The MeatEater Podcast - Ep 498: Hunting, Singing, and Going Dry with the Turnpike Troubadours

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Evan Felker, Janis Putelis, Hunter Spencer, Randall Williams, Maggie Hudlow, Max Barta, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Knowing how to conduct a vault toilet rescue from having listened to The MeatEater Podcast, Ep. 377: The Great Outhouse Rescue; Phil kissing; the dead-alive fish dish; ménage-à-frog; pig leases in timber country; First Lite’s new Stormy Kromer cap; how Evan’s dad is a fanatical hunter; cowboy-ing; Johnny Horton playing Jimmy Driftwood; how Cal thinks that “The Bird Hunters” song is the best hunting song ever written; an anapodoton; bean sayings from our audience; quitting drinking; NA beer; going to rehab and rewiring your entire being; trustworthiness and how no one would actually show up to ice fish at 7am the next morning; watching the lake give birth; writing prompts; buy Turnpike’s new album, “A Cat in the Rain,” and go see them in concert; a live performance of “The Bird Hunters”; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Holy smokes, we're joined today by Evan Felker from Turnpike Troubadours. Hello. Thank you for coming on, man.

Glad to be here. I got to tell you, just to start right out, Max here, you know what Max told me before you got here? He liked you before it was cool to like you. Really? When was that? Way back in 2015. He didn't know

about this era this time. He honestly asked me, you listen to Turnpike? And I was like, yeah, I did before it was cool. Yeah.

I saw him in 2018, so I guess you got me beat. There was a window there that we weren't very cool. But the beginning and now, I think we're pretty cool. Oh, for sure. Oh, you went from cool to uncool to cool again? I think so.

Oh, yeah. No, I got what you're saying. Been there. Well, thanks for coming out. A lot of these people. So this is Hunter Spencer. He's a fan. Turned Pike fan.

Dr. Randall. Randall Williams. He doesn't like He doesn't like music. He doesn't introduce himself as a doctor. I've never Oh, I was going to say, I've never liked anything before it was cool. So I'm still waiting for that to happen.

And of course, Max, he's a fan. And Giannis is a fan. In fact, when we came in, Giannis is listening to the new album. Thank you. Enjoying all the hunting lyrics that you've dropped in there. Phil, can you, speaking of lyrics, do you have the thing I sent you? Yeah, yeah. I've got it pulled up.

I can put it on the TV here. So just for a little background, this part, if you want to check your text messages and stuff, you can do all that. But this is the little part of the show where you have to talk about a couple things okay unrelated to our special guest okay but this might be of interest to you yeah because some time ago there uh some time ago there was a incident that happened at a river access site here you know when you go fishing and they put those outhouses at the fishing access the with the vault toilet you know when you go fishing and they put those outhouses at the fishing access with the vault toilet you know sure yeah kind of well like a picture going to like a campground or something they got those sort of like permanent yeah outhouse structures yeah well there was a

high profile news story that happened here where a woman uh where a dude went down in there to get his phone and got stuck in the vault and so we had the people that rescued him on the show evan didn't catch this story no no he doesn't need to i'm filling them in so then they became a whole rash of incidences of people retrieving things in vault toilets and getting stuck and then we had a cop right in he rescued someone out of a vault toilet that was retrieving her apple watch and he knew how to rescue her based on having listened to the podcast because the other rescuers didn't realize that you could remove the whole pedestal they thought the victim had to come come through Come through the hole? Had to come.

So he gets there, and the cops and firefighters that are there think that she has to come up through the hole, through the seat. Yeah. And he says, you know, I was listening to this podcast, and they had a guy on there that conducted a vault toilet rescue, and he was saying that you can actually jack the whole pedestal out of there so they removed the pedestal and conducted the rescue then corinne finds this this is a guy that this is fascinating here's a guy that does the news

he does the news in music so if you don't like reading the news, this gentleman... Sings it? Sings the news. Like a modern minstrel kind of thing. Yeah. This gentleman, and what's especially trippy about it is he's doing it in a...

He has a first light hat on. Oh, wow. And he's doing the news as reported in People. So People Magazine reports, woman rescued after trying to retrieve her Apple Watch from an outhouse. So if you're like, I'm not going to read that, but you like music, you could listen to music and learn the news.

Can you play this, Phil? Yeah, sure. This is amazing. This is amazing. Got the dolls of life, and a lady stuck in the can. Bet she's covered in that blue stuff. Was this really her plan? She ain't got a watch, so she can't tell the time. I know 24-7, she's out of her mind. Climbing in an outhouse pit, putting her whole self in it. Digging through 50 strangers' lunch.

Man, she likes her Apple products a bunch. But that's a bridge to your phone that's good Bill how isn't this guy more popular I don't know I feel like he should be

like he should be more famous than Weird Al 100% what's his deal we can't do that without at least saying who he is who is he

I gotta look him up he should be way more famous. I got it. That'd be a good show. It's a show where you know you have a morning show and they have famous people on. There should be a morning show where you have people who ought to be famous on. Yeah. It's Reed's Piano News.

That's the Instagram account. But is it Reed's like R-E-E? R-E-E-D. His name is Reed. He doesn't have a last name on there. No. Reed's Piano News. Well. Reed's Piano News. Well, Reed's Piano News, if you're out there,

big admirer. I'll be getting all my news from you now. He's only got 1,300 followers. I know. That's where I'm going to get all my news from now on, man. I wonder if he's covering the crisis in Israel. I was wondering the same thing. What do you think about that?

Are they all in the same genre? Or does he experiment in different genres? Oh, I mean, is he only into certain music? Does he have one tune that he plays every day? He's got to be on the piano. Unfortunately. I don't know yet because I only found out about him

this morning. In the morning, you wake up, my garage is a mess. My kids set their alarms early to play in the snow. They're a mess. Like everybody's late. And I was in a bad mood. And then I found that.

And then I walked around the house with a little chuckle, a little grin on my face. So he really helped me out. Reads Piano News, ladies and gentlemen. In other show business news, Phil, I didn't know until, I'm going to see Phil's special play this weekend. Thank you so much, by the way. I didn't know that you, my whole family's going. Yeah, it's lovely.

I was telling you, my kids are mistaken and think they're going to some kind of Halloween thing. Yeah. I'm sorry. I mean, you're going to be ruining their night. I just want to get you prepared for that. You know, the Halloween play. I'm like, the Halloween thing. Yeah. I'm sorry. I mean, you're going to be ruining their night. I just want to get you prepared for that. You know, the Halloween play. I'm like, the Halloween play. Yeah, I got tickets.

You kissed somebody in this play? Oh, yeah. Ooh. Yeah. No, I was telling Corinne the other day, I think I've kissed more people on stage than in just real life. Yeah.

Huh. That's just a thing. Do you know that it made Corinne uncomfortable? Yes. I think she said that she kind of covered her eyes which i think i'm mildly offended can you come over by the mic and walk us through what happened like watching your brother kiss someone who's number one and then kiss someone who's not their wife who you're friends with so your lack of your uncomfortability was on behalf of his wife well it was it was it was dual it was more like watching your brother kiss someone passionately

and then i was like oh also that's not yeah it was it was multi-dimensional you're doing it passionately phil. No, I'm getting uncomfortable now you've been doing play. I wouldn't call that passionately. I mean, like, you know, it's relatively brief, let's say in the grand scheme of like the, you know, the spectrum of kissing.

So, but okay. And I'm going to ask you something, but you got to promise me to be honest. Or tell me that you can't be honest. Okay, well, let me hear the question. No, it's not what you think. It's not what you think okay you think i'm gonna i'm not gonna ask you that but here's what i am gonna ask you over in in the in you're married i am yeah okay this has to have come up well we my my wife and i met during a play where i was kissing someone every night that a person

who wasn't her she was like helping out so that was your introduction yeah and then the next play i did the next play i did i made out with someone else and she was there too so she's kind of used to it just been baked in yeah it's part of the agreement yeah so there's never she's she never expresses any no i mean yeah if she if she has any sort of trepidation she's keeping it in and i i don't know i've never it's it's kind of just the the foundation of our relationship was built on me kissing uh somebody else so in theaters in in in a theater with with no um emotional attachment correct got you yeah um it has been going good or not good it's been great yeah i've been having a lot of fun um haven, haven't watched it, but people seem to enjoy it.

All right. So that's, that's been nice. Uh, we recently had David Chang on the show and David Chang talked a lot about, was he talking about that? Remember how, Corinne, you remember how? Yeah. Uh, what, what's the word ekg may we talked about that a bunch with david chang okay ekg may uh if you missed the episode

with chef david chang ekg is this practice where it's a way of dispatching a fish and a lot of fishmongers and high-end restaurants will require uh their their anglers to do this and it's that you so imagine you catch fish you right away sever the fish's like imagine that you're cutting off its caudal fin. Who can tell me what a caudal fin is? Tail. Tail. Imagine you're cutting his tail off. And you cut his tail. You cut through the backbone, the end of the spine of the fish.

