The Joe Rogan Experience - #2340 - Charley Crockett

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Charley Crockett is a country singer-songwriter. His most recentl album, "Lonesome Drifter," is available now.  www.charleycrockett.com Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/ROGAN to get 4 months free! THE WATERFRONT - NOW PLAYING, ONLY ON NETFLIX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Yeah, doing something at the Viper Room and then trying to come here the next day. The Viper Room is just notorious. Like even when you're in the building, it's just like ugh. It is notorious. It is funny because the only way I'd ever been in there was through that, you know, the door on the side street there.

You know? And they, you know, they had all the cameras out and took me around the, I'd never come in through the door on Sunset before, even recognize the place. No, I'd never been through that door either. Yeah. I've only, like I said, I've never been through that door either. Yeah. I've only, like I said, I've only been there once. I was there for a comedy show. It feels weird.

It's a, there's certain buildings that just have bizarre history. Yeah. Well, shooter was telling me last night, man, River Phoenix died on the sidewalk right out that door on the, I didn't know that. I thought it was in front of the, I thought it was in front of the whiskey for some reason. No, no, it was the Viper room.

I never realized that. No It's fucked up place. Hey, man. Nice to meet you. Pleasure's all mine Joe. I love your music. Really? Yeah. Yeah Yeah, well my friend Jake turned me on to you. Your music is like You've lived a life. You can't fake that. You know what I mean? There's something about certain dudes voices and songs songs, they're like, all right, that guy's done some living. You know, you can't create that with AI. Ha ha, right?

They're gonna try. Everybody, I mean, it's crazy, we were, I mean, we're kinda reaching singularity, you know? Yeah. Where nobody can tell the difference. I know, I think we're right about there. There was a new one that just got released today. Just hear the new one today It's even even better than the Google one that was insane. It was released last week

Yeah, it's weird. What are you talking about some new AI engine that does video? I'll send it to you Jamie It's it's pretty incredible this the the way they're able to make stuff now where it looks exactly like real human beings. It doesn't look fake even a little bit. I'll send it to you, Jamie. It's called ByteDance. So is that the China one? That's the company. Oh, okay. ByteDance is the company that owns TikTok and stuff. Oh is that the China one? Oh, okay. It's the company that owns like

tick tock and stuff. Oh, yeah, China. Yeah. Yeah. This is their new AI. So this is all fake, all fake people, all done by computers, indistinguishable. You know, it's like very strange you got it throw that up give me some sound You got a click on it This is all fake I mean what the fuck man? We are living in the weirdest time ever, Charlie Crockett. Oh man, you're right. This is the weirdest time ever to be alive because we are so close to not being able to tell what's real and what's fake. We're so close.

I mean, we're essentially right there with video and then eventually it's going to move into some sort of perception. It's going to be feel. You're going to be able to put a helmet on and go into some bizarre world. And you can't stop it. You can't stop it. It's coming. It's coming. And in the people that are working on it in America like we have to because China's working on I'm like, okay I guess that's just what we're doing Space race even if it's just a show. Yeah, it's essentially the Manhattan Project for artificial intelligence There's a race around the world. Joe did we go to the moon? You know, I don't think moon? I don't think so. You know, I don't think so either. I don't think so. It makes you sound fucking completely insane to say it, but... I lost a lot of friends when I was younger when I started talking like that. I did too. I gained

a lot of friends too though. I gained a lot of... Listen man, I've talked to scientists that don't want to talk about it publicly. Yeah. Scientists. Well see, you know what I figured? I figured that would be the one time in the history of civilization that human beings got to a new place and said, nah, I'm good and turned around. Exactly. I don't want to look around there anymore. Well, Bart Sabrell, he's this researcher that's been doing these documentaries on the moon landing and he's been saying it's fake since like I met him sometime in the early 2000s I believe and he put

out this this documentary called a funny thing happened on the way to the moon and he's got a great quote and he says there's not a single thing that's not easier faster and cheaper to reproduce today from 1969 except the moon landing it's the one thing well and everybody oh, but they spent so much money. Why would they spend the money on that again? Well, why would they spend money on all the things they spend money on? Like, what are you talking about? It doesn't make any sense. The moon is, has trillions of dollars in rare minerals on it.

There's all sorts of shit on the moon that would be very beneficial to society, and it was always going to be that we're going to have a base on the moon, and we're going to use that to go to other places. I don't think so. I mean if you look at the Just the the way they filmed it like when you watched it on television the people that watched it on television It was the first time ever there were where there was a news thing where the the news Stations the the networks didn't have a direct feed What they had was they filmed the moon landing, they showed it on a projection screen, and then the networks pointed their camera

at the projection screen. That's why it looks so shitty. Wow, do you remember there was a movie that came out, it wasn't that far back, and it's all about this, like a legit movie, and I should remember this actor's name because he's getting better and better known. He's a really great actor. He played the law man in Killers of the Flower Moon

that shows up there at the near the end and finally kind of takes them down. But he's been on a lot of other stuff and it's this really great movie about faking the moon landing and all that stuff for like you know American kind of cultural and economic dominance over Russia and all that oh so it's like it's a recent oh okay hey Jamie can you tell Jeff to bring in some coffee so it's um so it's a doc it's

drama a drama yeah it's a Hollywood Hollywood movie Oh, Jamie will find out what it is when he gets back I only saw it once but it's good and you know this actor cuz he's been everywhere man. He's been in everything I should know his name. I need to call him out. I think I saw him at the airport in Burbank a few months ago, actually It seems like a stupid thing to say but I don't think it is I don't think and then after COVID Realizing how much stuff they can lie about How much stuff the government can hide how much stuff that people would just accept as being true? Despite all the evidence of the contrary how much experts will go along with things how easy it is to keep a secret

it's not that hard to keep a secret especially a secret that is Essentially set up to let us think sir. Dang, that's how I know my wife stopped by. Your remate, is that what you're into? I love them, man. Yeah, they're good. You know why I like it, really? I didn't realize it for like a year or two, and now I realize it because it tastes just like Coca-Cola.

It does, really? It does. It's close. I think that's the secret, it tastes like Coca-Cola. Yeah. You know? This episode is brought to you by Dazon. Soccer fans, your summer is about to get a whole lot better.

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That's D-A-Z-N dot com slash FIFA. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. When it came time to make a website, there was no question that we would power it with Squarespace. From the intuitive design intelligence that helps to create a bespoke digital identity to the seamless payment options

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Or opium? Real? The original version of it? The original version of it? Yeah, the original product. We'll find that out. Yeah, I think it did. Well, that makes sense.

I'm sure. That's real great for headaches. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. I mean, more lies, right? How many times have we been lied to? But you know what it is. It's a You know, I think it's I'm preaching the choir here, but I think it's a perception thing right with

You know, it's like Planning that flag on the moon. Mm-hmm was a cultural thing. Yeah, you know a An American pop culture thing sure right well they wanted us to be dominant Militarily over Russia shit worked. Yeah, I mean sort of kind of kind I guess yeah I mean we definitely are dominant over you know militarily we definitely were back then essentially move Here it is heroin whoo Wow Bear had heroin non habit forming Here it is, heroin. Woo, wow. Barehead heroin.

Non-habit forming. Right. You gotta get the non-habit forming kind. But I mean, like, what is the difference between that and doctors prescribing Oxycontin? It's not that much difference. Sears Roebuck once sold heroin, Jesus Christ. Must've been a wild time back then.

Man, that's a great, that's a great illustration there. Yeah, look at that. Two needles, two vitals of heroin, only a dollar fifty. Less than fifty dollars adjusted for inflation. Wow. This is the 19th century. So the 1800s Sears catalog used to offer a heroin kit. I think the actor you're talking about was Jesse Plemons, but I don't know what I'm talking about. That's him, bro. See if you can find it. Jesse Plemons, but I don't know what that's him bro See if you could find Jesse Plemons just you can type moon moon I did what flowers of summer moon keeps popping up, but do but do

do space Hmm Discovery that's 2015 no 2017 try Jesse Plem's moon conspiracy or space conspiracy. Huh. Are you sure it was an AI? Because there's a lot of those. I thought Keanu Reeves really wasn't a new Dracula movie. Fake? Possibly fake? I'm just going to look. Possibly fake?

What was the other question we had? Oh, bear heroin. Yeah, man, they've been, you know, they've been tricking people for a long fucking time. You know, if they can make money, they'll trick you. Back then, they were probably being tricked themselves. People didn't really understand what was addictive and what wasn't. You know, doctors used to recommend cigarettes for people with emphysema. You got asthma?

You need cigarettes. Yeah, they were drinking, athletes were drinking Coca-Cola on the court. Well, you know who drinks Coca-Cola? Floyd Mayweather. Floyd Mayweather, after training, would drink Coca-Cola. And there's actually some science to that. Having sugar right after a really hard workout

actually replenishes Replenishes glucose right the body like Gatorade. Yeah, it's probably not a bad idea So I was got me drinking Gatorade again There's better versions of electrolytes, you know, yeah, you're right electrolytes are good for you Gatorade's okay It's just it's got a lot of shit in it. Yeah. Corn syrup and... There you go. Here it is. Fly me to the moon.

Channing Tatum. Oh, Channing Tatum. Hey, Harrelson. Is that it? Oh, that's the one. That's it. Wait, that's 2024? 2024. So... Oh, that's the one.

Yeah, he's not even in it. No, he is in it, I think. Historical romantic comedy drama. Huh. Yeah, he's not he's not even it. No, he is in it. I think the historical romantic comedy drama Huh Tasked to creating a false moon landing Apple TV and see it interesting. What year was it? I never even heard of it. I think it's still how do you have a movie with Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson and you never heard of it. They're not crazy. There's too many goddamn movies, bro You know what? I saw last night. I think I'm still thinking of it. Isn't that crazy? There's too many goddamn movies. Bro, you know what I saw last night?

I think I'm still thinking of a different one, but there's another one. There's another one, really? I think so. I saw it, man. It was a wild movie and they realize that the whole landing is being faked and then they, and then, I mean, I won't spoil it,

but then they and then and then I mean I want to spoil it, but you know then they get taken out Apparently moon landing JFK. I mean, what's the damn difference? Yeah, there's a lot of Mean there's almost nothing Vietnam Gulf of Tonkin. There's almost nothing from history. That's exactly as we're being told Almost nothing. Yeah so I'll crack a shit it's coke and Pepsi you know because I was thinking like you know that's the one thing that that they did that everybody liked and then they've kept that as long as they keep that flavor right right you they can they can muscle everybody out

you know it's like no like my RC Cola shit like that. Yeah, nobody's into that Yeah, and only if you can't couldn't afford the coca-cola price right and the you know coke machines Bless you. Thank you. I was a kid that was the only reason we drank RC Cola's cuz it was 25 cents right cuz it was cheap That's it, and you drank it and you knew it wasn't coke yeah yeah they tried new coke do you remember that when I was a kid god I think I was in high school they came up with a new formula of coca-cola somewhere around the 80s I think it was terrible never they they ride a new coke and everybody's like what the fuck are you doing why would you get rid of coke perfect yeah don't change that they can yeah they can change and try everything else and buy everybody out as

long as they keep Coca-Cola flowing. Yeah, and then Pepsi's always like for weirdos people who prefer Pepsi. I never liked it. Yeah, it's weird I like dr. Pepper. Well, you know Coca-Cola is to this day flavored with cocaine Do you know that you mean like the coca leaves? That's the secret to the flavor of Coca-Cola Coca-Cola the company flavor of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, the company that makes Coca-Cola, they are the biggest producers of medical grade cocaine, for real. So they take the coca leaves, they extract the flavonoids out of the coca leaves, and they extract the cocaine. So there's no cocaine in Coca-Cola. But then they take those coca leaves and the flavor goes into Coca-Cola and then the cocaine goes into

medical cocaine. To this day, I think they're the only company that's allowed to use coca leaves. I think they're grandfathered in. I think that's exactly that. Is that how it works? I believe they're grandfathered in, but to this day, that's what they use. As I sniff, as I sniffle, but these are real sniffles, folks. These are allergy sniffles. I watched the fucking craziest movie last night, The Substance, have you heard of that movie? I've heard of it.

That's that new Demi Moore movie? Yeah, I was afraid to watch it. Holy shit, man. It's intense. Oh my God, one of the most insane movies I've ever seen in my life. It's about this lady who's getting older and Someone approaches her with this new experimental drug that allows you to live as a young person For seven days and then you have to switch back to the old person for seven days I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but it's fucking insane

Like like I left I was like I gotta watch something stupid spoil it for anybody, but it's fucking insane like like I left I was like I gotta watch something stupid on YouTube for a couple hours Yeah, I go to bed because I'm I'm weirded out by this movie. Yeah, that's the reason I don't watch it yet I'm just saying Yes, I never liked I never liked Like the sensory overload like horror movies. Oh, yeah, I like classic horror movies. This is a sensory overload, like horror movies. Oh yeah. I like classic horror movies. This is a sensory overload times 10. I mean, it's fucking insane.

It's an insane movie. It's really good. I mean, it really grips you. It's very entertaining, but just good Lord. Have you seen Uncut Gems? Yes, loved that movie. Isn't that a good movie? Oh my God.

It was like a little much for me, but it was so good and it wasn't so crazy, you know? Yeah, well I grew up with a lot of gambling addicts. So for that movie, that movie really hit home for me. I was like, oh God, gee, like anxiety. Howard, is that his name? Howie Howard? You know, Sandler's character.

Is that what his name is, Howie? Yeah, and he's selling diamonds on 42nd Street or whatever That's a that's that's that's every manager in the music business Is that guy a lot of them gambling addicts that that guy out there, you know, they're they're juggling all these balls in front of you Which is fine. I don't mind guys juggling what I don't like is when somebody's got all these balls in the other juggling in front Of me and they're like Charlie. I'm not juggling somebody's got all these balls in there. They're juggling in front of me. And they're like, Charlie, I'm not juggling.

Oh yeah, the music business. Yeah, well, there he is. He's great in that movie, too. Yeah, he's incredible. I never knew he could act dramatically. I mean, he's always been great in comedies, but he's incredible in that movie, incredible. He had another one he did that was like a serious flick

way back, you remember Punch, Drunk Love? You ever see that one? No, I never saw that. That's a masterpiece. Yeah, I never saw it. Yeah, but uncut gems the the gambling aspect of it Like that sickness that the gambling sickness is a wild sickness. I grew up around gamblers, too Yeah. Yeah, my uncle was always a big gambler and my cousin I spent a lot of time and Casinos with him down in New Orleans on the Mississippi coast and all that. Oh, River Bowl gamblers.

Man, yep, exactly. Those are the craziest. Man, I didn't mind, you know, he let me and my cousin run all over the place. So we were stoked. So you liked the fact that he was a degenerate. Yeah, well, and anytime he won, like if he won big, we used to play his bingo,

he used to run this bingo hall in New Orleans. And me and my cousin, we could, both of us with those bingo daubers, we could play like, we could play nine card pages for him. We got that good that we could keep up with it. And because he was running the place, nobody in there ever said shit about me and my cousin being like, you know, eight and 11 or whatever.

And if we hit though, it was always a good time. It was Toys R Us and fried shrimp. With how much your privacy is being invaded online, VPNs are no longer just a nice thing to have. It's a necessity. Some people think I don't need a VPN because I have nothing to hide. But that's exactly what data brokers want you to think because their profits depend on you having nothing to hide. What you do online is your business.

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For some people, that's their juice, man. That's what keeps them going in life, just that next bet. I grew up around a lot of pool halls when I was in my early 20s. And I was just surround so many people that just live for gambling. They would go straight from off-track betting right to the pool hall, and they'd bet on anything. They'd bet on two raindrops coming down a window pane.

