Legends of the Old West - BONUS: Craig Johnson interview

Episode Date: July 8, 2018

Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, previews his upcoming novel, "Depth of Winter;" talks about the real-life inspirations for his characters; the Netflix show "Longmire;" and the audiobooks narrated by award winner George Guidall. From the Western Writers of America Convention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Lego Fortnite. Lego Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of Lego play and Fortnite. Created to give players of all ages, including kids and families,

a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play LEGO Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news.

We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of americam express visit amex.ca y amex benefits vary by card other conditions apply We're going to start this series of Legends interviews with a big one. Craig Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Walt Longmire Mysteries,

a series of modern Western novels that follows the adventures of the sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state in the country. Craig's books have won numerous national and international awards, and they're the basis for the Longmire TV show that began on A&E and finished on Netflix. Every episode is still available on Netflix,

so if you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend it. Craig was nice enough to take time out of his crazy schedule to sit down with me at the Western Writers of America convention in Billings, Montana. We talked about some of the real-life inspirations for his characters, got into some detail about his previous books, and then he gave a great preview of his upcoming novel, Depth of Winter, which will be released in September. I hope you enjoy it. Here's Craig Johnson. Thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. We very much appreciate it. My pleasure. You guys are early risers. I'll get you to get the first crack at me.

I know for sure that some of our listeners are huge fans, as am I. That's why I was very thrilled to be able to do this interview, and I'm very grateful for you to agree to it. I appreciate it. I loved the show and have been interested in the books, and as I just mentioned, I kind of let the cat out of the bag early that we'll talk about the audio books at the end, because I love those as I do a lot of long road trips, so they certainly get me through.

You know, whenever they first started doing the audio books, I remember talking with George Guidel, who does the audio versions, and it was funny because he was getting ready. He was asking me all these questions. I said, well, a lot of people are really excited about this, and there's a long pause, and he goes, why? And I said, you don't live out west, do you? And he goes, Greg, I'm lucky if I get across the Hudson River.

And I was like, well, for those of us who do live in the west, a lot of us survive simply by audio books. Music is great. I'm a big, big music fan, huge music fan. I actually listen to music while I'm writing. It's that important to me. But music can sometimes get a little tiring on a long trip. You just stay hours of music.

You're getting a little worn out there. I think we're all kind of hardwired from the get-go to have stories told to us. And our mothers, you know, kind of prepare us for that for the rest of our lives. And, you know, for me, like that's one of the joys, like it is that I've got this incredible reader, George Guadel, who actually I got from Tony Hillerman. Tony Hillerman is the one that told me about him. Yeah, I wanted to ask how this all came about. Yeah, I happened to, I won a little short story contest with Cowboys and Indians magazine that won the Tony Hillerman award.

Like it was one of the first things I'd written. And I was sitting there having dinner with Tony Hillerman, which was really kind of wonderful. And he heard that I was like doing the negotiations, you know, for the audio books, and he said, well, see if you can get George Guadel. He does all of mine. So if you can get George, get him.

And so the next day I was talking to the audio people, and they said, well, we've got a couple of different readers we're thinking about. One is George Guadel, and I said, him. And they said, you don't want to hear the others? And I said, no, not particularly. Look, if he's good enough for Tony Hillerman, he's good enough for me. And that's how I got George oh man but yeah I didn't you know tried to explain to George like that that you know yeah we we we out in the west you know when you're driving those long long distances it's just um it's it's inherent you know that that you know you can you can drive forever

like if you have somebody telling you a good story oh yeah you know I used to I used to live in Los Angeles for a long time I worked in the film industry for my first career before I switched to journalism. And my sister lives in Phoenix. So I would drive from L.A. to Phoenix all the time. Just that straight I-10 stretch of desert. Right on the desert. Yeah, all the way through desert. But you throw in an audio book and I'm there in a heartbeat.

I don't even remember. There are stretches of the drive that I don't remember at all. They're just gone to the ether, which is awesome. So I certainly know that. And I've driven to Denver and across to Texas where I live now, so the whole Southwest I've traveled extensively. So you need them. Yeah, I mean it's as simple as that.

I mean it's one of those things where, I very rarely do you see somebody sitting in a parking lot finishing a song or an album. But it's not unusual in the American West to see people sitting in a parking lot finishing a chapter. Yeah, I've been there. Or a scene before they move on with their lives. Absolutely. I sit there with my iPod in my hand waiting for a pause so I can get just the right place.