Bend it back so you now have opened up the spinal cord. And then they'll take a brass rod, a copper rod. Remember doing this with Helen Cho? I wasn't there for that, but we've talked a lot about it with her. You weren't there? Mm-mm. I don't have it as bad anymore,

but Yanni and I used to not do anything apart. So when he was, everything that happened to me, I assumed he was there. Yeah, that was a brief moment of meat eater pre-Yannis. Really? That long ago? Anyhow, you then take this wire and run this wire through its spinal cord.

And it alters how the fish goes through rigor mortis. I was observing him that I had seen this done in South America with a giant river turtle. Because when you kill a turtle, if you chop a snapping turtle's head off, he'll flex up.

When I was a kid, I remember my old man would chop a turtle's head off and then hang it by its tail until it relaxed. And then you'd clean it. But these guys took that turtle, flop! And then took a long skewer and down the back. That's not the noise it made.

Down, and this turtle just melted and then they could promptly clean it but this guy was listening to this conversation with david chang and says there's a dish called yin yang fish corinne are you familiar never see corinne's only half chinese so she knows she doesn't know half the chinese stuff exactly i i this is part of my lack of knowledge this is one of the half you don't know about china never seen this before um it was originally it was invented in taiwan this is a brutal dish man it was invented in taiwan this is a brutal dish man it was invented in taiwan but has since gained popularity in china vinyang fish means dead alive fish

and it's that you're processing you're processing but then also frying frying. Okay. You take a live fish, scale it, wrap a head in a towel filled with ice cubes. Then fry the fish's body. So that when you plate the fish, go ahead. After you describe it, if you want to show the video,

Phil has it queued up. The video? I didn't even know that was, I thought it a screenshot oh click on the link oh let phil do it yeah do we want to watch it well i don't know how long is it very short if evan wants to watch it we'll watch it if he doesn't we're not gonna watch don't hang this on me can we get the rest of the description before we decide what we want? I don't know that I need to see this. Okay, so the fish is then plated and dressed with a sauce, seasoned and adorned with other sides.

This is typically done with carp, and when served, the fish's gills, mouth, and eyes are still moving. Points out that it's just electrical impulses, but still. So is it dead or alive? It's dead or alive fish. Okay.

Roll the clip, girl. Are you going to play the clip? All right, let's watch it. We don't have to. No, I want to see it. Ready, set, go. Okay, he's scaling it with a cleaver, which I respect. He's scored it.

It's still alive. It's a carp. Still alive. Scored it. He's hauling ass. Wham, into a walk. Oh, that's the ice cube part, huh? Yeah. Brings it over. Oh, here's another guy cube part, huh? Yeah.

Brings it over. Oh, here's another guy doing it. Is that the same guy doing it? So he's holding it by the head, wrapped in ice, and just dipping its body in hot oil. Yeah. Oh, come on, dude. It's moving.

That's like a dish that does not need to exist, man. Then he's plating it out at a banquet. One minute, 29 seconds. Oh, it's a contest to see who... Seems like a contest to see who the fastest. Come on, man. Wow. The fish's mouth has to move or the chef fails.

Yeah. One minute, 27 seconds from when he started scaling that fish to when it's gasping fried on a plate. That's some fast food. That was good. You should get him on the show more often, Cranky. He should be a more frequent guest. Here's the deal.

Let's say a frog. This just came out in the Royal society. This is a scientific article that helpful finger sent over. Do we still have that helpful finger song? I do not have it queued up right now. I can, how did that song go? Was it like a real fast banjo?

I have no clue. But we have a song right. If we want another one. Yeah, I'm not going to do it. You want me to write a song? Can you write one? Real quick. We need it fast, though.

Like faster than that car. This is a different experience than I imagined. More of a jingle. I'm not going to do too much news but i'm gonna do a little more news so heffelfinger sends us over and these german researchers are looking at let's say you have there's a species of female frog um what is this species of female frog heffelfinger calls it menage a frog Well there was a few species That he said that do this

Yeah so let's say there's a female frog And she gets approached by Multiple aggressive males Um She might breed with a male One male and then Can lay there and play Dead for two hours Will lay and play dead for two hours we'll lay and play dead for two

hours until other surrounding males lose interest and wander off playing possum and then perks back Think about that Kind of makes me uncomfortable I don't know why I have a finger sent over It's not my fault Alright So Evan you're from Oklahoma Yes sir You know I just got I just got to do my first All right. So, Evan, you're from Oklahoma. Yes, sir.

You know, I just got to do my first deer hunt in Oklahoma, but I was not in your neck of the woods. Where were you? We were up on the Kansas. We were up close to Kansas on the Kansas border, just hunting little chunks of public ground, but had some very good deer hunting. I just got back. Really?

Yeah. Around Ponca or where? I don't want to tell you exactly okay not that i would tell i will tell you exactly i'll tell you very specifically exactly but i don't want to the other day i was telling my kids if anyone asked you where we just hunted i was telling them tell them it's where um nunya creek flows in the business river but uh no i'll tell you i'll talk to you about this box i'd be curious you're familiar with it you're from down in the southeast part i am i live in central oklahoma now but yeah i'm from around broken bow yeah what was uh what came first with you music or the outdoor pursuits outdoor stuff for sure at what age uh little as I could get around with dad, like squirrel hunting and stuff, yeah.

What was your dad's story? He's a cowboy. My grandpa, we moved back down there. He worked for my grandpa at the warehouse, at the sawmill, or at the paper mill, rather. He worked at a wire house or paper mill? Yes. They do pulp down there? They do pulp down there.

They had a sawmill, too, in Wright City, the town that I grew up. Were they pulping like pines or something? Pine. Hybrid loblolly pine. Oh, I see. Okay. It's a ton of open country there. It was a half million acres.

They were running cattle on it and pigs on it. People still had pig leases when I was a a kid like 13 14 years old seriously yeah they pulled the cattle in the timber country yeah a pig lease yeah huh yeah man never even heard of a pig lease oh maggie what's up good to see y'all maggie's a fan hey maggie hi evan thank you for writing the soundtrack man i heard you're gonna i heard you're 20s. I heard you were going to come in quiet, but that was real quiet. It's pretty sneaky. She even sat down. I didn't know she was there.

Welcome, Maggie. I've been working on my stealthiness in the elk woods. Let me kind of recap what you missed. Stuff about people getting into the mout houses to get their watches out. Again. Stuff about frogs that I didn't want to get into. And then about eating live carp.

I saw that. David Chang sent that over, huh? That's what you missed. Well, I'm happy to be here. Are you wearing one of those first light stormy chromers? I am wearing one of those first light stormy chromers. I'm a little jealous right now.

I couldn't help myself. It's a sharp looking hat, huh? Do you know Yanni's orange stormy chromers i am wearing one of those first light stormy chromers i'm a little jealous i couldn't help myself you know uh looking hat huh do you know yanni's orange stormy chromer story no so yanni had a or a blaze orange stormy chromer but it was like he had it so long that you tell it yanni what the game warden said well it had spent a lot of time sitting on my dash in my truck because it's a warm hat. When you're not in the field, I usually take my hats off and put on the dash. And I'd actually pulled in behind the warden. He was just off the side of the road doing something. I forget.

But you were pulling the warden over. Not really. I just went by to say hi, and we were chatting, and he looked at my hat, and he goes, You know, it might be time for a new Stormy chromer you're not quite blaze orange anymore you know you're kind of a light stormy chrome is really cool about that twice it's just a thing with that like color and dyeing that wool that color that they're aware of it and like every time they're like oh yeah no problem they send me a new one i've had a a couple, not Stormy Cromers, but orange blaze hats bleach out on my dashboard.

It's funny. I've never really experienced that, but I'm like very cognizant of it now when I take off my blaze hats and stuff, I don't put them up there. Hmm. Can I see that hat real quick? Shit.

I told that story recently, twice actually, and both times people were very- That's the first light Stormy Cromer? It's a nice hat. Dude, it's way nice. It's pretty cool. You familiar with Stormy Cromer?

Oh yeah. People were mad that the warden was spending time busting my chops about the faded blaze as opposed to doing other more warden things. Upset that he was talking to a hunter and establishing a rapport yeah uh so anyways

from there maggie went to growing up in oklahoma and we just are finding out were you here for the to find out there's such a thing as a pig lease i love not anymore but at a yeah at the time yeah i want to make sure i want to make sure everybody's getting this so because i might even have a little bit wrong so weyerhaeuser at a time i don't know if they. So, Weyerhaeuser at a time, I don't know if they still are, but Weyerhaeuser at a time was one of the biggest private landowners and one of the biggest. I think it's international paper now. I think they sold it. They bought it from Derrick's way back in the sixties or something.

Okay. So they had these big tracks and they would raise lob lolly. Yeah. They had pine and then it had, you know, hardwood on it. Okay. That they eventually cleared a lot of but um it's a lot of pine trees still and people would run so they're raising that but there's grass underneath it and people run around to run some rough cattle in and then uh yeah i guess they

they ran hogs and they're still you know feral hogs there now but when they ran hogs like that did they have to put out hog wire are they really just running like loose they were they were free hogs but they ate them and stuff so like these people had for years had lived on them so they'd go and mark them each year and like catch them catch them with dogs and like but it was like working their livestock yeah but then they got rid of them because they're obviously not great for anything. Yeah, I got it. I'm not a fan.

