center of attention. Of course. And like I get to like it actually I love it because it lets me sort of like highlight other people instead of just being making it about myself all the time.

So in some ways like I'm the facilitator and like the leader of it. But you know, I love the moments where it's more about someone just like gets up. there and can really sing and they just kill it. Yeah. And I'm still mixing it like a badass over here. Like I admit that I do some cool things sometimes, but I think that some of it's so like playful and accidental. Yeah.

Very organic. Yeah, I try not to like, freestyling. I try not to let it get to my head because it's just like, it's this like energy. It's not. It just comes together. It's like it's because people are into it. I can feed off of it and just start turning knobs and stuff.

Yeah. So it's not like some genius, you know, uh, thing that I've like written out and structured. It's, it's totally. opposite of that it's like I don't ever think about it I don't plan it on purpose because when I do it can kind of like get in my head and like yeah have you ever thought of doing like an album like a mount like where you like where you do sequentially because obviously once you record them you don't mess with them that they are what they are right that's what's so cool yeah for the most part they kind of like live how they're produced live live live live recording yeah there are some good live audio recordings that I've released on band camp and stuff oh really yeah just like some decent like song by song live recordings like I think it'd be a cool concept Like there's no mastering or there's no editing of the sounds of the audio like if the concept of the project was just like I'm gonna bring in

Track one I'm gonna bring in these people track two I'm gonna bring in these people and then I'm gonna record it and that's it Well I told you I really want to do like a like a Series almost like roundtable discussion style of like Because because then from that so I'd have guests maybe like you guys would be guests on my thing And we would talk and make music together and I feel like from that Why wouldn't the audio of the songs be an album? I You know? Right.

Right. I see a version of that that, you know, becomes, I already look at it as a band. Like, it's a band that has no boundaries. Like, everyone's in it. Yeah. So I always tell people like, you're in the band now. Yeah. You're part of it.

So mouth console is literally just me and everyone else. And it's cool because there's so many possibilities you do with that. Yeah. With that idea. Like, it's just, it's fucking infinite. Yeah. Third. Yeah.

Hey, were you on Drew Garabo show doing? Yeah, I do my phone on Drew show all the time. I've heard it multiple times on there, but I didn't know who it was. Drew's awesome. That's sick. I go on there maybe every two, three months. Yeah. Really?

I just heard it recently, like, not that long ago. I know I did. I drive home from work and I hear, I listen to them on the way home every day. I've heard it a couple times. Yeah, I know I heard it. He went and got all these, like, staff of the radio channel and, like, brought them in. Yeah, and everybody made a sound. Yeah, and they passed it around.

and, you know, there's always like a video going of their live stream that we do. And Drew always raps. Yeah, he does. He's a pretty good rap. Yeah, he is pretty good. He just freestyles. Yeah. And, yeah, I love Drew.

That's always a great time going on that show. Could we do it if we had, like, one more person there? Like, one, two, three. We could do it like this. You need more, though. It's just, like, the vibes better when it's, like, maybe, like, five people. I think that's, like, my magic number is, like, five to eight. Okay.

And also, like, if it gets too many in the actual circle. Yeah. Like, I like there to be, like, a circle and then, like, people, standing around or in the crowd. Yeah. But once you get to like 10 or 12, it can get a little weird in that some people don't. Some people freeze up. Yeah.

And I totally promote passing it if you don't want to do anything. Yeah. Somebody's going to like judge you because you couldn't like figure it out. Make a sound. Sometimes somebody will fuck it up. Somebody will like put in. They'll be like they'll feel. I mean, you don't want to say that.

It fucks up the energy. I would say sometimes there's someone that kind of goes into business for themselves and just like screen. into the mic and like tries to plug like plugs their website yeah and I'm actually kind of down for it like I can totally I have enough control that like I could cut off the mic if I really need to if they start saying some obscene shit yeah yeah but also like sometimes someone will do something really shitty into the mic and it's like distorted and weird and I'll still like tweak it enough to bring it back and make it like there's some of the funny thing and then I'll

delete it and so it don't make them feel like left out or like they're like assholes for making a weird sound Um, but sometimes it'll go around and not enough people will have done something like musical. It's almost like it's adding up the wrong layers. Yeah. But like the layers that don't mesh well. And then sometimes a lot of times my contribution is that by the time it comes back around to me, I'll add like a heavy snare or something.

It makes it like groove differently. Yeah. Where some people won't do that that whole time. So we're sitting there waiting for everyone to kind of get through their piece. Yeah. So I try to like mitigate that by not having too many people. but there's inevitable times where there's like 15 people in the circle. Sometimes I'll just ask for the mic back real quick and I'll say I'll give it back to him so I can add some high hats or something.

