The Prepper Broadcasting Network - WORKSHOP UNPLUGGED WITH FIVE TIMES AUGUST

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Tonight is a special episode of Workshop Radio we are joined by Brad of Five Times August, an artist who stood up for what he believed in and is now being rewarded for it. www.fivetimesaugust.com CONNECT WITH ME http://www.patchofthemonth.co/ PATCH OF THE MONTH CLUB http://toolmantim.co/ WEBSITE http://toolmantim.shop/ AMAZON AFFILIATE https://c3c5a9.myshopify.com/ MERCH http://www.youtube.com/c/toolmantimsworkshop/ YT https://rumble.com/c/ToolmanTimsWorkshop RUMBLE https://odysee.com/@Allseasonsmain:5 ODYSEE https://mewe.com/i/toolmantimsworkshop - MeWe http://www.facebook.com/toolmantimsworkshop/ - FB http://www.instagram.com/toolmantimsworkshop – IG https://twitter.com/toolmantimworks TWITTER http://t.me/toolmantimsworkshop TELEGRAM http://www.tiktok.com/@toolmantimsworkshop TIKTOK https://www.twitch.tv/toolmantimsworkshop TWITCH https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/toolmantim SPOTIFY https://freesteading.com/members/toolmantim/ FREESTEADING npub1738csh60emd5yl97sr092z0vqhde2fqgz3tdumcuvns2qker296q4dpx5q NOSTR http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com EXPERT COUNCIL https://www.empshield.com/link/cmz0bp0/ Save $50 on EMP Shield Mailing Address If you have anything interesting tool related you’d like to send my way, for review or just because, use the address below. U.S.A. Mailing address Toolman Tim Cook 102 Central Ave Ste 10699 Sweet Grass, MT 59484 CANADIAN Mailing Address ‘Toolman Tim’ P.O. Box 874 Provost, Alberta T0B3S0 Canada As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases Opus.Pro https://www.opus.pro/?via=toolmantim StreamYard https://streamyard.com/pal/c/5780333750648832 TubeBuddy https://www.tubebuddy.com/pricing?a=Toolman

Thanks for watching! for our lives. My family must survive. Over five years, a thousand gallons of gas, air filtration, water filtration. Coming at you from the frozen tundra that is east central Alberta, Canada, streaming live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Rumble, and Odyssey. Welcome back to the workshop where we create community, find freedom, promote preparedness, and share success. I'm Toolman Tim. Today is December the 3rd, 2023. This is episode 405 of Workshop Radio. I hope everyone out there is doing fine. I am back from a very short, abbreviated Christmas shopping trip. It was fun. I got a good buddy of mine waiting in the green room. We got all the M&Ms that he asked me for.

So he's back there just to munch on it. No, I'm just kidding. We'll bring Brad of five times August fame on in just a moment. Real quick, we only got one announcement tonight, guys, and that's our sponsor. We got to remember her. She was one of the first ones to take a chance on the workshop radio. And that is my good friend, Amy Dingman of A Farmer's Kind of Life. If you're like, you know, I kind of get tired of listening to that Tim Fowler. I need to listen to something a little different. Give Amy a go over at A Farmer's Kind of Life.

Add her in your podcast feed. If you're looking for a little bit of a cheery inspiration for your old ear holes, A Farmer's Kind of Life podcast is where it's at. So you know what guys, we are going to forego most of the niceties and we are going to bring on my good buddy Brad. Hang on. Hey Brad, how are you? All right Tim, how are we doing? Not bad at all. It's been a couple of months since we talked in person I think. Yeah, Prepper Camp is great. It's good to see you again and see everybody out there. That was my second time

going back to Prepper Camp, being invited out there through Rick and Jane Austin, who are good friends now and feel like family to the whole Prepper community. It's really great. Absolutely. We first met, it's kind of cool because you were one of the, it might've been the first in-person interview I ever did a couple of years ago at Prepper Camp. You were just kind of getting that, the gas underneath you getting going. And Rick brought you to Prepper Camp. He's like, you know, you should really interview Brad. And I interviewed you and had a beautiful looking interview with no audio.