They'd bet on roaches. They'd bet on anything. You name it, they'd flip a coin for 10, I saw dudes flip a coin for thousands of dollars. Guy would win a tournament. This is like a famous thing dollars. A guy would win a tournament. This is a famous thing in pool. Guys would win a tournament, win $10,000, flip a coin, lose the whole thing.

And you had to have heart. You had to be willing, that was part of the culture. You had to be willing to bet. And everybody's always, because the only way it's fun, yeah, the only way it's fun is if money's constantly flowing. So if someone's trying to be conservative, someone's trying to save them, they called them a nit. Like you're a nit, they didn't like you.

Nobody likes a nit. Like those are the guys that get shunned by the pool hall. They're a bad action. Where'd you grow up? Well, all over the place, really. But- Where were those pool halls? New York. Well, I moved to New York when I was in my 20s,

my early 20s, like 23. And that's when I got indoctrinated into pool culture. Yeah, it was just the most fun group of degenerates and weirdos and outcasts and, you know, as a comedian, I never felt like I fit in in normal society, you know, and then I'm around those dudes, I'm like, oh, okay, you guys are just like me. You don't fit in either, like, you're a bunch of fucking weirdos man

You know thing what I just thought about Joe when I was on the street in New York you know, I played up there and I'm sure you know, but I'd play on the street all day and at first I was playing in the parks and Then I went moved downtown. I was trying to play on street corners in the villages and all that. And you're dealing with traffic and cops. And that's what drove me down into the, into the subway platforms. And those were really competitive too. So even there, I started playing at the stations that nobody wanted or, you know, weren't

desirable. It weren't, you know, nobody's really competing for the spots or whatever. And I would do that all day, and then I would hit open mics all over the five boroughs every night, everywhere. And the comedy guys were always the coolest, because all of them, because we weren't in competition. I know comedians can be really competitive

on the circuit and obviously same thing on the music side. But I ended up like playing a lot of, I would open up for a lot of guys, like I'm like at the red door and like in the circuit there in the city and shit. Oh cool. Open guys up with two or three songs or play their breaks or whatever.

And you know, all the comedy folks liked me, I think, because I wasn't one of them. Yeah, no. We were cousins or something. Right right that's there's always been a relationship like that like Oliver Anthony was at the mothership this weekend and it's the first music act we've ever had performed there. That's cool. Yeah you could perform there too if you ever want to man. I know where it's at. Yeah it'd be fun. I like that you got it down there man. It's a great spot. Sixth Street is just such a fucking wild place. It is.

To have it right there is perfect. And to have it at the old Ritz, yeah, it's amazing. So, you know, it was great having it all. Is that what it is in the old Ritz? Yeah, yeah, we bought the old Ritz. Yeah, we have to keep the Ritz sign because it's one of those historical buildings. Oh, it's a great sign.

Oh, it's a great sign. It's got so much history. In the tunnel on the way to the stage There's a big picture of Stevie Ray Vaughn on the stage in 1983. Oh, yeah, you like SRV fuck Yeah, come on come on He's the only dude who could play voodoo child doesn't make me sick man. You know other than Hendrix That's right two dudes. Yeah, you're right Hendrix and and him. I mean, I'm sure other people can do it. I've never heard it. Nah, fuck that, just...

Oh yeah, man. There's certain songs, there's certain songs that you can't fuck with. Although I did see one time I saw Honey Honey and Gary Clark Jr. played Midnight Rider. And I didn't think anybody else could play Midnight Rider. And to hear Gary's song with Midnight Rider with that, you know, like Gary's signature sound.

Oh man. Yeah, that signature guitar sound. You've seen Gary live? Oh yeah, I'm friends with Gary. Man. I've seen him a bunch of times. Yeah, I love Gary too. I love that dude.

That guy. He's so good. Man, I remember. Oh, I gave something to him and I got it for you too. What is it? This is a real genuine Woolly mammoth guitar pick that is made out of woolly mammoth tusk But ten thousand plus years old

None of that's a shout out to my friend John Reeves from the Boneyard in Alaska I got a buddy of mine who has this spot in Alaska where they just pull all kinds of crazy mastodon, wooly mammoth, fucking cave bear, all kinds of skulls, all kinds of wild shit out of this one piece of property where a lot of animals died. And he's taken a lot of the wooly mammoth. That's where I got this too, this is a tooth. This is a tooth that was carved into a piece of art with a mammoth in it.

That's a big old goddamn tooth, son. Imagine. Can I see how heavy that is? Isn't that crazy? It's crazy, right? It's beautiful, too, man. Yeah, so that guitar pick is yours, brother. Man, thanks, Joe.

Any cool guys who play guitar, give them one of them picks. You know, I've never been good at holding a pick. I learned how to play with my hands, because I could never hold a pick well. But a lot of guys I know that are really great pickers, they play these really hard picks, you know, and can be real precise with them. And I just, I still can't hold them.

You learned with your fingers? Yeah. Yeah, I never held, I just couldn't hold a pick. I would try to hold it and they get sideways And I never like all this, you know, like the straight cowboy cords, you know CFG whatever I couldn't hold any of those cords like when I was teaching myself The positioning was weird for me, you know And so like I kind of threw away the book and I did what you call choking the chicken on the On the fret, you know kind of hold it like you're choking the chicken. Mm-hmm

And that's kind of where I developed my style and then I learned all the regular chords many years later You know, did you are you totally self-taught? Oh, yeah. Wow. When did you start? When did you start? Um, I was 17. My mama got me a guitar out of a pawn shop in South Irving. It was a Hohner guitar. And you just started messing around with it? Yeah, yeah, you know, my mama tried to get me on the piano when I was younger and I just couldn't focus and, um, yeah, I don't know. Seventeen was like the right age. I needed it, you know?

I started banging around on that guitar and I mean it must have sounded terrible. My mama lived in this little ass place, this tiny place. I was like scared to play in front of her, you know, but I was at first and I would say, mama, am I any good? You know, she wasn't gonna lie to me. She said, well son, when you play, people will believe you. She wasn't gonna lie to me and tell me I was good.

But she was trying to say, you know, just be honest with your music and the rest will take care of it. That's great advice. Yeah. When you play, people will believe you. That's what she said. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep, and then the next time anybody believed in me Yeah, when you play people will believe you that's what she said yeah Yeah, and then the next time anybody believed in me wasn't till I started hitchhiking And I remember because I've been out in California bunch recently And it was I had caught a ride with this guy We were playing at this place called the shanty up in the farmers branch Dallas Fort Worth area years ago. And there was this witch lady that, I mean, they called her a witch. This kind of magic woman who had a barn out behind her house and they called it the Shanty.

And she would have people over on the weekends and just kind of any random night, travelers, misfits, whatever, back there in the barn and everybody'd be telling stories and trading songs and you know, taking potions. Stuff like that. Long story short, this guy I met one night, his parents had like worked, they worked for like Texas Instruments

and he had disowned them, you know, because his parents were like scientists and he woke up one day as a young man and realized they were like, his parents were manufacturing like weapons, you know, and I never saw this guy again, but that was his whole deal why he left Texas. Oh wow.

And he was just back visiting this gal that had this shanty deal. And I talked that guy that he promised, he was describing this town of Boonville, which is this community in Mendocino County, Northern California. And the way he was describing it to me at this, in this barn or whatever,

it sounded like a Garden of Eden or something. You know what I mean? Like, and I wanted so badly to go with him and he promised me and this other guy that was playing guitar too that he would take us. And we passed out at the ladies house and we woke up that next morning, he was still there. And I was like, man, you ready to go to California?

And he was like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Like when I pressed him, he's like, man, I was on acid. I was on acid. I was on acid. I don't remember any of that. I don't have any room for you. And I begged him like my life depended on it.

And he took me and this old boy who was playing guitar, actually taught me a lot of songs back then. He took us to California. But as we got closer to Booneville, and we were talking to naive young Texas boys who had never been anywhere, he realized he, you know, didn't want us going anywhere near those hippies he was living with there in Boonville.

So he left us, like, he pulled into like a grocery store and left us in this parking lot in Vacaville. And that's when I really started hitchhiking in my life is like when we kind of got abandoned in a parking lot, kind of along the five, right? How old were you? 21, probably 22, something like that. And I had done a little bit of hitching before

like around the South Texas and like Louisiana, but I'd never really been way out there. And anyway, I started hitchhiking around because I had to, but I remember it was in California the first time about anybody besides my mama ever looked at me playing guitar as it having any kind of value,

like any economic value or like, it was a trade of recognition. It was kind of the first time I was out there. So you'd been playing about four or five years back then? Yeah. Yeah. I was playing outside because our place was so small. I wasn't playing outside to like make money

or anything like that. I would go to this park, have a baseball diamond on it, sit on these bleachers or whatever. And I'll never forget, the first time anybody threw just a pocket full of change in my case, I'm sure it's because they were worried about me and felt bad for me or whatever. And it wasn't like that money hit the case

and then a light went off or anything. It was a slow, gradual deal. Like I was playing outside because there wasn't enough room to play in the house or whatever. And then I got in a lot of trouble with the law, which kind of put me on the run, put me on the road. And what was the trouble with the law? You know, my, I've said it a lot and it's funny, I'm a lot better known than I used

to be. So it's like you say stuff about your family and they hear about it and they get mad, they get mad but so funny because it's all over the internet and They're the ones that had the government on their ass. Not me. But anyways, yeah We just kind of you know shit hit the fan got up in the newspapers. My brother didn't go to high school You know neither my sister neither and went to high school. They both dropped out, you know, cuz I'm from South Texas I was born in the Rio Grande Valley. They were born up in Dallas, but my mama had moved down there to South

Padre Island area, McAllen, Harlingen area there. And anyway, it's poor and pretty hard living down there. And, you know, hell, I didn't wear shoes till I was like nine or 10 years old, you know, playing outside. And my brother and sister, they're 10 years older than me, half brother and sister, and we have different daddies. And they really lived wild, you know? It was, things were pretty tough back then or whatever. I'm telling you that background because my brother became a hustler, you know,

because he had to, because of a lack of education, lack of access, you know, because he had to, because of a lack of education, lack of access, you know, because of poverty. And I've honestly always respected him for that, you know. He took, he used to take me around door to door selling newspapers when I was 11, right? And you want to know why? Because I had broken my arm. And he realized if you carted that young boy out in front of those apartments when that lady entered the door, and it's these two brothers, and one of them's got a broken arm, she's gonna go ahead and subscribe.

Yeah, she was bad. Yeah, and in a nutshell, man, he, through all that stuff, he started out as door-to-door salesman, hustling newspaper subscriptions, right? Then he started like selling neckties and like men's clothing door-to-door in downtown Dallas office buildings, you know, and as a very young man. And eventually he graduated, you know, hard knock boiler room type of guys, you know, hard-knock boiler room type of guys, you know, you keep knocking on those doors and that Wild West business scene of towns like Dallas,

you know, or Houston, you know, eventually you're gonna find what you're looking for. And he got in with some big old wolves, you know, and eventually it knocked everybody out and a lot of people died, a lot of people went to prison. And you know, we were in the paper and I couldn't, I found myself not being able to get a bank account and nobody I knew would go near me, you know? So it ended up being like a Bob Marley type of thing, you know, like, you know, he said, if you're not living good, travel wide. Right? He said, if you're not living good, travel wide. And I literally just walked out of town because we had scarlet letters on our chest.

And that's when I really started learning how to stand behind that guitar and write songs and slowly but surely start. I learned how to play basically in front of people. And people just were giving me money kind of over time. That and food and shelter in exchange giving me money kind of over time. That and you know food and shelter in exchange for my story at their back door. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. You think your family's got drama? Wait till you meet the Buckleys.

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Like, look, you're a popular music artist now. Yeah. You know, worldwide. You're famous. I'm surprised I... You know what I'm surprised by? I'm surprised I never got heavily addicted to drugs. Yeah?

I am. You know, my sister surprised by? I'm surprised I never got heavily addicted to drugs. Yeah. I am, you know, my sister passed away 10 years ago from substances and hard living and all that kind of stuff and hell, my whole family's in AA. Everybody top to bottom, left to right, turn them inside out. I think about it a lot, but I really do. I remember I was living with that guy

who was at the shanty that was playing guitar. He's on the football team. I knew him from sports. His name was Daniel Harmon. And he went out there to California with me that first time. And we were living on farms and I was working for ganja farmers, working on horse farms, working for winemakers,

all kinds of people, you know, just doing grunt work for them, doing the fence work they didn't want to do, moving soil for people, you know what I mean? Digging ditches, laying pipe across really hard, rocky roads, anything anybody can do, you just need broad backing to be young. Right.

you know, broad back and, you know, to be young. Right. And, but before I ever left Texas, I moved in with his sister. And I remember, and she was just my friend, I was never in a relationship with her or anything, but she was working at Silver City in West Dallas, the Gentleman's Club at 18, and making more money than anybody I'd ever seen.

The girl was 18, you know, and just making crazy, crazy money. She let me rent a room from her and kind of gave me a deal and all that. I ended up writing a song kind of about it more recently called Easy Money that I did with Shooter on the Launching Rifter record. And that's kind of the thing, you know, if you're a poor kid from Texas, there's no such thing as easy money. But I can't remember why I was telling you that. It was hard on, I just remember like seeing, you'd see like young women working in strip clubs,

making big money. And the ones that I have was around and have been around, very, very hard for that line of work, my line of work, your line of work not to become addicted. Yeah. You know, and I don't have a problem with, you know, a lot of the best artists I ever saw struggled with addiction.

But in that way I have been very fortunate, very, very fortunate. How did you avoid it? I don't know. You know what it is, man? I never had no kind of tolerance. I've always been like, I guess get drunk off of one drink. It's never changed.

I just felt it all like really strong. That's probably good. Yeah. Maybe it's a survival instinct too. I've never really thought about why, but I have considered it because my brother's been through, he did a lot of time in prison. And my sister had prison and you know, my, I say Mike,

my sister had, and my mama, you know what I mean? They both had their first kid, you know, and they were teenagers, you know? A lot of it I do credit to my mama, you know, it's like, you know, she told me something I remember that stuck with me. I've been saying this all the time, Joe. And like, we had a lot of trouble in our family and a lot of people that we knew, a lot of dysfunction, lot of trauma. But when my mama kind of got out of that, she kind of is the person in the family that said,

I'm gonna change the trajectory of this line and now in my generation. You know, and she didn't have an education. And, you know, she took herself back to school after I was born. You know, and cleaned up her act and got out of it. And isolated me from a lot of that shit. Which I think is a big part of the reason that I maybe didn't. Right, you had a role model.

Yeah, I had a role model. There was no male role models, at least not at home. They were only pro athletes and coaches at school. It's increasingly difficult for young men to find strong men of courage and vision that can help them grow into good men too. I mean, it seems almost impossible these days. It's unbelievable. It's very difficult to find your personal life. It's hard, man.

You have to find it in other ways. You have to find it people online or excellence in like athletics. Right. You know? Where the only way you can get there is hard work. Yeah. And odds are stacked against you and it requires incredible focus. I mean I just, I think that's why I'm always, you know,

in such awe of those people when they're able to succeed like that. But what I wanted to say to you that my mama said, she said, what happened to you when you were young is not your fault, but now you're a man and it's your responsibility. And I've been living, I've been living off of that for a long time because it's like if you don't take responsibility

at some point, man, it'll never leave you alone. Right, you can't think that you're a victim. Yeah, you can't think that it's not your fault. You gotta take responsibility. That's hard for people to accept when they know they've been victimized. When they know they've been dealt a shitty hand of cards, you can just kinda wallow in it.

