The Joe Rogan Experience - #1887 - Maynard James Keenan

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Maynard James Keenan is a musician, winemaker, and martial artist best known as the vocalist for the rock bands Tool, Puscifer, and A Perfect Circle. Look for the new Puscifer concert films "Parole Violator" and "V is for Versatile" on October 28.  http://www.puscifer.com/

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Do you have a sauna? Do you do that? I have a sauna, yeah. Yeah?

Do you use it? It had, um... Initially it had issues, because it was like a, you know, janky-ass actual heater that died, and we had to try to get another one. Yeah, we had to order another one. They had no luck with that company, so we just were like, oh, that company doesn't exist anymore. So we had to get a different one in there, but it's fine.

We just got done putting a bunch of the oil on it, sauna oil, because Arizona, therizona the the sun just like cooks cooks the fucking wood so there's like it was cracking and spaces so the real hardcore folks they use the wood fired sauna old school like you're cooking pizza yeah well they can do that yeah i'm not that guy yeah they sell those i'm like that seems like a lot of work plus you gotta kill trees yeah we you know so we um you know we use it quite a bit actually uh when it was when it was running it but then like i was on the road and then harvest we didn't bother with it until just now we got it back running it's so good for you man it's so good i just got out i do it after every workout it's like religious I make sure I get in there right afterwards. It's the best.

You're training hard there, fella. Well, John Donaher teaching you finder points of triangles. That was fun to watch. Yeah. I mean, it's hard. I would discuss this before. Being on the road is it's hard to find consistent training. training is your gym that instructor in your city your drive back and forth to your house uh doing two classes a day maybe if you can you know like that kind of thing but like the road is like inconsistent so the only consistency i can i can really rely on is picking a particular subject and going to people that i know that know how to do it. Rather than allowing them to go, hey, I got this cool thing where you go upside down and stand on your head and do a backflip and like buggy choke. Don't please.

I don't. I'm 58. Please don't try to tell me what a buggy choke is right now. You can't do a buggy choke? I might someday. But right now I just want to fucking get the triangles right. Buggy choke is a good thing to learn. Yeah, I want to learn it, but let me learn it when I'm going to spend three weeks on it and focused on it with somebody who understands the details, somebody who also understands the counters.

Because the counters end up being as important as understanding the actual thing. Somebody caught a buggy choke recently in MMA. I think it was in Bellator, and the dude picked him up and slammed him. And he's out. Yeah, he got fucked up, and then he beat the shit out of him. I was like, hmm, yeah, that makes sense, because it's like you really are committed to that. You've attached yourself to the person and that they're big and strong

and can drop you on a surface. You just don't have options like you do with a triangle. You know, like if someone picks you up with a triangle, you drop down to the leg, you let go. Like when you're in a buggy chair, you're kind of committed, I think. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should talk to like the Rotolo. Yeah, this is it right here.

No, this is not it. This is a different one. But people are getting these left and right now. You know, someone pulled one off in the UFC the other day, and people didn't even know what the fuck it was. I had to kind of explain it. I'm like, this is so fascinating that this is a technique that is, you know, for jujitsu it's been around for like a year or so.

He's out cold. For jujitsu it's been around for years, rather. But for MMA it's just starting to be applied. Right. But the beautiful thing about, especially that high level of MMA, is that somebody's going to figure out how to counter it or prevent it. And then it's gone. I mean, for a while, all of a sudden people were catching the Von Flu and then all of a sudden people are like, no, no, we're going to counter that now. But then every now and then, somebody catches one. OSP's the master.

He's the best at it. He's caught more of them than von flu. Von flu, I think, invented it. But OSP, I think, has more than anybody. He gets it all the time. It's like it's a natural instinct when someone takes you down to hang on to that guillotine. You just want to have some sort of control over them. And then all of a sudden that person shifts weight and they're on top of you sideways.

You're like, oh, shit. Then your arm is trapped. Good night. Yeah, it's a nasty joke. There's this – jiu-jitsu is so beautiful. It's so cool watching you guys today, like watching Donaher. Like I learned something, that position of the knee to the ear. Like I didn't know that.

I kind of did it anyway, but like watching the, like he's so good at pointing out the finer details. Yeah. You know, he's just such a master. What a fucking interesting person he is. There's no John Donahers out there.

No. Like if you said, I want a guy who was a professor of philosophy at Columbia University Who's a genius who fell in love with jiu-jitsu and is dedicated to it so much so that he walks around with a rash guard every day, yeah I just just I you know, I was just kidding myself like so John are we gonna gonna do gear no G. Yeah, I Think you're banding to key a long time ago, right? Yeah.

He's like, no gi. Yeah. I mean, you can do – the good thing about doing the gi is you must be defensively responsible because you can't get out of stuff. You can't just power out of things. You know, like there's certain techniques that you just – you know, when you get trapped in them, you really have to mind your P's and Q's when you get out if you have a gi. Yeah. And I like training both because I like kind of training my mind to not rely on the gi. But then when there's something like a lapel or a jacket or a gi available, then I've trained how to deal with that piece of fabric that's now a tool for you.

Well, I got very fortunate that I learned gi from John Jock Machado. And John Jock Machado only has one hand. His left hand, he only has a thumb. So John Jock's game was always overhooks and underhooks and clinch. And, you know, that's why he was so successful in Abu Dhabi in the early days because it all of his strategy completely applied to no Gi you know and so I sort of when I was training with Gi with John Jacques and no Gi with Eddie Bravo I would do the same things I would just have to be more responsible defensively when I train with the gi. You just can't explode.

Right. You know? I got back problems. I probably shouldn't train as much gi anyway because guys get a hold of it and then you're dealing with lower back issues. Do you have back problems? What kind of back problems do you have? Just lower back stuff.

Yeah? Trying to do all the, try it every, it's just age and beat down and travel. You know, like on the bus trying to describe i was just trying to describe bus life to your guys out there like you know it's you're sleeping in kind of a coffin um so it's kind of weird you know you can't really sit up because there's a there's something above your head how much time do you spend on the bus well between every gig unless there's a day off so you know we're doing two on three on and you're so you're sleeping on the bus but it's like imagine sleeping and then four people on each

corner of your bed every 45 minutes just shaking it fuck that yeah so you're like you're trying to get a solid seven eight hours sleep you end up having to get 11 hours of sleep because three or four of that is you waking up in the middle of the night because you hit bumps bad roads you know so what do you do you have the driver drive you in the middle of the night yeah so after the show you're in the bus and you're going to the next city and you know depending on the depending on the drive if it's you know four hours six hours, six hours, eight hours, nine hours. Yeah, I have friends who do that. Like, Burt Kreischer does that. That's his thing.

He loves tours and buses. I'm not into it. I don't love it. I enjoy performing the songs. The travel part is the most difficult part. And then, you know, so you're in air-conditioned scenarios, so you're getting a little dehydrated. You're trying to have to hydrate a little bit more than you normally would.

And you're having to perform that night. So training can be difficult on the road. So try to do whatever I can to get training in. Yeah, I admire people that just hit gyms, like random gyms, just show up at places when they're on the road like that's a bold move you never know who you're going to train with yeah no and that's and i'm i'm a i'm a pussy that way for sure i i people that i know i have the mats they come to me or if it's if i'm going to a place it's because i know the person do you weight train at all not much i used

to a little bit. It's really good for preventing injuries. When you're talking about your lower back situation, I'll show you some stuff, some of the equipment we have out there afterwards. Is it like kettlebell stuff? Kettlebell stuff's great, but for the lower back, there's a machine called the Reverse Hyper that we have out there that's phenomenal because it decompresses your back and it also strengthens all the muscles around it. All right. It was invented by Louie Simmons, who's this genius.

That's Louie right there. Rest in peace. Hello. He has left us and gone to the next stage of existence. But that machine, he developed because Louie was like a world famous power lifter and his back got fucked and they told him to get his back fused because it was compressed. And so he figured out a way to decompress the spine with active decompression. So that thing, as it swings down, and you'll feel it.

I'll show it to you afterwards when we go into the gym. That thing decompresses your spine on the downswing, and then on the upswing, it actually strengthens the muscles around the back. Anybody that has the room for it and has like some issues with their lower back even if you don't have issues if you don't want to ever have issues i can't recommend that machine enough it's phenomenal for a back i will i will take that advice i just feel like when you get to our age you must weight train it just i don't think it's an if and or but i think you have to do it because you otherwise you lose muscle density you lose bone density you know we're deteriorating must weight train. It's just, I don't think it's an if, and, or, but. I think you have to do it. Because otherwise you lose muscle density, you lose bone density, you know.

We're deteriorating, man. Yeah. Father time wants to fuck us over and grind us into dust. Yeah. And, you know, that's, and this is me making excuses, but, you know, there's a lot going on with the winery. Oh, yeah. So even just going to do jujitsu during harvest is, like, nearly impossible because you're doing 10-hour days, and so I just don't have the time.

And you're in the sun, so by the time your day is done, you're like, I need a beer and I need to go to sleep. Yeah. Do you take electrolytes? Mm-hmm. What do you take? I don't know. Henry Aikens turned me on to this little packet of stuff that's pretty good.

Do you know the company that makes it? No, I don't have. There's a bunch of good ones. I like liquid IVs. That's like when we have a couple extra interns that are starting with us in the cellar. Because it's Arizona. It might be 90 degrees, but it's 110 on the concrete. Just all that radiant heat off the concrete.

So I make everybody have an electrolyte drink just before we even start. Here, drink this. Now we're going to take every 15 minutes, stop, grab water, drink water, just because it's not easy working in the sun like that. I think you live a fascinating life. I think the combination of the things that you do is so unique. You know, the fact that you run this winery and you're very serious about it, you make this amazing wine. And yet also you're making this fucking killer music and

you're doing the two of them together. I also, I also make great pasta. Yeah, you do make great pasta. You make great pizza too, man. That pizza place. Well, Steve makes the pizza, but yeah. Well, your restaurant, your Osteria. That's how you say it, right? Osteria, yes. That place is awesome. Yeah, it's good.

Scottsdale. Yeah. So I'm on here to talk about stuff. What do you want to talk about? Because I'm doing stuff. What are you doing? Full disclosure, I'm here because I'm pimping stuff that i'm selling you're pimping yeah i'm pimping what are you pimping pimping my wares uh so we did this look like a pimp look at that jacket

hey hey very pimply hey forget about it i love that jacket uh so we did it when the when the whole lockdown shit happened um and we were we were, we couldn't tour, um, it sucked cause I just, I just released, uh, the Tool album. And then on the heels of that, I released the Pussifer Existential Reckoning and we couldn't tour Existential Reckoning.

So we did, we figured out, okay, screw it. Everybody's doing these, um, these, uh,

streaming events, pay-per-views. Right. So we did one for the, for the release of the album. And for Pussifer, it just made sense. That was the thing that for what we do with our characters and some of our sense of humor and the nature of some of the kind of interesting,

heady landscapes that we kind of paint with some of the songs. It's a really interesting format for us, and everybody in the band went, this is a great, this is a good thing for us. So we did another one. We did Billy Dee and the Hall of Feathered Servants, which was all of the Money Shot album and all the luchador stuff that we shot at the Mayan Theater. We released that one.

So we went ahead and did this still during lockdown, before we actually got back on the road. We did Conditions of My Parole, the whole album called Parole Violator. So it's a bunch of stuff that's got Billy Dee and Major Douche and a bunch of the characters, Hildy and everything, along with everything from Conditions of My Parole. And we did a bunch of the V is for Vagina era songs, reworked them completely and shot that all in the Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood. There's come some bits in that one as well. But those are two pay-per-views that are coming out this coming weekend, Halloween weekend.

And do you do these pay-per-views off your website? Well, yeah, Pusser4TV.com is is where they're gonna live for now as a temporary thing. Eventually we'll release them on Blu-ray and through iTunes and all that stuff. There it is right here. Double feature. Oh yeah. Nice. Yeah, so it's just such a fun, when I figured out what it was and how we can do it, and how we were like ducked to water with it, which which is all of us are really good with just the concepts, putting it all together.

Matt Mitchell's an incredible, not only just a producer for the record and engineer, but also his approach to figuring out how to put all these things together. And our team, his girlfriend, Elisa. You live in a fun life, dude. Oh, yeah. I like what you're doing. Yeah, so it's just, I don't know, we just kind of went, it resonates with us, this approach of doing this thing.

Like the idea of doing a series, a poster for a series, that doesn't really, I think full concert with all the cool stuff in it. Are you bandied about doing a series? Have you thought about it? Yeah, but I think, you know, I'm friends with Mark Brooks, who used to be a part of Metal ocalypse, and conversations I'd had with him and various other people that have been involved in those things, they're like, as soon as you go down that path as somebody like Adult Swim or Comedy Central or one of those things, they just own that thing now.

So imagine like me getting in the wrong contract and now all these characters that I've developed, I can't even take these on the road now because some other douchebag. Oh, you can't do that. No, no, no. We're not doing that. No, no, no. What about doing it independently? What about doing a series, you know, doing it yourself? Well, I think my attention span i think having being at the full

hour the hour and change thing that makes sense doing like the small episodes and having to to build in all those stories for an entire season and have somebody expect following through with the next season i don't think that i could i don't think i could do that do you have to kind of manage you have so many interests you kind of have to manage your time wisely don't you because the the vineyard the winery requires so much focus and so much attention as does the creation of the music and I couldn't I couldn't do with the winery the success of the winery I couldn't do it without people like uh you know my wife and and Tim White and Calvin and the various people that are involved, Aaron Weiss, in kind of handling their jobs, the delegation of what you

guys do. I have to be there to make the decisions when it comes to the winemaking. I'm on the forklift. I'm the one, you know, they're deciding what's going to go in what tank because everything ends up making, it changes the outcome of what's happening. And in what tank because everything ends up making, it changes the outcome of what's happening. And that's just the approaches of when we're picking the grapes, what grapes are we planting? All those things come back to me, but the follow through, if I didn't have Jen and Tim and Calvin and Aaron and all my vineyard managers,

Chris and Jesse, if I didn't have those people in place, I couldn't do it at all, at all. So it's not just a matter of me organizing my time. It's also about me delegating to people that I can trust to make the decision beyond the initial framework that I've set in place. Now, when you make wine and you grow these grapes, the grapes vary seasonally. Does the flavor vary dependent upon the weather conditions and what you do and don't do to the soil? Does that mature or change over time? Yeah. And generally speaking, you're trying to pick a location that the soil itself is going to express something in this way for a very, you know, forever. That's going to be what that site does. And what's the variables when it comes to the soil?

Well, this is a word called terroir. Terroir? Yeah, and it's everything. Everything, every completely untrackable thing that you could think of in terms of the levels of moisture, when that moisture hits that soil, how deep does that moisture go in, the content, the geology of the soil, the weather patterns in that area and how they shift year to year, what actual clone did you plant in that spot and how that clone is going to react differently to all of those infinite variables of just the soil, never mind the infinite variables of the weather. And then when you choose to pick how you choose to prune, how many clusters you decide to set on that particular vine, how you decide to train that vine, is it going to be a unilateral, is it going to be bilateral, is it going to be just a bush pruned, all these different variables about how you're going to do that farming, that affects the outcome. In general though, if there's a particular region that does well with a particular grape, like Oregon with Pinot Noir, there might be various ways that

they're pruning and adjusting how they're training and growing that fruit, but generally speaking, it's going to be Pinot from Oregon. It's going to have a particular profile across that state. Variations from region to region, from site to site, from producer to producer, but in general, it should have a signature that suggests Oregon Pinot, allegedly. Allegedly. Do you follow other types? Do you follow cigar growing or coffee growing or all these other different things that vary so much on the soil and things along

those lines? Coffee a little bit. We just picked up a, well, it's not here yet. Do you like, you want some? Have some of this? No, I'm good. I'm good. This is good stuff. I've had two today, so I'm going to yammer a little bit. I like yammering. Hey, yammer. That's what we do. I just picked up, it's not here yet, we picked up a nice modern roaster. So, because once I move the Osteria that's in Cottonwood up to the new Hill Project, that building in Cottonwood will become a coffee roaster and breakfast brunch place. So we're actually pursuing relationships with beans and importers of coffee beans. So when you do that, like I'm good friends with Evan Hafer from Black Rival Coffee,

and he'll travel all over the world and try out different beans and try out different things, and that's what this stuff is right here. I've gotten really into it. Oh, this is Black Rival? Yeah. Get some of that stuff. Well, then I got to. That's what I'm talking about.