And you were nice enough to come back. I don't know if you remember that or not. That's right. Yeah, I remember that. I do my damn best to look professional, but some days, you know how it is. So it's okay. We're at the mercy of technology these days. And when it doesn't go right, it messes it up for everything. So it's okay. It's all right. So for the couple of people in the audience tonight who don't exactly know who Brad is, or maybe they've heard of you by your more famous pseudonym, who are you? What do you do? That kind of thing. Yeah, sure. So I'm Brad Skistamis of Five Times August. I started Five Times August in 2001. I toured the country as just a singer-songwriter pop act for a little

over a decade, played a lot of colleges and university shows, had a lot of songs on different TV shows on MTV and independent films and commercials. And that's kind of what I was doing for a really long time. I took a break from that about, I don't know, 2018, and I started up a kids music project called the Juicebox Jukebox. I had became a dad, and so my songwriting mind was playing with different words, you know, that come into your aura when you're raising three kids. So I wanted to write songs for my kids, and that's what I was doing pre-pandemic. And then, yeah, 2020 rolls around, and sort of my naive outlook on the world comes crashing down, and I try to figure out what I'm supposed to say as an artist. And I wrote a song called God Help Us All and and put it out there as Five

Times August just because I wasn't sure what to do with it I had the song and and and I was like well I've been Five Times August forever I wasn't really doing much with Five Times August at the time but just released it out there and had two things happen at one time. I lost a lot of fans and then gained a lot of fans. And those new fans that I gained let me know that I wasn't alone in how I felt about the world. And so I continued down that path of writing those songs to let people know that they weren't alone either. So that's what I've been doing the last uh i guess going on three years now uh sort of releasing these protest songs if that's what

you want to call them we got a couple of fellow texans in here this evening so we'll uh all right we come along we got jewels and cold war prepper in here as well very cool texas but we're gonna i want to peg that we're going to come back to that in a minute. Let's go a little further back. Where did you grow up? I grew up in central Texas. So I grew up all around Dallas area suburbs, Highland Village, Flower Mound, for those that are in central Texas here, they might know where that is. So I grew up in the area. And I, you know, I used to think that I'd eventually move to California or New York or something like that for music, you know, because there was not didn't feel like there was much industry here or whatever.

But it's so funny, because I ended up staying in Texas. And after touring the country, seven times over kind of just realized Texas was where I wanted to be. And I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather be the last couple of years specifically than Texas. So definitely wouldn't want to have lived in California or New York the last three years. So did you, were you always into music or were, and did you start right into kind of full time musicianship or did you work a few jobs in between? Yeah, so it's interesting. I picked up a guitar at 11 and kind of self-taught myself. I started writing songs about 14.

And then by the time I graduated high school, I knew like this is what I'm going to do. And so I tried going to college and I would get distracted and I'd skip out on classes to book myself shows. And, you know, I was just, I was like going for it. And, um, I was recording music out of my bedroom and making homemade CDs and, and I was just doing it, you know, the independent route, um, right out of high school, pretty much. And, you know, of course, back in those early days, you're, you know, you're doing whatever you can, you're playing coffee shop shows and stuff like that. And I had gotten a job at CBS radio working in their promotions department

early on. And my boss there saw that I was a hungry, thriving artist. So he started sort of helping book some bigger shows for me at the time that were a little related to, you know, the radio station at the time, radio events and things like that. And then I had met actually my wife during that time as well, who there and long story short that other guy kind of fell away after a while and my wife took over all the booking things and and in between that time working at the radio station and touring I had different opportunities that came across like my first big break was on MTV's Laguna Beach and getting some songs on that show. And so that opened up a whole college demographic.