But that's a trap. That's a trap that'll fuck you up. It'll fuck up everybody around you too. Damn right. Yeah, but it's a mindset thing. It's like you can think your way out of that. You have to have an example though. Either you have to be your own example that. You have to have an example though. Either you have to be your own example

or you have to find an example of someone else who thought their way out of it. And for my brother, for all the trouble that he's been in, in a way like, I think he was trying to, he also was trying to help me. His hustle and his work ethic in another sense, you know, was, that's been helpful to me too, you know, because I remember he used to hand out flyers and shit all over the place.

And when I'd be like a teenager, he'd be like, he'd be like, listen to me now. If you go, if you leave an event at the other day that you're handing out flyers and you're flooding it with promotion, if you can even see that pavement underneath the pamphlets that you're handing out, you didn't promote it. Wow. Somebody used to tell me I was like 15, 16, and that mentality came in handy for me because I was just a street performer, just an itinerant performer. And I did have to learn how to market myself. And part of the reason that I was,

man, sometimes being underestimated is like the best thing that could happen to you. Because I think one of the biggest challenges for like in the music industry at least, is that the way the business works now, is they're almost exclusively, you ever seen Moneyball? Brad Pitt flick Moneyball?

Yeah. Right? Yeah. How they introduced that concept of looking at the data to like maximize the potential of the athletes and all that kind of stuff, which has totally changed the game, you know, all the games. I kind of call it money guitar, right? Which is like, you know, the business is seeding the young amateur and for the way that they

spend and invest and can move on if it doesn't work out, it's like kind of a, you know, it's kind of a pump and dump, you know? And the thing about that, and it works, like if somebody has a, you know, if somebody like some of these guys, you mentioned Oliver Anthony and some of these guys, they have a viral hit out of nowhere, they've never played a venue or anything in their life,

you know, it can happen really fast. And then obviously there's tremendous challenges, you know, down the line trying to keep that you know, astronomical, you know, quick rise up there. But back in the day, the business deals weren't any good. You know that they were terrible. What they were good about though, in a lot of cases, was developing these artists on these rosters, even if they were taking advantage of these poor farm boys,

taking advantage of poor black artists from the South, or women, or whatever. Nobody was getting a good deal, basically. But, you know, like guys like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, those guys were making two, three records a year. Wow. You know, and you think about when Waylon breaks through,

right, in the mid-70s, you know, and like, as he's doing, you know, coming into his own, in 1974, 1975, I mean, how many records in is he at that point, you know? Wow, yeah. He's, I mean, you know, Willie's Red at a Stranger, which revolutionized country music, or like the Outlaws compilation record

that the two of them were on together, which was basically a compilation, and kind of marketed as the outlaw of subgenre. You know, those guys were 15, those guys were 15, 16, 17 records in, you know. Aretha Franklin popped off on her ninth or tenth record. Wow. You know, and these, most of these artists, the way the business works, they won't make nine or ten records in their career, right?

That's crazy to me that is crazy and what better way to develop than to just keep constantly producing new music and learn along the way and in being neglected or Misunderstood by their business when I was first dealing with it. That was the it was a really a really a blessing Because I ended up making so many records you know. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Summer is almost here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost? Well you can't get a well groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken parmesan delivered. Catamaran? That's a no. Lemon meringue? That's a yes. A day in the sun? No. A bottle of rum? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely help you out

with that. Get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. The music business has always been so predatory. But it's like, it's the way I describe a lot of things. It's like when you get something that's good combined with a bunch of people that want to make money off that something that's good. You know, whether it's medicine or whether it's music

or even in comedy, you get the same thing. You get a bunch of people that just think they can make money off you. Man, I always thought comedy was the hardest. Always figured it was the hardest, right? Because you mean like, you gotta make them laugh or they're gonna fucking kill you. And you have new shit all the time.

There's nothing behind you. There's not even a guitar covering you up, right? That's crazy to me Just to watch all those guys do their bit and shit. So like I was always amazed by even a Tip people going up at like the open mics and like trying out their routine, you know that always terrified me It terrifies me still when I watch open mics. I watch open mics and I watch someone bombing. I gotta leave the room. I fear that it's contagious. Like, if I was on the road and I didn't get to pick my opening acts, like if I was working

at a club and they had some local act in Florida or something like that and the guy was fucking terrible, I would literally have to like not listen. I'd have to leave the room and just sort of time when I was gonna go on stage, so I could go on stage with a fresh mindset. I couldn't think that this audience had been poisoned by this guy's shitty comedy. I get that.

You know what I mean? It's like, it's terrible and it's like, you think that nothing could be funny. Yeah. He just, it's like, he's hypnotized them right into this like Mediocre state of mind like I can't listen I gotta hide yeah, and it's crazy that they could have that That strong an effect on the audience like that that quick I mean somebody can be up there fucking it up like crazy musically yeah, and you kind of get a pass

You know right you know poetic license or whatever well You know people it's tolerable if the guys into it, you know You get he could be into his own music and you're like, I'm not into it, but he's into it At least he's like doing his song if you're not into if you're doing comedy and the audience is not into it You're fucked. Hmm. You're like really fucked. You have to engage those see that it's unbelievable You got to be connected to those people and you can't fake it. Like you can't even be saying the words perfectly and not be thinking about it. You have to be thinking about what you're saying.

They know, they're little animals, they smell you. They know, they know if you're faking it. And you just gotta lock in man. And you gotta learn how to lock in, it takes about 10 years. It takes 10 years of eating shit Just yeah fucking bombing and traveling around and opening up for people. Yeah, and barely getting by That's the same thing with music though about the 10 year deal. You know the 10,000 hour thing. Mm-hmm

There's no doubt about it. I think it's probably almost everything. Yeah, almost everything. Anything you dedicate yourself to. You know, you like Noam Chomsky? Yeah, sure. You ever see? I like old Noam Chomsky. Haha, yeah. When I listen to him today, I'm like, Jesus, stop talking. Yeah, he's popping off, isn't he? Well, he just went, the COVID vaccine stuff, he was out of his fucking mind. He wanted people to be isolated and quarantined and taken away from society if they weren't willing to take this fucking experimental shit turned out to be worth it. Wow, I haven't kept up with him in recent years. Well, he's old, right?

And old people, unfortunately also, he's an academic, so academics tend to trust experts in whatever field they're in. And if he doesn't have an understanding, like he has a deep understanding of how compromised people are politically by money. He's written some brilliant work on essentially the way the media is compromised and the way politics are compromised.

I don't think he applied that same skepticism towards the pharmaceutical industrial complex. Which is strange. Well, people have their blind spots. Yeah, we all do. And they trust experts. And if he, you know, he's got experts that are academics and you trust them and also he's old and old people get real scared of diseases.

They get real scared because they know how fucking vulnerable they are. All the people that I knew that were old had the craziest reaction to COVID. Terrified. Even my own parents tried to, you know, talk them through some of this stuff. They didn't want to hear it. They only wanted to listen to doctors. They're one like, I don't think this is what

they're telling you. Yeah. You know, doctors are crazy. They're just, they got a cabinet full of pills that they've been, they've been sold to sell you. And they're incentivized. That's what's really crazy when I found that out That mean I learned so much during the pandemic about the medical industry where I just thought they were there though I didn't even I'm so naive. I didn't even realize that Hospitals are privately owned. I thought these were things set up by the government to make sure that people can get healed. Right. You know, I thought it was all about making people better. They're not public.

The closest thing to public there is if they're owned by like a, you know, religious organization, a church. Yeah. Not crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And they're just fucking shuffling people in and out, trying to prescribe them as many things and they're financially incentivized to prescribe things and

Then they have extreme overhead because they have liability insurance they have student loan debt and they have you know a high overhead to keep their practice running and Where's Bernie Sanders when you need them? Yeah Well, no see so I had I had open heart surgery right here in Austin to fix it. What was wrong with your heart? Valve here. Well I was born with Wolf Parkinson's white disease.

It's an electrical issue in your heart. Basically like your heart misfires. All this electricity is moving through it all the time. You know like a semiconductor or whatever. And there was like a section of it that was like misfiring and it would cause an arrhythmia with me. Wow. And when I was a kid in South Texas,

we were told that was all I knew about. And we were told that it was an annoyance because I almost died a couple of times and I was really, really young from it. And you know, my mama noticed and saved my life a couple of and I was really really young from it and you know my mama noticed and saved my life a couple times by getting driving in you know into the city there in the San Benito and them hooking me up to all the wires and saving me. Anyways they told me as I got older that it would just I could get you know

an ablation for it where they apply heat basically and close this electrical channel that's stuck in a loop or whatever. But it wasn't life threatening. And then I got out here, you know, I was on the street for years. And then when I was coming off the street through kind of blues jams and I had been, you know, I was working on ganja farms and had had been, you know, I was working on gondra farms and it started selling, you know, weed in the mail and all that to kind of get off street, buy myself some better clothes,

get myself a good guitar and amp and all that. Started showing up at blues jams and then I could like, you know, because everything takes money, you know, like the problem with being a street player was you can go play the open mics that have a two damn drink minimum. And they'd see my crazy ass come in and knew that I was, you know, pretty wild and they didn't have any money and it didn't smell and I didn't smell good. So they really didn't like me for the, you know, for the longest time or whatever. But I threw blues jams, I started leading bands and

bars and Deep Ellum, first gig I ever got in Austin was right there at Darwin's Pub, you know, on 6th Street playing kind of solo in the afternoon. It was the only guy, CJ was the only guy who gave me a gig even on 6th Street. I always owed him for that and he just gave me 50 bucks, you know, he wanted me to get paid out of the well whiskey and those, those, what does he sell over there, those gyros or whatever the hell he's got over there. Anyway, I get on the road, I get an agent, I was standing out at Green Hall handing CDs out on a street corner because I couldn't get into the show, handed a guy a CD, his

name's Evan Felker, I didn't know who he was at the time, but he's front man for Turnpike Troubadours. I gave him a CD and he took it home and he listened to it with his then girlfriend and now wife and lo and behold his agent John Folk called me up and started booking me and then that's when I started playing the old red dirt, I like to call it the Hank Williams circuit, you know, the kind of old country chitlin circuit. John Folk had kind of inherited it from like Buddy Lee attractions from an earlier generation.

It goes all the way back to Lucky Moeller and that old South circuit that all the R&B and the Hillbilly Country Boys were on. And Folk kinda inherited it and rebuilt it. And then Coke and Pepsi came in, CAA and William Morris and Wasserman and bought it all out. You had no choice.

I mean, they were gonna part it out no matter what. And that's the way that it works, right? When you get Coca-Cola's attention, right? And they show up and they're like, good job. You're taking some of our money away from us. We're going to buy you out, son. And yet, right? I think you can refuse them once or twice and they'll come back with a better deal, right? After that, if you keep turning them down, then they put all their energy into knocking you out, you know? That's what I mean. As long as Coke doesn't change the flavor of Coca-Cola,

right, they can, you know, that gangster shit, all the other gangster shit they do works really well, as long as they don't fuck up the original flavor, right? So I'm on that circuit working my ass off. 200 and whatever shows a year for a bunch of years in a row, playing all over the place. It seems like sometimes we play 21 nights in a row out there, you know, for shit kickers at Bonita Creek Hall

and punk rock clubs in New Jersey and shit, you know? Playing at the fucking, you know the Saint? That little club, the Saint in Asbury Park? It's like a 40 cap, man, it's a badass place. Anyway, I was like blacking out. I moved up to a bus and shit and I was like, my, I was getting really lightheaded. And I'd be sitting in the back of the bus

and I would be so lightheaded, I'd be blacking out a lot, right? Just sitting there, short of breath, but I just thought, you know, I'm grinding, I'm playing all these shows, I'm going as hard as you can go, taking potions, you know. Just doing all this dumb shit, working hard. And I was playing at the old Shady Grove here in town that's now closed down.

It was the KGSR radio thing. Marsha Millum put it on or whatever and then it turned into, you know, ACL radio and then Shady Grove closed down there on Barton Springs, wherever. But I played it a handful of times. First time I played it, there was nobody there. into, you know, ACL radio and then Shady Grove closed down there on Barton Springs, wherever. But I played it a handful of times. First time I played it, there was nobody there. Second time I played it, it was packed and I had Willie's old tour bus, the Redheaded Stranger. It was one of the ones he lost in the IRS era that he never got back. Oh, wow. And this fucking shyster, Chuck Ligon. I remember he, some motherfucker was selling this thing on the side of the highway up in

Oklahoma. The redheaded stranger with the murals on it and shit. It was a beautiful bus. Somehow this guy gets it. I shouldn't call him a shyster, but he definitely shystered me. That's a shyster then. Yeah, yeah. You know, the music business is crazy because it's so-

Here it is. Yeah. Wow. That's the one, is. Yeah. Wow. That's the one, man. Yeah, that's the one. On the other side it says, driven only by the finest bass players. Wow.

Because somebody in the band always drove those old buses. I had that bus, I used that bus exclusively for about a year or whatever. And we get off the stage at Shady Grove, and my heart had gone out of rhythm. I'll just say this, I almost died in the back of that bus. I ended up finding, because it won't go, here I am, 30-something years old, or in my early 30s.

My arrhythmia's out, it's going out, and it's getting harder and harder to get back in, to shock it back into normal rhythm. And I just kept ignoring it because somebody told me in South Texas in the 80s not to worry about it. Anyway, you know, it turned out that my heart had enlarged and all this shit was going on. And I had to get surgery.

The point, long round point that I'm making to you about medical industry that I learned the hard way man is like No one's advocating for you Only you you have to be your own advocate. They don't give a fuck You know, they don't like they were just gonna automatically put a mechanical valve in my heart, right? Automatically didn't present any other options anything, right? And I get there on the American Heart Association webpage or whatever, because I didn't have insurance at the time

or anything, nothing, you know? The only reason that they covered me at the time was the Affordable Care Act, and I had the right window where they could not deny me, right, otherwise I don't know what I would have done, and that is absolutely an imperfect system. I just didn't have health insurance. So here they are covering me, and probably because I don't have money and they're dealing

with how it is, American business practices or whatever, they're like, here's this mechanical valve. And I go and look it up, Joe, and it's like, you know, if you have a mechanical valve, you automatically are on blood thinner the rest of your life, automatically, no matter what. And that's just how it's gonna be. It lasts twice as long as a prosthetic valve, which I had not heard of at that point,

but that was the whole thing. This can last up to 20 years. But guess what? You have like 300% higher risk of a stroke with a mechanical valve as a bioprosthetic cow valve. And then the third thing was that you can hear that thing clicking. You can hear the valve ticking.

My buddy Everlast has one of those. Really? Yeah, he could go like this. You can hear the valve ticking. My buddy Everlast has one of those. Really? Yeah, he could go like this. You can hear it. And I was reading about that, and man I'm like neurotic like I knew. I'm like, I'll never get over it. So that's when I found out about the Bovine cow valve. So it's made out of a cow? Yeah, Edwards Scientific makes it. I carry a little cart around in my wallet with the tag of that product number in case somebody finds me on the sidewalk. Wow.

And in that part- How long does that last? They're supposed to last around 10 years. And I had mine done right there at Seton Medical there on 38th in January 2019. So we're coming back around to it. So you have to get another operation? Yeah, but what they did is they put a, the way they did it, and here's the thing about medical, and anything, right?

The medical industry is, I think, really fucked up and really predatory, totally profit-driven, and people's health and preventative well-being and all that, we don't give a fuck about that in this country, you know what I mean? There's no money to be made off of people taking care of themselves and eating right and being preventative and like, you know, there's nothing in that.

