So... Alright - How It All Began

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Geoff traces his early creative roots, and explores how he ended up in entertainment. Sponsored by ExpressVPN Go to http://expressvpn.com/soalright to get three extra months free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I get a lot of emails or comments from people asking me to tell the stories of the early days of how we got started at Rooster Teeth, how I got started on my creative path through Rooster Teeth. And to be honest with you, I feel like I've told those stories and Gus has told those stories and Bernie's told those stories and Matt's told those stories a million times in a million different places. So while I probably will get around to sharing some of that stuff here on So Alright at some point, I think one story that I don't ever tell is how I got to Rooster Teeth or how I got to the place in my life where I wanted to create Rooster Teeth. Because most people, when I have conversations with them, they assume that this journey began with the company. We all decided we wanted to make movies and cartoons and play video games together and be comedians and turn it into a thing. But that is not the case. Rooster Teeth is probably the midway point in my creative

journey. So I got to thinking about where it started. If Rooster Teeth's the middle, where was my beginning? And I remember when I was a little kid, I've always wanted to write. I was always into the idea of writing. And I remember when I was a little kid, I decided I wanted to be a novelist. And I was cranking out books at like six and seven that I thought were, you know, war and peace at the time. Although I didn't know what war and peace was. So I probably thought they were like frog and toad at the time. And it was they were pretty brutal. I can even remember I remember one of them, because I had so much fun writing it. I can remember like it was yesterday. It's I really wanted to go to a water park and there wasn't one around us in Alabama. And so I wrote a story about a boy whose family took him to a water park for his birthday. And then I just described how much fun I was having going down every ride. And it was like, and then I went down the blue ride with the loop and it was fun. And then I went down it again and it was still fun.

So I wasn't off to a great start. But I guess something clicked for me in the army. But there was always kind of something nagging at my brain that let me know, you know, I was very much a fish out of water growing up, at least going to high school in Alabama. And I've talked about that a lot in the past and how I didn't feel like I fit in, in that world. And, and I was this book nerd kid who loved to read and also loved sports, but was really mostly into reading. And I'd always had an idea that I wanted to write at some point in my life. And so when the opportunity came to join the Army and become a journalist, I took it for a myriad of reasons. That was not even the main one,

but it was definitely one of them. And then I began to be in the, it's the job of an army journalist is, at least when I was in, it was pretty convoluted. You're kind of like a jack of all trades. 46 Quebec is what my MOS was. I don't know if it's still the case or not, but 46 Quebec, the job was, was journalism. So to, you know, interview and do stories, expository writing as a journalist, it was photography and photojournalism. So to then also be the photographer that gets the accompanying photos for the journalism, it was a public affairs specialist, which meant basically being the public affairs office for every military unit. I mean, there is a public affairs office attached

to every military unit in the army, and you would operate in and out of that. And then also, to be a newspaper editor and designer. All of the Army newspapers are completely and totally built from the ground up by soldiers. So you were a lot of different things at one, right? And that was kind of cool because I never got bored. I had the opportunity to travel a lot as a journalist, and especially as I kind of became proficient in photography and kind of got known for it, a lot of opportunities in the army started to open up for me, and I got to travel to a lot of places to take photos. And I felt pretty lucky about that. But as I was doing this,

and as I was in the deserts in Kuwait, sitting there months at a time, taking photos of shit that I had already taken photos of 30 times and writing articles about how a signal brigade had a training exercise or, you know, how the sapper live fire exercise went or whatever. I just, I couldn't help but feel like I was learning a bunch of stuff that I wasn't using for me, right? And something in the back of my head was always itching. And I think it, I think it partly came from just like, like a desire to create and to be creative or just to feel like you're working towards something for you and not for others. I'm already firmly entrenched in the counterculture of the punk rock scene, and I'm completely and totally in love with the DIY or do own terms, whether that's starting a band with a counterculture message that runs against what you think is popular and conformist, whether that's opening a venue for those kinds of independent bands and voices to speak, whether it's running a record label because you have the ability to organize and

you have an ear for music and you think you can help usher other bands along in their career, whether it's starting a zine or a magazine where you interview bands, where you talk about scenes, where you explore the themes of the music. All of those things are encouraged through the DIY ethic. And not only encouraged, they're what fuels and runs that counterculture. This idea that if you want something and it doesn't exist, or you want something and it seems unattainable because of some corporate machine, you can just make it yourself. And if you make it good and you make it authentic and you make it right, the people around you that are like you will support you and you will support them in those endeavors.

