The Doug Stanhope Podcast - #542 - "Here's Some Candy Comic, Get in the Car"

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Doug asks Nashville comic Chad Riden about his off grid project outside of Taos, NM.  Thank You Patreon Subscribers. We could not do this without your ongoing support. Recorded Feb 10th, 2024 at the FunHouse in Bisbee, AZ with Doug Stanhope (@DougStanhope) and Chad Riden (ChadRiden.com). Produced by Stanhope. Edited by Ggreg Chaille. Signed copies of the NEW Hard Back cover "No Encore For The Donkey" available while supplies last at Stanhope Store - http://www.dougstanhope.com/store/ We have no idea what the future holds so get on the Mailing List at https://www.dougstanhope.com/. When we know, we'll let you know. LINKS - Check out Chad Riden's progress at FuckTexas.org. (chadriden.com works as well). Closing song, “The Stanhope Rag”, written and performed by Scotty Conant for Doug Stanhope and used with permission – Available on Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/scottyconant TOUR DATES - https://www.dougstanhope.com/tour-dates Photo by StanhopeSupport the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

I thought this was the safe space. Alright, sorry for the interruption while we set up equipment, but this story is wicked good and I'm very into it. So we're just calling this, hang on a second, let me get my equipment and we'll do a, we'll do a, this is an episode of, here's some candy, Comet, get in my car. You've got to understand, our guest is Chad Ryden, who is a Chad that once we knew Chad Shank, and I was calling him all the time. Well, Chad Ryden was the only Chad in my phone, so he didn't have to have a last name.

And then so Chad Shank came underneath Chad Ryden. So I was calling him all the time going, oh, we're we gotta do a podcast or whatever. He's like, it's me again. It's Tennessee Chad Ryan. Nothing more disappointing than getting a phone call from one of your favorite comics and then being like,

uh, uh, are the wings ready? What? Doug, do you want to do a show or something? Oh, wrong Chad. Well, fuck me. Wrong Chad. This is a wrong Chad podcast.

Welcome, wrong Chad. So, Chad, I've known forever from Tennessee. You're the king of the Tennessee scene shit. The locals. Yeah, the local guys. Don't blame me for any of that shit. the king of the Tennessee scene. Shit. The locals. Yeah, the local guys. I don't take any, don't blame me for any of that shit. But yeah,

I worked on actively developing the Nashville Comedy Scene for like 22 years before I got the fuck out of there. Like I'm 22. All right. 22. And you have gone and done

what I think is absolutely fascinating. I don't know if you've ever saw the scene of the documentary Off the Grid Life on the Mesa. That's about my neighborhood. That's the place? Oh my god.

I'm sure you can find every documentary now. It's streaming online somewhere. There's a website. It's somewhere. Life Off the Grid. So that's the shit. Yeah, so they filmed that in my neighborhood, Two Peaks area, Carson Estates, in Towson County about like 16 years ago. And I know a couple people in that film that are still alive.

Everybody else – like other than two people, everybody in that film is dead, which is crazy. Like all good comics? Like all good comics. All good comics, yeah good comics all good comics yeah I mean these people like in

so I'm told that like they played it up to the camera but if you watch this film it's like people shooting guns indiscriminately setting cars on fire

blowing shit up and just being insane and that's how would those people view Slab City if any of you guys

have any questions about this stop this fucking podcast right now and go watch these off the grid this is not oh we get solar and we moved a little bit out off a rural route this is middle of nowhere i've never been to and i've been to like all the back roads of nevada but that's some hilly shit that's yeah it's so like there was a land scam in the 1950s and this is pretty common, I guess around Arizona and New Mexico.

There's like four that I know of where somebody bought up all this useless property where you can never have water. You'll never have electricity, sewage or roads. And they bought it for like pennies an acre. And then this dude like divided it up into quarter acre lots, had them all deeded with the county and then he literally went to the 1963 world's fair and he set up a booth and he's

like you know he had all these pictures of because taos county is gorgeous there's the pueblo there's the river there's rafting there's elk hunting there's all this shit but then we're in the on the other side of the ravine on the other side of the gorge the rio grande gorge inaccessible so it's like two hours to get to taos at that time and so he's like register to win enter to win this luxury vacation resort build your dream cabin off the you know alpha middle of nowhere in the wilderness of taos county but right next to the point all the stuff and literally i mean so people would enter. And surprise, surprise, every single straight white male who already owned a home in 1963 magically won.

And they got this thing in the mail that says, you've won beautiful vacation plot in Carson Estates, Taos County. But if you want to upgrade, it's a quarter acre and it's 50 to register the deed in your name well it costs like at that time 14 to do that and so he's already tripled his money just by giving this away it's like the bookers that used to charge comics to look at their tape yeah you want to work here send me a tape and 25 for me to look at yeah in a transaction buy forever yeah so but he was like if you want to upgrade there's a three quarters of an acre around you and you can get

each of those quarter acres for 50 bucks each so some people did some people stuck with a quarter acre but then they started driving out there to see what they got and like i say it took two hours to get across the old bridge to get over to this area and they would show up and literally be like there's nothing they would expect a lodge and like neighbors building their off the grid homes. Like an off the grid in the sixties is way different than it is now. Like you're literally building a rustic cabin. Yeah.

But nobody was out there. It's just dirt. It's not even, there's no grid yet. Yeah. There's no grid to be off of. Yeah. And so like people would be like heartbroken.

