Shaun Newman Podcast - #496 - Brett Kissel

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

He is a Canadian country music singer who has won multiple Juno's and CCMA awards. He released his first album when he was only 12 years old and is originally from Glendon, AB. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastPatreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

This is Late and Gray. This is Tanner Nadey. This is Donald Best. This is Granny McCoy. This is Steve Holmstrom. This is Viva Fry. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Wednesday. Let's get to some of the episode's sponsors, shall we? Guardian plumbing and heating. That's Blaine and Joy, Stefan, home of the Guardian Power Station, bringing free electricity to everyone. You got to call them and ask them about that because everyone hurts my head a little bit

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so how about this? September 20th for the kids' sake, they're going to be a further kids' sake group is planning to be a part of the one million March for Children happening across Canada here in Lloydminster for everyone to attend the idea is to pull our children out of school on the morning of September 20th and to attend

a peaceful march by City Hall we are in the process of planning out a short program that will be followed by March at 11 a.m. and then kids activities, music, and lunch in the park. If you want to help, we got a band now playing. They have got signage made up, but they are looking for a few different things, volunteers, donations, et cetera, to offset the cost. So if that's something you can help out with, shoot me a note in the text line.

Otherwise, we'd love to see out. September 20th for the million, one million March for children. Anyways, I don't know why that's a monthful. Deer and steer butchery. Well, they're a fast-growing custom-cutting and wrapping butchered... Bouchery... Come on. Come on, Sean. It's only Wednesday here. Get it together.

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Erickson Agro Incorporated out of Irma, Alberta. There are Kent and Tasha Erickson family farm raising four kids growing food for their lovely community and this great country. My hat's off to Erickson's and the family farm teaming up with the podcast. Silver Gold Bull is North America's premier precious metals dealer with state-of-the-art distribution center in Calgary, Las Vegas. They insure fast, fully insured, and discreet shipping right off your doorstep. Silver Gold Bull offers a diverse set of services, including buyback, wholesale, registered savings, IRA accounts,

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For the past 80 years, they've been an industry leader in bulkfields, lubricants, methanol chemicals, delivering to your farm, commercial or oilfield location for more information. Visit them in Hancock, Petroleum.com. He's originally from St. Paul, Alberta. He's a country music singer who's won Juno's for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Country Music album of the year multiple times. He's also won a handful of CCMA awards. I'm talking about Brett Kissel.

So buckle up, here we go. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today, I'm joined by Brett Kisle. So, sir, thanks for hopping in the studio. Well, thank you very much for having me. here. I mean, we just played last night and it's made perfect sense. We've been wanting to do this for a long time, Sean, so I'm very grateful that you made time for me. Thank you. Yeah, I made time for you.

This is the job now, you know? Yeah. So this is like legit. The Sean Newman podcast is... Full time. And that's really great. It's really, and you do a great, a great job. I have to compliment you. You have a great reputation here in town and all province wide, too. Well, I appreciate that. It's something, you know, when you, I've stepped into a lot of deep waters, you know, and rough waters, I should probably say, where, you know, it's conversations that I think need to be had, but a lot of people, you know, want to talk about it, but don't really want to give opinions on it. And it's kind of this world, but I'm like, oh, it's just like people talk. Like people talk, and, I mean, we lose that.

We're in a dangerous spot, so. I agree. I think communication you can find common ground with pretty much anybody. No matter what, if you truly take the time to listen, have a conversation, and be open to both perspectives, because you can have two realities at the exact same time, no matter what, no matter what relationship you're in. So I think you've done a very, very good job with that. And that's why I have to be very selective of now a lot of the podcasts that I go on.

Because as an entertainer, I just, I don't know, I can just get roasted for anything. Like you buy roses and someone says, But what about daisies, you know? Do you let that bother you? Well, it used to. Because I didn't know any better. And I really cared about what people thought. And it's not that I don't care about them,

but I just care about being on my own path and understanding that you can't please everybody all the time. So if you have integrity and you're not causing harm to anybody, you just move forward. and right nothing you can do about it. You know, and you've got to be okay with who you are. Very much so. You know, I was saying to Brett folks before he got in the studio or as we were walking in,

I was, you know, like last night was something. Like I'm... Thank you. I'm... I say I'm not a concert person, but it's, you know, just the wife and I, stage of life, maybe a couple different things. Being in Lloydminster, you know, like Lloyd Minster has its troubles of, you know, it's not like, I don't know, Garth Brooks is rolling through every night, you know?

You got to make your way to Rogers Place or Calgary or whatever. And I mean, in Western Canada, that's just kind of life. Yeah. But to have an act like yourself come in. And then be fortunate enough, I got to give a show to Vick Juba for entrusting me to be on stage to help lay out the night and different things like that. So I was, you know, I was there. And you came on. And I'll give a show to Jordan Pollard, too.

Jordan did a great job. What a great voice, eh? Yeah, like a great voice. Yeah, she's definitely. want to watch who can truly become the next the next big thing in female country music. But to see you start your show and this will be the, I'll pump your tires here for a few seconds because I'm like, it comes on and I'm like, is this a country music show or is this a rock concert? Because like you can feel it. The entire energy in the entire building, you know, I joked a little bit,

tongue in cheek last night because I always say I come from small town. But like, you're in a, you're in a, you're in a, you're in a, you're in a, you're in a, you're not, you're a bull barn, essentially, you know, having a, a, a which is cool, right? It's a small town. And tons of people and all of a sudden your little intro starts or your music. I don't know what you. To me, the hockey player in me is just like, oh, this gets me ready for the hockey game. Like I'm like, we could play this at the start of a, you know, and I know your relationship with the oilers and everything else. And it, it really set the mood. And then once the mood changed, half the crowd got up and was like ready to roll for you. I'm like, man, that's going to be fun to walk out to. It really is. And there's

the psychology to it of of creating the show and creating a, uh, extracting from, from the crowd and in creating this, this response that you, that you want. And as an entertainer, I've watched many of the crates do the exact same thing. So I try to figure, okay, how do they do this? And so we've figured out a way now, you know, a bunch of years into my Canadian country career, to go into any situation and extract the feeling that we want and give the crowd what we hope that they want to. So prime example last night in Lloyd, it's small town vibes. We are in a bull barn. And we have to play into that. We have to show everybody how appreciative we are to be there, where there are a lot of other entertainers that might be used to playing the big theaters or an arena

and saying, ah, this is beneath us. No, no, no. We're here to actually celebrate this fact. Then everybody worked hard. It's the end of summer. Let's go out with a bang. How are we going to do this? And certain buzzwords that you can say is an entertainer to say, I know it's a Thursday night, but why can't we party like it's a Saturday night? You said something like that, or you tell all the kids that are in the crowd and all the people that thinking, I don't know, maybe I got to go to work tomorrow. No, no, you do not. Like tonight we're staying all night long and you say those kinds of things so that you can get this response and make sure everybody's feeling pumped up. And that's our goal. That's entertainment. I was actually very curious last night,

so you've already kind of hit on it. How much have you, you know, in your career, um, analyzed, you You mentioned Garth Brooks last night. You played one of his songs. You played Johnny Cash. Like I got a lot of time for a lot of different people that you threw out last night. I'm like, I wonder how much he analyzed or the team around you analyzes, hey, like, this is what this does. And this is what we're trying to do. And then a lot of it's got to be trial and error, I assume, as well.

You go out. Well, that didn't work. You know, you had your kids sing on stage last night. That was, you know, as a dad of the first time. As a dad of three, I'm like, that was super cool. And for the audience to be a part of the time. part of that, it's not about the music anymore. Like it is and it isn't, right?

Like, that's something that's like super special if you're in the room. Yeah. But I'm guess curious, take kids out of it. Just like the intro, the hype, the interaction. How much did you analyze that or your team? I don't know. Is that something from day one or something that you've grown into? Well, my team is extraordinary and I love them greatly.

Justin Cutting, who's my band leader, he is extremely smart. And so he gets it and he creates this musical culture in our band that's unbelievable. Tyler Volerath, our fiddle player, has been in my band since I was a kid. And he's in the Country Music Hall of Fame now. And where is he from? He's from Mornville, Alberta. He is Mornville. But he lives in just outside of Moncton, New Brunswick now and splits this time between Nashville.

Very, you know, in high demand, all of our musicians, Brendan Wall and guitar, Brendan Waters on keys, Spencer Cheen on drums. but then also our crew. Like we get it. We are in the entertainment business and we're here to entertain and perform and we've got two hours. We've got 90 minutes. We've only got 60 minutes of this crowd's attention.

What are we going to do with that very sacred time? However, when you talk about analysis, a lot of that really did come from me without realizing that I was analyzing or studying it as a kid and as a teenager. I just loved this so much. It's very similar to a kid who, just loves to play hockey and he saw what Sidney Crosby was doing,

and you just follow what Crosby's doing, you follow what Gretzky's doing in old footage, and oh, that's very interesting why he made that decision or why so-and-so decided that's what I'm going to do in the power play. So for me, as an entertainer, I watched DVDs of Garth Brooks, or I would watch ACDC, or I watched a Bruce Springsteen show, you know, as in my early 20s, and I don't know much about Bruce Springsteen's music,

but I know he's the boss, and I know he's one of the greatest entertainers that ever lived, But watching that show and seeing how he made those decisions and what he said in between the songs to get this reaction from the crowd, it's all psychology. And I loved it. And I soaked it in without realizing that I'm here to analyze the show. I didn't go into the Bruce Springsteen show or the Garthbrook show or the Billy Joel show or Paul McCartney show there to analyze. And I'm here to learn. I'm just here to soak it in.

And all of these lessons were downloaded at the, at the, times and then you take that back to your crowd and you realize oh well I'm gonna say this but it's not gonna work because I'm actually not in an arena you need to say that to an arena crowd this is more of an intimate moment so you have to say these kinds of things or play even my songs we have probably five versions per song of my set list and five different versions per song that we can play at any given time depending on the situation so we are very aware so awareness a big, big part of our show.

And analyzing that, I guess, yeah, it would be analytical, but I never intended to. I just loved it and I soaked it in. You know, as an audience member, right? And I can sit here and say this. Before last night, Brett Kessel, I'm like, yeah, really, like, enjoy your music. So I'm all of my playlist. It's not that I don't, you know, I don't know if there's a, you know,

like in Canadian history, you know, I think we could probably both agree on guys like Paul Brandt or. or tragically hip or, you know, I was mentioning you on the way in. Sam Roberts was a guy who came and performed at the grandstand. Well, it rained. And everyone said he was going to shut down the show and he just embraced it and enjoyed it. It was such a cool thing. I went and spent whatever it was back then, $25 on a CD because I'm like, that was, like, that experience was cool.

So I really get why people go to concerts. Yeah. To experience it. But last night, after you came, I'm like, Brett Kisler comes back to this town. I'm coming to watch. I guess I should say the area because I'm like, that was a show. Like I bumped into several people last night. I had never heard of you before, but they'd give him free tickets to it, right?

And they're like, I'm like, oh, what do you think? And you're about an hour in. They're like, man, this has been a lot of fun. I didn't know any of his music, right? But this has been a lot of fun. And that's, hats off to you. Because when I talk about analyzing, you know, like what I got out of it as an audience member. A, you got, you know, like, when you look at, I always come back to hockey, right?

You look at the NHL. As do I. I am so with you on the, again, the word like the analysis and the analogies between hockey and and music. So wherever you're going with this, I'm, I'm there for it because I relate my career to hockey in so many ways. How many second liners or maybe even first liners are in NHL? A ton, but a few of them have the skill of McDavid. It's evident, right? And so as an audience member, I go like, you walk out, you look the part, you sound the part.

But how many people do that in country music or music in general? Actually, quite a few, I would say. What was fun as an audience member and not the one who knew exactly everything about you and was in the front row, ready to go, was you drew me in over and over again with your attention, I call it attention to detail, right? And you will probably call that awareness. Yeah. Like everything had its part. You read the crowd.

You read the audience. I'm like, wow, this is, it pulled me back in the room several times because I was working on a couple other things. As you can see, I'm a one-man band, so I got lots of going on. Of course. And certainly I was there last night taking a concert, but I was also there to like prepare and make sure I don't mess up my lines. And I know, like, to the guy singing, that probably sounds funny. But I take it very seriously to be given the opportunity to walk out on stage and be like, hey, we got Jordan Pollard tonight. Hey, we're Brett Kist.

What do you guys think and everything else? And try and engage you the same way. And so I actually paid attention to you quite closely last night because I was. I'm like, there's things to be learned here over and over and over again. Because from a hockey player, I stare at all the grades and all the different professions and see how they do things because a lot of it can translate back to the game you love. And, I mean, man. Well, I love this game.