The part about it that is amazing though, even in the like kind of insanity of all the land of cheap traders is the technological advancements. The technological advancements in the medical field, though not really available to the common person, they are incredible advancements, right? So it's like, they're moving so quickly that by the time I need to get another one, I don't think they'll ever have to cut me open again because they can go in through a scope now.

They could do it at that time. It was just more experimental and they didn't wanna do it. They were only doing it on really high risk older patients. But I think it's already kind of gone more mainstream from where when they cut me open to like, if I did it right now, I could probably get around cutting it. So they'll go in through an artery. And then what do they have to do to it?

Well, so with me, what was happening was is, so I had the Wolf Parkinson's White, had to get the ablation first to deal to before I could deal with what it, aortic valve disease is what it's called. And what it what it basically is, is that over your aorta, there's these three valves that sit on the over the top of your aorta that they look like a Mercedes symbol is what they look like. It's like the best example. It really looks like a Mercedes symbol. And some people, it's a bicuspid or whatever, some people are born with two of the three fused together or just one missing altogether. And it turned out that I was missing one. It's like a leaky carburetor, you know? So like as the time goes, that old carburetor

in that truck over time, just leaking more and more and more. Wow. You know? And I mean, I just got lucky, man, cause I was like in the back of that fucking bus and there was this lady driving us back then that like was like holding seances

and burning sage over the top of me while I was like laying in the back of the bus Like that was gonna heal me Actually didn't work and she doesn't drive me anymore Get yourself a good bus driver you have to get a good bus driver you'll never get good sleep Yeah, because you'd be freaking out You'd be thinking what if this person falls asleep? Yeah, a lot of them especially the late-night drives oh man whoo late-night drives are scary that that highway starts hypnotizing you there was this guy there's a video

going around he drove us around for a little bit there was this video passing around the industry this guy called Jimbo is this bus driver that was like you know just a speed freak and it was like this video of him or he was like on whatever he was on and somebody had recorded him or like they'd put a phone up or something as they knew his nuts and he was like having one of those fucking like you know methamphetamine freakouts like you know driving the bus down the road and it was getting all passed around the industry and I saw it because like he was driving us at the time I remember we we woke up in, I remember we woke up somewhere in New Mexico one morning

because we're going on this road all of a sudden and we get up and I go to the front of the bus and he's, we're like on some fucking two-track you know, Kaleechee fucking dirt road that was like behind behind a gate in a bus that bus right and I get up there and he's looking all crazy and the door handle the inside door handle the bus had been pulled off and shut it was crazy man we got when he got to the we got back down here in Texas man I never saw a fool again well you got to think if you're driving buses all through the night, there's a high likelihood you're on amphetamines.

Yeah, exactly. High likelihood. Yeah. For the business, it's probably the best way to stay awake. Oh, no doubt about it. Yeah. And then obviously that shit's very addictive. And you need it.

This band has to get to Cincinnati. You got to get to Cincinnati. It's an eight hour drive. There's only one way to do it. You gotta drive through the night. And that's why all the old performers were all on pills. They were getting prescribed, I mean, they were getting prescribed that shit by the doctor.

Yeah. You know? Oh yeah. Does this give you a greater appreciation for life, the value of life, like knowing you almost lost it? Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I hadn't thought about... Immediately after that, I just started thinking about my mortality.

You know, I hadn't really thought about it before, you know. Of course. Everybody feels invulnerable when you're young. Yeah. Especially if you're young and you're living that wild, you know, transient, moving around, no roots. when you're young. Yeah. Especially if you're young and you're living that wild, transient, moving around, no roots. When I was in my 20s, I guess I really, looking back now, I was like, man, I was young.

I thought I could live like that forever. I thought I could live hand in mouth and sleep in people's pastures and, you know, do the gentlemen hobo thing forever. But you know, I was 26. There's something romantic about that too, right? Yeah. I loved it. I wouldn't take it back, man. But I think mental slavery is something that is real.

But so much of it is us. We do it to ourselves. And so that's what I was going to say about Chomsky. I haven't kept up with him in years. But I remember something he said a long time ago that stuck with me where he was talking about like American, you know, consumerism over the last hundred years. It really kind of illuminated my kind of mind was, he was saying, he was like, there are people working really, really, really hard to eliminate your sense of purpose

for the explicit goal of making you a more efficient consumer, right? All human beings live for and desire a life of purpose. Purpose, it doesn't matter what it is, something that you can dedicate yourself to, the 10,000 hours, the 10 years. It can be anything, wood-making or your buddy with this ancient tooth that he's carving

into this beautiful piece of art or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. I don't know, I guess it's like a heavy thing, but I kind of realized when I became a transient that a lot of who I was was like this amalgamation of a bunch of people just trying to fucking sell me products. You know, 90s radio just blasting my brain as a kid, right?

Like programming that like, it's like, so much programming is so hard for me to watch because you know that it's only a vehicle for the commercials. Right. Right. So whenever I'm watching something and as soon as I think that it's not that good, I can't stop thinking about like,

well, this is just a vehicle for me to fucking, think I need whatever the fuck they're selling. Yeah. You know, so, I feel like I killed a lot of the false version of me that I was becoming that I only realized when I walked, when I like walked away from Crystal City you know what I mean and then and then I could and then I really started becoming you

know me that's when I really started becoming me a lot of people are prisoners to that their whole life because the the only value they place is in how much stuff they're able to acquire that's the only value they place is in how much stuff they're able to acquire. That's the only value that they see in life. They look at numbers on a ledger, so they look at numbers in their bank account, and they look at the stuff they're willing to acquire, or that they're able to acquire.

And that's their only measure of success in this life. Yeah, your very definition of the word rich has changed so much over the last 100 years. It's kind of moved entirely. Really, richness wasn't a material idea. What did it used to be? Richness of life, fullness of life. Right.

Fulfillment. Fulfillment. Purpose. Health. Health, yeah. Community. Community, family. Yeah.

Yeah, friends. Yeah, real life. But so many people, they forego all that. They'll throw everything out the window just for the numbers. For numbers and they think they're successful. I mean, it's the way that it's being run, you know? I mean, there's no such thing as a free lunch, you know? All this free social media, this shit ain't free.

No. You know? You give up your attention. Your attention's very, very valuable. Your data and your attention. Yeah, your privacy. The transparent society. But man, like, y'all pulled up that AI stuff.

I remember, I won't tell you the whole thing, but I was playing on the street in Europe when I was younger. I'd met a guy down on the Lower East Side. He's a Danish jazz singer. And he would show up over in the States a couple times a year. And he was doing really well there in Denmark. And the state really sponsors the well there in Denmark and the the state really sponsors the arts there in a big way and it's a small country high quality of life

like he really had it made over there and when he was coming over to states to play music it was almost more of a leisure thing for him Benjamin Agrabahk is his name great singer great jazz singer and he'd show up at the open mics and all this shit and he I think he really liked me because he saw the way that I was living this American gypsy lifestyle. And he eventually helped me get over to Europe, and I played the club circuit in Copenhagen

for like six weeks or whatever, and I was really rough around the edges, and like the American novelty in the folk in like blues clubs around Copenhagen wore off really quick. And I wound up back on the street, but this time in Europe. And as soon as I started playing on the street in Copenhagen, man, then being a real Texan in Europe

in front of tourists on the street, man, I started, that's when I started making money. It was crazy, my money like quadrupled. Because all of a sudden I was like a truly exotic, Texas is exotic, and everywhere you go in the world, it means something, right? They either wanna shake your hand or they step back. And it doesn't matter where you go in the world,

there's not an inch of the world that hasn't heard of Texas, you know? And so musically, you know, I think culturally it means something, no matter what, you know, and to play music and be a Texan is worth a lot on its own. You know what I mean? It's a big part of it is just being a Texan. Gary Clark Jr., learning how to hold his own under the tradition of Austin blues players in Texas, guitar slingers, I mean, that's, it's second to none in the world, you know?

And so if you've seen him live, you know what it is. But I remember seeing like, there were no self checkouts at grocery stores and shit in the United States back then. Not one. And then I was like, I ended up down in France because it was getting cold in Copenhagen and I had like two or 300 Kroner left

and I put it all on a bus ticket to Paris because it was my mama's favorite city. And I grew up quite a bit in Louisiana, having some of that French heritage. And I went down there, I'm glad I didn't think about it, man, because the language barrier was really difficult, and I didn't really realize it, so I was pulling into the city, you know.

And actually there was an Algerian guy who spoke English that was like, man, go to Mont Marc, go to Les Sacres-Cours, go to Les Sacres Sacre Corps, that's where the tourists are, whatever. And I kind of learned how to hustle tourists with gypsies, kind of, that were using me kind of as a decoy on the steps. And I thought, this is great, these gypsies love me. And I'm sitting there playing, and while I'm playing, I realize that I'm just a distraction while they're pickpocketing these tourists.

It was a good trick, of course, I didn't say anything. Also, I didn't stick with them too much. But like, so like the automation thing, you know, Europe is way ahead of us on all of that because in a lot of ways, America, when you try to like analyze America against Europe and these countries over there, like in some ways it's similar,

but we're more similar to Latin or South America in a lot of ways with just how big the country is. Because the country's so big, we got the states that are divided up on the type of shit, those kinds of technologies to like hit the people and become mainstream, it's a slower process here, right? And one of the things, you know, about the pandemic that is obvious to me now is, you know,

a lot of people realize that they could speed that up, you know, and, you know, I mean, is a lot of people realize that they could speed that up. I mean, they think they'd been trying to eliminate the risks and what's the word, what are they like, externalizing costs, right? Once, like how do we get these machines in here and these people out? And we've probably jumped ahead in that process in America a decade or more in just a couple of years.

And I just remember, this was probably 2010. You'd go into a grocery store in Paris and there was only one person working there and everything else was self-checkout. And that was years before I saw it here. And then you think about the way that that's hitting in every single industry in America. Yeah.

Right? Well, it's so easy for people to be completely disconnected from other people now. You know, you don't have to interact. You know, and that's part of it. And if they don't have to pay people, they can maximize their profits, and then it becomes a very impersonal experience.

Soylent Green is coming, baby. It's coming. You seen that movie? Yeah. It's a good movie, man. It's a good movie. It's a scary fucking movie. Well, I think all the dystopian movies about the future,

they undersold it. It's gonna get real weird real soon. And because automation is not just gonna apply to self-checkout, it's gonna get real weird real soon and because automation is not just gonna apply to self-checkout it's gonna apply to everything. All the all that truck driving shit that's all gone. That's gonna be gone. Right. It's all gonna be self-driving trucks and they're gonna be more efficient, less accidents, safer. Just remember those big business people. Just remember those people. I know a whole lot of people who have relied on undocumented workers

in this state for decades, voting against the very thing that they were using themselves this entire time. How are you gonna rely on undocumented workers yourself? You ain't paying taxes on it. Those people got no safety net or anything. And then, you know, here comes the, that's where it's going to happen. And I'm not saying just as a negative thing, like I think you can already see in social media, I do think there's this exhaustion, even in the youth,

with this monolith, with this thing. The phones. Yeah, and I've been saying that in the music business, in country music, like Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes. Right. And so it's like, it's 25 now, but I was thinking of it last year in 2024,

cause like 1974 in music was this crazy year, you know, and like thinking about the Nashville system, the reason that Waylon Jennings is different than anybody else, is because Waylon's the specific guy who breaks the stranglehold that the Nashville system has on its artists. That you can't use your band, you can't choose your studio, right?

Like any of that. Like, Waylon, you have to think how crazy that is. You couldn't use your band and you couldn't even pick the studio. You couldn't produce, you didn't have creative control at all. Waylon's the guy that breaks that through that wall. How did he do it? I think a couple of ways. It's the yin and yang of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. They were both on RCA. Willie was, you know, at first, you know, it's like Stapleton. Stapleton made his career as a songwriter early on, you know, and that's what catapulted really for everything,

you know, that he's got going on now. There's a really great foundation there of a guy that's spent his whole life writing songs. And that's what Willie did, you know? So Willie actually had success pretty early when he got to Nashville with, you know, songs like, uh, Nightlife and Crazy and all that kind of stuff and Baron Young and Patsy Cline and these kinds of really big artists were cutting his songs pretty early on, right? But he was so weird to the establishment at the time. And so, kind of had this like philosophical thing into his writing that was going over the heads of the Hillbilly deal.

So he was really neglected as a, Willie Nelson records with him singing them. Waylon was more favored actually by like Chet Atkins and them. But like you'd be number one on the country charts in Nashville in the mid-60s and be in debt. That's what Waylon said. Waylon was like, man, I'd be number one all the time

and I was fucking dead broke. He's like, man, they got you out there seven nights a week and you're coming back and Lucky Moeller's telling them that you owe him fucking 10 grand. That was a crazy system. Willie ends up leaving RCA, they're over him. He leaves RCA because Jerry Wexler is coming down and A&R and Texans out of this progressive Central Texas scene of that era that was so unique.

And it happened then and just totally unique. The whole scene, everything here, the movement, the hippies and the cowboys, where everybody could like here in the capital of Texas, you know, it was weird, but they were in the same rooms. We're still doing that here, you know, which is what I'm what I'm really proud of, you know, and glad that this town never turned into Nashville or LA or any of those towns. The best thing that ever happened to us

is that the business didn't grow up like that. I really do believe that because it's allowed our unique culture to continue to grow, even if it's, like I said, and sometimes it's good to be neglected by that machine. For sure. But so Willie leaves, Jerry Wexler pulls him out of there because RCA doesn't give a fuck about him anyway, right?

He goes to Atlantic, sells 400,000 records. The boys up in New York don't even realize there's a country division. After Willie sells 400,000 records, which is a lot, right? They closed the division. And that's when Willie lands at Columbia and he's having success. Well, they were starting to think that Whalen was past his prime too, but then Willie's blowing up on the other label. And Willie and Whalen got the same manager at the time, Neil Reshin.

And what's Reshin doing? Reshin's leveraging it all. And so Waylon was about to leave RCA and they doubled down and matched kind of Willie's deal because they didn't want to lose Waylon. And Waylon was like, I'm only staying, you know, if I like I got to be producing my own records I gotta gotta be my band and I gotta pick the place that I'm playing You know and he he manages to do that. So it's not just Waylon. I mean, it's Willie and Waylon together That's why they're so tied together, you know, is these two guys that Their careers just kept you know

they just kept cut yet the chase in each other kind of through the record books, you know, they just kept, they're chasing each other kind of through the record books. You know what I mean? And, you know, cause you'd be in Nashville, it's still like this now, right? Like when I got signed to Nashville by 30 Tigers, it was purely because John Foulke was my agent. And those guys, they'd tell you this themselves. They didn't understand what I was doing.

They didn't get it. I was only put on the roster as a favor to my agent because they were having success with some other artists. Openly saying, I don't understand this. Right, which at least they're being honest about, you know? Um, but then what they would do that was so weird is like, they'd give you Like if a major label would give you you know

Half a million dollars on your deal These guys would give you 50 grand right like a tenth of that, you know, kind of on the independent alt country Americana circuit But they would what frustrated me what frustrated me about it, Joe, was that they're only giving you a tenth of money, but they're behaving like major labels with these like two-year record cycles. That just kills an artist that's like,

that hasn't broken through. It just kills you. That's a 100% industry model because they can always get another horse. You know what I mean? They can always get another horse and they can always, you know, they bet on 10 young guys

and one of those kind of amateur realists blows up, you know, they're good. But you're never gonna get a Waylon Jennings out of that model, right? It's not gonna you know what I mean? It's not it's not gonna happen, you know and so how did But how did Waylon get it so that he could do whatever he wanted? Because Willie left, right and They because Willie left and all of a sudden,

Waylon was really gonna leave. That's all of a sudden. That was his leverage. They gave him everything. They gave him everything, and everything was changing. Everything was changing in Nashville. Because we're talking about, when I say like 1974 here, you gotta think about it, you know.

