DISGRACELAND - Special Episode: Reggie Watts and the Artists You Want to Hear in Disgraceland

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

A special look at the new artists we’re covering in the second half of 2026, along with a peek into the breaking Reggie Watts story, and how you can be directly involved in the choosing of Disgraceland episode subjects. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch! Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan GroupSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Elvis. Welcome aboard season six of The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch. But you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have. Until one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution. that reshapes America.

Listen to The Girlfriends, flight or fight, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. All right, guys,

cutting into the Meletron here to hit you with a special episode of disgrace land. It is that time of the year. The season is changing. Summer is nearly over. Fall is creeping up on us. And that all means

that we've got a new season of Disgraceland coming your way with a ton of new episodes, many of them on artists you've recommended. So, I'm Jake Brennan, and this is a special preview episode of Disgraceland. All right, guys, welcome in. Last time I did one of these previews for all of you. It was back in the spring right before we launched our partnership with exactly right media. Back then, I wasn't only stoked about the new team we here at double all of us were combining forces with i was also excited of course about the new batch of stories that we were bringing you our story specifically on patty smith i remember being very excited about that and our story on sonic youth and of course our story on foo fighters now

that foo fighters episode it was different than most anything that we ever attempted here in disgrace land before i didn't plan on it being that way It just kind of happened that way. And if I think back to what made me decide to tell that story, I can't really remember the decision process. That story is a lot different, the Food Fighter story that we did, than the Patty Smith episode or the Sonic Youth episode that I mentioned. Those stories, Sonic Youth, Patty Smith,

they're standard disgrace land, meaning in them we take a look at the musician's story through the lens of true crime. The Patty Smith episode is about the ways in which Patty as an artist was informed by her obsession, which is true crime. And the way that the true crimes that she encountered growing up affected her first, the Limburg baby kidnapping, then the Manson murders, and eventually the son of Sam killings. The Sonic Youth story is about how a savage true crime from the early 60s influenced the artwork for their greatest albums cover. a fact that the band wasn't even aware of at the time that the record came out. And that was really interesting to me. Of course, I'm talking about here, the true crime that I'm talking about here related to the Sonic Youth album cover.

It's The Moore's Murders and the band's history. We get into that as well in the Sonic Youth story as it pertains, at least to this album in question, goo. Now, that Food Fighters episode was different. It was the first episode after 200 disgrace. End episodes, many of which, and the majority of which I should say I've written myself, it was the first one where I went into the story with the goal of answering a question that I honestly did not know the answer to before I began researching. And that question was, how did Taylor Hawkins die? Most of the time we tell these stories, like, I think back to even

the first episode of disgrace and the Jerry Lee Lewis episode, I knew, I knew what the story was. You know, and I think back to when I did that series Dead and Gone with Payne Lindsay from Up and Vanished, that was a completely different experience because we had no idea where that story was taking us. Now, that was over, I can't even remember, eight episodes or something, it turned into two seasons, and it wasn't really truly adjudicated at the end. You can pretty much, you know, figure out who you think's guilty. This one, though, the foo-fighter's story, I really was just, you know,

just shocked as a fan. I was just shocked that we still don't have an official cause of death for Taylor Hawkins. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be interesting to just ask this question and then try to dive into the research and see what I come up with. And I think I answered it pretty well. If you haven't listened to that episode and are curious, you can find disgrace. You know where to find disgrace. The easiest way I find these days, when I'm looking for an episode that we've done, I don't even go to my website. I just pump in foo fighters and disgrace land and whatever browser I'm using

and it just sends me links. So there we go. That's a way. But anyways, attacking an artist this way, a subject this way, trying to find an answer that doesn't yet exist. Specifically an answer to a question that the artist doesn't necessarily want us to know about

as a writer, that's creatively kind of scary. And what if you don't find an answer? And what if you do find an answer? and the answer is boring. I mean, shit, in that Food Fighters thing, I ended up having to explain insurance policies. How the fuck do you make that not boring?

I think I figured it out. Anyhow, I was going to say, I haven't really run into this problem yet, but I guess I did in that first episode. And I think what I ended up doing was finding a way to make the sort of boringness, not boring. I know boringness isn't a word,

but you know what I mean. And I think we got to an answer. I really do. Some people disagree, and that's fine. And I have no way of knowing if my hypothesis, my theory is right. But I'm pretty convinced it is. And I know people have other theories, and they're connected to a lot of things that are going on in the world elsewhere. And that's fine.