I really do. And it really is so much fun. And I've said this a million times, you know, to friends and family and speaking at a convention yesterday. And the fridge magnet says, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Yeah. So I know that I I this is not a job to me whatsoever. This is a true true passion. But I really do love working at my at my craft.

And the awareness of understanding where I'm at and how special this night really can be is something that really makes me tick in such, such a great way. And I've been able to, I think, create a culture in my band and with my crew to understand that this is very, very important. And what can set us apart and create longevity for us. in this business, which is very fickle. It can be very, just very difficult. It's a very difficult business, but it's amazing if you have this appreciation. You lead with gratitude, and you can go and deliver a show like this. And what we did last night was really fun.

And I mean, our group text is on fire right now. Everyone just had such a great time. How much forethought went into the deerhead making it up on? on stage. Zero. I was saying this last thing. So for the listener, you know, you got this beautiful buck, okay? Yeah, buck of a lifetime.

I got this, you know, you can tell the story of it for everybody in Paradise Hill because I think that would be very, very cool to shed a light on. But for me, I get invited into the green room, right, which was an honor in itself, right? Come and have a drink and have a visit. So I'm sitting there and, you know, I'm just kind of taking it all in because, you know, this is in my world a little bit new to me, right? I've been in a lot of different spaces, but the green room is always, I think, is a special invite. So I'm sitting there and

what is it? Three minutes after I get in, this giant buck gets hauled through and I'm like, I've only ever seen this in maybe two provinces and I want to give Alberta the benefit of the doubt. I'm a Saskatchewan boy so I assume this is completely Albertan because we're kind of mirror image provinces.

Oh yeah, but Saskatchewan, this is like, oh yeah, and I went to college in Wisconsin and I'm like, Wisconsin would be like, they'd be cheers and they'd find out somehow find a way I thought this to get it on stage. And so then you fast forward, folks. And if you watch my Instagram last night, you see this buck carried on stage like it's the Stanley Cup.

And I'm like, this only, like it flies anywhere. But I mean, you don't plant. No, it doesn't fly anywhere. It doesn't fly. This is my lighting guy is from, his name is Gordon. He's from Toronto. I grew up in Newfoundland, but he lives in Toronto. So he's right in the heart of, you know, the big city of T.O.

And I looked at him and he looked at me. He says, this is the most. country thing I've ever seen in my life. And I looked at him and I said, this is the least Toronto thing that you could ever see on stage. Like, if I'd have pulled up and brought this deerhead on stage when I played the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto last weekend, it would have been a shit show. It would have been so upset.

Now, granted, people still love country music and everything, but they don't want to see a dead deer. Whereas here in Lloyd Minster and this big buck from Buck Paradise that I shot last November, Clark who's from Turtleford, Saskatchewan, he came out and he did the taxidermy on it, and he says, hey, I'm going to come see you and Lloyd and said, can you bring the buck? So he did, and that's it. I just wanted to get it home, simple.

That was the plan. And I wanted, you know, Clark to have a drink and done deal. Well, I brought up Grant Kuypers from Buck Paradise, and when he and I get into the whiskey after shooting a big deer or whatever we hunt, because I go there several times a year, and he starts singing Johnny Cash. I looked at him and I looked at his wife, Lan, and I said, he's actually pretty darn good. You know, everybody likes to sing, which is great, and I love it. But only a few are pretty darn good.

And Grant's pretty darn good. And he sounded pretty good last night. And he sounded like Johnny Cash. And I'm saying that as a guy who was completely sober. I didn't have anything last night. So I made Grant a promise, you know, when we were in the deer blind, I said, if you put me on a big buck, and if we're lucky enough to get this, it's the final day shooting. And I said, if we get a big buck, I'm, I said, I'm going to bring you up on stage and you can live out your dream and you can sing

Folsom Prison Blues with us. Well, sure enough, the fact that Grant was in the room and the buck came in that day and everything, I'm thinking to myself, okay, this is too cool. So exactly that I get on, we have this little mic. I'm not sure if you notice right by the drums. My band leader has a private microphone and I've got a private microphone so I can give a message to the team because I changed my set list maybe five or six times in the show. Talk about awareness.

Like, you know what? we're, we hit party time, for example, quicker than we usually do. So no sense going to a ballad and a slow song next. He said, we're skipping song number eight. We're going straight into party mode. That was one of my cues. So you say that in the private mic, because I saw Grant, you know, was there. I go to the private mic.

I say, hey, boys are going to do Folsom Prison Blues. It's in the key of E. Poncho, you got all the solos. We're going to end on a solo. and like it's like call in place. Full on calling an audible. Tyler, you're going to take the second solo.

Grant and I are going to trade verses and somebody go get me the buck from my dressing room. That was it. So then you go and you start this and DC who's our stage stage tech. He's got a run and he goes and he grabs his buck. I saw him.

I'm like, where is he running to him? Our videographer, Darty, he's just in the bathroom taking a leak and he comes out and he sees that DC's got the buck. So Dardy gets his camera and he looks at DC and he says, what are you doing? And D.C. hollers says, I don't know. He said, get the deer.

So I'm getting the deer. So he brings the deer on the stage and we held it up like the Stanley Cup and everybody cheered because it's small town. It's culture here. Yeah. And I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I think I love these kinds of shows the most is because these are my people. You know, Rodney Atkins had a song in, you know, around 2000.

you know, six or seven, it goes, these are my people. This is where I come from. And that, that's me. Lloyd Minster, this is my stomping ground. So I think we're able to have twice as much fun last night than maybe we do in other places. Well, I was, once again, I'll say this one last time. Because I was, like, thoroughly impressed at how engaged the audience was. Like, I was just, I was like, this is, this is cool.

This doesn't happen. And Lloyd is the crowd that sits around and watch it. And I'm being a little rough on us. But like, I've watched so much. many acts come through in my younger days where yeah some people get up and dance but overall nobody really comes in so if you haven't been to a breck kistle here's the sell here's my salesman pitch if he's coming to your area go see what he does because i'm like who knows i just assume you could pull that off anywhere you do because like it was it was super cool to see you uh get them up now there that's no thank you

you know keep going the entire sean newman podcast should be a a complete sales job for the brett Kessel Compass tour coming to a city near you. Where are you off to next? Where are you off to next? By the time of airs, you've already been through Calgary. Yeah, through Calgary. That's just corporate work. What's the rest of late September look like for people? Super busy. I mean, I live by my Google Calendar. September's just turned out to be a crazy busy month, but it's a really good month.

We've got a corporate event for Canadian Tire that I'm really, really excited about. actually I probably shouldn't have said it because I'm a surprise entertainer so I'm just kidding surprise it's a corporate event for Princess Auto not Canadian what an idiot my manager's not going to like that doesn't matter playing playing a great corporate event that'll be in Edmonton then I'm going to fly to Nashville for four days we have a bunch of work to do down there from podcasts and interviews and media a little bit songwriting. Then I'll come back up. September 30th, I'm going to go back out to Buck Paradise

and do a waterfowl hunt. And then October is also busy Sunday, September the 8th. I'm playing, that's Thanksgiving Sunday. I'm playing in Regina at the Canexis Art Center. That'll be a great show on our tour. Prince George, B.C. in October. Yeah, I mean, Brett Kessel.com's got everything. This is where to go. Yeah. And I'm excited. For anybody in the area, you know, kind of the Lloyd area,

the next time I am somewhat in the area as a hometown show in Bonneville. And that'll really end our Compass tour, especially in the West. And when is that? Saturday, December 16th. And that one is going to be really cool. So I'm basically calling it like,

that's Christmas party extravaganza. And I want everybody to come out, get tables and bring your friends or your clients or whatever. And we're going to show you a good time because as soon as the show is over, I'm just going home to the farm that I grew up on. St. Paul.

My meme on my grandpa's and then we're home for Christmas, right? Yeah. So that'll be really nice. And December 31st in Edmonton, New Year's Eve, River Cree, resort and casino. That'll be a big, big night. Very excited. I've only played the River Cree once, and that was when we did our drive-in concerts in that, you know, in the COVID era. And so we did that in June of 2020. So now it'll be, you know, almost three years.

And I'm very, very excited to be coming back and playing your big venue there for New Year's Eve. Who would you equate yourself in the NHL? Like if you were to say, he kind of plays the way I sing or whatever. I'm curious. Okay. Hmm. That's interesting. Never been asked that ever before.

You know what? I can, I feel like I've got the dynamite comes in small packages. So I feel like I can dig in the corners and disrupt. the industry in a lot of ways the way that Brad Marchand does. Okay. Now Brad Marchand is, as I think he's got a great reputation if you love them, but you also, some people just can't stand them because of some of the antics.

I'm not saying necessarily the antics because I'm not a really an antics kind of guy, but digging in the corners, but getting the job done, very much so. And that dynamite coming in small packages, you can rely on on Brad Marchand to get the job done. Okay, so what I saw then last night and what I was expecting was, as I was expecting something like Brad Mershahn year three into his career, like he's, he's, he's an legitimate NHLer, but he's got things to learn. If that makes sense. And what I saw last night was Brad Mershant of pretty much right now. I'm like, holy man, like, I don't know what in my brain I thought in person for Brett Kissel was going to be. But like, this is, this is like you can see a well matured. vet on the stage. Well, thank you. So my question is, then, you've got to tell me the journey.

Because I've read on Wikipedia, you released your first album at 12. I don't know. Is that bullshit? No. Is that true? So you're living in St. Paul. 98% of kids are playing hockey and, you know, I don't even know what else, you know. And that's what we do here.

At 12 years old, Brett Kissel's got the guitar out and is recording an album? Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's an amazing journey to, to reflect on now. And, and maybe I'm, I'm getting more, more sentimental, you know, now that Cecilia, my wife and I, we've, we've got these four beautiful kids. And, and I'm thinking it wasn't that long ago. I, I remember when I was seven and I got my first guitar and I started to sing, you know, at family reunions and locally for a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But, um, the album came together because, it's, you know, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, the album came together. And, It was something that was requested every time I went out to play. And I didn't have any material to sell. From the time I was 10, for sure by the time I was 10, this is the year 2000. I was playing probably 50 shows a year, so like every weekend. And I would play at this rodeo to that rodeo.

Mike Sodoric, who used to run the X here in town, would get me out to open for Corbund or he would do. some kind of event or that some of the chuck wagon racers would have a a wagon party and they get this 10 year old to come out and sing a couple songs and i get paid 50 bucks or a hundred bucks and everybody would say do you have any cassettes or do you have any CDs that's how old i am cassettes do you have any cassettes and and you know my mom my dad and i would say like no like we don't well you need to get one you need to get one you need to get one and it had been almost two years of that and a local star named

Calvin Volerath, who's Tyler, my fiddle player, his uncle. And Calvin is one of the best musicians on the planet. He is so good. Like when he goes to Nashville, he sits in with Vince Gill. You know, this guy is, he's one of the best fiddle players to ever pick up the instrument in the history of the instrument. Like I'm talking, he could go toe to toe with whoever the best violinist was of the 1700s who, like, played for Mozart.

Like, I swear to God, he's that talent. It's a once in a in five lifetimes talent is Calvin Volrath. He's in the Hall of Fame as well. Anyway, Calvin is great studio equipment. And we talked to Calvin. He says, I'll make a record for you. And my parents were like, I think it cost us like four grand to make a full length album. And my mom and my dad, I remember having a conversation with me, which is kind of quite entrepreneurial to say, we're going to front the money, but we don't know, you know, how we're going to get this paid back.

But we're going to figure it out. And so that 4 grand went out the window. We made the record. And now we've got, you know, I think we have to do a minimum pressing of 500, 250 cassettes and 250 CDs. So at one point you sold cassettes. Oh, absolutely. I did. Do you still have one of those?

Damn right. I do. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, I can't wait to show my kids. And they're going to be like, what the hell is this? You're in 90. I'm in 86.

So, like, I mean, I remember buying my father a Pink Floyd cassette tape. for when he was long haul trucking, right? Yeah. And we listened to that sucker a ton. Isn't it good? But I had no idea. Brett Kissel was on a cassette tape. That's kind of...

Well, because it was 2002. So, I mean, CDs were obviously a big thing, but most vehicles, like if you had a vehicle that was in 1999, it was a cassette tape, right? So we made this cassette, and it was called Keeping It Country. And it was all cover songs, Johnny Cash songs, Jim Reeves, box car, Willie, truck driving man, and Charlie Pride, Kissin Angel, Good Morning, like all cover.

because I was the cover kid and all I did was sing old country. And we did a release party in Glendon, Alberta. And it was on Friday, September 12th, 2003. And we sold it out at 500 tickets at $20 a ticket. Well, now we're in the promotion business. My mom and my dad and I were like, that's really good revenue. Like, holy cockadoodle do. Like, that's 10 grand.

