The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 425: The Liberal Redneck

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Steve Rinella talks  with Trae Crowder, Janis Putelis, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: Chattanooga Charlie on "Veronica Mars"; wearing a MAGA hat so that no one talks to you; a conservative barista; pre-order Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars today; having a rude awakening to the fact that boneless wings aren't wings; South Carolina's coyote harvest incentive program; let's raise some money to Save Teddy's Church in D.C.; in defense of golf courses; cleaning MOOP at Burning Man; growing up in OshKosh B'gosh; the southern accent; the world record smallmouth bass; when your dad owns a video store; starting on the redneck comedy schtick; where fancy people and trashy people intersect; The Liberal Redneck's commentary; how right wingers need to figure out how to do funny comedy; Trae's new comedy special on Amazon; why Southerners are just born good story tellers; the longest goodbyes; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Ready, Phil? We're good. You got it on? It's on. Well, how are you going to know when it actually started? We'll figure that out. Make sure to introduce everybody. I kind of like those false starts. Golly, I'm sick of my dad telling me about how... Oh my god, tell your dad how to read.

He doesn't... Come on, who does that? Not while they're listening. Read the podcast description? Yeah. All right, that's what I'll tell them. Steve's answer to you is read the podcast description. Like everybody, you can learn how to spell it and everything. All right, everybody, joined today by comedian and commentator Trey Crowder.

You might know him as the liberal redneck or Chattanooga Phil? Chattanooga Charlie. We're going to get to that in a minute. Also by our beautiful, lovely engineer Phil. Corinne's here. Giannis is here.

Chattanooga Charlie. You were fixing to tell me about Chattanooga Charlie. You asked if I'd been in any TV shows. I said I played this guy chattanooga charlie and veronica mars i was like you know quite a stretch obviously really had to show my range but yeah the way i was explaining it i know a guy from tennessee that could do this right yeah and uh another well i'll get to that in a minute but you said so like what kind of character was it and so john mulaney this great comic had this old bit making fun of law and order and he's like i love how they always go to interview some bartender and this guy like refuses

to stop stacking boxes to discuss the horrific murder that has occurred right because he's so surly yeah right and i said i was one of those guys like i it was it's set in like southern california but it's a southern themed restaurant owned by Chattanooga Charlie, and there's been a series of bombings, and so I'm sweeping up peanuts while talking about these terrorist attacks or whatever. But that's

pretty much it. It was a lot of fun, though. I was going to say, after, and I normally don't read comments like this because I'll get fired up or whatever, but when those episodes came out, I saw a lot of people on the internet being like i thought this episode was pretty good but like that chattanooga charlie guy i don't know what that accent was supposed to be but that's not that is not tennessee i hope he realizes that good luck to him in the future yeah it was terrible but people think that my accent's fake all the time.

Like, all the time. Well, I can imagine living in L.A. Oh, I mean, out there, for sure. But out there, like, yeah, people will compliment me on it. They'll be like, oh, I love that accent. I mean, if it's real. Like, if that's your real accent. I don't know if it's because, like.

Do they think you're a methadone? That's exactly right. Yeah, we're in Hollywood. Maybe they're like, oh, maybe he's prepping for a role as a possum detective or something. I don't know. But I'm talking about on the internet and stuff. You know, people just don't, I don't know. They don't buy it.

But this is all Clay County, Tennessee right here. This is just what it is. When you tour for stand-up, you tour as the liberal redneck? No, I just tour as Trey Crowder. Oh, got it. But your commentary bits is how I became familiar with you. Yeah, and that's true for most people. But I didn't want to be purely identified as a character or whatever.

Because I was doing stand-up for six years in Knoxville and around the South before I ever put those videos out. And I was always just Trey Crowder on stage. So I kept doing that. So when you started doing your commentary videos, you kind of launched that character. I mean, it's a character and it's like me cranked up a little bit or whatever. But I had been doing a bit about that on stage at the time. Like basically just talking about how everybody thinks my accent means a certain thing because that's the only thing they ever see this accent portrayed as in

the media or whatever so i wanted to balance the scales by being just as crazy and redneck in public but saying a bunch of super liberal stuff just to throw people off or whatever and uh i was doing it on stage it worked it worked in like southern clubs and everything like it was working and i told my friends i think i want to do a like a internet video series based on that idea and everybody was like you totally should do that that sounds like a great idea and then uh finally i got around to it and then yeah that's the thing that like blew up and sort of allowed me to go full time and everything and it's what most people know me for but have you seen the curb your enthusiasm where larry you know he doesn't like to ever have to talk to anybody so he gets uh he lives in la and he doesn't like to talk anybody so one day he gets himself in a make

america great again hat yeah like no matter where he goes no one says anything to him yeah so he's sitting in restaurant and no one sits by him. Yeah, I mean that – He finally gets to live his dream of having zero social interaction. It definitely would be useful out there. But every time I see somebody in one of those hats in L.A., they're usually like doing the talking for everybody else. Like they're in a gas station up by the clerk just like going in on you know inflation or gas prices or whatever yeah but I just want to clarify the commentary that we're speaking of is the stuff that's on Instagram and I put them on all the social media okay YouTube yeah it's like

maybe it's like new Twitter tell me what what it is, first off. News commentary. Yeah. Current event commentary. Current event. I'll take, like, something that just happened, and then I'll do a little, like, comedic rant about it. And I always do try to, like, actually put jokes into it so it's not just, like, soapboxing or whatever. Because, like, you know, I'm a comedian. I want them to be funny.

And I have – this is my real accent, and I'm progressive so like i mean there you go you know well like people at first like people are like there's a lot of people in the south that you know who are also like me when they see it their reaction is like oh finally somebody who like both sounds and thinks the way i do right and then the people in like the rest of the country like on the coast and stuff they're like well this is neat i didn't know this was a thing you're like seeing a unicorn you know like it's uh a novelty you know what i was trying to today when i was driving around driving my kid to school i was telling about who's coming on the show then i got to talk about i had to explain the terms right i was like you know this guy is like the liberal redneck and i said i was trying to think of what's the opposite of a liberal liberal redneck and the best that i come up with is remember william f

buckley who's like like the very austere british conservative guy oh there's like that's the opposite of a liberal redneck would be william f buckley jr you know that was the best i could come up with conservative barista that might be a little bit more better understood by your kids i'll try it when i get home for dinner night i'll try it speaking of my kids kind of man we were in um we're in the so we went down to Baja for spring break. And we're coming home. Like, I see this thing, I see like a, there's a guy standing there and there's something like just so distracting.

Where he's like a fit, thin dude, but he's got one of those, he's got like, you know when you get like a big beer gut that just hangs real flat down over your belt? Yeah, like a flap, you mean? Yeah, and then I realized it was a fanny pack made to look like a big hairy. Somebody was telling me about this recently. It's a fanny pack made to look like a big hairy gut hanging out of your t-shirt. Classic. Dude, I kept being like, what is that? Do we need to get you one of those?

I was like, it doesn't match his skin. They call that a dunlap, don't they? Oh, I don't know. Like your belly dunlapped over your belt. I like that. But man, we had a great time. We did a lot of spearfishing down in Baja. And I had something, like if you look at the fishing regulations in Mexico, which is always confusing, they got, so you don't need any license to fish from the beach.

Okay. So any saltwater fishing from the beach, no license. There's a license for fishing from the boat. But I actually got checked to mexico by like the the baja version of a game warden and got a warning because he said you need a fishing license it's very hard to get through this conversation because i don't speak shit for spanish and he knew like some english so he was trying to help me out he's like you need a fishing license i mean no because i'm fishing from the shore.

But then there's a third category that I think they added in recently. So there's fishing from the shore, just fishing from a boat, and then there's fishing underwater. Oh, so you're spearfishing, you mean? Underwater. Right. Underwater from the shore, you need a license. Huh. I got off on a warning.

Oh, did you recognize you? No. Definitely not. Okay. People got to write in here. We need to do. So we need, what should, where are they supposed to send these? To meat eater at theateater.com. Also the normal spot?

Yeah. We'll do normal spot, but they should title it Chetiquette. Okay. So we know what to look for. Yeah. We have a call for submissions. We're doing a show all about etiquette, which we like to call Chetiquette, because we use our etiquette guy, Chesterester to help us wade through

etiquette problems we get all kinds of etiquette things anyways like um recently the guys that play leapfrog with their tree stands on the same tree on state land where they always move their climber above the other guy's climber and all that etiquette questions or like um you know you take your there's a guy that takes his brother-in-law hunting at a spot but then his brother-in-law his sister and his brother-in-law get divorced right and the brother-in-law keeps going to the spot and he feels like how could that be because they got divorced so you can't go to the spot anymore shit like that etiqu Etiquette questions. Chetiquette questions.

You got to send us a shitload of Chetiquette questions. How did Chester become the etiquette guy? I don't know. I don't know how that happened. I think largely because etiquette sounds, because Chetiquette's funny. Yeah. That's usually how things go around this office. There's no real reason other than we were talking about etiquette one day and someone made the joke about chetiquette.

And he's a very ethical person. Oh, you know how it was, too, is we were talking about boat launch etiquette. Right. Yes. There's a bunch of questions about boat launch etiquette and chester having been a fishing guide had a lot of opinions about how to how one should get their boat in the water in prompt fashion when at a crowded boat launch and so someone made the chatticot joke so it's not like he's particularly credentialed necessarily It's just that Chetaket sounds funny and Yonis Itiket Not as funny. Yoniket? Yeah. Yoniket? No, it sounds like another

disease. Bad case of Yoniket. Oh, also, it's late. We got to throw a birthday wish to Carter Hudson who just turned 11 the other day. On St. Paddy's Day. Whenever someone on this podcast swears,

Carter's dad has to explain to his wife why it's okay that he listens to a show that has cussing in it. Loves the show. You didn't quite read that right. He says that everything that you do, the kid also does. So the kid's like, well, if Steve's cussing on his show, I can cuss too. And his dad has to explain that that's okay. Oh, well.

There's value here. We really, really cleaned it up. I think big time. It's like become more and more family. The guy that edits the show is laughing. Well, it's just, I also edit Bear Grease and there's some very different censorship rules around those shows.

Bear Grease, if he's got a guest that says I don't know what the hell I was hearing, it'll be like I didn't know what the beep I was hearing. What? Sam beep. Pretty much. So happy birthday to to carter hudson thanks to his dad morgan for writing in um another thing speaking of kids so this is so

we've been talking a bunch about the book you've been working on which isn't out yet but we have a new uh kids activity book catch a crayfish Stars, available for pre-order now. Now, we announced this book on Amazon. If you scroll way down on Amazon, it's a ranking of all books being sold on Amazon at any given time. When we announced that Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars was up for pre-orders, I'm holding it in my hand right now. I'm holding a facsimile of it in my hand right now. Fun project skills and adventures for outdoor kids.

It shot up to number three. Really? Yeah, that whiny bastard, the King's Kid, he was still... Talk about chopping down the apple tree. What's he got left?

Do you know what I mean? If you're playing a long media game, what's left? Yeah, he already blew through the Netflix documentary and all the book tours and everything. He did it all. He's like, it's so bad. I don't have to work. I live in this big palace. My mom, like many people's mothers, died.

And I hate all that. It's like are you what's he gonna do now i know he's like for a while he's like a mental health expert i guess goodness gracious so he was still beating us well it's a good thing he put all of his money in that silicon valley bank so he'll he'll be just fine he did yeah so catch crayfish count the stars so it's a here's the deal it's a if you if you're raising outdoor kids you want your kids to feel um to have a lot of projects in front of them that that that will foster a sense of understanding for the outdoors a sense of comfort in the outdoors um knowledge about the outdoors it's a it's a great book a lot of it's kind of dangerous we had to put if you read there's a lot of language like no this is very dangerous this is very dangerous because there's machetes and

stuff and fires and hatchets and everything in there so there's certain things that you got to do projects you your kid would need supervision on there's certain things they can do on their own but it's everything ranging from like gardening stuff with understanding how gardening works and plants work all kinds of foraging stuff fishing stuff if they're interested in hunting for their own food how to get them up to speed on that building their own sorts of uh weapons like blow guns and frog gigs from natural materials basics on navigation navigation with the sun, navigation with stars, all laid out in achievable little day projects. Even a bunch of stuff about in the home.

So things that you can do on bad days inside your house when you can't get outside that would really educate kids about ecology, biology, even some basic principles of wildlife population dynamics. I helped write the piece about how to build a PVC bow. There you go. That's easy, cheap,

and lots of hours and hours of fun. My kid killed a cottontail rabbit with one of those PVC bows. My nephew did as well. Yeah. It'll show you how to do that. It's a super cool book. I listened to this. I heard

a friend of mine in Wisconsin, his two boys, who are probably I don't know, 9 and 12, 9 and 13. Their project, as soon as they get that book, they're going to work on it all summer, is they're going to launch their own YouTube channel and make a video about doing every single activity in your book. Someone's going to get sued.