You can believe those things. Obviously, I put forth what I think is what happened. My point, all of this tactic, to me, creatively right now, after writing, like I said, over 200 episodes is pretty damn thrilling. I'm invigorated artistically, creatively as a writer, and since I wrote that Food Fighters episode, I was like, oh, I'm going to do this again. And I really, really wanted to know the truth about Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Fushante and River Phoenix's death, particularly because I'm such a massive fan of Johns,

and I didn't want to believe what the internet was saying. And now, as you've likely heard in that story, I don't have to believe it. I like this approach. And I'm going to take this approach with future episodes. Not all of them, not all of them. Not every subject lends itself to this approach, but a lot of them do,

especially when we're talking about a subject like Bobby Fuller. Bobby Fuller is one of the great rock and rollers that never really was. okay. Avi, I've said this before, Avi who does our illustrations has been lobbying for a Bobby Fuller episode since I met him eight years ago. And, you know, I've always

kind of resisted because I didn't have a way in my mind to frame the episode. And when I came upon this tactic, I was like, okay, now I can do this. Now I can try and, you know, I can answer this question because he starts to tell this story. I always think of like the test of how would I tell this story

to a guy I didn't know that I was sitting next to at a bar. And can I make it interesting in a paragraph? And if I can, if there's enough there to articulate it really concisely and in a really compelling way, then I'm kind of ready to dig in and research. And I've always run into this problem with the Bobby Fuller story. When you bring his name about people, people go, well, who's Bobby Fuller? And that's a really good question.

But there's a better question. and that's how did Bobby Fuller die? And we fully explore that in the coming season of disgracing with our Bobby Fuller episode. And by the time you get done listening to it, you are going to know exactly how Bobby Fuller died. You're going to know who killed him and you're going to know why. Here's a short clip. Bobby Fuller grew up in West Texas in the 1950s in the shadow of Buddy Holly. To Bobby Fuller, Buddy Holly, the rock star from Lubbock, Texas was a god.

But after Buddy Holly's plane went down in that Iowa cornfield and they found Buddy's bodies scattered among the remains of fellow rock stars, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper, there would be no resurrection. Yet there would be a continuation of Buddy Holly's Texas rock stardom. Bobby Fuller from El Paso saw himself as Buddy Holly's rightful heir, and for good reason. Bobby's talent was off the charts. He could sing, play guitar. play drums, write, arrange, and engineer. He was also a star attraction. He looked the part, handsome enough for rock and roll, with endless charisma on stage.

Bobby Fuller was a southwest pied piper. As a teenager and a young adult in Texas, not only did Bobby Fuller write and perform his own songs, he recorded those songs in a studio he built and released them on wax on a record label he found it. Then he and his band would put on DIY shows in an underage club that he owned and operated. Bobby Fuller was everything. The singer, the songwriter, the studio, the label, and the promoter all wrapped into one.

But he was in Texas. And outside of Bobby Fuller, there really was no music industry to speak of in Texas. There were no real distributors or promoters or the type of industry muscle needed to take Bobby Fuller. to the next level. It was 1963. Bobby Fuller had regional hits, but he wasn't breaking through. Farther west in California, Dick Dale's surf guitar had created a wave of excitement that the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, was riding to pop music heights, that Bobby had never dreamed possible. Back east, Phil Spector was creating new sounds with girl groups that sounded like orchestral teenage riots.

Up north in Detroit, Barry Gordy was producing an entirely new American soundtrack in his Motown studio. Bobby Fuller knew that he had his own take on rock and roll, a Texas take, rooted in Buddy Holly, but wholly his own. A new type of rock and roll souped up for the 60s, switchblade serenades and rebel-rousing rave-ups all swaggering with drag-strip courage. Bobby Fuller from down by the border, built for speed. But if Bobby wanted to take Texas to the charts to compete with the likes of Brian Wilson, Phil Specter, and Barry Gordy, well, in order to put Texas on the pot music map, Bobby Fuller needed to leave Texas. All right, that is a little taste of our upcoming Bobby Fuller episode that is still in production.

Coming up right after this, the full list of our episode subjects, for the next season, including my thoughts on Reggie Watts and whether or not we'll be covering him in our next batch of episodes, plus news on how you can be directly involved in the choosing of which artists we cover in disgraceland back in a flash. All right, welcome back. So after asking these questions, how did Taylor Hawkins die? Who killed Bobby Fuller? I realized I had some other questions.