Just faking. So tell me more. So your old man, he worked, did mill work, but also did cattle work? Mm-hmm. And we moved back down there when I was a kid. And so, I mean, it was just this huge piece of Oklahoma that's all, you know, the sort of the Ouachita Mountains and all that stuff on the Arkansas border. And a lot of deer and a lot of squirrel hunting and a few quail and turkeys and anything. Quail's gone now though, huh?

There's still a few. Are you seeing them? Yeah. And then your, so your old man introduced you to he but he didn't he wasn't a musician no no but you had you had a did you you had an aunt or who i have an uncle that plays he played in some rock and roll bands and stuff and uh definitely was a was an influence to pick up a guitar he's pretty well he was a rock and roll guy yeah like a bar like a bar rock and roll guy or like a cover band guy heavily influenced by n's a rock and roll guy yeah like a bar like a bar rock and roll guy or like a

cover band guy heavily influenced by nirvana rock and roll like and then like you had an uncle that was heavily yeah yeah like pretty neat he's a really neat guy he was in uh marines for a really long time and and then uh he moved to seattle and stuff after the nirvana stuff was going on and like because of there i think so yeah i'd have to ask him but i would assume oh does he still play yeah yeah he still plays he plays gigs and tulsa and stuff still oh seriously yeah oh um how did uh like what was your dad's hunting program you know i mean was he like was he fanatical he is hunting right now or is getting ready at the bus right now and i'll tell you this

is really funny he's still down there so we no he lives in central oklahoma and he still travels welding and stuff so he he just got off of a job and i was we're doing a fall work on instead of cows and he's oh man i want to getback. I want to go do this stuff. But after muzzlehead season, you know. And so, like, we did all this stuff. And he's down at the – we have an old bus body down in the Glover River. And he's down there camping, like, where they've been camping forever. You have a what?

It's an old bus. Oh, you literally said bus body. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought that meant something other than a bus body. No, it's just like a bluebird. I got you. It's like you keep it as a camper. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that meant something other than a boss body. No, it's just like a bluebird. I got you.

It's like you keep it as a camper. Yeah. Yeah, they've been keeping it up for years. So, but you, okay, but you have a cattle ranch now. I do. But that's not a property you grew up on. No, no, I moved back there. So I went down to Southeast Texas for a while.

I had some friends down there that farmed rice, and there's a lot of cowboying and stuff down there. And we duck hunted a lot. Like, that's teal central and alligators. And, you know, it's just this cool part of the U.S. And so I really got heavy into day work and cowboying and learning about that kind of stuff and at what age at what age like 35 okay how old are you now 39 oh okay so yeah i just got obsessed with it and that's what i like yeah but you were exposed to it when you yeah i knew a little bit

about it all you know and i've been doing it my whole life but not to a very serious degree you know so who was the who was the friends you were down hanging out with so it's a guy named uh justin jenkins uh who uh it's got an old family farm down there they they raised a lot of rice and um and that's what the ducks are on yeah yeah teal blue wing teal like crazy and it was just like the first time everybody i hung out with was like really great at calling in ducks and training dogs and you know it was waterfowl central and really a cool place to be did you bring your old man down there to hunt i haven't yet no no it's it's like eight or nine hours from home so you know we haven't hadn't made it we've tried to but we haven't yet. No? No, it's like eight or nine hours from home, so we haven't made it. We've tried to, but we haven't yet.

How old are your kids? I have a two-year-old and a one-year-old. Oh. Yeah. Not quite old enough. No. No, my little girl almost. She's almost old enough to go with me dove hunting, but.

Huh. Yeah. So when I was saying down there, I mean like down there, like in that state, but so you, you then got into that and then got a ranch and now you're actually spending time doing that. The second time this, so we found out we were going to have our second kid. We decided to move back to Oklahoma because I was a long way from all of our family and everything.

And then, um, well, so you guys had moved all the way to Texas. I got you now. So when you were saying you're hanging out down there, you were living there. I was living there. Yeah. I got it. Okay. That's why I was asking about the kids and all that.

I'm trying to put this whole program together. Yeah. Hanging that kind of hanging out. I got you. So when you got into that and went back and started doing your own deal. And I'm bad at it. I'm not good at it. Turns out it's hard.

Is your objective to make money or just to have it just because you can raise your kids around it? The second one mostly, but it's got to be somewhat solvent or else you just lose a lot of money. So what sort of operation is it? It's just a cow-calf operation. And we run some yearlings, plant some wheat. But yeah, just raising calves every year.

Do you have to irrigate for wheat? We don't. No. Not yet. And then when you do the cow-calf deal, but you keep your own cows over the winter and feed them? Yes. Yeah, lots of feeding. I got a buddy that moved down to help me, and he helps me out with the feeding and stuff.. Yes. Yeah. Lots of feeding. I got a buddy, um,

that moved down and to help me and he helps me out with the feeding and stuff when we're, I travel still too. So, Oh, that's what I was curious about. Yeah. So he runs, runs things for me.

What's the, what's the, like how much time you spend on that and how much time you spend on music? So all my time when I'm home is like that and the kids. And then when I'm gone, you know, so you write when you're gone yeah if i or or i set aside time for it huh when did you used to write oh man you know that was that's

all i did when i in my 20s like when i was you know just hung over laying around the house or whatever i didn't have bigger aspirations i wanted to like write songs and play music do you remember uh you remember that that john prine album that he had it was all that live stuff no what it's like a big double album he had it was all live stuff but he's talking about when he went to once he went to nashville he's talking about how he'd always written like you're saying just you know whenever and he moved and he tells a story and he went to nashville and he had an appointment to write a song at 10 a.m on a monday morning yeah it's just how how like strange it felt to be like k at 10 on monday we'll write a song different approach to the craft yeah i i don't do that but like i i take a pretty organic approach to it and try to keep

inspired ideas like written down and have some stuff to work off of when i do get time to fool with it i was uh corinne was showing me this thing an interview you'd done where you were um you were talking about one of your muses or an influence being at those old tunes by johnny horton yeah yeah jimmy driftwood stuff and yeah but i didn't know until i read that i didn't know that that john i didn't know that he was doing someone else's stuff. Yeah. Yeah, well, nobody does, but I always say that because it's kind of neat because he wrote Tennessee Stud and all these other songs, too. Hey, Phil, can you cue up real quick Battle of New Orleans

just so people know what we're talking about? Yeah, give me a sec. That's why people know what we're talking about. I had no idea that Johnny Horton is playing the music of Jimmy Drift of jimmy driftwood yeah like just oh it's so nerdy oh phil's got a grab no but i love that stuff going up man did he do battle of the green berets i don't know about that one hey hey hey we're the green berets it's always weird because i always thought doc watson was tennessee stud yeah he had the best version of it yeah of it is the one with Vassar Clements and him on the circle being broken.

So here's where Tom bought. Here we go. Stone cold badass. Colonel Jackson down to mighty Mississippi. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans and we caught the bloody British in a town in New Orleans. Stone cold badass. That's good, Bill. Thank you, Bill. Okay. I just wanted to give people a little taste.

I've tried to turn my kids on to this stuff. It just doesn't click, man. You don't say. The American brain is just different now, man. I don't know what happened to it. I don't say. The American brain, you know, is just different now, man. I don't know what happened to it. I don't know why, but those story songs always seemed really cool to me. I mean, I knew it was like hokey or whatever, and I never got past it. Well, then, because he puts in these kind of like real lucid details. Like it winds up being like it's a legit story.

Yeah. And that's kind of his greatest hit Yeah But I think can you see did he do Did he do Battle of the Green Berets Sorry You're doing great So now Phil's saying he doesn't know Battle of the Green Berets

I don't know Phil you're doing great Thanks Randall It doesn't look like it no So I don't know if you remember, but you explained this in an interview. Talk about who John... Barry Sadler and Robin Moore wrote Ballad of the Green Berets. Yeah, but did he perform it?

Oh, now you're asking who performed it. Yeah, because I'm only just now finding out that he's not the writer. What's his name? Johnny Horton? Jimmy Driftwood? No, no. Johnny Horton? I didn't know Johnny Horton didn't write this stuff. he's not the writer the jit that what's his name johnny horton what's jimmy driftwood no no johnny horton i didn't know johnny horton didn't write this stuff he was kind of like a almost a like an elvis contemporary or something like a singer like that that wound up doing these sort of country songs sergeant barry sadler he's saying he's oh he's saying oh I feel like

well if I had some better people who are better at internet searches we'd find out if this is true or not Randall probably figured that stuff out computerless

you don't have it unfortunately no I'm good I'm good so I'm a PC guy big PC guy either way

you got influenced by like you kind of like you like that story yeah like Marty Robbins and I remember that one being a big one but that was all sort of the same feel the same thing for me you know feel the same slot and you got into trying to you got into like the story trying to write those kind of things because it's not easy no and then you uh doing dialogue within a song. Yes.