They'd realized they got scammed. They'd drive back to Taos and get a hotel room, and then they'd never come back again. And they'd either just let it go, or they would pay the property tax on it, $5 a quarter acre, for years. And so I bought my property from a lady who basically was a street urchin in San Francisco, and then she was following the Grateful Dead until Jerry died. And then she bought this property and posted it up and she had this kind of weird hippie commune thing. Alright, so

you bought this property but before then you were in Nashville for 22 years? For like 22 years. Doing comedy. What was the catalyst that made you go? We talked earlier where you go, you know, I've wanted to do this my whole life. We talked about Boys Life Magazine, we all remember where you go, you know, I've wanted to do this my whole life. Yeah. We talked about

Boys Life Magazine. Yes. We all remember. Yeah. So there's like two parts to this why I'm out there. So when I was a kid,

yeah, I was a Boy Scout, Cub Scout, and they give you Boys Life Magazine. So there's, it's propaganda. There's a lot of

Boy Scout stuff. I was really into wilderness survival. It's always been my thing. And camping, it's always been dope. But then there's a lot of rah-rah America and God bullshit. Yeah, it's a Boy Scout thing. It's always been my thing. And camping, it's always been dope. But then there's a lot of rah-rah America and God bullshit.

Yeah, it's a boy scout, man. It's a boy scout, yeah. But they would always have like, once a year, I couldn't call him Hitler, you know what I mean? That's what it was. So like,

once a year or so, they would have like this big photo spread about this Camp Philmont in beautiful north-central New Mexico. It's high adventure camping camping it's hiking it's rattlesnakes goddamn elk and river rafting and like i was in three different scout groups and

i talked to all of them i was like let's go and nobody wanted to go they're like you're annoying in the car for 10 minutes we don't want to be in a car with you for two days but you know plus this is dangerous and expensive and far away no so no i couldn't convince anybody to take me to this thing well i've kind of forgotten about it. Fast forward to my divorce, 2011. I'm in Tennessee, bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce. My ex-wife has moved out of the house and I'm sitting in the basement of my house

and I'm just sitting there and I'm like, what the fuck do I want? Because it wasn't this, you know? What do I fucking want? And I was like, I just want a goddamn basement. Like this is all I wanted is the fucking basement. And like every apartment I've had that was a basement was dope as shit. It's cool in the summer.

It's warm in the winter. Like every house I've ever lived in, I gravitate to the basement. I just want a goddamn basement. And I was like, still thinking in terms of living in a neighborhood where it's like, you go up to my lot. Write up a deed for the crawl space. I'll move in today. where it's like you go to my lot right up a deed for the crawlspace in a real neighborhood where it's like you go up to my lot it's just a garden and maybe a

doctor who TARDIS in the middle and you open up the door and you go into the TARDIS and it's a spiral staircase going down to my basement it's just a fucking basement that's like alright but if you don't have sunlight you're gonna lose your mind and I'm already crazy. People think I'm nuts. So it's like maybe a swimming pool as a ceiling that I can look at butts and diffuse light or whatever. But it's like, okay, this is dumb because it's going to leak and then it's going to destroy my home and flood it out and everybody's going to laugh at me. What if there's like a south-facing slope? I'm going to catch on fire.

I'm going to put it in solar. Oh, but then I'd catch on fire, and then I'd have no lips or nose because I'd just burn, and then everyone's gonna laugh at me. Ha ha! Then everyone's gonna shit on me. How awful the thing is, you're mostly afraid everyone's gonna laugh at you. I don't want to give comics ammunition. I'm already

a target. And so, like, then I was like, alright, well, what if there's a south-facing slope so I can do, like, glass wall, greenhouse, then I've got passive solar. i was like all right well what if there's a south facing slope so i can do like glass wall greenhouse then i've got so a passive solar yeah i was like okay i want to build a hobbit house right somebody else has done this who and so i started googling whether you build a hobbit house and i find earth ships in taos county so this architect has been working for the last 50 years to develop this off the grid thing where you're basically building a man-made cave out of trash it's tires and dirt and bottles and cans and upcycled materials. But he's building these beautiful structures that provide you food, water, shelter.

They're completely off-the-grid. They process their own – your sewage, but you also grow food out of your – it's a whole thing. It's everything I love. It's a goddamn hobbit house. And I was like, what? And so, I mean, I'm a comic thing. It's everything I love. It's a goddamn hobbit house. And I was like, what? And so, I mean,

I'm a comic and I know I haven't proved it to anybody ever, but I'm a comic, goddammit. So I set up a tour from Nashville, Tennessee to Las Vegas,

Nevada down Interstate 40 just so I could spend a day in Taos and see if it was real or some Instagram bullshit. And so like I did and I saw it and I was like,

what the fuck? And when I got back to Nashville, I wouldn't shut up about Taos. And so this girl at the radio station I was working at WXNA Ariel Bui I was like talking about the shit she's like well I used to live in Taos I used to work for Earthshift I've got property out there you need to beat my boy Marcus who's building one up here in Gallatin pretty close to where Johnny Cash's estate is. So I started hanging out with Marcus and, uh, you know, he was 80% done with his, but, um, you know, we would throw parties up there. Like we, we saw the eclipse there. We, everybody, 40 people camp for three days.

We all did mushrooms. Mostly we did mushrooms and tried to fuck hippie chicks. All right. But briefly, what, uh, what's that earth ship? So it's like you're, you're, you're using tires, um, as bricks. So instead of getting materials and having them shipped to you, like tires are available around the world. Right.

