The Joe Rogan Experience - #2027 - Oliver Anthony

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Oliver Anthony is a singer/songwriter whose song "Rich Men North of Richmond" recently became a viral phenomenon. He's the first songwriter to debut at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with no prior chart history in any form. www.facebook.com/people/Oliver-Anthony-Music/100085643337139/

the Joe Rogan experience do you ever find yourself with the desire to welcome the crocs in your life? yeah I've got some genuine Realtree crocs from when I'm out in the stand I know guys who use those as camp shoes real tree crocs for when I'm out in the stand, you know? I know guys who use those as camp shoes. They like to walk around camping them because you're wearing heavy boots in the mountains. Yeah.

Well, they're nice to kind of keep with you as a spare. You know, you soak your boots or you're just trying to go on out of the house real quick. Yeah. Brian Simpson now has crocs and stage Crocs. So before Brian Simpson goes on stage, he takes off his walk-around Crocs and he puts on his pristine stage Crocs. It's hilarious. It's so funny.

He used to do it with sneakers. He used to walk around with Crocs and then he would wear sneakers on stage. And then he went from Crocs to stage Crocs. Yeah, well, maybe I'll look into that. I need to get some new boots. My boots are like, these are the ones I always wear. And we were walking through the airport yesterday, and they're like literally one of the soles

is falling off. I'm like, I got to figure out something. You got to get them resold, man. They're authentic. Yeah. These are my genuine. You earned them. You know?

People pay for those. I thought about it. I was joking with my buddy the other day. You know? People pay for those. I thought about it. I was joking with my buddy the other day. I went and changed my oil at his house before we drove to North Carolina. And I left the dirty oil sitting in his garage.

And I was like, I'll get it, whatever. He said, no, man. He said, I'm selling that on eBay. That's Oliver Anthony's authentic used motor oil out of his truck. You could probably get $20 for that. There's a lot of people that definitely would buy that. But what I mean, people buy used clothes because they want to wear clothes that look like they have character. It drives me crazy.

When I see people with pants that are just shredded all over the place, like your knees are exposed. Yeah, see, the pro tip I have for that is just go to Goodwill. You can get real used clothes. For real used clothes. But that's extra, like, hipster authentic if you go to a real used clothes store. What do they call those? Vintage. Yeah, like that vintage look, yeah.

Oh, yeah. If you could buy some holy T-shirts and some dirty hippie wardrobe at a Rolling Stones concert in the 1970s, you can get that now? That's worth a lot of money. You know, if like he died of a heroin overdose and he kept the fucking t-shirt at his mom's house and she decided to sell it.

That's worth a lot of money. I've tried to hold on to things that I think I could sell down the road. I've still got the strings that I recorded Richmond North of Richmond on my guitar. I almost threw them away. I was like, hold on a second. You could definitely sell those. But that would be like an honest sale people can't say oh he's a sellout yeah yeah i'm just selling junk i have actually i'm considering selling my

my truck um just if any i don't know i think we talked about this before but if somebody it's it's worthless to me it's got 325 000000 miles on it in a salvage title and uh I still daily drive it but I thought man if I could sell this and somebody pay 50 grand for it or whatever and send it towards a charity like it would be it'd be pretty slick to do it has a salvage title it does yeah what happened by when it was already no um well now I paid it's a it's a 2007 Suburban I paid a couple grand for it years ago and then um just here recently i had to have it towed it broke down in the rollback driver i guess i don't know if he was under the influence or something or what but he unhooked all the chains off and then tilted the

bed back so the whole truck rolled right off the back of the rollback oh no it totaled the truck out it bent a bunch of stuff under the drive shaft And the front of the frame and all And of course I'm sitting there trying to figure out what to do with my truck And here comes all the police And they're like oh is that really you So here I am I'm on the phone with my insurance company And then all these guys are coming up trying to take selfies with me

That's hilarious I guess this is the world I live in now So can the truck be fixed It's drivable Yeah I'm driving it. It rides kind of like a covered wagon now. So at some point I'm going to have to upgrade. Is the frame bent?

Is the suspension bent? Yeah, the driveshaft in the back's bent. I think it's what's causing it to shake. Oh, so you've got like a wobble in your driveshaft? It went straight. Yeah, I mean, it went Dukes of Hazzard style off the back of the truck. As an adult, that show drives me nuts watching those cars land like what are you doing to those cars well hey this one can do it

so yeah sort of maybe i'll donate it to whistling diesel and just let him kill it i don't know it'd be pretty slick but well you could do that or if someone is listening to this and they want to do something cool and they've got the cheddar buy it it from you, and then send it to Roadster Shop, and have them put like a badass suspension in it, and make it a real sleeper. They can do shit like that. That'd be pretty slick. Because you have to get all that replaced anyway.

Why not replace it with better shit? It'd be cool for somebody to have it. It would have a cool story behind it. This company called Roadster Shop, they've been on my podcast before. One of the things they do is they do like a sleeper series. I think they call it the Legend Series. I'm actually not sure what they call it.

But what they do is they'll take an old car. So the outside looks like shit. The outside is patina and rust and all that stuff. And then they'll just completely redo everything underneath it with like a crazy engine, insane brakes, insane handling and suspension. But it still looks like a 72 GMC pickup truck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But underneath it, it's just a monster. It's got all the modern amenities.

Because new cars are so much more efficient. Like you don't realize when you – So they do stuff like this. That's not it. But they have different kinds of builds. Like, you don't realize when you... So they do stuff like this. That's not it. But they have different kinds of builds. No, so these are all just, like, the different ones that they did. Survivor Series, that's what it is.

The Survivor Series. Well, so I think the Survivor Series, that's what it is. Like, they leave the outside. It's interesting to me that older vehicles had so much more character. Like, I don't know if it's just that it's That's what it is We we nailed it with them We sat down with them and they introduced me to all these people that were the designers back in GM in the day This guy was a freak. He was wearing like crazy red suits and this crazy guy was probably definitely on acid

And these are the people that created these insane shapes. And then when the sweeping psychedelics drug act of 1970 came along, they made everything a Schedule I drug. Yeah. And that is when cars went downhill. It is when cars went downhill. It was early 70s. Yes. You can get a 71 Barracuda and it's still sick.

But you get into like 72, 73. Yeah. Those cars look like shit. 75, they're garbage. 79, they're done. Everyone's on coke. Everyone thinks Those cars look like shit. 75, they're garbage. 79, they're done. Everyone's on coke. Everyone thinks everything they do is amazing. It's just, you get the movie Showgirls.

Everything lost its art and it became focused more on algorithms of what's going to sell and what's more efficient and what's better to produce. Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on. They were going on past success. So if you go to like the 1980s, some of the worst movies that were ever made, like the Sort of, but back then I don't even think they had data they were going on. They were going on past success. So if you go to the 1980s, some of the worst movies that were ever made, like the Cocaine Years, I really strongly feel like those people were going on reputations of sales. And the studio would put a lot of money behind someone who had a great reputation. And this guy's fucking partying and doing lines and writing crazy shit in these scripts.

And some of them are good and some of them aren't so good, but they're all kind of clunky. They're all kind of disconnected. That like a true masterpiece of a movie isn't. You know, like Taxi Driver. Like you go back and watch Taxi Driver, that's a masterpiece of a movie. It's so connected.

You're connected to all the action. It's like you're on the edge of your seat it's what it's it's wild the acting's insane even Jodie Foster as a kid is insane in it it's so good but cocaine movies in the 80s they just they're just they were nuts man they they didn't go on algorithms I think they just went on what they thought people wanted. They probably took polls, but who the fuck's answering polls? Polls are the worst way to get information because you're only getting information from people dumb enough to answer polls. That's such a small group of people. How many people answer polls when they call you up?

How many people have fucking people with a life have time for a poll? Do you think Jordan Peterson has ever answered a poll? Yeah, like I always get those calls and immediately hang up. Yeah, just shut the fuck up. I'm sorry I have to do this to you, but bye. No, don't hang up. Some of them will beg. Please.

They can't get anybody to do it. Yeah, it's fascinating to see throughout history times when people were able to really connect with other humans. Whether it's through movie or film or cars or whatever. It's like maybe it was the psychedelics or whatever. I don't know. But there was a huge disconnect. It seemed like after the 70s with all that things kind of went off. And it's interesting even now, like I see a lot of the new a lot of the new movies coming out.

They're all just sort of remakes of they're just like a they're like a reconceptualization of something that's happened 15 years ago there's not a lot of like new stuff out there for people to connect with it's yeah matt damon did this conversation about why it's so much more difficult to make movies now there's no dvd sales anymore and it was very interesting and it kind of makes sense i think it's just it's really hard to finance those fucking things and you want a guaranteed success what's a guaranteed success you need a superhero people like superheroes you know and uh if your superhero is trans even better you could figure out a way to make it every ethnicity inside the group of superheroes that are there perfect now we're good yeah now we need cgi we need aliens explosions yeah i think cgi is a blessing and a curse because

like i don't know some of the best some of the best film it it doesn't necessarily have the best stunts or the you know like right you can tell where some of it's fabricated but that's okay because the the whole you know the whole thing's a fabrication going into it it's just about like being able to believe the story within it that's what's important you know even like i'm not a huge movie guy and i guess i'm um it's it's difficult for me to sit three hours and watch something straight. My mind's already long gone within the first 30 minutes doing something else. But Star Wars was really partial to me growing up.

And I don't think they'll ever touch the original series, even though. Yeah. Like you can tell some of it like it even with some of like the the renovations they've done on the newer versions of it, adding CGI into the old films, it's like just the story of the originals to me meant a lot more than the newer stuff just because of the... You don't believe it looking at it with your eyes as much, but you believe it more with your mind listening to what it has to tell you. I think that Star Wars is like generational wealth. Like the original guy who started the company was a bad motherfucker. That guy was out there grinding and he was selling soap out of the back of a wagon in 1890. But the folks who inherited the company three, four, and five generations in, they're kind of flat. It's different. When I watch Star Wars now, it's like a bunch of stuff happening. It's still fun. and five generations in, they're kind of flat.

It's different. When I watch Star Wars now, it's like a bunch of stuff happening. It's still fun. They're still good. I enjoy them. But Star Wars won in the context of whatever year it was. What was it, 77 or something like that? Hey, there you go.

Say the pop. What do you think it is? What was first Star Wars, if you had to guess? Yeah, probably late 70s, I'd say. Yeah, I want to say like 70s. In my unprofessional opinion. Am I right? 77? Yay!

Look at that. That movie, at that time, was fucking groundbreaking. It was amazing. Rick Baker did the special effects. That was when I was a serious special effects nerd. When I was a little kid, I wanted to do special effects for the movies. That's how I became a giant fan of Rick Baker. That's why we have that American Werewolf in London in the lobby.

Oh, okay. That's what that's for. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's this guy named Pat McGee. It's funny because that's our second one. We have another one that's in the pool hall.

And the reason why is that Pat McGee, who is this amazing special effects guy, he was also on the podcast back in the day. He made an American Werewolf in London that you could buy online. And I'm like, that would be the sickest thing for the studio ever. And then Rick Baker came and was a guest, and Rick Baker said, the proportions are off. Like, the arms weren't as long,

it was shorter, it was like this and that. So Pat McGee listened, and he was like, shit, I gotta make a better one. And so he made an even better one. And the new one is all hair. There's no synthetic hair. So it's all like, I think it's yak hair that they use. So it's like individual hairs are put in all over this wolf.

And it looks fucking amazing. It does look, that's the, yeah, that's the first thing that catches your eye walking in here, I'd say out of everything. Yeah. That thing's sick. You're not going to find one of those many other places. That was my 100% my favorite horror movie that i love that movie because it's funny it's terrifying it has to do with the werewolf theme to me is so amazing that you take some person who's

like a good person they're a friendly nice guy and you're like hey man you have to lock yourself in a cage you're going to become a monster it's like what the fuck are you saying it doesn't make any sense and no one they never want to believe and you know it's gonna happen and in that one that was the first time in one of those movies where you got to see like the advancements of special effects like what year was american guess that i want to say 82 i'm gonna say 82 84 81 81 um i should have stuck with 82 back back then when when you know you had special effects it was like kind of like they didn't move that good like they couldn't get their faces to move that good but he had figured out a way to get your hands to grow. Like, and he had to figure out a way to get things in his cheeks where his cheeks

were bubbling. Yeah, it's awesome. And it's all real. None of it is CGI. And there's something about that uncanny valley when you're watching a CGI transformation. Your brain knows it's bullshit. For whatever reason, you're better off having it

look fake but be a real thing like John Carpenter's the thing you're better off with that than you are with CGI yeah whatever reason CGI yeah I mean I think we just have seen it is this is a behind the scenes footage I was going to show you oh Oh, wow. That was pretty cool because it still moves in an interesting way. Yeah, but that's a physical thing moving. It's not a CGI. That does look exactly like the wolf in the lobby, doesn't it? But back then they couldn't even get the thing to close its mouth. Look how sick that is.

That's awesome. Imagine if you're in a subway and you see that fucking thing turning a corner. Oh, my God. That scene was amazing where the poor guy was stuck in the subway and he was running from it. And then you see it at the bottom of the escalator stairs. That's like just those quick glimpses of a thing like that. It's so much more terrifying than some long CGI'd up monster killing someone scene. Like the American War Wolf in London was just a masterpiece. Landis just

nailed it. It was the perfect horror movie. And it was funny. There's funny moments in it. Yeah, that's cool when you can get humor in there too. Yeah, that kind of reminds me of my dog when I don't give him table scraps. You know, he's got that terrible face like that.

That thing was amazing yeah but it's just the difference between digital and real and you're gonna have to deal with that soon because i guarantee you there's gonna be some people that are making some cgi oh yeah i'm sure what is that i'm sure there are yeah i haven't kept up with a lot just because um you know i'm doing so anything social media related right now or anything, any internet presence I have right now is coming from me off the phone just like before everything blew up. So I haven't invested the time to like look at everything circulating, but I've, people

like friends and family have sent me stuff and some of it's pretty funny, but you know, they've got all these different AI remixes of the song with different voices and overlay different faces and all. And it's funny to see where it's going to go. That is funny. Yeah. You're going to have to deal with that. My daughter sent me some advertisement.

She goes, did you do this advertisement? I'm like, nope. Nope, that's not really my voice. The day after things blew up, one of the towing companies had an ad on Facebook that had, it wasn't really me but it was a red beard and like the side profile of sunglasses looking out the window i'm like okay how dare you i guess i've made it anyway that's when i realized like people are already ripping things off and what's crazy is like every shirt that i've worn anywhere in public there's um so there's a there's a organization that i've um i'm not like officially related to or in any way have done anything with, but it's a friend of a friend in the neighborhood.