I might sue these kids ahead of time. I think that's a great, great idea. Oh, I just saw someone sent me an article yesterday. There's a class action lawsuit a guy is doing against Buffalo Wild Wings. Did you hear this? No. Oh, yeah. There's a class action lawsuit a guy is doing against Buffalo Wild Wings. Did you hear this? No. Oh, yeah. There's a class action lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings because their boneless chicken wings aren't wings. Right. For the love of God. To which Buffalo Wild Wings says, our buffalo wings aren't buffalo.

Our hamburgers aren't ham. Also, are anybody's boneless wings wings? I don't think they are no they're all no this guy was like I was

this guy's like I was led to believe I was eating a boneless wing and it's not yeah he's gonna be I think I read somewhere he's gonna be disappointing when he finds out

chickens don't have fingers either it's funny to think he genuinely didn't know that I didn't I didn't catch the genuinely didn't know that. I didn't catch the finger one, because they had like that buffalo wings are 0% buffalo. The hamburgers aren't ham. They had some other things. Fingers aren't finger yet.

There's no sticks and fish. That's another one. Good Lord. So back to the book. It ships in June. If you order now, you'll get it in June, but you can order it now. And hopefully enough for you to order it where Harry there

gets... Does it line up that he would have got his name because of Harry Potter? Or was he born too early for that? No, he's too old for that. Thank goodness. Order now. Catch crayfish, count the stars,

fun projects, skills, and adventures for outdoor kids. Order now and you'll get it later. And there's a landing page. I can't remember what. Cranky, put it in the show notes. There's a landing page you can go to and read all about the book.

So if you have any kids in your life, nephews, kids, grandkids, neighbor kids, local kids that seem like they're going to head for a life of trouble and crime, get them this book and get them turned around. And it'll give your kids a raw edge to them. Make them tough little

shits. The criminal put the landing page thing in there. And I don't know if it's still open, but for a while you could go in and like sign up and get an early copy so everybody do that oh speaking of this kind of like speaking to kids trey you got two kids two boys okay i was talking one day about how i didn't like it that when you went to the doctor, a first person comes and they want to weigh you or whatever. And then they go, what's going on? And you tell them some long story.

Right. Like you got two kids. I had it recently too because I'm like, well, this one had this strep symptom and then that went away. But then this one broke out in these little spots all over him and then that one got that again and then this one did that and that led the both of them to have this and now that one's fine but this one's even sicker right and then the doctor comes in and they go what's going on yeah right yeah yeah and then if it's some kind of specialist thing like if you never have never referral you'll just have to go to two other people and tell both

of them what's going on as well it's just an endless stream of explaining what's going on i know and various waiting rooms bigger and smaller waiting areas yeah as it gets smaller you get more hopeful yeah maybe they'll be here in a second right so someone wrote in about what that's all about one thing it's all about and i know this to be true because i've seen it before one thing it's about is you might tell them a thing and they gotta go study up on it on google yeah right so if like if you go in and say like yeah man i got trichinosis from eating raw bear meat they're gonna go be like he's got a what? And they're going to go study up on Google. So when they come in and you tell them, they can act like they knew what was going on.

Another problem they run into, what's this person do? They're a physician assistant. So they wrote in about what's actually happening when all this goes on. Another thing that's going on is people change their stories all the time. The patients? Yep. She said the physician's assistant will come in and they're like, so what's going on?

He'll be like, oh, this happened to my kid and that happened to my kid and now here he is. And then the doctor will come in and he'll spin a different yarn. Like the parent didn't like how it sounded coming out. Oh. And so they'll edit the story. But when I went in, I just said, it's really complicated. I'll just explain it to the main man, the main doctor.

In my case, it was a female. But I said, I'll explain it to the main man the main doctor in my case it was a female but i said i'll explain to them and they're like okay cool so i had no idea you could do that but what they're doing is there's a thing called locates did you know about this anyone i had no okay they're asking you there's like a little an acronym of stuff they're asking you location onset character alleviate aggravate timing environment severity comes out the locates they're after the locates but as i pointed out as a piece of medical unsolicited medical advice is just say i'll just tell someone later or you can like make a recording and just play the recording over and over no that'd be great.

Then they come and go, as I was saying to your colleague, let me pull up my voice memo and play. This is what I said. This is the problem. You can listen to it as many times as you want. You could have even little Google links at the bottom if you wanted. Yeah, I saved you the hassle. For notes in your explanation.

Because I know you're going to be digging into WebMD in a minute. When I was a boy, when I was a little boy, they would have this thing every year. They would take one king salmon and put a tag in it and turn it loose in Lake Michigan. Then it would have a big fishing derby. And if you were to be so lucky as to catch the king salmon that had the tag in it, you win Boku money. I've never heard this applied to mammals. However, in South Dakota, harvest a tagged coyote, get a free lifetime hunting license.

Correction, South Carolina. Oh. Well, you saved us a lot of time on the next episode. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources released 16 more tagged coyotes statewide recently as part of the Coyote Harvest Incentive Program. Program was created in 2016 so they catch some coyotes they tag them they release them four per game zone four game zones for coyotes anyone who successfully

takes and reports a tag Kyle will be rewarded with a free lifetime hunting license. Here's where they sweeten the pot. Let's say you're getting up in years and it's not going to do you a whole hell of a lot of good. Say you're like 49. Your star's fading.

You can give it to your kid. Gift it. Only that special one? Like the one you win? The one you win. You could say, I will bestow it upon my daughter.

I'd like to bestow this upon my daughter and make her a free lifetime hunting license. Did you read anything? Is it open and non-res? I haven't read that far yet. Over the last seven years, did you see that in there? No, I don't.

Over the last seven years, 112 coyotes have been tagged and released. Huh. So far, under half. So in seven years, under half, it's not terribly descriptive. I would have just have given the number.

I would have given the number. So somewhere between zero and 56. Yeah, maybe they're just embarrassed of the number. You know what? They're like, man, no one's under half. Yeah, meaning somewhere between zero and 56. It's under there somewhere. So somewhere between

0 and 56. Yeah, because if it said no one's gotten one yet, people aren't going to get fired up. They're not going to feel like everyone around you is winning. Under half of the tag coyotes have been reported taken. Coyotes

tagged in any year are eligible for the lifetime license. For information on the coyote harvest incentive program, you can go to the DNR, the South Carolina's DNR page. What I imagine they're trying to get around is they're trying to get around the, you know, for a long time there was just flat out uh bounty programs i think they're striving for the bounty thing but they're trying to gussy it up gussy it up in a more socially acceptable way and it might be like a little unsavory to some folks if they were saying it's like cold hard cash

is my guess of what's happening there uh a little bit south of there in florida huge correction on florida mountain lions chester should be here because it's his fault yeah that's true we were doing an episode and i was throwing research questions to chester on the fly and he was messing them all up. The episode was called Spitting and Strutting. We're discussing mountain lions being relocated from Texas to Florida. Yanni was present. The gist of it was I spent a couple weeks in Florida and everywhere I went I got a earful from people

about cougar recovery and the debate around whether many people feel that cougar recovery has gotten too successful there has been too much leaning into and making sacrifices on behalf of the species that is not regarded to be in peril anymore and not only that and they're having a devastating impact on deer not only that but people were saying how it's not even the same cougar that used to be here because they brought in super cougars from Texas. And I thought it was just seven or eight. Chester got to reading on some crazy website, the Mountain Lion Foundation website,

which is not like Wild Turkey Foundation. You know, it's like, not foundation. It's Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It's Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Turkey Federation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It's like an animal rights organization. Anyhow, Chester got to spewing off

about all kinds of mountain lions brought down from Texas, which is not the case. They brought in a total of eight and then actually removed some, which really surprised me. Some of the mountain lions that they brought from Texas to Florida. So at, well,

at its lowest number, we got it right here. If you want a quick little more informed background on this issue, we covered this quite well. Panthers used to be distributed everywhere, like everywhere in the lower 48 across much of Canada, Central America, South America from Tierra del Fuego to possibly up into Yukon Territory, McKenzie Delta even maybe. This animal is the most widely distributed mammal in the New World.

I think globally, right? Most widely distributed animal. Western Hem world. I think globally, right? Most widely distributed animal. Western Hemisphere. Let's go with that. As they got whittled away through poisoning and other predator control things, bounties, poisoning, you wound up where they were kind of existing in the wildest little corners. And the only population that held on in the east, east of the Mississippi, the only population that held on was this little isolated pocket of them in Southwest Florida.

So from 1986 to 1995, the minimum number of adult panthers, so this is adults, not male, not like all males, not all females, The minimum number of adult panthers fluctuated from 24 to 32. I often use this as the greatest piece of evidence against Bigfoot. Go back to those years in South Florida when you had 20 to 30 mountain lions. They're still getting hit every year on the road. So few. You have a population of a couple dozen and they're still getting hit every year on the roads. But Bigfoot can go 500 years.

How many of them exist though? There's got to be enough to make love and reproduce. There's no primate that lives forever. Also, maybe Bigfoot knows to look both ways. You know what I mean? Well, let me put it to you this way, Mr. Smarty Pants. Maybe you know about the guy in Montana that put a Bigfoot suit on and jumped out in front of a car to incite a Bigfoot sighting and was struck and killed yeah well that was struck and killed by two cars probably should have sold that a little better

why'd he get hit is he dumber than actual Bigfoot from 1986 to 1995 the minimum number of adult panthers fluctuated from 24 to 32. They brought in eight. They put some males in. This is interesting. They put some males in. Once they knew those males had bred, they pulled a couple of the males back out. Another correction is, this is from the journal. This is from science, correct?

The journal science? There is no evidence in breeding is causing physical malformations and negatively affecting recovery. Oh, sorry. Take all that out, Phil. I was wrong. Maybe leave it in. I don't know. You decide. Forget what I was just saying. Florida Panthers, okay. Florida Panthers were suffering from the effects of inbreeding,

including cryptochidism, low sperm quality. That's what I have. No quality. Kink tails, pellage cowlicks, opportunistic infections, and atrial septal defects. So they brought in, to save this couple dozen animals, they brought in animals from Texas. Eight, not 20 or whatever the hell chester was throwing around no i think he in total it was like close to 40 that he added up over a year so now they got 200 now they got a minimum of 250 and now it's starting to cause a lot of consternation among people who feel, sportsmen in Florida, who feel that they're having access issues, poor quality hunting because of the great deference

to this now recovered species that they feel is somehow not quite the same because it was supplemented with genes from outside. Take your pick on that one. What do you think? That's good. That was okay for an apology. Not an apology, correction.

No apologies. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a hind titty there. OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. Another news bit.

I've been talking to these, I met this dude. So every year I go to... Oh, you did? Yeah. Every year I go to I'm emceeing this year, the TRCP Capital Conservation Awards Dinner in which TRCP, they have an annual function in Washington, D.C. where they honor, typically they honor someone from the House, someone from the Senate, and someone from each side of the aisle. So Democrat and Republican, House, Senate, they honor them for conservation achievements. And then they'll usually honor someone from the private sector. I'm emceeing that event. I emceed it last year and met this dude who's working on this project. And I told him I'd help spread the word about his project.

When Teddy Roosevelt was in D.C., he would walk down to the grace reformed church in Washington, in Washington, DC. Um, he laid the cornerstone of the church. Okay. In 1903, that was the year that Augustus Skfier published his magnum opus, L'Aguide Culinaire.

And I believe it was the first year of controlled flight by the Wright brothers, if I'm not mistaken. Just check that out, Yanni. That year, he delivered an address at the dedication of the church. Teddy Roosevelt, kind of one of the fathers of modern conservation, and a guy who preserved 50,000 acres of American land for every day that he was in office in the presidency, worshiped there faithfully on Sundays during his vice presidency and presidency. If he had to skip a service, he would write a letter to the reverend of the church saying he would be absent. Anyhow, the church is up for sale.

So what's going to happen is someone's going to turn it into condos. But these guys have got this thing, SaveTeddy'sChurch.com, and they're trying to get the jingle necessary. They need to raise $6 million over the next two years so they can buy the building and resuscitate it and keep it as it is. www.SaveTeddy'sChurch.com So if that speaks to you in honor of one of our great wildlife conservation, land conservation heroes, go check that out. I don't know if I'm going to get into this.

We were having quite a laugh about golf courses because there's this golf course that needs to move because the squirrels are so mean. Did you hear about this? Yeah. The squirrels are so mean that it's driving golfers off. Trey, do you golf? Yeah, a little bit. You do? I'm not good.