And I just started touring colleges for a really long time. It's just me and the wife in the van playing at university. So that's what I was doing for, you know, all of my 20s. What was that like when you got to see your name up in the credits for the first time? I was really excited. I remember it because we had a big watching party. I was living in Denton, Texas, and we had recorded what was the first sort of full-length five times August album. I was living with some guys in this dumpy old house. There's about six of us. It was a dilapidated house and, you know, college cleanliness, right? Six guys living together. It

was awful. But we recorded an album there called Fry Street, which was the street that we were living on. And so that I had gotten an email from a music supervisor at mtv who found those songs on a website called cd baby which is is still around um but it was um actually at that time not i apologize it's not cd baby it was mp3.com back in those days. mp3.com was like right on the verge. It was before MySpace, before any of that stuff. And it was where independent musicians could upload their music and share it with the world. And so I had a music supervisor from MTV find my stuff and say, hey, can you send me this? I'd like to include it in a show. And he didn't really give me much information, but I was like, well, what do I got to

lose out of this? It's just a CD. So I overnighted him a CD, knowing nothing about it other than it was an MTV show. And then he wrote me back and said, hey, we're going to use it in this big episode for MTV's Laguna Beach. It's going to be in the prom episode, right? Yeah. And so it was really great. It was a teenage reality series. And so there's my song, you know, like playing on MTV during this big, like that was a huge show back then.

And right as the episode ends like they go back then they would say you just turned better with you by five times august and it was great because it coincided like and with the myspace plays and everything and but we all were like yeah there's our name you know and everything and so um no it was really great. And it was really a cool way to get around radio as an independent artist. And so I started exploring music licensing from from there on out. For a really long time, that was sort of my bread and butter was finding placements for my songs. And, and a lot of them ended up being on those kind of shows at that time. So they're just pop love songs. So but yeah, I mean, it was really great. It's always wonderful to see your name in the credits of a movie or a TV show or something like that.

It's a cool thing. Has it gotten easier? It's funny that things come through in themes. You know, I had Franklin Horton on the other day and he's a post-apocalyptic author. And he talked about how in the nineties and early two thousands, it was really hard to break into the, the writing industry because it was kind of an old boys club. And there was really, there wasn't a lot of the, the online presence. Has it gotten a little easier to be an independent artist and to kind of launch your own thing now as opposed to say 20 30 years ago or no oh yeah i mean the tools now are you know you look at guys like uh tom mcdonald he's really got it mastered right now like when i started out because see the arc of my career has been interesting because I started five times August in 2001.

I was 18 and I was, you know, my vision for the future was the traditional record label. You know, I'm going to sign to a record label, have my hit on the radio. I'm going to tour the world. You know, you have this naive outlook when you start out. And but it was rooted in the traditional sense of making it right. And over the arc of my career, as I accomplished things more and more on my own, like the music licensing stuff and scheduling college shows on my own and with my wife, you know, she was sort of the business side of things. on my own and with my wife you know she was sort of the business side of things it was just the two of us and we sort of created our own little record label and we were accomplishing all this stuff so so those two things actually the music licensing in the college shows we took those two things and and went to Walmart

and said hey I've got this album and I'm an independent artist. I'd really like to get it distributed in Walmart stores nationwide. And that was sort of one of my goals for a really long time, for two years. We went after that, just trying to find the right person about, you know, who can we get to help us make this happen and I ended up becoming the first unsigned artist without any record label to get distributed distributed nationwide in Walmart and that's where when I bring up CD Baby they kind of had a silent helping hand in making that happen but um but I was accomplishing a lot on my own and by the time I met with record labels I didn't really want to to sign with them anymore because I was doing all this great stuff on my own and by the time I met with record labels I didn't really want to to sign with them

anymore because I was doing all this great stuff on my own but even that was still uneasy because because I would see my friends signing at the time it was still you know where you wanted to go you wanted to sign the label deal but um so i would see my friends sign deals that you know i was doing shows with and stuff and i'd be like oh did i mess up you know and and and more times than not like the ones that i was maybe a little jealous of at the time they would by the time their contract was up they'd be celebrating that they got dropped because their whole record got shelved or they wrote all these songs that were never going to be released so the experience you know just getting signed doesn't mean you've

made it and it doesn't mean even that your music's going to be heard it just means that you're under contract of this label who's now going to do whatever they want with you and so I feel like I kind of, you know, I was saved a little bit by not ever going down that route. And then about that time, too, these tools started coming into play as well. YouTube was becoming more normal. And a lot of people were actually starting to make a living on YouTube, creating content. And the social media platforms were becoming more acceptable. Like when I first signed on to Facebook, you had to have a college ID, and it was just people. You know, it's just college students back in the day. This is like 2004, maybe 2005. And I remember writing Facebook way early on saying, Hey, why don't we do a