Which people will tell you not to do. A lot of people say that's incorrect or bad songwriting. Explain how dialogue would be in a song. Think of one of your songs that has dialogue in it and how you deliver it. Like Dance Has Hell of a Shot or something like that like in the bird hunters yeah you're just trying to sneak it in and change change the narrator quick enough so it doesn't sound like an insane person is the narrator and that's it never occurred to me that that's uh that's trick or frowned upon but then i'm trying to think in my head like you don't hear people say that often someone they don't quote a thing that often yeah i'm wondering what some other red flags and songwriting are that would have never occurred to

me yeah yeah do you have a list do you keep a pod you get a list in your wallet this explains why my act has never gone anywhere there's not like a don't do this list you keep in your wallet i need to i need one probably but no I don't There's gotta be some famous songs that have dialogue Romeo and Juliet by Mark Knopfler I guess That there is plenty of duets

That would have dialogue 99 Problems by Jay Z He says The dialogue part He said jay-z he says that so just the dialogue but but what he's almost like he said he's talking yeah there's a song that has a he said she said he's talking to the officer in the i mean never mind i think maybe oh you know what one for sure you know what the the one i'm thinking

of that really has a lot of it in one bourbon one scotch and one beer by george thoroughgood there's a very detailed conversation uh that occurs between him and his landlady say it says like i ain't got no rent money yeah right and she says she says uh a word that doesn't mean anything but i've used it my entire life because i've always been a i've always liked one bourbon one scotch and one beer as uh he says um he goes to explain he does not have his rent money and as best i can tell and george thurgood is not one to enunciate as best i can tell she says that don't befront me yeah as long as i have my money it's bringing some value by next friday and growing up like i'm not getting like in high school that was a that became so interwoven there's like two words there's a bunch of words but uh to say like it just doesn't befront me.

We would just use that word. And it was the only attribution would be that it came from Thurgood. Here's another, like another word that came up is we would play a lot of cards. Even on the school bus, we play cards. And when you're doing poker

with wild cards, you wind up with, you know, you got like trips, three of a kind, quads, four of of a kind but once you introduce the wild card it becomes possible to get five of a kind and five of a kind i don't know who came up with this was fooples so foops would be like five of something how many you got foops? Better don't befront me. So anyways, it's not as uncommon as some might think to have dialogue.

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onxmaps.com meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. But you do like the narratives, and the Bird Hunters is a great narrative song. Yeah, yeah. I like those kind of songs

that you're trying to flesh out an actual story that's bigger than what the song has to tell, maybe. Yeah. Sort of what you don't, that can do more than the time that you have there, you know? What does that mean? To tell a bigger story or to allude to some things that might sort of underscore the narrative that's going on. Because like in a song, you only have a finite amount of words that you can say to tell a much larger story.

Have you ever counted them up? No, but it's not very many. No, because it's shocking. I want you to continue what you're saying, but coming up in the magazine world, you'd be contracted

by word count. Mm-hmm. Okay. So be like, give us 800 words on this, 1,400 words on this. If they come in, it's like 3,000 words

and you're like, oh, sweet. So you'd sign a contract and be like, two bucks a word and then you're kind of waiting and we're thinking like 4 000 words you're like you know um but then sometimes you'll you'll have there'll be a song that is really moving you know and you feel like the song unpacks a lot and does a lot and you look at the word

kind of like that's some bitch did that in like 60 words. Which is not that much. It'd be interesting to count how many words are in Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yeah, there's a handful in there. Well, it doesn't have a chorus. It doesn't have a chorus either. Does it not have a chorus? I don't believe so. I believe it's all just verses. No, you're right.

It just rolls verse to verse to verse to verse. Yeah, so you're going to get more word count just because he cheated. He must have been getting a high. He was getting like, he must have been getting three bucks a word. I think that that is a red flag is to not give it a chorus at all.

Like, no chorus. Oh yeah, that song. Yeah, you're right. There's no chorus in there. But anyways, continue what you're saying about how to get more done in brief periods of time. Yeah, and you're, I mean, so you have a chorus that is obviously sort of

like underscoring your main idea, but you're trying to tell a pretty, like a lot of those songs, I'm trying to tell a pretty, like a lot of those songs, I'm trying to tell a bigger story than I have. It's two or three sentences, really, that the verses wind up being. So, yeah, that's the tricky part. You know, you remember, obviously mcdonald yes for while norm mcdonald had a talk show and it was a running gag in norm mcdonald's talk show to ask comedians um

where do you get your ideas and then the comedian it would just immediately deflate the interview. Cause it's like a sin to say that to somebody. So I'm trying not to say, where do you get your ideas? I'm recognizing that that's a sin, but I'm trying to get at that. So I'm trying to offer up like, uh,

okay. Uh, Cal, our buddy Callahan is not here. He, he, he, he's like the bird hunters is the greatest hunt he thinks it's better than country boy can survive and and fred bear no

steve evan i heard you mention in an in an interview once that a lot of your ideas for songs come from this time before you had cell phones. Yeah, I kind of put it in that time period when I was like, well, I didn't get a cell phone until I was like 19. Because you weren't allowed one or just didn't get one? I just don't think I got one. I don't know. It was another place. We were behind the times pretty pretty bad where i grew up but um yeah i i liked that um and i still try to like put everything in that sort of that's a romantic time period for me

or whatever so yeah oh i see okay so you mean most of the stuff you're doing is based off these interactions and experiences that occurred sure yeah and what would be pre-cell phone simpler times yeah simpler times so with the bird hunters i'm not going to ask you where the idea came from so you know what i mean so there's a hemingway short story called the three-day blow that part of that comes from and then parts of it are from real life and parts of it are just stuff i made up from my experiences but if you get a great deal like if you get a great deal like um you go to hell and i'm going home uh i would picture that i would be sitting there and i would overhear someone i'd be like in a parking lot and i'd overhear someone say um you go to hell i'm going home

and then like that would always live in my head and And then I would start adding things to that. That's pretty much it. Yeah. Give me a thing that's stewing in your head right now. Oh, I don't know. I can't do that. You don't have like a burning thing stewing in your head right now? I tell somebody they'll steal it.

Yeah, but they won't know how to fly. Yeah, somebody will. If I told you, just whisper it to them. Don't you remember our conversation with the Isbell brothers and Luke about how they just get together and then just churn and churn like a machine pumping the music out? That's all it takes. Yeah, but I don't think that you could do the same.

Yeah, if those guys get a hold of this stuff, gold. You think I'm going to get a piece of it? See, I actually got him on here right now. He's like... I imagine that cowboying is ripe. Oh, yeah. It can be. Definitely in Southeast Texas, there's a lot of...

It's easy for it to be silly, though. You got to watch out. I don't want to sound like dialogue for you. Is it right now current evans life just constantly giving you ideas central oklahoma does not offer up a lot of ideas all the time no it's not as many as you think you want me to give you a shitload of ideas right now sure check this out this is like i don't know if you know kren's a really good producer i don't doubt it at all listen to this so this is like so unfunny i had there's a very unfunny thing to happen i'm gonna give you a bunch of song ideas

in a minute here what state are all these song ideas from the family that has all the sayings okay i was trying to come up with an old time saying and i'll just tell you it's it's so stupid but uh i was observing how if you send your kids out to pick pole beans and i'll be like they'll be how many i bet all of them and they'll come in and i got them all and you go out and they definitely did not get them all then you send your visiting friend out and she'll say, I got them all. And you go out and be like, she didn't get them all. And I came up with this saying, it's an old saying, but I just invented it. And this is taking off like wildfire.

A fresh set of eyes will always find more beans. Now, a guy wrote in that anapodotin, there's a word, anapodotin is a word, anapodotin. And anapodotin is a rhetorical device in which a thought is intentionally expressed, intentionally expressed incompletely. Because you know that people know the other half. So when someone says, when in Rome, that is a anapodotin. I gotcha. Yeah.

Birds of a feather. Yeah, you're you're engaging somebody to to fill in blanks. So they're part of the storytelling.

What do you say? Different strokes. Those are all anapodotins. This is good stuff. So you could hear your brain turning. No, this isn't the song.

This isn't the shit for your song. No, I like this part. Oh, right. Phil, cut this out. Or make it if Dan and Reed, if Dan and Reed and Isabel listen, somehow it can't come through there.

Yeah, I'll find their IP address. We'll block it. It can't come to their IP address. A guy's like, because you're saying, he's pointing out that it's kind of dorky, but a fresh set of eyes. that works you're good but it's

also just so literal at that point yeah it is it gets mighty literal yeah because there's not much like the beans is what makes it sort of funny to apply it to a fresh situation but if you just find a deer that's been out there that no one's seen and you just say a fresh set of eyes there's nothing really to fill to fit in people have written in dozens of variations more eyes on the vine leaves less behind more beans you will find with a fresh set of eyes leaves less behind. More beans you will find with a fresh set of eyes. What do you think about these rhymes?