Yeah. I'm real bad, but yeah, I golf a little bit. Lately, it's mostly – so I started in Jackson County, Tennessee, which nearby, there's a nine-hall golf course there. And me and my buddies would golf barefoot and then cut off T-shirts and stuff. Like rednecks. Yeah, redneck-style golf. That was my introduction to golf. As I got older and moved to cities, and I found out that golf is like a fancy people game,

and they got a bunch of rules that they really, really care about. It kind of took a lot of the fun out of it it for me i didn't enjoy it as much anymore so now i'll go to like top golf or something and just you know drink some beers and hit some or whatever but yeah i didn't like being you know repeatedly shushed or having to tuck a shirt in or whatever that i've always been surprised that no professional golfer ever emerged who didn't have the same, like what informs the fashion sensibility of professional golfers? Like with football, you have no choice because you got to wear the uniform. But when you see them off field, it's a wide spectrum of dress styles. Right.

Wide spectrum. Yeah. Something about something with golf and forces like a very rigid. Right. Wide spectrum. Yeah. Something about, something with golf and forces like a very rigid sense of how one presents themselves to the public. I guess so.

Like I said, it's just fancy people stuff, you know? It's just, it's just the culture of golf. Or maybe it's also because like the stuff they wear to play it, you can also just wear it

other places. You can wear it out on the way for dinner. Yeah, you can just walk wear it other places. You can just wear it out with your wife or dad. Yeah, you can just walk off the course and change your clacky shoes out. You can't do that with shoulder pads, you know. That's a good point. You look like you're, yeah. So someone wrote in with a very spirited defense of golf courses as ecological refuges.

Great point. It's better than having condos there. That's what he's pointing out. And I'll tell you what else he's... There's this picture. I guess it's a famous picture. There's a ecologist standing next to these cut banks.

And one is like a crop of... One is a annual okay picture that you're standing next to a cutaway of a of a field where you've got a raw cutaway that's eight feet tall like you just slice the earth pulled it away and you got to look at a, help me out, what am I trying to say, a cutaway. Yeah, like a cross section of. A soil pit side view. There's a soil pit side view of perennial grass, and there's a side of the root structure of perennial grass, and a side view of an annual grass, or an annual crop. And holy cow.

Like a long standing grass, a long standing grassland. Eight feet of roots. It's amazing. It's so amazing to see this. He has a very spirited defense. And I'll point out, I don't like,

you know, I get what he's saying, man. They got ponds. He counted up how many white oaks are on their place. It's a really good point. I just read the whole damn thing. Should I? They're going to move an entire golf course because

of mean squirrels. They're too mean. They're some mean squirrels because that's no small feet right there. Or it's folks. Some fancy golfers. Fussy golfers. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Tired of these squirrels making noise in my backswing. Chittering in my backswing. Can't hear that. No, it's like they attack the golfers to get their snacks. Oh, right. Yeah.

That's aggressive. Let's read it. For instance, I work at a small private club near a large city with a heavy population of fox squirrels. He points out, I'm quoting him, but I'm, okay. He points out that, back to the quote, they aren't nearly as aggressive maybe as the ones down in Florida, but we do manage them every winter. Then he goes on to say, they've managed the squirrels, but their numbers continually bounce back with the copious amount of acorns provided by the 300 plus mature white oak trees.

The property in general has a lot of wildlife for how small of a property it is and how it's completely surrounded by urban civilization. We have mink, coyotes, red fox, white-tailed deer, skunks, raccoons, all sorts of raptors, including bald eagles, waterfowl, and a whole mess of other rodents that are all over the place. Many golf courses become a part of the Audubon

Society and are safe havens for many species of birds. Put that in your pipe, Smoker. He goes on. And then Corinne and him are not like email friends. Yeah, going down the rabbit hole on soil health

is real interesting. Gonna book a tea time for you? Well, here's why I'm very delicate about... I can't get... You know the secret of why I really need to tiptoe around

the golf issue, don't you? I don't think so. Spencer? Well, it's... I'll tell you't think so. Spencer? Well, it's, I'll tell you later. Okay. Really? Oh,

yeah. Hmm. You don't know? Mm-mm. I don't think I know. Do I know? Oh, you know. Uh,

Wisconsin. Is this the last thing we're going to talk about? I told you we had too many things to talk about and you can cut as desired.

I'm doing it quick. No, no, no. Wisconsin is circulating a bill to designate an official state rifle. The Henry Arms All-Weather 45-70 Lever Action. They point out in the bill that this does not mean you have to buy one. Though it is strongly encouraged. Yeah. You will not get in trouble for not buying one.

Though they are, I'd love to get, we got to have Doug. I want to hear what bubbly Doug thinks about his state. Like in my view, I get it. Cause they, it's great. Cause they manufacture them there. Big boy, all weather rifle. So it's a hometown manufacturer in wisconsin it's a great rifle but if you said to me like what's the what's the state rifle of wisconsin well who used to make that that that uh slide action 30-06 i think it'd be something

like that like an old like yeah like 742 woodmaster yeah like one of those like hardcore you know old deer guns that everybody had you know like a like a something in 30-06 right that's what i was gonna say i don't know anybody that's hunted or killed a deer with the uh henry all weather 4570 but it's made the rice lake based henry repeating arms so they make. It's a nod toward the hometown gun manufacturer. So if you live in Wisconsin and you don't have one, you can expect a visit from law enforcement officials. Trey, did you learn about all these different old guns in your riflery class or shoot them? No, no. It was mostly just like just target practice.

Yeah, pretty much. This was like a 22. It wasn't like history of riflery or anything, although that would have been cool. I'm horrifically under informed. They join, they're

joining nine other states who have state rifles. Oh man, there's a whole other thing. Okay. We'll talk about the Kansas trail cam

ban later. I told you I didn't want to add more stuff to this. And we'll talk about the Kansas Trail Cam Band later. I told you I didn't want to add more stuff to this podcast. And we'll talk about Burning Man. Now or later? Do you go to Burning Man, Trey? No, but one of my best friends just did this past year. Made it sound pretty wild. That gives us license to get into this.

It's quick. I'm interested in how you're ranking the remaining topics As to the ones that you're interested in talking about Just trying to fly through Because I got a lot to say About Kansas' public land trail campaign Alright, we'll move that to tomorrow I don't have a lot to say about Burning Man

And trash Basically, when you go to Burning Man It's a Is he defending Burning Man? I don't think... Yeah, he's just kind of explaining. How clean they make it. Exactly.

Okay, he's explaining just how clean it is after Burning Man. He was a volunteer there for the volunteer fire department. He volunteered at the fire department during the Burning Man thing. They clean it so good. The festival has to undergo an extensive cleaning procedure where they clean the entire seven square miles of M-O-O-P's. Moop.

Matter out of place, which he said ranges from straw glow sticks to nipple pasties. Mm-hmm. What's a nipple pasty? It's a pasty. Johnny. Picture that you add a little sticker you put over your nipple. That. What's a nipple pasty? It's a pasty. Picture that you had a little sticker you put over your nipple. That's it. Whole thing.

Decoration. Clothing. I'll get you some. It's not the same as being fully nude. You don't want to go nude, but you don't want to have any clothes on you. Exactly. It's like one step. There's body paint, but that's a whole thing. That's hard. That's a time investment. this body paint. Right. But that, you know,

that's a hard thing. That's hard. That's a time investment. Doesn't lead a lot to the imagination. Then they do this. This is where this gets interesting. This is what the BLM make.

Here's what the BLM does to determine just how clean the site is. This is where this gets downright scientific. Bureau of Land Management. They randomly select

120 inspection sites, with each site being a circle with a radius of 37.7 feet. Got it? I'm tracking. 120 times you take a circle about 38 feet radius, lay it down, and then you have to inspect that circle. But hold on, it sounded so scientific

until I got to this part. Where less than a palm full... Then it devolves out of science land. No, so you've got to be real clean. It devolves out of science land and goes into less than a palm full of nipple pasties. Can be found within that circle.

If you find more than a palm full, you gotta re-clean. If you've ever hunted or hiked, backpacked, camped in this location, outside of Burning Man, write in and tell us how clean it was.

I'd like to know. Yeah, no, when I first, so I'm from Tennessee, and I went to Bonnaroo when I was in my 20s, you know, big music festival. I went to like five of those in a row. And when I first found out about Burning Man, I was like, okay, so like what kind of bands are there or whatever? And it was like, oh, well, there's not. There's no lineup or whatever. And from that point on, I was like okay so like what kind of bands are there or whatever and it's like oh well they're not there's no lineup or whatever and from that point on i was like i was like so what is the point of it then and it's like an art festival like you people go there and make like art

installations do a bunch of drugs and get wild or whatever and then burn a effigy at the end of it and that's pretty much the whole thing but like those festivals are a marathon you're filthy you're tired you know it's like gross and if i'm not going to be able to watch like jay-z and bruce springsteen you know back-to-back nights then like i got no interest in that and i wouldn't even do the former in my 30s you know what i mean like but in my 20s i was all for it but i never really got burning man and i still don't and now it's a bunch of like tech bros and stuff i think on top of that oh is it i think so they've like overtaken is what i heard so now everybody goes to burning man talks about how it's

not the same as it was absolutely just like with everything neither is montana or baja yeah bonnaroo same way um where'd you grow up exactly clay county County, Tennessee. It's, you know, Tennessee's divided into East, Middle, and West Tennessee. It's on the Northeast part, like Northeast border of Middle Tennessee. So it's like halfway between Nashville and Knoxville and 40 miles up on the Kentucky line. What were the conditions like when you grew up there when i was like a little kid like up until i was like nine it was pretty idyllic and cozy little southern town i felt like like a nice little town and like just using my so there was this big textile factory ashkosh bagash made overalls like kids overalls and stuff ashkosh bagash they had a huge factory in salina and that

was like the beating heart of the town's economy. Everybody, my great-grandma worked there for 60 years or whatever. Yeah, all the kids, like if you were a kid from Salina at that time, I pretty much guarantee you had like a photo shoot, like a toddler photo shoot. That was all Oshkosh B'gosh, right? Like, you know, sitting in a little wooden bucket with some overalls on and a little conductor's hat. The official pants of Tennessee. Yeah, right, exactly. Would you guys do the side buttons up? Or would you leave them flopping?

It depends, you know, a little bit of both. You switch it up. Depending on how hot it is. Yeah, exactly. And then my family in particular was a bunch of small business owners. My grandpa had a car lot in a garage right we worked on cars and sold them and stuff and my dad had the town's video store crowder's video remember those yeah yeah he really dug deep for that name did he have the little

back corner with a curtain oh yeah wasn't a curtain it was a room it was a converted single wide trailer in the back room I was forbade to enter. And that's where all the boxes were a little bit bigger in size. And somebody from the Baptist Church couldn't go in there if there was anybody else in the store. That was a thing that would happen a lot. That back room kept the lights on in that grocery store and in that video store. So you guys had a double- wide that was a video store? Yeah.

Crowder's Video. Crowder's Video. That market just dried up. Yeah. Random VHS tapes. But as you'll see in a minute, we didn't even get to that point. But anyway, on the town square, my maternal grandmother had a little country diner called cat's cafe and across the square my openly gay uncle and his partner had a uh deli called the

new day deli a sandwich place or whatever and uh all these businesses are doing and the whole town or the whole downtown is populated by these little businesses and stuff, and everything's cool. Then in the mid-'90s, as I like to put it, the factory left forever, and the pills showed up for good at the same time. Got it. The factory being Oshkosh. Oshkosh. They left. They went to Mexico. Like, literally, they moved that operation to Mexico.

Just packed it up and moved it. Yeah. Was that some of the NAFTA? Absolutely. Yeah, some of the NAFTA? Absolutely. Yeah, some of the NAFTA. And that's got a huge part of people there's politics. Actually, that town is rural and redneck-y or whatever it was. You can look it up.

For a very long time, that county was like a blue county in Tennessee because it was like old school working man Democrats or whatever, that type of thing. Yep. because it was like old school working man Democrats or whatever, that type of thing. But then NAFTA, the Clintons, factory leaves, town gets demolished and it changes a lot. But nothing ever came in to replace that factory really. You know, by the time I graduated high school, all my family's businesses are closed. You know, my mom is addicted to pills herself. You know, people are sick. Yeah. Everything just falls apart.

And like, how did that feel? I want to back up to that, that place leaving. Like, how was that perceived by people? Did it feel like a betrayal? Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember, I mean, I, you know, again,

I was like nine or 10, but I can remember my parents, my grandparents, like talking about it and stuff i mean i can i have a vivid memory of my grandpa that owned the car lot coming into my dad's video store and slamming like a newspaper or something down on the counter and saying i swear to god i'll never vote for another democrat as long as i live because of that and like yeah i mean it was like a company town you know what i mean like i, everybody worked there and or like had somebody in their family that worked there and like all the other businesses, like, you know, people that work there mean, even as a kid, like I, I knew, like everybody knew

this is really bad, what's about to happen. And there was some optimism, like, well, we can replace it with something or whatever. But I mean, that, you know, that's 25 years ago, going on 30 years ago. And that, you know, there's like a couple minor operations have come in and left and whatever else, but nothing has really ever replaced it. So it's been, there's been like double digit level. I mean, I don't know right now, but I know for over a decade, there was double digit levels of unemployment. It was like, you know, one of the poorest counties in Tennessee for like years and years straight because of all that. And that killed the video store. Yeah, exactly.