It's called Nets with Vets, and they take out veterans with PTSD and let them go deep-sea fishing. So he asked me last minute just to wear his shirt at one of the concerts, and do you know now there's like 1,500 listings online for counterfeit Nets with Vets shirts? That's crazy. And so the organization reached out like, hey, are you like making shirts ripping us off? It's like, it's not me. So it's a weird thing. But I've already experienced a lot of that stuff.

Not so much on the AI side, but just, I don't know, the internet's just such a rowdy place, you know? Oh, it's so rowdy. The world's a rowdy place. It is. And maybe people bring their best and their worst on the internet. I've always tried to stay off social media as much as possible, but I've learned very quickly that Twitter and Facebook and stuff, you see comments and feedback from people, both overwhelmingly positive that maybe you wouldn't get in a personal conversation,

but also like overwhelmingly negative too you know yeah people just use that as a vent that just they just take whatever seething hatred they have inside of them they're like oh i'm getting that guy with it you know if you had a song just about love that resonated like that it would be almost impossible to hate you but you have a song where you're talking about how people are fed up with and it obviously resonated i mean i've seen songs go viral but that's pretty banana son your went to the moon right away and uh god i'm not sure who sent it to me i have to find out who sent it to me because it's one of those things where like once one person sent it to me,

then it was like dozens of people were sending it to me. It's funny because originally that song wasn't in my, it wasn't really even in my top five. Like it's not normally the type of song. I've written songs with similar messages, but as far as that sort of like, I guess, anthem format is what people are calling it. It's like an anthem.

Like that's not something I would normally write. But it's an unlikely anthem. Yeah. Insane times. It would be an unlikely anthem. Yeah, I had no idea that that song would react the way it did. Well, you're a smart guy and it's representative of how a lot of people feel. And it's also, there's something about the way certain people sing.

And I don't know what it is because i can't sing but there's a there's a tone there's an authentic sound and i know when they're faking it and it's not that they're not faking it in a beautiful way like there's a lot of people the faking it's probably a bad term but they're sounding perfect and they're singing a song there's something missing i don't know what it is yeah but some people like janice joplin's like one of my greatest examples there's an take a little piece of my heart there's a authenticity in that voice that god damn man if that doesn't bring you to your knees play that play that we need to hear that. We got time. This fucking song. We always got time. Every time.

This is one of those songs that every time I hear it, it just takes me in my mind to what it must have been like to be alive in 1968 or whenever it was that this came out. And this hippie chick who's 27 years old has a voice from the heaven. God damn, son. Listen to that. Give me some volume. Yeah, it's timeless, too. It's timeless, too. Take another little piece. She was a magical person.

Magical person. It's a magical person. Yeah, but she's really singing with everything in her. Everything. Yeah, I think, at least in my case, I think the one thing that's helped me too is that my singing isn't the best, but I've never had any vocal lessons or anything. So the way I sing is just the way I sing.

And so I think even the same way with her and other people. It's maybe rough around the edges. It could be a little pitchy. You're not using the right part of your face when you project and whatever. And so on paper, things aren't quite right. But I guess to another human, it sounds it is it is what it is you know it's authentic yeah yeah i don't think there's any right way to do anything i mean there's like you see it in everything there's a person who violates the rules and they're the best at it

and then and then the rules almost morph into whatever that is like um it's funny like with music yeah music has country in particular but music in general has gotten way too wrapped up in like this algorithm of how many beats per minute it needs to have and how many verses and how they need to be layered and it's like they've almost created this sort of like industry standard uh like osha rulebook of how music needs to be performed and so like you can only do that so many thousands of times before people are like okay what else is there you know well people like that too that's the thing there's a lot of damn people there's a lot of people the problem i think a lot of people is they want you to like what they like and if you don't like what they like what you like sucks it's

it's funny like that man it's we we're so tribal we we are we are tribal with our cell phones you know we're an Android or PC you know it's like we're so weird we're so weird but we're like that with our musical taste. We're like that with our cultural Sensitivities or our cultural sensibilities rather like the way we feel about life and how life should be we want everybody to kind of Think along the ways that we think it's very strange and when a person like yourself gets labeled a right-wing left-wing Fanatic like right out of the gate Both in like a week and a half and yeah, at least i know i'm doing something right like to me yeah they're looking for your biden campaign contributions now they're going through your fucking taxes it's the whole

thing is so bonkers man like can't they just accept that you made a great song and people enjoy it yeah why does it have you know why do people have to attack well i think it's just for whatever reason i've been there's i'm the subject matter the last couple weeks. And in everyone's defense, I probably haven't – I've waited for this opportunity, I guess, to really have a real conversation with somebody about whatever it is I am. So people are just trying to find who's this Oliver Anthony guy and what is he and where does he work and who did he vote for? And what's his family like? And yada, cause they want to sort of build this, um,

image of whatever it is that the person behind the song represents for better or for worse. The people who agree with it want to, you know, I don't know. It's, it's really funny to watch on my end. Cause obviously I know what's true and what's not. And so like,

just even what I've skimmed through of people sending me, like, like, like singing at the Superbowl, like how many people have formed an opinion about whether or not I should be paid to sing at the Superbowl. Like I'm not singing at the Superbowl. That's just somebody made up, but you know, there's, there's been hundreds of hours of people's time wasted, probably talking about all these little like things that don't even exist. It's just somebody made them up and put them on the internet. And so I'm just letting them ride. I think there,

I think it's, I think it's great. I just think it's great. Like that at least the last couple of weeks I've been able to entertain everyone and get everyone's mind off. Like all the, all the other horrible stuff that's going on in the world right now. Like,

uh, at least everybody can have a good laugh, you know? So, well, I mean, it's, it's a subject of discussion.

So like everybody is getting involved in, somehow or another became cultural and then there was a Dwight from the office Oh, yeah, he's shy did it if he was gonna write a cultural anthem What did he say something like you wouldn't write about overweight people on welfare? He would write about billionaires and their taxes. There is nothing funnier than millionaires talking shit about billionaires. There is nothing funnier about millionaires pretending these billionaires are out of touch. And then take Dwight from the office down to West Virginia. Take him through those coal mining countries. Take them through those places in Appalachia where people have extreme poverty. And pills have ravished those areas.

Take them through there. And it's everywhere. Yeah, the sad thing is it's everywhere now. It's not. You know, it's funny. People right off the get-go, I guess because it was Radio WV that posted the original video, but, like, I've never once advertised myself as being necessarily from the mountains my grandfather grew up in western part of virginia in the mountains but i've i'm from farmville which

is technically piedmont but even in throughout rural virginia that poverty is a big issue and drugs are a big issue and i mean it's not just even in the rural areas and you go into downtown richmond or any downtown anywhere for that matter it's like it's almost like um yeah these problems exist everywhere now. And I think, I mean, obviously they are because that's why the song resonated the way it did. They exist in other countries. In other countries, yeah.

Well, people are tired of being fucked with. And it seems like people in power are always fucking with people. And I think it's a natural inclination that human beings have. And I think the founding fathers of this country recognized that when they set up our government. They set up our government to protect it against tyranny and they did it by having all these different branches of government and they're all coordinated and there's a lot of fucking a lot of stuff that keeps people from just running it the way they want to run it like a king well they know they i mean i'm certainly no uh i'm no professional

historian but my understanding is that the federal government was never intended to be the size that it is today. Like, it's just we're very top-heavy in the way we're structured. You know, our federal government is enormous and out of control and almost impossible to manage. But then, like, on our community level and in our state government, things are, especially local government, things are just very neglected and weak and disconnected. And so like, that's why you see a lot of the problems, like we shouldn't have to rely on the federal government to fix things out in the street in small town America, like the communities and the local government should be the ones fixing that. And that's, that's the way I see things. Like even before the, even before our current form of government, I remember reading about like articles of

Confederation, and that was just an even smaller version of federal government. And it needed to have a little more structure than that. But even from day one, it seems like the federal government's never supposed to be the size that it's gotten to. Like that's really... That's a good argument if the country didn't get to the size that it got. The problem is you can't have like 30 people running 300 billion people.

But I think you could have more issues. So I think it's almost impossible for states to be able to have the control to make the right decisions for the people in their areas when the federal government limits them in so many different ways. I don't know anything about this, so I'm going to be talking out of my ass. But I would imagine they're probably low on funding, too.

There's probably a lot of issues, especially in places that are poor, because they rely on taxes from those people. It's all very complicated. But the idea of taxing the rich being the way to fix all this, no, you're just going to give more money than the government. And they're not really good at doing stuff. the way to fix all this. No, you're just going to give more money than the government, and they're not really good at doing stuff. You know, I mean,

would it be nice if rich people donated to fixing streets and schools and stuff like that? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it would be. Good call. Also, fat people shouldn't be buying fucking fudge rounds with food stamps. Also, that's not good. Yeah, and that's

a funny... But also... That's a conversation that's and that's that's a funny um but also that's a conversation that sort of got blown multiple ways and really i i like to let a song be left up to the interpretation of the listener but even with that it's like yeah i would love to write a song about like i always thought it was funny to like when gm got bailed out of the recession after they made all these terrible decisions like i never understood why we i don't i've never understood corporate welfare either to much of an extent.

So I do understand the people making that argument. Well, the corporate welfare argument is you're going to lose a shitload of jobs. You can preserve those jobs, give those people a loan, they build back up, then they repay the loan. That's what they did, though. Yeah. So there's actually some benefit to that.

So, yeah, there's... But it keeps American jobs, and it also keeps one of the most iconic American car manufacturers in business. It's good for everybody. Yeah. I think. It's a good conversation to have.

It is. Like, what gets bailed out and what doesn't? Yeah. And why? Yeah. Yeah, but ultimately, yeah, I do see a lot of people that aren't taken care of. Yeah. You know the most used business that didn't get taken care of during the crash?

Who? The porn business. The porn business got wrecked. They got wrecked because they used to rely on DVD sales. And then internet pirating came along and they lost everything. And meanwhile, these politicians are probably whacking off every day to them. That's a big industry even today. For sure. For sure.

Well, hey, for whatever they lost during the recession, they made it back during COVID, because that's my understanding. Everyone was doing that then. I don't know how that works. Like, who's getting paid? I don't know how that works. I'm sure there's a lot of money in that business.

There's obviously a lot of eyeballs in that business. I believe it's one-third of internet traffic worldwide or something bonkers like that. Yeah. Isn't it something like that? It should be more. I don't know. Let's find out what it is.

What's the percentage of – and everybody's like, I don't know where it's coming from. It's not me. I've never even seen one of these films. That stuff's terrible for people. It's terrible for some people. I gave that up. I think it's like Adderall. Some people can handle it.

That is one thing I I gave that up. I think it's like Adderall. Yeah. Some people can handle it. That's one thing. That is one thing I had to give up. Yeah, because it's, I don't know, it does disconnect you from reality in many ways. And I think a lot of the weird perversion we see coming out, sort of like now at this point you read about, I mean, I even referenced some of it in the song, of course, but you read about a lot of the weird things that people are doing that maybe wouldn't have been accepted 100 years ago I think people go down these rabbit holes with porn and they start off it's uh they start off with the video with the milkman and by the end of it it's like where did I end I don't know people have to keep it's almost like a drug people have to keep chasing that thrill and it takes them down

very destructive rabbit holes you know if you will. It definitely can for some people. I have no issue with anybody watching it, but I do hate to read about some of the things that it does to people. It ruins marriages and that kind of thing. It's like, I don't know. I think a lot of things ruin people. I think they also should be legal. Sure, yeah. Alcohol ruins people.

I like the fact that bars are legal. Shit, I own a bar. Alcohol is people. I like the fact that bars are legal. Shit, I own a bar. Alcohol is legal. I like it. It's not good for everybody, though. Some people drink alcohol and they lose their fucking mind, and it's not good for them, whether it's genetically or whatever it is. They can't have a drink.

I like a drink. Yeah. And I support your right to do whatever you want. Like, you know, I think if cocaine was legal, the same amount of people would probably do it. And it would be real. You'd get pure cocaine. It'd probably be better. We'd probably have better music. If you're getting this fentanyl mix shit and you're out of your fucking head.

Yeah, well, that's the problem. Like, yeah, I mean, gosh, yeah. Look at when the government bans something. It makes it worse so that's certainly not the answer i'm not interested in adderall i'm interested in trying it once but i'm not interested in like doing adderall i am interested i'm lying i'm interested because everybody loves it uh but i'm scared of it the porn stats you're right about 30 but this is the only one i find to be odd in, 16.5 years was the average age of first exposure to

porn in the United States. 16.5? That's like you're a sophomore or junior in high school. That's because 90 year old people are still alive and they do it based on them. I first saw my girly movie when I was 20. Frank had a reel to reel camera in the basement. We all

got there and we had raincoats on. That's what it is. It's like when you factor in infant mortality to the average age that people die during the Roman era. That's what it is. So you expect it to be lower than 16 and a half? Yeah, it should be. Yeah, it should be. You give a kid a phone.

Instantly. I know that was one thing that was interesting to me in Virginia They just recently changed the law where I think you have to enter your driver's license to watch porn now hilarious Yeah, they know exactly who's watching porn. They want that's good. If you're watching some freak shit You know if you're in death, you know, it's like I don't know You don't want to give the government the ability to spy on you. You just don't. And you don't want to give, because the government is just humans. We like to think of the government as being some all-powerful, all-moral, all-ethical entity that controls us in a perfect and very robust and well-considered way. But that's not real.

The reality is it's human beings like you and like me and like Jamie, people, people that get to dictate what other people can and can't do. And that's where shit gets weird. Yeah. And a lot of people, I think, go into government with good intentions, but it's like anything else. Once you, I think you get in the mix, it's like things change and you have to, um, you have to go with the flow and sort of agree to agree on things that maybe your heart doesn't necessarily agree with. And so that's why you see politicians constantly changing narratives depending on like the political climate. And so, yeah, it's kind of created this big disconnect between people like you and I and people like you and I that are in government because they're not they're not necessarily saying what they feel or what they think. They're like, let me keep my stripes just like everybody else's so I don't stand out.

Yes, there's a lot of that. There's too much money tied up in politics, too much bribe and extortion and slap on the back deals and stuff that should never be allowed to happen. Yeah, that's what's really created a lot of dishonesty within it there's a bunch of decisions that got made a long time ago that really fucked us and one of them was when they let drug companies advertise on television that's just like there's only two countries in the world that allow that really the united states and new zealand yeah and i think it was 97 was it 97 when they allowed yeah well it's

it's funny because yeah you watch the commercial and then at the end, it's like, it's the best thing in the world. You get to that last 20 seconds, you're like, I don't know about that. I know, you're at a cookout, everything looks great, next thing you know, your asshole is fucking spraying blood and you're suicidal. Yeah. Like, what?

And they say it all so fast. This is how blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? Yeah, big pharma, I guess, right. Suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation, rectal bleeding. Yeah, well, I mean, that's like, fortunately, at this point in my life, I haven't been on many medications. But I went on a run with SSRIs. And I can tell you for me, it's like it's the last 20 seconds applied more than the first two minutes of the commercial. Like, I didn't find any benefit in that.