And as I grew to understand that from, you know, starting at about 14 years old and here I am at 48, I just, I fell in love with that idea. And I never wanted to play in a band. I've never, to this day, I've had, as much as I love music, and it's probably my favorite form of entertainment, I have never had the smallest desire to play music, to learn an instrument, to get up on stage and sing. I did, back when I would tour with Catch-22, when they would play their last song, sometimes it was like American Pie, they would have me up on stage and sing. I did back when I would tour with Catch-22, when they would play their last song, sometimes it was like American Pie, they would have me up on stage and I would sing with them. And that was fun. But even in that moment, I thought like, oh, this is a fun thing to do. I'm getting to express myself with my friends. And it feels like we're all,

I don't know, they made me feel like a peer, which was really nice. But I never like got off the stage and thought, I'm going to get back up on that stage someday with a guitar. I've never wanted to play music, but I wanted to be in this world. And I was learning these tools through the army. I was learning photography. I was learning journalism. I was learning how to interview people. I was learning how to talk up and down to people depending on where they were. And by that, I mean, I had to learn how to talk to an E2 who was like literally burning a bucket of shit in the desert. And then later on in the day, I had to learn how to talk to a brigade commander who was in charge of 20,000 soldiers. And that dichotomy really helped me understand how to talk to all people from all walks of life. And it's definitely one of the things that I, uh, that I prize the most that I learned in the military, but here I am, I'm learning these skills and I have this burning desire to participate in this DIY punk rock movement. I want to, I want to be, I don't want to be a passive member of the punk community, right? I don't want to just enjoy

listening to records in my barracks and occasionally going to shows, but I also don't want to play music. So it just starts to make sense. Oh, I should start making magazines. I've always kind of wanted to write. Now I'm writing in the most bland, expository way possible. I'm just interviewing people about shit that I honestly, at the end of the day, don't care about when there are so many things that I do care about. So I started a zine. I started a series of zines. And I guess that's how this all developed. But I was trying to think back to the first time I did an interview with a band. And it's actually for the first zine I ever worked on. I would have been maybe 19 years old with my

friend Jason. And it was his idea. He wanted to put this zine out. It may have come out. I don't think it ever did. But he somehow secured an interview with Ian McKay on a Fugazi tour. And so the very first time I ever interviewed, I guess, a celebrity, but also just someone who was doing something that I was a fan of, was fucking Fugazi. Thinking back on it now, I would be so scared to do that interview at 48 years old, such a seminally important person to so much of the things that I find important. And at 19 years old, I interviewed the shit out of that guy and I must have been

dumb or fearless or something because I don't think I could do it today. And I even remember being so proud in the interview because it was a pretty boring standard interview that I think Ian had probably done 10,000 times on 10,000 tours throughout his career. You know, how's the tour going? What are you inspired by? New album coming out? What themes are you looking to explore? What's the worst show you've ever played? That kind of stuff.

And right as the interview was wrapping up, and I felt just, I was just kind of numb, you know, I was just kind of out of it. And a question popped into my head, and I just blurted it out. I said, hey, what are you listening to in the van right now? And he goes, what do you mean?

And I go, like, what tape is in the, this is how long ago it was. I said, what what are you listening to in the in the van right now and he goes what do you what do you mean and i go uh like what what tape is in the this is how long ago it was uh i said what tape is in your tape deck in the van right now like when you guys peel out of here and you go to san antonio or wherever what what music are you guys going to be playing and he looked at me for a second who just just like just looked at me for a second and then he kind of smirked and he said uh that's a really great question. And I felt like this warmth wash over me. I remember that like it was yesterday. I just felt like approval and I felt like a sense of being in a place where I belonged, if that makes sense.

And I still remember the answer. He was like, I'm listening to, it was a dubstep album. He, he, he told me who it was. I don't remember who it was, but it was dubstep album. And I had never heard of dubstep at that time. And I went, Oh wow, that's really cool. I haven't heard that one. I'll have to check it out. And I, I don't know if I ever did or not, but I remember very pointedly just the way he looked at me for that beat before he smiled and told me he liked the question and then answered it with more enthusiasm than he had in the entire rest of the interview. And that's not to say that he was a bad interview.