So I said, like, right. Obviously, the video store wouldn't have made it long term anyway but we didn't know that you know we didn't see the future coming but it didn't matter because that killed the video store my uncle's deli my grant the my grandma's cafe is like that's still a restaurant on the square but like it got rough and she was old And so that drove her out of it. And so, you know, pretty much just ended everything. It was pretty rough. So I understand why those people like in that place, I get why, you know, they don't trust politicians, Democrats in particular. I mean, I get it.

And I also get why that county went so heavily for Trump in 2016 because, you know, he was telling them he was speaking directly to that type of stuff and nobody else does because nobody cares about those people. And like Republicans, Democrats, both, no one cares about those people. Poor, like rural people like they just don't. I mean, I do because that's where I'm from. But like, you know, and so to have anybody been paying him any attention at all, I think was like attractive, you know, in a desperation way. Part of the reason, I think we were talking about this earlier. When we were talking about getting you on, Yanni had found your stuff and turned me on to it. And we had a laugh watching it.

And what initiated that was, and I'm not the first person to make this observation by any stretch, but it was like, we're talking about the last thing that'll be left that the whole country agrees it's totally fine to ridicule and insult is poor white Southerners. 100%. I think you could argue. No one will ever be like, well, don't you do that. I was making like jokes about that in standup when I started 13 years ago. And it's still like, because even then, uh,

it was already starting. And I would, I mean, I mean, who else is there right now? Do you know what I mean? Like you said, like you said, oh,

we'll get to that point eventually. But I mean, who else is over there? Yeah. Right. Pretty much. Like you can't oh, we'll get to that point eventually, but I mean, who else is it? Over there. Yeah, right, pretty much. Right, like you can't name another group of people that it's okay to make fun of. No, but also like I'm, as a comedian, I'm kind of totally okay with that as long as people will allow me as a, you know, formerly poor white Southerner to also make fun of other types of white people, then I'm good with that trade-off. Do you know what I mean? Oh, you want to be a dog? Like the French, Italians, whoever.

Any kind of white person should be fair game, I think, for me. Because, you know, we're going to catch it. I used to like, and I don't know what the real answer is, but I used to jokingly say that I thought that was because all these other groups of people gradually over the years each stood up and were like, that's not okay. You shouldn't talk about us like that, right? But rednecks were never going to do that because that would imply that they you know give a damn what somebody else thinks yeah we put like larry the cable guy and

jeff foxworthy out of business it's just like you know like the world tells them like hey they're talking shit about you who is everybody well tell everybody to kiss my ass and then that's the end of it you know like but i find that there southerns have a huge chip on their shoulder about pretty much the whole rest of the country like looking down on them earlier y'all were talking earlier off mics about somebody else you work with who clay yeah there's like the south and then there's like devil country clay i've been dogging on our colleague clay a lot because he's recently he was pitching this idea that he wanted to do and he had an email where he pointed out that he pointed out that

in southern culture you know music is very important yeah and i said have you been to a lot of areas in america where you found music to be unimportant right have you found it to be unimportant in the north and then i sent then i started looking up musicians per capita and um i pointed out to him that the most musicians per capita in beverly hills right so i think it'd be fair to say that in global culture music is very important well yeah and yeah but he sees the he sees like he'll be like i mean i'm storytelling is very important in the south well look i mean a lot of listen clay's not even here but i'm about to go to bat for him i think a lot of i think a lot of the like of american music like you know

has its roots originally in the south and a lot of that's my buddy pointed out when i was dogging on clay about this he pointed out that like if you sort of do a music family tree right you wind up with like like southern blues why is it being like the trunk of the tree is what he's getting yeah but i don't think that i don't i don't know if maybe clay knows that we'll have to get mine talk to him about this but no they are uh yeah they're a musical people like the the most redneck part of my county is called p ridge right and it's also the part where like what they're known for is like they all can just sing like angels like you know some groups singing on the whole everybody out there something in the water

just yeah like it's like oh they're red as hell but got pipes did you guys mess around outside a lot when you were kids yeah i'm kind of doing a bit about that right now like i i've got i've got two sons are 10 and 11 and i think about when i was that age like i would me and my little sister's three years younger than me like we'd leave in the morning and just you know be gone i mean literally all day you know what i mean and like obviously no cell phones i'm checking in or something just out like you know be gone i mean literally all day you know what i mean and like obviously no cell phones i'm checking in or something just out like you know playing in the creek trying to catch crawl daddies or whatever you know climbing into old storm drains just kid stuff you know but like

climbing up the pile the piles of scrap material behind the abandoned factory you know fun stuff like that but uh but yeah and then but today i'm you know i'm not like i went and i live in california i live in burbank california you know which is very suburban but it's still a city but i'm just not like you know i'm mortified at the prospect of that like unless i had some way to like track them or whatever i don't want them out there just running around all day but that's what we did yeah we would, yeah, all day long in the summertime and stuff would be just playing outside. And then, uh, when I got older, like in high school and everything, I was never a big

hunter, but me and my buddy, the only thing of note in Clay County, Tennessee is, uh, a man-made lake called Dale Hollow Lake, uh, which for a long time, not anymore. Unfortunately that, that also left with the long time, not anymore, unfortunately, that also left with the factory. We were the home of the world record smallmouth bass. They took that away too. They did. The world even took the bass away from us.

Yeah, the bass record. World record smallmouth. Yeah, it was on the sign coming in, welcome to Salina, home of the world record smallmouth bass. But like part of the local lore was always, and I don't know the truth of it, but part of the local lore was always, there's always these rumors and stuff that it had been weighted down with like nuts and bolts and stuff. But that was back when people were like, no, that would never happen. Yeah.

And so it was always like, yeah, it's like the town was divided amongst, you know, whether it was legit or not. But anyway, so like summertime at the lake every day, like always at the lake. Like a stolen bass. Yeah, right. Exactly. Stolen bass valour. Do you know who beat it? No, I don't know off the top of my head. Hey everyone, Phil here with a quick note. Immediately after the show, Trey did some research and found out that Salina and Dale Hollow Lake still hold the record for the Smallmouth Bass. According to him

he quote assumed the universe had taken that from us as well my bad. Thanks Trey and back to the show Can I tell you a quick story? Yeah please. It has to do with the South kind of There's a song by Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon Jannings

called The Conversation and in it they discuss Hank kind of um there's a song by hank williams jr and waylon janning's called the conversation and in it they discuss hank williams jr's mother aubrey and first off trying to get hank williams jr to come on the podcast so if you're out there listening my man please uh anyways hey like hank williams and hank williams j.'s mom, Aubrey got a divorce or not. And then he got remarried right before he died. This all happened really fast. He died young and unexpectedly. Once he died, once he died, there became a legal battle over who was able to call themselves Hank Williams widow,

because he hadn't done the legal separation prior to getting remarried. And then he died right after he got remarried. So in the end, it was settled that, uh, Aubrey, Hank Williams Jr.'s mother, became officially Hank Williams' widow. And in a settlement, this other woman had to stop saying that.

Aubrey was the first one or the second? Sorry, his first wife was Aubrey. Who he had been separated from but didn't get legally divorced. He was supposed to do like 60 days. I think he's supposed to be separated 60 days before he could be legally divorced. Well, it turns out he had only done 50 days of separation or something like that. And then got married. Yeah. Then he dies.

And so they're like, that marriage, that's not actually his widow. Because he didn't legally get divorced. Yeah. So I get to be the widow. I'm pretty sure that my mama is still technically married to my stepdad, despite the fact that they haven't been together in 20-something years. They just haven't done it. They just didn't do it. They just never did it. Never got around to that.

No. You know, it's a whole thing. You still keep in touch with your parents? Well, my dad passed away 10 years ago, pancreatic cancer. But he was, I mentioned earlier, my mom getting, you know, addicted to drugs and stuff when I was younger. So my dad mostly raised us. My dad was great, super close to my dad, but he was not really an outdoorsman. He was more into like rock and roll and movies, David Lynch movies and stuff like that, you know.

But it sounds like his video store would be in a David Lynch movie. Right, yeah. He would have been so flattered to hear you say that or so thrilled to hear that someone interpreted it that way. He would love that. But, yeah, but my mom, you know, she's still kicking, and we're like, you know, we're reconciled or whatever now. I wouldn't say we're super close, but we, you know,

I do keep in touch. I see her at the holidays and stuff like that. Does she understand what you do? Yeah. I mean, like, does she like it? She does. She loves it. She loves like the attention and stuff. Like, and actually she, I got to give her credit. Like she is cool about all that. Like I had one of my early jokes that I had was like talking about where I'm from and how redneck it is or whatever. And I, you know, and I'd be I'd be like yeah you know I love football and I hate shirt sleeves and whatever y'all know this shit and at the end I'll be like and my mama y'all my mama cooks the best crystal meth you ever had in your life right and like uh she heard me do that and she sent me a text message that was like, she was like, honey, I did not cook meth, right, space. I sold pills.

It's different. It's not the same thing. I was like, I know, mama, but I can't, you know, it doesn't work with the cooked joke. You got to cook. Talk about your home cooking. I can't use pills, you know. I'm taking some artistic license.

Give me a break. But she's pretty cool about it all. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So what was it that, when you left, was it like in the movies, you know? Like you, you know, left with your thumb out and got hitchhiked out of town and never turned back? Not quite, but kind of. And also, the other thing was was i was always like the smart kid in in my class which is like you know bars not all that high it's like not crazy impressive being the smart kid in this particular school but i didn't know that i had no frame of reference

so like by the time i graduated high school or whatever like i i literally thought i was like redneck goodwill hunting you you know, like literally. Because, you know, he had a rough childhood. He's a super genius. And the end of that movie is him just hitting the road, never to return, right? I was like, I thought I was. He doesn't want nothing to do with it. I thought I was Matt Damon in that movie.

And a lot of my 20s was having to reconcile with the fact that I am not, you know, that brilliant the way that I thought I was, you know. But, yeah, it was kind of like that. And my dad also was very much like that's part of like another thing I've always regretted. I mentioned my grandpa had a car lot. He, before I was born, like before my time, he built and raced stock cars on like the dirt track circuit in the south. His whole basement was full of trophies and pictures all his like stock car pass and stuff and he was like a gear head you know like my dad was really into music but i never i noticed my grandpa never listened to music and i was sitting with him

once in this like 79 chevy pickup he had right and we're sitting there and i'm probably 12 and i was like hey pa why don't why don't you ever listen to any music and he just looks at me and just revs the engine up real loud and he goes that's the only music a man needs son and uh so like but anyway but he had the his outlook on me was like you're gonna go to college you know you're like you're the you're gonna be the first one in the family go to you're gonna go to college get you're gonna what you're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer you're gonna work in some kind of office you're not gonna be covered in grease every the family to go to college. You're going to go to college. You're going to be a doctor or a lawyer. You're going to work in some kind of office. You're not going to be covered in grease every day.

You're not going to – you know what I mean? He wanted that kind of future for me, but I wish I had taken more of an initiative to learn that kind of thing from him. But he never offered, and I never asked. Learn how to wrench on cars. All that stuff yeah and i mean you know i'll like um like i'll do little stuff like with the tires or brake pads whatever don't i put uh alternators and it's always just like youtube and a manual you know you can figure it out it's not that bad but like he just knew he was just one of those guys you know knew everything about

engines and stuff it probably would have changed i guess because you know his cars like modern day cars with the computers and all that stuff and that probably would have confounded him a little bit uh but like the old school rides he you know top to bottom i can't remember why i even brought that up i don't know we're talking about your family and growing up i know where he's coming from man because um thinking back to when you could climb in i remember like working on uh working on pickups when you're in high school you would open the hood and sit on the front wheel well you'd be like sit inside there right yeah and everything's just laid out like oh there's the starter there's this there's that you know it's just so simple and now dude it's like intimidating man wrenched on any

kind of thing dude when you left you went to college obviously oh right yeah well so that's the thing again act like i'm goodwill hunting he was going across the country i went 40 miles up the road to cookville tennessee which is also a small town. But to me, it was like the major metropolitan area of Cookville, Tennessee. You know what I mean? Like Cookville was the town where if you're from Salina, that's where you go to get like school clothes. If you're going to go to the movies or if it's somebody's birthday. So you go to Red Lobster for a fancy dinner, you know, like that's what Cookville was.

And they also have a Cal college there, Tennessee Tech University, which is where I ended up going and i and i mean i loved it i had a great time but yeah i didn't go all that far away but what'd you learn about there i already knew that i wanted to do comedy oh you did yeah because well like i said so i grew up in my dad's video store so like i always wanted to do something in show business make movies or or whatever. And then when I was 12, and I've told this story a lot, but it's how I remember it. When I was 12, me and my dad together watched Chris Rock Bigger and Blacker

when it aired on HBO. Like we watched it live. And that's the Chris Rock special where he does this whole bit about dads. Nobody appreciates dads. It's always mama this, mama that. Daddy don't get no credit. All daddy gets is the big piece of chicken, right?