Sorry, brother. I didn't know it was yours brother i'm sorry yeah no he's cheers sir cheers good to see you yeah evan makes some fucking phenomenal stuff oh yeah yeah so you know so i have my you know todd fox is basically my my go-to guy he he actually has he has that eye of the tiger on those kind of things, and he'll point out things because I'm just, dude, I'm living and I'm going. And he'll go, check out the difference between these Colombian beans and these Brazilian beans.

And I'll go, okay. He'll be the one that kind of slows me down to focus on, check it out. You're like, you know what? All right. Then he'll put stuff you know randomly we'll have some stuff he goes what do you think of that one and i really like that he goes that was those are the brazilian beans so so he's starting to help me kind of identify what it is that i like in a coffee in an approach because i don't like a band i don't have to sound like

pink floyd or led zeppelin i just have to sound like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. I just have to sound like me and express the way I'm going to express. So I don't need to be able to make every kind of coffee from every part of the world. I just need to figure out the ones that I like because I'm kind of, in a way, I'm making it for me, but I'm also selling it. But I'm not selling it to everybody. I'm selling it to the people that are going to like it and they're going to come to my place because that's unique. I had a guy on the podcast years back, Peter Giuliano, is that his name? He's like a legitimate coffee nerd.

And we went down like a three-hour rabbit hole of coffee where he explained to me all the beans initially came from Ethiopia and how their flavors changed as they moved them to South America and grew in Columbia. That's an expression of terroir. It changes clone to weather to soil to grower to roaster. I mean – There's so many rabbit holes you can go down with that kind of stuff. Like, you know, your average large commercial facility is that have a consistent coffee

that's not great. It's usually over-roasted or they overheat it when they do the coffee because they're just trying to cover up flaws. Right. Well, it's just like when people talk about coffee and they talk about commercial places, most of the people are buying stuff that's just, they're not really buying coffee. They're buying sugar water. Right. That's got caffeine in it. I was at, uh, I went to do a, an article and a training session out at gun site in, uh, in outside of, in Paulding, Arizona.

It's an old school training facility. And I went there, you know, early morning, we're going to do this whole gun range thing. And this guy named Charlie sitting at the table, he goes, you want some coffee? I'm like, sure. He goes, cream and sugar. I normally don't, but like, it sounded like that's what he, yeah. Yeah, sure. He goes, I asked if you wanted coffee, not pudding. So he's testing you.

Fucking clotheslined me. First out of the box. Fuck you. But I fell for it. Yeah yeah i only go black now it's been like a couple of years now i only drink black coffee i do i do a little bit of cream uh and i think and i've and i'm i've been pretty consistent with that lately because because i'm now i'm focusing on what beans i like and for me i know it's going to change once i once i remove the cream, but that's the lens that I see the coffee through is I have to have the cream in there because that's how I'm

going to drink it. So I'm trying to figure out what ones I like. And with that lens, I know that if I remove that lens, it's probably going to change my perception of what coffees I like. It's funny, the cream debate, whether or not you should put cream in coffee. It's probably going to change my perception of what coffees I like. It's funny, the cream debate, whether or not you should put cream in coffee. It's an interesting thing because— I think there's far bigger issues in the world to discuss. There definitely are. There definitely are, but it's just such a funny snob thing. Leave my cream alone, man.

Listen, I like it. I like cream. I like cream in a Kona, a Kona coffee. Yeah. I like a little cream in there, but generally I just drink it black now. Yeah, I'm planning trips to Hawaii because I want to establish some relationships with some Maui growers so that I can actually make that be part of what I'm doing in Arizona, but also because I get to go train with Luis.

Oh, okay, yeah. Maui Jiu-Jitsu. Luis was my first instructor ever. He taught me my first private lesson. Really? Yeah. He had Hickson's. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. Luis was my first instructor ever. He taught me my first private lesson. Really? Yeah. He had Hickson's. Okay. Yeah. On Pico. Yeah. 1996. Yep. I must've just missed you. Yeah. Well, I only went there a couple of times and then I found Carlson Gracie's and I was so dumb. I didn't know. I'm like, oh, this is a different place, but it's the same name. Must be the same thing. And I caught Carlson Gracie's

right when Vitor when they were still calling him Victor right and he had just competed against John Hess in Hawaii that was his debut he was like 19 years old and then he was about to make his UFC debut yeah I remember I remember sitting behind Vitor one row behind him when Silva broke his leg. Oh, wow. But it's like, here's Vitor's head, and I'm like having to figure out how to see around this fucking brick. His head is huge. Well, when he got up to like 240 pounds when he fought Randy Couture, it was preposterous.

Yeah. He was an enormous man. Yes. But those days, like, those early days of the UFC were so interesting because, like, there's nothing like MMA in that regard or jiu-jitsu where you can go back just 25 years and you go and look at the difference between the art form then and what it is now. It's just evolved and leaps and bounds. It's evolved, but there's also, yeah, there's some, you know, we could go on for hours about it.

But when I first started at Pico, it was, you could tell that there was a, you know, there was a, there was a club within the club and I was never going to have access to that information. Oh, back then there was. Yeah. And then it was really weird. And you're not allowed to go to somebody else's gym. So I'm traveling and I'm like, I couldn't, I couldn't train with anybody. I had to like, I had to wait till I got back to LA to, to pick it up. Unless I brought somebody with me on the road to train some techniques, I had no idea what the hell we were doing. Yeah, I was very fortunate that Jean-Jacques did not have that attitude. Jean-Jacques was just, go train, my friend. Train. Train every way you can. And he was such a great guy, and he had such a loyal student base that he had zero concerns about people leaving him.

You know, his concern was just that you trained. Right. Which is very fortunate. I didn't have that because it was just such a weird at that moment. It was a famine mentality in the early days. Well, there was also lawsuits going on because, like, the Gracies were suing other people for using the Gracie name you know like Orion didn't he sue Carlson I think

they sure they'd suit so he sued someone for using the term Gracie jiu-jitsu even though Carlson's last name was Gracie I don't know if it was Carlson I don't want to misrepresent it but I know that there was some Lawsuits involved because Gracie jiu-jitsu itself became like a different thing They were calling that a different thing than just straight Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right? and now I think it's the op like I you know, I'm not sure where it is now, but Whatever. I give up. Well, you mean that's where it becomes fascinating where a guy like John Donahue kind of like leaps to the top of this thing with just this analytical perspective that's completely free of dogma. All he cares about is what is the correct way to do things.

It was the most effective in tried and true competition format. Like this is what we've learned without any bullshit. Yeah. This is what we've learned without any bullshit. Yeah. And that's been great for me to be on the road training with somebody like John, like my friends at Easton and Denver and Dave and Dan Camarillo. They all have a slightly different approach to the things. Some of the guys are going to be a little more self-defense oriented. So they're going gonna be looking to check your position to make sure you can't get hit in the

face right but if you but I'm a grown-ass man and so you go okay I am playing jujitsu I'm not worried about getting hit in the face I'm going to train this position to understand how to move my body because that's what it is about it's about if at the end of the day, it is about me taking you offline and advancing. But really it's about you and your self-discovery and your ability for self-control, me being able to control my body to do a thing. And if you don't have that self-awareness of understanding that this isn't just you flopping around like a fish accidentally kneeing some dude in the face while you're going for a move you're not really progressing if you don't understand that it is about your self-control so okay yeah that's self that's a self-defense approach to the jiu-jitsu but i'm also conscious enough to know okay i'm gonna do this look and i'm

gonna play around with x guard and see what happens because i've never done it and i want to see how that what that is how much is that how much is training in jiu-jitsu help just your your mind the way you approach life and we think about things well it's it's like I've mentioned before on your show this is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life this is not does not come easy for me I am the perfect example of a klutzy dude who this is not natural for me to do. And because of that, because of that, forever it was stressful. And so you're activating your mind in a stressful situation, and you're still getting oxygen in your blood, and you're moving, and you're opening up things.

But at some point it became more like chess instead of this oh my god this guy's gonna tap me well of course he's gonna tap you if you just get that in your head like i'm going i might lose today i'm probably gonna lose today be comfortable in that moment of understanding how to like be conscious and aware in that moment so that you can recognize the moment before you get to the moment now for next time that was a weird shift for me getting to a position of like i'm in a compromised position but i'm going to get to a safe position within the compromised position take a deep breath and pay attention to what he does next so that next time I can be ahead of what he does next. Weird mental thing.

And then training enough that you could store all this data and have it accessible when these scenarios present themselves again. Yeah, because, again, it's about body control and understanding what your body is going to do naturally now. The drilling, the drilling, the drilling. I cannot stress enough, the drilling in a safe environment with somebody who's not trying to tear your head off, with a good training partner who's going to give you the resistance you need

to be able to rep, you know, the repetition and then replicate that movement. Yeah, we're talking about jujitsu, but we're not. We're talking about making pasta. We're talking about making pasta. We're talking about making wine. These are things that apply to every area of your life. If you can find one that's more difficult for you than the other ones, you'll improve the things that come naturally to you by focusing on the thing that doesn't come naturally to you. Yeah. It's the great quote from Miyamoto Musashi. Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. That's the beauty of martial arts. And that's the thing that's missed by people that don't practice it, that think of it as like some sort of brutal endeavor for, you know, macho brutes, assholes. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, macho brutes, assholes. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, we know those guys. They exist.

Yeah, they exist. But they need to exercise too. Yeah. Yeah, they do. But, you know, I think that just that finding that thing that's actually challenging you physically, mentally, spiritually helps with other things that come along. Because there's, you know, the world's weird right now. There's things, I don't know, I feel like we're helping train people to understand that the world goes through a lot of changes. There's going to be

a lot of stress. Nobody's going to, 90% of the people in the world are not going to agree with you. And if you can get through that mentally and emotionally and spiritually to know that there's something on the other side. Yeah. I think things like jujitsu, things like growing food, resigning yourself to nature and having to navigate farming, those kind of things, they start to reset you in a way where like it's not this not everything has to be an argument sometimes it's you just having to navigate the fucking weather yeah if you can get to that mindset you get a lot more done honestly

and you'll survive shit that some people won't because they're so focused on the petty dumb shit that they're going to miss the bigger picture. I think a lot of the petty stuff is people also want you to agree with them. That's not really necessary. You know, so many people, they have an opinion, and they feel like if they can't convince you that they're correct or they can't force their opinion on you, that somehow or another it invalidates their own perspective. Yeah.

I find that, you know, going back, again, we go right back to jujitsu. We know guys that are like, no, this is the only way to do this move. Right, right, right. Yeah. Well, I just watched this guy beat the shit out of everyone at ADCC, and he's not doing the things that you're telling me that you're supposed to only do. And then this is the only way that, well, using Hickson example, Hickson says, only do this, this, this, and this.

You never do these other things. It's like, have you not watched his Valley Tudor videos? He did everything the opposite of what you just said. He had his nose before his toes. He had all these things that you're like, you're not supposed to do. And it's like, you know, those things are not necessarily 100%.

So you have to be open-minded. You have to disagree with it being one way. Yeah. I mean, it really is an art. And then be open to hearing the way that you didn't think it was. And there's all these variables, like the size of your frame, the way your body moves, whether or not you're flexible. There's so many variables that will present themselves in this sort of equation of how do you express yourself on the mat.

Now, the one thing that I was talking to Donald, the guy you just met today, you know, you were trying to convince a couple of friends to take a class. You know, they're not very athletic, but they, you know, musician friends like, yeah, just come in and take the white belt class. You're in a safe environment. And getting them to understand, like, when you walk in the room and you see a dude shaped like you, that might not be the biggest sniper in the room. It might be that geeky kid in the corner who looks like he probably works in a library. Yeah, oftentimes it is. And he's the one who's going to fuck you up. He looks like he's like, you know, the nerd in the corner with the glasses and the goofy hair.

Yeah. He's the guy who's going to fuck you up. The nerd assassins. Yeah. Well, because they're analytical. Yeah. He's the guy who's going to fuck you up. The nerd assassins. Yeah.

Well, because they're analytical. And jiu-jitsu favors analytical approach. You analyze positions and analyze possible counters and traps you can set. That's why I love guys like Mikey Musumechi. You know who he is? No. He is a fascinating fellow. I had him on the podcast. He is a fascinating fellow who I had him on the podcast.

He's like the smiliest assassin, thick glasses, only eats pizza and pasta. And he only eats once a day. Trains, no bullshit, 12 hours a day. Just constantly drilling and going over positions. Big-ass smile on his face. He's multiple-time world champion. Okay. And he's just fucking assassinating people. We have a new guy at our gym

Brown Belt out of Easton and he's kind of a geeky dude tall with glasses his name's Clay Wimmer he's from a malls gym in Colorado yeah he's out of Centennial I think he got his Brown Belt from Velour and he

when he's rolling he's got this creepy grin on his face like, you're creeping me out, dude. Stop grinning. And he's like, he's one of those backpack fuckers. He gets red on your back and you're like, you're screwed. And he got there. You don't know how he got there, but he got there. And he's grinning the whole time, like sometimes chewing gum.

You're like, are you? You're chewing. You're chewing gum and you're grinning. You're creeping me out, man. That's Mikey. Pull up Mikey Musumechi takes Imanari's back. There's a video of him. Watch this.

This is, he already took the back. Watch how he takes it back. Go back a little bit of ways and you see the position. So they're in a scramble. And Imanari, who's like the master leg locker, watch how Mikey takes his back. This is so fucking beautiful. He takes him out.

This is Mikey on top here. And this is, again, this is against Imanari. Look at this back take. Look at that. He got that neck grab. Do you see how sweet that was? Yeah. Look how sweet.

Back up a little bit. Look how sweet that was. So he's in there. Look at that, man. Fucking so slick. Yeah. And again, that's him doing it to Imanari, who's just a fucking legend. And he traps the arm.

I mean, just incredible stuff. Super, super high level. That's Mikey. And I think he's 24. You got it. Hey, look at him. he's 24. You got it. Look at him. That's Mikey. I love that guy.

He's amazing. And it's to me that he's my favorite example when I show people. $15,000 bonus for that incredible performance. Yeah. Wow. He's just such a sweet guy, too. And so talented. That's what I love about Jiu-Jitsu.

That's like, that's a world champion. Right. That it's just, it's an art form. I mean, he might as well be playing the violin. He might as well be, you know, making paintings or something. It's like, that's what he's doing. Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's, yeah. And like I said, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

It's fucking hard as shit. Yeah. Yeah, when I, that's, there's a bond that you have. Like I hung out with Guy Ritchie this past weekend in London, and we had the same sort of conversation. Like he did my podcast a few years back, and he said, I wanted to do your podcast because I knew you were a jujitsu guy. He's like, I knew we would have

like very common perspectives on things. Like there's a thing, if you've done it and you've gotten to like, he's a black belt under Henzo. Guy's, he's really legit. And you would never know because he's like super unassuming guy. But then you start talking to him

about details and stuff. Like, oh, you're fucking legit. He's for real. I love those guys. Yeah. You know, the guys that doesn't really happen anymore, but like the kind of guy that you wish you were at the end of the bar in some scenario where two dudes or one guy is just fucking with the nerd at the bar before camera, before, you know, before these.