Like, what the hell was Quincy Jones smoking? when he gave those interviews in the last years of his life. You know the ones, the ones to GQ and to Vulture, where he made a series of bat-shit crazy claims about dating Ivanka Trump, about the men that his friend Marlon Brando slept with, about jamming with Mussolini's son. He also made some crazy statements involving music

and thievery, fraud, and murder. I've wanted to tell this story since the beginning of this podcast, and I just didn't know how to do it because what was already on the page was so fucking good, I thought, man, how do I add anything to this? But again, this new framing, this sort of posing a question in trying to answer, it's so simple and obvious. It's really kind of opened up this story to me in particular.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read you guys an excerpt from the Quincy Jones episode from the script as it's coming together this week. I'm writing it right now this week. By the way, you may have seen on Instagram, I shared a bunch of images and videos documenting my research an outlining process for this story in particular. This script excerpt is the beginning culmination of that work,

and it tease up the thesis of that episode, plus the question that we're trying to answer about Quincy and frames this story pretty nicely. So here goes. During the last years of his life, Quincy Jones, arguably the greatest music producer in the history of popular music, made some truly outrageous claims, some involving crimes, musical, and otherwise.

Number one, that Michael Jackson, Jackson, quote, stole a lot of songs. Number two, that the Beatles didn't play their instruments. Number three, that Frank Sinatra was how he, Quincy Jones, knew who killed Kennedy. Quincy Jones, at the age of 84, when he gave these interviews, was clearly out of fucks to give. He also told interviewers that he once dated Ivanka Trump, a woman 48 years younger than him, and more outrageously, the president's daughter. Quincy claimed that Malcolm X sold drugs and said about his friend Marlon Brando's sexual appetite that in addition to sleeping with Richard Pryor and Marvin Gay that Brando would quote fuck a mailbox. These claims, regardless of whether they're true or not, are hysterical, especially when you hear Quincy or Q, as he was called, tell these stories in his unmistakable voice. But these stories aren't directly related to figures from music history, aside from Q's involvement.

So I'm less interested in them than I am the claims about Sinatra, the Beatles, and MJ. It should be noted that after Quincy Jones made these claims about Michael Jackson, that he was a musical thief, the Jackson family pushed back strongly. Joe Jackson said Quincy was jealous of Michael's talent, and an anonymous member of the Jackson clan claimed that Quincy Jones was in the first stages of dementia. was he? Quincy Jones was a lot of things. He rose himself up from a childhood of poverty through an oftentimes violent and racist music industry to create music that not only sounded like what America really sounded like, but that also changed the way America sounded more on that

later. And he became, as I said before, arguably the greatest music producer of all time. a music producer who said that all I ever did was tell the truth. So, was he lying about Michael, about the Beatles, about Sinatra? Was Quincy Jones telling the truth? All right, that's from our upcoming episode on the greatest music producer of all time, Quincy Jones. I actually, before I wrote that, I was thinking, is he the greatest pop music producer of all time? is he the greatest producer of all time? And I think he is.

I don't know who comes close. Like, for real. Of course, Phil Spector, Dr. Dre, Barry Gordy. But, I mean, Barry Gordy was more of a businessman. Wasn't his hands-on. Rick Rubin. But to me, it's Quincy Jones.

He just really, you will hear what I mean when I explain how he, changed what America sounded like. It's truly remarkable. He had his hands in so much across, obviously, not just music, but also film, just one of the all-time greats, if not the all-time great. All right. Anyways, that's from our upcoming episode on Quincy Jones.

Still to come, the full reveal of all the artists that were covering throughout 2026. Plus, as promised, news on how you can help choose the next batch of artists that we cover. coming up after this. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. Okay, speaking of Michael Jackson, his biopic, Michael is the highest grossing music biopic of all time. It has grossed over a billion dollars and has supplanted the 2018 queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody

as the biggest cash cow in this category. Now, if you think I'm doing a Michael Jackson episode, you're out of your flipping tree. Not yet. someday. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do it because honestly, I don't know what I think about Michael Jackson and I don't know what I think about the allegations is what I should say. I know what I think about him as an artist. He's just incredible and I love him and I listen to him all the time. And that probably won't change even if I dive into the research and I find out that he

was the horrible human being that many have accused him of being. I don't know if those allegations are true. Obviously the movie doesn't touch on it at all. I do know this. Whenever I mention even this question publicly on social media, people lose their fucking minds. People are so quick, so quick to dismiss the question. And I don't think it's a question that's easily dismissed. I could be wrong. I could have missed the evidence that came out that completely exonerated Michael Jackson, but I don't think I did. Anyhow, more on Michael later. I bring this up because, like I said, is the highest grossing music biopic of all time. It's grossed over a billion bucks

and supplanted the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. And just as none of these allegations, obviously, are in the Michael biopic, there's a lot that's not in the Queen movie, a lot of the band's actual history, specifically Freddie Mercury's history. And the history portrayed in the film of what stories, what anecdotes, facts, et cetera,

that may have been omitted. There's a lot of it that didn't make it up onto that screen. And basically, we decided we're going to dedicate an entire episode to figuring out what the real story of Queen was, particularly as it relates to the more, shall we say, excessive ways of living. What was left out? How did they futz with the facts? Okay. That's the angle we took in our Queen episode. That's coming up next, right after this, by the way, next week. Matt, give him a clip from the Queen episode. Does Bohemian Rhapsody accurately represent the career of one of the best-selling rock bands of all time?