I guarantee you we were bad interviewers. I think he was probably incredibly, incredibly patient with us. But I just saw him light up for a second. And I just remember how good that felt and how I have managed to hold on to that feeling for a very long time. Like I said, it wasn't my fanzine. It was one I was helping with. And so I don't know if it ever came out or not. But it was probably when I moved to New Jersey. And I was going to shows in New York City. Every weekend, I would take the train into the city

and I'd go to the Coney Island High or like the Knitting Factory or I don't remember. There's a million places I would go. Mostly the Coney Island High. St. Mark's Place used to be this punk rock mecca. And I've been there. I went there a couple of years ago and there's still some of the vibe there,

but a lot of the venues are gone and it's been cleaned up. And it's definitely definitely it's just definitely different now you know but in the 90s there was no fucking cooler place on earth to see a show than the coney allen high and so all these amazing bands were coming through i think i remember doing that fugazi thing and i uh i just started to reach out to record labels i remember one day i went to a coffee shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, and I sat down and I hand wrote, I had, I could afford, I bought 50 stamps is what I could afford.

And so I hand wrote 50 letters to 50 different record labels. I stopped at 50 because that was when I ran out of stamps. And then I addressed them and I mailed them out. And I just remember sitting in that coffee shop on a Saturday morning and it was raining and it was probably like October, November. It was chilly in New Jersey. And I remember how warm I was drinking coffee. And I remember I spilled coffee on like three of the letters. And then I thought, nah, these are going to punk rock record labels. They don't give a shit. And I packaged them all up and I mailed them. And I remember putting those in the mail and thinking, I'm putting 50 possibilities out into the world right 50 opportunities out into the world and I wonder what's gonna come back to me like this is this is such an exciting moment and I think about 17 record labels responded

to me and of those 17 I think like I't know, 12 or 13 sent me albums and started to let me know about when bands were going to be in town in my area. And from those, like from that dozen or so record labels to include some pretty great ones like Epitaph, Fat Records, there were a lot of, I think Lookout maybe. There were a lot of really cool, really, really cool record labels out there who gave me a chance when I had basically told them I was going to, I'd written a letter saying, I'm going to start a zine. And this is what I would like from you. I don't know that the world still, I don't know if the punk rock world still works like that. But even if it does or doesn't is irrelevant to this, I can't think of any other scene that would be so supportive to someone who probably deserves it so little. You know, like I must have been a hell of a letter I wrote, but although I care, I'm sure it wasn't.

I'm sure it was pretty fucking, pretty straightened to the point. But thinking back on it now, it's like, it's pretty wild to think that I sent 50 letters to 50 strangers saying I was going to start a magazine with the stuff they sent back to me. And, you know, more than a few of them did. Those are some cool motherfuckers out there. And I wonder how many people's lives

they changed in those kind moments like they like they ultimately changed mine and if they have any idea so this is an ad for express vpn which helps keep this podcast going going online without express vpn is like using your smartphone without a protective case. Most of the time you're going to be fine, but every once in a while you're going to drop it on concrete and then you're going to wish you'd protected yourself. This is why everyone needs a VPN. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network, whether it's a cafe, a hotel, an airport, oh God, stay away from, watch out for airports. Your online data is not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal your personal data. That's passwords, financial details, records of the purchases of all your collectible spoons and thimbles. You get the idea. It doesn't take much technical knowledge either to hack someone. Just some cheap hardware is needed. Any smart 12-year-old could do it. Even any average intelligence 12-year-old could probably do it.

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and offers to interview bands when they were on tour. And I had to put a zine out really quickly. At the same time as this was happening, I was a one-man operation for the United States Military Academy's preparatory school in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. So I'm sure you've heard of West Point, the United States Military Academy. Every year they take in new students, like any college, and every year there are students that are just on the bubble. They're really close, but they're not quite able to get in. So the military has this thing called the prep school, USMAPS, down in New Jersey,

kind of right near Long Branch, New Jersey, in Edentown, New Jersey. And they accept those students, those bubble students, they bring them in and they put them through a rigorous year of academic and physical training. It's honestly, it's a lot of like lacrosse players and football players who just don't have the academics yet, but they have a scholarship for that other thing. And so they send them through a year of like academic bootcamp, essentially, then they go back up and then they test and they almost always get in because it's a really good program. And they move on to their career in West Point to become officers. Because I was a one man operation, one day a colonel came into my office and said, Hey, Specialist Fink, that was my last name back then.