And it's, yeah, it's, I don't know. I think there's alternatives to pharmacy medicine in a lot of cases. Like maybe even if it's just habits, you know, like it's okay to prescribe a medication to keep somebody on course. Or like, you know, for example, like I've got a relative of mine. I won't call him out, but he won't change the way he eats at all. But he'll take whatever medications every day to keep his, you know, keep the diabetes away and keep his blood sugar, blood pressure low and all that. But it's like there should be more integration of like, hey, maybe this is like a plan of what you should do to go along with this medicine.

Ideally, eventually get it's like they don't want you to really get off the medicine, though. If anything, they want you to keep taking it. Right. So like, yeah, it's weird. It is weird that it's almost advertised like it's a soda or a, or a car or something, you know? Well, it's weird that, you know, people are so, we're so kind of like dependent on other people to take care of us that we would rather go somewhere and get some medication than fix our life, than fix your lifestyle choices. And we've been programmed to sort of think that there's solutions for you out there. Go get those solutions.

That's not a solution. Like internally, you need to reconsider like what you're doing to your actual physical body. Like what are you doing to your physical body? Like are you giving your physical body the exercise that it deserves to be robust and healthy? If you're not, you should. Are you eating food that's nutritious? If you're not, you should. Well, and how do you do, I mean, how do you do that in today's time anyway, if you don't have a lot of money? Well, you can exercise for sure. Nutritious food. Oh, exercise, certainly, yeah. There's a way to eat nutritious

food on a budget, but you have to be diligent. And the problem is fast food and food deserts. But if you have a supermarket, if there's a supermarket where you live, then you can get food. And if the supermarket has food, you can get healthy food. And it's not that much more expensive. Even people that go on a carnivore diet. I know people that go on a carnivore diet on a budget and they go to Costco and get a big tube of ground beef. And they freeze a lot of it and they cook a bunch of it like in portions yeah you know i know yeah and it's and that's a lot better than

the crap from the store but even it's not like i mean you read about i mean just in the part of the country i'm at we've got um really close family of ours that farms the father and the son have both died from cancer from what they've been you know from the commercial agriculture they've been in spraying and all like and all that stuff ends up in the food and you get i've read about microplastics in the food like you you know you're going by you're going by a tub of ground beef like how much plastic was in the food that they have all the all the bags of crap that they threw in there to feed the feed the animals but it's just it is really i think the only way to in this time in the area we're in, unless you're going to go buy really expensive food out of some fancy-smanchy grocery store that I can't spell the name of. It's like you're really better off going to somebody local and buying it direct, like buying it almost straight from the farmer.

Well, certainly if you have an organic farm near you. Yeah, definitely. But, yeah, pesticides and herbicides are a real deal. Atrazine, you know, Alex Jones famously said, they're turning the frogs gay. But they are. They're making them hermaphrodites. They're making them switch sexes.

I mean, atrazine is a very potent endocrine disruptor. And it's a fertilizer. Or is it a pesticide? Pesticide. One of those. I think it's a pesticide. Something needs to be done about it. But there's, you know, there's a lot of that shit that they spray on food.

Something like 90 plus percent of people tested have glyphosate in their blood. Yeah. That's wild. I mean, that is an herbicide that they spray on stuff. Yeah. So to me, it's like, i yeah you can definitely eat healthy like um but even then like a lot of the food today isn't very healthy just because inherently just because of the way it's grown well there's a lot that is there's still a lot that is you can certainly eat

healthy yeah it's not easy but neither is being sick being sick's not easy either man yeah just a amount of money you're you're gonna lose by having a body that's defeating you every turn. You're always tired. You have no inspiration. You have no motivation. You can't get shit done. It's one of the reasons why I can get a lot of shit done, being healthy. It makes a giant difference.

You have so much more energy than regular people who are just sitting around all day because you don't demand anything of your body if you don't demand anything of your body it's like good we'll just fucking atrophy into a sack of bones and meat yeah being complacent is is like the worst thing for you um physical physically testing yourself is good and then mentally testing yourself and and spending your time working towards some sort of purpose like I think that's really what was um that's really what was killing me the last few years was just and I see this in friends and family and people I know but uh even just from a mental standpoint not spending your day working towards whatever purpose it is that you feel like you really need to accomplish deep down inside I think that will really kill you over a period of time like you know you go work your nine to five or whatever you come home

and then you just start swiping start wasting your rest of your evening like that's your that's your time to be productive working towards whatever passion project or hobby or sure as long as you don't enjoy your nine-to-five some people actually enjoy their nine-to-five and they want to go play video games I'm gonna try to shame them folks maybe you should talk to your wife every now and again but yeah you want to play Diablo 4 at 3 o'clock in the morning, I support your right to do it. Yeah, if that's what you're...

I don't even mean so much video games, but just that mindless scrolling that I've found myself being into, too. Bro, I've seen more people get hit by cars over the last five months on Instagram. More people get shot. More people get mauled by animals. Instagram's wild. It is wild wild the shit they're allowed to show you

yeah and like one of them was like it's okay he's fine like like that was like in the like there was a big like letter you know a big print over the video of this guy get hit by a truck like that guy is not fine not each I'm not a medical expert but when you get hit by a truck and launched into the windshield of an oncoming car, I guarantee you you're not fine. No, I get it. Look, I've been that guy that sat. I've wasted at least an hour sometimes in a row watching Russian dash cam videos of these logging trucks flying off the road and stuff. I don't know.

There's something like that. It just gets your brain excited. I don't know. It's very addictive. I don't know. There's something like that. It just gets your brain excited. You know, I don't know. It's not good. It's very addictive. It's not good for you to see that many people die and that many people get bit by crocodiles. I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles.

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my algorithm, but I've seen more people get bit by crocodiles over the last six months than I have in a long ass time. But yeah, it's mostly a waste of time, but it's also fun. There's a lot of funny videos on there. It's just a matter of being disciplined. You just got to know when you're scrolling too much. And the way I avoid that is by doing stuff. So there's a lot of stuff I do, you know, whether it's archery or playing pool. There's a lot of stuff that I do where I don't, there's no time.

You don't, you're not spending any time on that. And so there's a complete different focus. Like when I'm shooting a bow, when I'm shooting at a target and I'm just practicing, my mind is empty. All I'm thinking about is the shot process. All I'm thinking about is whether or not the arrow broke clean. Did I move my shoulder? Why did that one go three inches left? Like what happened there? Was it that my elbows, my elbow up high? How was my follow-through? Okay, let's think about it and let's do it again so that's like a mind cleansing thing yoga class is like that if you can get a find a good hot yoga

class man when you're fucking standing there holding on to one foot and one foot is extended you're hobbling around on one like bitch you ain't thinking about jack shit but what you're doing a good job of connecting you to your body too which is something maybe we're not very good at either. It's very good for people. Yoga is like one of – if I had one thing to recommend someone who's never done any exercise before, please try yoga. Don't hurt yourself. Go slow because a lot of people do hurt themselves.

Yeah, I can't imagine me trying to do that. One of my friends who's a doctor said that yoga is like one of the main people that – it's yoga and jiu-jitsu, he He said people that come in to see him for treatment, but jujitsu makes sense. It's literally a sport of trying to break yoga. You would think you think it'd be the opposite of anything. Yeah. I've pulled muscles in yoga.

Yeah. You're, you're doing hard stuff, but hot yoga, I think it's a little better for that because it really does warm your body up like almost instantly. And then like if you do the Bikram series, I know that guy was a creep,

but if you do the series, it's not even, I don't believe he even invented that series of poses. I think he just popularized it. And they're all, like, standard yoga poses. But that series is designed very well to get you really warmed up. So by the time you get into more complicated and challenging movements, your body's pretty warmed up. It's a good system. They're really, it's fucking hard man a 90 minute hot yoga class at 105 degrees it's a motherfucker that sounds great for the sounds

like a great walk away from that the feeling you get oh you feel so relaxed that is one thing i'm looking forward to now is like uh you know continuing to focus on mental health and that area but also like i'm excited to get into better shape physically. And, um, just like the only thing I've done in the last six months at all is running. We were planning on, um, we were planning on trying to, trying to schedule a run in September that I think was like 10 miles or something. So it was a friend of mine that I've been running with, you know, uh, two or three days a week. And even that just whatever's on your mind, when you start, it's gone by the time you leave, you know, it's just just it's something good about like getting everything connected again

but music is big for me on that too you know that's just getting your playing an instrument and singing like you're just everything's that everything's all all one again you know it's very easy especially and maybe because of social media and because of the way technology i don't know what it is that caught i'm certainly no dr phil but it's like the world we live in today, your mind is very easily disconnected from like your body physically. Like it's you can get lost just worrying and thinking and doing. And, you know, it's it's good to have something like that, I guess, to have groundings, the word or whatever. I don't know. But it's good to have something like that to, like, get you back in the reality again. Yeah. My belief is that all human beings need something creative creative whether that's something creative as a game that you play

that you get to like invent moves or think about things and strategies or whether that game or whether that creativity expresses itself in music or in in illustrate drawing painting something i think people really get a great satisfaction out of making things and of creating things. Sure. And everyone's good at something. That's what's great. I'd say almost everyone's good at something. I know some people. Well, maybe they haven't figured out what it is, but you know, like you'd be, um, that's one thing I've enjoyed over the years with like what I've done in the past is meeting all these different people. Even if it's like, I, you'd be surprised at how how unique people are

and what they're able to do and what like i don't know everyone seems like they have that one thing maybe they maybe even if it's something that they had as a kid that they lost along the way but like people are people are really good at shit and sometimes you underestimate people and people don't spend the time they need to develop the craft it is they have but it's also sometimes people don't find a thing early on in their life where they get into it you know so if they don't have a thing ever it's very difficult for them to gravitate towards a something but that's why taking class that's like martial arts classes are great for that because all of a sudden you're learning this new thing and it's exciting like oh my god it's

monday night we're gonna go to jiu-jitsu class you got your little white belt on you're tying it you're like oh you're freaking out. But afterwards, you feel like, wow, I really did something. I really challenged my fears. I really took a class, and I'm learning some stuff, and I'm doing it with other people that are learning, and I'm making new friends. There's something really cool about that. And that's also a thing that people need that they don't have is like a real community, like feeling of community. One of the nice things about comedians is that we all work together so this is

like this feeling this is real feeling of community we go on the road together we travel to different countries together like all the guys that I go on the road with we're friends like we hang we laugh we're just we're having drinks and having dinners places and just everywhere you go you're with family it's beautiful it's beautiful in that way. If you don't have that, man, if you don't have a thing that you really like, where you're really like connected to like-minded people, it sucks. It's not fun.

You know, if like maybe the friends that you have are all fucked up and they're going in the wrong direction, try to pull you with them. Maybe your job sucks. That happens. Like you have to be careful who you keep in your social circle because you'll end up just like them, you know. Well, you have to be careful who you keep in your social circle because you'll end up just like them you know well you have to be careful of energy vampires there's people that are energy vampires and they'll steal from you they really will they'll steal from you they'll

steal they don't want to do the work but they want you to do the work for them like they want you to be involved in everything that they're doing even though they're not making any changes and they want to drag you in and they want it to be the focus of all the attention. And, and you really find out after a while that if you were around positive people, then all of a sudden you're uplifted and you have all this energy. Yeah. And it's funny how that works. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. All that stuff kind of goes on behind the scenes and you don't really think about it. Yeah. Uh, one thing that really benefited me or like even in my early twentiess on a lot of my friends seem to be older um one of my best friends he's in his he's probably i'm 31 he's probably in his mid-40s um and then everyone

above them's like my my best drinking buddy for years he's like 65 66 i love hanging out with older people though because they're just they just a lot wiser. Some of them. Well, you have to choose. There's some old dummies. Well, I'm a dummy, too, so it's okay if I'm hanging out with dummies. But yeah, I like hanging out with older people. It reconnects you back

to, like, I don't know, they've just experienced so much more than you ever could in that extra 20 years or whatever, 10 years. It's like, those are the kind of people you want to surround yourself with are people that are going to, that are, that are more experienced than you, more wise people that you can aim toward being certainly not people that, that are immature or on a bad streak, or even like now, like I'm trying, I'm cutting out the drinking. And like I said, I haven't gotten high. Um, and almost, I guess almost two months now, a month and a half or two months.

That was your problem, huh? Was the weed? Yeah. It was, well, the problem for me was I knew that I needed to do this. Like I knew I needed to, I procrastinated with music a long time. I mean, I'm 31. I've been playing guitar and singing on and off since I was a kid. Like my, my grandma was in a band years ago. And so like little, I remember as a little

kid, what got me interested in all of it was, um, going, you know, Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid, I was like five and I used to sit with my grandma and we'd sit and watch Dukes of Hazzard and watch Waylon Jennings pick that guitar. Of course I had no idea who Waylon Jennings was, but that just like, I just fell in love with that. And so grew up listening to like that 70s country. And she loved all the old stuff, like the 50s and 60s. And even in the 70s, even, you know, Janice and all that. And so like she really introduced me a lot into music when I was a little kid. And so like I just kind of held on to it, but never pursued it the way I should.

And then I'd play at a bonfire party or I'd play at whatever. It's a friend's house. And everybody's like, man, you got to do something with this. You're, you know, you don't want to waste this talent you've got and whatever. And that would almost make me feel even shittier because I'm like, oh, man, I suck. Like, I'm such a piece of crap for not doing something with this. And so, yeah, like when I was outside of work, it's like I would just I would just I drink. I'd get just absolutely stoned and I would just sit around and try to think about anything

but what it was that I really needed to be doing, which was like... And so it was kind of like funny, but that's ended up what kind of sparked me into writing all these songs and doing all this stuff because it's like I... I don't know. Just like with you, probably,

with what you do, jiu-jitsu or whatever, it's like for me, songwriting is... It gets my head, like you said, getting your head clear, because that's all you can... Songwriting is interesting for for different people but i've now that i've been in it i guess i've been in the industry for two weeks and i've talked to like now that you've been in the industry you've conquered it now that i'm an industry expert it's like some of the other musicians i've talked to like the people i've looked up to over the years they experience this too but certain people when you song write it's a very um it's a it's dramatic like um do you write all your own songs yeah but it's it's have you been

accused of not writing your own songs very early on yeah because since my state i guess it's not even my stage name it's oliver anthony music and so it's supposed to represent music from you know oliver anthony music as my my grandfather and so he grew up in the 30s in the mountains and used to tell all these wild stories about how life was back then but the music's just sort of a characterization of like that period in time and those people you know and that's so yeah when when so your real name is not all yeah christopher christopher anthony lunceford is my real legal name and so that's what's on like like if you look up the songwriting side this thing is decide to sing as Oliver Anthony?