And does it give an accurate portrayal the personal life of its iconic frontman? Not exactly. First of all, Bohemian Rhapsody's narrative is framed by Queen's performance at Live Aid in 1985. The film does not tell you that only months before this show, Queen were seen as pariah. in the music industry, having been fined by the British musicians union for playing Sun City in apartheid South Africa. Instead, the film makes live aid up to be this emotionally redemptive moment in which Freddie Mercury returns to and reconciles with his bandmates after having left to make a solo album. But Freddie never quit the band. And his solo album was not a point of

contention with the rest of Queen. In fact, Queen's drummer Roger Taylor had already released two solo albums of his own by this point. Was Queen's live aid performance absolutely riveting? Yes. Was it a kick in the ass to their career? Yes. But any notion of an emotional comeback is simply a dramatic plot device. The film also wants us to think that Freddie Mercury used the live aid moment to reveal

to the rest of the band that he was HIV positive. Again, live aid was in 1985. According to Jim Hutton, Freddie's partner near the end of his life, Freddie did not discover he was sick until later in 1987. And even then, it's unclear how much he actually revealed to his bandmates. And then, there's that great scene with Mike Myers as the pompous EMI Records Executive who doesn't want to release the song Bohemian Rhapsody as a single on account of it being nearly six minutes long.

That EMI executive did not exist. You know who did tell the band that the song Bohemian Rhapsody would never get played on the radio because it was too long, Elton John. All these factual quibbles aside, the biggest dramatic license that the movie takes is with Freddie Mercury himself. Sasha Baron Cohen was originally cast to play Freddy in the film, but he left before production started

because he wanted to tell some of the stories that I'm about to tell you. Stories that the film ultimately could not and would not tell. All right, that queen episode is coming up. Like I said, next in your feed, right after this. Actually, there's a rewind episode coming and then next week

you'll get the Queen episode, all right? After that, coming soon. An artist who was cuffed by the FBI right down the street from where I'm recording this episode right now, David Crosby, one of rock and roll's most notorious lunatics. As much as I dislike David Crosby, both as a person and as an artist,

I love his story because the version of him that was real versus the version, of him that showed up on record. They stand in such contrast to each other that it just makes for great storytelling. Let's do another clip here. Matt, give him a little bit of the crack that Crosby was smoking, just a taste.

David Crosby was holding. He figured no one here would be the wiser, but that was just the twisted logic of a junkie talking. Because here was Fair Oaks Hospital, a drug rehabilitation center located in Summit, New Jersey, where a judge had ordered Crosby to go after numerous run-ins with the law. First, there was that incident on the 405. Crosby and his Red Ford Granada,

on the way to perform a set with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash at a no-nukes rally in Orange County, Crosby's knees hugging the wheel so that he could use both hands to free base while doing 65 miles per hour. And the seizure hit him hard and fast and out of nowhere as usual. Next thing he knew, the blood was running down his face and the Granada was up against the center divider, and a cop was confiscating his stash and his loaded 45.

Just a few weeks later in a Dallas nightclub backstage in a shitty green room before a solo show, he was busted again. This time, by a couple of good old boys who waltzed right in while he was free basing, and once again with that loaded 45 by his side. Why do you carry a loaded weapon at all times? People wanted to know of David Crosby. and Crosby replied with just two words. John Lennon.

All right, so if you're keeping count at home, that's Bobby Fuller, Quincy Jones, Queen David Crosby. We also have episodes coming on Screaming Jay Hawkins, and yes, we know that he fathered something like 70 children. But in our research, we recently discovered that some believe that Jay was actually murdered, and we try to chase this claim down in one of our Halloween episodes coming this October.

Also this October, we have episodes on As I Lay Dying, Alice Cooper, Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon, and Reggie Watts. Reggie fucking Watts. Have you heard about this? Did you read that Rolling Stone article? Have you dipped your toe into the internet on Mr. Watts and his ketamine and his just deplorable behavior? toward his ex-girlfriend who committed suicide. Have you read the accounts from the other women in his life? From his ex-girlfriend's family?