like a streaming online concert? And they were like, Oh, no, we're not into doing anything like that. And you know, lo and behold, later down the road, Facebook, you know, has music pages and hosts events and sponsors things. So it's all to say, you know, so much has changed over the last 20 years. But the tools at hand right now you can record songs out of your bedroom just like i did when i was 18 back then put them out and you know um it doesn't cost a lot of money if it if it goes viral it goes viral so um yeah it's definitely a whole new ball game now so one more question kind of about your backstory. Who did you listen to? Who were your influences back in the, so you're about two years younger than me, so I'm

thinking we're probably in the same ballpark, but who were you listening to? Who'd you grow up listening to that kind of inspired you to become a musician? Well, I grew up listening to a lot of music from the 50s and 60s. And so I always really enjoyed, you know, what you would hear on oldies radio. I enjoyed Beatles. I enjoyed any kind of British rock kind of music. But that didn't really necessarily inspire me. I didn't get in. I don't think I was inspired as a songwriter until John Mayer came along and Dave Matthews Band and Jason Mraz and those guys, because I was that's, you know, they were writing those pop love songs. I was I was at that age, 17, 18, where, you know,

you wanted to be the cute guy at a party with your acoustic guitar picking up girls. And so, wanted to be the cute guy at a party with your acoustic guitar picking up girls. And so, you know, that's kind of what I wanted to mimic. And that's what was inspiring me kind of around when I started out. But I love so much music now across the board. My influences pool from all over the place. But yeah, I mean, it was always the songwriters, you know, I think when you boil it down to it, it was always, you know, like Billy Joel, when you look at Billy Joel's catalog, all his songs say Billy Joel underneath, you know, as the writer credit, you know, when you see, you know, the Beatles, it's Lennon McCartney for the most part, or George Harrison. I always liked the songwriter in and of themselves. David Gray was another one.

There's a great band called Della Mitri. There's a great songwriter named Justin Curry. Those were the guys that really always stayed with me. They still stay with me now and whenever i'm feeling kind of maybe you know uh stuck or in a rut if i go back and i listen to those kind of things um they kind of pull something out of me and go oh yeah that's what made me want to write music that's right so march 2020 or february, wherever that, all that shit started, we, we started hearing about COVID and nobody really thinks it's going to be,

I don't know, who knows? They don't know if it's going to be something insane, whatever. It doesn't matter. And then you start to see, it's okay. Don't worry. My dog's over there. He's, he wants to be let out. It's okay. Oh, he gets, yeah. He gets mad about COVID too. That's cool. So you yeah, he gets mad about COVID, too. That's cool. So you start seeing all the injustices, and you went from being a guy singing kind of love poppy songs for Laguna Beach. Then you went into singing kind of elementary school age songs and that sort of thing.

And then all of a sudden, you become, I guess, Arlo Guthrie or something like that, like the guy going against the, uh, the system. So how did that come about? Um, it's interesting cause it's not anything I set out to do. I mean, my heart was completely in that kids music project because it was the most pure thing I could put out into the world at that time. I mean, 2018, 2019, I'm in the middle of raising kids and they're helping me record it. It's a family project. And 2020 comes around and everything I'm doing with that sort of stops because I was doing elementary school shows, which let me tell you, those are the best shows I've ever done. When you play for a room full of elementary school kids and they know the words and they're singing along with you,

and then they just appreciate what you've done so much and come up and hug you afterwards. Those are like the best things. And all that stopped. And throughout 2020, you know, I'll tell you, like, I changed as a person. I had a naive outlook on the world. I released a song in 2020 called We Are In This Together, which was sort of my gung ho of, hey, everybody, you know, we're going to make it through this. And shortly after that, you know, all the George Floyd stuff happened and I could see the world sort of ripping apart. And then the longer and longer COVID stuff went on, it just sort of shut me down creatively. And I turned a corner as an artist where it was like, you know, maybe I have been a little too naive about my outlook on the world.