So you could actually get away. He could actually get away with it, you know, like, you know, in a bar and I'd like just go, oh, this is going to be great. Did you see the video of Henzo Gracie taking some guy down on the subway? Yeah. Some asshole just got really shitty. And he just like, my friend, you've made a big mistake. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't do that anymore it's a way of life though it really is it's a way of making this thing so difficult that the rest of life seems maybe not less complicated

but more understandable okay you know what I'm saying through that struggle of that thing you can kind of like apply those lessons to other stuff yeah yeah I agree I think it's I've over the years I've applied it to of course writing and and putting music together that's definitely that that struggle of like you hit up you hit a wall you have to navigate you know through around her over when you write do you write on your own do you write with other people like how do you create music do you create music alone it's it's like for

me it's it's okay I'm gonna train i'm gonna train jujitsu okay we're gonna bring it back to that because that's that's our that's our that's our uh our base here uh if i'm you know if i'm gonna train with somebody every different every body type is going to be a different thing and i can't just you know how it is if you if you're just going to force your will on some other dude then it's just two idiots trying to force their will on each other and you're going to gas out. You have to see what this thing is and this person, how they're approaching you. Are they approaching you standing? Are they butt scooting? Are they going to, you know, are they going to, you know, whatever they're going to do. Each song and every riff or whatever is a reaction to what I'm seeing or hearing.

Right? So I'm not just going to come in with a lyric and come in with a line on top of some kind of rhythm or melody. I have to pay attention to what's in front of me and work around that thing and listen to it and pay attention to it and drill. So how does this process start? Like, say you have a blank slate. that thing and listen to it and pay attention to it and drill. So how does this process start? Like say you have a blank slate. Blank slate. So for me, there's not really a blank slate. It's me going to, maybe it's me going to, um, Matt and going, okay, just in general, uh, I'd like to see what we can do with, there's some sounds that I heard on this, you know,

maybe it's a movie soundtrack, maybe it was a record, you know, maybe I'm picking out like mandolin or, you know, some kind of a particular pedal from a guitar or a film that has like a ricotta riff going through it or something, a vibe. And maybe Matt has picked up, in the case of Existential Reck reckoning he picked up a bunch of amazing old synths like Fairlight and Sinclair and all this kind of cool shit that's in a way it's what do you think since synthesizers yeah so old-school like you know Kraftwerk you know yes old like you know Michael Jackson's like I'm like that familiar ba-room, ba-room, ba-room.

Like, that familiar sound that's from a very specific thing. And you can manipulate those sounds to a point, but you're kind of boxed in on what those things can do in some cases. Like, the Fairlight's very, it's going to give you a very specific sound. It's going to give you a very specific sound. Now there's the framework, and he'll come up with a melody or a thing, and he'll throw it to me, and I'll just drill, drill, drill that thing into my head, driving around with it in my car, truck, putting headphones on on the plane, and just listen in the cellar.

I'll put it on while I'm working on stuff just to put that thing on loop and drill it into my head of what it is so that I can figure out how to go through, around, or over this thing, work with it, work against it intentionally. So it's a mathematical, three-dimensional, geometric puzzle. So when you're listening to it and you're just like going over in your head, you're just like allowing it to talk to you? Correct. Correct. You know, just like we were going over today with Danaher. Like, okay, we're in this position,

but did the guy retract his elbow or did he leave his elbow forward? Is the riff giving me an elbow or is the riff cutting me off on a particular rhythm or a melody? Because, you know, you might have a melody in mind, but you get closer to the end of that riff and it might have changed directions, then your note is sour.

So you have to pay attention to what note goes with that thing. And rhythmically as well as sonically, like, you know, melodically. So it's you getting used to this thing because, and he might be able to move it. I might go back, Hey man, can we, can we adjust a few things in here and move forward? So it is definitely a step-by-step piece. I will respond. Then he will give me back a thing or these developed further and I'll respond to his response. and I'll respond to his response. And then at some point, I'll go to Karina and go,

hey, I'd like to hear, before I go too far, I want to hear what you would do over what I've done, over what he's done. And now it's a tryout of us navigating that sonic landscape. So it must be an interesting dance in that you have to do it with people that have sort of the same engagement that you do. Same level of discipline, the same... Same level of discipline, but strengths where I don't have strengths, I have strengths where they don't have strengths. So you're kind of filling in each other's gaps with a common goal. kind of filling in each other's gaps with a common goal. So yeah, so we definitely have common things that we like, but we also bring different strengths to the table to make it work as a whole. That's one of the more challenging things I would imagine about a band, is that you kind of have to

get everybody on the same sort of... You have to remain open. Your listening skills should be as important and as honed as your regurgitating skills. I'm successful, and this is what I do. Fuck you. No. Then it just starts sounding the same. You're not progressing as an artist to kind of reinvent yourself and see things from a different perspective do you see my opinion do you

see this like this process does it do you see this process clear more clearly now then you did years ago like is this something that you get better at oh yeah like anything it's just that's you you get better I think you just get better at? Oh yeah. Like anything. It's just, it's, you, you get better. I think you just get better at listening the more you listen. And I've, you know, it's like, it's like anything. There's a, there's a, an action reaction. And then there's, there's some kind of reinforcement of that behavior, right? I found that when I started listening more and reacting more as a listener, the, the reinforcement of that behavior was that there was a better thing that came out the other end rather than just sounding like something I'd already done before jammed over something that somebody else has already done before. So you reinvent.

And then the behavior is reinforced because the thing, not from somebody externally, but from the thing that you're hearing, you go, I've never heard me do that before. Great. Keep honing that knife. How long can you do that for? Ever. Forever. Yeah, just listen forever. Because you're going to be hearing it at a different age. You're going to be hearing it differently than you would 10 years ago or 20 years ago right

because you have different life experiences so as long as it's engaging as long as it's fascinating right i will definitely you know probably already i you know i'm in have my head up my own ass but you know i i won't be relevant to the tiktokers of the world because that's just not it's not on their radar it's not those people that listen to the things they listen to and the things that respond the people that respond to the things they respond to now i'm not necessarily relevant but there's an entire generation of people that's not just my generation there's people older than me and much younger than me that have grown with this thing and so as they're aging they're they're they're discovering it right right can you think do you think about that though do you think about like whether or not

you're relevant or whether or not? You can't. Because you'll start being desperate and getting plastic surgery and looking like a fucking alien and trying to insert yourself into some stupid fucking thing. I'm not talking about anybody. Yeah. No, you can't. I'm not talking about my peers. Fuck, man.

If you're alive, you have to assume other people are going to... If you're on a vibe, there's other people that are going to be on that vibe. There's so many people. Yeah. You can't, yeah. The quest for relevancy is like, oh, boy. It turns to desperation very quickly. Yeah.

It reeks. So just maintain your art, dude. Like just, and then, I don't know, we're just having, we're having fun creating. Well, you guys are also so diverse. Like your sounds are so diverse. And I think that's one of the strengths of you is that with Tool and Pussifer and like, you know, Perfect Circle, you've done so, so much different stuff. It's like. That's the listening part. What does Billy do? What does, what do Adam, Justin and Danny do?

What does Matt and Karina do? I'm listening to what they're doing and having that conversation with them and building on those relationships. They're different conversations. They're different people with different life experiences. The art and the sounds that come out of those people is going to be 100% different. Even if I'm the common thing,

if nobody knew that I was in Pussifer and you were just listening to it you might pick up that i that kind of sounds like the guy from perfect circle but probably not like it would be a whole different experience if you didn't know that i was involved yeah for sure that's why i think these kind of conversations are so interesting to other artists because they get to like see this sort of like, you know, you've been around long enough that you have a foundation. You know, you're solid in your approach. And there's a lot of people out there that are like, am I doing it right? I mean, what am I doing? I don't know.

Is this the right way to do it? Should I change it? What should I do? And then I have that. I'm fairly confident in some things, but I try to change it up as much as I can. I guess that's going to start roasting coffee soon, so maybe that's one of those resets of I don't know what I'm doing. Right. Let's relearn this thing that I don't have any idea, and it might suck.

Those are valuable, right? Those new things? I think, I think so. I think just that, you know, it could be written off to like midlife crisis, but I think it's also, um, just understanding that chaos and change is part of life. And if you can kind of get yourself to recognize that things aren't, you're not going to just get to a spot and it's going to be that for the rest of your life. It's always going to be something changing. I think it also speaks to the complex aspect of thinking itself because like what is – what are thoughts and creativity and how do you keep them inspired and engaged? And I think one of the ways to do it is to become a beginner again.

Yeah. To just try. I started getting back into jujitsu. It took me forever to get back in because I was living in a remote area. But then when I got into it, I was progressing. And then I felt like, OK, I need to, you know, I need to ruin my day. So I took up Muay Thai, which is like way, like I'm not great at jujitsu. Holy shit, I really suck at Muay Thai.

Well, you also did it after a hip replacement, which is pretty wild. Yeah, well, I'm not smart. but you are because it's like why not if fucking they fixed it yeah but that works that kind of a reset where you're you're jolting your your brain into uh understanding a whole different thing you don't you're not familiar with the reset is huge i think yeah and you know And, you know, now it's... But, you know, I'm a fairly successful musician. I have a backup plan. I have these things.

I think on some level I can do that. Not a lot of people can think in terms of, like, their entire career of a reset of their entire career because there might not be something for you. You might not be able to do that. Right. I can kind of get away with that for now well it's also harder if you're boxed into it like if you're a pop star you know you're

boxed into yeah you know you have like a very specific genre that you're successful in very hard for those people to branch out yeah you know because i'm sure you've met people that are huge in their in their their genres that are just pop star huge and i don't i don't know i've haven't met a lot of those people i have no idea if there's that there's a core person to have a conversation with i have no idea because i'm. There is with some of them. I don't travel in those circles. Like with Miley Cyrus, there is. She's fascinating.

She's a unique little artist. I haven't met her. She's wild. She's very interesting. She's a real artist. But she's also a pop star. I make fun of her in our new show. Not bad.

I think she would find the joke very funny. I'm sure she would. She's got a good sense of humor. She's fun. But, you know, she's a pop star, but she's also like she experiments with shit. And she's, you know, trying to find whatever it is that's engaging to her. Right. Yeah.

And I have friends that are mutual friends with her. And I think that's what I'm hearing. Yeah. She's digging. I became interested in her when she covered Jolene. I heard that song. Jesus. There's a soul to that girl's voice that belies her age and what you would expect from her.

Right. age and you know and what you would expect from her right you know to cover that dolly parton song and do it and it's like very unique way with a like a beautiful fucking sound to it right you know yeah but again trapped in that machine yeah for sure and that was that you know she literally had to start swearing every other word to break out of at least part of that. You're so trapped into, you know, a Hannah Montana thing that in order to get out of that, you had to start, you know, almost like go full Mike Patton and start smearing shit on everything. Just to fucking erase it, you know, to start over. Well, that just, that happens to a lot of those people.

They just get stuck in this thing that's like uber successful and yeah but you know it seems like she's she's figured out a way to wiggle she has and broaden out of it yeah a lot of it but man what a fucking what a salmon trip up the fucking waterfall that is yeah because there's so many people with their hands out, so many people that have a piece of that, so many people that don't want you to branch out because anything you do that's not that they think could ruin the gravy train that they're enjoying, right? So we can see how that might be.

And the egos involved of the of the popularity and uh and the the attention and the money the people that you get to hang out with yeah i'm just not i'm not in that circle so i don't know i don't know i'm not wired for it i'm not i'm not that's not part of my world i'm not i'm not judging it at all but i i that's not part of my world. I'm not judging it at all, but that's not part of my world. I don't know how I would react if all of a sudden, you know, if I can name five huge pop celebrities of actors and musicians, if they go, hey, we want to come to your show. Like, what did I do?

You know, what did I, how does that, what is what I'm doing have doing of any interest to you? I don't know what that would look like. Or what are you seeing? It's somebody, what? I would be very suspicious of those people coming and actually reacting to what we're doing. But is that because you box them yourself? Like you decide that like what they've created is all they are?

No, no. I'm just would want to be wondering what, yeah, maybe I guess maybe I'm being judgmental. It's easy to do, right? Yeah.

Especially it's fun to do. But like, because I know that I'm busy and those people are busy. So why would they stop what they're doing to come and do to pay attention to this thing they already have all this shit going on like why would they come to the thing and I'm talking about numbers not just one there's like five or six people all at once decided to come you know like you know Gwyneth Paltrow and fucking Brad Pitt and somebody somebody somebody

wants to come to your show I'd be like are they but they promised something there's something I don't know like why would you come here right what what interest would you have in this thing like that doesn't this how is this even on your radar you know that would be I would be very suspicious of that that's funny that you'd be suspicious yeah do you watch Black Mirror I started to back when it first came out. And some of those episodes are pretty fucking amazing. Amazing. Well, there's a really wild one with Miley Cyrus.

And in this one, she has like this evil aunt who's like controlling her career. They download her mind into this little doll, like this robot doll that you can buy. And it's like your little Miley Cyrus friend, but it actually is her inside this thing. So multiple versions of her. Yeah, but it's like, I don't want to fuck this up because people should watch it. It's a fun episode. But it's her trying to escape her pop lifestyle, but she's being controlled by all these people that have, you know, vested interest in her making extraordinary amounts of money with that genre. And then she gets out of it eventually.

Right. But it's pretty wild. But it's that thing. It's like speaks to that struggle. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, you assume that Justin Bieber is just that fucking guy that sings like a girl. You know, like he sounds like first heard Justin Bieber.

What a beautiful voice that girl has. And then I'm like, that's a guy. I'm like, oh, what? Oh, he's young. Oh, OK. And then, you know, he matures over time and he becomes this different thing. It's like, but it's still a human. You know, like if he wanted to go see a p different thing. It's like, but it's still a human. Yeah.

You know, like if he wanted to go see a pussifer show, I could imagine you'd be like, what? He would be welcome. Sure. Sure. I wouldn't, I would never say those people can't come to my, you know, I would be happy to entertain. I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm an asshole, but not that kind of an asshole. You're not a snob.

I'm not a snob. No. You're 100% welcome to come to those things. But, yeah, I wouldn't exclude anybody from that. It's art. Something might resonate with them that would end up showing up in something that they did next, right? Artists all feed off each other in some way there's like i'm inspired by a bunch of different films tv shows bands for sure visual artists you know those things inspire

me and they get me thinking on you know the next thing that i'm going to do and how do i build on that and make it make sense well music is inspirational in such a weird way too. It's like a drug, you know, like prison sex, that song, there's something about that song that makes me want to lift. Like when I'm lifting weights, that song is just like the guitar riff. It's just fucking, it just like gives you extra juice. Okay. You know, there's something about music that it provides, like it opens up a specific pathway in you that it's like a drug. It really is. It's an amazing drug of inspiration. And it can be a, it's a neural map in a way that opens up that, whatever that is you're getting, there's a rhythm and a tone to that thing that's inspiring those myelin connections in you to do a thing.