Just in. Well, like I said, I have it. I just had the YouTube channel listed as Oliver Anthony music. Just because like that's sort of, that's sort of the demeanor or the, like I said, the character I was, like that older Virginia style music.

Like if you look, if you go on YouTube and you look up that type of music from back then, like there's old recordings of people like that's, that's what I just love that type of stuff. Do you think you're going to keep that name? Yeah. I mean, I mean, a lot of people still call me Chris and I've posted on social media, call me what I mean. I've been called a lot worse than either of those things, but yeah, it'll, it'll stay Oliver Anthony music indefinitely. Yeah. It's a, it's a,'s a special name, and it's a special name to me, not only because it was my grandfather's name,

but it's sort of like, to me, it reminds me of how much, how different things were back then. But he was born Oliver Anthony, but everybody called him Antony growing up. And so, like, he always thought his name was Anthony Oliver, and last name Engel. And so, like, it wasn't until he was in his 60s and going to retire, he realized that his name didn't match his birth certificate. So he had to actually change his legal name when he was in his 60s. But it's because he thought his name was Anthony Oliver.

Yeah. And so his whole life, but his legal name was. And so it's yeah. And his parents named him. So it's just like but but all the paperwork back then was so scattered up because a lot of people were illiterate. And, of course, documents weren't tracked as well as they are now, you know. And so it's like there's people in the family that have a different spelling and it's the same last name, but a few letters are different and stuff. It's just kind of cool. But he just thought that was crazy.

He had to change his name when he was 65 so he could draw his retirement and all because his Social Security and everything was under a totally different name. That's crazy. So it's just special to me he's like the only other one in the family like me most of our families like average height six feet and under but he and I were both you know 6'6 red headed left handed like I just I don't know in a lot of ways I just I thought it was special to kind of respect him

he passed away in 2019 and that's kind of when I I guess that's when I first kind of adapted the name for the music. I didn't really get serious with anything until probably – Two weeks ago? Yeah, until a couple weeks ago. Probably until – I think I uploaded the first original. Like, when I decided I was in it to win it and I really wanted to make this thing happen,

it was probably about – yeah, probably May of last year when I uploaded Ain't Got a Dollar. Or it might have been Rich Man's Gold was the first one I uploaded on YouTube. But that's when I decided, like, all right, I'm doing this thing. So you were just smoking too much weed, drinking too much, and just procrastinating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so that, and, you know, like, anxiety is definitely something that's underestimated.

You know, I used to laugh about, not laugh about, but I used to just not really understand when people talked about mental health and anxiety because everyone gets stressed out over stuff. And so you think of anxiety as being just like this normal phenomenon everyone deals with, but your, your mind can really put you in a dark place to where that thing is just like, it just holds onto you like a, you know, and it just makes it very difficult for you to do anything. And so, yeah, I spent at least two years of my life almost constantly just having what felt like just a knot right here, just wrenching at me. Well, that's especially true for people that are pursuing a nontraditional life, you know, that doesn't have any guarantees. It's a wild life to try to be an entertainer. Like, just to choose to try to make it in this wild world of people that are singing and making songs.

And you want people to pay attention to you. Like, do you know how many fucking people are singing? How many people can sing? How many people are recording things? And now with YouTube and the like, how many people are putting stuff up on the internet for other people to enjoy it's a lot well idea that you're going to stand out so that you're filled with anxiety just because of that because you're this future's uncertain yeah i think for me a lot of it a lot of the anxiety came from me just feeling like i was running out of time like i knew that um i knew that i had an ability to pursue this and kind of take this adventure on

and i just had kept like i said for 10 years or or more, I'd pick the thing up for a few months and then I'd put it down. And just always doubting myself, you know. Yeah. Well, I think it's, I mean, the universe in some weird way always sort of finds, like for people that becomes very successful especially like yourself it's almost like that's the best way to do it like I've never met anybody where I was like your way to do it isn't the wrong way to do it like I everybody that I meet that becomes successful especially like overnight people it's like oh I see all these fat well that's why you're good that's why you're good

you're good because you had a real life like a real tortured regular life like regular people if you're in the fucking mickey mouse club when you're 14 and then all of a sudden you're famous i mean i love miley cyrus to death and she's fucking insanely talented and i heard her new album is her best ever everybody's raving about it but I feel bad for people that become famous when they're young I just feel like that's a heavy burden for you to have to carry and you didn't ask for it you can't ask for it you don't know what it is it's like you know it's like getting a face tattoo when you're five like yeah it's like I want to get a heart tattooed on my forehead let everybody know i'm full of love like okay billy let's take you to the tattoo parlor like i want to be famous so everybody knows me okay billy let's get you in front of tv yeah and it's it's

tough because yeah because then um everyone's perception of everything's different anyway based off the way they were brought up like you know the way you and i look at something we we both look at something a certain way. And it's it's our way of looking at into us. That's reality. But everyone's perception is just different, just inherently, just based off the way we were raised and maybe even our genetics and the way our things we've experienced or the way the way our parents taught us things. And so, like, yeah, it's it's it is tough if you get thrown into that at such an early age, because this just such a – I feel bad for anybody that gets thrown into all this anyway. Like the things I've seen and heard and witnessed and – Just in a couple of weeks.

You need to do this and you got to do that. Yeah, but that's just people pulling out your strengths. This almost crazy sense of urgency everyone's sort of thrown on me to do something with this. And it's like I don't – yeah, at the end of the day, I've got to, I've got to remember who I was, you know, a month ago and I've got to make sure that I, you know, and it's okay to evolve from that and change. And like, I don't, I don't want to always be stuck being that guy, but I don't want to like leave him behind either.

You know, I don't want to. Listen, man, just be yourself. You're going to be fine. This is like this conversation that we had over the phone. I said, fuck all those urgent people. You have talent. You have talent. You have talent. You don't need anything else but talent.

Talent and authenticity. You got both of those things. This urgency thing, what the fuck are they talking about? You literally had the number one song instantly. You can't do that again? How the fuck do you know? You don't know jack shit. These people are crazy. They don't understand what's going on, and they

don't understand what it's like to be famous. You are in a weird spot right now. What you need to do right now is just keep being you. And don't let anybody control you, and don't let anybody wrap you. And certainly don't let anybody put you on some crazy publicity campaign to try to capitalize on this great moment and immediately get some large record machine behind you and mass produce. Yeah, because that really goes against the whole message that I wanted to get out in the first place. And so, yeah, what would it benefit me to sign a big deal or have some like I don't know as busy as things get.

I don't know that I'd ever let anybody even manage my social media and stuff like that's just something that I'd like to have the hand on. And then if I know i do mine i do all mine yeah i don't want anybody doing my shit well i think like just with you like we talked about earlier your show in general the reason people watch it isn't you know you could you could add more people in and have more uh have more special effects and lights and what you know figuratively speaking like you could make you could make this into something bigger than what it already is but it would just it would just take away. Like sometimes the more you add, the more you take away. It's the, it's the fact that you have conversations with people that

you're genuinely interested in. Like we don't have enough real conversation in any way in the world. Like we have very little, I had never had a Twitter account. And, uh, so I made one a couple of weeks ago to like start uploading everyone's, Oh, you got to get on X and upload all this stuff. And within like a week, I'm like, okay, I get like i'm tapping out yeah i don't read any of my stuff on twitter i do post occasionally you know what i do like to do is repost things i think are interesting i do like that yeah well thanks i appreciate it well that's what Instagram, I put that up on. Okay, yeah. Yeah, but yeah. A lot of people liked it. I think on my account alone, it had more than, let me see.

I'll tell you how many views it had. I want to say it's somewhere around 11 million views. I was explaining it to someone the other day. I was like, do you know how insane that is? Yeah. You could put something up that this guy just made 12.8 million views wow that's bonkers dude that's bonkers that's a lot of fucking human beings that's a lot of human yeah so i've had to ask myself like why that happened the way it did and um and look i'm not

i have said this a hundred times already but like i'm no i'm certainly no preach like people have have made comments about like oh well why does he he reads scripture or whatever and talks about god but then he does other things like like i do have some foul language and i do sing some songs that i've written about whatever you know getting high and hanging out in the woods but like it's just what i am like i'm not here to say that i'm anybody better than anybody else by any means well didn't god invent the woods and weed? Yeah, well, there you go. I don't believe anybody that tells you that God doesn't want you to have weed.

I do want to use, if there's anything I'd like to capitalize on with my opportunity, it's just like, because for me, just being in the position that I've been in the last two years and just the trash I've had in my head is, I tell you, like, I don't care who, and look, I haven't been in a church in 10 years, and I'm not saying I'd ever go back into one again. I don't know about all that, but there's a lot of things in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that make sense and are timeless to today. Like, if people just could find, if people could just have enough open-mindedness to just read a little bit of Proverbs and just see what it has to say, I think like it would make the world a better place. There's a lot of truth in those words. They don't just talk about, it's real life advice that I work toward every day applying in my own life. So was there like a moment with you, because I've read the legend story, but I wanted to ask you this live in person.

Was there a moment when you had like a literal come to Jesus moment where you realized you were at rock bottom? Yeah. I mean. What was going on? Yeah. I was at a point where I was having, man, I don't even think I'd call it panic attacks. It was just like I was so everything was just so screwed up. I was getting like I was getting chest pains and shooting pains all down into my like I was having like almost cardiovascular symptoms that are just I guess now I realize they're stress and anxiety related. But I thought I really thought I was going to die. Holy shit. This is why you're having drinking a lot i was well i think yeah well i

think maybe the weed was even causing some of that like i was i was slamming down so you know we can grow it in virginia now so i grew you know a lot of i grew a lot of pounds of weed last year and so like i've got and i don't even know what i'm gonna do with it all now but i sell that on ebay i've got yeah sell it in your truck you can buy a suburban yeah I'll save it for hard times if you come to Virginia the back of the suburb where it's legal the back of the suburb will be packed with as much weed that is legal to sell yeah I had grown some crazy stuff and was smoking it and Oliver Anthony weed brand we're in I think it's like uh yeah let's go Hulk Hogan's got his own weed brand why don't you?

We'll talk about all that, the growing, because I am intrigued with the growing. But yeah, to your point, it was like I just almost disconnected from reality. I don't want to say I was having like I was never psychotic or having like you're freaking out. I was very disassociated from like my reality. Like I can remember just being around really close friends having dinner one night. You get warm and fuzzy feelings being around people you care about, and everything was just ice cold. I just tried. It was almost like I just tried to feel something other than what I was feeling.

What were you thinking during these times? I was thinking that— What was the state of your life? I was thinking that, um, like what was the state of your life? I was thinking like that. I was gonna, I was thinking like, see, I don't know. Suicide's a weird thing because, and I can't speak for everybody, but for me, like it wasn't, it wasn't that I ever wanted to kill myself. Like I knew I wanted to keep trying to fight and get out of whatever it is I was in, but

it was almost like at some point I thought I was going to do it almost as a fight or flight response response like that I couldn't escape whatever it is that I was in. And like that was my own that was going to eventually be my only way out. And so as sad and as whatever, like I hate even talking about this, but I feel like I should talk about it. I mean, where else to talk about it but on Joe Rogan. But it's like that was one of the things that compelled me to throw a lot of these videos up just off my phone you know like it's funny when i had when i had those songs and maybe i still do i haven't looked at the charts in a week or whatever but i had stuff on itunes that was like in the top two or three spots other songs those were just recorded off my android phone uploaded on youtube i ripped the wave file off

the youtube video and then just uploaded it through DistroKid. People were buying the number two song on iTunes at one point. I think it was Ain't Got a Dollar. That's just the audio from the YouTube video. I wanted to get all those. I had a lot of these songs sitting around. From a microphone from the phone?

From my front camera on my Android phone. It sounds pretty good. I wanted to get all that up, though, because I really didn't know if I was going to be around to do it. Can you pause that for a second? Let's listen to that. I want to hear that. Don't get freaked out and uncomfortable listening to your own voice. That's okay.

No, I like it. Because I want to hear what that sounds like. This would be the, yeah, the Ain't Got a dollar, the original version is a good example. Recording off of Android phones might be the new thing. You can tell it's very mono. The new authentic. Recording off of Android phones. Well, I ain't got a dollar.

I don't need a dime. I got a little spot in the country where I spend all of my time. Listen, man, you don't got to listen to nobody. Tell them all to eat shit. Shut the fuck up. You can do whatever you want, man, you don't got to listen to nobody. Tell them all to eat shit. Shut the fuck up. You can do whatever you want, man. You just keep doing that. You just keep doing that and do concerts. That's what got me uploading the songs originally.

I was like, I'll just go ahead and get something out there. And then, I mean, man, I was taking aspirin every day thinking like I was going to have a heart attack. It was just, I was having like all this crap. So what was the, when you were recording these things and releasing them, what was the hope? The hope was that people would enjoy them? Yeah, I was just trying to leave, I was just trying to leave them out for the world in case like. In case you died? Yeah, in case I, I guess in case either I died from a heart attack or like.

Do you know how huge these songs would be if you died? I think that's like the most horrible rumor about Jimi Hendrix is that his manager was like a gangster, had him killed. His manager had him killed because he was going to leave and he owned the music while Jimi was alive. And if Jimi died, he would get the music and they killed him. Yeah, maybe I thought like, I figured like that was the

only thing i had that was worth anything and so like if i was going to be a shitty enough person to like leave you know leave a kid behind and like whatever my family and whatever else it's like at least there'd be something there for them to be able to capitalize on and make where you was your bad feelings come from did they come from a lack of hope for your future did you have like a sense of what would what would make you happy what you were missing no no like it's was it just the mind is the mind is well and for like i guess i'm a creative person i guess you'd say and so like for creative people in general, life is very imaginative anyway. So like, again, it's like you and I could go to the same restaurant, sit down, order the same meal, have the same waitress, identical everything.

Right. In a parallel time. And you and I would walk out of that restaurant noticing different things, experiencing it completely different. Like the mind perceives things individually. Right. And so like when you get into a bad headspace like that, your perception of what would otherwise be good things can become very bad. And I don't know, I don't know the best way to explain it. Um, cause I'm not well versed on psychology or anything like that, but that's the best way I can explain it. It's like, you don't understand sometimes what people are going through, even from the outside in, you know, you look at people are going through, even from the outside in. You know, you look at people who are not living life right, and you're like, I just wish he'd just get his shit together.

I don't understand why he's doing that. And it's like, because maybe in his head, what he's looking at is totally different than what you're looking at. And the mind's very complicated, you know. And my understanding is even now with all the studies we've done and the technology we have, like we understand the mind very little, but there's so much that goes into it. And like so much of our thoughts come from our gut biome and all like, there's just, there's millions of living things within us that I think influence the way we think and what we do. And it's, you know, it's a very complicated thing. So yeah, it's easy for people to get, to get off track. And, um, you know, it's hard to get back on the track when you get off like it really took that's why i say like i was really just um even though i it was

on paper things were great right like i was married things were like i had i have a great marriage i had a good job like i worked my ass off but i i made good money and what were you doing for work um so the last six years, I've been in industrial sales. So I worked outside sales for – because I was in the industry working factory work when I was younger. I had a bad accident. Couldn't go back to that job. And then during that recovery period, I went to work – can I say – I don't know if I can say the place or not. You don't have to say the place.