I'm not cutting off a word. Have I finished a thought or a scene? That's flattering. Absolutely. I have to do it that way. So, yeah, I was going to bring up George Bedell at the end, but we were already talking about him. So I'm almost 100% spoiled on the man now. So it's hard for me to listen to an audio book that he hasn't done.

He is an artist. He truly, truly is an artist. He's a consummate performer like that, too. I mean, he will call me up whenever we're doing one of the books, and we'll sit and talk for an hour or so. And he'll have all of his questions all lined out. A lot of his pronunciations, like the Northern Cheyenne, the Crow, look at the Basque, you know, and then place names and all that type of thing, but then he also asks a lot of questions about the subtext, you know, of the characters, you know, what do they mean by this, and what are they trying to accomplish with this, and he just

is an astounding performer. I mean, it's no, you know, no accident that he's won all of those audios, you know, he's that amazing. Right, absolutely. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who would say this, but listen to the audiobooks so often that now if I read a book, I can hear some of his voices. There's a couple in particular. Not all of them are that way. But a couple times I'll hear his version of Henry Standing Bear when I read it on the page.

And it brings me to kind of a little guilty pleasure question that I have to ask because it's kind of it ties in George Goodell okay and I know you've you've referenced certainly characters in the books are based on real people or you've taken qualities from certain people and composited them together which pretty much every writer does so where does the character of Lonnie Little Bird come from and where does his catchphrase where did his catchphrase originated because I hear that I crack up when George does it. I can't help it. I'm like a kid.

I listen to it. I start laughing. There's nothing I can do about it. It just cracks me up. You know, one of my favorite quotes, and I've stated it numerous times, is the one from Wallace Stegner on teaching and writing fiction where he says the greatest piece of fiction ever written is the disclaimer at the beginning of every book that says nobody in this book is based off anybody alive or dead. And it's bad enough, you know, when you live in a state that

only has half a million people in it. But then whenever you go up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, there are only 5,000 enrolled members of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. So whenever I use them in my books, everybody knows who I'm talking about. You don't have to reveal him. No, I don't think he would mind. It don't think he would mind. Like it is Charles Little Old Man. Like one of the tribal elders. Like it. And he he actually uses that phrase. Oh, thank you.

Like it. And he's just an incredibly insightful individual like that with just an amazing sense of humor. And it's just too much of an opportunity, you know, for me. And I'm fortunate enough like that the books and the television show are very popular up on the res. And I think one of the main reasons for that is because I don't treat those characters as set dressing. I treat them as living, breathing human beings with the same fears and desires and passions and happinesses as anybody else. But it's kind of nice like that because it's gotten to the point now where there are a lot of people on the reservation who claim to be characters in my books that I've never met. So I take that as a compliment. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's filtered out now. Now everyone wants to be a character whether they are or not. Absolutely. I figured it had to be. It's such a specific catchphrase. I thought that's got to be based on something. Either someone says that exactly or it's an adaption of something. Well, it's interesting that you like you honed in on that too like that because that's one of the the drums I beat an awful lot of the time like whenever I'm doing you know teaching workshops or working with younger students, writing students, you know one of the things I'm always telling them is, is you have to be very specific about the voice of your characters like that, because that's one of the big reveals in who those characters are and what they are. And, you know, one of the biggest mistakes I see with a lot of young authors is all the characters sound alike.

Right. And I'm like, you know, you got to give them a voice, you know, because writing a book in many ways is kind of like conducting a choral group in the sense that each one of those characters has a very specific voice for a very specific reason in telling the story that you want to tell. And so I want it to be almost as if I don't have to tell you who's talking. As soon as I have them speak, you know who that is. In my books, if there's a character that doesn't use any contractions, you know who that is. If there's a character that uses the phrase, yes, it is so, you know who that is. If there's a character with some very colorful language, you know who that character is, too.