This is America in Vietnam, you know? This is America coming out of the 60s, you know? It's coming, everything was, you could, I feel like in a lot of ways what was happening is like, you know, the commercial culture was really starting to take off. You know what I mean? And then by the time we get to the 80s,

you know, it's like this level of like pop culture and like American pop culture as a global export, you know, it's like, I guess maybe it's finally truly realized by maybe by the time Michael Jordan becomes the most visible person on the planet, kinda in the 80s and 90s. It's like, Nashville was such an old system. It's kinda like in country music today,

one of the reasons everybody's sprinting into it is because it's one of the reasons everybody's sprinting into it, right, is because it's one, it's like one of the only places left where there's like loyalty, long-term loyalty in the fan base compared to like, you know, what happened with pop music in the last 20 years with pop and hip hop and all that. I mean, I can't, every one of those guys called me at one point and were like, I wanna get every one of those guys called me at one point

and were like, I wanna get into country music cause you got loyal fans. Wow. All hip hop industry guys. Wow. All of them, every last one of them. And they've had success with a whole bunch of guys since then, I just didn't do it.

Well, country music has always been connected to authenticity. Yeah. And that's the reason why you keep the loyal fans. That's right. Cause people know that it's real. That's right. Whether it's Colter Wall or whoever it is. It's authentic. You hear it and you go this is not mass-produced. This is not a bunch of executives sitting around looking at a

focus group trying to figure out what's gonna hit. That's right. Yeah. Man you mentioned Coulter. I wanted to say this. This is something I wanted to bring up with the Willie and Waylon thing and I've've been meaning to tell Colter this, I'll just tell him on your show. So we were both on the 30 Tigers roster for years. I met Colter out at Willie's ranch, God damn, 10 years ago, right? And he's one of my favorites,

I've always loved his songwriting. I mean, everything he puts out is great, don't you agree? Yeah, love him. Special, you know, really special. Some people. Jamie turned me on to him when I heard Kate McKannon the first time. Jamie Johnson? No, Jamie this Jamie.

Oh this Jamie. Yeah. He texted me and he's like, you're gonna love this guy. Yeah. He sent me that song and I was like, holy shit. When I found out he was 21 when he made that song, I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. That sounds like a 60 year old chain smoker.

Man, it bowled us all over. And you know what's funny, man? He's just getting better. Yeah. You know, he is. He's incredible. Here's something about that I told him, I wanted to buy him a pickup truck as a gift for this.

This is why. So he was on the roster. I was on the roster. And I started way down at the back of the line, right? And made a lot of records. And more and more of the labels are calling and each record I'm putting out is doing better than the previous one. And there's more money and promotion going into each album. But all a lot of outside guys are calling, you know, all the coastal labels are calling New York and LA or all over me

Culture ends up Pulling up stakes and going to RCA and he didn't just go to RCA took everything with him He took the whole catalog over there And I wasn't really aware of that I didn't know what was going on and RCA what like they had hollered at, like, through one of their A&R guys or whatever, but their big guys were never really interested in me out there, right? So they weren't one of the ones that was, like, really hot on me. But David Macias at 30 Tigers, very similar to, what I'm saying is, is,

culture to me is kind of like Willie left RCA back in the day. And when he left, all of a sudden those guys, because he took everything with him, were about to lose me, and they fucking handed the keys over to me. You know what I mean? Because, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Kulture had left and just took everything.

And so that ended up happening on a record cycle for me for an album called $10 Cowboy. And I was this close to going to the New York boys and Macias comes in last minute and beats them all on the royalty rate, on the money, on everything, right? So I guess what I'm saying is culture's kind of my Willie Nelson. Appreciate you bud, you're doing good.

Yeah, he won't do podcasts. I try to get him in. Sent me a bunch of records, sent me some cool shit, said sorry, but no. But I mean, that's probably better. He wants to just be as authentic as possible. The dude spends time actually working on a ranch.

Well, that's what he loves to do. You ever been up there to Saskatchewan? No. Man, it's in their blood. That's what that land is. That's what they do up there. I've been right through Saskatoon, even that big town there. I guess he's not too far down south from there, but like, those are ranching folks. Yeah, well it's in his music, clearly. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, that guy screams authenticity.

Yep, he does. And he grew up on, you know, Waylon and all that stuff, you know, and all the cowboy, and all the, you know, he knows that cowboy music probably better than anybody. Yeah, yeah, well that's the thing that, when you're talking about these hip hop artists and pop artists, that's what they feel. All artists, even someone who's a pop artist, what do they want to be? They want something that resonates with people.

They want something that really connects with people. And if they think the vehicle to doing that is a hip hop song, they'll take that route. But then they'll hear something like Kate McKinnon, like, God damn, that's what I really wanna do. Yeah, and you can't duplicate that. The only way to do that is to live it. Yeah, it's gotta be real. It's gotta be, you know, there's something,

just like I was talking about with comedy, like they have to know that you're really thinking that. It's something in music too, they have to know that you're really thinking that it's something in music, too They have to know that this is and they like when you write your own shit, too You know, you know that it's coming from someone's someone's mind and their soul. It's coming from their life experience It's who they are as a human being. This is their art this is a true expression of their their being and That that's what makes people loyal.

That's what connects them to people. Those pop artists just wanna take a picture standing next to authenticity. Yeah, they do. Well, they wanna be it, but they don't know how to get there and they don't know how to do it and they've never lived it.

And they've been paying attention to all the polls and the focus groups and they've been listening to the executives and they've been taking the advances and driving the Mercedes. They're doing all the shit that leads you down the wrong path. And then one day you realize, like, fuck, it's not what I want. It's interesting, because it's like, there's always going to be these examples of something

that pops through that's real, that people gravitate towards. And then there's always gonna be these people trying to capitalize on it and make money off of it and trying to figure out how to recreate it in an inauthentic way. And it's not possible. That's the one thing that might save us from this AI shit. Yeah, exactly.

Because AI is gonna create a bunch of really catchy songs, you know? But it's never gonna create an Oliver Anthony song. It's never gonna create hard times, you know? It's never gonna create some of Anthony song. It's never gonna create hard times. It's never gonna create some of your shit. It's not going to. It's gotta come from a real human being. And there's a thing that people are always gonna want.

You're always gonna want something that you know a real human being made, that there's something in it. That's why this building's filled with art. I love looking at something that somebody made. It came from their soul. It came from whoever they are as a human. They laid it down, whether it's music

or whether it's art, comedy, whatever it is. It's like that's coming from a human being. We're always gonna wanna be connected to that. I was looking at you saying that with your Joe Rogan experience sign and you telling me in the hallway that it's named for Hendrix? Yeah, yeah. I stole it from Jimmy.

When we first started doing it. The greats never reveal their sources. Wow. I couldn't help it. I'm just kidding. I had to. Well, it's obvious. I had to give it up.

It wasn't obvious to me, man. As I'm saying, I'm kind of slow. I had to give it up. It's like but you know Austin, Texas robust It says right there I used to listen to Jimmy all the time on the way to the Comedy Store that was like Jimmy and Led Zeppelin mmm. I'd listen to whole lot of love and if six was nine I'd listen to that all the time on the way down Laurel Canyon do do Do do do do you imagine how that crazy that must have sounded? on the way down Laurel Canyon. Do-do. Do-do. Do-do. Do-do.

Can you imagine how crazy that must have sounded coming through the radio or coming through like people's sound systems in America in the late 60s? Well my friend Phil Hartman, when he was a kid, he used to work at the whiskey. He was like you know like a grip and it was his job the the speakers were precariously placed on the edge of the stage and Jimmy performed there and it was his job to stand there and make sure that Jimmy didn't kick over the speaker into the audience so he stood right there while Hendrix played right above him and the way he talked about it, man,

it was just, to him, it was like this magical moment, because I think he was a teenager at the time. And it was, you know- You see that in somebody else's band or something? No, he was just working for the club. You know, he was just a guy that was hired to work there. You know, just a kid. And he was basically literally just there

to make sure the speaker doesn't fall into the crowd. And Jimmy was playing right above him, just right there. He said it was incredible, it was insane. He said it was just like this magical moment. Because Jimmy live, there's something about seeing someone live, like I was talking about when I saw Gary play Midnight Rider, there's something live seeing someone live, you know, like I was talking about when I saw Gary play Midnight Rider, there's something live.

And I was with my oldest daughter and we were at this downtown LA club and it was like a Monday or Tuesday night. It was a weeknight and it was a midnight show. It was like a real late night show. And it was sponsored by an alcohol company. I wish I could remember the company, but they put together this very small show, and it was just, it was a total impromptu session, and Suzanne, my friend Suzanne Santo,

who's the lead singer of Honey Honey at the time, she's incredibly talented, she was singing it, and she didn't know the exact words, so she had to get the words off of her phone So she's singing Midnight Rider off her phone and Gary's in the background and I recorded it on my phone And I upload see if you find it It was Jameson Oh shit. That's what I'm talking about right there. Go ahead, Gary. It was Jameson. Come on.

Love when he gets into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The blues will never grow out of style. Woo! will never grow out of style. Yeah. Come on, Gary. Let's go. That's a nice jacket G. Yeah. Oh Jamie see if you can find Midnight Rider on my Instagram. I know it's on there I want to I want to play that part because it was fucking insane. It was just one of those magical moments where you see someone perform live. There's just something about... you get a lot of it. Oh, yeah. See how she's looking at her phone? She had to read the lyrics off her phone.

They're all doing that now, it's crazy. She had to, because she didn't know exactly the lyrics. What if you didn't have this fucking thing though? Well. Then you might have to remember them. Well, she would have had to get a piece of paper. Or make some shit up. Yeah, make some shit up.

Man, you know, listening to Gary do that and you talking about how much you love Stevie Ray Vaughan, it just, you know, it reminds me, it's like, you know, this, to me, it's like, you know, it's like country is everything, country is nothing. You know, because if you're in Texas, all that shit over there on the other side of Mississippi, it goes away for us.

You know, there's a brashness, there's a boldness in any sound, whether it's coming out of honky tonk or coming out of a blues joint, in Texas it's a totally different sound. You know, it's like, Billy Gibbons talked about this a lot. You know, like when those guys were trying to break through on the national scene,

the idea of Texas is just a total stigma, right? It's all hillbillies, it's all provincial, you know, and all this shit, you know? And so it's like, you go to Nashville or whatever and it's all Appalachia. It's all, you know what I mean? It's cause it's, and that's the thing. It's like, I can give a fuck about some genres,

because you get classified. But one thing you can't explain away is place. You can't explain away region. You are from where you're from Yeah, Gary Clark jr. Is from right here. Yeah, and he fucking sounds like it. You know what I mean He sounds like it and it's like it's not that it's rock blues soul country Whatever it's it's Texas and what happens with Texans of any background, right, they discount you for sure. Look at us as provincial, right? I mean, people got some ideas about what Texas is

who have never stepped foot in the state. That's not any different than, you know, people who've never been to California claiming to be an expert on it, right? And so it's like, there's two roads for a Texas artist. You either let somebody in Nashville or New York or LA convince you to lose your accent, you know, wash the Texas off, do it our way,

or, which is the only way, is to take your brand of Texas to the world. Whatever it is, whether it's Gary or Selena or anybody. Steve Ravon. Steve Ravon, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's with comedy too, man. I mean, Bill Hicks, who's one of the greatest of all time.

Hicks, he's my favorite. Right from here. That's right. The scene was hot, man, the scene was hot. It was hot because of him. It was hot because of him and Kenison. It was Texas. You know, I remember-

Did you know Hicks? No, met him once. Met him once real briefly. Didn't even get a chance to talk to him. But I saw him perform live a few times before he died. You did see him live? Yeah, saw Kennison a few times live. I saw Kennison live before he died too,

but he had already passed his prime. Kennison passed his prime real quick because he's a cautionary tale Because of the party and you know like he was the fucking man Oh y'all got a party scene y'all you comedians got a party. Oh, it's well that party scene in LA at the time Was the cocaine party scene it was a different party scene You know Mark Maron said that he hung out with Kenison and they did so much coke that he had voices in his head for A fucking year afterwards a year like literally like schizophrenic

You know like hearing voices in his fucking head for a year before they stopped talking to her Yeah, they were doing cocaine. Yeah, they were doing at the viper room everywhere Yeah, he was doing it everywhere. Yeah, butinnison became almost like a caricature of himself. It became sort of captured by this, the perception by this character that they had created. And Kinnison is what birthed Hicks. You know, Hicks was a great comic, but he was one of the outlaws. It was Kinnison and Hicks that sort of defined the Texas style. And when we were living in, at the time, I was living in New York, and there was really

two places in the country. There was LA, where you wanted to go to get on TV, everybody wanted to go get a fucking sitcom, they all wanted to be Jerry Seinfeld. And New York, which was like the club comics, that was like the David Tells and these guys that would like, you know, the guys would do the clubs, and they were thought of as like the real pure comics.

And then there was this new scene, this new scene out of Houston, this new scene out of the Laugh Stop in River Oaks. And I remember the first time I ever worked there, man, you could feel it in the building. You could feel that they had been there. They were both gone. By the time I had worked there, they were both dead. But you could feel it in the building, man. You could feel it they had been there. You know, they were both gone. By the time I had worked there, they were both dead.

But you could feel it in the building, man. You could feel it in the comics, the open mic scene. You could feel they were pure. You know, there was a Texas quality to the way they were doing comedy. It was a fuck you, fuck you. That's what I like. Hicks would fuck with both sides of the room.

Absolutely. And then just fuck him up and cross him over and put him in his pocket. No one knew what he was. They didn't know what he was. That's right. The first time I ever saw him, he bombed. He bombed except for the comedians. We were dying laughing. Because you know there's quite a bit of video of him from these clubs here and in Houston when he was younger. Because even in the 90s they were filming. And I've seen some of those clips where he's like, like you're talking about, he just couldn't fucking the whole room's afraid of him.

No one's laughing. Everyone's afraid. And he's like super fucked up. Well, he was the first comic really that had a message. He had like a, there was a social commentary to his, like a dark poetry to his comedy. And so many people tried to emulate it that at the the green room, the punchline in Atlanta, there was a, like people wrote a bunch of shit on the walls in the green room, but one of the big ones that said quit trying to be Hicks. Wow. I remember seeing

that going, yes, everybody did. We all did. It's crazy. Everybody wanted to be Hicks. Dude, you come, so after Stevie Ray Vaughan passed, right? I remember, you know, we were up in Dallas, Fort Worth and you'd come down here, we'd come down here in high school and shit and go up and down Sixth Street. I will never forget this. Every single guitar player and every little bar on Sixth Street,

every single one of them was playing like Stevie Ray Vaughn. Every single one of them. And there were 30 of them. Like, there were 30 different ones coming in and out of bars, doing all the shit. It was unbelievable. Yeah, there's always gonna be someone like that that sets the standard. Quit trying to be Hicks.

Yeah, quit trying to be Hicks. Yeah, quit trying to be Hicks. But it was like that was a- My daddy died for that flag. Oh, really? How about mine at Kmart? It's made in China. But he could do it because he was a Texan.