Well, here's the thing. So this guy wrote in and he goes, I got a lot of old-fashioned sayings that our family invented. And these are where the songs are lying. Let me know if anyone's heard these before. That's a damn thin shingle. They ain't got two sides.

Imagine a shingle. Your shingles on your roof have gotten so thin. It doesn't have two sides. It's so thin it doesn't even have two sides anymore. It's your little red wagon. Sorry. It's your little red wagon. Sorry. It's your little red wagon. You can push it or pull it.

Haven't heard it. Nope. Okay. Well, I wear a nine, but a nine and a half felt so good, I got a 10. Nope. Well, it's bigger than a butter bean, and you eat those one at a time. I think you started with the better ones.

Yeah. If Junior is fishing in the mud puddle with a broomstick, don't call him stupid until you ask how many he has caught. I like that one. I could picture that being a song. It's kind of a long saying. None of this is grabbing you. We need to get, instead of having Evan Pellicron,

we should have got that damn guy read from the news. No, he could have made a song. He'd have 15 songs written. I fear we might be setting your songwriting back a few weeks with this I don't know we're gunking up the works here yeah it's like actually

counterproductive if this reed guy churning out stuff it takes me a year to do an album six years whatever do you feel you guys done five albums? we have and you did an album that wasn't really an album yeah we did one kind of in a garage in duran oklahoma that didn't sound the sound quality was

not because you because you guys were touring but didn't have anything to sell yeah we were playing bars and stuff like right around like really crappy bars in oklahoma originals though yeah we were playing original songs. We were playing songs off that record and then whatever else they made us play. And you wanted to have a thing to sell so you made an album. And then later you had to be like, well, not really that album.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. What happened to that? Is that album still out there? Kind of, maybe. I don't know. Which one is it? In what form was it back then?

It was a CD. It's not on Spotify. Yeah, we just made a bunch of CDs. It's not on Spotify? No. No, it's not on Spotify. Do you want it to then? It was a CD. It's not on Spotify. Yeah, we just made a bunch of CDs. No. No, it's not on Spotify. Do you want it to be? Not really.

No. What year was that? Five? Yeah, 2005. It could be. I'm not... It just wasn't... Like, most of the guys that play,

or all the guys pretty much that we play with now weren't on it. Kyle wasn't in the band back then, and it was a pretty young iteration of what we are now. Yeah. Did you ever go back and fix any of that stuff up and redo it? Yeah, we did a few songs off of it on the Turnpike Troubadours record, the one we did in California.

You guys have had, I mean, such a long, long, long run. Mm-hmm. In years. Yeah.

Yeah, it's crazy. But then, you're not worried about putting out an album every year. No. No, and I- Is there pressure to do that that there really isn't honestly i mean it uh for a while there we were touring so so much and then stepped away from all of it for

x amount of time and it's still like five years and some change was the longest we've gone putting out a record you know whatever two and a half three of it. We weren't, weren't even playing or thinking about playing. Yeah. So, you know, um, but no, there's not any pressure, but I do, I do like, you know, having, having songs, having something to promote, keeping things new, having new songs, you know, cause without a, without a record, it's hard to play new originals in the shows too. So you become your own cover band. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. Um, you guys broke up for a while. How sick of talking like on a one to 10, how sick of, are you talking about this? Not at all.

Whatever. Yeah. I don't, I don't mind talking about it at all You know Yanni Yanni here texted me this morning And he's like hey can we talk about drinking on the show Oh yeah

I said I imagine so Quit Quit and drinking It's a lot in the album What were you thinking about Yannis Yannis periodically quits drinking. Really? He did a whole year one time.

Really? Well, I think the older I get, the more and more I think about it more and more. And you think about being present for people in your life. And if you're on the sauce even just a little bit, you're not 100% there. And I see other people close to my life that battle with it and i see it all the time too you know and i'm it was the the best thing that ever happened to me was getting sober i've been i'll have four years or so in january total sober toes completely sober yeah do you even do you drink na beer i do you're not supposed to talk about it but heineken zero zero is pretty good why are we not supposed Totally sober. Completely sober, yeah. Do you drink NA beer? I do.

You're not supposed to talk about it, but Heineken 00 is pretty good. Why are we not supposed to talk about it? I don't know. It's just not a good example. Who's not supposed to talk about it? You're not a good role model if you just don't want to talk about it. Oh, hold on a minute. Like a recovered, like if you quit drinking. Yeah.

It's bad form drink? It's not good form to like if you're helping people quit drinking to propose that slamming some na beers you know it's just not a great look i cannot like if you're going to work or something i so completely disagree with that it actually has was a cool thing and like it's it's nice to be able to drink a beer like after an entire life of you know that being a sort of cornerstone of what yeah what people did you know you guys all know and like no man I can talk about this subject this is so off subject for us we usually talk about outdoor stuff but I I'd talk about this kind of stuff all day long yeah um there was a time like you had a quote in that in a I think you were in a Rolling Stone profile on you.

You know, a quote like, if you didn't drink like that, you weren't our kind of people. Yeah. When I was in, for a lot of years, I was suspicious of people. Me too. They made me uncomfortable. And I was joking before you came in we were joking i was joking if someone you know suspicious of people that didn't drink oh yeah like when i was in graduate school and if someone was you know someone like invited like some folks

you went to school with were getting together to play a board game or watch a movie or something and you sounded got the sense that they weren't all gonna be totally wasted you'd be like i don't know it sounds uncalled sounds awkward yeah you know it's just you couldn't what are we gonna talk about well yeah i'd be like i'd either but like to be if i if i was out in the mountains or out in the woods i like that and if i was in town i was drinking i'd write in the day and I was going to drink at night. And if not, if I wasn't do that, I was going to go hunting or fishing. If I was hunting or fishing, I didn't, I didn't even like barely had a thirst, barely had a thirst, but I could not be in a social arena without having, cause it was just so, it's just too intimate.

You know, I see now at the time I just thought it was like, we were just trying to have fun. It'd just be easier to go laugh about stuff with your buddies than it would be to, to engage, you know? Um, and Yanni, cause I don't know if you know,

Yanni's, well, he's Latvian and they like to pull a cork. Really? And Latvia. So Yanni would periodically check to make sure he didn't need to pull a cork. Really? In the lab, yeah. So Yanni would periodically check to make sure he didn't need to pull a cork. Did a month? Still do.

Did a month? Yeah, did a month. Did a year. Where are you at now? Like, I don't know, five days. Like, specifically right now? Yeah. Yeah.

Five days. I haven't been drunk since, the time i got drunk it was in well no that's a different story since i last had a beer versus no when was the last time you got drunk oh i don't know i've been drunk in years and years months again you got drunk a couple months ago well again that depends on what the definition of that is like drunk enough to be like i'm not going to drive yeah a couple months ago yeah but that doesn't take much the last time i got drunk we were at shot show in las vegas and we were out with kent and caruth and i remember having like five six uh vodka tonics vodka sodas hung over for 48 hours no thank you and i was and i never ever again because the thing i say this all the time the thing that got me

the thing that made me quit drinking and i never like like i didn't struggle to quit drinking when i used to call about drinking i'm talking like drink drinking it wound up not being hard because uh i got too sick of the hangovers But the thing that happened to me that was most impactful was having young kids. My oldest is 13. So I would find that you would, I would find myself being annoyed at them in the morning. Yeah.

Because they're up and ready to rock so early. Being hungover doesn't help that. Yeah. And so you're kind of like irritated or you'd hear them, you know, you hear them, they're up and ready to rock so early. Being hungover doesn't help that. Yeah. And so you're kind of like irritated or you'd hear them. You hear them. They're up and you know they're up. You learn how to be a very light sleeper as a parent. And so you'd be like, you hear a noise.

Bang. And you're like, and I just remember thinking like. Son of a gun. Seriously? Five more minutes, please. Yeah, seriously. And catch myself in that annoyance and then having the realization of being like these people did not ask to be born yeah they did not like

ask to come live in this house you did this you know you created this scenario you did this and if anyone can learn anything from reading corn mccarthy once you do something you should not pretend you didn't do it and and that little bit of guilt about just not being ready to rock in the morning it was the thing that like ultimately did it and i haven't gotten to the point now i just don't but in terms just to return to the na beer thing yeah you know if you're out at an event and people around you are drinking and you just go up and get water or whatever you you're so you're aware like something in your brain is aware that you're not yep but i have found if you get an na beer and put really spicy bloody mary mix in it about a one to four ratio spicy bloody mary mix one part three parts and a beer you think because there's a burn the spice there's the fizz of the beer and

the spice of the thing and there's a burn in the back of your throat that makes your brain think that you're like social do you know what i'm saying if i'm doing that i can like converse your brain's starting to tell you everything's gonna be okay you know yeah i'm like oh yeah you know it shuts off and then all of a sudden there i am talking to some guy i don't know and i'm like well actually i was born in michigan, you're from Tulsa? Do you know Bob? All that kind of shit. And there I am, talking to some guy I don't know very well.