That bit. And my dad's just like losing his mind watching this. He was just dying. And like that was the first time that I was like, that in particular seems like it would be cool, right? But again, I'm a kid. I'm in the middle of nowhere, whatever. I started keeping notes like for possible like stand-up bits and stuff like that.

And I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get a degree because I would have been the first of my family to do it I wanted to do that either way but I then knew I was going to start comedy wherever I ended up after college so I because I knew that in college I got an MBA not because I have any interest in business but just because I thought it would give me the best shot at getting some kind of job where I could like pay the bills and not have to do any of that starving artist bullshit. Like I had no interest in that type of thing. You know what I mean?

I'd been poor and waited tables enough, like get a good job while I was moonlighting as a comic. And so that's why I got it. And then that's exactly what happened. I got a job working for the U.S. Department of Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Moved there, started to stand up in Knoxville. Doing what for the Department of Energy? I was a contracting officer, so like contract specialist eventually, and then a contracting officer.

So like the federal government doesn't, they don't really do much of anything themselves. Anything they do, they contract out to like private businesses, private industry. I know people that would take offense at that statement, but go ahead. Well, no, I mean, they just, you know, they have contractors for everything. You know, like a federal employee, it's rare that they'll, you know, do any of the like, you know, brunt of the work or whatever. There's a contractor or a subcontractor or whatever. Well, so I had like a warrant, they call it. And I was like, I awarded and administered those contracts on behalf of the government.

Right. So like I worked with the contractors and, you know, made sure they were following the rules, made sure they were doing what they're supposed to do, you know, and then they got paid and all that type of stuff. Competition was a big part of it, doing a request for proposals and companies submit proposals and you have to put a board together and pick the company you're going to. Some of these contracts are, you know, huge. Yeah. Did you make a lot of money on kickbacks? right no i never got to that point would have been pretty

sweet though because yeah you know that was going on we'd have ethics classes and stuff where they'd tell us you know stories of people who have been caught you know like don't do that but i'm sure people were still doing it but i mean there was other little stuff like somebody's son-in-law's company would get a maintenance contract you know what i mean there was other little stuff like somebody's son-in-law's company would get a maintenance contract. You know what I mean? There was still some, like, good old boy type stuff that would go on there. But the big dollar contracts, they were, like, heavily scrutinized and had to be, you know, competed and all that stuff. But it was just a – I had a top-secret security clearance and all that.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, one of my contracts was a the uranium processing facility so like the nuclear web where they enrich the uranium you know that goes in our nuclear weapons uh and so i would go to all these meetings that were like top secret and heavily like heavy security phones outside all this stuff like very very high level of security but like dudes from iran trying to listen to the walls and stuff. But like, I could like, you could have waterboarded me all damn day and I wouldn't have been able to

tell you any of it. Cause it, cause like it just, no, I really, like, I really don't know. Yeah.

Cause it's all like, it's all sciencey and shit, you know, it's like, it goes over your head. So if you're like me anyway, so I was in those meetings and stuff, but I didn't understand them. They were highly technical in nature, and sometimes people would think that it's a –

like it sounds like a kind of cool job, but it was just an office job, really. It was kind of office spacey in a lot of ways. When you knew that you wanted to do comedy when you were young did you how did you perceive what it was you were growing up around i like do you understand i'm getting at i mean maybe do you mean like meaning that that until you i didn't fully understand where i grew up until i went somewhere else yeah for sure like i didn't know about where I grew up until I went somewhere else. Yeah, for sure. Like, I didn't know about, until I was in graduate school,

I didn't know, I had never met Ivy League kids. Yeah, right. I didn't know about any coffee besides gas station coffee. Yeah, yeah. Right, like all that shit. And then you go like, oh, oh. I know, yeah. That was weird.

I got a few examples of that. About growing up. I've had stand-up bits based on that premise, too, because I went through a very similar thing. I mentioned Dale Hollow Lake. In the summertime, tourists from Big Ten country, like Ohio and Michigan, up your neck of the woods. That's what that's called, Big Ten? I just called it that. It's just like a reference point.

I don't know. Places that have really good sports teams at their colleges but uh people from up there like the midwest the north northern midwest they would like to us that was just the north like you know yankees yankees would come down devil's country yeah devil's country right but of course you know that's the thing devil's country is just you got the south and then there's devil's country because california is like the devilist of devil's country. And it's not in the North, but they're like honorary Yankees in California. But anyway, anyway, they would come down there and like go out on a houseboat. So if they come to the lake in the summertime and it's like a huge reservoir.

Oh, yeah. It's a it's a big lake. It's also I was always told that it was one of the cleanest lakes in the country and all this stuff. And it's I mean, I think Deljala Lake is awesome. Like unimpeachable to me. Yeah, I'm showing me a picture. That's a whopper. Yeah.

And so people come out there, go on houseboats, stuff like that. So because of that, we were at, I think it's like in any place where there are tourists, the locals are very aware. Like we all thought that the tourists you know thought we were all idiots right like the local yokels you know what i mean like they like we were the like we thought they thought they were better than everybody else or whatever else and what's funny is in retrospect these are like very middle class midwestern people these are like you know this guy's like probably an electrician or something an electrician from iowa and we're like look at this fancy pants son of a bitch they couldn't afford to drive to florida exactly yeah but we didn't know you guys feel

like you're like you're like townies at martha's vineyard or something right yeah exactly but like there's just a and also it's just a universal thing in the South. Whether you're in a lake town or not, you're just aware that everybody else thinks you're dumb. That's a thing. The accent makes you dumb and all that stuff. And again, I was a smart kid in my class. I thought I was smart on a global scale. So I took that very personally. They used to really piss me off.

I was like, no, I'm as smart as any of these sons of bitches you know it doesn't matter how i talk you know how do you become aware of it though like at the age of 12 like what has taught you that the rest of the world thinks that you're you're not as smart as they are like are your parents just telling you this yeah people just talk about it and again but again especially that's why i brought up the tourist is because that just that was just the general like consensus or the way it was. You know what I mean? Is that like the tourists are uppity assholes, you know, think we're all dumb. And it's like you just know that from a very early age. Right. But but anyway, so I was aware of that. Right. But there was a whole lot of stuff. i knew the south was like that i didn't know that my town was different from other places in the south like other cities or other places that

are not economically devastated or whatnot like i didn't really you were the bottom yes and i didn't know that and so like i get and i used to have this bit like when i was in college there again i started dating this girl who i considered to be a rich girl, but literally her dad owned an auto body shop outside of Nashville. Right. But like I was in the bathroom getting ready for our first date. Like, here's your one chance. Fancy.

Don't let me down. You know, like I thought, this is my ticket, you know. And like when I went to her house for Christmas or whatever, you know, I'm in the kitchen like, why is all y'all's plates the same you know that's weird you know they had glass tupperware i was like as i live and breathe you know like uh blew my mind i was like i had a few moments like that i was like oh my god i'm white trash you know but because I didn't know that until later. I remember being with a bunch of college friends.

They're all kind of, you know, middle class, but again, rich to me. We're riding around going to somebody's house to pick them up and they're from Cookville. And it's like a nice neighborhood with a lot of like, you know, like big suburban homes, nothing crazy, not like full on McMansions, but like, like you know nice houses in like a subdivision right well-kept yards yeah right and we're going through there and I'm telling my friends I'm like dude this is insane I was like everyone I was like there's not a house this nice in all of Clay County and this neighborhood's full of them or whatever and one of the dudes was like are you serious about that and I was like yeah man I was, there might be one or two up on the lake, but that's it. And he was like, dude, that's poverty.

And I was like, oh, shit, he's right. That is poverty. So, yeah, I had a lot of those realizations. It's so funny. Without the whole southern north thing, there was like a strikingly similar thing that happened where I grew up. Right. There's some people that around our lake, we had like the Chicago people. There's a couple of places where they bought cottages around the lake I grew up on and they'd come from four hours away from Chicago and they were into the same stuff.

Right. They're into whatever, playing in the water. They're inefficient, but their shit was so much nicer. But again, they were working class people, but they had like glass Tron boats. They had like dedicated ski boats with stereo systems. Yeah. So when they would stop to like circle around and pick up a skier, you'd hear that they're playing music, which would just blow your mind how you play music out of a boat. Right.

Yeah. And so they did the same stuff. They just did it with nice. And if they went fishing, they had like a fishing boat, you know? So they were into the same junk, but it was just, their stuff was nice. And he became aware of that was the sort of first inkling that there's another way to go about shit. Yeah. You can be like the Chicago people down the beach.

Right. Who everyone disliked. Yeah. Even though they like to do exactly the same stuff. Right. It's just, they did it with nice stuff. And that annoyed everybody. Yeah.

You know, you complain about, you wouldn't complain about it being nice. You complain about being loud. Right. Loud music. Yeah. Loud boats. Meaning that's a nice boat. Yeah.

My buddy's dad, one friend whose dad was like the highway commissioner. So that's like a good job. Well, that's like a good job. Well, that's another thing like in my town, like as far as like the kids at school go, like your family was considered to have money. Like if your family had money in Salina, that basically meant like your parents were still married and both had a job. Right. And that like classified you as being as having money by Salina standards. Right. So my one buddy is that was a highway commissioner.

It was like a legitimately good job. And so he had a big bass boat, right? But that bass boat was our, like, you know, tubing boat, skiing boat, whatever else. Like, it was just the boat. We used the boat for all the boat stuff, right? We didn't have an assortment of boats or specialized boats. Like, we were just lucky to have just that one boat. When you started doing the, what was the first comedy you did?

Like what was the first sort of audience material? So like I said, I'm not. How do you say when you start comedy? I don't know. When you start writing, I guess you like when, like when you start being a writer, I guess in my mind, you start getting paid for your work. Okay.

I didn't start. I mean, you get paid gas money or whatever at bar shows and stuff early on. The first time that ever happened, I was probably, no, I started MC, I mean, about 18 months in to doing it, I'd get paid a little bit. I'd MC at Sidesplitters in Knoxville, the comedy club there, $25 a show, if that counts. I didn't go full time until the videos we mentioned earlier went viral in 2016 so i've been like full time for seven years i started in 2010 at side splitters and were your first jokes about poor southern culture yeah all of them so you never thought that you had to go make up jokes about stuff that other comedians were talking about no and it's kind of worked out because i still like to this day like for people that don't know they're listening or

whatever like hear the liberal redneck thing the stand-up that i do has always been and is still like you know culture it's not like straight up political like i'm not getting some political stuff but i also talk a lot about just like how i grew up or my hometown or you know the south in general how other people think this out I got tons of jokes that make fun of California ever since I moved there you know like it's not just politics but um one thing I found is like people in other places because I didn't realize either like you were saying you're like you know you remove the north south from it and similar stuff was happening in my hometown like I didn't realize that until later

but like that holds true for a lot of people in a lot of places meaning like a lot of people can relate to that type of thing like the other day i went to my eye a new eye doctor in burbank california he's like a mid 30s armenian dude named dr hovsepian and he as soon as i came in he was like i know this is weird but i'm a huge fan he was like i grew up he's like i grew up in a poor immigrant household. And he was like, and so much of what you say just like. Oh, really? Yeah, right. And another time this dude came up to me after a show and he was like, hey, so I grew up my whole life in Cuba.

And I never knew it until listening to your set just now. But apparently I was a redneck, I guess. He was like, because all that stuff you were saying, like, totally applied to me, too. So, like, you know, it's a more universal experience than a lot of people realize or whatever. That's like the high mark of art, though, man. Right. Is when, you know, you convey a particular experience and then it, you know, it resonates with people who haven't lived that same one. Right. Yeah.

Or they reflect on their own stuff. Right. It makes them reflect on their own things and feel better about it or they laugh about it or, you know. Right. But, yeah, I don't remember the exact material, but yes, it was talking about just my very first set was all about like, and also at the time, because I was real nervous and everything. And also I probably had a couple of drinks because I was nervous. So I get on stage and like, so all of those things means that like my accent was like way thicker. You know, I'm up there like I'm from Clay County, Tennessee, you know, like it just.

You're just belting out. Yeah, without meaning to. And so it probably played because I was talking about how redneck my hometown was. I remember I talked about moonshine but i don't remember any of the jokes it was talking about like you know something about punching off makes you want to punch a horse you know whatever else like somebody as we know the party's gonna turn up is when some old boy pulls the moonshine out or you know shit like that pretty like honestly pretty um like blue collar comedy tour e type of type of stuff honestly and then as i kept going i started

and i started talking about more like whatever you want to call it social commentary you know i'd have bits about like i'd make fun of the bible or i'd make fun of the confederacy or i'd get into racism or homophobia or that type of shit but always mixed with uh you know the other stuff the lifestyle stuff too and now i'll talk about you know i talk about my wife a lot you know what i mean so like try to cover a lot of the bases last night i was writing some kids material well you know i just like i don't want people to like i don't want to just do the one thing you know what i mean i'm okay with people knowing me primarily from one thing but like i want to do more than just the political stuff.