The vernacular was real. And then he'd turn around and, you you know fuck up the other side. Yeah No, it was genius Well when I when I first saw him he went on in Boston and it was at Nick's comedy stop And the guy who went on before him was this he was a nice guy, but he was a hack You know, he was just like cops and donuts normal shit stupid jokes, but the stupid jokes were working It was cartoon character smoking pot, you know, what would happen if Daffy Duck smoked a you know joint with Donald Duck it was dumb but it was watered down Dangerfield but it was getting people to

laugh and then Hicks went on stage and like immediately started bombing you know it immediately opened up with saying that he's tired of performing and tired of going up and Telling people a bunch of shit. You couldn't possibly think up on your own But the comics were dying and there was there was like 300 people in the room by the time he was done performing There was 50 there's 50 and there was maybe me my friend Greg Fitzsimmons We're in the back of the room just dying laughing and maybe ten comics We had all come to see Hicks because we had heard about him

And then I saw him a month later at the Comedy Connection And he fucking murdered the Comedy Connection was this little tiny club. It was like 150 seats real low see where we're Boston as well This is when I was first starting. So this is like 1988. And it was before he had really popped. I had heard about him from the Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. So the Rodney Dangerfield had these young comedian specials. Rodney was the best at like introducing the world to talented comedians. And he had these Rodney Dangerfield young comedian specials where he'd have on like

Robert Schimel and Lenny Clark and Andrew Dice Clay and that's where Kinnison emerged and Hicks. Hicks was one of them too. And I remember I'd seen Hicks on that so I went to see him live and like I said the first time he bombed the second time he fucking murdered it was Tiffany meeting Jimi Hendrix at the mall. He was doing this bit about Jimi Hendrix, like Tiffany playing at the mall and Jimmy Hendrix shows up It was it was just fucking just genius bit. It was so funny, man Is that something that's out there? Can you see that? I wonder man I wonder cuz I don't think he ever put that on anything. It might be on an album somewhere

But it was back when there was all this like pop mall comedy or pop mall music and he fucking hated it You know and it music and he fucking hated it you know and it was and he was just rallying there's a genre for you right there yeah rallying against corporatism it's gonna make a comeback that little sub genre yeah I mean it would do something new with it it kind of has Austin has a great comedy scene right now it really does and it's really just emerged from the pandemic. Was that like the main thing that drew you here?

Well, we all moved here to start it. We didn't even move here to start it. We moved here to just keep doing what we were doing in LA. But LA had shut down. In 2020, we were all like, we were all without a country. We were living in LA and the comedy store

was shut down for a fucking year and a half. Oh man, y'all were wild. Man, it was was so so shut down out there. It was so shut down, and I knew I'm I'm one of those dudes It's just like I've never had faith in systems and government, and I'm like these motherfuckers are gonna keep us shut down They're gonna keep and I came to Texas and Ron White was already here So Ron White who's a very good friend of mine, and Gary, I knew Gary from LA. He used to hang out at the Comedy Store too, and that's when I became friends with him. And he moved here, I think 2017 or 2018,

and I talked to him on the phone, I'm like, why'd you go back to Austin? He's like, man, I can't fuck with those people in LA. It's just like, I'm tired of it, man. He goes, I love Texas, this is real, and it's like, I need to go back home. And I was like, wow, that sounds right, that sounds right. And then when I talked to Ron, and Ron's the same way,

Ron's a Texas boy too, and he was like, I just don't wanna do this anymore, I'll stay here, it's great, he goes, it's great, it's the middle of the fuckin' country, I can fly anywhere, fuckin' food's good, people are nice. And so, I knew when I came here. I was like, I was like, at the very least, Ron's here, and are nice. And so I knew when I came here. That's all you needed to know. I was like, at the very least Ron's here,

and Ron's a good friend. And then when we came here, we could perform live. I first started doing shows outside. Me and Dave Chappelle started doing shows at Stubbs. And we were doing outside shows where we had to test the whole crowd. Everybody had to get tested. So everybody had to show up like two hours in advance.

We tested everybody for COVID. They had to wear a mask outside. It was show up like two hours in advance. We tested everybody for COVID. They had to wear a mask outside. It was so fucking stupid. The whole thing was so ridiculous. But we were hanging out in the back, getting drunk, smoking weed. And it was like normal.

It was like normal times. And it was like this cultural thing. Like we were the only ones doing comedy. And everybody just started coming here, man. They all just started coming here. And then we started doing shows inside at the Vulcan Gas Company, which is a music club. That's on 6th Street So we started performing there and you know, Nick the guy was the owner is just a wild dude

He's like fuck it. Let's just do shows Yeah, we started doing shows in November of 2020 and it just felt like we were baby killers. We were killing grandma You know, we're out there just spreading diseases. We were super spreadersers if you spend enough time on 6th Street anyway, it'll make you immune We had developed some strong antibodies Six-street I got sick in Florida. That's what I mean though. Sixth Street will make you bulletproof. Yeah Well accept the bullets so yeah accept the bullets and there's a lot of that going on there, too So we we started doing shows there live and then comics started moving man They started moving in droves they started all moving to Texas because they could do shows here

We were just lost I didn't know that without doing shows. We just all felt lost and then by the time 2021 rolled around there was like 15 16 world-class comics living in Austin Wow, and then I was like fuck it I'm buying a club and Ron talked me into it. He's like you got to get a fucking club We got to do this because you know, he knew I got a bunch of money from the Spotify deal So I was like, alright, let's fucking do it. And so then in 2022 or three I guess we opened up and It's just been gangbusters ever since and now it like, this is the hub of comedy in the country, which makes it the hub of comedy in the known universe.

It's all here in Texas. It's all at that club. I like that. Well, that's really cool, man. Props to you for pulling that off. Well, I mean, I think I pulled it off, but I think it's, but everybody pulled it off. People are proud of the comedy, you know,

history in this town. Yes. And it's a great place. And it's all walks of life, man. Everybody likes to use that term inclusive and diversity. Well, our scene is diverse and inclusive, but everybody's great. It's only diverse because they just happen to be,

everybody's fucking diverse. You get artists, they're all different weird people and What we didn't seek that out it was just what happened it was just who's good Who's good who's who's really all about this who really wants to live this life who really wants to just do comedy And we set it up where we have two nights of open mic nights And you know we've got kill Tony on Monday night So all the amateurs get a chance to be seen in front of the whole world and the biggest live comedy show in the world on YouTube and

It just became this hub man, and now it's just fucking every night. It's sold out. It's crazy It's just it's a vibrant wild scene and now on 6th Street There's five full-time clubs within two blocks of my club. Comedy clubs? Comedy clubs. Oh shit. Yeah the scene is insane. I mean it's the best scene in the country. It's like there's never been a scene like this before. They just emerged and it had all we had to hit every green light like the Comedy Store had to be closed down so I hired everybody that was working at the Comedy Store before we even had a club, I said,

I'm gonna pay you full time, you get benefits, you get all insurance, all that shit, just come move to Austin, we'll call on you in like a year. It's gonna take like a year to build this place. But meanwhile, you'll get paid, you'll be able to just like live here, set your roots, get established, it's a beautiful place to live. Everybody fucking loved it. And then when when we opened we hit the ground running we opened up one night

we did a couple of test shows like let's try the venues make sure everything works good and then we'll say fuck it let's stay open and we just stayed open before you know it was seven nights a week and then it was just it's been almost three years now you gonna keep it rolling fuck yeah yeah fuck yeah we're talking about doing in other places now. That's cool. We just don't wanna water it down. You know, we've talked about doing it in some other city

and trying to figure out what the next one will be. But it would have to be a city that has a real group of talent. You have to have talent. Like that's, every comedy community, the only way it works is you have to have a lot of great comics that live in that town. It's the only way it works.

And then we feed off of each other. That's the only way there's no lone wolves in comedy You know comedy only it's only iron sharpens iron You know, there's no like the best comic in the world living in Pittsburgh doesn't exist Like they all live where they are all they're in not in competition, but in cooperation with each other Like you're we're all inspired by each other Yeah You have to have that if you don't and so we had to have like every green light The comedy sure had to be comedy store had to be shut down for a solid year and a half all those people had to

Be unemployed. I had to have all this money from Spotify I had to be in a place like Texas that allows you to open up and have a show indoors when everything in California was closed they wouldn't even let you do outdoor shows. We weren't even allowed to do shows. We tried to do shows in the parking lot at the Comedy Store and they wouldn't allow us. It was crazy. No, I remember how shut down it was.

70% of all the restaurants went under. I mean, it was fucking madness. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, a lot has changed. Yeah. Really fast. Yeah, real fast, real fast. Real fast.

Really fast. So we had hit every green light. And we had to have all these people that were willing to take a chance. All the Tom Seguras and Tim Dillons and Tony Hinchcliffe's, and Duncan Trussell's, all these great comics. It just was like, fuck it. We'll move there. Brian Simpson and Tony Hinchcliffe.

And so all these guys just said, fuck it. Let's take a chance like I don't want to live like this I don't want to live where I can't do comedy it's like we were just like junkies with no fix you know? Yeah I was still working the red dirt circuit when the pandemic hit so to be honest with you those boys was like it never closed. Wow. It didn't, not all those old dance halls and beer joints and.

Thank God. None of those places closed. Thank fucking God. Thank God they were right. It kept us working, man. You know, it was a thing and I was just working so hard, I never really thought about anything else, but something about the California shutdown

that that's funny when you we talk not funny but but um like the pandemic hit and I was unknown but I had just finished that record Welcome to Hard Times and it didn't have anything to do with anything. I had had the two surgeries. I'd gone through a relationship that crashed and burned in a tailspin. I'd gotten rid of a management relationship that was going nowhere. And I wrote Welcome to Hard Times just kind of out of my own personal kind of dark feelings about where I was going through and just the whole like rigged casino, you know, America is a casino, you know, and I have thought that since I was a kid because I kind of lived in them, you know, you're talking about being in pool

halls. And then the rec, I cut the record in Georgia, South Georgia with Mark Neal. Right, like the whole thing I cut it. Like I wrote the record in November, cut it in December, got the Masters back. And like a week or two later, I remember me and Taylor Grace, my now wife, we were dating and we were at a diner in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and my manager at the time called me and said that South by Southwest was canceled. And that, for us here at that time,

that's when we knew this shit was real. Nothing could stop that machine that was South by Southwest at the time. And strangely for me, I'm not, I knew a lot of people that, I've known a lot of people that have passed away or anything, so I'm not, I knew a lot of people that have known a lot of people that have passed away or anything. So I'm not saying that all the stuff that happened is a good thing at all. But for me, my career trajectory totally changed early on the pandemic, because

no one was putting out records. The whole, no one had any interest in putting out records. the whole, no one had any interest in putting out records. And for that reason, David Macias, because I was riding his ass, actually thanks to John Fouke at the time, he was like, don't let him shelve your record. Put that record out right now. We're talking about July of 2020. You know?

And I demanded more money. No one had ever put a dollar into marketing my records. I'm talking about nothing. Before the shit hit the fan, these guys were talking about spending like 10, 15 grand total marketing Welcome to Hard Times. Total. I mean, shit, I spent twice that or more making it.

And that's still a cheap record. But I mean, I remember a publicist told me once like, you should spend at least double the money marketing your record that it costs you to make it and at least match it. You know, and here I was like, that's what I mean. I was like caught on this like broke dick Americana scene, you know, on these two year record cycles,

you know, with no money, you know? I was on a broke dick deal, just like Waylon was talking about. I'm not bagging on Americana or anything. I'm glad I showed up on the map somewhere. But we went ahead and put it out in July of 2020. And I had been wanting to buy billboards, and it just so happened, especially in California, but even in New York. I mean, everything was shut down.

I mean, totally shut down. So I remember we bought a billboard in Silver Lake and in Times Square, right? Static, traditional static billboards for like 80% off because nobody was buying shit. Not a single other billboard over the course of like a nine months or a year and those neighborhoods changed. And I bought a one, all those billboards, I bought like one month billboards and some of those motherfuckers stayed up over six months.

You know what I mean? At like 75% off, you know? And you know, sometimes you write a song that get lucky, I was writing about personal experience, and it spoke for me, it wasn't a big record, but it changed my trajectory, because Welcome to Hard Times,

the song really spoke to what was happening in America. And that's when my train really started rolling. That's when it really started rolling. You know what I mean? And then I did all those records and Welcome to Hard Times and Music City USA coming like kind of right for the Nashville machine. And then the man from Waco that I made down in Lockhart with Bruce Robinson, which was like the first time really that I'd made a studio record with my guys, you know, with more money and Bruce Robinson, a songwriting friend that was not stopping me from being me, you know, and then that one was my first one to hit the like a Billboard 200. And then $10 Cowboy really took off another big step from there.

And then I got hooked back up with Shooter. See, I used to open up for Shooter, cuz Shooter was getting booked by John Falk, too. Right? And the two guys that took a liking to me early on, pretty much nobody else did, was Evan Felker and Turnpike Tributeurs and Shooter Jennings. Shooter would take me out and he didn't have to be cool to me. I mean, he's a fucking Waylon son, but he was always so cool.

He's just cool. And so thoughtful, you know? Yeah, he's a great guy. And he would give me little things to live by, like when he saw how hard I was working out there, he's like, it says you can't park behind the Nashville Palace, but between me and you, you fucking camp there

and nobody's gonna say shit. And I lived in that fucking parking lot. That's the kind of shit you get by on, you know what I mean? And we, I've got this movie that I funded, how slow the movie business is, that was gonna be called $10 Cowboy, and it's this thing I put together,

I finished my touring season at the rodeo finals in Vegas, and then I get back to Texas, and all the pressure of the in Vegas. And then I get back to Texas and all the pressure of the business is mounting on me. And I'm just trying to get away from my manager and the machine and my phone and all that shit. And I decide to leave the phone at the house. And I had heard from a journalist

about this secret shrine in a liquor store dedicated to Waylon Jennings in his hometown in Littlefield, Texas there on 84. I'd known about it but we in the movie I'm playing like I've never heard of it and I'm going on this pilgrimage you know to find out if this little museum really exists which it does it's run by his youngest brother James Dee Waylon's youngest brother. And so when to get the movie going I needed to get on the phone with Shooter to get hooked up with James Dee and them, and we got the idea to get his mama, Jesse Coulter, involved

and all that. And I wanted to use some of Waylon's music for the film, and I was scared to death to ask for it. But Shooter had always been good to me. And so we ended up having the conversation. We caught up on a lot of stuff, because because see I'd been hearing that he was producing right, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it where he was going with it and Truthfully, I was like avoiding producers all together because a lot of these guys it's like

You know, they're such they're such big names it overshadows the artist You know what I mean? And then they have the deal like they have the the artist deal. Then the artist just kind of in a lot of ways gets limited to like acting talent, you know, showing up at the fucking, you know, movie lot or whatever. But I kept hearing records that he was making by people I knew like Jamie Wyatt. And I said, man, it's the best thing she's ever done. Shooter Jennings. Vince Eniel Emerson.

This is the best thing he's ever done. Shooter Jennings. Like over and over. And I had been noticing that. And so we're on the phone and he's all about the movie. Yeah, I'm going to help you license the songs. We'd love that. You know, my mama loves your music and all that.

You know, she decided she's in the movie. He just was helpful with everything. And I had almost made a record at Sunset Sound there in old downtown Hollywood, the old Sunset Sound studio. I'd wanted to go in there because Mark Neal had told me about it. And I was tired of making records in Georgia and didn't want to go over to the wrong side of Mississippi. I wanted to make a record in California and I told Shooter in passing on the phone that it had fallen through and you know did he know such a sound and he was like man Charlie's crazy I'm signing the lease on Studio 3 the print studio tomorrow. Wow. Just in passing you know and I'm like man well then let's make a record.