And so you get a tire and you put cardboard in the bottom of it and then you fill it full of dirt, about three, four wheelbarrows full of dirt. And you sit there and pound it with a sledgehammer until it's so tightly packed that you can stand on it and it doesn't give at all. There's no squish. And you make sure it's level. And it'll weigh about 400 pounds when you're done and then you live on top of that that's the whole house but you keep building those and you build them like bricks and you usually have a curved wall and then um you you stagger them back and you kind of plaster over it and you backfill and you've got a burn behind it. Okay, it's a house. You're building a manhunt cave on a trash.

Really well insulated. Sounds like you've made up some kind of... Were you going to put a pond in yours? Like a water feature? Yeah, well what you do is like so you do rainwater collection off the roof it goes into cisterns in the berm there's culvert going

through the berm and poking through the back wall so you have natural convection of cool air coming through, cooling going through the berm and poking through the back wall. So you have natural convection of air coming through, cooling off through the berm, and then venting out through the greenhouse facing south so that you don't have an HVAC system, but you have naturally controlled. And so the reason they call it a ship is because it's a lot of rope rigging because they want to make it manual and not electronic. And so you can open and close vents to basically control the airflow in the temperature of your house and you can use like wax Mad Max Road of fury it's

crazy there's a documentary on Amazon called garbage warrior that explains everything but if you google you earthships and look at YouTube there's thousands of videos and there's million dollar homes that they've built that are just amazing. Just pieces of art. Yeah. So it's like... The whole jungle inside. Yeah. You have a greenhouse to absorb the heat and you can grow your own food. A lot of people

grow weed or have ornamental stuff. But you can grow fucking in the desert. I don't want to run out of battery before we get to murder. Yeah. So you find out serendipitously through your friend that, oh, yeah, I know everything about where exactly you're going to move to in the middle of fucking nowhere that no one knows about. So my friend Ariel was going to build her tire wall October of 21. And I took the month off of everything and I just came to New Mexico to do that with her. And I was there five minutes before I was like, I got to buy property here.

This is a shit. And because it's all off the grid. It's outlaws. There's people running from the law. But there's a lot of hippie chicks too. I'm surrounded by people with love in their heart who want to build sustainably, live off the grid, and have a cool community. And so, like, I bought my property there in December of 21. And I went back and forth from Nashville a lot.

I would spend about a week there and then come back until about June of 22 when I moved there full time. And I'm living in a goddamn school bus in the middle of the desert, high desert, West Mesa. So what was that like? Give me the transition. Yeah. Okay. You didn't have a school bus when you got there. No, she –

You show up and you go. So the previous owner had built like two shithouses, two shedders, like three sheds, and she had two school buses that were campers. And some other stuff too. She didn't really build very – she saw what her ship was doing and she tried to do it herself, but she didn't have any training. This is the person you bought from. Yeah. Sweet lady. So this is what – okay, this is your school bus and I'm out of here.

Yeah, she's gone. So she – you mentioned Slab City. There's a lot of overlap between my community and Slab City, so she would always winter there. And a lot of people go back and forth from Taos to Bisbee. So like, I've got friends here in Bisbee who have places up in the Earthship community who just

come down here for the winters. It's nicer. So, anyway, yeah, I'm up there building my bullshit. I'm trying to build a traditional Kiva, like the sunken, circular, ceremonial place that the natives have built. Quick question. You're building.

Have you studied this enough? Because you probably don't get YouTube out there on your first day. No. So did you have to memorize YouTube videos before you start banging the tires in dirt together? I've got Starlink satellite internet, but there's like three internet service providers in Taos that I could get a direct line to if I had one.

When it comes to living off the land, naked and afraid, I can't get through the first commercial where I go, I tap out of naked and afraid. Well, people like to know skills. The comics who've come to visit me have always been like, this seems cool,

and some of them have bought property near me but like a lot of them are like i couldn't do it man i need a flushing toilet like that's not it dude you don't need a flushing toilet there's nothing about pooping into fresh water that you need what you need is a goddamn shower and after about three four weeks you're gonna be like no i need to shower no no it showers uh toilet paper that would be my thing i mean i've got toilet paper but i'm shitting into a hole you. That would be my thing. I mean, I've got toilet paper, but I'm shitting it into a hole. Wet wipes are my friend, I'll tell you that. You get a lot of roughage out there in your guys.

Hang on, let me knock this ad out. Yeah, so okay, let's go that way. You're trying to figure out how to build your house, and you already got toilets and buses. Food. What's it, what, if you, if you go, I failed, I'm hungry, I just want a frozen pizza. What's, how far is it from you to the closest processed food? 40 minutes? By camel car jack back car oh my god yeah well you it has to be four wheel drive like my roads are mud

most of them are uh cliche which is like this chalky dirt that they've it's called human waste but you call it collegiate but like my road is completely ungraded and it's just mud pits right now because the snow is melting and shit so you have to have a four wheel drive vehicle with high clearance or you're fucked and during monsoon season sometimes you just

sit there for a couple days and I don't go anywhere because I can't but yeah I've got to have you ever missed an important meeting there are no important meetings I just I've engineered my life so I do whatever the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want and nobody tells me no and I don't have to be anywhere or do anything you know if you had uh say a young girl in a bamboo cage yeah and she's shrieking help help get me away from this fault and it's crazy bastard could anyone hear her scream sure I've got

neighbors like half a mile away that's what we would my question was I hear the schizophrenic neighbor to my west screaming every like he howls at the wind every day but like I like when we pay attention so my neighbor just texted me that there's a fugitive on the run from the state police who's up on the mountain just right next to my property. My neighbor to the north is the Carson National Forest

and there's a guy on the mountain right there who's hiding from the law. Pulled up, put a rifle on this 10-year-old boy that's my neighbor when he was out there gathering wood yesterday.