And what does it really look like, you know? And what do I want that world really look like you know and and what do i want that world to look like for my kids what what am i supposed to say in this moment in time because you know i i say this a lot but two things happened at that time was you know what where number one where am i where are all my heroes i grew up listening to? All those 60s protest artists and things like that, none of them showed up. And more importantly, I was thinking, I do not want my kids to look back on this time wondering why dad didn't say anything or speak up during this time. And so I just felt called to say something. And that sort of led me to write that first song, God Help Us All.

It really came through prayer of sitting and going, you know, what do you want me to write about? And that song came out. And I really thought that would be, that song would sort of be my one say on everything that was happening I thought like I'll put this song out it's a long song it's a five minute song of me just venting you know just saying god help us all this is not looking good and so you know that song comes out and it and it completely stirred the pot of everything that i was doing because i had like i said i had fans that had been following five times august for two decades who that were like whoa you

you don't normally talk like this brad and then i had like new people going like you know wow you know thanks for saying that and and um and at the same time, the Kids Music Project stuff sort of started falling behind because I felt like we have a really important moment in history to talk about right now, and we're still in it, which is the unfortunate thing about it. But from there on out, like I said, I just kept leaning into it from one song to the next and ultimately had a whole album put together called Silent War that I put out last year. So which song, which one really kind of pushed you into the zeitgeist? I was trying to think back because for me, of course, it was this just in, right? Because being a Canuck and, you know you know everybody the song started getting put around

and for any of the fellow canadians out there listening if you don't remember it was basically the song you know that was in favor of the trucker convoy making fun of justin uh trudeau which we all love to do and it it's quite a uh anyway i loved it and that And I saw and heard that song multiple times before I even knew who created it, who did it. And then I think I really made the connections at the first Prepper camp. So what was the one that kind of went viral? Was it the very first one or was it just kind of gradual? I think the one that pushed me over the limit was Sad Little Man about Fauci. It kind of went like this.

I released God Help Us All. And when you listen to the album, top to bottom, they're all in the order that I wrote and released them. So there's kind of a story top to bottom as you listen to the Silent War album. But there it is. There it is. There it is. There it is in vinyl.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Out on vinyl now. But so God Help Us All comes out, and then I don't release anything until, again, until maybe April, a few months later, called Jesus What Happened to Us, which was another sort of a sequel, maybe you could call it, to God Help Us All. And in that same mindset, coming through prayer and

and then I started noticing all the crazy people online through TikTok was becoming a thing and lives of TikTok became a popular account. And so I wrote a song called Out of Your Damn Mind, which is really starting to really call out, you know, the crazy people that you are seeing instead of just minding your own business. And that was that was new for me to really lean into it like that. And then I Will Not Be Leaving Quietly came out after that which was sort of my commitment to this moment I was sort of like you know what like I'm not going anywhere like every time I say something that's important to me I get this pushback from people that are you know especially from people that are supposed to know what I'm all about people that have been following me for years that all of a sudden lumped me into this crazy category um so i kind of committed to it with that song and i wanted to also give you know people that

were showing up to these rallies a little three chord song that they could you know go to rallies to and learn easily and chant and sing along to um after I Will Not Be Leaving Quietly, I think, let's see, there was Silent War and Joe, and then finally Sad Little Man came along. It was like number six or seven, I don't know. But this was how things unfolded for me. And leaning into Sad Little Man was interesting because I did not expect it to really take off like it did.

I knew I was calling Fauci out and that was something that wasn't really being done because he was being held up on a pedestal and treated like a god, like I say in the song. But that one really took off, which really put me in this other category of dangerous misinformation spreader, because all of a sudden my YouTube channel was being attacked, and I was taken off of Wikipedia, and I was seeing these things that you only heard about actually happen to me in my life. I was feeling the suppression and censorship starting to sort of creep in around me. I'm like, oh, wow, it really does happen. Okay. And so that one, I think, was really the one that pushed it.

And every time that that has happened to me, it's only ever made me lean more into it. So I'm a little bit of a troublemaker in that sense. So it's been fun to watch. Most, I think, I don't know. Anyway, I look back on whether it's the fun to watch most uh i think i don't know anyway i look back on whether it's the you know 60s countercultural or the you know late 80s 90s punk they they were typically troublemakers you know and yeah well we'll talk about that in a minute too won't we so you also something that i didn't really mention you do all of your videos as well.