Okay. What was the accident? I fell and hit my head. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I had internal know if I can say the place or not. You don't have to say the place. Okay. What was the accident? I fell and hit my head. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I had internal, I had like an internal fracture. I remember riding in the ambulance on the way. I'd had seizures and all and passed out at the, I was, it's weird because I can remember laying there and remember the ambulance and the EMT people coming in and everybody around

me talking to me, but like I could hear them, but I was just kind of in a dream. And I do remember waking up in the ambulance on the ride. I had like, I had, I remember I had blood coming out of my ear and maybe out of my, out of my mouth or my noses. But I remember I had blood on my, I went and reached and I had blood on my face. I was clean shaven then, but, uh, and I asked the guy in the back with me in the ambulance. I'm like, man, I was like, is every, am I going to be all right or what? And he's like, buddy, we're doing the best we can.

And I'm like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. And that messed me up pretty bad. I was in the hospital for two or three days. But even for the next year after that, my memory was trash. I had really bad balance issues. It was difficult for me. It just kind of jacked everything up.

I had a lot of inflammation and stuff in my brain and but that kind of and i and i questioned whether or not that had a lot to do with my mental health issues like i've talked i've met a lot of people just even at the i've done i've done four shows so far and they've all been like intimate settings and so like i've taken hours after each one to talk to everybody to give everybody a chance to talk and i've talked to another guy who had a chance to talk and I've talked to another guy who had a bad head injury and and um has dealt with something really similar to me but I almost wonder if that didn't affect that that kind of knocked a few screws loose upstairs with like everything everything else that's went on but I tell you like the thing it so you got depressed

after that yeah for sure yeah before then I was totally fine. 100% they're connected. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I mean, it might not be the only factor that led you down that road, but 100%. That's a major symptom of fighters. When fighters get knocked out, when football players get knocked out, depression, major symptom. Major symptom.

That's one of the real dangers of head trauma. There's a lot of people who have had severe head trauma that go to take their own lives afterwards yeah and looking back I think that could be a big part of it because I look back into my 20s and a lot of it was very dark and that's after that for sure yeah I guarantee you they're connected yeah guarantee you and I guarantee you like if you got your system like if you had really good health care they could they could find some issues with your endocrine system. A lot of times with people that have really bad head injuries, their pituitary gland gets damaged. And your body's not producing hormones correctly anymore.

And you're just all fucked up. Your cortisol levels are all fucked up. Yeah. Because I would say that was the thing. It was almost like my brain was stuck in like this fight or flight type of thing. it was almost like my brain was stuck in like this fight or flight type of thing. And maybe that's what the writing helped because the writing helped, like it helped emphasize that more creative part of my brain to get me out of that headspace. But I loved my job. I did because I was still in the field. So I was still on job sites and industrial plants and hospitals. And

so like, I've, I guess the reason that I've, the reason I feel like other than just really divine influence, um, again, based off of just the experience I've had the last 60 days with my faith and stuff, which is just, and I'd love to touch on that some too, but, uh, I've had so many conversations with people the last six or seven years, cause it was my job to go almost kind of like how you talk to people in here every day. I was going around and talking to Joe Schmo and Billy on job sites all day and every walk of life, not just blue collar. And so those are some just very authentic conversations you have with people because you're just a guy and they're just a guy and you're just talking. You can still have those.

You can still have those even if you get famous. The same message kept coming across, which is really what i guess i resonated in this song but they're just people are just so tired and um so yeah i think i think being in that position sort of gave me this unfair advantage to to look into the world maybe on the inside and um i don't think it's unfair at all i think it's probably i mean if you wanted to believe in fate you you know, I don't believe in fate, but I should, if anybody should, I should believe in fate. I've had a pretty lucky life. Yeah, you have. I don't necessarily think it's real though. But I also think if you believe

it's real, I think there's a lot of things that if you believe it's a lot of what's going on with human beings is the way the mind perceived things. And it's a lot of what's going on with human beings is the way the mind perceived things. And it's kind of the software you're running. That's why we seek out people who are inspirational. Like if you watch a David Goggins video, you will go work out. You will go work out. It will get you off your couch. If you, I guarantee you, I guarantee you when, when we were running, that's, we would, we were were joking we were saying David Goggins quotes while you're running about carrying the boats

and all that who's gonna carry the boats David's the fucking man and there's another guy Jocko Willink I love him too Jocko has he has a video

find Jocko good find that video there's a video that I 100% legitimately play in my mind when I'm tired I say good I say it my mind when I'm tired.

I say good. I say it to myself. Like I was in the cold plunge the other day, and I was being a bitch at like two minutes and 30 seconds, and I was like, good. Listen to this video. Have you ever heard this? It's amazing. I don't think I have.

Direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on, and he'd say, boss, we got this and that and the other thing. And I'd look at him and I'd say, good. And finally, one day he was telling me about some issue that he was having some problem. And he said, I already know what you're going to say. I said, well, what am I going to say? He said, you're going to say good. good I said that's what you always say when something is wrong and going bad you always just look at me and say good

and I said well yeah when things are going bad there's gonna be some good that's gonna come from it didn't get the new high-speed gear we wanted? Good. Didn't get promoted? Good. More time to get better. Oh, mission got canceled? Good.

We can focus on another one. Didn't get funded? Didn't get the job you wanted? Got injured? Sprained my ankle? Got tapped out? Good. Got beat? Good. Got beat.

Good. Learned. Unexpected problems. Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution. That's it. When things are going bad, don't get all bummed out. Don't get startled. Don't get frustrated.

bad don't get all bummed out don't get startled don't get frustrated if you can say the word good guess what it means you're still alive it means you're still breathing and if you're still breathing, well, now you still got some fight left in you. So get up, dust off, reload, recalibrate, re-engage, and go out on the attack. That's what's up. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That's software you can run in your mind. You can run that. You just need to listen to it and then apply it.

That's real. Now, if you don't know that software, and if you know that there's a human being like Jocko out there in the world that's a real person that really does think like that, then you't think it's possible but it is so you have to be seen it so you see it now you know run that software run that software I don't know how much of people's depression I mean I think depression has a mosaic of problems that's associated with it and a mosaic mosaic of causes like like a large pattern. There's a lot of stuff going on that causes people to be depressed.

Some of it, in your case, may very well have been from a physical injury. And I think that's a big factor. I had never considered that until now. I think it's 100% connected, 100%, because it's totally in the literature. My good friend, Dr. Mark Gordon, he does a lot of work with traumatic brain injury patients. And he runs this Wounded Warriors. It's called – what is it called? What is the thing that he works with those guys?

Warrior Angels. And it's helping people with traumatic brain injuries and he's helped countless soldiers fighters football players all these people yeah and it's real similar with a lot of them yeah and they have no hope and and exactly and that's and i guess that's the that's the thing that i've learned from this um again from 18 year old chris that thought a lot of that was just made up and people giving excuses, like to what I've understand now about is again, it, it feels those that, that place that your mind can take you. It feels just as real as anything else. Like, even if you tell yourself, like you can tell yourself a hundred times that, Oh yeah, well, you still got a job you still have everything's fine

it's like if i don't know it's your perception of reality becomes very distorted when you're in that place and it's um again for me i think a lot of it came down i just knew i wasn't fulfilling whatever purpose it was i was here to fulfill you know probably didn't have any energy because you had a head injury it's probably a major factor in it. Major factor. It's another major factor in people with head injuries. They drink a lot because their dopamine is really low. It fucks up everything, man.

And there's people that have traumatic brain injuries that are subcocussive trauma from playing soccer. People play soccer and heading the ball. It doesn't even hurt but you throttle throttle your brain in the cage over and over and over again and eventually you have TBI that's real you have real like CTE symptoms for soccer players and it's crazy but the head is just not designed to get hit yeah and. And I've experienced it with so many fighters, so many guys that I know that got knocked out. And then after the knockout, they're like severely depressed, both because they lost. It goes like this. Even if you lose by a decision, you get depressed.

Yeah. It's a terrible feeling to lose in front of the whole world. Well, sure. Yeah. I mean, just inherent loss in a lot of animals does that. You know, and that's a whole other conversation. But one thing i did find from jordan peterson talking about the lobsters it makes me think about the fighters but it's like

you lose that dopamine and that drive all those chemicals are very tightly regulated to your to your performance and your place sort of within the world what do you say about the lobsters again um so if uh yeah if two lobsters fight the defeated lobster he loses his drive and dopamine he's like there's some ridiculous um chance that he won't win another fight like he basically just becomes a bum lobster once he loses but they can give they can give them the same medications that they give humans to combat that like whatever antidepressant or whatever and then they're at their fight you know they give ssris to um like i've got some close friends in veterinary medicine.

They have cats and dogs that take SSRIs. Oh, God. It's just. Freaked out cats and dogs. But I can tell you my experience with SSRIs were not pleasant. Like, all it did was just make me very numb. Just like the cat. Like, and I'm not, I'm certainly, like, again, I'm not giving anybody advice on anything.

But just in my personal experience, especially for a guy, when you're on SSRIs, it does a lot of things bad to you. For one, like if you're in a relationship, I like, I hear this on both sides with men and women, but like good luck, good luck, like making love with your, with your lover, like good luck having sex. Cause that's out the window. It messes with that. Like good luck having sex because that's out the window. It messes with that. It messes with your with your thought with your thought patterns and takes away like it was very difficult for me to write music when I was on it. And so I that was a short lived life. But the best thing that I found that helped me other than just then just jumping into this and making this music happen like along the way was actually I found a lot of benefits out of cbd like even smoking cbd flour um and so like that surprisingly like i i never really got benefits from the oil but i'd say if anybody is in a position like listening to this right now where you're having like daily panic attacks and you're just like you're you're just there you know like if you're listening and you'll know what i'm talking about

but you're at that like breaking point like i was uh i found smoking cbd joints like not ingesting it where it would go through my system go through my liver and all but smoking it just like he would smoke traditional cannabis flower knocked a lot of it right out interesting now it's not going to fix it there's an underlying issue that you got to figure out and address but it'll at least give you some like it gave me some very good relief from that. That's amazing. That's really good to hear from people because it doesn't get you high either. Right.

It doesn't get you high. Yeah. But it- Reduces inflammation. Yeah. Have you tried adjusting your diet? Well, I'm good now. That's what's so funny.

Like, since this has all happened,'t had a like i'm telling you again because you're on top of the world well yeah but even before it like it i have to be careful with what i say because i don't like my shit stinks like i'm nobody special and i'm not here to preach to anybody but i'm telling you like giving things to god uh for me alleviated 99% of what, like I had a, like, I don't know how to describe it, but when you, when you experience, and I mean, you've done things that I haven't like with DMT and all, and that stuff's very intriguing to me. And so I'm open-minded to all that as well. Like I'm not, but yeah, like I had when this, when I kind of had this breakdown moment and decided that I was going to let whatever ego I had go and just at this point is like I knew I didn't have much left in for me anyway. And I wanted I wanted to serve whatever purpose it was that I was here to serve.

It's like you get this just overwhelming feeling and I'm just crying like a baby, just this very like warm feeling throughout me. And that that um, that really hasn't gone away since like, I, I'm not the guy that can play in front of 12,000 people on guitar. I would be like, I mean, I had never played a paid gig when we, when we played the show at the farm market where Jamie Johnson showed up, that was my first paid gig. Like, I'm not a guy to go out and play live shows, but I can tell you, I was so was so like um I was just so at peace being up there like it just felt like that's where I was supposed to be and that and with all this it has been like there's no way that Chris from six months ago could handle what's gone on the last two weeks but I feel just so empowered from all of it and um

I don't know I'm telling you like again I'm not I'm not anybody special and I'm certainly not here to preach anybody but just from coming from somebody who was just really just in a really just fucked up place like and I use that word just like with discretion but in this case it describes like where I was like that guy found a lot of peace like from this book and from looking at things in a different way. Yeah. From looking at things through the eyes of scripture.

And I think for me, it was like I had been in, you know, I'd been in church growing up and I had been exposed to all that. But I'd found a lot of theatrics and a lot of politics in church and in religion when I was younger. And so it just immediately turned me off to it. So if you can take us to like, what was like the day you picked it up? What, what was the feeling that you had? Like what caused you to act? What, what was it like when you did it? Yeah. I mean, I'd been reading it here and there off and on and I had for like off and on for a long time. because I again I was introduced to it as a kid but it was really just like um I remember I'd went to the I went to the ER for everything that was going on I mean I thought I was seriously gonna die like I was having shooting pains up

under my jaw down in my wrist and my leg, like just cardiovascular one-on-one symptoms. Of course, I'm 31. I had been like, I could run four miles without stopping. No problems. Like I knew my heart was strong, but I just freaking out. Yeah. But I went and did that. And, uh, I remember being in the truck after that, just like, and I just, yeah, I just had a breakdown moment I was just just crying and was just just I just felt hopeless like like almost the way a child feels hopeless when they you know like you can't find your parent or something like a like a four-year-old that can't find his parents or something I was just like just didn't have anything left in me and I don't't know i just uh i just decided like right then and there i was like i know i can't do this anymore and but i know i know that i can i know there's things that i need to do

and i just i just just told god i was like just let me do it like and i'll give all this shit up i'll give up the weed and i'll quit getting drunk and I'll quit. I'll quit being so angry about things and I'll just like I'll just call it good. Whatever I've done up from from up until I was 30 or whatever, 31, like we'll just call that good and I'll start over again. And I'll make him the focus and not me. And I just tried to tried to let my let my ego and everything that I was just let that go and just focus on. Because obviously, like, it's not just me. I've seen it with even other people I know. And I see it with celebrities and everything.

But I don't know. I just feel like we're in such a weird place right now in the world that I feel like God's working through inadvertently through certain people to get, to get his point across. Um, so take me to what, what you did. Did you start reading the Bible? Like, what did you do? I just changed my perspective. Um, you changed, I quit worrying about me and I started worrying about what, what it is that I'm supposed to do. You know, like it talks in the Bible about being a servant and, you know, giving up, I in the moment to give myself whatever satisfaction that it is I'm trying to get. It's about trying to let go of your ego, I guess, in a way. And, I mean, people pursue that mentality without faith. I mean, it's the idea of there being something bigger than you.