I think we can very easily identify that person. So, you know, for me, like, that becomes, I mean, obviously Walt's going to be the major voice in the books, like, from beginning to end. But, you know, I want all of those other voices. They kind of need to be a counterpoint. You know, they need to be able to give me other options, you know, in being able to tell that story. Right. That's kind of important. I mean, it was interesting like that because one of the reasons why it was that the book got picked up as a television show,

they told me, was the character of Vic Moran. Okay, right. They said that, you know, she gave a really strong urban voice in a very rural landscape. And so, you know, you've really got to look at that composite of all of your characters and see how you can put them all together and make them work. I mean, obviously the one that made it work the most was obviously Walt Longmire,

who is a bit of a throwback to the cowboy code and all of this, but also a little bit more on the complex side. I mean, the aspects of his nature, that he's dealing with a much more complex world, maybe so than, you know, maybe Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Right, you know, and like I always say, like, I'm still waiting for that, you know, that Roy Rogers song about kicking the door down on a crack house, but I don't think we're going to see that anytime soon. He probably didn't record that one. We might not find that in the archives. It might not be.

It might be a Hank Williamsiams you know the third song i don't know like that but yeah that's the big thing is character you know in place like it always seems to me to come back to that absolutely and then getting going a little bit deeper on a little more specific thing you kind of mentioned a second ago with walt obviously being the feature character and i kind of i told you that i had lived in los angeles for a long time one of the great joys of having lived there during the time period I did was that I met two friends who are diehard USC fans. And so I got to go to a ton of USC football games during the Pete Carroll era when they were just dominating college football. So I got to see all of that craziness. And of course, lo and behold, Walt went to USC. He did.

And he also is a Denver Broncos fan, which I am too. Born and raised in Iowa, where you kind of pick your pro teams because we don't have any. I don't know how I gravitated to the Denver Broncos, but I did. So I thought, oh my gosh. So Walt went to USC and he's a Broncos fan. That's perfect for me. So how did you choose USC for his college? You know, it was interesting because like whenever I was talking with the producers, like that was, it was interesting for me like that simply because, you know, what I had was a package deal from Warner Brothers where I actually got to meet the people.

It was all assembled together, and I got to meet the producers and directors, the writers and everybody. Whereas a lot of times when your work gets optioned in Hollywood as an author, you really don't know who these people are or if they can get an envelope made. You really don't know. With an option, it could be optioned to just sit on a shelf somewhere and just collect dust. Lay there moldering in the grave like John Brown in a manila envelope. It was interesting to see but I remember one of the first questions that Greer Shepard

who was one of our head producers asked me. She goes, why did Walt go to USC? And I was like, she's read these books closely if she has that information. And I looked at her and I go, it was the 60s, where'd you want him to go, Lincoln, Nebraska? I just had this idea that there was Walt, this ranch kid that had grown up there in Wyoming,

and it's the 60s, all these things are happening, I mean, you know, the society and the culture is in such a state of turmoil like that. And I thought, you know, okay, Walt would probably like to go to Southern California. And so he was a pretty good ball player. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the big differences between the Walt of the books and the Walt on the television show. I mean, Robert Taylor is a pretty good-sized guy. He's about 6'3 and weighs about 220, I think, or something. But the Walt in the books is like six foot five and weighs about, yeah, almost 250, 260. So he's like a refrigerator with a head, you know, basically is

what it is. And a lot of people ask me, they say, well, why did you make Walt as big as he is? Like my immediate response to that was, you know, I wanted him to be durable. You know, I mean, I wrote the first book, The Cold Dish, as just a standalone book. But I knew what I was going to do to him. And so I thought, okay, for him to be able to survive this, you know, it would probably be adept for him to be that large, like that, to be able to do what it is that he needs to do. And the other thing I'd noticed was that an awful lot of Wyoming and Montana sheriffs tend to be big guys.

I can see that. It makes the job a lot easier. You walk into a domestic disturbance where two people are ready to kill each other and suddenly you're the biggest animal in the room. The focus changes a little. I can imagine. It kind of seemed to work as far as the character was concerned. And then the other thing was I didn't want Walt to be one of those fifth-degree Dan,

black belt, Navy SEAL kind of characters. The way I described him was I said he's one of those guys degree Dan Black Belt, Navy Seal kind of characters. The way I described him was I said he's one of those guys that can take two fingers, slip it into the twine of a 75-pound bale, and throw it four layers up on a trailer. He's that kind of big, that kind of powerful. I don't think anybody in Hollywood actually understood that. And finding a person who could play that character and be that size has got to be really difficult. Yeah, yeah. So I think they did a really good job with Robert Taylor, who I think is very emblematic of the character.