And I think they're a lot of fun. I said before they kind of reminded me a bit of like Monty Python's Flying Circus or the opening the Fawlty Towers, that kind of stuff. Where did that start? So all that stuff started with the kids music project that I was doing. kids music project that I was doing. So it's it's funny because I never would have known I would I never would have had that skill set to make the videos for my current songs without going through all of the kids music stuff because I was I started the the project Juicebox Jukebox and I had these cute songs and then I was like I should make some cute videos for them and I didn't really know how to do it. I wanted to make these sort of cut and paste crafty looking little style videos that something

that looked like a kid could make it. And so that's where that style came from, from me. And, and so I did 12 of those for the kids music stuff. And so by the time I came around to, you know, Sad Little Man, you know, I took that style cut and paste and make it look like, you know, just like you cut a bunch of magazines out or something like that and pieced them together, do a little stop motion. That's how it came about. But I think I was also a little bit inspired by those Monty Python things. Once I started piecing it together, I was like, oh, yeah, it's got that look to it. And so I've kept with that, you know, going from Sad Little Man to This Just In to Gates Behind the Bars. It's especially fun to do that when you have a character you know that's a central figure to it because

it gives you the opportunity to really just poke fun at who they are and you know make them look wimpy or you know just shrivel them down to the weakling that they are so did you have you had any any songs or videos completely pulled off a platform at all or have they mainly just kind of been like uh low-key not published or not promoted type thing sad little man was um heavily suppressed and the original upload to it and then i ended up re-uploading it later with the exact same information on it just to do a test. And they didn't bother that one. And so that was interesting.

I've had about four other videos be demonetized. And then a few months ago, Gates Behind the Bars was pulled completely from YouTube. So that was the first one that they actually took off of the website. And we're like, you can't have this up, which is weird, because it had been up since like February of this year. So it was up for like nine months before they were like, wait a minute, you know, now it can't be up. So it's silly how they do that. Like you when you talk to you know google creator support on the back end i which i think is just robots anyway but um you know you're sitting there and you're like so why did my video get pulled and they're like oh medical misinformation you're like what's

the medical misinformation and they're like we're not at liberty to say and i'm you know it's like well if i'm a creator and you're the host of my content you're saying there's a problem then why don't you tell me what the problem is instead of just take down my stuff so it's it's funny that way jules just uh just ordered your album got an autograph so she's picking the extra for brad so oh thank you so much i really appreciate that. So was the Gates Behind Bars, was that on Silent War, or did that come afterwards? Yeah, so by the time I released Gates Behind the Bars,

or by the time I released Silent War, I had two songs that hadn't had videos yet, which were Gates Behind the Bars and a song called Lions, which I still haven't done an official sort of video for, but there's a performance of me doing it on the high wire. But yeah, Gates Behind the Bars came a few months after the Silent War album came out, but it's on the album. Yeah. And you did a kind of a Kickstarter type thing for the, because I remember when I seen you a couple of years ago was like man you got to bring it out on vinyl and you'd said you'd had a bunch of people mention it and so how did that kickstarter go i thought that was kind of ingenious

kind of neat how you did it yeah i worked with a company called crates it's q q rates crates um which is basically like a website to crowdfund record pressings. And I had had a number of people asking, like you, say, what's it going to be on vinyl? And I had always wanted to release an album on vinyl. I thought if I was ever going to do it, this would be the music to do it with. And so I did a little limited number crowdfunding project of 200 on crates. And we sold those. And if you've got one of those, you've got a collector's item now.