Like I, me and one of the guys I work with a lot started a new podcast this year. That's just us two hillbillies talking about fancy people shit. Right. It's called putting on airs and it's like, not, it's not political at all. I mean,

we have a lot of fun with it. I think it's funny. You know, I try to like find places where fancy and trashy people overlap, like cousin banging or getting drunk on a boat or needing a lager or stuff like that. That's a great little couple there. Cousin banging and getting drunk on boats. Yeah, right. What more do you want, you know?

The boats are different. Yeah, exactly. You know, you talk about doing kid humor, man. It's like, I just want to spin it back. We got to go way back a little bit because I thought you were going to ask the question, but we didn't never get there. The uncles. No.

I want to ask about the uncles. When you're like a kid and you're like, oh, I'm going to do something in show business. And you even said you were starting to write down things that you thought you could make fun of. But my question is, what in your head, what was going on where you're like, oh, I'm funny enough that I could present? Or were you like always kind of class clowny? Like what gives somebody something in their head? They're like, Oh, I'm funny enough that I can produce jokes.

I make a lot of people laugh. Like a lot of kids from a broken home situation, whatever. I was funny. Like I was a smart kid, but I was also, I wasn't like class clowny, but I was funny.

My friends would tell me like, you know, you should be a comedian someday or whatever. Like people would say that. And again, I cannot stress enough the inflated opinion i had of my own mental capabilities intellectual and creatively and everything so like i was like yeah i could totally do that you know what i mean like and and i and i'm not just saying this i really was aware even then i was was like, because see, I'm still going to have my accent, right? Because I can't help it.

But I'm not going to be dumb. And that'll be wild. I'm being facetious, but I was aware even then. You can't buy this. I was aware even then that it would be a thing. That I would have a thing without even trying to have a thing just by virtue of who I am as a person, you know,

like I thought about that even then. Um, so, but don't get me wrong. I was still very nervous. Like, so by the time I get out of grad school and moved to Knoxville, I'm 23.

And it was like, I was very much like, all right, if you're going to do it, do it. Like it's either now or never. You've been keeping your little notes and saying all this shit for years, but either do it or don't.

And so I signed up for an open mic. I stacked the deck in my favor like a lot of first-timers do. I brought a bunch of coworkers and stuff with me. That's good, yeah. Yeah, most people, their first time, they end up doing that. You know, they bring friends with them, and so it kind of pumps up the response you get. then i just got the bug and i don't think i missed a i don't think i missed an open mic after that for like two and a half years did you bomb that

first night no because i had my friends in the crowd like it went well i you know it wasn't long before i bombed for sure uh but by that time it was too late i was just fully in it you know man dude that's like one of the things that like learning spanish um pretty much that learning spanish and doing learning spanish and learning how to do um and i'll never do it i'll never do either learning spanish learning how to do stand-up i think it'd be like really interesting man like if something bad happened to me like i lost my arms and legs and shit i would probably get into that yeah usually something bad has happened to i wouldn't make comedians well no no that wouldn't be my line of humor but i'd be like i would walk away from certain other activities well not if your legs well yeah i would walk away

yeah i would move away from certain activities and i'd be like i gotta learn spanish and do stand-up uh funny spanish i can't tell you how many times i have started and then ultimately stopped learning spanish in my life so you feel the draw i do absolutely i've i've like picked it up so many times i've had you know both duolingo and Rosetta Stone or whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I'll start to pick it up and everything, and then I just stop. For me, I've always equated learning Spanish to learning to play guitar for some reason. Oh, really?

Just something you ought to do? Something that seems cool, that's real easy to not keep up with. Do you know what I mean? It seems cool, you pick it up, and then next thing you know, you're like, oh, damn. Oh, yeah. I don't do it. It's hard. You're like, it's so far away from me being a rock star.

Exactly. Right. Yeah. I've done that so many times that when we go to Mexico, Steve actually thinks I have decent Spanish. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got to a point where i could like i could read spanish pretty like pretty well you know like i could uh but i couldn't i never was able to like

uh and i could speak a little bit of it but i never could a native spanish speaker talking was always way too fast i could never parse it you know but now i got next to nothing it's my second most favorite country next to America. Mexico? Yeah, Mexico. Yeah. I go there a couple times a year. And every time I go there, I come home feeling just humiliated that I haven't picked up much of anything.

I mean, well, living in Southern California is like that, too. I mean, it's like I told them. I said that was another time. I know I said it as though they have sole proprietorship over that language. Right, yeah. time i know i said it as though that they have sole proprietorship over that language yeah but that's my like my that's where i go to feel like a dick for having not learned spanish yeah and but that was one of the times when i moved when we first moved to la i was like this is great i'll finally pick up spanish right seven years later i'm like you know hola my yamo tray like i don't i don't have it at all you know and it's everywhere out there um uh i won't get back into like some of your career stuff but i wanted

to comment on you're talking about trying to write kid stuff yeah well not like not not for kids but about having because that's most comics have kids they have material about their kids and i never have but it's like a starting path like i don't know it's a i know it's like it's a path you go down dude i'm not a comedian it's a path you go down and i think it's like a decision you make okay please elaborate i'm very literally last night i started so this is on my mind says i'm gonna start doing jokes about my kids and it's like a path you go down right it's a path you go down yeah but you also can't help it i made a i just made a bet with my daughter for 10 bucks that she bet me that she broke her toe and then she didn't i said you didn't break your toe she said yeah i did so she gets the x-ray she didn't break her toe and i said you

owe me 10 bucks she says no i'm not doing the bet because i didn't realize i hadn't broke my toe right i'm like what's the home that's the whole point of that that whole thing that's why like that that was the whole conversations about that so they do stuff that's funny but then if you if you deal in that you traffic in that you become like a dad you become a yeah a dad comedian yeah it's definitely like my wife boy the old ball and chain right you know that's the old battle acts yeah that's part of i think that's part of why i've never done it but i think another reason for me is like i'm not saying all of them but i feel like a lot of comics that have kids when

they talk about kids it's some version of like you know oh they've sapped my life essence you know what i mean like they they drain your youth they kill your dreams right it's like some version of that and i've just i've just never i've just never really felt that way and so like i just uh i don't know i didn't see the angle i'm making a bunch of jokes and you know about how much i think it rocks to have kids yeah that's a good thing though because i've talked to i've talked to some comedians I like about this where I've tried to explain it to them

and I don't know if it resonates with them, but I've said that you approach stand-up from a position of strength because sort of the stereotypical stand-up thing is like, oh, the old battle acts. They're like, oh, you know, no one at work takes me seriously. Oh, my kids, whatever. You know know no one at work takes me seriously oh my kids whatever

you know no one i don't get laid right right but to do comedy from yeah comedy from a position of strength it's hard but it's good like comedy from a position of of of of comfort yeah right comfort happiness like feeling good about yourself and then do comedy? Yeah, well, and that's part of the, because I do think

it makes it somewhat novel because that's usually how it goes. The stuff I was kind of working on last night or thinking about is it's all positive about having kids.

Like it sort of talks about how everybody says all these negative things about it and then I tell why, you know, why I think it's positive which is hopefully,

you know, makes it different enough. It's fresh. But yeah, but yeah but i do i mean i do self-deprecate but i also like you know um like another part of my appeal i think is literally sometimes just like big work it's like the sounding kind of smart thing like sometimes like crown connecticut or something i i feel like they're laughing it's like you hear that it seems smart but it sounded dumb i love that like uh and so that's because i've also taught there's this uh this media company that i've worked with before like doing some pilots and stuff they're like a vice type of outfit but it's not vice and they're uh the guy works there told me once it's the reason he's like the reason

we love you is because you're pretension proof right he was like you he's like he's like he's like you're never going to come across to our audience as preachy or pretentious because you're southern because of and the unspoken part is like because of how dumb you sound right like it makes you immune to that like you could could be just as, you know, superior acting, just as sanctimonious as anybody, but you're going to sound all dumb while you're doing it. Well, you know what study they've done? It doesn't work on other Southerners though.

That study they've done where they have people read the same speech? Yeah, right. They have people with different accents give the same speech and then people rate how well they knew the subject matter. And the Southerners are like, that guy, he didn't know what he was talking about. I did not know that was an actual study. I've got a bit about that exact thing, about how if you say the same thing to people in different accents, it'll impact them in different ways. A British person is going to be more impressive. Exactly right.

And a Southern male is going to be less – the material he gives is going to sound less legit. Can you give us an example? So the example I'm using right now is like, even if you pick a famous quote that sounds smart on its own, like John Lennon's, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, right? Like you said to somebody in a French accent, you know, life is what that means when you're busy making other plans. People are like, you're so accent you know life is what that means we get busy making other plans people are like you're so right so we should have sex right now right like i just want to have sex all of a sudden i don't even know why you know australian accent oh mate life's what happens when you're busy making other plans people are like hell yes well let's party this guy likes to party i could just tell but if you say it in my accent life's what happens when you're busy making other plans. People are like, oh, no, he's not going to tell us his plans, is he?

I don't want to hear this guy's plans. Probably involve truck nuts and tiki torches. Let's get out of here. But yeah, but I didn't know there were literal studies. I'd like to check those out. I hope I'm not lying, but I'm sure we talked about that. I mean, it makes sense. We have.

We talked about that. I mean, we have. We have. We talked about that. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have.

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We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. We have. a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You had a bit for a while. You had a bit for, I want to talk about the inception of the liberal redneck. You had a bit for a while where you do sort of that, it'd be like that same joke you were talking about, but you're talking about like having a liberal perspective coming from a rural southerner.

Yeah. But then you started doing it for real. Exactly. What was it that got you going on it? Well, a very specific i know exactly what it was because i had that bit for a little while i told my comic friends i'm thinking about making a series an internet series based on that idea every one of them was like that's a really good idea you absolutely should do that but at the time i was like i was like i don't know man i have to like

save up money and buy a nice camera i have to learn how to edit i need lighting it'll have to it can't look like an amateur you know i thought there was like a barrier i didn't you know i thought i'd have to do better like in terms of that and then one day in like the spring of 2016 north carolina had passed that anti-trans bathroom law they had right the transgender bathroom law you guys remember that like were they yeah i do remember i can't remember they passed a law prohibiting trans people from using like you had to go to the bathroom of your biological birth gender or whatever so like a trans woman who is now a woman would have to go to the men's room under that law or whatever. Yeah.

So anyway, they made that law. I saw this video that was going viral amongst the right. So like I saw people that I went to high school with sharing it on Facebook. And it was this preacher in North Carolina who was mad as hell about this whole thing. He's like preaching fire and brimstone out in the woods for some reason, you know, yelling at his phone and not being funny at all, not a dick joke in sight, just like just nothing but just, you know, fire and brimstone shock and all about the horrors of these animals in the bathroom with our baby girls and whatever else.

And this video had like 15 million views on Facebook, right? And when I saw that that it was like a light bulb went off i was like well if that guy if that thing is like the thing i'm trying to make fun of then like i don't need any of that fancy shit like in fact that would be a mistake like i should just do it exactly the way that he does i should just go out and yell at my phone right and now it's like the simplest thing in the world but like i hadn't looked at it that way until i saw that guy and then i realized and after i realized i went out and i made the first one the first one was about my home state of tennessee trying to make

the holy bible the official state book right and it got like 70 000 views or something which i was over the moon about i was complete anonymity at this time. I was blown away by that. So I was like, I'm definitely on to something. I'll keep going. I made the second one. The second one was about the transgender bathroom law, and it ended up getting tens of millions of views and went crazy viral and changed my life literally overnight.

So wherever that preacher is, I hope he knows that this is all his fault. Mysterious ways, am I right, buddy? You didn't see that coming. So when you had that and it took off, but you still would do normal. You didn't just totally – that didn't become your comedy bit, though. Like on stage, you mean? Yeah, you had to keep it separate. Yes, and I do keep it separate but i'd like to say i've been you know i've been touring post going viral for seven years now and so i feel

pretty comfortable saying that like if people like those videos i think they'll like my stand up too and i also think that maybe people that don't like those videos or don't want to hear just a bunch of political stuff would also still like a lot of my stand-up because I'm still the same guy, right? So, like, I'm still, like, scratching a lot of the same itches or, you know what I mean? I'm still, like, in the same ballpark just by virtue of just being who I am. But no, I do not, like, rant about politics on stage as a stand-up. I do, like, you know know more traditional stand-up material about whatever subjects has your there's a difference between you can have political differences right

with your friends you grew up with but if you're gonna have if you're gonna do political differences and then get tons of audience right i could see that causing friction it did do you have friction with people you grew up around yeah i mean i really hate to say this but i mean some of them i feel like uh it's just broken now there was like friction at first and gradually nothing ever happened it was never like you know what we're done nothing like that ever happened but i just at a certain point, realized like, I ain't heard from or talked to him in a really long time. And like, that's also on me, you know what I mean?