I could see that. Yeah. Yeah. And also it speaks to, especially like older music, is like a time map. It's like a map of the culture when that song was created, who this person is is how they fit into the culture whether or not they're around anymore like whenever i listen to hendrix in particular it's like hendrix to me is like a map of the 60s in a lot of ways yeah it's like the rebellion from the vietnam era it's a it's a wine it's it's something that happened on that day at that time on that site in that

place made that certain way that's a time capsule of that of that moment yeah yeah it really is and unique in that way that you could kind of listen to it and it transports you it takes you there like janice joplin does that for me too okay it brings me to that time you know just just like like trying to imagine the context of how, when it was created, who she was. Right. So going back to your original question of how we write, you have to be true, to me, for the way that I write, is I'm trying to be true to who I am today. Because those are waypoints, like as you pointed out, Those are waypoints along your particular history and your experiences. So if I can be in the present moment when I'm writing those things about what's happening,

how I'm feeling about things, even though some of the experiences are lifelong experiences, how I perceive those experiences today and how I can attach those to a bed of rhythms and sounds and melodies will end up hopefully being what you're talking about. It's a waypoint for that moment in time that now you can go back and revisit. Yeah. It's such a unique art form in that way. It just encapsulates so many different things lyrics and sounds and feelings and and just you can just turn it on anytime you want i mean what a weird time too because like you just talk to your phone and tell your phone hey play me this yeah

yeah so strange it is wild the access the access to that art is so instantaneous now. Just so bizarre. But like anything, it's a hammer, right? You can use that hammer to build something. You can use that hammer to destroy something. This is such an awful thing and such an amazing thing depending on how you're how you're dealing with it yeah you can use it to gain more control more money or you can use it you know to share things with people right and help them find a way and also like having a level of discipline is so important

when engaging with that thing because that thing can can, you know, we were talking about TikTok earlier today, about how the parent company of TikTok is using TikTok to specifically monitor the locations of American individuals. And how fucking crazy that is. I deleted it. Yeah, I never had it. I wouldn't, right away I was like, what? And then when they were talking about banning it, I started looking into it away I was like what and then when they were talking about banning it I started looking into it I was like that things that's a problem and then we read on one day uh during the podcast we read the terms of service and what it's allowed to do if you in

which nobody reads and uh agree yeah agree everybody agrees But it's so fucked up that when I read it, I couldn't believe that it was real. I had to go over it from multiple different sites and then like, I want to know that this is am I being accurate with this? Does it really have access to your computers that aren't connected to TikTok? If you have the same, like if you use the same email

account, if you have the same computer and a network, yes. Yes, it does. It has access to everything you do, which is fucking bananas. So I read that over and one of my kids came home. She said that her friend was mad because her mom listened to me talk about the terms of service and made him delete TikTok from his phone. Yeah. It's a new world. it's a whole new world but on the other side there's so much there's so much interesting stuff that you can get off of it i'm i'm so much more educated about so many different subjects because of it because of that access to to yeah if i you know i just um i just harvested um some uh some of the stuff from our produce from our garden.

I'm like, I have these random things. I'm going to try to do something with these random things. Just type in the random ingredients recipe, like all these things. And there's 12 fucking recipes involving these things. And now I can make this amazing salad with these things. It's fucking delicious. And my wife's going, what the fuck is this? these things and now I can make this amazing salad with these things. It's fucking delicious. And my wife's going, what the fuck is this? You know, so there's those benefits of like,

how do I, how do I roast coffee again? How do I, you know, how do I, how do I make this particular sauce for a pasta? It's all right there. How do I fix this, this specific power washer that's broken? How do I fix this power washer so I can get back to cleaning bins oh here's a whole like for video options of like understanding how to you know fix that that mechanical thing that you could never have you'd have to take it to somebody mmm ten years ago yeah we just don't have the user manual for how to use it correctly. Right. You know, it's like everyone knows you can't drink whiskey all day long. You'll die, you know,

but you could have a drink or two and it can enhance conversation and it's a social lubricant. You feel great, but we know that because we have a human history of use that dates back hundreds and hundreds of years. This, there's no thing going to turn this fucking thing off yeah I just got a notification from my phone the other day that said my screen time is down 77% and I'm actually yes congratulations I did it yeah yeah

but that's because of that trying to like make my own user manual i find that the reason i'm on it more than i would be is because three bands three wineries you know sure all the businesses that i have going on i end up being on it a lot more than i want to be just because i'm answering questions or inspiring plans or whatever yeah i. I just have to be responsive. Yeah, for me, it's a quest for interesting shit to stimulate my mind. I mean, I'm always looking for, like, what's a new place for me to go to find things? You know, and I sometimes feel boxed in. I'm only going to, like, a specific six or seven different sites to try to get information.

Well, I need a new site. I need a new thing. Like, how do I get that thing where is it how do I get access to a new perspective that I didn't consider before and not get overwhelmed by fucking pop up ads and bullshit and nonsense

yeah I do I do you know we're on the we're currently on the road this is a stop on the way we're playing Texas with the new version 2 of the Puss in Fur Tour. And I find that when I'm in the break after sound check or before training jiu-jitsu with whatever person I can find in that town, I end up, rather than going to those things that I should, like you're talking about, I'll just go back and I'll be watching in my dressing room just old episodes of stuff. So it's almost like for me, it's like I'm turning my brain off with my Apple TV.

I'm just going to zone out and have whatever light lunch I'm going to have before the show, play with my dog, and just let that kind of be almost background noise of what's going on. So I feel like there's, there's a, an unconscious Zen thing happening with that eye candy. Uh, and you know, familiarity, like I'm, how many times can I watch Teledega nights? Many more to be honest. I'm going to watch that many more times but like that kind of thing just being there on the background as a familiar comfort you know

blanket you know to have it on so that I'm not I'm not thinking too much so in a way I'm putting that on so I'm not on this

right so you're learning I'm learning to just put a movie on that like it's going and meanwhile I'm cleaning out a drawer

in the road case of shit that I didn't need like everybody hands me t-shirts I'm trying to just put a movie on that, like, it's going, and meanwhile I'm cleaning out a drawer in the road case of shit that I didn't need. Like, everybody hands me T-shirts. I'm trying to figure out, like, okay, do I really want to hang on to this T-shirt? There's so many T-shirts. Yeah, there's so many shirts. So many shirts. I intentionally didn't bring you anything today because, like, I always, like, I feel like you're probably just every fucking time somebody comes in there,

they're just giving you shit. Yeah, but, you know, every now and then you get good shit that's true that's true it's cool i have a lot of cool shit because of that right some of it's nonsense but right but it's again it's like the phone thing like you gotta filter out what is nonsense yeah what are you doing in texas which shows we just played uh poster for just played, Pulsifer just played San Antonio and El Paso. We play Houston tomorrow and Fort Worth the day after. And I don't know where the fuck we go from there. I think it's, I want to say Louisiana, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Eventually, I think Halloween, we're actually playing in Nashville, which I'm kind of excited

about because I love Nashville. Nashville's awesome. It's getting a little weird. It's getting a little Hollywood. Yeah, but every place is going to get that way. Of course. Again, right back to this, and right back to a podcast like this, I say, oh, I love Nashville, and that

now people are going to, you know, there's going to be, even if it's five people that decide to go to Nashville because of hearing you say you like Nashville or me saying I like Nashville, you know, when did somebody say something about Austin that made you move to Austin? Because, like, you know, somebody said something and inspired you to move to Austin, which, when I used to be here, it was a much different town when I hung out here in 1985. What's now Elysium is the club now on Red River. It used to be, it might still be, it was like a gay bar. And on one night a week, it would have a thing called Club Iguana.

And it was like a kind of a goth punk rock night in that location. And that area was, you know, it was like the sketchy 7th Street was all the, you know, kind of cool alternative gay bar, punk rock thing. And the 6th Street was all the frat boy things. I think it's still kind of that. 6th Street's pretty weird now. It's got a lot of cool shit. Is it? Yeah.

Because all the hip hop clubs. Yeah. Well, Elysium now is like, I think, I could be completely wrong, but it's more like, now it's goth most of the time. Oh, really? But I don't know that. I haven't been in years. Oh, I started coming here in 99.

And I just, I always liked the fact that it seemed different than any other city. Yeah. It's got its own, I started coming here in 99. And I just always liked the fact that it seemed different than any other city. It's got its own... Is this it here? This is Austin in 1985. Nice. They look like they're dancing a wham. Wake me up. And where is this? I typed in that club

you said, and this is a video that popped up. Club Iguana? Yeah. I don't know that it's it specifically, but it's someone interviewing people on the street down there okay come here we all know each other how amazing would it be if you see me in this video because i was hoping yeah great i wouldn't you know kids by day i had my you know my army cap on and my my full of bdus you know and then you know as soon as we hit the weekend hit and we had the time off, hat comes off, two-tone hair, mohawk, wear some like adamant looking, you know, Sergeant Pepper looking jacket.

I forgot about adamant. And then like wearing, you know, like stretchy blouse for pants with a belt. So like it's actually a shirt. You're wearing it like almost like tights. Like, you know, we had a fun time. It was a a shirt. You're wearing it almost like tights. We had a fun time. It was a good time. If you saw photos of me, you'd be like, I'm posting this shit on the internet, dude. Fucking don't you fucking dare post that on the internet.

But that was a good time. It was fun because it was something I wasn't used to. In Michigan, we didn't have a club like that. And it was such a mixed, diverse group you know, a group of people. Um, I just love that area. And so I've always had a thing since then. I've always had a thing for Austin, but I've watched Austin change over the years, but it seems like it has this great, I don't have the words libertarian or, you know, century, whatever, but you've got, you've got a mix of everybody here and they've managed to get along and not kill each other.

Well, it's a good combination of a blue city and a red state, which is kind of my favorite. Right. It's like open-mindedness and progressive, but yet surrounded by people with guns who farm. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah, and that's kind of what we have kind of up in, like, in Jerome, Sedona area. It's very much that mix. Yeah.

But, you know, it's a, I don't know, I've always had a thing for Austin. I just like coming here. It's that town. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah, as did I. That's why I moved here. Los Angeles, I don sense to me. Yeah. As did I. That's why I moved here. Los Angeles.

I don't, I don't resonate, resonate with Los Angeles. I don't resonate with far kind of more right cities either. You know, that's, there's, you know,

is there a right city? I don't know. It just seems like there's, they don't even exist. Do they? Well, that's the thing about, you get a group of people together. They almost always become a Democrat city.

That's, that could be. Yeah. It's weird. It's fascinating that you you get a group of people together, they almost always become a Democrat city. That could be, yeah. It's weird. It's fascinating that you just get enough numbers and they go blue. Almost always. All right. That's the big fear about Texas is that you get enough people come here, it's going to go blue. They're all worried that they're going to lose that fucking weird edge of freedom that makes Texas unique and independent. Yeah, Texas.

Texas, I don't think you have anything to worry about Texas. Texas is an amazing state, and it's just going to maintain its identity through whatever. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. I hope. like it I hope it's just you know when you see like that video from like 1985 what's interesting about that that that that was pre-internet right so that the identity of that was kind of organic mm-hmm people just heard yeah you know

they just decided to all like me that was ground zero for ecstasy that was like that was Dallas was right yeah but like it was when I was in, in, uh, at that club, it had come here in its purest form and I was still in the military and I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna chance that. Getting caught with it. Yeah. Or I don't know. Like they said you couldn't, it wasn't technically illegal. It just wasn't legal. You know, it was that weird thing. But like when there's just always that clause in the military of, like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, but up to our discretion. Wow. So, like, you know, and I'm not going to chance it because maybe they would detect it somehow and, you know, I'd be fucked and sent to fucking the brig or whatever.

There's a podcast called Psychedelic Salon. There's a guy named Lorenzo who runs it who has also been a guest on the the podcast but he was a pretty straight-laced guy and he was living in texas i think it was dallas and then did ecstasy for the first time and was like whoa like okay like this is a different fucking world yeah i can see why people might do this yeah and then he became a not just a hippie but a guy who runs a podcast that plays like old alan watt speeches and wow mckenna things and i mean psychedelic salon is probably like the best resource of like just psychedelic conversations and people talk and it's run by this guy who's god i, I think he was a lawyer, wasn't he? Do you remember?

I forget what his, but he was like super straight-laced guy who someone turned him on to it. You know, it's like Jack Harer, the guy who wrote The Emperor Has No Clothes. Like that guy was a, like a Goldwater Republican and got divorced, met some new gal. They smoked pot together. And then all of a sudden he became this hemp activist

and became this super open-minded hippie who's writing books on mushrooms and marijuana. Yeah, I can see that. Because those things are, they alter your perspective and they open up neural pathways that hadn't been open to you before. shift that near-death kind of thing in your body or whatever that shifts your perspective that opens up new possibilities if that was always kind of present in you are you a person who would build something interesting or go down some interesting path or would it take you

trudging along in the world that you live in and all of a sudden having that that moment that consciousness opening thing that you've already established what you think the world is and then it changes your perspective. Yeah, I've met some people that started out that way. They started out like very liberal, open-minded, progressive, drugs and free thinking. And then they got annoyed with all the negative aspects of it and they eventually became conservative yeah just you know they eventually realized like hey like hard work and dedication and

discipline are that they're very important components of a successful existence interesting how that flips yeah yeah I could see that I could see that that makes sense. Yeah. It's just, what's one of the beautiful things about America is there are so many different ways to live. And you can find these little patches of humans that sort of have just gotten to this different mindset together. You know? Yeah.

Not easy to arrive at. No. There's different ways to live your life, and there's different cities that you can go to, and they'll help you with that. They'll feed that vibe or destroy it or turn you into them or turn you jaded, like the New Yorkork city vibe yeah no i'm just like you know i

grew up in a small town so i kind of that's kind of where i resonate more i feed off of a larger city vibe when i'm there in it for those temporary moments um but then i i got to retreat back to population 500. Yeah, even when I lived in L.A., I didn't live in L.A. I lived outside of it in Ventura County and was dealing with coyotes and shit. That to me made more sense. I need some peace. I mean, I have friends that love to be on top of it.

They love living in Manhattan on the 34th floor. Yeah, I couldn't do that. Beep, beep, honk, honk. I always kind of lived right in that kind of near between Coanga and Wilton in the Hollywood Hill area where you get like Caluities the size of fucking Buicks area. The Hollywood Hills, it's always been weird because it is kind of urban, but it's kind of not. Like, it's really quick to get into, like, you get to Chateau Marmont

in, like, five minutes. Yeah. Or, you know, needles and bum shit. Like, that's right there and Chateau Marmont's right there and then, like, the Gucci's right there and then there's, like, a coyote and, you know, fighting over a fucking raven

and fighting over a rabbit. Well, especially now. Like, have you been now and seen the like the human wildlife is out of control now? Yeah, it's nuts. I don't I don't know what to do. I have no. I can't really speak on it because I have no solution. I don't like speaking about things that I don't think I have maybe like a suggestion of a solution. I just, it's, it's, it's a, it's a mess. I can, I can acknowledge it's a mess and I have no, I have no idea how to get out of it.

Does it shock you? Do you see how much different things are like three years, like post COVID? It does. I just assume. And I guess my retreat is to try to grow more food, to teach my friends how to grow food and to understand how to, you know, distillation, roasting coffees, like growing things, making, producing things in house. that's my default of understanding like whatever's going to happen unless it's a meteor or something crazy that interrupts you know what we what we recognize to be as weather patterns and growing seasons and those kind of things whatever's happening politically financially in the world if we can just remember how to secure fresh water and grow things and survive whatever this is, I don't have any answers other than that. That's my default, to grow things and to not hoard, to actually be active and conscious, aware in the space to figure out how to survive this thing. It might be the only thing you can do because it doesn't seem to me that anybody has real answers they have opinions and they express those opinions and some more confident than others but it doesn't seem

like there's any real clear path as to how things i think it's just a time thing. I think, you know, it's like the Hindus came up with the concept of the yugas, the different ages of civilization. I think that was very astute. I think they were accurate. I think there's something to that, that things have to go in sort of a natural cycle of success and decay. It'll come to a head, and we'll figure out a way through it. Yeah, you just got to take care of yourself

while it's all getting weird. Yeah, and also help people, other people take care of themselves too. Right. That's where the old, the walking dead shit goes sideways when people are like just not taking care of each other.

Right. Yeah, that's what's interesting about that show or interesting about any concept of the apocalypse end times. The real concern is other humans, is how humans react to this deterioration of civility. Yeah. Yeah, I would like to think, because I'm an idiot and romantic, I'd like to think that we would,

most of us would choose the right way to do a thing. But when faced with impossible situations, I think that we're probably going to go back to our primitive. I think many of us will choose the right way. there's been so many people that developed in sort of a, an environment where you didn't really have to, to have earned character, you know, where you don't really develop the concepts of discipline and of, you know, of postponing pleasure and, and, you know, it postponing pleasure and, you know,

like to farm off all the important things that need to be done to work, to have society function correctly on other people, but yet expect it to work. And then it goes away and you never really developed the discipline or the skill or the understanding of what's required. Yeah. Just understanding, you know, and I don't, this is of, I don't know if I'm just kind of making this up, but it seems like that, that 40 hour work week, I know that's kind of a standard, like, you know, that's your that 40 hour work week, I know that's kind of a standard, like, you know, that's your weird corporate, that's the way we've grown up. But if you can do a thing and focus on doing a

thing where you're, you know, you're working your 30 to 60 hour week of something that you're doing that, I feel like as long as it's feeding you in some way, that's'm that's what i do i i i don't have like i don't work like i don't know 10 hours and then coast for the rest of the fucking week that's i'm working that moment where you're starting your workout and your your heart rate's going up and you're like man i don't know if i'm going to be able to do this today well you got to just get past you got to get past that first five minutes of getting it to the next to the next thing yeah and then you can do that thing for fucking 70 hours a week right it's like it's you can get past that whatever that little initial the resistance the resistance yeah that's the thing that people don't learn how to do whatever that little initial. The resistance. The resistance. Yeah.