Yeah. But yeah, like one of the weirdest gigs that I do is first night, St. Pete, the New Year's Eve celebration. Oh, yeah. Family-friendly New Year's Eve celebration at Straub Park downtown. They hire me to come do like a little mouth council zone. And last year it got a little crazy because it was just, kids. It was just all kids. And like maybe a handful of like people who might have been drunk stumbling by. Yeah. But it was kids like, like it's crazy with kids. Kids are great. Kids are

better than drunk people sometimes. Kids are like they're uninhibited like drunk people are, but kids are actually pretty creative and like drunk people. What do you mean when you say kids? Are we talking like like children? All ages. Like this was there was a girl there, a little girl right next to me. She stood up. She's like, she could tell she was just like mesmerized by what was going on. And I think she was probably three. Okay. Like probably the youngest that's ever like voluntarily walked up and done it. And I gave her the microphone and she started singing.

What? Oh, sick. It wasn't like Whitney Houston singing, but it was like, it was like really listenable singing. Yeah. And everyone was cheering and she probably didn't even understand that they were cheering for her. It was that kind of moment. And then like I found out her brother was sitting right next to her. And he was also like having a blast doing like kind of like almost rapping.

but it was it was like scat yeah so we're going around and this was just like nonstop there was no structure to it i wasn't limiting who could come in so we had like 25 kids around they're all trying to get their moment and like everyone's having fun but musically it was it was at times it was you couldn't listen to it yeah yeah it's just noisy but everyone had fun yeah so that's all that matters sometimes i want to play one clip we can add it into the podcast so we can like have oh this is the, is this the one, who, it's the one we did it with the mayor. He wasn't in it. He was watching, though.

It's the mayor's lounge, Mayor Christman. Oh, okay. I got to pick four friends to come and be the performance on this web series called Mayor's Lounge. Okay. That's right in St. Pete. Yeah, this was the hideaway on Central. That's sick.

So you got four people plus you, and you're like beatboxing. Yeah. To start it out just to get the beat, five going. And I strategically placed these four people because I knew, Zach right here. We kind of come with like a funny but musical, musically good sound. Yeah, that's,

that's like his specialty, one of his specialties. Oh, my she's going green like that. And then, yeah, I had my friend Senio, who's like, he's actually the lead singer of Banga Rang from Tampa, so I got him to get out there. See how sweaty I am.

Which happens a lot. I've broken loopers because I've sweated into the faders. That's my third. Oh shit. That's my third machine, yeah. Because the water all messed up. Could you imagine like Rod Wave sitting there, like

singing one of his songs and then somebody else beatbox and then him mixing it and then like the girl throwing in her stuff? It's always really special when there's a rapper that knows how to freestyle because we build this beat and then I have a way of mixing once they start rapping that cuts it out at the right times. I'll put like an octave on his voice to make it like

and drop it out. Satanic, you know, for like certain lines. Yeah. And like that's my favorite thing is when someone just goes goes off and then I can like put a filter on like cut out the beat at the right moment right back and yeah Because I kind of vibe off that person doing that yeah definitely if you had like a got a link rod at wave up with them Yeah if you had the rod wave and then like a death metal like a corpse grinder right yeah That's a that'd be a beautiful yeah yeah do Malthcounsel me all the time really and they're amazing and Yeah, they're like two my go-to people for if I need to make like a really good

good musical mouth counsel because they'll come through with like some catchy hooks. Yeah. They're both really good rappers and they'll just kind of like capture the moment with me. That's sick. And there's a lot of people like that. But yeah, you know, we have our OG crew, I think, that I would hit up for things like this for the mayor and stuff. Yeah.

What kind of like, so what kind of shit has this led to? Like you've said you've done like a bunch of good corporate. It's like led to like team building activities for brand companies. Just yesterday I did it for a bank for their management party. Um, at like 10 a.m. I was doing mouth council with a bunch of people to us formally. A bunch of bankers. Yeah, they were super into it. And it was like, like the, the more like higher ups were super into it trying to get everybody to like let loose. And, um, it was really fun. There, you'd be surprised. There aren't too many situations where people aren't like down to down to clown, you know. Right. Yeah. Um, because it's so, it's such a super like, it's super like, super immersive. Yeah. And I try to let people know that. You can't do anything wrong. Like you're not going to ruin it. You're not going to ruin it.

You do something weird. Right. We're just going to keep moving. Yeah. And so it's imperfect in that way. So it doesn't make you intimidated and think that you have to be American Idol to participate. Right. Right. Yeah, it's like my comfort zone.