Three times he pulled a gun on him. And Ruby Ridge. I mean, it's crazy. Like, there are people, it is the Wild West. There are straight-up murder i mean it's crazy like there are people it is the wild west there are straight up murderers there's meth heads there's people on the run but there's

also but they know not to fuck with us so like my my friend angie right beautiful i'm meeting the community yeah like not me and my dogs well no like me and my neighbors uh we've got a good little we watch out for each other yeah and if one of these motherfuckers like starts rolling up on my property somebody's good my dogs are gonna go ape shit and my neighbor's gonna go ape shit and i'll hear about it immediately like and plus i do have video cameras set up like you know but but like nobody's gonna nobody how do you as a comic you ingratiate yourselves using like uh okay i'm gonna be funny that's how i make friends and i'm known as a comedian at least yeah like how did you start to like make a community of these people were they tentative

about you at first they like who's the new prick well people are like that sure there's old timers who've been there from back in the day who like there's 80 year old dudes who've been growing weed out there for decades you Is there a community center? Do you go, okay, I'm here. I got my fucking pup tent up. I ate my lunchables. And where is the bar? So, yeah.

So, now, when I started working on my friend Ariel's tire wall, like, people would come and go because she was connected to the community. And I met this one dude who runs this nonprofit veterans off grid. So it's like a couple hundred acres and he's, he's keeping people from being homeless by teaching them how to build a hut out of hyper Adobe. That's, you know, maybe a hundred square feet and you could do it yourself in two weeks and not be homeless.

So like I volunteer there and I've built a bunch of shit there, like a wall of peony and a earth ship and some other stuff. And so like hanging out there and we have these vol and tuesday events so every tuesday we pick somebody's project somebody who's building something similar and we just go and staff them up so 15 30 people show up and just help you for a day and so i would have a you're not done on mine wednesday wait we're not done here i had other ideas so i've met like all my friends and neighbors like that way and then there's this carson cafe carson new mexico is the closest thing to me so

it's a 45 minute drive for me to get to the closest coffee shop they've got beer they got pizzas it's dope and so people sit on the porch and they smoke their weed and we talk shit and we have fun and so like that's a good community Okay. So you don't have something that's your own off the grid. Like, hey, well, let's meet up here. That's the closest thing is Carson Cafe. And then the Burger Stand. So is that a legit cafe? Like, that's a licensed place?

Yeah. So it's like Carson in New Mexico is basically a post office, a firehouse, and this cafe. All right. And so, like, I hang out there a lot. And then there's the Burger Stand in Taos. And's just a they got 22 beers on tap they got dope ass burgers and I do a comedy show there once a month but that's a community hub to where a lot of us dirtbags are there just kind of hanging out smoking weed and trying to talk to hot chicks who are there to ski I can't believe I've never

been to Taos in my Santa Fe was one of my first gigs. I saw it once. That's enough. Albuquerque's the ugliest fucking city in America. Mexico's the ugliest people in America. It's not the worst state. No. Indiana.

Indiana, but... But I've never been that middle of nowhere because I'm scared of 25 mile an hour turns on fucking black ice. You fucking had a gig. He had a gig in

Prescott last night. He goes, okay, and then here today and then Albuquerque tomorrow, which is a 10 hour drive. Oh, he's not going to have any time at all here. I wake up at 1 o'clock in the morning to piss and I look at my phone.

He texted at 12.54. I just, I'm on my way now. I'll be there early in the morning. I'm like, what the fuck? I like driving at night.

There's not, there's shitheads on the road. Plus this is the weekend. I don't want to be on the highway. There's shitheads on the road. There's fucking deer and anthill and black ice and anthill. Yes.

And black ice and drunk drivers. I can drink at gigs anymore. I can dodge. Well, I drank early and then so I'm touring with a band right now. My favorite band. It's indigenous. Faith plus Bees and Locust from Taos. They're dope. It's a seven-piece funk band with an indigenous

rapper as the lead. And so I drank before the show and then um then i danced and so like i and i ate food and so i was good to go by the time you know i didn't take off till way after but i'd rather drive at night yeah it so where's the band staying oh they had a place they had a place i i could have crashed with them they don't you know but yeah they drove down here in the day or whatever. Right. But, anyway. So, let's get back to now. You've been there almost two years now. Mm-hmm.

So, you've learned. You've met the psychotic neighbors and the cool neighbors. And you go, okay, I'm part of the clan now. Clack, clack. Yeah. Yeah. Circle of wagons. Yeah.

So, I mean, like, I walked around armed for the first year everywhere I went. Because I didn't know who was who or what was what. For the first year, did you have that orange thing at the end of the barrel of the gun so people know it's a tool? No. It's not unusual to see me with a sidearm. But then I realized I know what I'm doing and I know where I'm going and I know who I'm talking to for the most part. But yeah, there is a straight-up murderer in my neighborhood who has shot and killed people and we don't know what to'm doing and I know where I'm going and I know who I'm talking to for the most part. But yeah, there is a straight up murderer in my neighborhood who has shot and killed people. And we don't know what to do about him.