That's the thing that people don't learn how to do. And, you know, now people are struggling with remote work because they don't want to go back to an office where they're forced to actually get past the resistance. You can kind of like fuck off and you use an app that pretends your cursor is moving around. Right. You get caught jerking off on Zoom. No, I didn't um when but you know what i'm saying like it's like you are a guy who wants to be stimulated

often with your endeavors and some people never learn that and that's sad to me. That's unfortunate because I think we all could be that and we all could find satisfaction and, and just a real sense of purpose and a real sense of, uh, I want to say accomplishment, but that's not really the word. It's like engagement, you know, where life becomes rewarding and stimulating. And it's like you have these robust moments, these like exciting things that are happening in these endeavors, these things that you're choosing to do that are complicated and difficult to do. And if you can get past that initial resistance. But some people just never develop that. And that's what's unfortunate to me about people that just work. They just have a job

and the job doesn't engage them and they just want to get out of there. It's like there's other ways to live life. And if you could find a life that is engaging and if you could find things that do stimulate you and find things that you do, get real satisfaction out of the complexity of them and the learning and the growing and the constant stimulation of those things. This is just my upbringing. I don't know that this was everybody's, but my dad was very, and my stepmother were very inspirational for me to be able to always assume that maybe you don't know what you think you know and also work toward a thing so that you can develop just that focus and those skills and understanding connecting A to B, to C. Like, we're going to weed this thing. We're going to till this ground.

We're going to do this thing. And at the end of the day, you're not going to know what you just did. We're not going to know until, like, next week or four weeks from now or six weeks from now. Now we're weeding that spot to make sure that this thing survives and then you're harvesting that thing and we're going to have that thing for dinner when you start connecting that all the way back to the cause and effect that was a very important lesson and how some of the things i did wrong so we don't get to have this part. So understanding everything you had to

do for your day to enjoy the thing you're doing, but also understanding you're doing it for a bigger purpose. You have a connection with it. I don't know. I just, that was instilled in me early. And I think you're right. Like people that don't really understand if you're doing this thing just because you're trying to survive and you don't really you're not connecting the beginning to the end yeah i guess you are miserable you're going to pick up the app that's going to move the cursor around because you're not really helping anyone but i don't know they don't have examples of those people around them which is part of the problem of all of us is that we, you know, like you were talking about how all art is kind of inspired by other art. Well, there's kind of

an art to living life. And sometimes we don't have local examples of someone who's doing it in a way that you find engaging and stimulating. And so you don't know what to do. And if you're surrounded by people that are just using that app to move the cursor around, you think that this is just the engaging and stimulating. And so you don't know what to do. And if you're surrounded by people that are just using that app to move the cursor around, you think that this is just the way to do it. And then you seek thrills and drugs or in entertainment or something that just numbs you. The dopamine addiction. Yeah. Dopamine, alcohol, jerking off, gambling, anything. Something that just like removes you from the.

Sounds like a Saturday morning to me, sir. Sunday morning and a Monday morning. I'm just kidding. I don't gamble at all. Um, yeah, no, yeah, I feel like there's, it's, it's a, it's a treading water, uh, disconnect, um, from the bigger picture of things. Um, yeah, that's a whole other six hour conversation, right? Just not, are you just, are you just a, are you just a clock? You're like, you're just like a, an hourglass. Yeah. You're just marking an hourglass? Yeah. You're just marking time until you're done?

That's a lot of people. That doesn't make, that's sad to me. Well, it's sad to them, too. That's why so many people are depressed. It's one of the reasons. Well, you know, we've talked about before, like, the action-reaction, the immediate, like, the immediacy of everything. I want this thing, and I'm bitching because Amazon didn't deliver it to me before I ordered it.

They should already know what I want and it should come yesterday. Life is just not like that and when that goes away and you're trying to figure out how to find fresh water, fuck, good luck to you. There are so many people

that develop things that do give you that immediate satisfaction. And some people get addicted. Like TikTok. You're just constantly getting just stimulated versus being a farmer. Like I've always been fascinated with farmers because when you talk to them. That's the long game, dude. Oh, my God. That's the long game.

The amount of work involved. You talk to a real farmer, a real get up at 5 in the morning farmer, work till dark and be exhausted and then do it all over again and not get rich. And, you know, all the challenges come along with it. Because now I'm getting my phone is blowing up the last couple of days because we're spotting a bobcat in the neighborhood well that means now i've got to bring i'm not even there and i've got to make sure that i'm checking with jen and make sure she's bringing the ducks

home early and paying attention in the morning don't let them out too soon because we want to make sure there's people around and i'm literally doing things like uh peeing into a fucking water bottle and spreading it around the perimeter of the fence because some of those predator cat they don't like they think that that that territory has been marked right does that work well i hope so because i'm the idiot not to bring bottles of piss along the fence line my buddy andrew's like yeah you piss along the fence line. My buddy Andrew's like, yeah, you piss along the fence line. I'm like, dude, I'm not going to go out in my yard and pee on the fence with all my neighbors staring at me. I'm going to have to, like, do the weirder thing, which is pee in a bottle and then pour.

If it works, then great, because I've got, you know, two dozen ducks that I have to protect them. So what do you do? Do you hire someone to, like, watch the ducks or kill the bobcat? Well, you can't really kill the bobcat. It's protected. So you just have to pay attention to when the ducks are by themselves and do things like pee on your fence line and like hope that they just pick. Are you allowed to chase the bobcat off?

I think so. What are the laws in terms of like? I think you have to call like the, you know, the local fishing game to see if they can relocate it, maybe. But if that bobcat finds out I have ducks, there's not much I'm going to be able to do. It will come back until it gets all of the ducks. Yeah, we had that in California with chickens and coyotes. They got all my fucking chickens just a matter of time so just mark mark your calendar because eventually like in about you know a year

you're gonna like the video surface where i'm out there half naked peeing on a fence chasing off a bobcat you know with a fucking paintball gun yeah A lot of people just hire someone to deal with that. But that's not us. This is what we do. This is part of our world. We raise ducks. We raise quail. My wife's a, I don't know if I told you this, she's a falconer, licensed falconer now.

So we have a hawk named Loki. Whoa. So she has a full-on full-on hawk so when you say licensed falconer do you use that falcon to go do stuff eventually eventually we'll use the quail for you well yeah it'll it loves the quail but uh you know we can take it around the vineyards eventually and it'll chase off ground squirrels and rabbits out of the vineyard. I was at a Tohon Ranch recently, which is in central California, and there's more ground squirrels than you could possibly imagine. They were telling me that the body mass, the biomass of ground squirrels, is greater than the biomass of cows they have. So they have beef cows everywhere.

There's enormous cows everywhere. But there's more body weight in ground squirrels than there are cows. That's nuts. There's so many of them. There's little holes everywhere you go. I have a solution. His name's Loki. Loki would have to go to work.

I watched an eagle catch something. I don't know what it caught, but a golden eagle. I watched it snatch something and then drag it up into the cover. I couldn't see, but I watched it come down, snatch this thing, and then it was moving with this thing on the ground. It's incredible how they can see that

from so far away and like, boom. And those little fuckers are trying to get away from that eagle too. It was this beautiful dance, but to be there right when it caught it was wild. I tried to get close enough to take a photo of it, but I couldn't. But it's, you know, that's the balance. Like, you have to have that.

Yep. And when you fuck that balance up with, like, a giant pack of ducks that are all in this one, it's like, this is so much food in this one spot. Yeah. Why am I going anywhere else? Right. Fuck ground squirrels. These things don't even fly.

Yeah. And they'll come after your ducks. Yeah. What do you use the ducks for? Eggs or you eat them? No, the eggs. I make the, well, Chris at the Osteria Mix uses the yolks for our pasta. And then eventually when I open up the brunch place, we'll use the whites to do a quiche.

up the brunch place, we'll use the whites to do a quiche. Duck eggs have a weird way of, like, coating the surface of your mouth, like the roof of your mouth. Yeah. It's a weird egg. Yeah. That's why I like them when you put them in the pasta. It actually works better. Like, rather than just having the scrambled duck egg, I don't prefer the scrambled duck

egg. I like using the yolk for the pasta and the, we'll use a couple of yolks, but mainly like an egg white with some yolks, quiche base. We were talking about this before, I know, but are you getting your wheat from other sources? Like you getting it from outside the United States? Yeah, the best wheat flour are it's a it's an Italian milled flour but a significant portion of that flour is actually hard wheat winter wheat from Arizona that's so you mix them like a blend they do they get they'll get the you know all the wheat that just gets growing around you know the Midwest and Arizona ends up going to a central, it's a commodity.

So it goes to a central area, then it gets shipped to a place like Italy, and they mill it and blend it and sell it back to you. And what's the benefit of adding the Arizona wheat? It's just that, just the way that it works with pasta, you pasta, the gluten structure of the pasta, that hard winter wheat from Arizona is a good ingredient to make it. Just for texture? Texture. It's pretty cool to know that there's a significant amount of Arizona wheat in our flour that we use. Even though it's not milled in the state, it's a part of the blend. And is this an heirloom wheat? Is this a modified wheat? We were using quite a bit of heirloom flour from Arizona.

But the combination of the blend, whatever the Italians do to blend that thing together, it just ends up being better. So we're trying as much as we can to use Arizona wheat, blend it in, we blend more in than when it comes in, just so, because we're trying to support the flour from Arizona. But at the end of the day, you know,

it's got to have structure it's got to it's got to be tasty so we got to do what we got to do to make it the end product be presentable and awesome how much do you pay attention to glyphosate and you know the the real debate now about what how much glyphosate is getting into our food supply i don't know what the fuck you're talking you don't know what roundup is oh yeah roundup yeah yeah yeah yeah i we don't we don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You don't know what Roundup is? Oh, yeah, Roundup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't use it in the vineyard. We used to because we thought that's what you're supposed to do, right? And then our southern Arizona, the 80-acre vineyard down there, we have awesome ground cover down there. And so we just mow the ground cover down or mulch it down.

So we're not using any of the pre-emergent or the weeding shit anymore. so we're not using any of the pre-emergent or the weeding shit anymore. It's a big debate now because there was a recent study that I think it was like 80% of people they tested had glyphosate in their bodies. I would imagine it's all of us. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense because we used it on everything forever. Yeah, it's a creepy herbicide.

Yeah, it's a creepy herbicide. And also, I think they've genetically modified certain foods to have glyphosate in them. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. It's like... So we're doing our best to not, you know, we use as much as we can just, you know, manual weeding, or we use the ground cover in the vineyard to eliminate that part of the process. Do you pay attention to people like Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms or any of these people

that have like regenerative agricultural practices? It's interesting because I don't know if it's scalable. Like the big question is like... That ends up being the issue. Too many people. Right. Too many people not growing food, which is the big problem in cities. Yeah, too many people not growing food, too many people in general, or just the scale of doing that thing with the current, the way we do farming.

Like, you know, the debate of, you know, migrant workers coming in and working on things. It's a lot. It's a lot to do. So that's why you end up defaulting to things like Roundup and those things because they're trying to make the margin and cut the corner to get the thing done. And it's an economy of scale, I guess. So we're trying as best we can to do that in-house. We grow our own food for the Trattoria Osteria and the place in Scots that we do as much as we can to grow food for those locations. So the stuff that's on the pizza, the stuff that's stuffed in the raviolis, the salad

you get on the labrador plate, a significant amount of that is what we grow you start to supplement so when we supplement we supplement from local growers in arizona that are you know organic growers that are not using the the roundup but again that's you're dealing with a couple three room size three restaurants yeah we're not we're not we're not talking about a chain of olive gardens across the country. Right. Or just a city. Yeah. You know, a city of 15 million people that aren't growing food.

Right. Just the sheer bulk of the amount of stuff that's consumed. Right. That's the weirdest thing about cities is that we've figured out this way to make these centers where you have extraordinary populations with cement structures and water piped in underground, but there's no food. Everything has to be trucked in. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'm sure there's somebody smarter than me who could figure that out.

But it's all up margins, isn't it? Do you ever play it out? Like, where does this go? it's all about margins isn't it do you ever play it out like where does this go like if the population keeps increasing cities keep growing you're you're in the food growing business well i you know i used to work in a pet store so um eventually the rats eat themselves you can't put you can't put a bunch of rats or hamster hamsters are worse than rats hamsters you can't put a bunch of hamsters in a terrarium or a aquarium for people to come and buy because if you put too many in there, you'll come back and half of them are dead.

They eat themselves? They'll fucking kill each other. Really? Yeah. Just from overpopulation? They will turn on each other and they will eat each other. I've read a study once where they were talking about rat population density studies that their behavior mirrors the behavior of high population cities.

That you have a certain amount of mental illness that occurs, a certain amount of violence that occurs. I can see that. Yeah. It's just a function of. And then, you know, we would get in the shipment of the new hamsters this week. And I would have to take this aquarium, move it away, put a new aquarium there, put fresh shavings and stuff in it, and then move those hamsters and those and put them in together that way. If I put the new hamsters in with the old hamsters in their environment that they've

been pissing in for a couple days, they fight. You have to basically introduce them to a new environment so that it's new to all of them and there's new smells, and then they won't fight as much. So we need to start a new country, as you're saying. Correct. That's the move. Hey. Where do we go?

Maybe with global warming, Greenland will be available. Yeah. Or we could just take all the garbage and pile and compact it into bricks and make an island. Ah. Garbage island. That's not a bad idea. Something has to happen. I patented it just now. Copy. Garbage island. That's not a bad idea. Something has to happen.

I patented it just now. Copyright. Copyright. Yeah, I wonder. You know, I wonder when you look at, you know, the human race is approaching 8 billion people. Like, at what point in time do we all exhibit, like, is that the future of the human race? It's like the worst aspects of urban living just i think universally there's you know that's i think it's going to sort itself out i think it's

going to end up coming to a head in some way and i don't know civil war meteor virus something will alien invasion alien invasion Turn us into fuel. Hmm. Or the other concept is that when people live in these urban areas, they actually have less kids. And that slowly population growth sort of declines naturally because people become obsessed with their careers and, you know. That doesn't seem to be happening. It is happening in some places, apparently. It's like Japan has an issue with that right now. And some different cities do have... They don't have the sustainable population for their future of what they're doing?

Yeah, the thought is that people are having so few children that ultimately at one point in time you're going to see a population decline and that there's going to be this sort of an implosion like elon's actually talked about that the importance of having children you know like so many people aren't having children that live in these urban areas that you're going to see a collapse i'm you know i'm i'm sure there's a mathematician out there that can say okay for, for every person, how many kids should I have? One? Two? Right.

So if between my wife and I there's two kids, is that enough? That seems like enough. Or one. But if you only have one, then naturally you're going to have a decline. Two people have one kid, you've got a decline. That's a lot of what's going on, and maybe some people are not having kids at all because they're dedicated to their careers. Okay. It makes sense.

Yeah. Voucher system. Voucher. Well, then you got the government involved telling people what to do and not to do. That's never good. Sometimes it's okay. You live in, like, how many people

live in Jerome? 500. Jesus. That might be the way to go. You like it, huh? Mm-hmm.

The contrast between that and touring has got to be pretty cool, but if you just live there with no touring,

you might get a little bored. You know, you've got Flagstaff to the north, you've got Sedona, you've got a little bored. You know, you've got Flagstaff to the north. You've got Sedona. You've got Phoenix to the south. Right, you can visit other spots.