And we're right in the middle of a trilogy now. I did Lonesome Drifter with them. Man, and then the next one that's coming out is Dollar a Day on 8-8, which I think is a lucky number. And then I've got a third one coming after that that we're calling the Sagebrush Trilogy. And Shooter is the first guy I've ever been in a studio with where I truly don't feel judged.

You know what I mean? And now, and because I've got all these, it's just the perfect timing. It's like, wow, they've like, have been out on the road with him 10 plus years ago. And then, you know, like think about what he's been through in the business, right? I mean, he started cutting records 20 years ago.

I mean, he's a crucified son automatically. Right, right. You know what I mean? Walking, you know, walking in that shadow. That shadow. Man, he said a crazy line to me on the other day. He said, in regards to some other situation he was in, he was like, he said,

I went from one shadow to another. Just a beautiful line. I think he was talking about like an old relationship he was in, he said, I went from one shadow to another. Just a beautiful line. I think he was talking about an old relationship he was in or something. But he's overcome that because, you know what I mean? He's stepped into, if you listen to his records, when he's starting out and you compare it to the field in country music in Nashville at the time, like he's totally like, he's totally swimming upstream. He's totally going against the grain. Nobody's sounding like that. They're not sounding traditional and pushing the boundaries. Like he just was, you know, and I can tell you constitutionally, he's just like his daddy. I mean, he drank me and

smoked me under the table. I'm like you are well and so And for some reason you like get smarter the more weed you smoke and My brain is like my brain is just like pulverizing you know, but but I'm really proud of and excited about everything that I'm doing with him because I Just taking me so long to get where I'm doing with him because I've just taken me so long to get where I'm at. And here I've got a partner in making records that isn't judging me, but also is pushing me to take it higher.

Cuz I'm trying to figure out how to transcend it too. Everybody's always, there's a lot of, I've always been a pretty polarizing figure for some reason with audiences, it's a love hate thing. And I've done a lot of styles, and they've called me a stylistic chameleon. Here in Austin, even the first time they put me on the Chronicle, they called me a stylistic chameleon. And I had a hard time with that, because I wasn't taking it as a compliment. Right. It's not a compliment.

No. But it's that whole thing where it's like, okay, I can play the blues, I can play country music, I can play folk music, learn how to play all that shit on the street, matter of fact. Right? It's surprising to me that people would question my authenticity I can play folk music, learn how to play all that shit on the street, matter of fact, right? It's surprising to me that people would question my authenticity and point to me playing in subway cars as this aha moment that I'm not who I said I was. I'm like, why don't you go try to play in those New York City train cars?

Well, that's people that are just talking. Brother, I'd rather get on a fucking bull. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's people that are just talking. Brother, I'd rather get on a fucking bull. You know? Yeah, yeah. Do you ever think, man, like, it's synchronicity, that like, fate is a real thing? Because just think about how all that lined up.

I feel like sometimes, I mean, it's a very egocentric thing to think, you know, the things are meant to be, like there's a plan for you. It's silly. But it also isn't. You know, fate seems to somehow or another be a real thing. And sometimes the way things synchronize and the way things line up, you're like, man, this seems like it's meant to be. There's certain things that just seem like they're meant to be. And I feel like if you're on the right frequency and you're following the right path, those

doors open and these things do happen and they happen when they're supposed to happen. They happen at the right time for the right reasons. I believe completely in faith. I don't really believe in faith. Mm-hmm. I think there's a there's a Surrender and a helplessness in a lot of ways to a lot of people's idea of faith. Mm-hmm, right When people are like love your struggle, I never liked that saying it's like no love the strength that Your creator gave you

to overcome the struggle. Don't love the struggle. Nobody fucking loves the struggle, right? Right, right. It's the strength. Especially real struggle. Yeah. Like real struggle is not knowing if it's gonna work out.

You're not gonna love that. That's what I mean, I never understood that. I mean, I guess I get it, but like, but fate. You get it after it's successful. Fate is a thing that's like, that's destiny. You know, like Waylon, like shooter and like the Waylon Jennings thing for me, you know, it was like, you know, I was out there, you know, we were, I did my, I debuted at the Houston rodeo back in the spring.

And for me, that was like my career goal, you know, because of Selena and George straight and and everybody hell Elvis played there twice. I mean, it doesn't matter what your background is as a Texan, any background, the Houston rodeo. That's the top culturally, I think as like a stage for an artist to perform, I think is the Houston rodeo, you know, and it was the Astrodome and not NRG Stadium. I would have never known that. It's the truth and it crosses, you know, everything economic, racial, everything. It's the Houston Rodeo, you know, and it's the biggest rodeo on earth, you know, which is why you got everybody from, like I said, you know, Waylon, Jennings, Murl, George Strait. Nowadays you got Post Malone and Beyonce both playing it.

Wow. I mean, it doesn't matter who it is. Like that's the platform. Anyway, I played there and we were putting a live record out on it and me and Shooter were mixing it there at Sunset Sound. And then I stayed the extra night because he had the party at the Viper Room for the announcement of these three unreleased Waylon Jennings

records. And they're legit unreleased. It's not AI bullshit. It's not remixes. This is truly legitimately unreleased music by arguably, you know, the king, certainly the king of all the outlaws. But in my opinion, when it comes to like Nashville, country music, whatever you wanna call it, man, like, a buddy of mine, John Spong, a journalist here in town, a Texan, we were at the Sagebrush doing an interview a couple years back, and he was saying that like, if Willie Nelson to country music is like

Che Guevara right Waylon Jennings was the long-haired Prince of Darkness right and like he's the guy that like he's from West Texas right the guy learned he he learned how to play bass on stage he learned how to play bass on stage. He learned how to play bass on fucking stage, backing up Buddy Holly, right? Who at the time was bigger than Elvis, man. You know, I mean, that style of rock and roll, right? It's coming from everywhere. I mean, nobody's just making their,

nowadays they're kind of strangely making music in a vacuum in a bedroom, But like in some ways, right. But these guys, it's like whether it's Robert Johnson or BB King in the Delta or whatever, or Buddy Holly out in West Texas, you're influenced by the radio and all that. But there's something to be said for like what's out, how hard that earth is out there in West Texas. And like people talk a lot of shit about Lubbock, right. Smells like shit because cows everywhere. So fucking flat, you know, the thing you can stand on a fucking tin can and like, people talk a lot of shit about Lubbock, right? Smells like shit, because it's cows everywhere.

So fucking flat, you know, the thing you can stand on a fucking tin can and like, you know, see a hundred miles or whatever they say out there, right? But like, the best people to play a show for, probably anywhere in America, in many ways, in my opinion, is like a show in Lubbock. Like, there's something about the people in that town where it's like, it's just the best place to play.

And then like Willie Nelson is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he deserves it. Dolly Parton now too. But Waylon Jennings was always rock and roll. Like he was never traditional country. There's nothing about him. If you know what you're listening to, even on his very first record,

like country folk, folk country, right? There's nothing straight ahead. Listen to anything coming out of Nashville in like 1965, anything next to Waylon Jennings. He's the long haired prince of darkness. You know, he is like, he is going to be their undoing of the, because what they did is they built a wall around Nashville because the

coast had all the money and all the zeitgeist power. And in response, Nashville walled themselves off, right? You know what I mean? That's really what they did. And then Waylon busted through, and I know I'm going back on that a lot, but like my path that led to making records with Shooter was that when I started figuring out, the map is when I cracked the code

and realized what Waylon was doing musically. Like I finally fell in love with him musically and it was on this specific record from 1968 called Hanging On. Every swinging dick in this business that I ever knew coming up in Texas, that had anything to do with Texas songwriters or country, every one of them wanted to be Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, and Billy Joe Shaver.

Every single one. And I naturally stepped wide of that because everybody I knew was trying to do it and like imitating an artist Like for the advanced part of their movement on in and of itself. That's worthless It's it's not that it's worthless. It's that You will never touch it if you don't go walk your own path so a lot of guys I knew when I started playing

all the shows with Willie, Willie called me up and got me on with his agent and shit and put me on like 50 shows. And a lot of guys I knew were like looking at me like, man, why are you gonna play with Willie? You know, and at first I didn't even, I didn't know. Right, cause I was realizing guys that I knew, like they knew Willie Nelson's shit in and out. We're literally trying to sing like him.

So they're like, fuck you, I should have that spot. And like, you know, I'm nobody at the end of the day, right? I'm the best at being me. Right. You know, when, sometimes, right? But like how I think I've landed with Shooter and his family and playing all those shows with Willie and getting married on his ranch and all that stuff

is because, not because I worship Willie Nelson, but because I think Willie looked at me and was like, I like what you're doing. I like how you got where you're at. You can play with me. You don't ask to take your picture with Willie. He fucking lets you know when you're going to take your picture with him. You know what I mean? You're going to let you know it's time to get your picture taken with Willie. That's how they did it.

Wow. And we're standing there like a hundred nitrous cans behind us and shit. It was like the greatest photo of my life. You know? Yeah, it's a natural inclination that people have when they want to be authentic, to imitate authenticity. And that's the thing is you got to find your own path. You got to, you got to, you have to put, you have to put yourself out there, you know, like when I was playing on the street, people knew I was different.

And artists, the hipsters, like in the Brooklyn scene and in Bushwick and Williamsburg and all over the boroughs and shit, like to be on the street playing, like there's credibility to that, right? But, and like I didn't want to play in subway cars. Actually what it was is young rapper, Jadon, Jadon Woodard is his name.

And he kept seeing me at the Metropolitan Avenue stop, playing there at the platform, you know, for the cars coming by on the L train or whatever. G train down there on Metropolitan. G train sucks to ride on. It's great for subway performers because it's the slowest train in the world, right? So you get huge audience between every fucking train.

So it's a gold mine for a street performer and a terrible drag for the New Yorkers waiting on it. Anyways, this kid kept trying to get me. He would always show up with a different guitar player and shit with an amp on his shoulder, which I copied. I got an amp, ran off a nine volt battery. You get about seven, eight hours of it in this Telecaster. And I learned it from this guy Ghost,

who was already doing it, that was playing with Jaydon, who was kind of part of Citizen Coat, Clarence Greenwood's street team. He kept trying to get me to go on the subway cars. I was like, man, this kid's crazy. Like he's rapping and shit and man, the subway cars, like, ah, I'm all right, you know? And eventually he like kind of cornered me.

Actually what it was, I kept dodging him. And then I was finished one day and I get in the car, it's on the L train, and I'm riding in the car and I'm just sitting there looking down the train and all of a sudden I see that skinny motherfucker in a white tee walking toward me and he's moving but he can't really, you know how the train's going to be loud, and I'm looking at him, I'm trying to put together and when he gets closer I realize he's rapping. And he's got that guitar player with him

with the amp behind him that's playing this like really badass bluesy hip hop beat. And he's freestyling like, you know, the hat you're wearing, he's rhyming to it. The next stop, he's putting it in the verse and shit. And he's got all these mixtapes in his hand and he's handing them out and shit. And he sees me and he hands me one.

And that's how he got me. Cause I saw like it working. And he was making money he hands me one. And that's how he got me, because I saw it working, and he was making money and dropping product. You know? I thought, holy shit. Right? Because so comedy scene, music scene, whatever. Say you got a place on 6th Street, holds, right, 100 people. And you play there, you get a residency,

you play there 30 nights a month, right? And you get 100 different people show up there every night. That was that 3,000 people? It's like, dude, you could hit 3,000 people in like half a day on the train cars once we started working it. And so it was like, it was his, it was his, and he was a spoken word poet.

This kid started fucking rapping on trains at like 15. In like Philly, which is, fuck man, Philly's tough. I don't have to tell you, Philly's tough. Like train cars in Philly, that's mind blowing, you know? And then he comes to New York with that and like takes that spoken word improvisational thing and like all the best rappers I saw in that town, they were all like spoken word poets because they just were smart and quick. improvisational thing and like all the best rappers I saw in that town they

were all like spoken word poets because you know they just were smart and quick you know and like we then we got together and like mashed it up and again like I went from making where I would make $30 you know all the sudden like we would make $300 and split it you know50. And we turned that into a whole, like a really fine, pretty well-oiled machine where there started being five or six of us and we were bringing guys up and down from New Orleans and shit.

So that's where you see the trumpet players, different spoken word, rappers. We were squatting in warehouses, owned by Hasids that were like renting out space that was supposed to be for rehearsal, but really everybody was living there and selling drugs and shit, wiling out and, you know, I cranked that up.

We cranked that up and did get discovered by like the heart of the pop machine right there on the R train. Wow. And like, just what you would think. You can see video of this stuff, but it's like, they saw that we were believable. Yep, and we're just trying to figure out,

and that's one of the spoken word dudes right there, was Eric, he was from Jacksonville, Florida. And that hippie right there, that was my friend of mine, his younger brother from high school down here in Texas. There's something about street performing that is, there's no net. You're performing for people that are involuntary. Oh man, they don't want you in there and you're breaking like ten laws.

You're breaking ten laws and they don't want you in there. Right, but if you're good, if you're good it means a lot. You ever see the video of Biggie when he's performing, he's 17 on a street corner in Brooklyn? Oh yeah. Oh my god. You pull that one up Can we see it just for fun? Yeah pull that up that fucking video is like you watching this kid This kid with this talk about even though he I mean, I know he's the king But he's still underrated. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah, he's crazy underrated for that how smart he was

Oh, he was so good. He was so good. Yeah standing on standing on a street corner. Yeah, and on the street, that's why you took your fall out Yeah, I'm Jesus, got my brother, that's my brother I stay close to my, like you know, all terror Victor's mother, the punk mother, mother undercover Mother, mother, I'm the fucker, and I love ya Cause you're a sweet bitch, a crazy brat, you might make my dick it I'm so used to your new film, I'm sick and used to it I keep being a boy, trooper like ice cream, I scoop ya My music is gonna get looser, stay tip, and I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here, I'm still here The blues never goes out of style.

Never. What do you say like ice cream, I'll scoop you? It's so clever. Oh, he was so clever. It was so clever. There was comedy in his lyrics. It was power. I met his aunt on the train.

Really? Yeah, we did. And like, J-Don knew who she was because he was running the trains before I was. And he knew all those people because he'd been working it so hard. And it was like, it was crazy. Some of the people that we'd come in,

like who you come in contact with on those subway cars? You know what I mean? It's like, I saw Jake Gyllenhaal on the train one day and then some other day on the, you know, six train, it'd be like the NBA commissioner and shit gave us a hundred dollar bill. Wow. You know, it's like, to me, that's like,

that's all, that's, that's all it is, you know, it's like, whatever the circuit is, it's like putting yourself out there. And when you go out in public, man, and when you go out in public and you put yourself out there. And when you go out in public, man, when you go out in public and you put yourself out there and you really do that, that's a transformation. That's a metamorphosis for anybody. For anybody. Yeah. It's just undeniable. It's the most authentic form of performance ever. That's not your audience. They don't know you. You have to earn it. You have to break through.

You have to break through it. It has to hit. It has to be real. So all I've been doing is swinging at him the whole time, Joe. Yeah, man, well you're killing it. They used to call me, sometimes they call me the Muhammad Ali of country music.