I want to put a bounty on his head, but nobody else wants to. Shot and killed people elsewhere in that move? No, right there. So there was an altercation about a year ago where he shot and killed somebody and got away with it. There was this cute little girl, 21, and she was riding her little motorbike to work and she was out on the road. Allegedly. We don't want this murderer to lawyer up

and sue us for that. He doesn't have any lawyer money. It was a joke. This poor girl, her little bike broke down and so she was just walking to work. And a pack of dogs, there was wild dogs. There was like 40, 50 wild dogs that came and swarmed on this girl and just tore her to shreds and so

somebody was driving down the road and they saw her and they chased the dogs off and they saved her life took her to the hospital covered with scars so she covered up her face but um this poor girl so this motherfucker sees her moped her dirt bike on the side of the road and picks it up, throws it in his truck and takes it to his place and starts parking it out. And we are a small community. We know who the fuck did that. We see them. And so somebody called him out for him on Facebook, on the community Facebook group. And he's like, yeah, fuck you. And so somebody had to go over there and get the bike from this motherfucker. And this girl took the bus to Espanola to get the parts she needed to fix her little thing.

That's the kind of community it was. And, like, we've put those dogs down since then, you know, but this motherfucker is, like, a problem. Wait, who did he murder here? Well, he murdered somebody else. It was a different story. I'm sorry. But that's just an example of, like, this kind of shitbag. So he's got a tow truck, and, like, if you break down, you better spend the night in your truck because he'll fucking pick it up and take it off and part

it out right does anyone else it sounds like a nightmare to me but it's wonderful i love it i thrive in the chaos and i really am in my element like i love it i know i love the stories but does air get sucked out for anyone when we said, well, we went on our Facebook group? I'm not a Facebook person, but like, you know, these people, everybody in the house is on Facebook. And so it's like I've got like a bullshit account where I can talk to you. Does Slab City have a Facebook account? I'm sure. Oh, my God. Yes.

You can't be off the grid anymore. I mean, you're off the grid. I'm not connected to municipal utilities. I'm still on the internet. Like, you've been in front of me, like, you started shitting on me on Twitter, like, a year ago, like, you know, off the grid, but you post online more often than any other

motherfucker I know. It's like, yeah, but I mean, like, I'm still, I'm still an attention whore. That didn't change. You know? What if I got, like, a few people that are up for a goof, and we moved up there and bought our $14 plot of land, and said, yeah, we're going to be the police.

We heard you didn't have police here, so you could be a sheriff. People like to say, we don't call the police, we take care of our own. That's what you said, and that's why I said, oh, no police. What if I can get a bunch of my crazy fans? And we go, yeah, we decided you need police. We're cops. But then you go, oh, we're going to fucking team up and fucking kill these people. And you go, and we're hiring for really good wages.

And then all of a sudden, you're not off. Because we were born into police. That's a fact of life but at some point they decided hey we're police now what does that mean yeah well i'll tell you like the police are scared to come to my neighborhood i've seen the sheriff out there twice uh the house was on fire and what happens like if somebody moves in and we don't like them they'll burn their goddamn house down so the house they're trying to build a fire yeah i don't know them, they'll burn their goddamn house down. So the Taos, they're trying to build a Starbucks in Taos. Now, there's two inside.

This is hilarious. There's two that are inside Kroger-owned grocery stores, but they're building the first standalone Starbucks, and they burned it down twice. So they framed it, and then somebody came in and burnt that shit to the ground. They cleaned up the mess, they framed it again, and somebody burnt that shit to the ground. And I'm so delighted by the whole thing

because Taos isn't fucking playing this corporate bullshit. They don't want those motherfuckers there. We've got straight-up anarchists all over the place, and there's a coffee shop ran by anarchists. It's very open.

And who knows who did this because it's a bunch of lone wolves. It's fascinating to me. I love it. It's very open. And who knows who did this because it's a bunch of lone wolves. Fascinating to me. I love it. It's like, it's literally I live in what's called the enchanted circle. It's just like six steep towns and it's all spiritual and shit. The Pueblo has been inhabited. They say they've been there since the beginning of time.

It's the longest, most continuously lived in structure in North America. And I mean it's just, I really love this back to uh the guy that was bragging that well i i was born and raised in bisbee i'm uh what do you call it i'm a native yeah well you know what that you're the only people that didn't fucking choose to be here right yeah no choice so the same thing with fucking Indians. Fucking sacred burial ground.

I'm not saying anything bad about my native friends. I love them to death. I'm honored to be there. I feel like I'm trespassing and I'm always... Do they make you feel like that? No. You're living this. People say bringing it real, I believe the kids say. People say the mountain accepts or

rejects you. I'm clearly very drawn to this place so I've started saying like boys life magazine right I started getting into that so after I bought my property I came and I gave the woman the money I paid I put the deed in the uh courthouse and I'm driving back to Nashville now because I still live there and as I go over the mountain I enter and I see this sign that says, now entering Boy Scout property, Philmont Park. That's the place I've been trying to

get to since I was eight years old. It's literally on the other side of the mountain from me. I've been trying to get to Taos since I was a fucking child. And I didn't piece it together until after I bought this property and realized, holy shit, I've always wanted to be here. You're tearing up a little bit.