Yeah, it's not that far away. Prescott's a little hoppin' little town. It's pretty great. Prescott's a hoppin' little town? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of cowboy, but it's, you know, got some fun activities. There's one area, maybe it's Prescott, that's one of the best places to observe the night sky. Well, a lot of places are like that. Jerome's amazing for that

because there's definitely a light discipline as far as ordinances about having too many lights on. Is there? Yeah, so you can actually see. It's like this. It's crazy. And it's just for that purpose? I think, partially. You can only do that in smaller areas. Yeah this it's crazy and it's just for that purpose i think partially but you can only do that in smaller areas yeah it's amazing like it's the the stars in in arizona are incredible because

there's uh there's less uh humidity in the air so that just that less humidity in the air doesn't like kind of disperse the light so it's focused you can see all the stars and you can see the milky way oh yeah you can tell you can tell when that that's's focused you can see all the stars and you can see the milky way oh yeah you can tell you can tell when that that's venus you can tell that that's venus you know that's a planet that's a star that's the beautiful thing about living in a place where it doesn't have light pollution is it's like there's a humbling aspect to staring out at the cosmos that really lets you know like hey we're a part of this enormous, impossibly big thing. Yeah.

And it's not just about your career. It's not just about, you know, your credit card debt and, you know, how much you owe The noise of the big city can kind of drown a lot of that out. You don't really. The noise and the light. Yeah. I mean, it's not a, that environment where you have extreme light pollution and no access to the stars is – it's very unnatural and very unusual in terms of a human history. It's never happened before.

Up until the last couple hundred years with the invention of electricity and the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, I didn't really think of that. They didn't have that. So people had sort of a, there was a humbling aspect to the night that allowed people to just like get a perspective and also just the beauty and the majesty of the sky and looking at the cosmos and looking at the Milky Way. It put things into focus in a way

that I don't think people in cities have access to now now come visit the desert did you ever see anything up there in the sky look at that where's that Prescott that's Prescott so it is it Prescott is the that the place I don't know I was trying to find that specific Say it right. I'm sorry Prescott like biscuit Prescott Prescott Prescott, Arizona. You'll get yelled at by the locals. Well fuck them That's what you want to yell at me about that's beautiful though. Yeah, it's yeah It's insane and that's that's pretty much what I see at night is it looks that good

Yeah, that well sometimes like that one of those Good on that one there you can see the the milky way more yeah wow so that you know that that's you know when you're at night on my porch that's i can see that you ever see that's a little intense because they've definitely like it's done more of a time lapse so it's kind of like really sunk in but like on on your average night in arizona i can see it i can see all those things wow that's amazing yeah you ever see some weird flying around uh well i i didn't um i was abducted and um what'd you learn i learned that um i don't like butt stuff allegedly

I don't know I don't really see anything there I haven't seen anything weird or you know kind of extraterrestrial in nature that I know of I may be looking right at a thing and I didn't know that it was a thing but I don't know

I'm so enamored with that sky that uh that to me is like that's extra trust real enough for me just to see that just a majesty were you living in arizona arizona when the phoenix lights thing happened yeah i was there yeah no idea what that was you know one of those things where did you ever see any of it no i didn't i didn't see i saw videos? No, I didn't see it. I saw videos of it, but I didn't see it. Do you know anybody who saw it? No. That's a weird moment in urban history

where mass sightings in this one area. I think I might have talked about this with you at some point. To me, it's almost like it's... I feel like as we go forward in time, maybe there's some kind of technology that allows us to look back in time. You pay your fee at Disneyland and you can put the goggles on and it opens a portal in a time frame where you're just allowed to look. You can just look. You can't touch. But then if you're paying attention,

you see the dude looking. Right, you see the portal occasionally. Yeah, the portal occasionally. And it's just a remote viewing from a future time when they can actually, like, peek. They can't metal. They can't touch. They can just look.

And it's just an anomaly in anomaly in your in your in our simulation i was reading this thing about quantum computing today and you could probably relate to this because you've done some music with the fibonacci sequence and where they entered the fibonacci sequence into quantum computing and they found it's something has to do it had something to do with different ways that time expresses itself. So you can find this because I'm going to butcher this. But I was reading it and I remember here it is. Scientists fed the Fibonacci sequence into a quantum computer and something strange happened.

You can have the system behave as if there are two distinct directions of time. I think it's just a matter of time before they figure something like that out. But should we? We're going to. Aren't there movies that start this way? There are, but there are movies that start that way because we understand how the human mind works. This constant lust for technological innovation is never going to be quenched. Right. And I think if we continue to stay alive, we're going to come up with something that's going to change everything about the way we interact with reality. And it's probably going to happen within our lifetime.

It seems like the exponential. I would think. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. It probably depends on who's at the wheel. It's a thing. Yeah. Good or bad is relative.

But I think it's going to—we live in an amazing time because both things exist. You have wine and you have farmers and people cultivating food and creating art. And you also have these disruptive technologies that are being implemented in a way that we really have no idea what the consequences are Yeah, it's all happening simultaneously Yeah, and it makes the hikes in the mountains more attractive It makes the staring at the sky and Prescott more interesting that you you do live in these simultaneous sort of timelines yeah that's a good thought yeah well it's well you're not gonna stop it you know what I was having this conversation with my kids one night at

dinner recently we were saying like if we just stop making new stuff right now life's pretty good if we said all phones that we have right now, no more. iPhone 14 is the end of the line. Just keep making them and keep fixing them, and that's it. We don't need anything new. But we'll never do that. And then we're all just talking about it like, yeah, you're right. That's why we're in a constant state of invading some other area that has some natural resources

because we've got to get to the 16, right? Yeah. Got to get to the Tesla that goes zero to 60 instantaneously. That, you know, operates on some fucking gravity drive that allows you to punch a hole through space and time and pop up in Australia in half a second. It's coming. Just need a Subaru Brat, man. You'll get there. Well, I'd imagine where you live,

robust vehicles are probably very valuable. Yeah, I have an old 73 FJ. Oh, yeah. Those are the best. Yeah. FJ40? Yep. Yeah, and of course we redid it.

It's like a V8 engine in it. Do you use like an LS swap? Is that what they did? Like an LS V8, like a Chevy? Probably. Like a GM V8? Yeah, it's a pretty amazing thing. Those are beautiful cars, man.

Those FJ40s, like Icon out of California makes those where they do the V8 swap. And it's just, when you're in one of them, it's just they're so satisfying. It's so mechanical. Yeah. Everything about it is like it speaks to you, and it's so robust. Yeah, mine has little ammo boxes. Look at that.

Yeah. Is that what you have, one of those? Yeah. That's how you get around? Yeah. That keeps you grounded. Yeah. I mean, you know.? Yeah. That keeps you grounded. Yeah. I mean, you know.

Is it a manual? No, it's automatic. I'm a pussy. Oh, how dare you. Yeah, I know. Why didn't you get a manual? Because I'm lazy. Yeah.

See that one right there? 350 powered? There's my, the other one, the tan one. That's you? Yeah, that's kind of when I had it. Those are gorgeous. There's something about those. It's like, that's like one of the coolest shapes that people have ever figured out for sort of an industrial vehicle or a farming vehicle.

That's perfect for a farm. Yeah. Do you know how to fix it? Or do you hire someone to do it? I've got guys that fix it. But as far as, I still have the old Subaru Brat. And so I haven't done it. You weren't kidding. You really do have a Subaru Brat.

My wife stole it for the 24 hours of lemons races. What the fuck is that? That's your homework. Fuck Le Mans. Is that it? Fuck yeah, man. That's hilarious is the El Camino of Japanese cars

yep but I you know that was one of my first cars so I knew how to change out the alternator fix the clutch cable like I can fix I can fix that one to a point I would have to have a friend come in and help me if I had to rebuild an engine on it yeah I would

have to like go to another friend but I can fix that the new cars and stuff like no yeah i'm lost no no one can yeah i mean you have to really have a fucking education in computers like the weirdest thing about cars today is like they're having a hard time finding chips for them right it's like it's hard to buy a new car some of some of the new cars there's like a back order because they don't have chips. Right. Because everything relies on some sort of a centralized computer. You know what doesn't have a chip?

Subaru Brat. No. Does that 73 Toyota with the V8, does that have a chip? Well, no. I think the engine is just old enough to where maybe it doesn't. Oh, okay. I would have to ask my guys. Because a lot of the new ones, they actually do have a, unfortunately, they do have a computer that powers it.

Probably is, yeah. Yeah, because if you LS swap, they have like an ECU that sort of runs everything. Most likely it is that. Still. Like, those older Japanese cars are the very best cars when it comes to, like, robustness. Like, those Toyota FJs, the FJ60s, the 62s. Yeah, my dad, back in the day, like, 1973, the original little, it's not even the Tacoma, it's just the Toyota truck. That thing back in 1973, he had it for decades.

That thing had, like, one million miles on it or something insane yeah they're very valuable today because because of that reason because people realize like this is kind of fucking unique that these things are that that robust they can last for so long i think by the time he actually he had sold it to a guy sold it to a guy and they actually took it to the you know the dump and like actually took it to the dump. And they picked it up and it broke in half because the engine was still good. 500,000 miles, I think, was on it. But the frame was gone.

It was a foot through the floor. Fred Flintstone down the road. Yeah, but all that stuff can be repaired. It's just to be in a place like yours and to have those kind of vehicles. It's got to be very grounding for you, driving around that farm. Yeah, I can't have a truck. I have friends that show up and go, hey, man, I want to go out and check out the vineyard. And I look at their car and I'm like, yeah.

Not in that thing. Hop in. Hop in. How big is your vineyard? How many acres is it? I have 80 acres in that thing. Hop in. Hop in. How big is your vineyard? How many acres is it? I have 80 acres in southern Arizona. I have several sites up in northern Arizona. A two-acre, a three-acre, a four-acre, a 30-acre, and a five-acre.

And how do you pick these areas that you're going to acquire? Available water. Paying attention to water rights, ditch rights, groundwater rights. And you expand based on the need? Yeah. And so like you got to make. Just expense. I mean, there's a huge expense in terms of vineyards.

So let's, you know, just quick math. Let's assume you own a piece of land. And depending on where that land is, it's going to be a different price. Like if you buy an acre of land in the Verde Valley, it's going to be $50,000 to $100,000 for an acre of empty land. Now you've got to put power and water on it. So if you're getting a vineyard, you're not going to do an acre. You're going to do 20 acres or whatever.

So southern Arizona, maybe $15,000 an acre, maybe $10,000. So depending on where you're going to do an acre unit you're going to do 20 acres or whatever so southern arizona maybe 15 grand an acre maybe 10 so depending on where you're going to do it so let's say you own the land you've already paid whatever that number is now you're going to make sure that there's power and water to that so let's say you've got it graded you've got power and you've got water on it that's a huge expense just by itself right just to plant an acre of vineyards is about $30,000 an acre. So with that 10 acre site, you're already up to $300,000, right? But the vines don't produce fruit for four years. Whoa. So you're not going to see your first grape. And even if you get your grape, now you got to wait, you know, you got to make if you get your grape, now you've got to wait.

You've got to make it. You've got to age it. You've got to bottle it. You've got to sell it. So from your first, assuming you own the acres and assuming you have power and water and it's been graded, and you're $30,000 in for that first planting, that first year, you're not going to see your first dollar for at least six, seven years. that first year, you're not going to see your first dollar for at least six, seven years.

So when you acquired your first farm, was it an existing winery? No, the land that I planted the Judas block on, I planted that vineyard and I was sourcing fruit from other vineyards for a while. How long did you think about doing that before you actually pulled the trigger? I was kind of mulling it over from starting around 99, 2000. Wow. And then I planted my first vineyards in 2003. Were you like, what the fuck am I doing? Yes.

I'm still today in this very moment. I'm wondering what the fuck did I do and what am I doing? How many people do you have working for you now if you have that many different farms? Between Pussifer, the Pussifer store, you know, all of our distribution people, our retail people, our behind the scenes, you know, seller workers. I'm about 110 families that we employ. Wow. Around Arizona. And so when you develop a piece of land,

it's like if, say, if you want to start and expand into a new piece of land, who do you have? Does the person have to relocate there? Do you have to have someone that can commute to the spot and make sure it's running okay for the four years? So down, you know, down in Southern Arizona, Jesse lives on site with his wife and we have, you know, a couple of full-time people. And if you're farming it properly, you need seasonal work. You need people to come in and like a large number of people to come in and

prune, a large number of people to come in and do shoot thinning and blah, blah, blah. And then for picking, of course, you've got that season. You have people around that you have to do the pick, and you have to work with a labor contractor to make sure that you have those numbers of people there to do that. But annually, year-round, those two or three people are on site all year-round. I would imagine that is always in the back of your head, that you have all these different moving parts going on constantly. Yeah.

How do you rest? You just, you either do or you don't, right? You just rest, you know? But that's a lot of noise constantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why you watch television at night and fall asleep. But that's a lot of noise constantly. Yeah. That's why you watch television at night and fall asleep. God, from the time that you started doing that, did you ever imagine that it would be what it is now? No, I thought it was going to be a much smaller thing.

It's still a pretty small thing. But as far as all the moving parts and all the beautiful things we've got that we've accomplished no regrets I think we're doing there's a pretty cool thing we're doing it is very cool that's when I really started getting interested in you honestly

when I found out about your vineyard I was like huh what a fucking weird guy yeah that he's doing that there's a couple people in my in our not even really our genre, just like musicians. There's a couple people that are doing stuff. I think Pink is involved in her wine production in some way.

But I'm, you know, other than her and a couple people, not anybody here that has a wine label, generally speaking, is they're just putting their name on it or they have somebody doing it for them and they might be kind of involved, but they're not as involved as I am. No. That's just, it's so involved. Do you ever anticipate not doing music and just doing that or do you think you're always going to be doing everything? I think I'll be doing everything. I don't really see any reason to give up either one because they can coexist there's definitely time for both because especially if you're

organized like i am and create those spaces for creating music and touring but knowing that you it's not up to you when the when it's harvest season this is harvest season so i like that balance of like i had to respond to what mother nature says on this front but on the music side i can kind of have a little more flexibility and and uh and create when the spirit moves me it has to be a wild challenge though to figure out how to scale that like as it was happening and grow like how did you figure out how to make it all work i don't know that i have yet you know we're just we're we're we're figuring it out still wow it's um it's very complex but it it it makes for a very unique experience, I would imagine, in life.

Well, again, going back to like you started this thing, and seven years later, and then I put that wine in a bottle, and I try to forget about that bottle, to then open that bottle another 10 years later to go, oh, fuck, man, that's, I did that. Yeah. And there's a time when you should open it too, right? Depends on the grape.

Honestly, you know. How do you know? You don't. I mean, especially in an area that we're growing and the grapes that we're not quite sure about yet. There's definitely things in wine that help it be an ageable wine that won't fall apart right away. But, you know, there's chemical things you can kind of figure out, like what do we think might age better. But until you actually open that bottle 15 years later, you don't really know. You think you might know, but you

don't know. Have you ever heard of a book called The Immortality Key? There's a guy named Brian Murorescu who became obsessed with the Lucidian mysteries and the ancient Greeks who drank wine and invented democracy and invented all these different things in this one particular area of enlightenment. And he started studying this and found very distinct evidence that the wine, what they were calling wine back then, was wine that was mixed in with a bunch of different things. And a lot of it was like ergot. And a lot of it was psychedelic compounds. And probably, yeah, through this, they've actually developed a field of study at Harvard, through his work, and he came on the podcast and talked about it sort of opened up

this field of study is that the book is really fascinating, because he's, he was obsessed with this for decades, and studied it for a long time. And then they eventually found physical evidence in these old wine vessels. Okay. Because it would be there. Like that's the cool thing about those. There's always going to be some chamber that's going to be unearthed that nobody knew was there. And if it's Greece or, you know, early Roman times, there's going to be wine in that thing.

That's what wine was. There's going to be wine in that thing. That's what wine was. There's going to be some bottles in there. Wine was like fermented grapes, but it was mixed in with a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. Like that was what they used to, when we think of wine, we think of what you make. But what you make is not just the grapes, right? Like not just fermented grapes. There's stuff in there.