I'm actually privy to some other information. People have reached out to me. I have some direct info related to Mr. Watts. This article pissed me off in a way that I haven't been upset in a long time. And it was like, you know, I'm wrapping this Quincy Jones episode this week. week, the writing of it, and I got to move on to research right away on Monday. And, you know, I still, I want to get into this damn Courtney love story so bad, but this freaking movie refuses to be released.

I don't know when it's coming out. And I know it's going to have things in it that are going to, you know, make anything I write now seem dated or misinformed. So I just have to wait. I can't, there's a major documentary coming on or I can't, I can't, you know, finish my research until that's done. So I needed something. I needed to pivot to another story

and this Reggie Watts thing just was a gift from being honest. Sucks, obviously, for the people in his life, particularly his ex-girlfriend, Catherine McCullough and her family. Again, the story

is so fucked up and so dark. And not unlike what I was saying about Crosby where the artist's personality runs so counter to the behavior. It's one thing when it's Jerry Lee fucking Lewis or, you know, I don't know, big lurch. You know what I mean?

I always go back to those guys. G.G. Allen, you know? It's one thing when the artist wears that asshole nature as a badge of honor. Reggie Watts is like a smiley fucking puppet. Teddy bear, oversized puppet, I should say. you know, lovable. And yeah, there's plenty of people

who have met Reggie Watts in real life and have walked away going like, oh, guys, fucking awesome. Made them feel good, you know? But my goodness, I don't want to burn it all here. I'm very motivated to get into this story and I can't wait for you to hear it. And that's coming up next season as well.

And I promise you, the first thing I'm going to do after this Courtney Love documentary is finally released and I get to watch it Or if they decide they're never going to release it, one or the other, I'm going to dive into writing this story. I can't wait to do it. It's coming soon. Now, we still have slots for stories toward the end of 2006. We have a handful that I'm not going to mention here because we're not 100% sure. We're going to tell those stories. And we've got to figure out very shortly what we're doing for stories, which artists we're going to cover. There's a way that you can do this with us. I'm going to do a Zoom with as many of you as I can. and it's just going to be a hang. We'll get some drinks. And we will just kind of spitball.

We'll kind of take all the suggestions that you guys have and want to make. And we'll just get into it and we'll talk about why I think stories, certain stories make for good disgrace land episodes and why certain ones don't. We'll put some criteria on together and we'll figure out what we're going to cover going forward.

This is a perk that we don't offer to everybody. we offer it to our Sound and Fury members, our Patreon All Access members. You want to get in on that. We're going to do this a couple times a year. The first one is coming up. I don't know when, but shortly. We're going to announce a date soon,

probably very soon after you hear this. And like I said, there'll be a Zoom, and we'll all get into it. We'll figure it out. We'll have some fun. It'll be good to see you guys. I haven't seen you guys in a long time. I think I've been the last time we were doing those book clubs.

and a bunch of us got to hang on Zoom. That was fun. But this will be with a much larger group. And I really need your input. I really value your input. And oftentimes the artists that you guys suggest make for the best episodes, a handful of the ones that I mentioned earlier that we're covering, those come from you guys.

And, you know, if you've written in, and we've talked about this on the after party, certain musicians you want covered, this is absolutely a way to get them to rocket to the top. So if you want to be part of our disgrace land all-access crew and you want to be part of the crew that jumps on that Zoom and lets their voice be heard and helps shape the next few episodes of Disgraceland, you can sign up at disgracelandpod.com.

All right. Take a short break. Be back after this. Guys, thanks so much for hanging with us during this preview. Appreciate you all. However you support the show, if you're just listening, that's fantastic. If you're an all-access member on Patreon or Apple subscriptions, that's cool too. If you're following along on Instagram and all the madness that we got going on over there,

jump into the comments. Stir some shit up. And appreciate you getting in there. I appreciate the emails, disgracelam pod at gmail.com, the voicemail, 617-90666663-8. The text hit me up about anything. You can always, even if you're not part of sound inferior, you can always let your voice be heard. Those are the ways to do it. We've got, what have we got?

We got an after party coming up after this on Thursday. And then we've got Queen. That's the next new episode for you. That'll be hitting on September 8th. and you'll be hearing from me in the after party after that. All right, I'm going to get out of here. Thanks for hanging out with me. Here we go.

We're moving into the, God, 300th episodes of disgrace land. That's amazing. That's incredible. Thank you guys for listening along. Appreciate you all. I'm going to take off rock and roll. Welcome aboard season six of The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, which takes place 30,000 feet in the sky. A beautiful woman smiles and hands you a scotch,

but you have no idea just how messed up her job actually is. It was the most sexist job I think you could have. Until one day, a group of stewardesses spark a revolution that reshapes America. Listen to The Girlfriends, Flight or Fight, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.