That's funny. Which you don't like doing. Not a ton. I like talking to him. I don't know him. I haven't. So I just am surprised about it, that the na thing is is regarded as not positive it depended on who you're talking to but it's just so close to the line for some people that it would

be easy to step over it and you know what i mean for there's certain people at certain parts of their sobriety that it's not a very strong thing you know and so they're on They're on knife such. It's good to set a better example. That's all. This is my buddy Jimmy Dorn's bar, radio bar. Is this messing with you that I got this bar shirt on? No, I don't care. You're like, where exactly is that bar? Yeah.

I go to plenty of bars. How old were you? Did you start drinking real young? Yeah, pretty young, like probably 15 or so. That was how it was when you grew up? Yeah, it's just. We didn't have you. Yeah. Where I grew like probably 15 or so. That was how it was. Yeah. It's just, we didn't, yeah.

Where I grew up, we didn't, there wasn't, um, not that there wasn't drugs were not alcohol was the thing. Yeah. Pretty much for us too.

Yeah. In high school and stuff. It was like, I'm sure there was like, you know, there's probably stuff I didn't know about for the most part where I grew up. You,

you had, we would develop in our community we we would develop very serious drinkers by 17 18 years old we would develop daily drinkers by 17 18 years old of the guys i've graduated high school with there were a number that were daily drinkers yeah at that age and then buddies of mine now are like, man, it's just not. It's like, it's edibles and stuff now. It's like a lot of weed now, but it's not like that in those rural areas anymore, you know?

But I don't know. Starting young. Yeah, everybody drank all day. Like, drink, like, it was not uncommon for people I know to drink beer all day and work and stuff. Like, it's, I mean, a lot of it, I guess it was probably their days off that I was around them,

you know, probably my days off too, but it seems so much like a lot of day drinking. Would you probably not even gotten into music if it wasn't for drinking? No, cause they go hand in hand, man. I don't know.

Probably not. Maybe not. I mean, I wouldn't take for any thing. I, you know, I wouldn't do it again, but you know, I wouldn't mean i wouldn't take for anything i've you know i wouldn't do it again but you know i wouldn't i wouldn't take for it i'm really happy with where i'm at but yeah i think that partying and stuff like that would have had a big impact on me playing i mean i just because you would have never gotten you never gotten drawn into the you wouldn't have gotten drawn into the nightlife

like like starting out in music it's a nightlife and then the nightlife would have been intolerable if you were just a straight-laced sober guy you know it's not for it's for other people i don't mean to reference norm mcdonald twice but, but Norm MacDonald has a whole bit about going out to the bars after you quit drinking. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And then he talks about hooking up and how awkward it is when you're not drinking. Well, ma'am, I'll be putting on my trousers now. Just how hard it is to go through life with all your uh drinker buddies did uh when you got to

where you didn't want to play anymore what was going on uh that was kind of so i was kind of trying to figure out life in general and i i mean i was burnt out on playing that was all i'd done from the time i was you know from the time i was 24 or so until the time I was about 34 for about 10 years. I mean, that's all I thought about all I did and playing, not just performing, but just like on the road. Yeah. Right. Oh, so, okay. So for you playing is the road. Yeah, correct. I got you. Yeah. And, and I'll, you know, part of it, there was a long sort of romantic period there where I, where I wrote a lot. I was very creative. I mean, alcohol had that effect on me at that point in time.

And then it didn't. And we were in the bars four or five nights a week, and everything just was nuts. And so I thought, well, I get off the road. This problem will solve itself. I changed sort of my schedule yeah yeah then i can fix that and plus i wanted to to learn there's so much more to the life than being in the bars playing music and all this sort of base level stuff so you know i wanted to i went back i went down there and worked for Justin at the rice farm in whatever capacity I could. And then we started messing more with cattle and building fence and this and that.

So when you walked away and went down, you walked away and literally went down and started working. Yeah. Yeah. What was your financial situation though? You were set or not set? I was good enough. I didn't have a lot of bills, so yeah, I was good enough. I didn't have kids at that point in time.

And so I was just out. Yeah. And you guys like deleted all your social media stuff and everything? I think, I don't know. I wasn't part of that. You did. Yeah, I guess so. And then what happened down there um then i realized that i wasn't drinking too much because i was on the road i was drinking too much because you're

drinking because i was an alcoholic oddly enough god uh yeah so it wasn't the bars after all no they certainly had their hand in it but it was time to make another big change. And so once I realized that I couldn't control that, I went to, I had a buddy of mine, like somebody that I look up to, a bronc rider guy. And he was the first person that I'd ever known that actually went to like any kind of treatment and had success in that and like his life just immediately got better and he was a happy dude and was better at everything that he did and so he said hey i got a spot for you like it's you ought to just go to this place where i went and i went and did like a 90-day deal and changed my life and was that 90-day deal just done so like you walk in the door and you're

not gonna drink yep yep did you sit out in the parking lot for a minute no he's walked right in yep yep and uh you stay there what do you do for 90 days it's so fun uh now it's just a lot of classes and learning about addiction in general and uh so they tell you what it is yeah and for a kind of halfway analytical guy like me that's what it took you know that helped me to understand sort of some physiology stuff and understand what habits are and what's going on and uh yeah so it was it was pretty boring but it's but it's also like you have to rewire your entire being because i'm like this maniac who's coming out of the bars

and can do had for 10 years could do anything you wanted to at any given time of any day so sort of have to learn responsibility and i'm very lucky that i got to do that before i had kids because now i got two little ones and i and they do annoy me in the mornings but it's but you know at least i'm not hung over and mad at them you know so it's it's lucky are you familiar with that long running show um Fresh Air with the host Terry Gross. I'm familiar. Have you ever done that show? Mm-mm. I've never done it. I'd like to. She had a neuroscientist on or like a, I don't know.

Does that mean a brain scientist? Randall. Randall's got a PhD in history. Yeah. That means a brain doctor? Yes, yes. Well, a neurologist, a doctor would be a neurologist. A neuroscientist I think would be like neurologist uh a neuroscientist i think

would be like a researcher yeah that's this person was they studied addictions and they studied the effects of um different chemicals on your brain and she said that she was she was talking about the ways that things what they do in you and And she talked about the, like cocaine is, has a, like a laser intensity, what it does and the chemically it's doing a very specific thing inside your head. Right. Um, like a's like a laser burning in there. And then, uh, we, she described it as spilling paint on something. And then, uh,

she said, alcohol is, is someone in there with a hammer. Oh, it's affected a lot of, a lot of parts. Yeah. And then the physiology part of it too, you know, you see, yeah, it's, it's affected a lot of parts. Yeah. And then the physiology part of it too.

You know, you see, yeah, it's a, and it's such a ubiquitous thing. Like it's just everywhere and so widely accepted that being addicted to it has its own name. Like you're an addict, right? It's just a drug, but you're an alcoholic because it's more accepted culturally. Yeah. It's just a drug, but you're an alcoholic because it's more accepted culturally. Yeah. If someone says someone's a drug addict, I'm always like, oh. Oh, boy.

Hope you don't shoot me. Soften it up a little. Yeah. Oh, he's just an alcoholic. That's cool. And it's the world over. You can be in a small village in South America, and guess what? Someone's brewing up some booze.

Yeah. I was talking to a woman the other day. We were camping. Not the other day. I was talking to a woman a couple months ago camping. And she had done seven years in the federal penitentiary. And she was on the laundry crew. so she was a laundress in prison and they would get they would they would get fruit juice from the cafeteria and they were able to put they'd get these i don't know what they were using for containers but they found out how to put that

fruit juice by the dryer vent because that dryer's running around the clock and it's real warm. To ferment it. Yeah. She was saying, man, we were able to ferment, we were able to make booze in jail behind the dryer. Wow. It's like you need some booze bad, dude. I know.

Hey, folks. 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 high and titty there on X is now in Canada. The great features that you love in on X 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, 24 K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, 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. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Evan, what was your drink of choice back then?

I drank beer. I drank Mexican beer a lot of the time but for years it was just cheap beer whatever like keystone or whatever did you uh did you have to relearn how to come up with stuff oh yeah everything i had to i had to learn a lot because like so much so much your developmental um life you were relying on alcohol. You think about drinking from the time you're 15 on and how much you actually develop physically and mentally

with that chemical kicking around in your body. This person I'm talking about, this neuroscientist? Can you hold your thought? Yes. That's the other thing that really surprised me is when you if you start if you start really boozing hard at before i think if you start boozing before 18 your whole mental map

is different because you think of little kids like you're still trying to establish not kids at whatever the hell teen high schoolers your brain is still trying to establish a baseline right of all this hormonal activity and like how much of this to produce and how much of that to produce and you're throwing that thing so out of whack at a developmental phase that you create an abnormal normal you're normal of like what it feels to run at normal is built on that pedestal and and so people if you look at like later you look at alcoholism rates when you start drinking as a teenager um you're creating a much greater likelihood of being a drunk later in life because you've set yourself up for it.