I think he does a wonderful job. One of the wonderful things that he does is there's a stillness, I think, that Robert uses, which I noticed even in his audition tape, where he you know, he doesn't move around a lot. He doesn't gesticulate a lot. He doesn't overact a lot. Right. And it's interesting, like, because, you know, with each episode, you know, you'll have different actors coming in from different shows or, you know,

haven't been on the show or whatever. They're using up all the acting, whereas, you know, Robert kind of saves a little bit of it. And I asked him about that. I said, you seem kind of still, you know, whenever you're doing Walt. And he goes, Walt's a hunter, Craig. You don't catch anything by being a hunter and moving around and making a lot of noise. Very true. Great observation on Robert's part. Well done. And I want to go back to something you kind of mentioned a second ago, but it still ties into Walt. We're talking about

the detail and you were talking about CSI and the character came about during that era when all those shows were very popular. One of the first things I noticed from the cold dish and on all the way through was the level of detail and research you must do about certain specific things. I mean, the ballistics that you talk about, you go into such detail with things like that. And I can't think of a whole bunch of other examples right off the top of my head, but there are many where you really hone in on something. So the ballistics is the one thing. So I thought, my God, do you contact a lot of people to discuss this? Do you spend

hours online? What's the process of getting to the, of putting all this detail in there? I think that's one of the joys of what it is that a writer does is you have the opportunity to go and use those most seductive words in the English language. Tell me a little bit about yourself or a little about this or whatever like that. And there's no excuse anymore these days with the resources that are available to all authors to get this stuff wrong. There really is this laziness if you do.

And then you get what you deserve because somebody out there will know that information and be happy to tell you what you did wrong. Yes, they will. And so for me, it's kind of essential. But the other thing is, is like, I mean, that's the art of what it is that we do. Like that. And, you know, if there's something that sounds off, you know, if we hit a wrong note, you know, by providing a false piece of information or something that's just not quite correct, you know, it's going to jar, you know, with the reader. And I love, you know, giving that information. It's like the information that

you can give out that maybe people don't know. That's always going to be the other thing that I'm looking for. I'm always looking for historical aspects of the books, like at social aspects of the books, but I'm never looking for what the general story is. I'm always looking for something that might be something you don't know about the place, about the people, about all of these things. The book that I've got coming out in September, Depth of Winter, I was doing some research about Americans who disappeared into Mexico, which is a rather telling aspect to that book.

And of course, one of the ones that immediately comes to mind is Ambrose Bierce, the journalist from the turn of the century, who wrote Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and The Devil's Dictionary, and a number of others. But he was a Union soldier in the Civil War. And I think it was Brown's Ferry, I believe, he was involved in a battle where the Confederate troops were going to overtake the Union forces. And the Teamsters cut loose their 20-mule teams and just turned the mules loose.

And it was a nighttime attack, and so within the bullets and the explosions and all this kind of stuff, the mules turned and ran back in the opposite direction and headed right into the Confederate forces. And the Confederate forces were sure that they were being attacked by heavy cavalry and turned their charge and went back. And so basically these mules won the battle. And so Ambrose Bierce writes a report to Washington, D.C. that says all of these mules should be promoted to horse. And I think that was probably the beginning of the end of his military career. But it's one of those little, if I had not been reading that book, if I had not been doing that research myself,

I would never have found that story. And, of course, that story gets used again you know in depth of winter I'm sure walled but that's one of the perils like it about you know doing your own research you know I don't think that you can have anyone do your research for you because number one you're not never quite sure what it is you're looking for if you send somebody out to do research you're gonna give them very narrow parameters on what it is that they should be looking for and finding. Well, it's the ancillary information sometimes that's much more interesting and much more telling, you know, about a place, like at and about a time, like at and about characters. And so I think I'm

a big believer that you got to do your own research. You got to get out there and, you know, rattle the bushes and shake the trees. It sounds like you certainly have. The level of detail that's put in there is fantastic. So my compliments. Thank you very much for putting that level of detail in there, because I don't find that very often. Thank you. You often say that these books are set in the least populated county, in the least populated state in the country. So you have brought that county and that state to life now for people all over the world. What's it been like to see people's reactions now that they've heard about

this county, they've heard about this region, and you've kind of brought to life similar to the way I guess Stephen King did for Maine back in the day when he created these towns and he said all these stories in that area? I don't know. I mean, to an extent, you know, I mean, in many ways, like, you know, those of us in Wyoming like to refer to it as the Big Empty. And the reason behind that being that there's an awful lot of people who don't know exactly where it is. They just kind of look at it as kind of like the Baja country of the United States. It's even worse.