But I think inherently all human beings idolize something. Like it talks in the Bible about false idols. We all have false idols, like whether it's our phone or it's a celebrity or it's something we do or it's our addiction to food or drugs or whatever. But it's very difficult for a human to be the biggest thing on their hierarchy. There's always something above us, right? Because we're always in pursuit of something bigger than whatever it is in that moment. And I think for me, it was just about taking everything else, all the distractions

and all the other things in my life away and just ensuring that at least, and look, we're all, we're all, we all sin and we all do stupid things. Like we're all just people, nobody's special or righteous. People sometimes act like they're special and righteous, but we're all, we all sin and we all do stupid things. Like, we're all just people. Nobody's special or righteous. People sometimes act like they're special and righteous, but we're all just the same thing. Like, but it's just about trying to make that my idol. Make God and the concept of what it is that he wants done on this earth my idol versus anything else. You know, like, we all serve some master, whether we realize it it or not so why not let it be the master that is above all and so when you made this transformation in your mind did you then start reading Scripture like regularly like what did you start doing yeah well it was

different well what's what really I guess it's like now I don't read it I don't read it because I feel like I should read it to be a better person it's like now I try to read it for I don't read it because I feel like I should read it. To be a better person, it's like now I try to read it for the guidance within it. And I'm still in the infancy stages of a lot of this. Like I've read a lot of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and Luke, and there's other good books. But just trying to, I don't know, like trying to restructure, I guess, on a granular level, like I guess the neural pathways in my brain that have certain habits and certain ways of thought,

like I've tried to retrain that to, you know, like there's things it says, like, and I'll be very brief with this, I promise, but like one thing, ironically, it's Proverbs 420, which I thought you would like. So if there's anything better. Perfect, read it, preach. My son, pay attention to what I say. So if there's anything better. Perfect. Read it. Preach.

My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them and health the one's whole body. Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free from perversity.

Keep corrupt talk far from your lips let your eyes look straight ahead fix your gaze directly before you give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways do not turn to the right or the left keep your foot from evil but um that's pretty fucking profound but the whole book of Proverbs is like that. Like it's not preachy. It's not what you think. Like it's good guidance. It's like good guidance that you would want a father to give to his son. What do you think it comes from?

Like if you had to guess, where do you think the Bible comes from? Like it was an oral tradition for who knows how many years before they ever wrote it down yeah what do you think these stories come from um what I believe that people come across in different points of time and I think they are given messages that need to be delivered and I'm not in any way trying to parallel me to anyone in any of these books by any means. But I do think that throughout history, like even beyond from what's been written in this Bible, there's been important people that came along and said important or maybe not even important people.

Sometimes it's the lowly of the low that come along and just say things that need to be said. that come along and just say things that need to be said. And if I could, to me, it's like there's no question that this is an intelligent planet we live on in an intelligent solar system. Everything is just much more immense than any human on Earth would admit. Like even people in science, so much of science is based on theory. Like it's this very elegantly written way of thinking, but ultimately if you take it down to it's this very elegantly written way of thinking, but it ultimately, if you take it down to it's like on a granular level, it's very, it's all in many ways based on theory. And so

I think the earth is far more intelligent than we realize in the systems that we live in. Like, I just don't think somebody just pulled all that out of thin air. I do think that, and Hey, maybe it's, I've been waiting for my time to bring up the aliens. Cause I, but anyway, but no, but in all seriousness, it's like for me, I just I believe that. Well, let me if you if you read through it, it's so much of it is so timeless and so much of it. If you read about the rich and the poor and the wicked and the way just the inherent human behavior that existed at the time when these books were written back then. It's so parallel to what goes on today. Like to the point that you wouldn't, if you just read it out of context and didn't know it was scripture, a lot of it sounds like something somebody wrote two hours ago and

posted on a, on a vlog or whatever. It's like, it's to me, there is no other book like it. Have you paid any attention to Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and their theories about the restarting of humanity? It's a really fascinating field of Inquiry and discussion because it's now starting over time to be backed up by more science because there was always this Curiosity like when did the human race first invent civilization and the current theory is that it was about 6,000 years ago it's Mesopotamia Sumer and these areas which is where we found the first written language like first mathematics cuneiform language but what

they believe is that's a restarting of civilization and that very likely civilization existed at a very, very high level somewhere around 11,800 years ago. And that what caused the end of the Ice Age also caused just a mass destruction all throughout the universe, or all throughout the Earth, rather, of particles from space slamming into the Earth. The Earth goes through these comet storms periodically,

and it happens, I think it's every June and every November. And when they go through these clouds of comets, occasionally we get hit by big ones, and there's a lot of evidence for this. And what they believe is that when you're looking at the ancient Egyptian structures, when you're looking at some structures in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East, you're looking at things that are older than 12,000 years old. Yeah, and I agree with that.

I think that it's obvious that technology existed that we don't know anything about today. Just the construction of the pyramids alone leaned you to that. Like somehow or another, they were able to do that. And they were able to do that with immense sophistication and insane capabilities. The ability to move stone from hundreds of miles that weighs tons. Massive stones cut perfectly, stacked on top of each other. 2,300,000 of them that are perfectly due north, south, east, and west. Yeah, that's the craziest thing is that they could understand that at that scale. The technology was almost, we don't understand what they were doing.

It's alien. And not alien like human beings, not like non-human beings. I think there were human beings that made it. But I think to us, they went in a direction with their technology that's very different than we did. We went in this weird direction of internal combustion engines and silicon chips and all these different things. I think it's very likely that they had comparable, if not better technology, but it moved in a completely different direction whether it was using sound or vibration or some other completely undiscovered technology that we have yet to invent that was wiped out when civilization was knocked into barbarism and i think that's one of the reasons why you go back in early history people were so fucking

savage because i think that the people that survived that 11,800 years ago event, I think whatever was left was like fucking walking dead. And I think people lived a horrible life for a long time. I think it was thousands of years of this until we emerged from that and finally started reinventing agriculture and cities and all these different things again. So I think the 6,000 year ago mark, I think if I had to guess, I would imagine that is the first example of a rebuild of civilization that took thousands of years to emerge from horrific slaughter. It wouldn't surprise me if all that doesn't happen again. It could easily happen again if we get hit again. That was one of the initial things that really intrigued me reading, and I think it talks about it in Ecclesiastes,

but that everything that's happened under the sun has already happened before and will happen again, that generations that are yet to come will be forgotten about those that come after them. Like it's, I think just in the same way that we have a summer and a fall and a winter and a spring, it's like I think human society, just because of our human nature and our pursuit for whatever it is that we want to – we just love to create and develop. And so we shoot all the way up to the top and then some tragedy comes along, whether it's self-inflicted or from comets or whatever, and then there we go right back down to the bottom. We start over again.

And, yeah, like there is a lot of weird things. Like they've discovered a lot in South America recently because of new technology, like the civilizations that existed down there that we had no idea. Graham Hancock's talked about that too. It's called LiDAR. Who knows what's went on, even just on this ground in years past that we'll never know about. Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, we know quite a bit about Texas, which is a fascinating story, and it's of its own.

But, you know, what's really fascinating about Texas is they were dominating, like these nomadic tribes were dominating this land for hundreds of years where people couldn't even settle down. There's an amazing book called Empire of the Summer Moon that's all about Texas and the Comanches and the Texas Rangers. Crazy stories, just crazy. But I think what the Bible is saying rings true and that if people, you know, they just understood the history of the past from when they wrote the Bible, they had to have known massive catastrophes. They had to, but they believe that's what the story of the flood is from. The flood from Noah's Ark and even from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is even older.

It's like they have these similar kind of stories and they think that these similar kind of stories relate to the immense flooding that occurred after impact. They think that after impact, well, they know that at one point in time, the United States, half of it was covered with at least like a mile of ice. Some places it was more than a mile,

which is just insane to think. To think now, yeah. Standing here and looking straight up for a mile, cover in ice. Yeah. I mean, how can you even wrap your head around that? It's so difficult to even imagine. And what's even, yeah,

it's crazy to think about it existing then, but that like that's i guess when i talk about the intelligence of like whatever system it is we live in the fact that the earth is able to self-correct itself over a period of time it's like no matter and even today when we see cycles and things happening it's like i i don't know that i'm'm sure that we could destroy the earth with some of the technology we have now. Like, I fear that we don't, that this sort of proxy war that we've involved ourselves in doesn't escalate into something bigger because we could really, we could wipe society out indefinitely, but.

We were talking about this yesterday with Peter Berg. He's a director, actor, he's a guy who did Lone Survivor, made that movie, made that painkiller show that's on Netflix. Yeah, yeah. And he did a tour of one of those battleships

and he saw the missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. He's like, what the fuck? Like one of these ships could literally wipe out the whole earth. It's so bonkers. It's so bonkers

that these things exist and that there's thousands of them. Thousands of them. Thousands of them ready to go. Thousands of them ready to just flatten the planet. That probably has happened before. And if I had to look at things with the most optimistic perspective, my most beautiful optimistic perspective is that's what the aliens are here for that's the beautiful one is that life exists everywhere in the universe and that it's a very

complicated process of evolving from territorial apes to becoming these intergalactic travelers that have no ego and and don't display irrational behavior and work for whatever purpose. Because that's where it gets weird. It's like if you don't have emotions, you don't have jealousy and envy and love and lust and all the things to fight against and all the things to fight for. If you don't have those things, like what is purpose? What is our purpose as humans? It's very terrifying for us.

It's one of the reasons why we're most scared about technological innovation. where it comes. It's Terminator. You know, that's everything. All these things that we create that wind up killing us and that we are somehow or another purposeless if we don't have all these things that we cling to, like love and fear and anxiety and jealousy and, you know, and all the stuff that we want. We want to be praised and loved and all these different things that motivate people to succeed and do things in life. Without that, what are we? That's a big question.

But with it, how dangerous are we? We do use it in so many different beautiful ways, like your music or like a great book. There's ways that people use this that are beautiful. But it's ultimately the reason why life is so scary. It's ultimately why during the period of mass communication, during the period of exchange of information worldwide, which has occurred from the start of the 20th century

to where we are in the 21st century, we've never had a time where we could communicate with mass amounts of people better. But it's still, we're at the verge of nuclear catastrophe. We're still in this very terrifying place where one group of people, for some reason or another, opposes. Like, I don't know anyone in Russia. I don't know anyone in Russia. I don't know anyone in China. The idea that somehow or another China is my enemy or Russia is my enemy, like how?

How did that happen? Yeah, well, the people there aren't. Exactly. Their establishment's an enemy of our establishment, right? The idea that what the human mind is capable of in creating great art and great music is also capable of dominating massive groups of people through tyranny. We have to be very careful because that same thing that makes us this emotional being that wants all these weird feelings, that's the same thing that leads us down the road to tyranny.

And I bet that exists everywhere in the universe. And I bet the aliens, if they're coming down here, they want to be very careful with the species while it's going through this transition because I bet this shit is very touch and go. And I bet every now and then some fucking Putin-type character goes, oh, yeah? Yeah, NATO?

Fuck you. I have cancer. Fuck you. Doo, doo, doo, doo. Yeah, well, that's all so complicated because... Yeah. Yeah, like... It's scary so complicated because, yeah, like. Scary.

All that starts with someone's imagination. Like all these, it all starts. And that's on the other end of that, though, to your point, it's like that's what I find so important about freedom of speech and the ability for people to have good, honest conversations. Because you can imagine the mind is just as capable of creating good as it is evil i think yeah i think right now maybe we're creating a little more evil than we are good but oh i don't think i think things can i think things can turn around just as quickly as they've turned bad as far as on a global scale i don't think we're creating more evil than we are good i think if you look at the statistics of history human human history, we're moving in the right direction. Even though there's a lot of struggle, it's not like a perfect curve. It goes up and down. But over time, if you look at just violent

crime and horrible things that people do to each other, it's down almost everywhere in the world where it was a hundred years ago. And I think it's moving in that general direction. I just think it's messy. Human beings, we fuck up a lot to get better. And we have to, things have to, like, I was having a conversation with a friend about Nordstrom's closing in San Francisco. They get robbed so much, they're just like, we have to close up. San Francisco is so crazy.

It's so fucking crazy. And the person I was talking to was like, good, they'll have to reassess now. They'll have to realize their policies are crazy and they're going to have to put someone in here that fixes it. And I'm like, yeah, or it becomes like a third world city. Like some crazy, like violent crime ridden city that's controlled by gangs. Like that could happen too. What do you feel like? See, to me, I perceive that as being a

Symptom like what's the what do you think the problem is like? I mean, I know the easy answer is it's the people that run the government in California that have that have like made it into this atrocity that it is that it wasn't maybe 15 or 20 years ago But like there's also a big problem too with like homelessness and like, well, cynical me wants to think that there's a conspiracy. Cynical thing me wants to think that if you create more prime, more problems, more crime, more confusing, then people will give in to more control by the government to somehow or another mitigate those problems that exist everywhere. There has to be a solution. This is the only solution is that you have to have a digital ID. You take it everywhere you go. Everyone has a cell phone. So everyone has digital ID. That way we'll catch everyone when they're doing all these crimes. That's scary.

And you got, yeah. Because they're not just going to use it for that. And then they're going to make up crimes. They're going to decide that you saying things that they don't like that may even be true, like malinformation, like that's a crime. And then they'll shut down your social media. And look what we saw that during this, the Twitter files investigation from when Twitter first was purchased by Elon Musk. And he let these journalists go over all the emails. They're like, holy shit, the FBI is telling people to delete tweets. Like, this is nuts. Again, it goes back to freedom. Yeah, I can see that there is a power at bay that wants to limit free speech. Sure. People that have money that are making money off of suppressing information. And free speech is such a precious thing. Like, that's something that

if we have anything, if we have something precious a resource that needs to be protected more than anything right now it's freedom of speech it's a very important thing for this country and you know I've said it many many times but it's the reason why this country has created so much culture the reason why there's so much sure and and you and you've seen that you've seen that like spread out throughout the world like to your point like a hundred years ago a lot of the even though all these countries they're dealing with they've got radical politicians that are locking them down and taking away their rights.

And like, yeah, all that's happened within the last 10 or 15 years, maybe. But in general, like the whatever craziness that we established here, like arguably the first country, I guess you'd say, in modern history that had some form of democracy and some form of involvement of citizens deciding what it is they want, what the world they want to live in, like that's spread out. Like you see, most all countries have some sort of, you don't see a lot of kings and dictators running countries anymore. They have an election cycle now, whether or not it's all credible or not, I don't know. But the idea that like sovereign people can live in a land and decide what it is that they want for themselves is something that like has not existed. It has not existed for a very long period of time in the world, and it is precious that we hold to it. And I guess going back to my point earlier about the federal government and state and local level, it's like I just think there needs to be more strength within local communities as far as people making decisions and uniting with one another.