And so we have 10 grand of gross revenue. We paid off the album in one night. In one night. We sold $6,000 of net. Now, I hired a band, and Calvin played in the band and everything like that. We did a parogi dinner. And at this time, you're 13 years old. I just turned 13, and we do this album release party.

And now we've got the greatest business card to actually, I would cold call rodeos across Alberta and I would send him a CD and a cassette and I write him a handwritten note Hey Bruce Stampede My name is Brett Kessel I'm you know And email wasn't really a thing

And so I put it in the mail to the Bruce Stampede PEO box whatever it was Or the Calgary Stampede Or the Lloydminster Chuck Wagans Or the Bonneville Pro Rodeo And I would love to do an event I don't know if you've got any space for me And they would always call me

Always without fail And then you do all these gigs and and before you know it now I'm doing 80 shows a year and they would always say what what do you charge and my mom was my manager at the time would be like we don't know just an honorarium and sometimes it'd be a thousand dollars and I'm 13 years old we open up a small business account and at one point we had like 45 grand and I'm 13 years old and so the entrepreneurial spirit really was was now flowing through my veins not because I was a day addicted to money, but because I realized this is a real thing. And so we double down our efforts on this incredible new opportunity and life thinking that this is literally, in my data, the analogy is like, it's like a 14 year old or a 13 year old who's got this promise that, you know, he might really do something in midget. And then once you do well in midget, you know, it's like, this kid really could do well in junior hockey.

and if you do well in junior, there's a chance this kid could make the NHL. And so we just had this momentum. And it was all thanks to the small town atmosphere that I grew up in, all the entrepreneurs that I was surrounded by, and I got very lucky. I got that first album led to the next one.

Give your parents credit. Have you talked, you know, as an older man now, and I mean, you're younger than me, but have you talked to him about those early days? Because, like, you know, you're a young parent now, right? Yeah. You got four under, seven, right? And I got three under seven. So you kind of, I kind of, okay. You and I are in the thick of

things. We're in the thick of things. That's why we're drinking coffee and Bailey's today, because it's like, you know what, let's have a holiday. I look at it and I go like, okay, so as I get older, I'm like, I think back to some of the choices my parents made or some of the things they pushed on me, some of the things they prod me to do, et cetera, et cetera. And I go back to thinking about it, 10 grand to get an album for you, you know, and you're just a kid. Like, I mean, you just are. But I bet they're like, look at, you know, because we can see it now with our own kids. Yeah. Of like, but look, this is what they're going to do.

Hey, hon, this is what they're going to do. And this is in the long scheme of it. But have you ever talked to your parents about it? You know, that's a great question. And it leads into something that I don't mind revealing to you. I am very, very grateful. I talk to my dad on a regular basis. I'm estranged from my mom.

I haven't spoken to my mom since July 2017. I haven't spoken to her. I've seen her once or twice. We had a major falling out in our family. But I know she listens to a lot of this stuff. So it's really important to express that I'm extremely grateful for all the hard work that she in particular put into me and my career and managing things flying by the seat of her pads because she didn't have any type of, you know, recipe for success, you know, or any type of guide to say, you know, if your son's a musician, this is what you do. And she was really hard on me,

you know, like a lot of hockey coaches are, a lot of hockey dads or hockey moms to use that reference again. But I'm now very grateful for that because she would push. She would push a lot. She wasn't a momager,

like you know, like you'd see some of these terrible stories on a biography. I think of Britney Spears, right with her dad. Not even close. My mom was, was extremely supportive, but really, really hard to the point that as a kid, there are,

and I'm grateful for everything because I can't change it. So I have to either accept it or be a victim to it all my life. But my mom, it was a point where if I would go and play in with Taskawin or Winfield, Alberta, or Camrose or Medicine Hat, and if I didn't, get a standing ovation at the end. Like, you know, from the crowd. It was a failure. Like, you know, but that would really poke and prod me to do better.

And we would have incredible fights about our set list, about what it was going to be. And my mom says, you've got to end with this song. I said, I think I want to end with this song. And so as I became a teenager and started to have more control and more power as a teenager than a lot of adults did, I was gaining this confidence, and that's where we started to lock horns in a big, big way. And so I'm 15 years old.

I have a learner's license. I'm months away from getting a driver's license, and I couldn't wait to hit the road on my own and make decisions on my own. So the power struggle was there, but now I'm in my 30s, and I'm realizing my parents sacrificed a great deal. Like you can't get, and I'm not relating myself to Connor McDavid, I just know Connor really well. And I know his dad, Brian, very well. We've had so many conversations.

And it's interesting to be friends with both Brian, the dad, and Connor. And talking to Brian about a lot of the things that they did and they just let Connor steer the ship. But they were always there. They were always there to support. And my mom and my dad were always there. And I'm very grateful for that. Very, very grateful. learned a lot of incredible lessons.

When my mom and I became estranged and I had to hold a boundary of issues with mental health and years of abuse and struggle and stuff like that, it was a decision in my 20s to protect myself, to protect my marriage, to protect my children, and to say, I can't have this toxicity in my life anymore, but just because I've laid a boundary doesn't mean I'm not appreciative of in so many ways how I was raised. and I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't have that. So I've actually got deep gratitude for my mom pushing me, you know, in that way, which is, it's taken years and years of therapy to even be able to say this because I,

I couldn't stand thinking about talking to her and I would never give her credit if this was three years ago. But I don't mind giving her a tractor bucket full of credit because she deserves it. She did a great job, you know, for me as a kid. I appreciate you sharing. That's tough because, I mean, like, that's your mom, you know? It's my mom. It's funny, like, maybe not funny, but I just think a lot of people can,

because through COVID, right? We all know the mandates, the lockdowns, you know, like, I remember, I remember this like yesterday. We went out to, we never, you know, they said, you can't go to your parents' house for Christmas. So, you know, everybody in Saskatchewans, worried that they're going to like literally call the cops on you if they see it. Either call the cops or the narrative was you will kill the older generation.

Correct. You will. That is a fact. You are going to kill them if you go and see them, which I'm certain a lot more people died of loneliness, old aunts of mine, old uncles of mine, neighbors of ours, whereas my grandparents were doing the bubble concept before the bubble concept was allowed. and my meme on my grandpa basically said, we live on a farm,

we don't see anybody, we don't need to get groceries, because we have it all. We got potatoes in the cellar, we got whiskey in the cupboard, and we've got beef and moose in the freezer. So we're not going to not see our great grandkids. So that's what we did.

Well, just to bring it full. We kept it quiet. Just to bring it out, you know, like the reason I bring it up is I just feel like, you know, It doesn't matter the relationship. It could be your friends, could be your coworkers.

But certainly, I haven't ran into a single person that COVID didn't mess with their family at some point. Now, that could be extended family. That could be your immediate family. Sisters, parents. And the problem is, is we're now, you know, don't get me wrong. There's a whole, you know, like the fear over the next wave of this fall and everything, right? You see it in the news cycle. I don't even like to give it that much time because I'm just like, I'm just not even worried about it.

All I'll say is is be careful, folks, because I do. believe that they will try it again, that they really, really will. And we've learned very quickly that the lockdowns were extremely dangerous to our mental health, to the mental health of our kids. And if they even have a sniff of saying, this is for the greater good of all, it is, we now know, and everyone is smart enough. So many people did their part and listened, like kind, polite, humble Canadians do, but we all know now that that in many ways was a mistake. So I'm really, really hoping that this time around, I don't know, a government mandate can say X, Y, Z, but I don't think we have good politicians and I don't trust them anyways. So yeah. I look at it and I go,

I just had Sean Buckley on, a lawyer from Eminton and he was talking about, if you take the institutions, if you take the politicians out of it, and you just, just people having conversations. And I come back to like, it got as far into society as the immediate family. Immediate families fell apart everywhere and they're still not talking. And what Sean Buckley was telling me was like, you know, like, if you look at it from the person who was fearful of their life, they thought you were literally killing them. And so you have to just have a moment of grace to see what they were trying to see and try and open the dialogues. You can get them talking.

Because the only way we get through whatever comes in the future is together. I mean, divided we fall, you know. I couldn't anymore. And one of the things he was talking about is. just how do you, you know, and maybe more of what I thought after we talked, it was like, how do we opened up to try and listen to the other side or whatever side because there's a lot of different sides on this. It always gets drilled down to whether you took it or you didn't, right?

Because that was the divide they put in society. That was the biggest divide, but there were so many other divides. So when you fast forward to where we're sitting right now, it's just getting people talking yet. We just need to get people talking and talking about things that are going on. And so I guess your story of you and your mom, like, that breaks my heart because I don't, you know, I don't want, but the Newman family has their own things going on. And I'm sure if I listed off every family that I'm friends with, they got their own things going on. There isn't a family in North America or I would say in the first world. Because actually, COVID was really a first world problem. In the third world, it didn't exist. There wasn't anybody in Afghanistan. as they were as they were taken over my favorite meme on all of COVID was when al-Qaeda had taken over the capital in Afghanistan. And you have all of these terrible human beings with their AK-47s who have stormed the capital.

And all they're in the heart of COVID. We're all locked down and we're on our phone seeing this. And the meme was, I can't believe there's no social distancing or masks. Why didn't COVID exist in Afghanistan? Dan. When it, when it, I don't, I don't think these guys cared. But all I'm saying is, I'm getting through this now with humor and talking with a lot of my friends and my family and opening the door now to just have a conversation. And I love hearing people out on, on both sides and figuring out a way to find common ground. And then not hold it against them anymore is my choice to move forward.

Now, there's a lot of family members who will still hold some of my decisions against. against me, that's your choice. That's fine. My door is open to have a conversation about this issue so we can find a common ground and move forward. But if you don't want to do that, then that's on you. So I'm okay with being here. I really love who I am. I love my family. I love everyone that is in my community and in my circle, which is this amazing group that I'm so proud of. But I do believe that there is a way and there can be a solution for so many families if you're willing to have conversation, not get heated about it and really not take it personally because there were so many factors at play and everyone I truly believe, because they have it in their heart, we're trying

to make the best decision for themselves. And in doing so, you made this choice and that's totally okay. How are we going to move forward together? Yeah, how are we going to move forward together? That's, that's, well, that's, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? Maybe a billion dollar question at this point. I don't know what money's worth these days, but it's not what it was a couple, even a couple days ago. Oh, I know. It's, it's, it's crazy. And that's a whole other topic. Now I'm, I mean, I'm learning in my 30s with, with, with my kids. And, um, like, it's, it's just wild. I'm telling my kids these stories of a hot lunch or when I was in school, how a looney could get me, you know, a pop and a bag of chips because it was 50 cents a piece, so just two quarters in the

machine, you know? A loony? Are you kidding me? Sometimes I try to bribe my kids to do some farmer because I'll give you a loony. And they give me a side eye. They're like that a loony is like a dime to us back in the day. You got to tell them, I don't know if, I assume it was the same era because I used to be able to go to the Helmont Rink and they had sank candies. So for a dollar, you could get a hundred candies. And I remember trying to eat 100 candies and getting very ill out that. It was a big mistake. Stank candies, you know. Every kid tried that. And you can just imagine being the parent, you got to honor it. He's got a dollar.

Okay. And they probably had arguments at the board meetings of like, should we at least put this up to five cents a can't? That's way too much. Five cents a candy. Come on. I know. Okay.

I'll count out 100 for Sean and watch them go puke it up and be like violently ill. And I love stories like that, the nostalgia of it. There was a store called Little Dave's and it was on the way to Bonneville in this little area called Hose Law. And, you know, just between Glendon and Bonneville. and we would stop at Little Dave's and I used to get Popeye cigarettes and it used to bother my mom and my dad so much

because my Auntie Doris smoked and my mom had asked my Auntie Doris as a kid you know you might not smoking in front of the kids and I don't know what Auntie Doris said but she never quit she like it's my life I'm 50 years old and I'm gonna smoke them smoking darts

and there's nothing you can do about it so I you know pick rocks with my grandpa and he'd give me a loony and I remember when tunis came in in 1996, now we're getting tunis, and I was so excited. So I go and I buy a pop, dill pickle chips and a pack of Popeye cigarettes, and I would hold them in between my fingers like I was cool. And you know what?