I'm very emotional about where I live. Like I've always been connected to my community. Like I live in East Nashville and I know every motherfucker on my block. And I've worked really hard community building. When I started comedy in Nashville, there was one open mic a week and one comedy club. And it was a good comedy club, but that was it. Now there's three full-time comedy clubs. There's three or four open mics a night and there's two or three book shows outside of the club system. I'm not saying I did that, but the nonprofit I ran, Nashville Stand-Up,

fucking did that. Me and my friends fucking did that. I'm a community builder. I've always been tight with my community, but I've never been closer with my community but I've never been closer to my community than I am right now do you think you have enough clout in your community that you've moved into and see me that if we came out and started a very small but lucrative dollar tree it would get burnt down like nobody wait wait wait it would get burnt down after they sell what they can get for only a dollar 25 cents you know it's a tumbler when do we not need a tumbler not 25 is like pocket change if i had pockets i mean there's only one way to find out i'm building a comedy club at my place my kiva is going to be a comedy club and i mean and then so like i'm trying to i

really thought once i started building and posting about this shit online my dirtbag friends who are van lifing it you know would come out of the woodwork and come and join my weird comedy commune it's not a sex cult yet but okay but but like uh but like and people will come to the visit and they'll help me out or they'll fuck around for a week. But nobody, like it hasn't become the cult I want it to be. Wait, wait. You said every time a comic has come out to visit me, I want names of what comics and what experiences specifically for each one. Okay.

The first comic to visit me was Ryan Singer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's fucking weird. I think I was picturing him. He's into Paranormal. His podcast is Me and Paranormal You. It's all about shapeshifting. He's the one whose eyes look

just like Joby. I brought pictures. I saw him at the comedy store. Very, very funny comic. Just a rogue warrior. I've loved him forever. He was the first to come out and he was like, I'm going to buy property. Then he hasn't. Of course. i keep paying him money to do to do other stuff yeah i mean you can drive away that's the thing it's like i can do shows if i want i can drive

i go to albuquerque and denver all the time and uh and do shit oh please thank you so much you're a joy i used that guy but yeah like'll, like I'm focused on building my shit right now, but like every once in a while, I'll go off on a run of shows and I'll call it my tax write-off tour

because it's like, I'll go visit, thank you, bless you. I'll go visit my daughter in Nashville and do like one show, you know,

and then. How old is your daughter? She's 20 years old. Okay. Has she visited? She has came. So when I, when I had,

there was a dog fiasco I was talking about off camera and she came with me uh when i uh when i had there was a dog fiasco i was talking about off camera and she came with me um and she like when we got into eagle nest and it opens up you see the lake and then you see the mountains all the shit she was like she gasped and she was like dad like i've seen your photos i've seen your video i hear you talking about this shit non-stop this is overwhelming i was was like, I know. And we can't drive across this bridge.

Not on your mini spare tire. Yeah. It's going like this. No, she was, like, I took her around for about three days, and I showed her pretty much everything. And she was just like, God damn. Like, it is overwhelming. It's the ski capital of the world. It's the snowboarding capital of the world. And it is gorgeous.

of the world is the snow cop uh snowboarding capital of the world and it is gorgeous i mean i'm like i'm in the middle of sagebrush but like the the the enchanted circle itself is like something of legend it's really insane okay so on your worst night sitting there in your bus i'm gonna bus i'm gonna goddamn school bus all right i don't know maybe you had a like a what do you call that? A yurt or something when you're on sad nights. What do you miss the most is what I'm getting at. Pussy? On the nights.

You've just gotten laid there once? Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, there's. You can't have a one-night stand there because you're going to run into her over the fucking school. So the dating pool in Taos is very, very shallow. with the fucking soul. The dating pool in Taos is very, very shallow.

I've had a few encounters there, but I'm driving to Santa Fe to fuck, and that's not sustainable. I'm hauling in every dry water I drink, and I'm hauling in every piece of ass. It's not good. I had this Tinder date with a woman in Taos, and she made the comment.

She's like, you can always get dick in Taos. And I was like, is that our town slogan? We've got to start marketing this shit to people who've been slut-shamed elsewhere. It's like, come on, horse. Come on over to Taos. Come to Taos, and we'll come on you. Okay, so when you're in Taos, which is an upscale ski market. It's a ski resort place, and it's very expensive.

So you meet a lady, and your place or mine. Her place. Yeah. She's just never like, oh, will you make me breakfast? Yeah. Fuck yeah, I will. But somebody else is kidding. And I've had women.

I have fucked in my school bus. I can say that. But in general, I do a lot of dog sitting and house sitting for people. And I still can't get the stink out. There's so many like Airbnb's as there are in every fucking city I think Airbnb is the problem we have with our housing market but it's destroying our country and Airbnb should be outlawed all those landlords should be shot in the

goddamn head but you're staying at one yeah I know I know except we don't think you but you it's Airbnb for you. Yeah, yeah. And thank you so much because that's the first shower I've had in two weeks. But like, yeah, I'll house it for people just so I can take a shower and do laundry and fuck people in a normal, nice house and not have to take them back to my school. Wait, is this their call? Chad, we're going to let you house sit as long as you do our laundry and fuck the people there for us.

It's my laundry. They're not giving me people. No, you got it all twisted. It's what I do. Don't go out there back there if you don't want to meet quite yet. Yeah, don't let them hang up. Yeah, I don't think he would want, I mean he would scramble I think. Yeah.