I keep hearing about websites, The army, the army needs websites to West Point just launched a website. Where's our website? And I said, I don't know what that is. And I don't know that it has anything to do with me. I'm just a public affairs specialist. He's like, I don't know who else it would belong to. So call up West Point and figure out how to get a website. I wanted immediately. And so I had to find out who the webmaster was at West Point. And I called him up or emailed him or whatever. And I said, Hey, I'm told I need to launch a website. Can you help? And he did not help much. If I'm being completely honest, he was very unhelpful. And so and so I did a, I guess probably a Yahoo or a Magellan search for website design.

And then I spent the next two weeks teaching myself how to make websites so that I could create the West Point Prep website, which I did. I fell in love with website design. I fell in love with the possibility of what we were doing. I fell in love with the idea that I could essentially create this space on the internet that anyone on earth could access. And so very quickly, my idea of making another print zine to distribute at shows and local coffee shops and bookstores morphed into I should make an online zine. I have no idea when the first online zine was. I can't imagine I was anywhere close to being that. But I must have been fairly early because I never saw another one.

I looked all over the internet to find examples of zines that I could copy and there weren't a lot. So as I was learning how to make the West Point Prep website, I learned how to make my zine. I needed something to call it. So I am embarrassed to say I called it Uncle Zine. My whole take was, i thought this was so clever at the time and it's one of those things that sounds like it means something but it doesn't

really mean something so uh if you hear you're like oh okay but then if you think about it for two seconds you're like that doesn't really mean anything it's fucking stupid but my whole tagline was like everybody's looking out for big brother but watch out for uncle as if that means anything anyway so dumb name dumb zine but i created it and so then i had a place to start reviewing all of these albums that were coming into me in the mail and i started to get more and more i think that the the record labels liked the idea that this was an online publication and so they started to send me more and then record labels started to seek me out to volunteer to send me stuff and i started interviewing tons of bands and you know i'm interviewing all these fat records bands and these epitaph bands and i've talked about it before but i interviewed blink 182

at one point when i put my foot in my mouth and embarrassed myself in front of tom dolan and uh and he turned out to be right huh uh funny about that I, so I'm interviewing all these like major, like lag wagon bands and like no use for name and, and H2O and like all these, like not those bands specifically, but I even, I tried to sit down and think about all the bands that I'd interviewed and I can't, it blows my mind. I can't even keep it straight, but you know, so much of it is just getting lucky. So much of it is, so much of it is just experimenting and finding your limits. So much of it is, is things that happen outside of your control. Even I remember one time when I was running that zine, I got the opportunity to interview this Canadian,

I think they're Canadian, this Canadian band called chicks dig it, who was having a moment at that time. And this was kind of the late nineties. And my friend was a really, really big fan. I didn't know a ton about them. So I offered him the interview. He jumped at the chance. And so we went up to the city to interview them. And we get to the venue like two hours early. That's when we're supposed to talk to them.

And he looks at me as we're walking in and he goes, I forgot my notes. I forgot my questions. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I don't have my notepad with all my questions. I forgot my questions. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I don't have my notepad with all my questions. I don't know what to do. I can't do this. And I don't know what to do. And I said, oh, it's no big deal. You're a big fan of the band. You know all their music. You have all their albums. I don't think they had a lot, but I was like, you have their two albums or whatever. You know the source material really well.

Just talk to them. I'll record it. Just talk to them and it'll go well. And he just goes, I can't do this. I'm so sorry. I just, I can't do it. And he left. And so we're like, we're like at the fucking door to the venue having this conversation, waiting for the guy to let us in. And he's like, I can't do it. I got to go. I'm so sorry. I apologize. He just left. And so the door opens like in a movie and the guy's like, all right, the band will see you now. And so I get let in and I sit down with the guys and I have no questions prepared. I don't know the band like he did. All I have is a tape recorder. And I go, well, shit, I guess I'm going to wing it. And I interviewed those dudes and I had the best fucking time. And when it was over,

they thanked me for the interview. And they were like, we really appreciate this. Wasn't like the, you know, usually we get a dude with a notepad with like the same 12 questions. And I really appreciated that that wasn't what this was. It was really nice to talk to you. And I learned in that moment that I could think on my feet. And I don't know that I would have ever discovered that if I hadn't been placed in that incredibly uncomfortable position in that moment. And so a lot of this stuff is just seizing opportunity when it presents itself. But it was such a rad thing because I was getting music in the mail constantly, more music than I could review. So I was having to give CDs to my friends and say like, hey,

can you review this new Furia 5 album? I can't get to it in time. And I had this whole little publication going where I had like three or four people that were writing for me. And I was being solicited and I was getting to put out like two interviews a month, you know, from these bands. So I was getting to go to shows up in New York or occasionally in New Jersey. And they'd be like, hey, Peg Boy's playing. Do you want to go interview him? And he'd be like, I love Peg Boy, you know? And I would go with a little tape recorder and a set of notes. And I would sit down and I would do exactly what I did all day long when I was a journalist. I would just ask them the questions that were interesting to me and try to befriend them and try to be, honestly, try to feel like a peer.