And it worked because it got me into smoking. And that's what the fear was. And so as a teenager and in my early 20s, I wanted to smoke so bad. I really did. But it wrecked my voice and it made me so sick I couldn't do it. and then I'd keep trying though I just wanted to smoke I wanted to be like

because it looked so damn cool because it looked so cool so I would buy even nowadays because it's like still $2 for a pack in Nashville I'll still buy a pack of smokes and it'll just sit

and I just never smoke I probably smoked I bought a pack of marlboros once first time I ever went to the States this was playing junior hockey I bought a pack of marbles and how cool did you feel I felt cool and then they sat in a box

until like five years ago so we're talking they sat in a box for 15 years because I didn't know what to do with them and we finally smoking. I couldn't believe it. They were still decent. Like I was like, oh. You know what? That's

because of, there's nothing organic about those, you know? Their shelf life of some Marlboro Reds. But yeah, it's just... Damn it if the Marlboro guy wasn't. Like, everything about their commercials, everything, you're like, that's freaking cool. It really is. Anyone who says smoking isn't cool.

Like, I don't know. I... Everything else about him sucks. Like, the taste, the smell, the fact, you feel like absolutely. shit in the morning like everything about it sucks there's there's you know sure the buzz I guess if you've never smoked before because if I were to go have a smoke right now I'll get like like like this rush of like holy crap well I mean there's a reason why people do it it's like putting a dip in like like I see like I see like I see and you know you got their wives or their girlfriends at our at my show

last night and you can just see because I I love to look at the crowd and try to pick out little stories of who I see and stuff like that and you got three cowboys kind of standing in the back and and you know you got their wives or their girlfriends out having a good time out in the floor and they've got this big dip in their bottom lip and I'm looking at these guys thinking you guys are so cool you guys are so country drinking a Coors banquet like a rip on yellowstone with a big dip in and I just know that at once a year I try to put a dip in and I get so turned around and loopy I feel like I'm upside down and so I just I just can't do it none of the vices which is a good thing the universe doesn't want me to have any of these vices clearly

You know, so for me, I just look at these cowboys. I'm like, man, I wish it was as cool as you. I looked at my auntie Doris and I'm like, man, I wish I was as cool as you. But, hey, it is what it is. I was thinking, you know, last night, I want to ask about how you met your wife and how long you guys been together. Before I get that, I remember Dad telling me they went to Deaf Leopard when, I don't know. This is like maybe five years ago kind of thing. Like, not that long ago.

So I don't know how old Deaf Leopard is, but like you get the point. They're on their late 60s or 70s now probably. I'll tell you what I'll look at it up. I wouldn't be surprised if they're all like between 68 and 72. Okay, the lead vocalist is 64 years of age, okay? So essentially my dad's age. This is what he's talking about. He's watching this.

So they drive this ass to him to see Def Leopard. My parents, I'm like, you're going to see who? Right? We're all kind of like, what? You're going to do? Anyways, whatever, yeah, sure. Love it. Have the best time, Mom and Dad.

That's right. And he says, you know, he's like, if you ever want to, I can't remember how he put it. It wasn't if you ever want to get women. It was something about women and singers. And he's like, it's just strange. I'm in a deaf leopard concert. He's 60 years old and women are still throwing their bra and panties out.

Absolutely. He's like, how does it? In what world does that make sense? Like, you know, like, and so last night, I'm watching the crowd. And you can just, you can just like see it. I'm like, this is strange. Like, women are just ramped up. Like they are ramped up to be at the front, slapping hands, everything else.

And then, you know, and then what melts their heart even more is you got your kids there and your wife and everything. I'm like, this is, this is interesting. So you got to tell me because, you know, there's certain guys who lead the rock star life and, you know, are out and I. So many of them. And never get married or maybe they do when they split. And they got kids. And anyway, you get the point. I look at you and you got four kids.

I saw the three last night. We both got a meal, which is interesting. Oh, nice. Yes. And, and I just see a healthy family. And I'm like, and I go like, you're a good looking young guy, you know, relative. Some 20 year old's going to say you're old. Some 40 year old is going to say you're in the primary life.

Some 60 year old say you get the best years of your head of you. It doesn't matter. And I go like, okay, how did you meet your wife? And like, just walk me through this. Well, of course. And I'll lead with a funny story that started this morning. We went and stayed at our really good friends, the Sayers, and Mike and Michelle. And Michelle owns Beauty from Bees.

out in Marwain and my wife does a lot of work with Michelle and so just happy to give them a shout out. Their hospitality is great. They become really good friends of ours and Mila, who's our oldest, she had just seen it on a movie about what a crush is. So she asked me, she says, do you have a crush on mom? And I said, oh yeah, I sure do. And mom, do you have a crush on dad? And oh yeah, I love your dad so much. And then, you know, Cecilia and I will kiss in the kitchen and the kids just get all bashful. stuff like that. We do have a very healthy relationship. And I love my wife. I love our marriage. I really do. But this morning, Mila said, dad, yeah, there were a lot of girls there. And I think they all have crushes on you. What are you going to tell mom? And Cecilia says, those girls who have

crushes, they pay our mortgage, honey. So it was so funny. And we did an interview. Cecilia and I on a red carpet once. And she's got some great one-liners because she is not a spotlight person. She's the most reluctant influencer, even on Instagram. But she just got on Instagram, I don't know how many years ago, and just got all these followers, all these followers. So she's very protective of her platform. Does not want to be famous.

Does not want to be a celebrity. Doesn't really even want to be on social media, but feels she has a platform to say some really special things and encourage a lot of moms and women in general. But Cece and I were on a red carpet. And I had a single out called Cecilia that I wrote for her with my friend Brad Remple from the band High Valley. Beautiful song, Uptempo, Cecilia. Of course, you have the Simon and Garfunkel song.

Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. And Cece had always said, hey, one of these days you're going to have to write a Cecilia for me. So I did. And on the red carpet, interviewer says to Cecilia, says, isn't it nice how Brett finally wrote a song for you and Cecilia put her hand on the shoulder of this beautiful lady interviewer and Cecilia said honey all the love songs are for me and so it just again drop the mic cecilia is my greatest inspiration she she is and a lot of this secret to any success that i've ever had or i ever will have is truly because of her and one of the reasons why i say that is because

she is such a great grounding chord for me. She is my rock. And in every sense of the word, however you describe the person in your life who is just a rock, a steady, a constant. And I believe that I can go forth and I can spread my wings and fly and try and fail, make attempts, succeed. I can do all of these things because I have this incredible support system behind me. And I try my very best to thank her and show her as much appreciation as I possibly can. But I know I'm going to get to the end of my life and I will never be able to do it in the ways that I really wish that I could. She's not from this world.

Cecilia is not. She is an old soul. She has more lessons and she's lived more life in her, you know, 30-some years than maybe anybody else. and I love her and the minute I saw her it was love at first sight it was like a movie your love at first sight guy

100% it exists it works I saw her so walk me through in Bonneville March 15th 2008 I was doing an event for the Bonneville pro rodeo they were bringing the chuck wagons in

we did a gala rodeo gala dinner I know that her and a friend got the last two tickets because we're you know my family's part of the committee um she sat at a table kind of around the dance floor she was wearing a metallic gray um uh top uh had no no strap she had tight black dress pants she looked like a billion dollars not just a million bucks that's for everybody else she looked like a billion dollars uh dark tan skin the most beautiful hair just these piercing green eyes like nothing i'd ever seen

before and she I had never seen anybody that attractive in my entire life like like with my own two eyes like you see sometimes these these incredible supermodels on on TV or on a movie and you're like that's amazing you've never seen a work of art like that I got to see that with my own two eyes in Cecilia and I told my band I said and I don't know why I said this but after meeting her and having a brief visit. I came backstage and of course everyone in my band, you know, saw her too and is like, this is the most attractive human being on the face of the planet that we've all ever seen. And I said, I'm going to marry her. And they all told me to look off. They're like, because you're what, 18 at this point? Not even. 17. 17. And they're like, yeah, screw off,

man. Okay, you're 17. And she's clearly a 14 out of 10. And, and yeah, okay. But then in the middle of the show, I played this song by the Eagles called Peaceful Easy Feeling. And because of the first lyric, I like the way you're sparkling earrings lay against your skin, so brown. And I looked at her and she had this, she's of Spanish background and she has this, you know, dark skin. And it was, I looked at her and I'm like, I'm going to ask her to dance because this is like a great two step. So I did the chorus because I'm already standing on the ground. And I looked at the band and Tyler was in the band. And I said, play as many solos as you can.

I put my guitar on the stand. I hopped off the front of the stage, walked across the dance floor, through all the dancers. And I asked if she would dance with me. And she said yes. And if you get her ever on the podcast, she'll say that she's like,

I'm either going to turn this guy down in front of everybody or I'm just going to say, okay, I'll dance with you. It's going to be just, you know, two minutes, whatever. She danced with me. I took her back to her seat after we're done dancing. I got back up. I sang the final verse. Like I felt it was like a top G move. Like I felt like, I'm going to be honest. It was like a top G move. It was like, yeah, I felt like Romeo out there. And then I got her Facebook. And from that night on, we... Does she recounted as a top G move? She said I had

balls. She said I had balls to do it. Yeah, 100%. You know? And she said, she, you know, and she, She had no idea how old it was. It's straight out of a movie, right? That would be something that plays out in some Hollywood flick. You know, absolutely. Hey, could you just keep the chorus going? I'm going to go ask this lady to dance and off you get. 100%.

You dance and I bet you you just look swabay and you dipped her and everything. And then you sent her back. The whole thing. And I held her in my arms, like all those old country songs and everything like that. And I held her in my arms and it felt so good. And we're just chatting. I have no idea what we're talking about. But I'm looking into her eyes.

and I'm falling in love. Like I'm talking deep in love. And I've loved her ever since. So it was March 15th, 2008. Now I turned 18 and she had no idea how old I was. But we were kind of dating by the time I had, you know, turned 18. And, you know, she's like, okay, well, that's fine. I'm two years older, but, you know, whatever.

And, yeah, November 10th, 2009. I'm only 19. I asked her to marry me. And my parents weren't happy because it's like you're supposed to move to Nashville. Like what are you doing? Like you're getting married at 19.

Are you kidding me? You know? But I've been married now for 12 years, four kids. I think our marriage is better today than it's ever been. So when you know, you know. That's a cool story. I, uh,

I, um, Thanks for asking. I never get to go in-depth and really tell the true story. It's a conversation that is a five-minute interview on a radio station. Tell me about how you and C-C met at a show. I fell in love. Love at first sight is real. And we've been married 12 years.

That's the answer. But you got the full scoop. It's what I love about a podcast. Honestly. You get to have an in-depth conversation about whatever. And one of the things that I search out is men who have their shit together, right? Like one of the things, even admired more so, if that's bugging you, you can pull it off from the, it should be tied up there. Yeah?

No, it's, no, it's all the way down. This is, this is perfect because I'm leaning perfectly and I haven't relaxed this much in a conversation because it's not that I feel that I have to be on when I'm on other things. But if I'm on a morning show, I know that it's important to. to be entertaining and to have some pepping my step. Actually, I, you know, what I was going to say. It just feels good. But anyways, continue. What I was going to say was, I searched for people who have their shit together.

And what I admire, there's a lot of things I admire about the show. I think people are getting that out of me this morning. But it's so fresh. I'm like, even, I watched Jordan Peterson in Rogers Place. So him and Tammy are out there, and they danced on stage for the crowd. I can't tell you how electric. The entire show of what he said was good. But I've watched Jordan Peterson.

multiple times. I've listened to so much of this stuff. It wasn't like this rock star night. Like it was cool, but like overall, I took my wife who'd never heard Jordan Peterson before. Interesting. And what did she think? She's like, yeah, it was good. And she said, you know, but he said a couple words that, you know, I don't know, and he kind of was hard on this point. But overall, she said it was a good night. But what was amazing to me is he got asked by. They had a at the end, Q&A with him and his wife was reading what the questions were coming in from the crowd. And then asked Jordan and Jordan answers. One of them was, do you actually dance with your wife?

You know, he tells a story about every Thursday night was date night. And at the house, they would, every Thursday night, regardless of what was going on, he put on a playlist, and they've compiled this playlist over, you know, how many years they've been together and they dance in the living room. It sounds like so, like, great. Honestly, you're like, okay. Oh, sure. Sure. Sure, yeah, I do.

So he gets asked his question, and he goes, absolutely. And then he looks at Tammy and he goes, let's show him how it's done kind of thing, right? And he gets up on stage, and as he's talking. and dancing with her. I'm talking like, well, like, it brings good. I'm like, that's cool. And I think it's really cool for specifically men to see it. Like, it's cool to be romantic with your wife and, like, push family values.