And, you know, I've had a lot of people. When an ugly ginger is walking around, like everybody's like, oh, is it that guy? And so I've had a lot of people stop me on the street and in parking decks and at the airport and at the hardware store. And, like, you know how many times I've had now? and at the hardware store. And like, you know how many times I've had now, at least a dozen times now, I've had people tell me that they're talking to people they haven't talked to in five or six years

that they got pissed over politics about. And just this message that's coming out has given them, like I know a guy in my own personal life, he hasn't talked to his brother in six years because they disagreed over Trump and Biden. And even prior to that, like they just left and right. And which one was the Biden guy? Uh, the guy, the guy I hang out with is, uh, cause obviously I like, I live out in the

country. I own guns, you know, like I am the people in my neck of the woods are not, uh, despite what they may say on, yeah, despite what they may say on a news organization somewhere, like a lot of the people I hang out with in the area of the country I live in is stereotypically red, right? Because a lot of people will vote, no matter what other influences there are, a lot of people will vote conservative just because of their Second Amendment rights, which is very much under attack in Virginia. You know, like you remember when you're at the sanctuary cities and all this, all the counties that decided, well, even if the

federal government bans this, we're not going to enforce it type of a thing, which is crazy to see like in our time. But yeah, he, so he voted, he was a big Trump guy and, and, and he watched his certain news organization. And then the other guy was for Biden and he watched his news organization. And so they just basically picked up whatever narratives they got from each other's news. And they would just, you know, they let that destroy literally a friendship. Yeah, they were brothers, you know, biological brothers. And so so dumb. That's that's not good for us as a country like this.

It's not it's not a wise thing to just apply to your life as a human being. You can have people in your life that have disagreements with you. I have people in my life that disagree with me on so many things. Absolutely on politics. Absolutely. You know, especially like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. You know, there's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot. Like, listen, I would like to try it that way. like when I was a Bernie Sanders supporter. There's so many people that are like, you're a fucking idiot. Listen,

I would like to try it that way. Let's try some guy who doesn't want war at all. Let's try some guy who wants to take a certain percentage off speculation trades in the Wall Street, where they're doing these and they're running a tiny fraction of a penny for each one of them. And he's saying it would generate an insane

amount of money that could be applied to education, that could be applied to healthcare. You could give people free healthcare. You could give people free education. Well, why wouldn't we do that? If you got some guy who doesn't want to divert money to these fucking forever wars and instead wants to apply it to communities, I was like, let's give that a chance. Maybe it won't work. I don't know jack shit about politics, but sincerely believe the guy and i'm like that to me is at least an option for change and that guy had been the same guy his whole life he had been always pushing for that his whole life he's kind of gotten tired in his later years but that's just understandable he's kind of like supported yeah and so you you believing in someone shouldn't

yeah it shouldn't suspend your friendships or relationships with other people like yeah but it's just you're hanging out with dummies people should have like i have many friends that are trump supporters i have many friends that wholesale believe in the democratic party no matter what it's a million times better no matter what anybody says. And no matter what anybody says about the Biden family, the Trump family. I've seen a lot of people change that now, though, in recent years, like even people who were hardcore conservatives and hardcore Democrats. Like, I don't think whatever whatever a Republican, a Democrat was represented at some point in

time is anymore. Like both both both sides have. I mean, like I said, I'm a, I love freedom of speech and I love the second amendment, but, um, there's a lot of things that I see that I don't like, I mean, you got to think I'm 31. So I was in fourth grade at nine 11. So we've been, we were an endless war from nine 11 on. And, um, you know, even when we shouldn't have been like so both sides have like just picked up on things and ran with it but they use certain emotional triggers to like keep their fan base happy you know like the like oh they're gonna take your guns and the other side

they've got all their emotional triggers and there are things that they're trying to feed their audience with but i guess like at the end of the day, it doesn't it doesn't help either side to pick like no. In my opinion, no one's no one. No one can go into that position in politics in the White House or anything else for that matter at this point because of how just inefficient how large the federal government is. I don't think anybody can go into those positions and overnight save everything. They can certainly make big influences. I mean, you saw when Trump was in office, the economy was rocking. But then other things that he did, you know, like there's things like warp speed and all that, like that, there was a lot of controversy around all of that. And so-

Well, he would have to be a vaccine scientist to even understand what they were doing. And imagine being him while, and this is not to defend Donald Trump, but imagine being him and being in control of all of it. You're in control of the economy. You're in control of foreign relations. You're in control of the biggest military the world has ever known.

You're in the public eye. You're tweeting about your ex-girlfriend being a horse face. Yeah, I don't think one person can do it. There's so it shit going on in that guy's life do you think that he had the time to investigate the efficacy of the covid vaccines that were this novel mrna technology that never been applied to hundreds of millions of people and you had to trust the cdc and fauci and all those people like how could he know well and that's and that's a good example why i a good example of why I don't think we can

or should rely on one person to save us on all those issues. It's something we've got to work out on a personal level. Well, it's insane. It was invented back when people lived in tribes. So you had a tribe of 50 people. You want that old guy. He's got a lot of scars on his face. He knows how to run shit.

He knows what to do wrong. He knows what to do right. He all of his brothers died you know like those guys are the guys you want teaching younger people it's like you were talking about with older folks that was the whole idea of a tribal leader like this was the greatest warrior this is the smartest chief this is the person who's like they can lead us and they want nothing but good for us because they love us because they know us but i don't know you he don't know you none of them you don't know he don't know you he doesn't care he just wants to get up there and says say his speech the right way and then they give him ice cream and then he sits down like and then do you see that woman who's the white house press secretary and now i

don't know if this is true so we should find out if it's true did she or did she not accidentally delete a biden tweet from her account? So it was a tweet as president. When I ran for president, I had this and that. Oh, and she accidentally posted it on her own. She accidentally posted it on the wrong. I want to find out if that's true, though, because that could be Russian disinformation. Because that's true, too. Here's one of the reasons why free speech is so important in this country, given the parameters of social media,

is because we know that foreign interests are interfering with our discourse. We know it. It's proven that there's troll farms. They have in Macedonia. I'm sure they have them in China. They have troll farms where people create accounts and then they argue with people about stuff and they'll post links to fake stories and they'll post fake information. They may even post fucking AI voice swap shit.

But what they're doing is trying to get people arguing about stuff, trying to get people to diminish their faith in democracy, trying to get people at each other's throats from the right and the left. It's manipulated. And think about who that benefits. Investing in America means investing in all of America. When I ran for president, I made a promise that I would leave no part of the country behind. So she did do it. She really did tweet it from her account.

Is that real? Oh my God. Oh my God. She really did do it. Oh my God. That's so crazy. So of course, when you read his tweets,

it sounds like her. Like she's got a very politician way of doing it there's she's like an am radio dj an am radio dj well that's her job right like version of what a press secretary is yeah like a politician because you know am all right here we are on the drive i'm mike and i'm with the rock you know or whatever with the fucking sidekick and maybe that's what attracted people to trump and maybe what attracts people to like um see thank god i haven't especially now at least i've got a good excuse not to keep up with politics anymore because i've got a few other more important things on my plate but i think that's what attracts

people to like that rough raw authentic type of speech like it's not clean cut and it's not professional but it's at least like like you said, even with Bernie, which who knows, I don't know anything about Bernie, but- He's not polished. But at least what he's saying is like, at least you feel like he actually, like at least he actually believes it. He believes it.

You can look at politicians over a 15 year span and like they'll quote something from like, oh, good God, think anybody, any politician from the 90s is gonna have a lot different opinions on emotional triggers that we talk about today. Politicians from the 90s from the Democratic Party sound totally different. Yeah, they sound like Nazis. There is this crazy when Biden passed the crime bill in 94. There's this famous speech that he gives about locking people up so that his wife is safe and so that they're safe and that I'm safe.

And it sounds like right-wing, like, Proud Boys speech. It's fucking crazy. It sounds like patriot speech, like what you worry about militias say. I know very little about any of this, but my understanding is even, I know for sure with Hillary Clinton, but I think even with Obama, originally their stance was very much against gay marriage. And then it flipped around. She didn't support gay marriage until 2013. Yeah. 2013.

No crazy. Pass them cigars. You're going to bust out your first cigar ever on the podcast. Yeah, so this is exciting. So like I said, a fan gave me these at a show. But yeah, so that's the thing. I just hope to see. A fan gave you these?

How do we know they're not laced with Fentanyl? Well, I'm going to let you try it first. God damn it. Oh, they're sealed. It definitely has to be real if it's sealed in plastic. And it says it's from Cuba. So it must be from Cuba. I should have brought the note with him to give the guy a shout out. That my fault but he's a cool guy he's uh well hey cool guy thanks for

the cigars I hope you're not poisoning me bro I'm gonna find out shortly here these are supposedly the real ones from Cuba but you know how hard that is to get like the real ones yeah there's a lot of fake ones it's one of those things where for whatever how do you tell the difference you don't i'm not a cigar aficionado i like cigars i can't even open a box that's all i suck um i'm not a uh i i like them but i don't know jack shit about them like my friend bobby kelly he knows a lot about cigars he could tell you all that shit and he can he can answer all these questions but i know the good ones this tastes good and they feel good like there's something about, you piece of shit. Sorry, we should have done this. It's okay.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm just trying to slice open this little cover with my sweaty hands. Come on, bitch. God damn it. This is hilarious. Maybe he set us up. It's so hard to open. Yeah, maybe he did. Maybe it's a bomb. Maybe it is. Maybe he set us up. Yeah, maybe he did.

Maybe it's a bomb. Maybe it is. He's given us a bomb. Maybe it's a sign. Pass this through security. Yeah, maybe it's a sign that we... I'm trying to preserve the looks of this box. I'm out the window. Oh, I'm not worried about that.

Yeah, but everybody likes boxes. In the cigar world, people like the whole thing behind it. They like cutting the cigar world people like they like the whole thing behind it they're like cutting the cigar and smelling it and they're like knowing that it came from somebody and it's just hilarious

they like the experience of it yeah I don't know why I can't get into this box this is brutal it appears that this is a fake box we'll have to start we'll have to

have to plan that out better next time. Yeah, man, for real. I should give this to Jamie. He'll figure it out. I think I see the seal in a different spot. Do you? I think the top flips up. Oh, you're right.

God damn it. That's hilarious. That's how dumb I am. How do I not know this? It's up here so these bitches need to cut it along this way I thought there's a line in it

and I thought that that line was the seal this will be like a perfect YouTube short of us trying to get the box open no it'll take too long

it's not short anymore. It's not short. This is way too long. This is pathetic. Come on, bitch. Maybe they've been packaged away for 50 years. No, these can't be that old. There you go.

Look at that. Awesome. I split the box. This bitch does not want to open. Is it the wrong side? I don't know. It isn't anymore. Now it's the right side.

There we go. Oh, look. There you go. It's the wrong side. Jesus Christ. Beautiful. Awesome. All right.

Smell that. That's what you got to do. You got to smell them. This is what they do. They take them. They put them by their nose. It smells good. Look at that.

Now we're going to have to find out if these are fake. How do you know? Bill Burr says you just know. You know. I got some real ones. Yeah, you fucking know. Are you supposed to leave this on or slide this off? That's personal preference.

A lot of people leave them on. Let's slide them off. They seem a little ostentatious. A little ridiculous. For a regular guy like yourself, then you know. Yeah, for Joe Shmuel like me. Now, real cigar people, you're going to have to do that by yourself. Because you've got to kind of suck on it while you're doing that.

Real cigar people will tell you what you're really supposed to do before you even suck on it is roll the flames around the end so you should probably do it correctly because i didn't they'll get mad yeah you do that you get a little cook kind of get it a little burn get a little cooked there you go now put it in your mouth and light it and suck on at the the same time. And then you get a nice, nice bull. Yeah, I feel like I need to get some bullhorns for the hood of my truck now. Bro, these might be legit. Can I see that? Here we go.

These are good. You think they're good? I mean, they seem good to me, but I wouldn't know the difference. Yeah, like I said, I'm not an expert. I don't even know how to open a box. But they're good in that they're smooth. They're very smooth. So if it really is from Cuba.

There's only like, it's a very small area where they grow these Cuban cigars. What is it called? Abalto Viejo, Abalta or something like that. What is the area of Cuba? But it's a surprisingly small area where they grow the best cigars. And it's just something about the soil that makes and the climate and everything's perfect but they grow really good cigars in nicaragua they grow really good cigars in the dominican republic it's kind of now it's like you know it's funny because i um i've never really been interested in the cigars but you know who one of my favorite guys

on youtube is um dry creek wrangler school i don't know if you've watched that yeah i have watched i love watching him and he's kind of gotten me interested in trying him out this is well now you're trying them uh well vialta how do you say that vuelta vuelta abajo that's the area so that one area just has bomb-ass soil. And they figured out a long time ago they grow the dopest cigars there. Do you know that when the embargo happened with Cuba, JFK ordered a shit ton of cigars before the embargo? What a dirty bird.

He knew. What a dirty bird. Even the one guy that we love the most, that was his insider trading. That dirty bird. He went out and got, like, how many boxes did he,200 1,200 cigars 1,200 I know that there was like an auction at one point in time for his humidor I think it actually still had some of the cigar see if you could find that maybe I'm imagining that

Maybe I'm imagining that. Humidor auction pops up. JFK humidor auction? 2017, it went on sale. That's right. $575,000. Dude. Imagine what a baller you have to be to be sitting there with your Tiger Dick tea, smoking Rhino Horn, whatever.

What other things do you have? Like a 1,000-year-old bottle of wine and JFK cigarettes. If I hold on to my boots long enough, maybe that's what they'll sell for. No, you have to keep them, man. You have to just get them resold. Come on, man. You already broke in the best part. If you can get a good pair of boots and break them in.