Is it in there and like having to just answer to the moment of like people are looking for this to be musical. Let's make it into music and like take chances and. and I do a lot of like flipping the beat and like raising the tempo slowly and like getting turning into something else right like I think that's kind of what sets it off I do take credit for that like my job is to not make it just loops right right over and over again it's changing it up and bringing things in and out and having structure to the songs ending the songs at the right time so that it feels like a complete song right so and so it's not just like goes on forever and ever there is a time

where I'll feel like I can go for like 20 minutes and I just do because it's a party or something where people just want the music to keep going. So, and on the flip side, when I do Infinite Third, it's like a four hour long song sometimes. Right, right, right. Not a four hour long song, but it's a seamless song to song. They all kind of blend into each other.

I don't really like stop for applause that much. And even when I do, I like to just kind of like... Oh, really? You just like make some kind of like long piece and you chop it up into tracks? No, for Infinite Third. For my performances, it's like, it's happening forever. Like, there's like little droney interludes that connect every song.

I try not to make it like, okay, now a song's over. Like every once in a while, there would be that moment. Yeah. Yeah. So I like to kind of keep the hypnosis of it going so that it doesn't kind of kill the vibe. And then also, like, I just, it creates a really reflective environment at the right setting. Like when I play for, like, say, a grassroots scava house for like four hours, which I'm doing on, you know, an up.

coming Friday. Yeah. I just kind of install myself in there and people just come and go and hang out and talk or not talk and do whatever. And it's a really good environment for that. So when it, when it stops, people are like still kind of in the zone and they're ready to just like keep getting in the zone. So just keep it going.

And then what's the other thing I want to talk about? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This, Billy Mays. Yeah. So tell me what is, is it true that this was, we were talking about earlier, this was the website that you had created for your dad?

Not, not quite. What I mean is that, um, I was the only person in his circle at the time of his death or the years before his death that said, hey, why don't you have like a website and why don't you like have a presence where you can talk to people who are like fans of you and like, why aren't we connecting with these people more? Right, right. You know, sending them autographed photos and stuff. Because he was big into that. He would carry around autographed photos.

Are you serious? So like people would just get a picture with him. And he was always down to pose for a picture at the airport. So I would travel with him and we'd, have to like stop every minute to to like take a photo I would take a lot of the photos and like get their information and yeah at the time it wasn't so connected all the time yeah but um he would bust out these these photos that he would sign and and give him to people and it was like kind of a bonus he was kind of over the top in a way but yeah he was just like he loved it yeah he

liked connecting with the people I always noticed that he he would actually care about the people that or interested in meeting him, like, there'd be a second of like, yeah, I'm that guy, blah, blah, blah, take a picture, and then he'd be like, what do you do? And, like, I would see him get into all these, like, really genuine conversations with just your everyday

person who just was a fan for a minute. And, like, that was something I really looked up to. Yeah. Just in who he was as a person, because he was kind of like that with everybody. He would, on the set, he would talk to, like, all the crew members and, like, he was never, like, too good or anything.

Yeah. He was just kind of, like, one of the guys and yeah so anyway i always thought well why wouldn't we connect digitally and like make it happen and so he kind of like agreed to that by the time he died and i was basically envisioning what it would be and where we'd put all the videos and how he would do it and stuff and like a welcome video like hey welcome to my website this is 2009 so you're like the billy may's creative director yeah i would have been i i was and i guess yeah now i actually am now you literally are so what i mean is that like when he died i knew that i wanted to do some non-profit work

like under his name as a tribute but i never really knew how and like i didn't really have the resources to just like start doing charity i didn't have like tons of money to donate and stuff like that so there wasn't anything that was obvious so there were a couple iterations of me trying to figure out how to do this nonprofit thing and then over the years i think I became more mature and I learned things and I kind of decided that I can tell his story, kind of like pay tribute, have like these fun, you know, posts and meme collections. Yeah. There's a whole page on this website, Billy Mays.org, that's dedicated to memes.

Yeah, like people tag me in memes all the time and I just like rip them and put them up here. There's a ton of Billy May's memes. And I want people to Zemmy them because they still exist and it's so funny that like, It's so funny that people are still making them. And, you know, they've even evolved since his death in some weird way. But, um, and, and just like references when people see him referenced in something. And like he's been in, he was on, he was in, uh, better call Saul. Like, he, like, that came out like years after his death.

Really? There was an episode where, um, the, the breaking bad spin off. Yeah, Mike, Airman Trout is breaking into someone's house. Like, the classic type of. breaking bad scene where you know an assassin's coming in like silently into someone's house but like there's a TV playing yeah and so the TV was playing and my dad's commercial was on no shit they had to like get it cleared and stuff that's and yeah so there's like moments like that he's in a couple movies like that in that capacity where he's just on the TV and the movie but um yeah it's so

any of that I definitely like welcome yeah oh for sure I'm like I'm the sole Billy May historian, you know. Yeah. Trying to keep track of where he appeared and what happened. Yeah. What work he did. And I'm still trying to find all his commercials. There's like a million of them.