So, like, having your kids out on stage, I thought that was really cool because I'm like, you know, like, I was like, I don't know if my kids could handle that one. Like, I think they would have went. I thought your kids were really well behaved. Thank you. I thought your son was like totally rocking the stage. rock star. He didn't care about singing. He was out there high-fiving and giving the rock and roll sign to everybody he saw. But it was super cool and I've seen Jordan Peterson. I really admire when people in the spotlight really, because I think

it's something, I don't know if it's being lost, I don't know if I'm sensitive to it. I just look at it and so much of today's world is focusing on like how easy it is to divorce. You get in a problem and just, you know, and just kind of like wipe your hands and move on. And I'm not saying that's, that's what's happening. That's just what I see. And I'm like, I want to see more of traditional family values, which is just a man loving on his wife. And both can work, both can be in a, whatever. It's just a healthy relationship and kids underneath and everything else.

And I really admire that. So hearing the story, I would say my wife would not agree with love at first sight. Because when I first met her, you know, on my side, weird circumstances get me to going to college in Wisconsin. I should not have been there. It's very interesting to be from small town, you know, prairie boy and go to Wisconsin. Wisconsin, although it is the closest to Saskatchew, you're going to find in the States. You know, I've been there a couple times and, you know, I would say, I would say you're right about that. It's definitely got a very similar vibe.

The buck last night you have on stage, okay? I'm driving to where I'm, I don't know this when I go for my visit, but I'm driving into the town where I'm going to go. And I look over. and there is a buck strapped to the front of a truck like the entire butt everything with like I'm like oh I'm home

you know like I didn't mentally I was like oh this could be home right like yeah when you see that you're like that's allowed here it's a sense of comfortability and in our inner dorm rooms

the guys would go hunting at night and they would hang deer in the back like kind of patio of the dorm and like hang them from the and I'm like where else does this happen and go on and skin them and do you

Even a Saskatchewan boy, I'm like, is that allowed? You know what? I bet you at the college in Lloyd or Vermillion College, I bet you it's happened before. I bet you've been. I bet you've been. I bet you it's happened in Vermillion. Yeah. But I think it's really, really cool to have that sense of, that sense of home.

And as we tie it back to, you know, what you're saying about Jordan Peterson and you're talking about me and Cecilia, I believe that home can also be a person. Home is a physical place. Home is, it can be a physical place. place it can be four walls home can be a feeling or home can be a person and so cecilia very much is is home to me and have you heard home i hate to interrupt have you heard home by uh edward sharp and the magnetic zeros no home is where the heart is oh i'll play it for you after oh oh you don't know what you're in whereas well i i i can't wait to hear that and when you're saying home is where the heart is um it reminds me of the last song on on one of shenaya's first records

which is a heartbreaking song called Home Ain't Where His Heart is anymore. And that's a very, very unique play on words to, again, you know, leave it to country music to pull your heart out and rip it apart. But when you're talking about traditional values in divorce and everything like that, divorce is a reality for many, many people. Yes, it is. And I believe in many circumstances it is necessary. But what I would say about our generation, this is only my opinion on it, is that no one, not no one, very few people are willing to put in the work and work through the shit to grow together with your significant other.

Because when you do that, and my wife and are prime examples of it, you are stronger and better on the other side. It's like achieving another level and maybe in a video game to use a reference. Like you got through a very difficult chapter. And now that you've done that, I feel so proud. And I love Cecilia more because we got through something that really could have or should have torn us apart. And there are many circumstances in our 12-year marriage and our 15- or 16-year relationship that could have or should have led to a separation. but we worked through it and I was really addicted to my work and to performing and I cared more about

the stage and the crowd and celebrity status in my own way than I did about the adoration and the love of my wife for my kids big mistake but we worked through it and I've completely changed that around and I'm very proud of that well what I will say this is well I will agree with sometimes it is like, you know, it's probably for the best that you get enforced. Okay. I will, I will tentatively agree with that in the thought that I think all relationships go through this and whether or not you allow, so Jordan Peterson talks about the dragon in the home, okay? So every disagreement you have, if you allow it to grow, it's kind of like how the Grand Canyon,

you know, maybe it was just a small crack. And by the end, it's the Grand Canyon. How do you pull that back together? It's almost impossible. So you go, well, it's probably best. But if you talk to different people long enough and they go back through a relationship, they find key moments where, you know, this happened and we were just busy and whatever. And I look at my relationship with my wife because I agree with everything you've said that,

you know, if I look at over the course of our relationship, we've been together now nine years married and it'll be 16 years together. There have been ups and downs. Of course. A relationship is going to have those. and there are times where there was an issue or something, you know, that could have grown into something really bad if you didn't address it. Yes.

And by addressing it, you still got cracks, but you didn't break, so to speak, right? Like you still, you didn't allow it to grow big. And I've seen lots of relationships where we just don't address what's going on to help hold it together. And that's the work, I think, like, when you mention work, to me, that's what you're talking about. It's like, that is the work. It sucks. It's uncomfortable. You got to take a deep look inside of you.

Your partner's got to be willing to show up and do the same thing. Like it takes two to tango. It doesn't take one to hold on. It takes two to really push and pull and, you know, like come together. And the thing about, you know, life is you're going to go through some things that you have no idea coming. And that's the toughest and the most exciting thing about life. It's an adventure. Yeah.

It certainly is. And a relationship can be an extraordinary adventure. And I can't say that CC and I can take, you know, the credit, just the two of us. We have, we have been in therapy since the beginning. Since we were dating. We would go to couples therapy. Really? From the get-go.

And we still do. And we love it. We enjoy it. We get a lot of great tips and tools out of it. We've had a life coach now together for about four or four. five years. Her name is Lynette. She lives out on the island. And she is unbelievable because she kicks my ass. And she said from the beginning, she says, you're either here, if you want to just talk, someone else is going to charge your money. Yeah. She says, that's fine. Go and he'll listen

or she'll listen. Sure. If you want solutions, you want tips and tools, I will tell you exactly what the problem is. And she'll look at me and she'll say, you're being an asshole. That's your problem. And this is why you're an asshole. As a woman, you're doing this. You're conceded. You can be like this. You can be like this. And that's why this isn't working. There, I just saved you six sessions. You're being an asshole and you need to stop. Okay, well, you're right. Okay, you're absolutely right. And it's important to soak that in. And I don't know what she says to Cecilia in the one-on-ones during our difficulty. I don't know if she's as abrupt as she is with me, but I can take it and I appreciate it because I want a solution. When I go into therapy, I want a solution. I'm here to get better.

And I always thought to myself, if I can take a guitar lesson or if I can take a lesson from watching Bruce Springsteen to become a better entertainer, well, why can't I take life lessons? Why can't I take marriage lessons. Why can't we take marriage lessons? And we still do it. And we really look forward to it because now we're at a point where we don't necessarily have any problems to fix. We have opportunities to actually grow. Now we're focused on building an empire, whatever that means. And in terms of wealth, which isn't land, it isn't money, it's a very healthy family and a very healthy home and that's wealth to us that's an amazing feeling well that's your that's your foundation and if your foundation has cracks and starts to crumble it don't matter how much because

how many how many how many guys who are billionaires or millionaires have all the money in the world almost all of and they have no issues and and life sucks or or you know they deal with depression or whatever it is yeah if you can get your foundation correct very much so you can take on the world and and and no one's invincible here today on this podcast and in this conversation, I know I'm in a very good place. I feel very grateful. I love what I do.

I love my family. I love where everything's going. But it wasn't that long ago that things were in a state of chaos. Now, that's just, again, the adventure of life. And maybe the next time, you and I have a conversation, I'll be honest with you. I feel this is a safe place.

I trust you. And I might be able, you know, I might say, hey, things aren't going that great right now, but I'm working through it. And this is what I'm doing. doing, but it all circles back to what you're saying about having conversations. And Cecilia and I are constantly communicating about what our needs are. And I think because of that, it's allowed me to just have a much better summer and a much

better chapter of life right now because we've done a lot of hard work. I went to Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy. And when I came home... How long were you there for? Seven days. Yeah. And it put me in a dark place. And so when I came home, all right, like, so don't get me wrong.

When I take a step back from the Freedom Convoy, what it stood for everything, being a part of the pilgrimage out to Ottawa, seeing all the people on the roads, everything. Those are memories I will never forget. Well, you were a part of a gigantic moment of Canadian history. Correct. That will never be forgotten now. Will they allow this to ever be published in a textbook? Probably not. Will they teach this 50 years from now?

Who knows? Who knows? That being said, very, very interesting. And whether it's in this conversation or off the air, I've got a million questions about it. Sure. Well, when I was just going to say when I came back, I was a bit of a, I don't know, a wreck. People can go back in the podcast and they can actually see. So I'm, you know, when I look at your career, I hear consistency.

I hear like, you know, it wasn't like he did one show a year. It's like, no, at a young age I was doing 50. I'm like, that's a hockey. That's how hockey starts, right? You just get going wherever he, in a... In podcasting, I've approached it the same way. So it'll be five years in February since I started. So 2019 is my first podcast in February.

That month I had like, I don't know. It's like a small number of downloads. I forget if the entire month was 400 downloads, but it doesn't matter. It was an origin story. Congratulations. Right. And so up until the Freedom Convoy,

I have either released, you know, the first year was one episode a week, then the next year was two episodes a week, then towards the convoy. it was starting to be closer to three, but I don't miss. It was one of the things, I'm just consistent,

and I was going to take Christmas off and things like that, and then I had people reach out and say, well, I work Christmas. I'd love to, if you could record something and put it out on, you know, because Christmas Day

would fall on Wednesdays when I said I wasn't going to miss Wednesday, for instance. I'm like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. All right, well, I'll just record an extra couple and I'll throw one out on Christmas, so if you're at work, you can have something that's fresh

and you haven't heard yet, right? So that's, that's what I did. Convoy comes. I'm recording every single day, and then I go dark. And I had people wondering if I was in jail, have I been killed, if I, you know, like everything under the sun. I've only ever done, you know, I do five a week right now, and I don't do anything solo. So it's five new guests a week.

It doesn't mean I don't have reoccurring. It just means I'm trying to get different people on the podcast. The only one I've ever done solo came after Ottawa. And I just explained to the audience. And I, you know, I got to be honest. I was thinking about this the other day. I haven't gone back and listened to it. I'm a little nervous of what I said,

but I was just trying to explain where my head was at and reassure people that I was okay and that I was back home and I was safe and everything was sound. But what I was getting to with all that, so you can go back and listen to that. And then I take 53 days off, I think it is. So the only time, in five years I've had time off,

came after the Freedom Convoy. And in that time, I started going to a psychologist, and I've been seeing him ever since. And so when you bring about marriage counseling and life coach and therapy, yeah. One of the things I appreciate about that is, like listen, I don't know what I thought of it to begin with, but now going through it, I'm like, it's, it's, it's like extremely healthy. And through COVID, we all got, well,

it doesn't matter what side of the coin it is, you were on. We all got just inundated with fear, fear, fear on and on. It would not end. And I didn't realize how much that had piled up on me, like just like literally was piled up on me. I thought I was doing okay. I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. One day I'm not. And so the psychologist told me, this is probably like six months ago. It's like, man, you don't need to keep coming in here. You're doing great. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

And like, yeah, the problem is, to me, it's like going in the gym or something. Or I play noon or hockey. I'm just going to keep coming because I never want to go back there ever again. And if that means paying a little extra so that I can have this healthy out once a month over and over, I'm like, I'm willing to do it. And I think that's healthy for people to hear because, like, there's a lot of people that are dealing with some heavy shit that don't realize that all of us were dealing with. it doesn't matter the time of your life,

but COVID put it on steroids. Absolutely. We dealt with some heavy, heavy stuff. And to go to talk to somebody, isn't this, like, weakness.

It's actually, you know, like, if that's what you're willing to put your money to, I mean, like, how much money did I sink into booze as a kid

and, uh, and, and, and, like, partying and, and traveling and everything. And it's just a small number.

And it's your mental health. And listen, I'm not going to go deep down this mental health thing. Just that, like, I didn't think it could happen to me. And it happened to me. It was very public because I do a podcast and I don't miss and then I told you.

Of course. I think this long break. And that's what it was, it was to clear up some things that were going on. You know what? It's so important and it can have a profound impact on yourself, you know, on your person, but also on your family and also on your network of people. So there is nothing wrong and there's no shame in any type of therapy. And a lot of us, especially as men, just turn to, you know what, I'm going to go out with a couple of buddies. and I don't mind saying, you know, telling them, you know, I'm in a bit of a tough time and you're sitting around the garage and, you know, and you're sipping a couple beers and stuff like that, that's good and that's healthy too.