Actually, I've got to be honest with you, though. I've probably met a lot more people in Europe, look at it, who have an exact idea of where Wyoming is. They seem to have a really good strong sense. Some don't, and then you kind of have to explain it and say it's between Colorado and Montana. And then you get that kind of blank look where they go, there's a state there?

And I'm like, yeah, for quite some time actually. But yeah, the book's been translated into about 14 languages. I'm on the 14th one. And I don't know. I guess for me a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was going to be a response. I look at the motivations for what I do as a writer, and a lot of times it's in response to something.

And the response at that point in time was everything was very CSI-oriented at that point, like whenever I was thinking about writing the books. And so, you know, it was amazing because it seemed like, you know, on these television shows and in these books, they were able to get DNA evidence, you know, in two minutes, you know. And it just struck me as maybe that wasn't quite honest. And so I ran into two DCI investigators in Wyoming and asked them, I said, how long does it take you guys to get DNA evidence? And the one looked at me and said, well, this is a high-profile case. And I said, let's pretend like it is. And he goes, about nine

months. And so I thought, well, okay, well, what if you did, you know, a protagonist who was the sheriff of the least populated county in the least populated state? It would force you to deal more with character and place, which is always where I think the best writing is going to be, no matter what genre it happens to be that you're writing in. I think that it's always going to be about the voice of the characters. It's always going to be about the strength of those characters to carry the storylines. And even in the most vacant and beautiful of places, sometimes horrible things happen. And that's kind of Walt Longmire's load to bear. You have certainly some terrible things seem to happen in Walt's little loose, hot, dirty county.

They do. The poor guy. That's where the TV show and I kind of parted company a little bit like that because early on I came to the conclusion that it was going to get pretty ridiculous if Walt had somebody getting killed in his county every month. So many murders Yeah, yeah. There's not going to be many people left. Yeah, murder capital, you know, USA so I thought, okay, well, the other thing that happened though was I thought, okay, well, if this guy you had this sheriff who was breaking all of these cases and becoming more and more notable in his abilities as a detective, I thought, you know, people would notice that. And there would be other sheriffs in other places who would solicit his help on some cases that they were working on.

And so I thought, okay, well, then that gives me the opportunity to kind of like moves Walt's new jurisdiction out you know away from Absaroka County so I've had him open Montana I've had over in South Dakota down and further south you know and in Wyoming like it all the way to Philadelphia say all the way to Philadelphia you went to Temple right yeah yeah drew on a little bit of that personal knowledge absolutely college years and I bounced him around a lot of different places just you know to give him you know and also it's nice to look at because it gives me a varied option as far as the the environs of the book are concerned sure one of my favorite books to write was the

little novella that i wrote called the highwayman yeah i love that one which took place you know in the wind river canyon okay which is just yeah an incredible place okay and to try and you know imagine that for a reader to try and come up with the words that will try and give them a sense of what that place is really, really like. That's the challenge. It's a challenge, but it's also the joy. I'd heard of the Wind River area. I'd heard of the Wind River Canyon, but I'd never seen it before. So that novella really brought it to life.

I could picture all of these areas that you were talking about. Oh, my gosh, it's such an interesting geographical area. I would love to go see it now. Cool. So yeah, I got to go check that place out. Hopefully they're getting a little residual siphon, a little bit of money. I'll stop by and say, by the way, I got here because of the highwayman. It was a fantastic book. What kind of preview can you give the listeners to the next book coming out, Depth of Winter, which arrives in September?

Oh, let's see. I don't want to give away too much with the end of Western Star, like at the last Walt book, but obviously Walt is headed into Mexico. This is a situation where he's going up against one of the most vicious drug cartel narcos that there is, this character, Tomas Bedard, in a conflict that's kind of been building for about five novels now. And it's a situation where this can no longer be ignored simply because Walt's daughter has been kidnapped.