My favorite boots are made by this company, Origin. This is a company that Jocko is a part of. And they make everything American made. The factories in Maine, everything. The leather, the cloth, the threads, everything. And they make handmade boots, handmade jeans, jiu-jitsu gear hunting gear it's fucking awesome it's all like under like jaco's leadership and and and pete the other guy runs it i'm excited i hope to meet jaco one day he's another he's another youtube guy i'd love to do that i'd love

to go go do a hunt or something like that that'd be pretty cool i don't think i don't have you hunted before yeah well my uh that's what a lot of guys in the comments were saying on the Richmond North of Richmond video. They're like, I don't think that tree stand is going to be very good this year with all that screaming and shouting y'all were doing down there. Yeah, I hunt on my land, and I let people come in and hunt it. I don't run dogs or anything, but that's real popular in Virginia. So we'll do our thing at like early season and then we let the we let the club come in and run dogs at the end of the year you know that's very controversial in virginia there's like you want to talk about coke and pepsi politics like that's

definitely part of it you got people are very opposed to running dogs and you got some guys that just it's like a such a long tradition you know those two clash together um but as far as like any of the big game like the stuff we were checking out and i'd love to i'd love to experience that once that'd be crazy so do you use dogs to catch deer or what do you run the deer they run the deer yeah so they they um they use them just to get the deer moving which again i don't i don't know enough about it one way or the other um but virginia's got got a really healthy deer population all things considered like i just think people

think it's cruel you know people think it's cruel when they do that with mountain lions too but i was trying to explain to something listen to somebody if you don't do that you don't get mountain lions like you're not going to find them they're they're they know you are coming long before you have any idea they're there and they're gone and they're smart see i don't know if i'd want to kill a mountain lion i think i just want to like see this is one thing people give me hell about but like we've got um on my property we've got coyotes and bear and bobcat and we get them on camera a lot like there's a huge bear we kept getting um june and july it's like man i don't i don't think i'd want to shoot him i think i'd want to just

just just admire him and let him go i don't know like i'm just funny about that like uh well there's nothing wrong with not wanting to shoot an animal you know and if you don't want to shoot a bear look i've eaten bear i've hunted bear bear tastes good you can eat bear but it's not my favorite thing to eat it's not but it is also an animal that has to be managed yeah the thing about biological management this is the uncomfortable truth of it you have to have a balance there's wildlife biologists they observe populations and they want to enact some sort of a balance of predator and prey and when you have an overabundance of predators in areas that are um like when you

have hunting that's off limits you create a really dangerous imbalance and they did that in all places of in new jersey the governor of new jersey ran on this platform of stopping the bear hunt in new jersey because a lot of people in New Jersey, they live in urban environments like Newark and, you know, like Hackensack. And like that's where the population is. And like, we don't want you vote. I mean, voting to kill bears. Why would you kill bears? What they don't understand is like rural New Jersey has the highest bear per capita in the country. There's more black bears in New

Jersey than any other state, which is so nuts per capita. I wonder why that is. Because they're fucking everywhere there and there's not a lot of hunting, you know? So they had a bear season and this governor came in and stopped it. It was part of the things that he ran on. And then when he got into office, he realized after a while, like, oh my God, we have to kill these bears because like human bear interactions are growing up. A kid at Rutgers got killed by a fucking bear. Like he was out in the woods near the campus and he got fucking slaughtered. See, I always wonder if I'm going to get, I think the bobcats psych me out more than anything i always the bear i'm okay with like i feel like they'll leave me well enough alone but um until they don't i remember even when i when i first bought the place like

right after i closed on it because i'd had um i my house before that i had a house with five acres and like had the little homestead thing going and we had like you know some basic stuff horses and chickens and that's cool um but i knew i wanted more land and with everything the way everything is like they're not making any more of it you know so i said i'll go ahead and um and that that caused that caused a lot of controversy uh with my better half and i because she thought i was crazy that i was selling our like our comfortable house we're living in to go buy land and stick a freaking camper on it until we can afford to build something. But man,

it's, I remember my first weekend, it was Memorial day weekend of 2019 was like the first time I slept out there. And I'd heard, I knew what a coyote was, but I'd never heard a bobcat at night. And it was me and the dogs and we were tent camping out there.

And it was like two in the morning as a bobcat, like right on us doing that. the dogs, and we were tent camping out there, and it was like 2 in the morning. It was a bobcat like right on us doing that noise they make. What is the noise like? It sounds like a demented baby crying. I don't know. It would be cool to hear if people haven't heard it. We ended up leaving in the middle of the night because my dogs wouldn't stop barking, but the bobcats are the only thing out there that really freaks me out, like one of them jumping on you. I don think they attack people though let me hear this shit

whoa it sounds a lot wilder than that maybe we get going they live up to 12 years in the wild yeah that Jesus Christ Oh, I Saw links once in Canada. It's fucking cool Oh, it's weird to see some wild cat up in Alberta, in the woods. I was like, whoa, that thing is fucking cool. They have cool paws

to get around the snow. It's just wild that there's a cat up there. When you think about cats, at least I do, I always think about warm environments, like tropical cats. I'm excited to... What is this one bobcat attacks coyote

oh jesus i stopped it before i saw it ran away i thought you got him whoa try to get him wow bobcats try to kill coyotes he's just hiding in the fucking grass look at him look at that little killer he's just trying to kill anything he can imagine having instincts like that everything that comes close to you you want to eat that's a cat you know that's one thing i am excited with the opportunity i've been given with all this is i do want to travel more and get out into nature in different places this is my first time on the i've never left the east coast oh like this is my first time in texas but this different places. This is my first time on the, I've never left the East coast. Oh, this is my first time in Texas, but this is my, this is my first time any farther West than I think the farthest West I've ever been is Tennessee. So, um, I'd love to go.

And I don't know what'll happen with me next year. Like everybody wants to pull me in 10 different directions. And, um, but I'm just, I've always just been drawn to nature and, and being connected to it and so like i'm sure we'll do some big shows and we'll do some things next year but my heart is just pulling me i'm just excited to go experience like like i the first time i go to wyoming and stuff like i'm just that's gonna be it for me like just getting to see that experience i've never i've seen it on the on the internet. It's pretty stunning. And up in, I've watched all these videos in Canada.

One of my favorite YouTubers is Camping with Steve. It drives my wife crazy when, because like anytime we want to watch something at night, I always want to watch Camping with Steve, but he's a guy up in Canada, and he goes and does all these obscure, like different types of camps, different places. But just some of the area he explores up there in Canada

is just awesome. It's just like I've got to try it out for myself. Wilderness like that when you're looking at mountains and stuff like that, it's some kind of medicine for the human mind. It's something about the awe-inspiring beauty of it and just the vastness of it. It's like it sets you at ease in some strange way. It also is very lonely.

It's weird that it's like, because you realize like, oh, I'm not important at all. So when you're out there in the woods, you're like, I'm not important at all. Yeah, well, you realize like, yeah, and maybe that's part of what I was trying to convey earlier in my words too, but it's like you realize that, yeah, there's whatever problems and issues you've, in your mind have sort of perceived to be top ranking. Like they really are irrelevant, you know, and the bigger scheme of things, like, um, it's a beautiful thing when you can, cause you find, you really find peace in that. But yeah, there's something about being out in nature. I don't know, like I've read all these things about, you know, there's this whole kind of hippie

spiritual side to being out in nature, but there really is something just very peaceful about it. know, like I've read all these things about, you know, there's this whole kind of hippie spiritual side to being out in nature, but there really is something just very peaceful about it. Like, and I found that even on my property, being able to just be out there in the woods just helped me tremendously with everything. You know, I've been reading about like these different, these different like healing centers and camps and things that they're using to try to, it's for people like that are just getting out of rehab centers or PTSD or whatever, but like they, they have a lot, some of these nonprofit organizations where they take people out into that environment and there's, it's, they found a lot of benefit in it for people, but, um, I'm looking forward to getting

to experience just different parts of the country and even outside of the country. Like it's, if I think if I get anything out of this, if there's anything I'm really excited about, it's just getting to camp different places. That's cool, man. That's a beautiful thing to look forward to. That's smart. You got your head on right.

This is going to be fun for you, dude. You're going to have a good time. Yeah. You're going to have a good time. You're already making the right decisions. I'm having a good time now, so this is cool. It's crazy overwhelming, I'm sure. I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to

be you i got a nice slow trickle of fame yeah you could just just like i got like like a snake venom like you get a little bit more all the time tolerate a little bit more you get to a point you can still be yourself that's where it gets weird you know you're just gonna you're just gonna get a lot of people pulling at you but you don't have to listen so there's been a lot of good people come out of the woodwork like big big names, you know, like. That's got to be cool. People that have given me like very good. There's I won't I don't want to say his name on here and disrupt his privacy.

But there's one guy in particular that like, well, everybody's seen me meet him at one point. If that gives you a hint at all. But he's just a really good dude. I didn't see you meet anybody. Yeah. One of the shows, you know.'t see you meet anybody yeah one of the shows you know a show yeah at one of the shows yeah you're saying one of your shows he uh yeah talking about jamie johnson no yeah i can't say any names but okay he's been a yeah he's just a he's everything you think he is but he's just been a big help um that's awesome like almost kind of a i don't know if you'd want to say a father figure in the industry, but like, there's been some very good hearted people like mentor with,

despite all the craziness and all the people that have come out, like just clawing at me like that, uh, movie we were talking about at the beginning, you know, like, uh, there's been a lot of that. There's also been a lot of just really down to earth people that have, um, that just have the interest of me trying to, trying to preserve whatever it is I've created here and turn it into something to help keep me on the train tracks. It has been a wild couple weeks, but like I said, it's been a lot of fun. You're handling it really well. You are.

And you're handling the controversy and the criticism and the hit pieces. You're handling it all right. I love it. Just leave it alone. Let them talk. They don't even realize they're working for you. They're just making you more popular. Well, the thing is,

I see a lot of the negative stuff online, but man, if you read through my emails and my social media messages and the people I've talked to on the street, there's no question that the majority of people perceive it in the way that I hope that it would be perceived. Yeah, no question. No question.

No question. You don't have to think about that. You, no matter what you do, you can't make everybody happy. No matter what you do, no matter who it is, there's always going to be people that don't like it.

It's in everything and in music and comedy and literature and films. There's always going to be people that don't like things you like. It's always going to be people. And that's okay. That's okay. Just don't have to read it. Like the thing is about your things that people are going to people are going to write about you now like you don't want to like inject that negativity into your mind so just don't read

it you don't have to read it like it's so that they don't like you said this so they think you said of that should have done this oh yeah no shut up yeah it's funny though like i but they're allowed to do that too that's that's that's their job yeah and and like and that's what i've said even with people at certain organizations that i strongly disagree with that have reached out trying to do interviews or even some of the people that have come out with the hit pieces and all i'm like look i respect what you're trying to do same way with the people in the music industry that have approached me it's like i don't necessarily want to work with your organization but i respect you for what you're doing yeah i mean they're just trying to earn

an income just like anybody else you know and they're stuck in a system everybody's got a boss you know yeah if you're doing a show on cnn you're you're in a system that's what you're doing you know you work for a system there's no way around that you are part of a gigantic corporation that is a very specific kind of news that it does and you're you're told how you're supposed to do this and you're hired accordingly and you know what your job is and it's not it's not you representing you and um i think what your music one of the reasons why it represented or why it resonated rather with people is because it represents them it represents humans like a real human being this isn't just some bullshit hit written by AI.

It's a real human. Well, I read on the internet that it was AI. You probably could, but I don't think you'd put the fudge rounds in there. That doesn't seem like AI would be that creative and make those things rhyme. It's funny that that was one that was the most controversial. I really thought when I, because it's funny, I was one that was the most controversial i really thought when i

because it's funny like to just i guess if i just to tell the story about the song and how it was written it was like i had the first again this that song to me we weren't even i was i didn't even want to record that song when draven from radio wv came down he had hit me up on a thursday about coming to do the the recording and um i'd watched a lot of Radio WV, like Logan Halstead and a few of them, Nolan Taylor, like those guys are just, they're some of my recent favorites. And they were all sort of debuted on his channel. And so I've been watching him for years. And a guy gave, a guy on TikTok got me in contact with him. And so he called me on a Thursday. He wanted to come that Saturday and record. And I only had the first half of Richmond North of Richmond even written.

It was on my TikTok. I was sitting in my bathroom, like, just half-heartedly singing through the – I didn't even know if I was going to – when something comes in my head, a lot of times I would just post part of it online just to get it out there, you know, very casually. And everybody in the comments was like, oh, you got to finish this one, whatever. And then Draven was insistent that we needed to do that song because my top song in my head was Ain't Got a Dollar.

Ain't Got a Dollar and I Want to Go Home are like two of my favorites. So I just threw the rest of the song together. I finished it the day. We recorded it at around 630 on a Saturday, and I had had the song finished at like three o'clock on a saturday so it was very thrown together had no idea that was going to be the one wow um and alex i was a little reluctant to even record it because i was like i'm not really an anthem song kind of guy a lot of my other songs are different than that so i mean i'm glad he i'm glad he had the insight to tell me to do it but It's just kind of funny the way it was thrown together. Really, I thought when we uploaded

the song, I thought the controversy in it was going to be more around the first line in the second verse than anything about miners on an island somewhere. I thought that was going to be... Well, that one people got upset about too. I thought that was the one. What's interesting is people on the left got upset about that one.

Like, why is he talking about minors? Why wouldn't you be talking about it? That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's horrible. Why would that be a thing that's controversial to sing about? Why would it be something that left-wing people would be upset about? Like, what happened?

I hope that people will – and I've seen it happen. Like, a lot of people like I Want to Go Home. I've seen that happen. Like, um, I, a lot of people like, I want to go home. I've seen that one's got like some million views on it and whatever. And that's awesome. But yeah, Richmond, North of Richmond, isn't really even my, my favorite pick, like my faith and I I'll get a better version uploaded of it at some point right now. It's just off my phone, but like, I'd say my favorite song that talks about like class and politics in the world and like the way i perceive it it's probably dog on it like dog on it's probably my favorite out of any of them um so

i'm excited to like get those songs released in a more professional format the way richmond north of richmond is and i've got notebooks just full of stuff written down so i've got a lot of ideas of new songs that i want to work on so i'm really excited to get and I hope that like it's good that we did this interview and that we got to get on here and talk but I'm not I don't want to talk a whole lot anymore I don't think like you don't have I'm not a talker I'm a I'm a writer and so I hope moving forward that I'll just be able to communicate with people just through music and not worry so much about doing interviews and stuff like that because well I think you made an excellent account of yourself and people are gonna understand what you really are and you know and it's a cool story it's fun I think more people gonna be behind you now than

even before they'll get it a sense of this is a magical thing for you and it's beautiful and if it can happen to you if you can pursue a dream and and do this other people can do things that are very similar exactly i mean if there's if there is a message to get out of all of this it's just that you don't need anybody to do to do what it is you want to do like i'm just a guy that wrote some songs i took i recorded them on my phone i uploaded them through distro kid and like here i am and um it doesn't matter what your pursuit is. Like you don't need some big industry, fancy, schmancy,

whatever to back you up to do it. You just want, you just got to go do it, you know? And I think there's so many people that are like, and I know people like that, that are very good at things, but they say,

Oh, I'm not good. And like the, the fear holds a lot of people back from being successful. You know, you're afraid of your, your fear of failure will, will keep you from being successful. You know, you're afraid of, your fear of failure will keep you from being successful all day long.

So I hope that if anything resonates out of this, it's that, that people just do what you want to do and don't worry about if people are going to like it or not. They probably are, you know? And if they don't, make something better. Go back and try again. Yeah, who cares if they don't? Well, hey, brother, thank you very much for coming in here.

Congratulations on everything. Enjoy the ride. You're going to be fine. Yeah, who cares if they don't? Well, hey, brother, thank you very much for coming in here. Congratulations on everything. Enjoy the ride. You're going to be fine. Yeah, no, it was fun. We'll do it again in a couple years. Yeah, that sounds good. All right. All right, cool.

Sounds good, brother. Good luck to you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. music music music music