That's too good a compliment, but I like it. But that's the only way you make Charlie Crockett. You gotta I mean your story is important for people to hear because it's the only way you make someone like you. You know you don't make someone like you in a mall. You don't make someone like you with a bunch of executives making these decisions based on what they think is gonna be popular. Man it was crazy they were doing that shit you'd think they would do. So this woman, Nell Moldary, saw us in the R train

and she was in the Sony system and managing artists and like kind of the star maker, that pop machine of like 2010, 2011. So they bring us up into the offices in Koreatown, right? And like on the edge of Hell's Kitchen there. And her office was off the side of this Sony Legacy like kind of catalog room. Because of the time she was married to Rob Santos,

one of the guys at Sony Legacy. And she had this little office off the side of the like library thing, whatever. And she brings us in there and they're putting us in there, and they're putting us in front of these computer screens and showing us like gym class heroes and the gorillas and Odd Future and Janelle Monae and doing these focus group training things,

and where they're gonna plug you into the thing. And it was like, what was so difficult about it for me? training things, you know, and where they're gonna plug you in to the thing. And it was like, what was so difficult about it for me? I'm not, they didn't do anything wrong, you know? We were young, desperate men playing in public transit. You know, you, be careful what you ask for, you know? And I was mad for a long time, but I've been eating off that plate forever

because it, I realized, man, I was like, man, if you don't know what you want, if you don't know where like, man, if you don't know what you want, if you don't know where you're going, if you don't know what you're selling, they're gonna sell it for you. Yes. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter who it is.

Yes, it's not their fault, that's what they do. No, that was the best thing that could have happened to me is cause like, I believed that there was some deal. I wasn't on the trains for it, but I knew we'd find it. I really did, I had, it was fate. It was fate. And like, you know, it's that whole thing. Like I got there, it fell apart quick.

It wrecked me, man. And I got, that's when I found, that's when I got off the street. And I went back to California, started working on the ganja farms because I realized, you know, like big L set or whatever, you know, I was going to get street struck. You know, you can't stay out there forever.

You really can't. Right. And, uh, I realized, you know, like Big L said or whatever, you know, I was gonna get street struck. You know, you can't stay out there forever. You really can't. Right. And that's when, you know, that's when I looked at, that's when I looked at it and it's like, man, okay, what am I willing to sell? You know, like what is Charlie Crockett willing to sell and I think that that's stronger than

Playing it cool Right and letting somebody else figure it out for you. You know that's where it that's where it it gets dangerous You know and so it's like I know a lot of these guys in the business They're like oh, man. You know I don't pay attention to the business shit and all that type of stuff. And I'm like, you're crazy for that. Cause all like, I don't care if it was Willie Nelson or James Brown, they were poorer than you. They both picked cotton and they learned the business

because they had to. So someone gave me that bullshit. We need to understand the business if you're in the business. If you don't understand it, you'll be taken over by it. There's no doubt, even if they got you on top. Yeah, and then you have to have autonomy. You have to have this personal sense of self,

where you could avoid the influence. You have to be able to just stick to your guns. And that's the hard part, right? Because then they dangle that carrot in front of you. That carrot is juicy, especially if you've been out in the street. It's right there. Oh, it's right there. It's right there. Oh, it's right there. It's right there and it's so juicy.

And a lot of people bite it. A lot of people bite it and then they don't want it anymore and then they don't know how to be authentic. Were you dealing with the, like on that circuit, because I mean I know you're a comedian and I know you also like got into into the dealing with the network, TV shows and all that kind of stuff. Did anybody ever fucking get you pretty good? Well, I got lucky in that I got on television so early

and I didn't want to be on television. It wasn't something that I wanted. But they offered me so much money to be on TV. I was like, what? Okay. But I kept me so much money to be on TV. I was like, what? Okay. But I kept growing and doing my comedy at the comedy store. And that was the most important thing, that I just kept doing comedy. And then the money was just like, fuck you money.

So it's like, because I had the fuck you money, I could kind of be myself. And you know, there was a lot of temptation. Like I remember the producers of Fear of Hector, like what are you doing? Because some of my comedy was just out there. This will get you in trouble. This is not network television comedy. I was like, well then I won't do network television anymore. Once I had a certain amount in the bank,

I was like, all right, this is more money than I ever thought I'd ever have in my whole fucking life. And I never thought I'd ever be wealthy. And then all of a sudden I have money. So if you have fuck you money and you don't say fuck you, what's the point? No one's going to say fuck you then. If you're going to be a prisoner to that money, like everybody says, man, have I had all that money?

Or afraid to be you. Yes, afraid to be yourself. That's the only time you can really do it is when you have, you know, it's like the universe gives you this gift. And what is, the gift is the gift of freedom. And you have to choose to either accept it and take it and run with it, or be captured by it,

and then want more and more and more forever. Forever, and there's no end. You know, we were talking about my friend Brian has this friend who's worth $3 billion, and he feels poor, because his friend is worth 80. You know how were talking about my friend Brian has this friend who's worth three billion dollars And he feels poor because his friend is worth 80 You know crazy think how crazy that is like this guy's just constantly chasing to keep up with his friend Who's worth 80 billion and he's got three yep? That's how it works you could get trapped and then you know still keep it up with the Joneses

Yeah, you got a hit show you want to hit movie you got a hit movie, you wanna be, I wanna have a Grammy, I wanna start singing. You know, you start getting crazy. You start, you just, you chase that demon, that demon of success that just lures you deeper and deeper into hell. And the next thing you know, you don't even know who you are, no one knows who you are. And if you don't know who you are, they'll decide,

they'll decide who you are, they'll sell you, they'll sell you as a thing. You know what's crazy about music business? The manager is, in many cases, the most powerful and the least regulated. I think that's what's wild about the music business. There's basically no regulation. you know what I mean? Yeah.

It's like, I think that's what makes people say it's the shadiest business. I don't think it's the shadiest business, but a guy told me that in New York, actually when I got caught up in the Sony thing with the train robbers deal y'all were showing on the screen, a lot of people were trying to sign us, actually the guys at A&R Wu Tang,

like DJ Scott Free and Matty C, they were trying to get us into a deal. Citizen Cope had a deal on the table and all that shit, and it was like, he was the one that told me that. He was like, man, fuck what you heard, this is the shadiest business. Now I had come from a background of dealing with some pretty crazy shit in Texas, you know,

and with everything. But even in that business, like people that are, if you're trying to play the stock market or whatever, Wall Street, it's a corrupt business and it is really fucked up, but it's highly regulated. I mean, compared to the music it's highly regulated. I mean compared to the music business. You know what I mean? You're dealing in like you're you know that's the stock exchange there it's like it's like you're

like it's like they're like dealing in culture. Cultural power, cultural wars whatever you want to call it. And there's no, there's just very, very little regulation. And a lot of power. Man, it's, you know. So much power and influence, and the people that make the most money, the people that don't even create the art. Cause like you talking about, like,

let's say you got a, oh boy's got his buddy, it's worth 80 billion or whatever, still doesn't make you a, it doesn't make you a star. Right. Right. It's still not fame actually that's what's crazy You know I have a friend who's a billionaire who desperately wants to be famous. That's what I want It seems like a lot of them want to be They don't have right they have everything you can't exactly buy that

Well you kind of can kind of but then it turns on you yeah, yeah turns on you Yeah, to be the rich guy. Like then you're... Watching those... I mean, I see some of that stuff playing out. I don't want nothing to do with that. Nothing. Look what they did to Elon. Yeah. It's crazy, man. You don't want that. Yeah. It's a harsh world because there's no sympathy for you. You know, you're the wealthy oligarch.

Oh, and you want everybody looking at you, right? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, they're looking at you. They're looking at you right? Yeah. And then all of a sudden they're looking at you. Yeah. I think I just got nervous. They got you under that eye of Sauron. They're trying to find all your flaws. That's what? Everybody's got them. That's why I got this little bird right here. It tells me all the secrets. What is that bird? I didn't know what this was when I bought it, right? This is Horace, right? Oh wow. And I just, I found it in this place, this found items place about 10 years ago. And I just liked it. Actually, I just thought, I thought it was native, right?

I didn't realize it was like Egyptian. And I've always liked this one because it felt like it was a little bit of both. And I didn't know anything about it at first. But the reason I never take it off anymore is like when I started reading about like what it meant to the Egyptians was that it meant like safe passage as you journey through this world and get ready to go on to the next one.

You know what I mean? And protect you against evil. Protect you in, you know, and for health and happiness. They call that initiation. So it makes a lot of people tie it to stupid shit like a, you know, Illuminati and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, it's just a, it's just a thunderbird.

Well, you know, the eye of Horus is essentially the pineal gland, where the seat of the soul, where the brain produces dimethyltryptamine. That's the eye of Horus is essentially the pineal gland where the seat of the soul where the brain produces dimethyltryptamine. That's the eye of Horus. Have you ever seen the image of the eye of Horus next to the pineal gland? I'm not sure maybe I have but I'm ignorant I didn't. The ancient Egyptian. What's pineal gland? The pineal gland is a it's a gland that's in the center of your brain it's essentially the third eye. In

reptiles, it actually has a retina and a lens or a cornea and a lens. And it's where... Now they believe that DMT is actually produced by the entire brain. It's also produced by the liver and the lungs, but it's like the most spiritual of all the psychedelics. And they believe that the Egyptians had some sort of, you know, there's so little understood about truly ancient Egypt, but look at that. Look what it looks like. I mean, the Eye of Horus essentially is, it's a diagram of the pineal gland,

which is kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy when you see it that way. Wow. they knew things and we don't know what they knew. We don't understand how they built the pyramids We don't understand how old they are There's so much speculation about the true age of that civilization figuring out like how they harness the energy and all that stuff We've no idea I mean there's this group of scientists that believe that there's structures under the pyramids that go two kilometers deep into the earth. And there's a lot of controversy about that. But these guys are, they've multiple readings of these things, and they're pretty sure that

they're accurate. And they've been accurate with other things, like other temples that are underground, that are 50 feet underground. They've mapped those things out with the same technology. So there's a precedent to it. These people knew things, and we don't understand how they knew it or what they knew. And we don't know if the people that lived in ancient Egypt that we considered ancient Egypt, like, you know, 2000 BC, we don't know if they found those structures or if those people built those

structures. There's so much weirdness with Egypt because the construction is so beyond anything else that exists anywhere on earth and especially when you're dealing with four thousand five hundred plus years ago. Four thousand five hundred years ago is the conventional estimations but there's a lot of these heretic archaeologists that think no it's this is a lot older than that I mean there's a king's list that goes back 30,000 plus years. Yeah, that's what I've been hearing, they're saying like 30,000 years.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds nuts to people that want to have this conventional dating of the dawn of civilization being about 6,000 years ago. But there's a lot of evidence that that's not accurate. There's a lot. And I think the most profound evidence is just the vastness of the Egyptian Empire And what what they're just the vastness of the the construction the way they were able to bring these stones from

500 miles away through the mountains that are 80 tons How how do they cut them perfectly? How do they put them? 120 feet in the air and put them in the ceiling Perfectly how did they put them a hundred and twenty feet in the air and put them in the ceiling? Like what what the fuck was going on then what the fuck was going on with people were supposedly? Just getting out of hunter and gathering I mean this is like the emergence like a couple thousand years earlier We're supposed to be like using stone tools and throwing them in animals And now you have these people that build this immense structure That's perfectly aligned a true north south east and west has two million three hundred thousand stones in it

What it's aligned with Orion stars the stars in the Orion belt like what maybe the maybe what happened was is AI took them down to it might be way way back. It might be it's bad I'm just saying, right? It could be. It could, stuff could be, I forget who said that, but it's like, I mean, I'm all for science, but in the end of the day, you know, no matter what we think we know,

it's still just like a, you know, it's like a flame in a dark night, you know, there's so much out there beyond what we can see. Yeah. So I always kind of thought that myself. There's so much out there beyond what we can see. So I always kinda thought that myself. I mean, it's a basic thing nowadays. You know, when I was like a kid, a lot of people had this thought,

but it's like, you know, I'm always looking up here in the stars, and it's like, if they're saying that the stars are basically infinite, then it's infinite possibility for other planets with life on it. Which basically is a certainty, right? It's basically a certainty.

It's a certainty. Yeah, it's basically a certainty. And the more we explore in the known universe, the more we understand that it's much more likely that this is not an anomaly. That there's many, many planets out there. Who knows? Maybe an infinite number that have life. So who knows what's going on with those Egyptians? Well, we don't know how long ago they did this. You know, there's just so much speculation. Well, and the version of Egypt that we're taught about, it was like just the latest

stage of it. Oh yeah. Like I read where there was just, it went on for so many thousands of years and there was this whole evolution of those kingdoms. I'm talking about throughout Africa. Yep. Well, all the Sub-Saharan area. All of that, too. That's where they believe that Atlantis was. I mean, there's this thing called the Rishat

structure that there's, again, these heretic archaeologists believe was the site of Atlantis. I mean, the South Saharan, the Sub-Saharan Africa was a rich rainforest thousands of years ago. There's whale bones. They find whale bones in the Saharan desert. That's crazy. It's fucking madness, man. The history of Earth is so confusing. Graham Hancock says it best,

we're a species with amnesia, you know? And that's what's wild about all this ancient shit. We don't remember anything. Well, we definitely don't remember shit from 20,000 years ago. It's all just speculation and you know and people have been in this form You know the form of Homo sapiens now for 300 plus thousand years like who knows how long and Who knows where they learn this stuff from I mean who knows if they learn this stuff from? I mean, who knows if they learn this stuff from visitors? We don't know. I mean, if we did get visited 20,000, 30,000 years ago, what evidence would be left?

And are we being visited now? Well, we're about to find out, because if this shit keeps popping off with Israel and Iran and they start going nuclear, that was the only, the great hope of the people that really believe in aliens Is that what they're watching over us is to make sure we don't fuck everything up that we're so close to Emerging as a type one civilization. We're so close to getting out of this barbaric, you know

Territorial apes with thermonuclear weapons We're so close to passing this stage that we're in right now as long as we don't fuck it up. And who knows how many times people might have fucked it up in the past. That might be what we're looking at when we're looking at ancient Egypt. There might be the remnants. And there's also natural disasters. Yeah, and that's all I meant by AI. Yeah. You know what I mean?

It could be our greatest natural disaster. You get there and, but I like your there's a It's a very positive outlook though. Are you talking about getting to the next? Yeah, would you call it type? Would you type one civilization? Where does that mean? Okay? There's this there's type one type two and type three civilizations, and I remember who was the one who formulated this It might have been Sagan Jamie pull it up, so I don't fuck this up. Come on, Jamie.

But it's essentially our, here it is, type one civilization known as a planetary civilization defined by our Kardashev scale as the one that's harnessed and controls all available energy on its planet. This includes utilizing all forms of energy from sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and potentially even harnessing nuclear fusion. A type 1 civilization is also characterized by a global technologically advanced society with a high degree of interconnectedness and the ability to manage planetary scale resources and weather. So we're on the way to that. An AI in best-case scenario helps us achieve that. So we're on the way to that. An AI in best case scenario helps us achieve that. And we're close. We're probably a lot closer to that than we think. Type 2

civilization is stellar, meaning we populate other planets. Type 3 is galactic. We populate the cosmos and we explore the cosmos. Wow. We're on our way to that. It's inevitable. If we used to live in caves and now we fly in hypersonic jets, this is what's coming. And it's whether or not we fuck it up along the way.

That was beam me up, man. We should probably end on that. Charlie Crockett, you're the man. I appreciate you brother. Thank you very much for being here man. Pleasure's mine man, Texas forever. Yeah, thanks a lot. Texas forever, thank you sir.

Come on man. Thank you, thank you. All right, tell everybody where they can find all your shit. Do you have a social media? Yeah, but you ain't gotta do all that. Okay. I mean it's Charlie Crockett Charlie with an EY like Charlie Pride. That's it. Crockett with two T's just like David. That's all I need to know.

That's it. Alright, thank you. Bye everybody.