And so Walt has to head into the Chihuahuan Desert pretty much alone. Because as it turns out, the American government is kind of hesitant because they've got to get their ducks in a row before they can have anything done in a foreign country. And of course, the Mexican government is not quite sure what they want to do with this. And so it kind of leads into a desperate situation for Walt. And it's probably one of the darkest and probably bloodiest books that I've written. It's very hard to write a cozy about drug cartels in northern Mexico. There's not going to be a lot of fluffy bunnies. No, no. There's a lot of humor. There's a lot of humor in the books.

It's surprising. I guess it's maybe a defense mechanism that works not only in real life, but also when you're confronting those situations as an author. But there's this one guy that comes to pick Walt up in Juarez, and he's driving a 1959 Cadillac convertible that's bright pink. And when he pulls up to the curb there, he asks Walt some questions. Walt asks him some questions, and he says, well, you ask a lot of questions. Walt asks him some questions, and he says, well, you ask a lot of questions. You got any more questions? And Walt's answer is, yeah, how much Mary Kay did you have to sell to get this thing anyway?

So there's still humor no matter what. I love it. I can't wait now that I hadn't heard the trek down to Mexico to find that elusive character whose name pops up every now and then, but we haven't really seen him since obviously he disappeared in one of the previous novels after the attack on Vic. And so, yeah, it'll be very interesting. Now I'm even more intrigued to see how this is going to go.

Were there any Old West figures or events that shaped the creation of the Longmire world or the character of Walt? Hmm. Historically, is that what you're asking? Yeah, or, yeah, historic events, characters you read about where you thought, eh, maybe he has a little Wyatt Earp in him or something like that. Not really. I have to be honest and admit that, you know, not really.

I mean, other than, you know, the stereotypical aspects of, like, you know, talk low, talk slow, don't say too much, you know, not really. I mean, other than, you know, the stereotypical aspects of like, you know, talk low, talk slow, don't say too much, you know. And that was interesting because, you know, as I mentioned, you know, Greer Shepard before, one of the first things she'd asked me was, you know, whenever we were developing the television show, she said, well, you know, do you think of Walt as a verbose kind of character, a very talkative kind of character? And I said, well, yeah, I do. You know, the books are written in first person. So, you know, it's, you're inside Walt, you know, Walt, yeah, I do. The books are written in first person. So you're inside Walt's head for 300, 400 pages. And she goes, I'm not talking about what Walt thinks, Craig. I'm talking about what Walt actually says. And it was a little bit of a

revelation because I had to go back and look at my books. And I thought, well, damn, he thinks for like three pages. And then he says one sentence is what he does. And so in that way, yeah, there are a lot of the stereotypes and maybe not the cliches, but there are some certain aspects and character traits, I think, that, you know, that Walt carries, you know, from that, you know, that lone individual who's, you know, a vertical figure, you know, on a horizontal landscape. That was always the way that I looked at him, like that he was in opposition, you know, but still a part of that landscape that he's such a part of and, you know, comes from. But, yeah, I think, you know, the majority of the information for Wall, look at, that was garnered actually came more from ride-alongs,

like with sheriffs, you know, here in Montana and down in Wyoming. Okay. And just, you know, seeing how they did what they did, you know, and in the modern era, you know, to see, you know, like, you know, how it developed them and how they dealt with a lot of these very complex situations like that. But, you know, and all of them in very different ways like that, but that probably more than anything else. Yeah, and I guess I was thinking about that because he, it feels, he does feel like that quintessential character that you could pluck out of the 21st century and drop into the

1860s or 70s and he would fit just perfectly in Dodge City or Tombstone or Deadwood or any of those places. Oh, he would. So he's got the same kind of feel to him as what we think some of those famous lawmen of the old days would have had. That's what you hope is what you do. I guess the way I describe Walt is that if my truck slides off the road on I-80 on a January night, and I'm sitting there in four feet of snow trying to get my truck dug out, the set of headlights that pulls up behind me there, the guy I want in that truck is Walt Longmire. That's the guy I want.

That's kind of the way I ride it. Thanks for listening. Now, as always, if you like the show, please give it a rating and a review on iTunes. Those things help make the show more visible to new listeners as they're browsing through all the different podcasts out there. You can find us on the web at oldwestpodcast.com and on our Facebook page, Legends of the Old West Podcast. The handles for Twitter and Instagram are at Old West Podcast.