But it got, not with all of them. A lot of my friends are like, they're like me. They're either apolitical or they're more, you know, they like lean left. A lot of the other Salina boys, you know, the group of buddies I grew up with that I'm still tight with. But some of them, yeah, it got weird. but if i ran into them at christmas or whatever i know that it would be cool like we'd you know hug it out might be slightly awkward but it would be okay but like we almost never used to talk politics at all ever and and one of the times like this happened i had rented a houseboat on

dale hollow everybody went out there brought their kids and whatnot and one of the guys i'm talking about like he comes up to me and out of nowhere like we're standing there drinking beer looking at a fire on the lakeside or whatever and out of nowhere he's like he's like trey you know me man he's like you know like i i work my job i pay my taxes i raise my kids like i'm a you know i'm a upstanding member of society or whatever and it's like and he is he's an all-american family man 100 and i was like yeah i know buddy and he was like i just don't understand why you think i ought not be able to have a gun right and i was like well i don't think that buddy you know and he's like what do you mean i was like i don't think i've

never said i don't know why you think i think he just found out that I was like liberal and then assumed I wanted to take everybody's guns or whatever. And I was like, I was like, I was like, you helped me move my grandpa's guns to my house. Like, what do you think? Like, what do you think happened to it? But I was telling him, I was like, I was like, I I've never thought that I was like, I just think that, you know, I think there's a lot of people in this country who are dangerous or unhinged or whatever and they shouldn't have a gun and maybe we should try to find better ways to keep guns out of those people's hands and he was like well hell i agree with that and i was like right i was like i was like so we pretty much are on the same page right you know but like you just assumed that it wasn't the case i feel like a lot of people do that if someone self-identifies as being on the other side of the fence politically from you, people tend to like automatically assign them to the far end of that spectrum.

You know what I mean? And it works in both directions. And most of the time, that's not the case. Like those people do exist, and I could do without either one of them. You know, the extremist on either end i'm not not a big fan of most people are not really that far separated from each other on most of like the big things i think you know what i mean it's just yeah but the centrist the centrist redneck isn't funny no i know i'm not i'm not a centrist at all i'm just saying like i think that if you were it's not funny. Right. Like you know it just has to be

that. It says a lot. I'm glad you get it. Yeah. No. Yeah it does. You know I don't need to do the whole

I don't need to do the whole I don't agree with you on everything because I like to point out to people I don't agree with anybody on everything. Including my mom and my wife.

That's also a good point. So I don't agree with anybody on everything but I think I think you're that shit's funny. I like your I mean

I appreciate that. I could watch shit's funny. I like your, I mean. I appreciate that. I could watch. It's funny. It pains me that no one, there might be a lot to it. It pains me that very few people from the right of the political spectrum can do that kind of humor. There's probably like a scientific explanation for it. There's some that can. They've done it like the right has very,

like some comedians have very effectively made jokes about the excesses of the left. But even like you look at like Bill Maher. He's from the left. But he's very good at making jokes about the excesses of the left. So they've been able to do that. It's like, I don't know.

There's just a lack of, there's not that much really funny news commentary coming from the right. It's just they don't. I mean, I agree with you. Because it's like they, if you have a perspective from the right, looking at commentary is much more likely to go what is the world coming to me yeah that someone needs to pay that's what i was and they're less likely to do like holy shit dude are you kidding me and then joke about it i know i mean yeah that's what that was going to be my response to that it does seem like that's more of the default state of their commentary is more i'm geared towards like vitriolol and that sort of thing.

That's a hot tip for right-wing comedians is figure out how to do funny news commentary at night, and you probably get a big show. Yeah, you know, there's something like, well, nah, he's not straight up right-wing. I was going to say, I think one of the funniest dudes on earth is Tim Dillon, and he's kind of— I don't know that guy. You don't know Tim Dillon? No. Is he funny? He's so funny. But he's kind of I don't know that guy you don't know Tim Dillon no is he funny he's so funny and he's like

he but he's not like he's not super right wing he's sort of got his like own thing going on politically do you know what I mean it's hard to explain

I just he's kind of you know he's got a huge podcast and stuff lately so I just thought that you know he might be a reference point

people know he's like a he's like a very long islandy like New Yorker guy who's like a like a tough talking reference point. People know he's like a, he's a, he's like a very long Island. He like New Yorker guy. He was like a, like a tough talking kind of conservative dude, but he's also a gay man. And so it's like, uh, but he's just, I'm just saying he's not a lefty and

he's super funny. So like, and Nick DiPaolo, I haven't, you know, he's been a comic for forever. I always thought he was super funny. I know he's very conservative. Like there's, you know, there's some Dennis Miller turned conservative. I was always a huge fan of his. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good conservative. Like there's, you know, there's some, Dennis Miller turned conservative. I was always a huge fan of his. Yeah, that's a good point.

So, you know, there's some. When I'm watching your stuff though, man, I'm always like, I'm like, I always have this thing in my head where I'm like, that's a good point. And I'll think like, if you're talking about something that I'm not totally on board with your perspective on it,

I'm listening, I'm like, damn it. That's a good point. And someone would have to really think of a good way to get around that one. I got nothing. I really appreciate all the stuff you're saying because that's like I try to, you know, I mean, that's what I'm going for a lot of times. Like, even if you disagree with me you can like at least have to acknowledge part of where i'm coming from oh no yeah it's like it's like really um it's really funny fun compelling arguments and then you kind of you know it too is like i guess

for me like you know for me being uh a yankee i guess maybe in some way i'm as guilty of the shit that you're talking about the like stereotypes and stuff you mean i don't know it's funny like you know it it's it's somehow in my head it's um maybe i'll like i'll never get over the surprise of oh it's like the joke in the first place yeah right yes it's the joke in the first place. Yeah, right. Yes. It's the joke in the first place. If you're going to hear someone, you know, as like, with your sort of background, vocabulary,

way of expression, accent, on a rant, with a camo hat, I feel like, let me guess how this guy feels about the bathroom. For sure. Let me guess how this guy feels about the bathroom issue. Well, you know, I mean, that's like, I mean, that right there is the whole reason that I'm. It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Right.

You know what I mean? I just like, I could just, I could hear it before you start. And then you like, it winds up being like, not at all what you thought you were going to hear. I mean, that is kind of like my whole thing right there. You know what I mean? Like that, how you just laid that out. I feel like that's kind of putting it in a nutshell, the videos at least. Cause I mean, yeah, it's none of it would like have worked the

way that it does if people weren't thinking that or thinking the same thing. You know, I mean, I'm very aware of it and I, and I get it. It's just like, that's the other thing too, when it comes to South and stereotypes, I'm always like, I'm not trying to say that they don't exist. Like stereotypes exist for reasons. Like, a lot of those people are real. You know, a lot of that stuff is real. It's just that we don't have a monopoly on it. Like, you said earlier – I don't remember if we were recording yet or not.

Walmart got brought up, and you were like, well, we got those people up here, too. Like, right. Well, let me do it right because Yanni's not guilty of doing that. I did that. Right. So what Clay, our colleague Clay, who we were talking about earlier, he has a very good podcast called Bear Grease Podcast. And in it, he's exploring, he's from Arkansas. And somewhere he found that for some long span of years,

Arkansas was the most maligned state in the Union. Even over Mississippi? Well, I think it got beat by West Virginia or something. Yeah, West Virginia. But for a long time, Arkansas was the most maligned thing. And he's talking about the persecution complex of hill people, country people in Arkansas. Yep. And when he was laying this out to me, he was getting into how there's, when you get into the complexity of it though, he goes, you know, not many people would guess that this world-class art gallery, I can't remember the name of it. Do you know? Crystal Bridges, I think.

Yeah. No, you wouldn't know that Crystal Bridges, this world-class art gallery is in Arkansas. Right. And he goes, and you might not know that Walmart. Right. And I was laughing. I was laughing. I'm being like, I feel like that is on the other side of the argument.

Right. That's not coupled with Crystal Bridges. No. Just totally joking. Walmart exports Arkansas. Yeah, totally. Yeah, as a total. So when you came here talking about our Walmart conversation,

we were laughing about me and Clay's sort of public debate about. Yeah. Like as a total, so when you came here talking about our Walmart conversation, we were laughing about me and Clay's sort of public debate about. Yeah. What, what in the popular imagination when people think of Walmart and sort of how it's treated in the comedy world. Right. If you're going to, if a comedian is going to do a Walmart joke. Yeah. It's not going to be about sophisticated business practices. Right. It's not going to be about sophisticated business practices. Right.

It's not going to be about revolutionizing retail. Yeah, supply chain innovation. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you're like- Bleeding edge logistics. My new bleeding edge logistics bit about Walmart.

That would be a wild angle to take. But they- Yeah, well, it's not just like comics doing bits. I mean, there's like, you know, people of Walmart. It's like, you know what I'm talking about. I don't know about that.

There's a subreddit. I think there's an Instagram. It's like they just post pictures of people of Walmart in their natural habitat, you know, the chips aisle or whatever. And, you know, so, I mean, it's just like it's a thing. But anyway, you said that. We were talking about that. I said something about it. And Giannis was like, well, to be fair, it's just like it's a thing. You know, like it's not a thing. But anyway, you said that. We were talking about that. I said something about it. And Giannis was like, well, to be fair, like we got those up here too.

And that's all I'm saying is like, especially since I started traveling as a comedian and everything going all over the place. Like if you drive from Spokane, Washington to Seattle, Washington, which I have done, like the topography and everything is different. But like culturally speaking, you start seeing a lot of very familiar stuff if you're from the rural South. You know what I mean? The same thing between San Francisco. The dichotomy. Yeah, right.

Like, you know, the whole like there's – they may not self-identify as rednecks, but there's, you know, redneck adjacent people in pretty much every state in this country. Oh, no, they do. You know what I mean? I mean, eastern Washington, full onon they're rednecks proud of it no doubt right yeah i know some of them are like some of them are yeah proud of it i think like the way country music nashville country like radio country music has gone in recent years has added to like the sort of like you know having that as an identity strongly wherever you're from. Like, if you're from Maine or wherever, you know, being, like, redneck and proud, you know, because it's become more of a, like, just, like, a cultural identification or something.

The country lifestyle. In recent years. Yeah, right. Exactly. But, yeah, that's the only genre of music that I'll, that, like, I don't, I don't have, like, favorite genres. I have, like, genres i have like artists that i like in whatever genre but like radio country is the only one i take like personally you know what i mean like i uh i don't know i can't stand it like i like well like the stuff that is on the

radio not like i'm with you yeah you know like not what they call americana right which americana like stargill simpson jasonbel, Tyler Childress, whatever. And I've always thought like as far as I could tell, Americana is just country music that's good, right? So they can't call it country. They have to call it something else. But yeah, like the last time I went downtown in Nashville because I grew up going to Nashville all the time and I still go every year and do shows and stuff. But the last time I went downtown the real touristy part Broadway second avenue honky-tonking right I was in town with this camera crew they're all California people and they wanted they wanted to go honky-tonk like they specifically wanted to go downtown and I was like

you know but I was like to the local guys I was like okay I'll go with you and we get down there and they're like uh i just get in there and i have a couple drinks i'm looking around and it's like to me i just see all these people that are like like cosplaying as my cousin kenny ray or something like that like you know what i mean like they go down to go to redneck fantasy camp or something you know and like it just uh i don't know i'll just i'll get my red up as where i'll get annoyed the last time i got kicked out i got kicked out of a bar down there because they started playing Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue and everybody's singing along while this dude

in a cutoff camo shirt, like white, it stands on the bar and waves American flag back and forth across everybody else and all this stuff. And I started screaming. This is no longer true. I've since found out. But this, at one point was true. I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Toby Keith is a registered Democrat. Toby Keith is a registered Democrat.

Toby Keith is a registered Democrat. And they kicked me out for it. And you were lying anyway. No, he was. He's not. You're right. I was lying because I said he is a registered Democrat, and that's not.

He's not anymore. That's emblematic of the South. That is. You're right. It's true. He's like a... What do you call it? Blue dog?

No, when something's... Like a small thing is emblematic of something larger. A microcosm? Yeah, microcosm of the American South. Nailed it. Yeah, you're right. Man, I want to come see you do a show sometime. I'd love it.

Yeah. He's in the middle of touring. Montana's I am. Yeah, you go to TreyCrowder.com. Check it out. Also got a special on Amazon right now. You can find there as well.

So funny. Which we watched. It was funny. Do you got any shows coming up in Montana? I was actually about to say I need to get on to my agent about this.