But taking a deep dive with a profession is so important. And so many of us only attempt therapy when something's going wrong and you're in a state of crisis. Well, how good would it be to now have tips and tools on how to make progress? you know, instead of being in a reactive state, being a proactive state. Correct. So for you choosing to go and do this now in a proactive way, I think is very wise. One of the things, though, is that there, when you go back to, you know, what I was just saying about any guilt or shame associated with it, I really hope that that doesn't exist for anybody who's listening or watching this right now because it's a wonderful thing and we all need it.

None of us, like none of us, not a single one of us in the community of Lloyd Minster, the province of Alberta, the country of Canada, is immune to any of the shit that's going on in the world or having tough times, dark days, issues, or being in a state of chaos. We're not, we're not above it. So I'm really grateful that, you know, years and years ago, there was a big campaign to have men check their prostates because, you know, prostate cancer is on the rise. So do that. There's a big conversation now about mental health. Everybody, you know, check yourself. Like, you know, and check on your friends. I'm here to be a gigantic advocate for anything that you find therapeutic because it's, it is so valuable.

And I stand by that till the day I die. You know, it's funny. When I talk to my wife about it afterwards, you know, I don't know if this was months afterwards. I can't quite remember the timeline. But she told me. You know, I knew something wasn't quite right about a year before, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

And, you know, like, it's not like you were coming home, bawling in tears or anything, right? It was just, she's like, I just started to notice something, and I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. And what I would say to the listeners is we probably have somebody all in our lives that you just need to be kind to. And I'm not saying for me, I'm just saying for, you probably got a friend that just probably needs an ear.

And you could probably pick up on, hey, man, you everything okay or or to whoever it is because there's a lot of people that uh internally i have a dialogue you know and i'm constantly thinking about different things of no different i woke up this morning i got i'm breakfast in there all right better be this and that and this is what i do every day and i walk in and i'm working on things and through covid it just was like you know normally through life when there was no covid we could get away with living for the weekend and and just get me to the work week, then on the weekend, I rinse and repeat.

And, you know, with kids and things, you can get going so fast, you're not even thinking about anything anymore. So you're just on constant, like, I just got to get to the next thing. I got to get to the next thing. And then COVID really slammed into everybody. Now you have to sit and deal with some of the mess you've created.

And when you talk about being proactive, I think that's one of the best lessons I learned out of COVID was like, when you get running that fast, you don't realize you're starting to leave a little chaos in your wake. And if it ever gets slammed, it all comes to roost on you. And being proactive on it is extremely, extremely important. Well, what you're describing, I just had this kind of download of this analogy of, you know, you've got a, all of us are almost like a speedboat and we're going through the waters,

we're going on the lake. And sometimes the faster you go, the bigger the wake that you have. So with all that being said, yes, you can leave some chaos behind. And I think it's very important to be proactive and understand that. And to be very conscious. We talked about awareness at the very beginning of, of how I'm, you know, I'm aware as an entertainer, but also as human beings, it's very important to be aware of ourselves and also what we're doing to the community around us. That could be your

community at home or your community at large. So without question, I think it is so, so important to take the first step. Now, we as friends can reach out to our other friends and say, are you okay? And that's really cool. That's really great to do that as a friend. But we also need to take the onus on ourselves because we have to put the life vest on self first or the oxygen mask on self first. And so Cecilia and I over the years have learned through our life coach that practicing love and self-care really is a wonderful thing to show our kids. And it's not about being selfish. It's about practicing self-love. And no man in today's generation says that kind of stuff that much but i have to really focus on loving myself and taking care of myself so therefore i can take care

of others and so many of us especially as men and i see a lot of moms do this they take care of the house and they take care of the kids and they take care of everybody else but when actually if you took care of yourself first and more often than any mom usually does and i'm not picking on moms i'm actually trying to be supportive of moms if you take care of yourself first whatever that means to you, you actually will have more gas left in the tank to give to your family. And we've learned, and I've watched Cecilia do this, because she is the heart of the home. And Cecilia says, I'm the head of the household. But the heart is actually the most important part.

So she's the heartbeat and the lifeblood of everything that goes on in our home and in our wonderful, you know, little life that we have. But if she's off, we're all off. So I'm so grateful that she takes the time for herself and she's learned to do this because what a great lesson she's teaching our daughters. And what a great lesson she's also teaching our sons. Well, shit, I better do the same damn thing. You know, I better get myself together. And of course, after the COVID era, like I said, none of us came out of that clean. None of us came out of that thinking like, yeah, that was rough, but I'm good.

Bullshit, you're good. There's no way anybody could be good after that, you know? So with that being said, it was a dark period too. Never once in my life would I ever think, because of course I thought depression was such a negative word. And that's for people who are depressed. And I ain't depressed. Oh, damn. And I was, it was a dark cloud.

It wasn't just gray. Like I was, it was dark. And I was blue. Like a constant state as a songwriter, you know, like, I'm so blue. Like, it's gloomy. And I've got no pep in my step. And there were many, many things that said that that is like true depression. And there's various scales, but without question.

So you got to put the oxygen mask on self first. And I know I couldn't be the dad that I wanted to be. And damn rights, I couldn't be the husband I wanted to be until I got that sorted out. And now exactly as you said, after, you know, you got home from the freedom of convoy and convoy and everything that you experienced, whatever that was, you took 53 days to figure some stuff out. That's what I'm picking up from this. Very, very similar in figuring out how I can get myself back to, you know,

full of life to do what's best for my family and my community again. So anybody listening, maybe this is your reality check right here right now to say, it's okay. It takes a lot of strength to do it. a lot of courage. So be brave and go and do it. The thing is, is if you can clean up your room

and get yourself under control, then maybe you can help someone else. Because you know how when your, your head isn't screwed on straight or you don't have your things in order, right? Like, I mean, I haven't, you know, I still don't got anything figured out, you know? I figured out a couple things.

Well, I know what you're saying. And I know you're, you know, you can be, you know, self-deprecating, You've built something really, really great here. And to be doing this for a half decade, be having these conversations. Who knows what somebody is doing right now is you driving to work or is there, you know,

got this in their AirPods and they're listening. Who knows what they're going through, but I think you've done a great service to a lot of people. You know what's funny. And I do want to end with a little talk about the Emmett's knowledge. But the funny. Right, absolutely. The funny thing is, is like when I started this thing,

You were talking about Mike Sidoric at the start, right? And when you're a kid and he brought you in and everybody knows Mike and Lloyd. He was episode 90 on this sucker. Okay, so he's actually been on the podcast before, right? Which is, I find humorous because that's what it was. It was local community and then it grew into, you know, Paul Bissinette and Glenn Sather and Don Cherry, Rahm McLean and, you know, Ray Ferraro and all these guys, Bray and Holpey.

And so it was this sports thing. And in sports, I didn't realize how much I internalize this, but in sports, you don't talk about politics and you don't talk about religion. I remember that on sports talk radio, and they'd almost come out and say that. We don't talk about da-da-da. And I've almost embraced now. I'm going to talk about it at all.

Like, I'm like, I want to get back to talking some sports? I would love to have, you know, I had Mark Lettestu, a guy from here in the neck of the woods. Number 55, yeah, Mark's wife Brett and my brother Jameson went to school together. he's a he's a great story like a cool story he is from the bonnieville ponniacs to you know playing with sidney crosbie to coming back here for the oilers and playing on the power play and i mean like so it's funny how it's gone from uh sports to like now you know like i i just stepped on a landmine the other day folks i i brought on a pastor james coates who got went to jail for 35 days here in alberta during a lockdowns he's been uh uh vindind indicated since then and everything. But he came on and I said something, you know, and this is what's lovely about a podcast. I said the word mass.

You go to mass or you perform mass. I can't remember, which is a Catholic term and he's not Catholic. And then he continues to viscerate Catholicism for like half an hour. So you can imagine the phone line. You can imagine the phone line and it hasn't stopped. Like you should have heard it before you walked in. It was like ding, ding, ding, ding. And I'm like, I don't.

Because my phone line for you, is on every podcast. People think I'm insane for it, but I'm like, it's the best way to know what people actually think. You can just text me. It's cool. Text me.

You hate it? Text me. You love it. Text me. I won't get back. And like, right now, I'm trying to keep up all the Catholicism.

It's not even, like, I love it. Nobody's being mean. They're just like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Or some people are like, this guy's the greatest. And I'm like,

I didn't realize I literally stepped on this big giant landmine. I'm laying in about seven bits right now. Yeah. Not to make light of war. But I'm like, And so I guess where I'm coming back to is like the podcast has grown over the course of almost half a decade, like you say, that's weird to think about. But it went from being hockey and I'm not talking about anything to finally talking about COVID to like, what else haven't we been talking about that we should talk about? And now it's like, well, let's talk about it all, you know?

And. Well, I love that you say whatever time you have attack like you're trying to save the world, Joe Rogan. So Joe's podcast and that, the Joe Rogan experience, you know, it's not. someone try to categorize it, what is it? It's everything. Well, you can't have everything. You need to have a, you need to have a, you know, a schick. What's your, what's your, what's your demographic?

What's your market? It's everything. And because it's everything that actually could pose a challenge. And then maybe you don't get what you're really wanting out of this. But why I would compliment you, Sean, is because if that is one of your, you know, one of your heroes in this space, he's done everything. you're doing everything. And so I think that that's a really smart move because you can actually start to pull

from all these different listeners and build, I would call a fan base, but build a listenership and an audience that wants to hear a little bit of everything because that's actually how we talk in the real world with a cold beer in the garage with your buddies or sitting with Grandma and Grandpa around the island

at the farm. You talk about everything. Let me ask you this. Okay, everybody knows Joe. the story behind that that's Annie Jacobson asked him, you know, basically about, you know, like how do you find success? I can't remember it. It's quiet men, men live quiet lives of desperation.

It's one of Joe Rogan's favorite quotes. And then he goes on this rant, tear about how you get out of being stuck as a guy who's middle-aged and has a job and mortgage and kids and all these things. And I was sitting in the studio, right before I came in the studio, I was sitting in the old studio, listening to it and it was like he was speaking directly to me. And so I've had that experience. That's why he's up on the wall. Well, because he was speaking directly to you.

He knows that. And it's like an entertainer on stage. There were many people. There was a thousand and some people. So you're speaking to that person. I'm actually not speaking to a thousand. I'm speaking to a thousand individuals or one person a thousand times over.

If that makes any sense. It does. So was he speaking to you? Absolutely. He was. The universe put you in that moment. and you're in that headspace and delivered that message and you were just conscious enough to hear it.

So I believe there's a lot of people in our world right now that are unconscious in many ways. They just go through life. They're on autopilot very much so like you were saying right before the COVID era. They're just, you know, work until the weekend and they're really on autopilot. If you're conscious and you are open to receiving these downloads, there's no coincidence that Joe Rogan was saying exactly what you needed to hear at that time. And maybe there are some nuggets of information that you and I spoke about today that is really going to impact somebody.

And so it's a really, really unique thing if you're aware enough or open to receiving those messages. Well, I look at Joe and I go, he is the best. And that's my opinion. He is the best. But here's the thing. I look at Canada and I go, there's no reason. them why. You're never going to recreate Joe Rogan. I don't, I don't think, but why can't Canada have their podcast or series of podcasts that are similar, you know, like I look at Oliver Anthony,

right? You've seen the meteor rise of this guy. And he just went on Rogan. I was like sitting here going like, I've sent out my feelers, right? And I'm like, but you know what's going to happen? Joe Rogan is going to have him on. Oh, wait, he did. And then I'm like, and probably Jordan Peterson's going to have him on, you know, and he's going to go down this line of like this giant list, even though Peterson is from Alberta, at this point he's living in Florida, he is in this line of these shows down there. And I look at Canada and I go, it's slowly coming. And one of the thoughts I had just about a week ago, and it's why I've started to put more work back into the studio. And is it perfect? And is it Joe Rogan-ask? No, it's getting there.

Hey, I haven't seen his full studio yet, but it looks like it's, it looks like it's tiny. And it looks like he's just got his neon sign behind him and a red curtain and that's it. So it's what you create in the atmosphere. No different than when you're on stage last night. When you started doing it, I'm like, oh, man, I love this. We didn't have pyro. We didn't have big screens behind us.

We didn't have a giant light show. You're in a bull bar. You're in a bull bar. You're in the Lloyd X. That's what I like. And so it's on the performer to create the atmosphere for the conversation for everything else. And I have come to the terms with.