She was talking about there are very few, you can't find cases of people who don't drink and start drinking at 40 and become an alcoholic. Yeah. It don't happen. You got to develop it like a fine wine. It's a long journey. What's funny about that too is that there was a period of time, like after I quit drinking, that there's so much emotional maturity.

You still develop. It's neat. I spent these sort of very formative years in my 30s learning sort of how to be a man whatever you know like be trustworthy and do do these things correctly and sort of be the guy that you know that i i want to be now um around like those people in southeast texas that i sort of look up to but but it but it was certainly, you could feel it. Like there were a couple of years where I felt like I grew up emotionally,

you know, became a different post, became an adult. Yeah. Post alcohol. Yeah. So strange. So you wait,

you rated your trustworthiness and found it to be low. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. I mean, I was like,

now if I say I'm going to do something, I typically, unless something falls apart, I do it. Even if it's hopefully, even if it's something small. But back then so everybody just and everybody read drinkers you know like all the right yeah so you know everybody wants everybody's gonna be an avant-garde writer you know i was at kind of like a like a high-end writing program and so everybody read like raymond carver and charles buch and, you know, and all the drug addicts and right. And, uh, so super cool to drink. And you talk about like the trustworthiness, it used to be a running joke, man, at, at one in the morning in the bar, everybody was going ice fishing in the morning at seven when you're supposed to meet at my house, crickets. Except for a dude named Ben Block. If you're out there, Ben, Ben Block would be there.

The Hemingway line is like, always do what you say you're going to do drunk. It'll teach you to keep your mouth shut or whatever. This dude, Ben, he was a painter. He didn't grow up doing any kind of serious outdoor stuff, but I took him out ice fishing. He's a really good painter. I took him out ice fishing. We pulled a big northern up, threw a hole in the ice,

and he said it was like watching the lake give birth. That's a good analogy. Oh, buddy. it said it was like watching the lake give birth oh buddy i like that guy what uh um oh another observation because i want to get back into what it's like to write tunes when you got to do it totally differently but the thing i miss my wife talks about it too is um how funny everything was stuff is not funny like that anymore yeah but there is funny stuff like that out there you just have to pursue it so like oh tell me tell me where to find that well i can um but uh you know like the average stuff is not as fun but it's stuff that you don't need to be doing anyway you know like sitting around on a tailgate bullshitting with people that you half know or whatever like yeah like that's not funny that's not good necessarily good company and not good use of your time right okay but um i i do like like you you've had some good belly

laughs like on these big like hunting trips that you go on with your buddies or whatever. Not as many. Like, that's real. Yeah. Yeah, not as many. I get it. So when you, how did you get back into writing, though? I set a deadline, and I said I'd do it because I knew I wasn't going to.

Because now you're trustworthy anyways. Yeah. I told them I'd do it. Sadly enough, that't going to do it because now you're trustworthy anyways yeah I told him I'd do it sadly enough that's how it went the new you the new you said you'd do it

well I pay my bills on time and now so we decided we wanted to go back in the studio we played some had we played some

shows already Patty before we decided to do the record or we decided to do the record before oh Patty can you introduce yourself Patty our manager oh hey sorry this is uh yeah this is patty i'm i'm turnpike's manager um we we had set out that we were gonna we were gonna record but we were gonna do some shows before we record it got it and you had to do like in the beginning of the Blues Brothers movie, you had to get the band back together.

Yeah. It's exactly like that. So you had to go around. Which one came first? And find them wherever they were. Assembled my crew. Yeah. No, we were all ready to, we'd stayed pretty close. And so we, yeah, we just set some dates and i just did what i could and just hammered

and hammered and hammered at it until something felt good felt like i could be proud of it maybe so you had like i gotta i gotta do 12 or whatever the hell it is yeah and i just got as many as i could but i'm in doing that kind of learned how to do it again and learned what i like and what i'm after was it something that you missed after a while of being away from it like it built up that you hadn't scratched this this creative itch i mean you're obviously focused on other things but like after a certain period of time away from it like you felt like you had to go back to it or what was that sort of relationship with the craft like like i think if i'd known it was off the table forever i would have missed it but um no it i always felt like I'd come back to it.

So, and there's certain aspects of it that are really, really neat. Like that connection with a big audience like that and singing together with like that many people at once is very, very interesting. I mean, it's such a. I can't imagine. Yeah, it's such a neat moment to get to have. With those kind of numbers, though, it probably loses... It's not as... When you're with a ton of people, the awkwardness probably goes away because there's nothing super like...

Like if we made you sing a song in here, for instance. I'd be very scared. But you wouldn't be when it's a one in thousands when it's so not as much no it's not as and there are even like situations where the you know the right people in the room with 10 or 15 people would be the scariest to do if it's somebody you wanted to impress or whatever you know like all your musical heroes sure like kick us out a song evan about pole beans yeah and when you when you went on hiatus you had done you had done four albums yes okay yeah something like that four four and then bozer city i think yeah first one and then uh i was reading too that you had uh when you got back into writing you'd establish

like a with one of your bandmates you you were sharing writing prompts is this thing oh that was jamie wilson so she had a book and it's really cool it's called this isn't that rolling stone interview yep she talked about it and we yeah so it was the series of writing prompts and this and that and you just it was in a book yeah and so we both got the book and we were both like going through it together just for fun what would be an example oh man i'd have to um it's been a couple of years but i think one of them was just like right for 10 seconds or not right for 10 seconds but like right for 60 seconds on this subject in whatever way you can. And it was just like cyclist.

And so you're out of story. So that's where you guys, and that's where we were. That's one example. You know, when I read it, I took it to be that, that you guys would send each other prompts that you'd come up with to build

on something. It was like a writing exercise, but that helped you get back into it. Yeah, it did. Honestly did honestly it's i want to go back and go back through that book it's pretty neat so where are things at where are things at now i mean are you are you um do you picture that you want to do music for 20 more years or i mean yeah you do yeah like you'll do it as long as you can do it yeah how was it um i grew up you know listening to my dad's whalen records and then by default i came into the shooter yeah era how much did he like was the magic in this new lp he's a he's just a really nice guy and like he's one of those

people that music is it for him. Like he loves it. Like he loves, he knows every record. He knows who produced it. He knows who played on it. Like that's his, like life, life makes sense. We're talking about shooter Jennings.

Yeah. And so having somebody like that, that that's just, that's that, that passionate about it. Um, and that well-versed and everything. Um, it was, it was amazing.

How does a relationship like that come up? How did that come to be? Had you guys always been buddies or something? Kind of, yeah. We were acquaintances, and we liked each other, and then the opportunity came up, and he'd been doing, you know. Like he'd just done Tanya Tucker's stuff? Yeah, and you could just, there's so much stuff just right there handy the opportunity came up and he'd been doing you know like he just done tanya tucker's yeah and

you could just there's so much stuff just right there handy that you could listen to and say hey this is really really great quality and he got really good performances out of these people like why why not work with him you know and uh what's your like what's your next project gonna be i don't know we'll just do another studio album probably are you baking on that yeah trying to but nothing major fresh set eyes always buy more beans that's not bad probably it'll probably wind up in one of them sure is dusty down here in oklahoma yeah um but i do have a question on that you mentioned earlier that uh you kind of you'd be wary maybe of like the cowboy genre a little bit because it'd be so easy to be hokey.

I feel like throwing in some hunting stuff into your tunes could probably have some of those same pitfalls. Are you mindful of that as you're writing? It could. Yeah, you have to be like... Yeah, it could be... It could come across as silly or like

I'm forcing something. But bird hunting is such a thing for me. It's something that I fell in love with pretty naturally. I quit, so I coon hunted for a long time. And I got tired of being out late. So I sort of just traded that for a pointer. Did you train your own dogs back then? Yeah.

Would you have walkers? You ever out in the woods run into a guy named Clay Newcomb? I don't know. You guys were border mates. Oh, yeah? He was right across in Arkansas. Oh, really?

In the Ouachita. But he was in the Ouachitas, yeah. You might have heard his hounds across state lines. Oh, probably. You might have chased the same coon. Probably. Do you have walkers or blue ticks?

I had both. And I think, I want to say I had a red tick dog or two. I never had any real good ones. We ran a lot of deer. We were out late a lot. And we also drank a lot of beer. Yeah. I was out.

We're not quite sure whose place you were on some of the times, probably. But, you know, most of it was public. Okay. Oh was out. We're not quite sure whose place you're on some of the times probably. But you know, most of it was, was public. So, you know. Okay. Oh yeah.