Montana is one of only like four or five states left in America that I have not done stand up in. Have you done Alaska? That's one of the other ones. Alaska, Montana, Wyoming.

North Dakota. I've been to Fargo. I got maced in Fargo on accident. On accident. On accident. Like we, somebody else got maced. You got caught in the crossfire? Yes, yes.

The elevator doors open. We're holding pizza. We're going back to our hotel room to record a podcast. Elevator doors open. Just're holding pizza. We're going back to our hotel room to record a podcast. Elevator doors open. Just pandemonium pepper spray. Some dude runs by us bleeding from the nose and a wife beater, like, you know, trying to get the hell out of there. We're like, we start coughing, throwing up and stuff, or, you know, almost throwing up. It was wild.

And then the hotel, what was really weird is they, it's almost like they wouldn't even acknowledge that it had happened like like after we try to talk to him we're like like we're not like we're not trying to complain we're not going to file charges or sue anybody or whatever it was just like just what was that about you know and they're like uh we you know i really shouldn't speak on that kind of thing i don't know what to tell you or whatever like they just wouldn't they just wouldn't even acknowledge that this incident had occurred so i still don't know the details of you or whatever. Like they just wouldn't even acknowledge that this incident had occurred. So I still don't know the details of it. But yeah, I got inadvertently maced in Fargo.

The show was fun though. South Dakota is one of them though. So yeah. But I'd love to come back to Montana and do a show up here. Even when I got here just driving around, I was like, I need to send my agent an email about making that happen. Yeah, tell them. i just realized there's all kinds of people here right yeah we do some shows more and more right but yeah i don't know

i don't know man i feel like like music you're you're surprised by um you're surprised by the musicians that come through here yeah i Yeah. I mean, because, you know, relative to the relatively low population, you're surprised by the musicians, but you're not often surprised by, well, me and Corinne saw Chappelle. Yeah. Chappelle. But, but there's not like, it's not like a big stop. It's not like a big stop for like, it's not a big comedy stop. Right.

Maybe that's changing. Maybe I'm wrong. I just don't feel it's a big comedy stop. Maybe that's changing. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't feel it's a big comedy stop. Yeah, I think there's a new club that someone from California moved here to open. I don't remember what it's called. I've never been there. It's Last Best Comedy. Yeah, right.

Then there's a little problem where I don't go out. Heard that. Heard that. I mean, other than my own shows. When I'm in town, I'm not out. I know. Yeah. Yeah, I don't.

That's one of the upsides that I had in mind for having kids. Like I told you earlier, I was trying to think of like the positives of having kids or whatever is that kids are like a cheat code for getting out of shit. Or like canceling plans. Sure, man. Like no one's ever going to question it. It's a huge social buffer. You can get out of whatever you want to get out of. And as you get older, like getting out of stuff

is like way better than going to stuff. Oh, and when you got to go to something, when you got to go to something you don't want to go to, you just bring one of your kids. Exactly. That way you can kind of focus on them,

talk to them, pay attention to them, and then leverage them as why you got to go. Why you got to go. Why you got to get out of there. Exactly. Oh, I love it.

Yeah. I love it. It's a great thing. It drives a real wedge in my marriage that I don't like to do stuff. Yeah. That I don't like to go out in public. Right. Yeah. I love it. It's a great thing. It drives a real wedge in my marriage that I don't like to do stuff. Yeah. I don't like to go out in public. Right.

Yeah. I mean, my wife's the same way, but I tell you, I mean, you're probably traveling more than I do, I guess. Yeah, but not in a super public way. We kind of hole up. Yeah. Right. We totally hole up.

But is that why, because you travel so much when you're back here, you just don't want to do nothing? Or also you just can't go out? No, it's the older I when you're back here, you just don't want to do nothing? Or also, you just can't go out? No, it's the older I get. Yeah, right. You just don't want to do it. I just don't like engaging that much, you know? It's a problem I've got to work through.

Totally, no. Or not. We could also just not. Which is probably what I would do. We could also just do you. You just need to get yourself one of them red hats. Oh, yeah. No, I'd be talking to all kinds of people.

People would be like, hey, buddy. Hell yeah, brother. I'd be like, man, I never knew it could be so fun to go out. I knew it. It's a hell of a lot more fun now. Just gotta switch the hats. Do we still have enough time? Yeah, I need to get like a Biden hat and go out.

No one will talk to me. Do we still have enough time that Trey can tell me why all Southerners are just born good storytellers oh yeah this is good to explore oh i mean your prejudice yeah is it his prejudice or are you better at it oh i mean you know i don't want to i don't want to start any kind of uh you know regional disputes or anything by claiming supremacy of storytelling supremacy but it's definitely like a thing uh and like i got this one buddy he's just a good old boy his actual like uh his his nickname is porno actually uh nicknames are regular there's like you know porno duck sunshine right but anyway porno is like uh he's like a machinist you know works in a factory good dude

everything pretty damn country for my hometown all this and he's just like but he's not any kind of performer is what i'm saying and but he's just like just a natural master class storyteller do you know what i mean like he'll just anytime he's done anything like if you ask him about it you know you're in for a good time. You know what I mean? Like, he came to visit me in Knoxville from our hometown. This man at this point in time I'm talking about, he was probably 32, 31, 32. First time he'd ever driven on the interstate, right?

And so, like, I knew that was going to be funny when he got there, right? You know what I mean? And he comes through just, like, all out of whack, just, like, sweating. And I'm like, God damn, son. Oh, he's animals out here you know whatever and then it's like tell me all about it porno you know and then he does and it's always tremendous uh as for why that is i wish i had an answer for you i don't know you know some things are just like ingrained culturally i guess like uh and also we're big and i mean this in a i mean this in a good way we're also we're big, and I mean this in a positive, I mean this in a good way. We're like, we're big bullshitters. Yeah.

Do you know? Like, just naturally. I'm agreeing because I understand that you're saying that in a positive light. Yeah, right. Not that I think you guys all lie. We like to embellish things for either, you know, comedic or dramatic effect or whatever. It's just like, that's also a big thing culturally. It's like, everybody's like a little bit full of shit but in a fun way you know and i think that you know that helps in telling a story if you're the type of

person to do that kind of thing and when i i married a gal from the south from north carolina and when i got introduced to the south i feel like i would go and visit and just be like this is great i'm just gonna listen to people talk and laugh my ass off yeah not because the accent because the stories are good and i'm laughing and it's great. And I was entertained by it. So when you went to Michigan for the first time, were you like, fuck, these people are boring? Oh, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Did you think they were great storytellers?

Probably not. No, but I didn't think they were boring or anything. I mean, my first time I ever went to Michigan was at that all- day job i spent a week in michigan at a training thing with other people they worked for the department of defense so it was like a pretty like buttoned up affair do you know what i mean but uh i remember one time i don't remember specifics of it we were broken up into a group we're having to decide on something couldn't agree one girl said one thing another girl said the other and i said quoting oh brother where art thou i said well i'm with you fellers right like just playing around and i could tell that they both just thought i was just saying that do you know what i mean like they had no idea

it was a i was quoting a movie or doing a bit or whatever they were just like okay that doesn't help but all right uh but but yeah, no, I don't know. I like, I've grown to appreciate the Midwest because I think that, like, well, because also, like, I don't know where you're from originally, but you're talking about getting introduced to the South. like i can this is gonna sound so dumb but i can remember i can remember being surprised also to find out that like hunting and fishing and all that type of stuff was so big in other parts of the country too like as a kid i thought that was all south shit rural south yeah right like because it was such a huge thing there and i knew it wasn't a thing everywhere and i thought that was like like a southern thing but obviously it's knew it wasn't a thing everywhere, and I thought that was, like, a Southern thing. But obviously it's not.

And so I'm saying, like, there's just, I just feel like there's a whole lot of overlap. You know what I mean? Like, cultural overlap in terms of interest and whatnot. Like, you're going to sound different, but still, you know, it shouldn't be too alien to you, I wouldn't think. A lot of, you can definitely find a lot of common ground. I would think, you know, sportsman. For sure,

man. Yeah. But, but yeah, the, the, but our people in Michigan good telling stories. I don't,

I don't know people in Michigan. Yeah. I think you're probably right. Chicago. Well, let me, here's the way of putting it. Here's what I'm trying to wrap her up. I got to tell you one last Chicago. Well, here's the way of putting it. Here's the way.

I don't know. I'm trying to wrap her up. I got to tell you one last story. Me and Ronnie Bain. Okay. So me and another very Yankee person. We were down in South Carolina one time. We're with some guys and we're working up a custom load for a rifle.

So you go out, shoot a couple rounds. Okay. And you go back into the reloading bench and mess around. And the amount, like he was losing his mind because the going in, getting the ice tea, him talking and everybody sits down. Yeah. Right. And he's like, holy shit, man.

This should take 20 minutes. Do the thing thing like what in the world yeah and he like he went on a rant yeah afterward about he went on a rant after about what in the world you know i think he attributed it to there's no sense of needing to get the wood cut and the crop in. Right. Because the cold's coming. Yeah, no. Yeah. Winter is not coming. He's like, they'll just cut wood later.

Is that going to get us going to be able to go anywhere because of the snow? Life definitely does move at like a slower pace, like legitimately. Like I feel like a lot of rednecks, a lot of southern people will, you know, take half an hour or 45 minutes to say goodbye, to like leave a place. You know what I mean? It's like, well, better get out of here, you know. And then they stand up and they're like, you talked to Paige lately? You know.

Just start a whole new thing. And then, you know, and then end up in the driveway standing by by the truck having a whole separate conversation for 10, 15 more minutes. Get in the truck, roll the window down, keep talking, you know. And finally pull out and yell on their way out the driveway. My grandma's from Birmingham, Alabama. Whenever we'd try to leave her house, it'd be a three-hour affair. She would offer us four different dishes or something. Well, you're going to dry up and blow away.

There's Midwest comics that do bits about the Midwest goodbye, and it's very similar. Well, right. There you go. Start by putting your coat on, then stand at the door, have another beer, and then you have to stay longer because you've got to let that beer wear off, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I do think there's a a lot of cultural overlap really between the because also it's like that's all as far as like the coast coastal elites and all that stuff you know the midwest also is that's flyover country do you know what i mean like there's it's all the middle part of america that you know the coast looks down their noses at or whatever and there's just i don't know there's a lot of like there's a lot of common ground there or should be. But I think it's probably the Southerners who would hold it up because, you know, the whole Yankee thing.

No. Yeah. Sure. All right, man, tell people how to find you. Pretty much just by name, which is spelled wrong because I'm white trash. It's T-R-A-E Crowder. How are they supposed to spell it?

T-R-E-Y generally. Oh. T-R-A-E Crowder. How are they supposed to spell it? T-R-E-Y, generally. Oh. T-R-A-E Crowder. T-R-A-E Crowder. Yeah. Dot com or just. That's how people can find your shows. That's how they can find my shows and the special.

But any social media you use, it's also, I'm also just Trey Crowder on there, except for Instagram because some bitch scoped me. So I'm official Trey Crowder on Instagram. Oh, yeah. The rest of them are just Trey Crowder. So pretty much just my name. That's called getting scoped. Scoped? Yeah. I said scooped me, so I'm official Trey Crowder on Instagram, but the rest of them are just Trey Crowder. So pretty much just my name. That's called getting scoped.

Scoped? Yeah. I said scooped. Scooped. Oh. Yeah. No, no, no. I was asking.

Oh, you were asking? Scooped you. You know, like a journalist gets scooped. You know, like when you give someone's contact information online, you dexed them. Doxed. Yeah. Doxed. Yeah.

Yeah. Doxed. I thought scoped was getting something. I mean, I kind of feel like that maybe works better, really. I'm going to start having to be that that's what it is. If you get scooped, like as a journalist, somebody beat you to the story or whatever, you get scooped. And that's, I think, why I said that, but I didn't even really think about it. But scoped, I like scoped better.

Yeah, I'm going to start acting like that's what that is. I was caught unawares. Right, yeah. Yeah, didn't see it coming. Yeah, like it even happened to to trump he had to do the real donald trump because someone else picked up his yeah thing all right man so people find you there if you're if you're if you're a big left and you like to laugh well check them out if you're super right-wing guy and you want to be all pissed off and laugh check them out yeah yeah either way

you're welcome either way a lot of right-wing people come to my shows because they get drugged there by their spouse or whatever. And usually at the end of the show, they're like, I didn't agree with a damn word you said, but you were funny, though. I liked it. I'll give you that. I think you'll dig it. You redneck. Dumbass redneck. Anyway, thank you guys for having me.

This was great. Appreciate it, man. Good luck. Yeah, thanks for coming. Oh, ride on, ride on, let it fly on. I want to see your gray hair shine like silver in the sun Ride on Ride on Ride on Sweetheart

We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new and ride on We're done beat this damn horse to death. So take your new one and ride on.