No, no. It's all, it's just grapes. But you add some sort of yeast? Well, yeah. I mean, well, no. The yeast already exists on the grapes. And so our fermentation process is kick-started by the yeast that exists on those grapes. So I just do wild ferments. I don't add yeast. Some instances I do, depending just do wild ferments. I don't add yeast. Some instances I do, depending on the fruit coming in and if I'm observing, there's going to be maybe some

problems with that particular batch of fruit. Yeah. Maybe I'll add a, do a, an inoculation for that thing, but we're 95% wild ferments. But I do also do mead, which is honey, water, yeast. also do mead, which is honey, water, yeast. So we do that fermentation to do canned. I think I brought you some. Yes, you did. The canned mead. We had some at your Osteria. It was amazing. Yeah. So that really wild tasting, like different than anything I think I'd ever drank before. Yeah. But that we also were about to can it, but I actually did a fermentation with the mead where i did uh one with lavender one with hibiscus one with bergamot and one with star jasmine just to see what that would lend as far as a floral nature in that in that in that mead we'll see haven't we haven't actually canned it yet to see how that went but you also had like a natural sparkling, like a white wine.

Yeah, the Petnat, we call it. It's an ancient method of letting the wine finish fermentation in a bottle. So it's kind of like champagne, but different. But more different tasting. It was kind of more complex. different tasting it was yeah kind of more complex yeah i think i think some chance you know if you're a champagne person versus like an italian sparkling uh i'm now i'm getting all geeky with people that are wine drinkers but what we're doing in arizona is far more like a a uh a filtered uh ancient method Italian sparkling because it's Malvisea, Bianca and Chardonnay

50-50 so it's for people listening if you're wondering what kind of sparkling I'm doing that's a pet nat it's very much an Italian sparkling approach rather than a champagne the reason why I brought up the Brian Murr rescue book because I've always been

fascinated like if that was what wine used to be, that wine was the fermented grapes mixed in with psychedelics and all these other compounds that they're sort of discovering. When did modern, what we think of as wine now, which is like what you make, when did that start? No idea. Yeah. start no idea yeah I didn't know it could very well be some kind of way before pre-prohibition kind of stuff and Europe I have no idea but you know I know that there's there's people that have done like botanicals where they're kind of doing almost like beer bearish wine ish botanical fermentations various you know varying results but i don't know

i've really researched it did you ever see the documentary sour grapes yeah wild shit right yeah that guy was amazing crazy yeah yeah that uh one of my good friends is in that documentary i uh met that gentleman who got arrested I met him at a wine tasting Me too Did you? Me too, yeah Really? I was with Peter Gago from Penfolds

They were doing a whole Penfolds Australian wine dinner At the Australian consulate's house or whatever And that guy was sitting right here What was his name again? I don't remember his name It was right at the tip of my It was like an American name. I met him because my friend is a wine dork and he, he had a birthday party. So I went to his, I want to say it's 2003 and, uh, we all were sitting around and they

would serve this incredible food with flights of wine. And they'd all brought their own wine. They were popping corks and Rudy. Rudy. Yeah, he's out now. Yeah. Yeah. His, you know, never mind the shady shit he was up to.

That's, you know, that's why he went to prison, buddy. But his palate and his ability to mimic those things was fucking otherworldly. He was really good at that thing. And his perception of things in that bottle, in that glass, to be able to reproduce that the way he did was exceptional. Well, that was why I brought it up. Like, did he reproduce it accurately? Enough. Enough to fool complex palates.

Just enough. Because, you know, there's bottle variation on things. So it could be like, oh, this one doesn't quite taste like the ones I've had before. Right. Right. And that could be expressed in legitimate bottles. Yeah. From 2000 what to 2000 this and yeah different climate different yeah weather was

different that year yeah the funny part was like people that were totally duped yeah like what yeah no these minor minor cool i wasn't i'm not a dupe well it was funny in the the people who are self-professed uh wine was like, this one's real. And then another guy would come along and go, this is garbage. I'm like, well, how can there be such a varying opinion amongst people that are actually wine experts? There's always been that kind of like, you know, you can't taste how expensive a wine is. Well, no, of course you can't taste how expensive a wine is. But there are guys who are really good at identifying right down to the year and the producer by what they're tasting in a glass.

And it's like I think it's fucking voodoo. It's incredible how they can do that. They can narrow it down. And that's, of course, from an established region that has a history that you can kind of kind of track it uh to a point through time and having maybe had that wine and they have that fucking lock box yeah they can they can log that shit away and it's like a you know steel trap of of recollection of those things those guys are incredible yeah i've talked to somalias that claim to be able to do that. And I've tried to get it from them.

Like, what are you doing? Like, how are you doing that? Like, what is it about a wine? Like, you can drink it and say. There's a checklist that they go through. It's a very rigorous drilling of a checklist of things that they identify. The first thing they identify, the second thing they identify. And it's not, you know, it's more like, okay, when I walk into, when I pull into your parking lot, is this a house or is this an industrial complex or is this a barn or is this an airport? Well, it's an industrial complex.

Okay, now, is there parking? Yes, there's parking. Okay, when we walk in, is it, you know. So you're going through this checklist of just super general shit down to very specific things. Have you tried to learn that? Fuck no, man. I got way too much shit to deal with that shit. But I would imagine like in making wine like you do there, you have to have some sort of a palate.

Yeah. But, you know, at the same time, I don't have to sound like Led Zeppelin. I just have to sound like me. So I'm only expressing these grapes are going to tell me what they're going to do, and I'm going to try to get out of the way to make sure that these grapes grow from grapes to wine, and I'm going to do everything that I know how to do to get out of the way to make sure that thing is that thing. Now, me describing that thing to you like a psalm describes it, I can't do that for you. But I can get out of the way to make it get to the thing that you can describe. That's your job. But when you decided to do this in 2000,

you must have had some sort of an esoteric appreciation. Yes, 100%. I just couldn't describe that to you, and I couldn't map out what year was what wine. I could just tell you that everything about this wine is inspirational in some way, whether it's like the age on it, the acid structure, something that all the pistons were firing in terms of like all the sensory of like all the sensory alarms that are going off in my mouth, the length of the experience, like how it's changing in the glass. Yeah, that was very inspiring to me. As far as actually being able to map that out for you, I'm an idiot.

I couldn't do it. Did you go through any sort of education in terms of like what is involved in the creation of a wine that you appreciate? in terms of what is involved in the creation of a wine that you appreciate? Time in cellar, spending time in Adelaide Hills at Penfolds for a very short amount of time, seeing it happening around the world, going to wineries while on tour, while they're trying to time it where I can go when they're going to actually harvest today to see what's the equipment they're using, what how do you, how are you doing this thing? Like, when did that spark get ignited? Like what?

99. So it was like right before you started. So before that, were you a wine connoisseur? Were you a wine appreciator? I started appreciating wine maybe around 96. Really? Yeah. So just a few years later, you own a vineyard.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. It just resonated. Whatever it was, it clicked. Right. It's like, you know, going back to, I was talking to Donald today. He was like, he walked into Hickson's place on Pico back in the day. Um, Henry Akins walked in the same week that I walked in to Hickson's Academy back in 95. in the same week that I walked in to Hickson's Academy back in 95 Henry Akins is one of the best black belts I've ever met I can't I can barely tie my belt you know so it resonated it resonated with him it made sense to him it clicked and it went and there's no way you can figure out what that is to

make you know make him what he is right i was not that guy i had to work harder on it wine was like i'd been doing it my whole life almost instantly it made sense and then and then slowly backing up and understanding the chemistry of it working with people to go action reaction and logging that in to develop that, you know, constantly. But the process, just the basic logistics of making wine made sense to me almost instantaneously. And this was from 96? Like when? No, my first wine that I, you know, actually was involved in making was 2004. Oh, but in 96, when you first started getting interested in it, you went to a vineyard? It was just dinners.

You start to all of a sudden went from a dude who grew up in a lower middle class family with parents that are teacher budget, cutting wood for for the winter to being on tour with a band and all of a sudden i can afford a bottle of wine that was more than 50 you know going oh this is cool seeing all the all the agents and the the lawyers and the fucking promoter and the manager and the fucking accountant all backstage having a nice glass of wine while I'm drinking Bud Light over here. Going, what the fuck's that? And I want to know. And I grabbed a glass and tried it and went, this is the new thing. This is something I want to know about.

And when was the first time you actually went to a, do you remember the first vineyard you visited while they were doing all that? I want to say it was like 97 i think 98 it was um pegasus bay in new zealand in new zealand yeah watching watching the process watching no that was i think they were doing um sablonk i think it might have been pinot i think it was Pinot But they were do stemming and I was watching the stemming process going. Okay. Okay machine I can afford a machine and You just thought one day I'm gonna do that. Yeah, and then the wheels started getting into motion. Yeah Wow How many people around you're going Maynard? What the fuck are you doing all of them?

How many people around you are going, Maynard, what the fuck are you doing? All of them. All. It just seems like such a fucking intensive, complicated endeavor. Yeah. But it's rewarding. It's work. You're grounding.

There's setup. There's cleanup. There's logistics. Like Tim and. There's setup. There's cleanup. There's logistics. Tim and I are like the logistics Nazis. There's a way to do it to not get in your own way to understand the 16 steps. Like today, dealing with that triangle, I kept getting my foot caught up and trying to get the leg around the head because I was getting in my own way. I didn't shift enough to make it so that I wasn't in my own way. In the cellar, I am not in my own way.

I'm thinking five steps ahead, and I'm not going to put a thing down in the way that I have to move and add six steps to get into the next step. And this is a thing that you get better at. I get better at it with every harvest, but I was already naturally inclined that way as far as just like Tetris is my thing. Hmm. Wow. That's wild because there's nothing like that in my mind that I'm fascinated by that I would want to go and start developing a company that makes these things. It seems like it's just so rare that something like light bulb goes off and you're like,

I need a wine press. Yeah. Wow. So when you like crack open a bottle of wine today, do you ever open one and go, I should have waited? I mean, yeah, there's those instances. Or I open up some of my stuff from before and go, yeah, I fucked that up. This is a good bottle.

It's okay. But I know that I could have done better on this bottle. And what would you have done to do better? Well, it depends on the grade. It depends on what I did. And it depends on the thing, but there's adjustments that I've made over the years that have made it so that there's a higher percentage of success for that year.

What are those variables? It all depends on the grape, depends how we picked it, depends on what it did. Is it too much oak? Is it not enough oak? Oak in the casket? Yeah, when you're putting stuff in barrel, is it too new? Is there too much much flavor are we imparting too much flavor on the on the wine

you know going back and tasting some of the stuff i earlier did it's because they were new i just bought the barrels so there there's a lot of oak on some of the earlier wines that i did um that it's not there now because now they're older barrels and no longer imparting that flavor of oak so in hindsight i i you know i can't change it it's done right but i might have aged the barrels yeah get get more i get a couple new but but buy some neutral ones from somebody instead so that like there was just a kiss of oak on it rather than a lot of new oak so there's a company that specializes in creating barrels? No, you just go to some of the other wineries that are cycling through some of their barrels

and you can buy used barrels from reputable wineries. Oh, because I was going to ask you next, do you reuse your barrels? I use as much as I possibly can because I don't necessarily want the oak influence on the wine. Does the wine that was in the barrel influence future wines?

No, you're rinsing it out pretty good. You're cleaning them out. What do you clean it with? Steam. So there's no chemicals or nothing, just water? No, no, just steam and water, yeah. Wow. How the fuck do you have time for all this?

I just don't understand this. Logistical time management. I understand, but I don't understand where it's coming from. I'm looking at a clock. I'm going, okay, this goes around. There's 12 of those, and then there's another 12. Like, where the fuck is the time? Yeah, organizational skills.

Do you ever anticipate doing anything else with this sort of... the amount that's involved? No, I think because, like, when it comes to... Tim and I are going to develop probably going to develop a gin but that will be 100 us just coming up with a label coming up with a concept coming up with maybe a recipe and then handing that to some house i don't even know what gin is i know it's an alcohol i have no idea what you make it out of it's well depending

you know depending on the gin um it can be grain-based, but I'm probably going to go more for a molasses-based spirit. Molasses? Yeah, you ferment the molasses to give you the spirit. Is that a common thing for gin? Some of my favorite ones are. A lot of it ends up being more the grain-based, but there's also people that have done honey.

Honey gin? Yeah. So what gin is, like, when you're saying gin? I know it's an alcohol. Juniper is the key ingredient to it. To make it a gin, juniper is one of the botanicals that comes into either during the distillation process or post-distillation, juniper is involved.

But you can also do other things, other botanicals and things, to make it a more unique gin. Now, what about tequila? Tequila's agave, but I don't really know the process on tequila that much. I'd like to know, but I think gin is going to be more accessible to me because just the process of over-farming and tearing up land to fucking put in agave, I don't know what that sounds like. Over-farming? Yeah, just like I'm not, you know, I've heard rumors of like just fucking tearing through Mexico and fucking up entire landscapes to deal with like the agave thing.

It's a controversial subject. Oh, really? I think so. What I was reading about was... I'm trying to hurt it, and I was like, I don't want to hear about it right now. I got other shit to think about. I was reading about the health aspects of tequila,

that tequila actually has a probiotic benefit to it and that it has less sugar in it, so people find it to be more healthy than drinking other forms of alcohol? Maybe. I mean, you know, I suppose me not having five of those one night is probably not the smartest thing. Yeah. Waking up the next day going, not feeling very probiotic. Right. But, you know know if you exercise restraint which i'm not sure i know that word but uh yeah restraint do you do anything to recover from hangover specifically do you have sort of a routine yeah water just a lot of water uh the sauna um you know there's some stuff you'll drink electrolytes you know i do the the old school uh, you know, Baraka if I have to.

What's that? It's like a fizzy, like a vitamin C, multivitamin fizzy thing you drink with water. You know, it dissolves in the water. So it's just a vitamin sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we have some. Yep, there it is.

Does that work? Yeah. Well, I mean, the best thing for a hangover is drinking heavily the night before. Then you'll for sure get a hangover. If you want to avoid the hangover, don't drink heavily the night before. It just is what it is. It just is what it is. So, you know, just exercise restraint and drink a lot of water when you're drinking.

Like if I'm going to have tequilas, I have to force myself to be double-fisted. Water in one hand, drink in the other, so that way I'm hydrating as I'm drinking. Right. Because a lot of it's the dehydration that's fucking with you. So that's why the electrolytes in the next morning help and just, you know, pounding water.

During the process. During the process and the next day resign yourself to the fact you're going to pee a lot yes yeah yes do you have a hard time keeping up with the demand because i would imagine you can only grow so much wine yeah yeah we're doing we're doing great with respect to that we're right we're at the balance of what we can produce and what and what we sell it's sell. It's a nice spot to be in. So you're like at that, but do you feel pressure to expand? We want to expand because a healthy wine region has a healthy bulk wine market. So if I can make wine out of all those grapes, but I only need 80% of it, I sell my 20% of juice to other winemakers

just so they can supplement their programs. That's a healthy winemaking environment. Like, you're familiar with the wine, the Prisoner? No. Okay. You know the Prisoner? Oh, the one that has, like, the mug shots on it? No, it's got a guy in chains.

It's a very popular a it's it's a very popular uh bottle of wine called the prisoner you know for the most part that was all bulk wine so that's a california project that took off that made fucking distributors and people that's it a shitload of money because it was the person was just basically going around initially to just get bulk wine from all these different houses that had bulk wine that put a cool blend together and it was priced perfectly and you know wholesalers made a shitload of money on that thing because it was it was a it was it hit but it was bulk wine it wasn't some weirdo like me in a cellar making wine so the that's a person that doesn't actually even own a vineyard they're just getting there's that

there's a lot of that like in california there's like people that don't own a vineyard don't even own a winery they're just like putting together in a house or doing a they're producing a blend of wine from from uh bulk wines and presenting you a bottle, which is totally fine because as long as it's labeled properly, that's a California red wine, okay? That's fine. How do they even know what it's going to taste like? They're putting together because they're only buying it if it goes with the blend.