Oh, yeah. Find them all. And a lot of them are only exist on tape. And I really have a VHS tape somewhere. Yeah, like in a vault. Yeah. How many, if you were to ballpark like a number on how many commercials he's made, how many would you say?

I don't know. Hundreds, thousands. Yeah. I mean, if you really break it down into the different versions of each one, it could get into the high. Like the high hundreds, early thousands maybe. If you're like, if there's like a 30 second one, a minute one, 90 second one, like there was all that stuff. But I would say hundreds.

And products wise, I think, I don't know, like 60, 50, 60 products. Wow. There's a big list. Maybe not that many, but it's a lot when you look at it. Yeah. Some of them were bigger than others. So I eventually realized that I can like combine those two things, like paying tribute to him. and kind of having the fun of, you know, sharing this stuff with people who still care about them

and also do nonprofit work. So back at the beginning of 2019, I connected with my friend Mike who owns the Dunedin Brewery in Dunedin, Florida. Okay. It's like Florida's oldest microbrewery. He had always been down to do something like this, and we finally just like, decided what it would be and it would be a tribute beer because they had done a few other types of tribute beers over the years yeah and so it it also has meaning because my dad actually lived in done eating for quite a while yeah so um they brewed this sort of orange IPA and we just decided to

call the billy may's IPA and it was released on the 10 year anniversary of his death really June 28th 2019 and for the first run we only did it as a on tap at the brewery yeah and like a few other local places had a keg of it just like for fun but um when you go to the tasting room at the brewery which is awesome by the way and they have like amazing food i've never been there i need to go there all their beers are amazing and i don't drink like tons of beer but i've never had like a bad beer from done eating brewery yeah yeah so on june 28th 2019 we we dropped the beer and in the tasting room um every pint that you buy a dollar 50 from each purchase it hasn't even happened yet is getting donated to the laundry project, which is a charity that I chose to partner with,

which is Tampa-based. And I thought it was relevant because of the laundry thing. Right. And they do free laundry days, pop-ups at laundromats, all in different cities and communities. Nice. Pay for everyone's laundry? Yeah, I volunteer with them sometimes. It's so awesome.

They just, like, they get a team there. They bring soap and quarters and donuts and coffee, and they just advertise that, like, you can come today and get your laundry. Free laundry. So it costs a lot. to do like tons of people. But you realize how efficient you have to be like, they have to plan it out so that like everyone's keeping track of who's stuff and what,

so they can put names on the thing so that it can keep going because it gets pretty filled pretty fast and you still want to get as many as you can. So it's a really fun time. And so we just finished the first batch of the IPA and they're working on the second batch right now. Really? And we're about to make the first donation to the laundry project. So cool.

I don't know how much is going to be. So we can literally go to the brewery and buy it. Not right now. It's sold out. right now. Sold out. Yeah. So the first batch sold out, I think maybe like last month or something.

Okay. It lasts about three months or something like that. And so we're working on what we're going to do for the second batch. And if we're going to try to take it bigger, might do cans, my doing can release. That would be cool. Yeah. So I would like to, I would like to take it further. And each can have different art on it.

A different Billy Mays meme on there. Oh my God. Dude, that would be so sick. I'm into that. That's cool. I want to do like, I want to do like, I want to do like. a big event that's like a can release fundraiser that has bands and you know shirts and just auctions and art auctions and stuff because i own a lot of billy may's art that people have

made over the years really oh yeah like cool little paintings and stuff and i like big paintings as well so i imagine one day i'll be able to possibly use those for a good yeah put a little gallery yeah sell them sick man yeah well cool dude thanks so much for doing this yeah hell yeah thanks for coming what uh tell people like the the main social media links or or where they're can find you. Where they can find you online. Yeah. At Infinite Third, spelled out,

T-H-I-R-D on Instagram and Twitter. And I have Facebook pages and stuff like that. But really just you can find me if you search Billy Macea Third, I-I-I-I-I-Find all my stuff. Yeah, I have tons of albums on Bandcamp and on iTunes and Apple Music and Spotify and all that under Infinite Third. If you want to check out the mouth council stuff, it's pretty much best to just like go on YouTube

because there's not really much like just search it, it's more videos and stuff. But yeah, I'm always around. I'm always touring. I'm trying to go to more cities in 2020. Do you post the dates up on the website and stuff? Infinite Third.com always has all the dates, including mouth council dates.

Cool with links to event pages and stuff like that. So I personally keep up with it and I type it out every couple of days. I'll update it. Hell yeah. So yeah, I'm super reachable if people want to try to contact me and collaborate or something like that. Just hit you. Cool.

Dude, I'm super pumped for Saturday. Come out there and check out. Yeah. Cool, man. It's gonna be fun. All right, dude. Thanks again.

Cool. Thank you.