Cause it was a warehouse. You guys had a lot of pub. Okay. I see. Yeah. Yeah. So we had plenty of places to go, but yeah,

it was just. Now, would you ever throw in a Coonhound reference? Probably subtle. I have. I did on this record. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I heard that this morning. About the place in the bottoms. Yeah. You know, um, we were always raised that we had the shotgun that had come from my mom's dad. And, um, my dad, so my mom's dad had had it, but my dad wound up with it. And he had always told people it was a Belgium. It was a Browning auto, whatever that was, i don't know a5 he always told everybody it was belgium made

yeah and because you guys have you have that reference yeah and uh when he died we looked up the serial number was not funny that's a that's a thing man that i like is uh it winds up being we're talking to we talked to luke combs about this once he's got a song you know he talks about like a johnson outboard right he'd be like well you know obviously it's not gonna be a right it's not gonna be a honda yamaha right i mean i own i own five honda four strokes i have a four-stroke jet which i adore and would like i'd rather give up my kid than my jet boat yamaha jet right but you don't write songs but i thought it was a weird yeah it's like a weird choice to throw in that it's a belgium because it's like there's like about

two people who'd be like oh i get that yeah i don't know i think that's just i don't know that's just like a seem like what they'd say what the guy would say or whatever no yeah no it's interesting when you have something that's um like references that are not, references that are, that have the potential of being missed. Yeah. The thing, it like harkens back to like a time period. Cause like what, that'd be something my grandfather or father would say. You wouldn't hear Belgium made as much now. Yeah.

I feel like there's sometimes when you hear hunting and fishing or outdoor references and songs, It's like something that it's so superficial. It's like a t-shirt or a bumper sticker slogan. And you're like, oh, did, does that person hunt or fish? Or did someone say add a hunting and fishing line in there? Yeah. Talk about a big buck or something like that. Do you tend to go out of your way to put more in or go out of your way to take them out? What's that?

Like hunting stories? Hunting visual references. I typically write about hunting because I write about it as like a background for a transitional thing, you know, for a story. Like it just happens to be what they're doing because it's interesting and things are moving around yeah on the album now you're talking about going to elk hunt yeah with the with the

booze and the saddlebags right yeah oh no they're remembering the booze yeah the song is not about the elk hunt yeah yeah it's just kind of coming to a realization or a couple nas and saddlebags yep shake them up though beer and saddlebags don't go very good together huh no when i was asked about do you find taking them out or putting them in i mean if you get where you got something where it's close to what you want do you sometimes say to yourself man i, I need to lighten up. You know, I'm going to pull a couple of those out. I'm going to pull some of that hunting fish and stuff out.

Or do you look and be like, I need to put more. I need to get heavier. This is not heavy enough. Yeah. So you might catch it. It needs to be a little more like, yeah,

it needs to be a little more like clear. Like if it, what if the story is just kind of boring and then I just put it in a hunting backdrop? And then there's more happening, so it's more interesting. Yeah. You know, we've talked a lot about how No Cunch for Old Men feels like a hunting book. Mm-hmm. For only one reason when he finds that massacre site right he's blood trailing an animal he completely forgets about the blood trail yep there's no reference to it we actually hunter or spencer newhart did a little work on it and he was almost

certainly poaching there's no way he would have drawn that tag um but either way it's just like he's like he had to be doing a thing when he finds the money you know and he's like i'll have him i guess what would make sense he was hunting but it like burns in your head like that first scene and then for somehow they could carries with it that it's like this thing about hunting and you look at it you're like well no it's just it's just like you said i needed to have them doing a thing it's good and that's what i had them doing he blood trails himself into you know the the murder you know it's a or a massacre or whatever but yeah it's just brilliant stuff and he'd be doing it anyway our character like that lou ellen characters you know he's going to be out doing something staying away from the

house right yeah it's good he's not out picking daisy the story would have felt very different if he found money on the way to work he's driving around had a job that he really likes yeah and he worked hard for it so So what do you guys got? What's your, what's your tour situation right now? Um, it's, we,

we play quite a bit. I mean, we're just staying steady throughout the year now. I'm inviting you to plug something specific if you feel like it. We have a show in Oklahoma in January. I think that we are. Yeah. Two or three nights.

Yeah. Isbell's playing with us. And Charles Wesley Godwin Not until January That's in January Is that Is that part of a big tour Or what

Oh yeah We're playing in Florida This weekend Oh okay So who's that Man I don't know You got Knoxville November 16th

Which I was gonna go And I You guys need to come to that But I got a hunting tag I gotta try to fill it You're not So you're not going? No I'm gonna try to get

This mule deer So if you see an empty Seat out there Yeah It's that fella So you're not You're not on a Like a very

You're not You don't have Upcoming right now Or anything A very scheduled Like you know Five night a week Uh uh

No it'll be like Three nights here Maybe a weekend off could be four or five nights but it's all pretty haphazard yeah how many will you want like if in the next calendar year what would be your guess on how many shows you'll do oh i don't know 50 or something 55 close enough that's a lot though yes plenty yeah it's cool to get to be home every week having little kids like that.

Sure. Right. Do you bring your kids out on the road? Sometimes. Now that we have two, it's been trickier. So, but not like out on the road.

Like sometimes Stacy brings them to see us or whatever. Yeah. They don't come out on the bus. I don't like that. They're not on the bus. You'll bring your family on the bus. No,

we're all, we've got a big crew and yeah yeah you'd almost have to have your own setup for that um did corinne talk to you about playing something she maybe did i don't know well you got your i brought a guitar so you don't mind doing it no i don't think so but it's gonna be it'll be awkward for you because it's so intimate in here? Probably. Intimate and warm. Yeah, but it's got to be hot in a lot of them concert halls. It is sometimes, yeah. What are you going to play?

I don't know. I thought I might play Bird Hunters. Yeah, do that. People would like that. Well, Cal would like it. Oh, he's going to be bummed. How do we set this all up, Phil? Phil's probably going to want to do some little thing.

Hunter, if we can just get a mic kind of relatively close to his guitar and then he can sing into that one. We can angle that one down. And while we're filling time here, has anyone here seen Killers of the Flower Moon yet? No. No, but I feel like I'm just getting bombarded by Oklahoma because I was hunting.

I saw it this weekend and it's funny because Scorsese put a bunch of musicians in there. Like Isbel's in there, Sergil Simpson, Pete Yorden. Jason Isbel is incredible. If you didn't know he wasn't a musician, you'd be like, oh, who's this awesome character actor?

But I was just thinking because- He plays one of the victim's husbands or something. Yeah. And he's got scenes with Leo and he steals the scene. It's really, he's great. But I was just thinking because Evan would have fit right in there.

He's just got that vibe that I think Scorsese was looking for. You think I could have been in that movie? really, he's great. But I was just thinking because Evan would have fit like right in there. He's just got that vibe that I think Scorsese was looking for. You think I could have been in that movie? Oh, totally, yeah. You know, we had the author

of that book sitting right where you sit. David Grand was in here. Really? Yeah, he sat right there. Man. Charlie Crockett wrote the theme song

for it too. But he was, David Grand was here promoting, he wasn't promoting Killers of the Flower Moon, he was promoting The Wager. Oh man, I don't know if this thing's in tune is that okay i wouldn't know

don't you got that app on your phone i do no i thought i was gonna turn you onto that app Covey took wing The shotgun's a-singin' A pawn dog down On the old logging road And Danny got three And looked back a-grinnin' the old logging road and Danny got three and looked back grinning I fumbled around

and tried to reload the country was cold where the sun westward sinking it's good to be back in this place with my hands around

A Belgian maid brown And my mind on the lines of her face How good does it feel You belong in these hills It's best that you let it all in. You'd have married that girl, you'd have married her family, but you dodged a bullet, my friend. She said, go on back to Cherokee County

Won't you crawl back with nothing but a razor and comb She says, baby, if you need me, I'll be where you found me Go on to hell, honey, I'm headed home. Dancers, look at old Jim. A dozen Decembers behind him. No worse for the wear. Your time spent in Tulsa did not help your shooting Look at

the gray in your hair How good does it feel You belong in these heels It's best that you let it all in You'd have married that girl You'd have married her family

But you dodged a bullet, my friend She said, go on back to Cherokee County Won't you crawl back with nothing But a razor and comb Say, baby, if you need me I'll be where you found me Go on to hell, honey I'm headed home

Oh, and I was beginning to deal with it And then the old dog had pointed and part of me died Then a flutter of feathers Then a shotgun to shoulder I thought of the 4th of July Should be home on the 4th of July Bet we'd dance on the 4th of July Dance says hell of a shot Looks like you still got it That's what we came here to do well it's light enough still at the foot of the

hill you could kick up a single or two she said go on back to Cherokee County Won't you crawl back with nothing but a razor and comb Says, baby, if you need me, I'll be where you found me Go on to hell, honey, I'm headed home Go on to hell, honey, I'm headed home. Go on to hell, honey, I'm headed home. All right, man. Beautiful. I got goosebumps.

Ladies and gentlemen, Turnpike Troubadours. Sounds like you have 55 opportunities to catch them in the next calendar year. At least. And lots of albums to choose from. Anywhere you listen to music. You can go on Spotify and listen to a bunch of stuff. You can go on YouTube and listen to a bunch of stuff. You can buy the actual things.

Come to the show and buy a CD. Come to the show and buy a CD. Dig up that old CD from the old days and sell it as a collector's item i've considered it and of course uh you know if you if you tune into your to your fm dial you will uh likely pick up some tunes as well but the best thing to do is go check them out live over the next uh over the next year throw some support thank you very much for coming on man i really appreciate it. That was great. Thanks a lot. you