And I tried to make it a little special. It's got a gatefold and an OB strip on it. And it's white vinyl. And I'll never make another one like that so it's a it's like a collector's item and then i tried to actually do a a limited edition second pressing after that the thing with vinyl this year has been interesting with me so we did that there was the first pressing then i was like let's do a second pressing on clear vinyl and I'll make it a I'll make the red strip blue and it'll be a you know a marked Marked second pressing special and and we'll see how that goes and so we did that and that campaign was successful as well

But as we've been waiting on that pressing to get finished it's still not finished yet so crates has really let me down they've had some issues on the back end and in the meantime I ended up pressing a standard black vinyl edition so there's going to be ultimately three different versions of silent war on vinyl we've just had issues with pressing and stuff like that. But it's good to know people are still buying vinyl. It's cool to have songs on vinyl. In fact, this album has been released on vinyl and CD, and we even did a cassette copy of it as well, which, yeah, you've got a couple of them right there. do so i i didn't mention this yet but we're gonna give one away uh i'm gonna do it on friday night show so anybody who listens to this and shares you can

share the audio share the video doesn't matter just let me know you did comment on the youtube video i'm gonna put you in a draw and we got right there it's one of only 50 cassettes of all things. And it's signed right there by Brad. There you go. We'll be giving that away. So if you share it, just let me know. And we will put you in a draw. And somebody will win it.

And I'll ship it out to you. Very cool. How's the vinyl gone? How many have you sold? Quite a few? You've been happy with how it's going? Yeah, the vinyl's doing well. In fact, we also did a release of the new single, Ain't No Rock and Roll. How many have you sold? Quite a few? You've been happy with how it's going? Yeah, the vinyl's doing well.

In fact, we also did a release of the new single, Ain't No Rock and Roll, on a 45 vinyl. So I'm really happy that people, I think more people are picking up the physical copies, at least in our world, than streaming and downloading stuff, which really makes me happy, because I think we need to get back to that world where we own our stuff. We keep hearing that phrase that you're going to own nothing and be happy.

It's like, well, start owning your stuff and just be happy. How about that? So I've got tons of vinyl behind me. I still collect CDs and cassettes. I buy my favorite movies. I buy my favorite books. I think that's important stuff. It tells a lot about who you are, what you believe in.

You know, it gives you a reason to connect with another. You're never going to really, you're not going to sit through your phone and be like, hey, what kind of music do you like? You know, and be like, oh, I like that. You're going to, you know, it goes, you connect through going through records together and things like that, I think, you know, at least you did in the old days. Took my 13-year-old daughter to a record store on the weekend, and I love it. Every time we go, we just look. Sometimes we get something. She usually makes me look at Taylor Swift stuff,

you know how it is. That's fine, you know, it's a cool way to connect, right? Yeah, 100% is that my 11-year-old boy cool way to connect right yeah a hundred percent is that my 11 year old boy loves records and he'll sit down here and look through my records and ask me about them and he'll go through my cds and you know i have stories that go with these things so like you know that's the thing about it is it it opens up a whole other world i connected to a lot of the music i loved growing up through my parents' record collection and asking them about, you know, when did you buy that? What's the story behind that? And, you know, you end up getting these little nuggets of information about your parents

or your friends or whoever it may be that you wouldn't get otherwise. And, you know, I think that's important. We're kind of, we're losing grasp of that when everything is on our phone and on our computers these days. We're not going to hand down iPhones, you know, we're not going to hand down obsolete iMacs. So, you know, we got to own our stuff again. So speaking of Ain't No Rock and Roll, how did that come about? Because I mean, anyway, I know you don't need me to boost up your ego anymore. But man, I love that track. That is a solid track.

Thanks. I wrote that song a year ago and I ended up going on a small tour in Austria about this time and debuted the song there and I just played acoustic and even over there like the you know my first couple times playing it it resonated with everybody they knew what I was saying and you know it was just sort of sitting around after that I was like this needs this can't just be like an acoustic song though it's got to feel like an old Tom Petty song or something like that I wanted it to feel like an old Tom Petty song or something like that. I wanted it to feel like a song you haven't heard on the radio in 30 or 40 years or something like that. And I reached out to my friend Pete Parada, who formerly of The Offspring.