Like I didn't want to be a fan. I haven't, ever since my Charles Barkley incident, I haven't wanted to be a fan of things. I wanted to be on the same level as them. And so I tried to present myself as such. And I made a lot of great acquaintances. That's how I ended up meeting. I interviewed Catch-22. And that's how we all fell in love.

And I became the roadie and then had that whole adventure. But it was all this process of taking all the tools that I had learned from journalism and photojournalism and public affairs and the website design stuff, all these things that I was learning in the military and just using them for me. It seemed like the most natural and normal thing ever. And I was also getting to, to like, I worshiped the swinging netters. I fucking, I can't tell you how much I loved that band at a point in my life. And I got to interview them one time and I got to sit there next to Johnny and have this long conversation. Spike was in the band at that point. I got to talk to Spike. spike it was surreal and here i am at like 21 22 years old

thinking my life will not get better than this this is as good as it gets and then as i befriend bands like catch me too and i get to start going on tour with them and then you're suddenly you find yourself like and suddenly you find yourself in a shitty club in detroit with catch 22 on one side of you and the suicide machines on the other. And you're all playing dice games together. And you're just like, it just, for me, by the time I was like 20, by the time I got out of the army at 23, I felt like I had lived five lives worth of joy. It was, I just felt so fortunate and so lucky. And so I had, I still had all this desire. I knew I didn't want to be in the army anymore. I got out, eventually moved back to Texas, where I just felt a strong pull to live in Austin, right? And then I continued making zines and doing the punk zine.

I continued with the website. I interviewed bands in Austin constantly. I was at Emo's four or five nights a week. And I did that for a couple of years until I sort of just kind of lost my passion for it, I guess. And around this time, I start working at Telenetwork and I meet Gus and I have this, I'm developing this love for websites and web design and putting content online. Well, at the same time, I've left the military, I've left journalism behind and I kind of, my desire to interview bands and to go stand in line in guest lists and argue with people to be let in and then to take photos and then to do that whole I was really losing my passion for that. I think as I was leaving journalism behind in the army, I was kind of leaving it behind in my personal life as well. And right then I meet Gus and I realize, I was thinking about this yesterday, what it was that attracted me

to Gus and I think that attracted him to me. I've never really put it into words before, but I mean, outside of a tremendous amount of kinship and love and a real genuine chemistry and connection and friendship that we felt immediately. I never wrapped my head around it until, like I was saying just yesterday, but Gus was the first creative partner I've ever had in my entire life. And that's what clicked. I had dealt with people before. I had had people work with me on the zine before. I had helped people on other projects. I had paid, you know, for Kevin Smith and that whole thing in New Jersey. That was a big part of my, my learning process too, was I thought I wanted to make movies. I thought I wanted to get into film.

And then I went and I worked in film for a little bit and I worked around film and I got to know a lot of the people involved in film and the independent film scene in the nineties. And I realized I did not want to make movies anymore, but that's neither here nor there. The thing here is, is that I had met a person who was just as passionate as I was, who wanted to put in just as much work as I did because he also didn't see it as work. I think for him, I can't speak for him, but I think for him, it was less about work and more of a compulsion like it has been for me my whole life. And I saw eye to eye and I trusted him. And I knew that he knew that he could trust me. And I think that was the moment, the real moment my life changed. And so when people ask for advice on how to get started, it's really hard for me to give it because my path, as you can see, this just gets me up to rooster teeth, was meandering. And it was a mixture of

falling into things and learning to apply skills from my career in other ways and a lot of spinning up. I didn't mention all the websites that I started and ended in this process and the times I tried to launch a zine before the one that launched that failed and all the little missteps that I made along the way, of which there were many. But it wasn't until I met someone

who shared a creative passion like I did that I was able to really succeed in in a career and so I know that there's a lot of people that work solo their entire career that that was clearly not the case for me I clearly needed to find someone out there who who wanted to live this way and who wanted to live and breathe this thing in the same way that I did. And so for me, the secret to it all was finding him. All right.