So they're getting samples, samples, samples, blending, and then picking the samples, the blend, and buying that wine in bulk and putting it together. Is this the most you've ever talked about wine in a two-and-a-half-hour period? No. I can go for a long time. I can bore the fuck—I can put you all to sleep. No. It's fascinating.

I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by anything that anybody is like deeply interested in. And it's clear that you're deeply interested in this. Yeah. So to answer your question, I wouldn't mind expanding the vineyard so that I have flexibility because what happens if I get hail and it takes out half my vineyards? If I have way more vineyards than I need, then I can kind of in that year, I can kind of massage what I have. Maybe use bulk wine from the year before to supplement into a blend but if I'm if I've made all the grapes from the vineyard we didn't get weather that wine is always valuable to somebody else to sell as a bulk product hail can take out half of your oh yeah it fucking it sucks

is there a way you can mitigate that but helps over it hail netting yeah we don't that yeah so like it looks like Hail netting, yeah. Hail netting. Yeah, so it looks like bird netting, but it's hail net. So it serves two purposes. It combats the hail and birds. Jesus Christ. It's expensive and looks weird. There it is.

Hail. Yep. Fuck. Look at that. And that just destroys everything. Well, those vines are probably, if they're not dead completely, they're definitely not getting any grapes off those vines for the next three years. Oh, my God.

Yeah. And it could very well be that those vines are done. Done, done. I'm just overwhelmed by the amount of commitments involved in this. I start thinking about my own head, like how I would handle this. I'm like, I just, I couldn't. Tequila. Something.

Hey, we got hail. Fuck. Listen, man, you balance it out. I don't know how you do it. It's, I think we kind of got a better perspective on what's involved through this conversation, but I don't know how you do it. It's a lot. Well, I don't do it by myself.

Yeah. You have to delegate and you have to trust people. If somebody wants to buy your wine, what's the best retail outlet? Caduceus.org is our website. You can go buy it off of Caduceus.org and we ship to most states. We're only in distribution in maybe 12 or 14 states. You couldn't get it at a grocery store unless we're actually in that state. Texas, we're in stores here in Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California. But the best way to get it is just to order it offline.

All right, that's what I'm going to do. And if you want a review, you have to ask Drew Dober, because I just sent him some wine. Oh, really? You sent some to Drew? Yeah. I love that dude. Yeah, we had a bet. It was the last fight.

I said, if you win the fight, I'll send you wine. If you lose the fight, you have to wear a shirt in public. A Caduceus shirt? Any shirt. Any shirt. Just any fucking shirt. If I was Bill O'Kee fucking shirt i wouldn't wear shirts in public either i'm so jealous of this fucking that was the terrence mckinney fight right yeah that was a wild fight it was a good fight that was a crazy one that was that terrence mckinney is wild did you see the uh the sugar

sean fight yes i did yeah the look on his face at the end, I was like, he normally runs his mouth pretty good. He's a good old Arizona boy. But he had that look on his face like, did I win that? Did I win? Well, he was very honest. He said, I'm going to have to watch this afterwards to see if I actually won it. Yeah. A lot of people were shocked.

Yeah. There's a video of Khabib watching the decision. And Khabib's like, how? How? Yeah. How? How did he win? How?

Yeah. I was right there 50. I wasn't sure because I thought the other guy won. But I think the bigger takeaway is that he was in it. Oh, he was certainly in it against Piotr Jan, who was a former champion, one of the best in the division by far, the number one contender. It was a very close fight, and he definitely hurt Piotr

in multiple occasions, caught him with that big knee, rocked him. The question is how much is the takedown worth, how much is control worth? Right. I assume that when I saw all the takedown worth how much is control worth right my my i assume that when i saw all the takedowns like then then yan won because there's a lot of takedowns yeah but takedowns without damage it's like what is that value i mean and i'm not now i'm not denying that i thought peter yan won because i did think he won at the end of it but takedowns without damage versus stand-up with damage because Sugar landed more strikes standing and had big moments.

Jan had some big moments too, one big left hand that rocked him. The question is, like, how much is the—how valuable are those takedowns and how valuable is that top game and that control? And that's way out of my, you know— The problem—there's several problems, but one of the problems is that top game and that control. And that's way out of my, you know. The problem, there's several problems. But one of the problems is that I feel, and I've said this ad nauseum, that I feel that we're very limited by this 10-9, this 10-point must scoring system. Because someone can win a round 10-9 and it can be a very close round.

And someone can win a round clearly and it can be 10-9. Right. And that doesn't make any sense to me. And I feel like the system is designed for boxing and it's a good system for boxing. I don't think it's a good system for MMA. I think MMA needs a much more comprehensive system. Like if a guy can hold you down with no damage at all for three minutes

versus a guy who holds you down and damages you for 30 seconds what's worth more you know what hits you with three or four good hard shots is that worth more or is like the predominance of a like if you you spend the majority of a round on top of a guy even if you're not damaging him how much is that worth what are how much is a leg kick worth how's how much is a submission worth like a submission attempt I think we need a much more comprehensive system that it doesn't it's not ten point must I don't think that's the right system for for MMA I think it should be a completely different system we just sort of adopted the boxing system so like the first

round of Aljamain Sterling and tj dillashaw i mean that is a fucking dominant round like what is that is it a 10-7 is it a 10-6 i mean that's an all aljamain round he beat the shit out of tj dillashaw dillashaw took him down dominated him took his back beat the fuck out of him like what's that how do you score that round and you know how could you know how how could that be better scored with a better system? Right. I think there's definitely room. I feel like that UFC was probably my top five UFCs ever.

It was amazing. It was really good. Jamie hooked it up from my iPad to a television through an HDMI connection in the O2 arena. We were in London. We just did the show. We had no idea what happened. Luckily, we got off stage, ordered food, and Jamie set up the iPad to a big screen TV that was in the room. We're all in there. It was like 20 of us in there watching. It was fucking incredible. Don't tell Dana. It was incredible. He'll sue you. No, he wanted me to. He gave me the fucking fucking gave me the link to it i have a fight pass membership but that's how we watched it but it was such a good fight and then watching

islam and and charles olivera that was what a fight that was i islam makachev must have the most incredible squeeze his his squeeze must be out of this world. Because you see how quick Charles tapped once he clamped that on him. I mean, poof. He had all the points covered, and he just like, done. That dude is on another level. I mean, he is the truth. I was always impressed with him.

But, I mean, I was saying leading up to him getting a shot at the world title, he's the boogeyman of that division. He was the guy that everybody was saying, like, is the most dominant of all the contenders. And then when he tapped Dober, that was a big one. When he tapped Dan Hooker, that was a big one too. It's like the way he's tapping these guys who are these world-class fighters, he's just fucking running through them.

But the fact that he got on Oliveira and mounted him and then submitted him with an arm triangle, head and arm choke like that. Yeah, that's a statement. He submitted the guy with the most submissions in the history of the sport. And the way he did it was just he was so fucking methodical and dominant and olivera tested him i mean he got out of bad positions in the first round he got back up to his feet hit him with some good shots but makachev he's the fucking truth you know there's an interesting that he's going to fight volkanovski next that's kind of a crazy thing for Volkanovski to go right up to 55 from 45 yeah I don't know you know I'm interested in that because Volkanovski is he's fucking

amazing I mean the the fights with Holloway especially the last fight with Holloway we see the evolution of his game and he's gotten so much better. Yeah, it's interesting. Don't you have an iPad on stage with you sometimes? Oh, yeah. While you're playing, watching the fights? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because I want to know.

I mean, of course, it's fighter-specific. There's people that I definitely pay attention to more than other fighters just because I want to see what happens because, you know, I back these people's career. I just want to know what's going to go on. So I don't watch every UFC in that context, but if I know Thug Rose is fighting, I'll iPad on the stage.

I got to see. Nate Diaz, I'm going to have the iPad up there for sure. No joke. I think that's hilarious. You're in the middle of a fucking wild concert and you've got an iPad sitting on the stage. I know it's awful. No, it's not awful. They're like, come on, we're here to watch the show.

So you get an extra show. You get a thing that's like not just us doing our thing. I'm going to deliver what I'm going to deliver. I'm not going to not sing the song, but I'm going to run over here, and you should be laughing at the fact that I have this weird fucking obsession with UFC for your show. Do the people know? No, not mostly. They know now.

They know now. What's that weird glow? Why does he keep looking down there where that speaker is? Is he going to get a teleprompter? Oh, no. Get up, get up, get up, get up. Have you ever had a moment where something shocking happens and you react? Yeah.

Yeah. I can't remember the fight, but I have the video somewhere. I'll send it to you. But it was like backstage. Yeah. Do you ever get a chance to go see many of them live? UFCs? Yeah.

Only when it's like maybe Arizona. Yeah. Have you been to some of the ones? Did you go to the one where Oliveira fought? Who did he fight where he won? Justin Gaethje? I missed that. I think I was out of town for that one.

The one I saw was I was screaming like a fucking idiot, man. I was front row. And it was when Diaz caught Sterling. Is that Sterling? No. He didn't win. He got him down and he started to showboat. Oh, Leon Edwards.

Edwards. I'm like, dude, finish the fucking fight. I'm like, I'm on the, I'm on my feet screaming my fucking head off. Finish it! Like, because, you know, and he didn't. Well, easier said than done. Yeah, I know. But I was like, you know, armchair fucking dude down on the ground.

I was just so excited for him that he caught him, and he was down for a second. We should go to one live. Let's go to one live when I'm not working. Okay. We should come see one at the Apex Center. The Apex Center is great. It's the best. We went to—we did a combat sports trifecta.

We saw Abu Dhabi. We sawa. We saw Abu Dhabi. We saw Gordon Ryan compete in Abu Dhabi. Then we went to the UFC and saw Corey Sanhagen and Yong Sedong at the Apex Center. And then we went to see Canelo Alvarez versus Triple G in a boxing fight. It was an incredible day. How do you think Silva's going to do? Against Jake Paul? Well, it's interesting.

Jake Paul is a, it's interesting. Jake Paul is a big, heavy-handed, young guy. And if Jake Paul was just a boxer and not a YouTuber, I think people would take him very seriously. Right. And I think people, for whatever reason, think that he's— I think you have to take him seriously. You have to take him very seriously. He knocked out Tyron Woodley with one punch. He's legit as fuck.

Anderson Silva is one of the greatest combat sports athletes of all time, one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. And as a boxer, even though he's 47 years old, he did beat Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who was a legitimate former world champion, and he knocked out Tito Ortiz to show you that he's got power. Obviously, Tito's not a boxer. I'm curious. I'm curious.

I don't know what's going to happen. It's 47 is old. Because for me, there's the UFC and then there's Anderson Silva. Yeah. So I'm very precious about Anderson. Well, I was very fortunate to be able to commentate against while, excuse me, when Anderson was competing in his prime against the best in the world. When Anderson was in his prime, he was a magician.

He was spectacular. To see him fight in his prime, like when he knocked out Vitor with that front kick to the face, when Anderson beat Chael Sonnen with a triangle in the last round, a fight that he was losing when he just beat the shit out of him in the rematch. Anderson during his prime was something extraordinary. He really, he, people forget because you see him towards the decline after he got his leg broken by Chris Weidman in that fight. He was never really the same again. But if you remember, like, you should look at a fighter

in terms of, like, what they were when they were at their best. And Anderson at his best was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all time. He was amazing. He was fucking amazing when he was in his prime. Yeah, I had friends that would watch the fights with me. And they're going, what is he doing? He's not doing anything. The first time I go, he is testing every single fucking boundary right now to figure out what he's going to do in the second round.

He's downloading data. Downloading data. I'm going to go like this, see what he does. I'm going to go like this, see what he does. I'm going to go like this, see what he does. He was extraordinary. And then second round, boink. I was a fan of his before he ever got to the UFC.

And I remember there was a betting line when he was fighting Chris Lieben. And I was like, whatever the betting line is, put the fucking house on the Brazilian. I'm like, you have to understand what you're about to see. Like this guy is on many different levels. He is, and he was in his prime, because I was watching him compete. He was initially competing in Japan, and then he started competing in London,

in England, in, it was a cage rage, I think it was called. That, and that promotion was when he came into his own. That's when he fought Lee Murray. That's when he fought George Oliveira. He was in his prime then, And that's when he came to the UFC right after that. I'm like, when he fought Tony Fricklin and he hit him with this like preposterous upward elbow, he was so good. And I was like, we're getting Anderson like when he came

into his own. And that's when he entered into the UFC. So people got to see this, like, just perfect striker. He was so good. But he's 47. You know, that's when I'm looking at this fight coming up, I'm like, hmm, I don't know. He's also 47, and I don't know what kind of testing they're doing. Right. That changes everything. That changes the whole world.

Because if he's on all sorts of Mexican supplements, then we could see like a turning back of the clock. Extra mustache? Yes. Could have an extra mustache. He's most likely going to be supplementing. I wouldn't imagine he's not. At 47, I wouldn't imagine he's not taking something. If you're taking something in you're 47, that is not what we think of as 47. That is 47 with a body that responds like a 30-year-old. Is that the case? I don't know. Is that enough? I don't know. I'm interested. I'm in.

I'm going to watch it. I'm definitely going to get it. Yeah. You know? Even if it's on stage. Yeah. Right over here. Yeah. I didn't do that. I couldn't do that. With comedy, I can't do that. True. I can that. With comedy, I can't do that. True. I can't, but afterwards I'm like, I just gotta stay away from my phone

and get to the iPad and watch it. Yeah. But it's an amazing time to be a fan of combat sports. There's so much going on. I agree. Yeah, almost too much. Well, yeah. I love that the ADCC has gone to the level that it's gone. Yeah, almost too much. Well, yeah.

I love that the ADCC has gone to the level that it's gone. Yeah, we saw that the Thomas and Mac was sold out, 12,000 people in Vegas. The arena was packed to the gills, and it was nuts. Like, the energy in the place was incredible. And to be there, like, to have it this popular, it's not a coincidence that it's this popular while Gordon Ryan is at his peak, who is the greatest jujitsu athlete of all time at 27 years old, which is so crazy to say. He looks amazing. And I talked to John before you got there today and John and I were talking and he's like, he's not even in his prime. He's like, he's not even at a hundred percent. He's still getting over his stomach issues. He's like,

but Gordon Ryan at 70% destroys everybody. Yeah. And he's getting better. It was impressive to see because most of the things that he was doing were very simple, methodical, cutting off all your fucking exits and trapping you into a thing. Nothing fancy. Just this this now this is mine now this is mine now this is mine now this is mine and you're done we were talking to him before the finals we're hanging out outside and when he's fighting nikki rod in the finals he said i'm just

gonna give my leg because the only way he can win is in a wrestling match. He goes, I'm just going to give him my leg and make him do jiu-jitsu with me. And so he walks out there and he just kind of gives him his leg. Nicky grabs him, takes him down. Gordon grabs all of his leg, laces it up, taps. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, this is exactly how he called it. But the way, I mean, he was so calm in the way he described it.

I'm just going to give him my leg. And he did it. Yeah. Have you been to an Abu Dhabi live? Two years from now. Let's go. Okay. Yeah.

I think they're going to do it again in Vegas. If that's the case, let's go. Okay. It'll be worth it. It's pretty fucking amazing. And it's pretty amazing as a jujitsu lover to be able to see jujitsu get the attention that it deserves and to see like this fucking rabid fan base because like basically everyone in the audience trained so there's like 12 000 people who are jiu-jitsu trainers and fans and practitioners that are there enjoying that yeah i'm gonna all right we got a date all right two years from now yes maynard you're the fucking

man thank you sir thank you very much um Give people information on all the stuff that we talked about earlier for everything you got going on, the pay-per-views. Yeah. PussiferTV.com. There it is. And the tour dates. Yeah, we're still going, man. It's going to be all the way up to Thanksgiving. There it is.

Pussifer.com forward slash tour. Yep. All right, brother. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.