Yeah, it's fun dude and you should come and do shows I think Sean Smith what's her last name Australian chick yeah is she coming? she says she is and so I'm going to do a show for her and I tweeted it wrong right wait hang on you have to go all the way to Santa Fe but now you're going

all the way to Brisbane to get pussy she won't let you not fuck her I mean you know if you listen to her podcast or watch her tweets yes

she's a prostitute that doesn't take no for an answer like a car salesman that's yeah and you oh and all of a sudden

she's playing jazz jazz we've talked a good bit farmhouse I think she's great I really do think she's talented she. We've talked a good bit. I think she's great. I really do

think she's talented. She is an insane person. That's what I'm in the market for. I love insane

people. I'm one of them. But yeah, she's coming. I had Ryan Singer, Jeff Tate.

Tate was out there? Yeah. Dave Stone and Gilbert Wallen. I have a T tape tape to it. He enjoyed it.

He had a good time. All right. He's not one of the, I mean, running water. He ain't buying. I don't think he's buying property out there. Like, a couple comics have said, like, buy up a quarter. Let me know. Give me a heads up, and I'll send you money.

Like, a couple people have said, like, don't tell my wife, but I want to buy a quarter acre as a bug-out place. I'm like, okay, I'm not telling your wife about your bug-out place. We've got deeper issues than trying to hide from whatever the fuck you're running from. But, I don't know. Trish Smart is a comic who has had van life. She's been doing comedy like six eight years you would love her she's uh she's a fucking hustler she's very very funny van life sounds very familiar yeah she's she's uh she she drives back and forth across she spends a lot of time in

Las Vegas and Washington DC and goes back and forth but she travels the world doing comedy and so I think she's gonna buy property out there and there's a couple others too has anyone come through to to buy yeah uh no i i've got a couple plots i'm sitting on where when people come up with their goddamn money i'll give it to them but you know i'm not like morgan murphy kept talking about she did rent here down the oh she would enjoy it. But I don't know. No, she's definitely... She needs red water, for sure. I mean, but the point is, for us,

right now we have Christine Levine. She lives here with Gary Lucy. Yeah. You know, him from the Pacific Northwest.

He's moved down here. And we've had a few people that were not comics that have... See, I'm trying to replicate your thing here, but out there. Yeah, that's a harder sell. We have a safe way.

I mean, well, I've got a super save. It's just 45 minutes away. Yeah, that's... We have an airport 45 minutes. I have 45 minutes. It's 20 minutes to get through the mud roads to the community well, to the highway, to the pavement from my place.

20 minutes. The minimum. Like if it's fucking monsoon season, you may never get out. Or days. Yeah. But 20 minutes and days. But that's, you know, and the roads are bad and they tear up your truck. But I hitchhike in and out of town all the time.

And I can get a ride within usually 5 to ten minutes in or out that's great and it's a it's pretty amazing like i've done videos i've done tiktok videos where it's like how long does it take me to get a ride to taos it's literally like eight minutes top hang on you know what that reminds me of this commercial break you're listening to the Doug Stanhope Podcast. All right, we're back. My next question that off the grid you already answered as I was setting it up was what do you do with all this time out there? But evidently you just sit on Facebook and TikTok.

No, dude. I mean, I used to, but when I was just sit on facebook and tiktok no dude like i uh i mean i used to but like when i was uh like in nashville on the grid like yeah i'm on a fucking computer all day checking off and day trading and you know watching movies play video games but like sun i wake up with the sun and i work until the sun goes down and usually people like about one two in the afternoon people want to have like lunch and like everywhere i work or help like there's a vegan lunch and then we all they have river fun so people go down to the river and they swim and it's like it'll be like 15 hippie chicks and like three dudes and everybody's

naked and we're in the river and then you go to somebody's house and they uh jam and it'll be like nine people playing instruments everybody's smoking weed some people have alcohol and you have a little fucking thing it's a tight ass community in life but then i can also sit what's the first uh social faux pas you made where you go oh oops oh it's all like the squabbles between me and my my friends out there let me just tell them my the one I remember most is I was road raging at the Vista

which is quaint little fucking rich it's a and I passed someone that was going

too fucking slow like if a red pass it at the tennis courts like it's 15 mile an hour fuck you yeah

like ooh and then they're behind me at Safeway and you go oh this I can't ever do this yeah it's a small Fuck you. Yeah. I'm like, ooh. And then they're behind me at Safeway. And you go, oh, this, I can't ever do this again. Yeah. It's a small town now. It's not Los Angeles.

For us, like, it's criticism about how sustainable you're being. So it's like, you're not doing this good enough is what I'll hear. And it's not necessarily about me, but between people. So it's like, goddamn, I'm growing my own food. I'm shitting in a god damn bucket like a cat. How sustainable do I have to be to fucking make people happy? That's where it's like, fuck. Eating meat is my biggest sin, honestly.

Do you have to hide it? No. I fucking grill a lot. Like damn awkward with the salmon and trading places. I'm not giving up my Nashville hot chicken. I grill like a motherfucker all the time. You smell meat at my place. Do you raise chickens?

No, I will. Like I had chickens for a minute and then I realized it's like I'm in a school bus and I don't have water that doesn't freeze for my dogs. Maybe not have chickens yet. Maybe like build your house before you start fucking building a chicken house. So I donated the chickens to Veterans Off Grid. If this murderer disappears, are we going to have to pull this podcast out?