I'm never, I'm like, I'm not saying never. But right now I'm not leaving Lloyd Minster. I'm not going to chase this in Amundon or Calgary or Saskatoon or Regina or any of those cities because of proximity to an airport so that maybe, because it would lose the feel of what this is, I think. So I've come to terms with, okay, how do I get Brett Kessel in Lloydminster to come sit here and do it here? And if I can build something here, what's to say I can't get more? Because, I mean, last night, you're performing in one place. And in the building rate over, you had John Gibbons, former Blue Jays manager, right? And John Shannon from, and this isn't something unique.

This happens all the time. Lloyd Minster is this like interesting little hop step between probably Saskatoon and Edmonton, right? It's the middle pole. Well, it's, it's the border city and it really matters. It really does. Gone are the days where entertainers will skip communities like this. There's a viable place to put on a show. I mean, my manager and agent Jim Cresman brought Bob Dylan in here.

with Mike Sodorik. Like Bob Dylan played in Lloydminster. Bob freaking Dylan. Think about that. Zizi Top has played here in Lloydminster. You know, you go down the line. There have been many entertainers here. And now as budgets increase and some people, you know,

I mean, Bonnieville, Alberta, my hometown had nobody. Randy Travis has been there. The Doobie brothers have been there. All of these acts have now played there. Well, one of the things I'm... Yes. Many guests can come to your podcast. I'm putting in the back of your brain is that one of the things I want to be is a stop has to be the podcast on the way through.

And I'm going to work really, really, really hard at this. So when we have a conversation in a year's time or wherever it is, you walk back in. You're like, man, you've been crushing it. Because I listen to your story from 12 up until where you are now and what you've put together. It's really impressive. And I think it's a lesson for myself and probably a lot of people listening of what can. happen if you put your mind to a task and get really, really good at it and continue to analyze and learn and grow and, you know, repetitions this wonderful thing where if you keep doing something,

you're going to get better, right? It's just how quick can you make the progress? I was thinking about this the other day and we often as a society and especially as men, actually it doesn't matter, you know, male, female, we often get in our own way. And the first thing we'll say when we have a dream whether it's as a kid, a teenager, an adult, or we've got a job now. We're in our 20s and our 30s, and we're tied to that because we need the income to live. But we have a dream and we say,

ah, but you know what? Yeah, that'll never happen. The minute that happens, you're absolutely right. It'll never happen. That's your mindset. Yeah. But if you can say, no, this can happen, well, that's the first step.

And then this, you know, this can happen. changes to this will happen to this is going to happen to this is happening and then you're sitting on a podcast one day saying it happened it really is a mindset a shift and the universe will put a situation in front of you and give you opportunities it's our divine right as human beings living's human experience to have anything we want in this life and if you say it's They can't. It's because it's lack mentality. If you say, oh, well, that'll never work.

But Brett, you don't know my story. You don't know how hard it is. Oh, believe me, I don't know your story and I don't know how hard it is. But you can work through it. There are so many rags to riches stories. Oliver Anthony is one in most recently. You look at Connor McGregor, who's, you know, one of the biggest stars on the planet. You look at Ryan Reynolds.

You look at Stephen Tyler. You look at Garth Brooks. You look at Bruce Briggs. Look at a guest who's been on this show. Don Cherry. You go back and listen to his story. He's selling cars and he gets. He's down on his knees and prays.

And it's like, I can't remember if it's a month later, folks, or three months later, he's coaching Bobby Orr and the Boston Burlington. Think about that. And think of Oliver Anthony's. He just said, God, you know, I'm going to paraphrase, but he says, listen, if you give him my dreams, I'll give up drinking and I'll give it. And now he's been, like, it's like a month later, he's got millions upon millions of views. It's unreal. He doesn't even have, he was joking with Joe Rogan that the one video has been recorded off of his phone, the song. That's on Spotify.

Right? He's been on Rogan. He's on Peterson. He's on all these different things. You're like, you know, I'm not saying it's that easy. But at the same time, as soon as you limit with your speech, that's what you, you know, the tongue. Very careful what you say, because the universe is always listening. And whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

Do you have, for me, the thing that comes to mind is I set goals when I first started the podcast. I was like, you know, honestly, like, okay, let's just be super reasonable. If in five years I was doing this full time, is that possible? Yeah, five years. Okay, yeah, sure. It was three years. And I wrote that down and I was like, holy crap, like that's pretty cool. I told the wife the other day, you know, like, I want to make a million dollars.

Once upon a time I wanted to make $100,000. I'm not a big financial incentive guy, but not only got kids, I don't want to do this for free. I certainly don't want to have to, like, worry about things to do with my family if I'm going to attack this hard as I can. Because I could go make big money in the office. tomorrow like boom done yeah let's go and and work a hard job there's nothing wrong with the oil field i know a ton of the guys i got a ton of friends in there and so i've set the goal now i i is it a big goal it's a mountain of a goal but i look at it so i'm i'm thinking of a million sure and i and i'm sorry to interrupt you but no no no thinking okay you're going with if you want

to make a million dollars well on a podcast how do you do this how's someone going to pay you a million no, it's not a million. It's about finding 100 companies that find value in this platform that are going to give you $10,000 of their marketing budget for the year. Well, 100 times 10,000 is a million bucks, just like that. Or you find 200 people, 200 people at $500 or $5,000 and so many companies so you can get your million. Like I just, and you've probably got your million already, but that's immediately what my head.

I don't have my million yet, but I tell you what, that's why I like talking about things. What my head goes to because whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. You're right. And if a million is your goal, and I love financial goals. What is Yoda say, do or do not? Right? I forget how that goes. What is Yoda say?

I don't know. This will be very controversial. I've never seen Star Wars. What? Yeah. Now watch your phone lines light up. Do or do not, there is no try. Do or do not, there is no try.

Yeah. I've seen it on like TV. And I'm watching it and I'm like, oh, I'm so lost. And then you click and you go back to a hockey night in Canada. Yeah. It's crazy. Oh, my God. You've never seen Star Wars.

And I mean, to go back and watch the originals, the graphics, you know, is a little left, you know, because it's an old movie. I actually love the old stuff thinking like. story is they accomplished this in 1983 like you're kidding me I started watching all of the Indiana Jones because I'd never seen them okay so I started watching all the Indiana Jones and I'm gonna watch all the Star Wars I am

but I've never seen Star Wars star wars it's never seen them or sorry Indiana Jones yeah Star Wars oh it's that much greater the original three are fantastic I people argue about the first three the last three because you know they got all these movies out now but the original three Even as a teenager, when I watched them, and, you know, you got the poor graphics and everything, right?

Because, I mean, at that time, even, you know, the Matrix was coming out and things like, like, how far we progressed. But the story, the story is, is like, and the characters, it's, it's, it's unreal. I didn't think I was going to sell Star Wars today, folks. Hey, I have great respect for, for that, that brand in the franchise. Same thing with Lord of the Rings. I had never seen Lord of the Rings. Please tell me you've seen Lord of the Rings. And my wife and I, we, we binged it on Amazon or whatever.

We watched all of the, and we watched it in order. So I think we watched all of the Hobbit. And then we watched all of the Lord of the Rings. Well, I thought it was just an extraordinary masterpiece of costumes and, again, storyline, and creating this world. And same thing with Harry Potter, not a Harry Potter guy. Watch your phone lines light up on this one. When I was a kid, I thought Harry Potter was dumb. I didn't like it.

I was a guy who loved real stuff. Like I wanted a biography on Johnny Cash when I was 13 years old. I didn't want to watch Harry Potter, but I watched him now as an adult. And I'm like, how creative and you're creating a language and here Voldemort just doesn't show for so many movies. And he's the bad guy. And you don't see him. And until the, like, holy, and it's all intertwined. And what an outstanding.

Seriously, like I'm talking unbelievable. I rate Harry Potter 10 out of 10. I'm going to guess then. You haven't read Dune or seen the Dune movie. Now, I haven't read it, but I watched Dune on an airplane. Actually, just like a couple months ago, on an Air Canada thing. I thought it was extraordinary, but I'm also kind of lost. If it's fantasy, I'm usually lost.

See, you've just attacked. Watch your phone lines light up again. You've just attacked my entire, I'm like, so I started off with, with Harry Potter basically came out over my lifetime. So I basically, when Harry Potter was a kid, I was a kid. I started reading in grade four, grade five and every book. So when they brought out book seven and I always say book five, book five, I couldn't get through. I was so mad at it. Umbrage.

If you read that book, Umbridge is, is, uh, Ministry of Magic puts all these crazy rules in. It's COVID. Like I mean, it's just, it's COVID. I'm just like, oh my God. I'm like, there was video. I'm like, this is, this is painful. I couldn't read it back then as like a young, man, I was like, this is, this will never, you know, I didn't say this will never happen, but I'm like, this sucks.

And then my brother, Dustin, he's like, you got to keep reading it. And so they pushed and pushed and pushed. And I think it was when we bike Canada. Don't quote me on that. I think it's 2006. I finally picked it back up. And as we're biking, I finished reading it. And then after that, it was like guns ablazing.

I wanted everything else because you just had to push through this, like, difficult moment in a series. But Harry Potter, the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings. All of that stuff. Read it all. Loved it all. The creativity, the underlying, you know, if I go back now, I'm like, I should probably go back and read Dune because of the underlying hidden messages that as an adult you just see clearly. And as a kid, you're just in the world. And you're just like exploring this world where, you know, in Harry Potter, you know, they get magic.

And Lord of the Rings, you've got trees talking. You got ants. And you're like, what the heck is? Where did he come up with this and wizards and everything else? Well, what the trees, what I loved about the trees is that nature, as it does in real life, will always. Mother Nature will always reset herself. And nature, even though you had the power of all these wizards, once the trees got upset, that was one of my favorite scenes where they just wreaked havoc and just started crushing

everybody and killing everybody and saying, screw you, we're taking back our lives, we're taking back our forests. I just love that. And I'm without being like an environmentalist, I am a tree hugger in terms of I love to physically hug trees. And it's the weirdest thing. You like being out in nature. I love being out in nature.

And there's many clips that, you know, just either been on my stories where I'll be backstage and there's this oak tree that's 300 feet tall. And I'm like, this has got to be like a 150-year-old oak tree. Like, what does this tree know? What did it see? And I'll just give it a big hug. And I love the energy of it.

We're on a complete side tangent on stuff that started at, you know, I'd never seen Star Wars. That being said, I have a lot of respect for the storyline. and the cinematography and how they've created this world that has impacted you and I now where we're talking about it in Lloydminster, Alberta, because we're still on the Alberta side,

and we're talking about, you know, this incredible world that was created that has so many similar parallels to what we're experiencing today. And yet George Lucas, you know, created this and Spielberg directed this in the late 70s and early 80s. Like that to me is a masterpiece.

That stands. the test of time. Yeah, it's, well, and you, you sang last night, had a guy on stage singing a guy that stands the test of time in Johnny Cash, right? And there's just certain, there's just certain things that transcend time, if you would. Well, on our next podcast, I got a lot of Johnny Cash moments in my life, even though I never met him, where he's, I truly believe that he's had his hands on my shoulders. And I can't wait to meet them one day.

Meet him up in the clouds and on the other side. But it's unbelievable. And his son, John Carter Cash, is actually going to be my special guest at a show in a couple days. Yeah, we're doing a tribute to his dad because September 12th is the 20th anniversary since Johnny Cash died. And so... It's been out long, man. And what's interesting, Friday, September 12th, if you roll back the tape, was the day I released my first album. And that was also on the day that he died in 2003.

So the fact that his son is coming to be a special guest of my... It'll be a special night. You know, and I've always thought a lot of people, you know, will wear the bracelet. WWJD, what would Jesus do? I always think WWJD, what would Johnny Cash do? That's kind of what I've always thought. Because sometimes as an entertainer,

is this a time to be a rebel? And just actually, by being a rebel, all you're doing is is standing up for what you believe in. yet Johnny Cash did that every day all the time. Every day all the time. And was hated for it. But then a decade later was like, no, you're actually a hero. You're the only one who saw through it.

Or is now the time to actually be so benevolent and help out your fellow man and do your very best to lend a hand to somebody hurting in this moment? Or is now the time to take a break from touring and just love on your wife the way he would dode on June. Carter. All these different similarities. So he's a big, big hero of mine. And I can't wait. I've never met John Carter Cash.

I can't wait to. I used to have Johnny Cash poster in my college storm room. Yeah. The middle finger one? Yeah. Absolutely. Frickin, like his music was, is just unreal. Like I just, you know, and then you speak in Saskatchewan and country music, like

Colter Wall comes on the scene. Yeah. And he starts singing and I'm like, I know he does, he says, I don't even want to be compared to him, but I'm like, dude, you sound identical to him. His voice is so, so similar. And that's such a great compliment because not since 1964 has there been a voice like that. And Coulter is so good.

I think he's the most reluctant superstar. He's like, I think he'd rather brand cattle and ride on his horse. But that's part of his brand now. Part of it. Yeah, and he's the coolest guy. Has he been on the show? No, he hasn't. Well, I hope he'd get him because he's, I don't know if there's anybody cooler than Coulter

Wall right now in the music scene on both sides of the border. Absolutely, he's, quick old to Saskatchewan, I was talking with John Carter Cash yesterday driving up to Lloyd here, and he said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to Lloyd Minster. He says, oh, yeah, this is the border city. I'm like, you know Lloyd Minster? He says, my dad had a cabin. We still have a family cabin up in LaRange.

No kidding. And he says, I spent all my summers in Saskatchewan. Up north. Up north. Yeah. LaRange is a beautiful spot. And his dad, he said, my dad, and I'll quote John Carter, says, my dad, he said, you know, I bet you he has more friends.

He was, my dad loved, he said, all the Indians up there. He says they were, we were best friends. Of course, indigenous now. Like I'm under his, just quoting and paraphrasing. But the indigenous community, he said, was so kind to me and to my dad. And he said, we have so many artifacts. And he says, my first pair of slippers and all that stuff. It was all all moccasins and all that stuff.

And he says, my dad just loved it up there. He said, he said, I was certain that we were going to live up there at one particular moment in time. I don't know if my mom would have wanted that. But Laurent's Saskatchewan, the man in black Johnny Cash. Before I let you out of here, I'll slide into the Crude Master final question. I'll make sure that I mention Crude Master, Heath and Tracy, because you've seen the podcast where it's coming. They've been pretty much since day one.

I've taken them on an absolute ride. They've never wavered, you know, and certainly there were some questionable times. There probably still are some questionable times. But they've never wavered, and I really appreciate the friendship that's come from Heath and Tracy and then Crude Master here in town. But the final question, I'm going to gear towards. words of the oilers. I'm like, you know, you of all the things you've done as a diehard oiler fan, you know, when you get to sing the national anthem, when you get to be around

them, you know, you talk about McDavid and his dad and you, you know, and that's just the tip of the iceberg from what my eye see. Um, talk about the others for, for a hot minute. Absolutely. And a big, big shout out. Yeah, you're right to Heath and Tracy for believing in the podcast. I can't wait to shake their hands one day. Maybe, maybe next time we're on the podcast. Let's, uh, let's bring them in. Let's have a, let's have a cool. beer or drink some deuce vodka or or uh or something like that maybe our backcountry whiskey that'd be pretty cool i'm uh i'm a scotch guy and uh heath is a uh what is it bacarty rum is it rum yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so anyways okay good we'll we'll uh we'll make sure we'll make sure it's an afternoon

instead of a bright morning that way well as my grandpa bear says it's noon somewhere it's true i just had chuck prodnick in here uh a week ago he he served overseas four years years, four tours, sorry, and he brought me a ball of scotch. And I'm like, well, it's 10 in the morning, but I feel like if you're bringing it, we might as well have one. So I can play, anyways, carry on. Yeah, I think, I know, I think you're supposed to. So what do you want to know about the Oilers? You want to ask my prediction if they're going to win the Stanley Cup, because the answer is yes. Well, you want to talk about McDavid. Is he the greatest athlete in the world?

Yes. And I said, athlete, not greatest hockey players, the greatest athlete in the world. Rogers place is at the best barn in, in the NHL, all 32 rings? Absolutely. Really? Why do you say? that. It's just the coolest, because that's where the weather's play. I'm biased. And don't get me wrong, I've been to Vegas and New York. I've been, you know, you perform so.

So I get to harass them a little bit. I understand if you don't want to jump in on that. But I have been so, you know, they build this glorious rink. This rink is like top notch, right? You walk in, you're like, well, this is something. I've always been one for the fan experience. And as a kid, I got to watch it all the time as the Derek come down and them skate through the Derek.

Oh, they should have that back. And they should have it back. They should have that back. They should have had that back, and maybe even just for playoffs. And you can rig it. If you can rig Nickelback and a Kiss show, like, yeah, OEG, I'm here to call you out in the most friendly possible way. 100%. But I want my kids to get there and see, that's the cool.

Yes. The music's playing. This is the Oilers. You talk about a show experience. You know, last night, the drums, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you can just feel, oh, the oil Derek's starting to come down as they're counting down. and then the fireworks coming out of it. Like I... You're right.

Even the video game, I'd let it play out back as a kid because I'm like, I just want to see it come down. And when they added that in, I'm like, this is unreal. And so we get to the new rink. And it's just in Fort Hall. It wasn't even in Fort Hall yet.

They put that in after because I was like, there's probably a whole bunch of Shons out there running around going like, where the heck is it? Like, put it in. Well, here's the thing is that this is the Edmonton Oilers and this is Oil City. And this is the heart of the energy industry.

and you have to have, I mean, you had Leduc number one, baby. You have to have that. And you got to bring it back. Bring it back today. Figure it out. Rig it's so easy. My team can do it. We've rigged up stuff in Rogers place before.

Hire Mr. Kistel's team and we'll have a back. Are you kidding me? Rig it, get pyro. And if you don't want to do it for the whole season, that's fine. No, but I think play. I think you may. But bring it back for the playoffs. You know, we used to do this thing.

Like, come on. playoffs and senior, the year we won, showed it to Joel Budd because he didn't let us do the flyby during the regular season. You score a goal and you go pump the gloves. And I was like, why? He's like, you just wait. In the playoffs, it'll mean more than you think. And I'm like, okay, because the little things add up. And I was like, okay. And so in the playoffs, we finally got to start pumping, like, you score and you tap gloves. And how good do the boys feel? And it went up. And so when you say maybe just for the playoffs, you're not wrong. Because if all of a sudden, the regular season or regular season, then game one, you come out at home and you get to skate through

and you see what that does to the crowd. The crowd will feel that. That is a motivator. It's something different. Now, Chantelle, did you, I mean, because you filmed this, right? Can this be an isolated clip of us talking about the oil Derek needing to come back? Because this is something that needs to get traction. We need to get all the sports writers to be doing it. And it needs to originate here on this show on the podcast, the two of us talking about it, and then we need Jason Greger to start talking about it on Sports 1440, the new sports station

out in a, you know, on Stingray and Edmonton. And then before you know it, we need all the alumni. We need Fernando Pisani and Dwayne Roleson and George LaRoc to get behind this to bring the Derek back. And even if it's for the playoffs. Bring back the Derek, I think is, you know, is the hashtag.

And actually, if you push it for the season, it would create anticipation. Imagine night number one. Think of how insane that building is on opening night of the playoffs. Like I went to game, game, what was it? Game three against Vegas, I think it was?

Yeah. And the place was berserk. Got to take the kids. Unreal. I was like, this is something, right? We're in the nosebleeds, who cares? The place is electric. There's no bad seed in Rogers in playoff hockey.

And if all of a sudden the Derek was, I just think of like entertainment, Yeah. Value. It's giant. If the Oilers, I'm going to say this too. If the Oilers bring back the Derrick, I will give 10 grand to the Oilers Community Foundation if they bring back the Derek for the playoffs.

And there's 10 grand. And maybe we've got to do a fundraiser and get all the oil people that just 100 bucks at a time, just until the pot is sweet enough. for the Oil Community Foundation. But I'm starting it right now. If they bring it back for playoffs, I'm... 10G. I'm writing a check for $10,000 to the Oilers Community Foundation.

There you have it, folks. What a way to end a podcast. We've got to do it. I tell you what, I'm excited for the Oilers. I mean, Sam Gagne, PTO, hey? Hey. Interesting to have the kid back. Well, he's not a kid anymore, but you know what I mean?

No, still. I love that. There's all these storylines that we've been building up for us to win the cup. And what's really interesting. Flames fans are just stirring. Flames fans, just, you know what? We had so many bad years in oil country. It's your turn.

So just go go to your red mile and drink a couple pints of beer and just go cry in it. We've had our share. It's time for us to start winning. And we have to. And you know what I love? is that there's not a lot of superstars on the flames right now. And so for the Heritage Classic, I bet you the NHL was like,

okay, well, we've got McDavid, or we actually could put Drysiddle in this, or we can actually have this really cool montage of, you know, the young guy in Skinner and Nuge and Hyman and McDavid and Drysidal, you know, this really cool montage of like our, you know, our top line and Ekholm was a big ad and Darnell Nurse. We got all these options for stars.

you know, and let's create a montage of flames fans for the hair. Well, who do we choose? Did we go back to Ginla? Is that what we're going back to? Maybe, exactly. Maybe what we should do is we should have Flames alumni, but we can get all these flames. No, they're not as good as Oilers alumni.

So they've just opted for McDavid, greatest athlete walking on planet Earth today, greatest athlete in professional sports today. And, you know, I guess we'll put Osam Kadri. I guess we'll put Kadri up there. I love it. That's great. Good for you. Good for you guys.

We've got the greatest athlete in professional sports and you guys are like, well I, you know, they're looking. The NHL is in New York and they're like, well, who do we put up there? You know what? And they're probably sitting around the boardroom and they're probably saying well,

I guess we'll choose Kadri. I guess he's the only one we can choose. He has a Stanley Cup winner. He is. You can't take that against, you know, you had a hell of, like, he did well in Colorado. You can't take that away from him. But I just love that that's all they have to choose from. Man, I'm excited.

I'm excited for the season to get going. Man, I appreciate you coming in and doing this. I look forward to whenever it is the next time you enter the studio. This has been well worth the weight. I was saying to somebody, you know, I've been bugging you for quite some time to try and get you here. And what I love is that. I'm glad we didn't tell. We saw each other in the airport and what was in Toronto.

It was Toronto. Yeah, because you're going to Minnesota, and we're going down to Nashville, and we had a great visit. And I'm really grateful, I think, the universe. I remember thinking, you know, what was in the case? I'm like, what's in the case? Like, I couldn't even piece it together. I'm like, this guy's got this weird case. What is it?

And I'm like, is that Brett Kessel? I'm like, is that Brett Kessel? I'm like, my wife doesn't know who you are. And I'm like, you're no help to me. I just need to know what's in the case, and is that Brett Kessel, I must have thought about. And, of course, it's a cowboy hat anyways. I had no idea. And, you know, and I love that, that cowboy hat case.

It's got a lot of great stickers on it and a lot of great memories. And I get people asking me all the time, what are you carrying? And I actually collect guesses from people. Someone said, what is that? And I'm like, I will tell you, but you got to guess first. So from flight attendants to other travelers, someone will say, oh, it's got to be drums. It's got to be like your symbol case. I'm like, great guess.

I get it a million times. So my cowboy hat. So what's the most random guess you've got and that sticks out? Someone said, is that a pet carrier case? I said, a pet carrier case for what? And they're like, a turtle? And I'm like, that's very unique. No, it's not my pet turtle.

It's my cowboy hat. These people felt all dumb, but it was so funny. And someone also said, I know what that is. And I said, well, what is it? They're like, it's a case for a cake. You must be a chef. I'm like, nope, but that's a great guess. So I read it down on my phone and it's just my cowboy hat.

Wouldn't that be something to have a, you know what? Some chef out there probably does have a case of what they carry a fancy something in, you know? Probably. I never thought I'd have a case to carry mics in, but I do. It's important. It's important. And anyways, really appreciate you doing this. I want to make sure that you get on the road.

And I'm curious, how long you think we've been going for if you had to take a stab? Probably right around two hours. An hour and 59 minutes and 47 seconds. That's a good guess. Let's just wait with dead air here, just so we can get to two hours. Okay? It's just awkward. Just stay with me, folks.

I've got six more seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. Two hours. There we go. Congratulations, Sean. Hey, thanks for long time coming. A long time coming. Thanks for coming in and doing this.

And I hope everybody enjoyed the show. You know, I've got to give a shout out to Brett and his team for putting this together. and of course, whatever part, folks, we've been doing this now for the last little bit, whatever part of the episode that, you know, you really enjoyed, we want to hear from you. So shoot me a text on the line if you're a Flames fan. I'm sorry.

We could clip the end for you, I guess, but I think you'll have a couple of choice words for me. That's all right. Whatever part you want, we've been trying to clip that out and put it on social media. I think with Brent upping the ante, I assume a lot of the Oilers talk

and the 10G is going to be want-to-be talk about. But either way, hit me up on the text line and let's hear what you have to say. We'd love to hear from you and we'll get that up on social media. Anyways, we'll catch up to you on the next one.