No. Yes. Yeah, we know those people that if they died in this town, no one's looking. I do want to say i did not burn the starbucks down i cannot condone arson but it is very funny um and but yeah like you know people like my neighbor claire uh ended up dead and was in the river and people jump off the bridge all the time like hers was unusual circumstances i don't know all the details it's weird there's

there's people who've been murdered that are unsolved in my neighborhood. We don't know. If somebody's house burns down, it's fucking intentional. It's not electrical in your attic. We don't want you in this goddamn community and your shit is burnt to the ground. Build it again. We'll fucking

burn it again. This podcast is sponsored by State Farm Insurance. State Farm. If you have a... Yeah. It's self-policing. I mean, they say that, and it's true to an extent. Now, this motherfucker's still out there, but

I'm getting ready to put up wanted posters where I'm going to offer a dollar for his head. Kelly, here, she was talking as we were leaving the yard sale. She said, yeah, we need to get a hot tub i like hot tubs better than saunas like hot tubs it's like people soup that's all i can think of when you said that girl was found dead in the river that you party in every day you know they found her body dead but party's still on let's wait out there. Yeah, it's tough, dude. Like, people do die, you know?

And people, it's the fucking Wild West, for sure. Do you hate tweakers as much as we do here? Yeah. Oh, I was getting ready to tell you. So my friend, okay. So my friend Angie, beautiful woman. She's my age. She's like 40-something.

Petite. And she's built, like, several structures. There's a guy here in town Kenny and he goes back and forth he's helped her a lot anyway she's a community organizer and she's a wonderful woman and so like some tweakers set up shop like across from her shit and they're squatting on land that you know nobody's really taking of. And at first it didn't matter. If you don't bother anybody, nobody gives a fuck about you. But more and more people started showing up and they started getting louder and louder.

And then trash started blowing around. And that's unacceptable. So she just walked over there, this woman by herself, very tiny woman. And she walks over and she goes, listen, everybody here loves me and respects me and has my back. And you guys are doing dummy drugs. You're loud and you're making a fucking mess. And it stops right now. You stop all that shit.

You clean up this mess and you get rid of the fucking drugs. You get rid of the idiots and you quiet the fuck up or you get the fuck out of here right now. And they did. They fucked off. Now they went to the other side of three peaks, this community and the neighbors went over to them and were like angie told you to get the fuck out of here and they did they fucked off and i don't know where they are now maybe they're somewhere

where we're not paying attention but that's the kind of community it is where this cute little woman was like nah we're not having the shit you get the fuck out and they did that's fucking beautiful it is i mean that's that's community because she wasn't lying i love that woman with all my heart and if she told me that these people need to go i'll go over there with a fucking gun and get them out get them the fuck out of there you know put the fear of god into them i mean i don't do shit you got it stuff i mean but you need it like you just need it so like i there's a mobile mechanic friend of mine and he's great but the first time he came out to I mean, I don't do shit. But you need it. You just need it. There's a mobile mechanic friend of mine, and he's great. But the first time he came out to my house, he had a sidearm.

And I see the holster, but I don't see the gun. But the girl in his car has got the gun on me the whole fucking time. Because she doesn't know. This could be a trap. I could be robbing and murdering him. But then he's my friend now. So they don't bring the gun anymore. That's great. Yeah, I know. i love it like i just fucking love it yeah i would definitely visit in the summer if i had um what if i showed up in your town oh my god with like looking like a fed like a narc like a men in black, driving a Tesla.

Okay. I had something built that was a little audacious than the other flop houses that you build out there. I had a nice two-story with a deck, but I kept to myself. You're fine. I had a Bison Frieze that I walked walked and i picked up and spooked yeah and then i was nine to five you can count on me coming in and out you're okay all right as long as you don't fuck with anybody else like there's teslas out there there's million dollar homes i mean it's a snow resort no in the fucking slab city no i yeah i mean there's no i want to build like a

giant thing right in the middle my joke like when I pick up every hitchhiker because I want to I hitchhike and I want to meet my neighbors and it's a great way to do it. And everybody's cool when they need a ride. But I'll tell every one of them, I'll fuck with them and I'll be like, yeah, I bought this shit. I bought this shit from Linda. I'm going to develop all this.

I'm going to be all condos. And I'm going to have like five condos per quarter acre. And it's going to be aos and i'm gonna have like five condos per quarter acre and it's gonna be a million dollars each and you just see their the rate but i'm the comic who lives in town so everybody knows i'm full of yeah and he's the comic that's playing tonight not the night that you you won't see this until it's way too late but he he is playing, unknowingly, he is playing in town tonight in Bisbee for the guy who is trying to build condos out of historical structures.

And that's the guy. That's the guy. I've never met him, but... Well, I probably won't be invited back because I'm going to shit on him. Yes, you will, because you are sitting on the stage of art under the fucking off-the-grid,

under-the-weather, off-the-radar stage. This is a Murphy stage. Oh, yeah. It's right up into this wall. on the stage of art under the fucking off the grid under the weather off the radar stage. This is a Murphy stage. Oh yeah. It's right up into this wall and then we put you know 30 seats in here

and the lighting and the mic and the stand and you'll play here next time. This is a beautiful venue and I can't wait. Alright.

Chad Ryden we'll give him your socials. It's Chad C-H-A-D-R-I-D-E-N everywhere on the internet please go to my website fucktexas.org

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