He got kicked out of the band The Offspring for not getting the shot. And now he's in a band called The Defiant, which is doing really well. And it's sort of a super group of guys that got kicked out of their bands and want to speak up. And they're really great. They're fantastic. So I reached out to Pete and I said, hey, I've got this song. Would you want to play on it? He did the drums on it. song you know would you want to play on it he did the drums on it and then um and then I didn't really know where else to go with it because I wasn't I wanted to get musicians on the track

that really felt what I was saying don't forget the eight track yeah we got to bring that we're gonna work really hard on bringing back the eight track dude there are artists out there who are putting out brand new eight tracks rightacks right now. No kidding. Yeah, there's quite a few, actually. So if there's anything you ever want to do, yeah, I can at least tell you who to look into anyway. Okay, that's interesting. Well, as soon as I sell the cassette tapes, I'll move on to 8-track. And so in between that time, after Pete recorded the drums, I was kind of, had the

song sitting around, and my friend Chad Prather, who's on Blaze TV, he had been talking with a new record label called Based Records, and he said, hey, you should talk to those guys. They're kind of like this non-woke, looking for free speech artists. They're starting up, and I've been talking to them. You should talk to them. So I've been talking to them. You should talk to them. So ended up talking to them. They invited me down to Austin for a weekend for an event that they were hosting. And I got to know those guys over there. And they're just really, really good guys that want to bring back, you know, everything that's missing from music. And so I was like,

well, if this is what you guys are doing, I have a song that would be great as your first release. And so we did a little contract for the single and signed on to their label. And they got some great guys in Nashville who are superstars in their own right. Ira Dean and Chris Whalen produced it. They're both like mega songwriters in their own right, number one hit country songwriters. And so we got some really great guys. We got Jim Moose Brown from Steve Miller's band.

Gosh, I can't even list them all off. It was a super group of guys that actually believed what I was saying, who were really great at what they do. And I think that's why the song comes across so well as as the finished product. It came out exactly how I wanted it to turn out. And so, you know, that's how it came came about. And then I just sort of sat down and did the video for it like I do the other ones. And that that kind of leads me into what I was going to ask him indigo anyway but who were some of the bands that you thought really should have stepped up and spoke against some of this covet

tyranny that really didn't yeah i mean the first one that comes to mind that threw a real big stink was neil young um who you know um drew a line in the sand and said look it's either me or it's joe rogan and that didn't work out for him sorry um it was good it was good yeah so there's him there's you know rage against the machine the whole joke the last couple years has been you know rage against the machine is now raging for the machine the last couple of years has been, you know, rage against the machine is now raging for the machine. And so, you know, they were big ones. Foo Fighters.

Foo Fighters were another one. Gene Simmons and Kiss, like Gene Simmons. Gene Simmons of Kiss literally told you, and I quote, to shut up and do what the government tells you to do like those were like the i can tell you probably verbatim that's what he said and uh and he called you know anybody i think get the shot an enemy of the people so to see all these guys you know uh kowtow to the government and just uh it just completely flip the script on everything that they were supposed to stand for. It's disappointing to say the least. So you've been all over the world over the last couple of years. What are a couple of the highlights of places you've been and some

of the cool things you've seen kind of getting to spend, you know, spread your message a bit. Going to Austria was really cool. It was really eye-opening to go from Dallas, Texas, where I'm from, that area, go from Central Texas to Austria and see people singing these songs that I wrote. It really awakened me to how far I've reached people and not just that my music has reached people, but how big this movement is of freedom fighters all around the globe. To go from Central Texas and have a conversation with somebody in Austria that you've never met, but you can talk to each other like you've known each other for years. It's a really beautiful thing.

And I got to go to the UK in August for a three-day festival called Jam for Freedom, which was another really great experience when you can think about it. These events did not exist three years ago so there's something happening now when you can get three days worth of freedom-minded musicians and speakers to get together and hang out over over the course of a weekend that's a really great thing you know things are happening there's something new that's brewing out of, you know, the rubble of COVID. There's this new thing coming out, at least culturally, you know, and I think, you know, that's what's going to drive people is, you know, there are artists and songwriters

that are speaking up. There's rappers, there's punk rockers with the Defiant now and and and actors speaking up, comedians speaking up. There's a whole new cultural thing being established right now, which is really exciting. I love the Defiant. I ordered their vinyl, too. It's on its way. So I had to support those guys, too. But who? Yeah. Who else? Who else do you see that are it's kind of cool that this countercultural movement is coming out of this, because we haven't really had, I don't know, I'm a grunge head, so to me, I haven't really seen a countercultural movement since probably, you know, the early to mid-90s. Maybe there was something that I missed, I don't know, but who do you see coming out of

the post-COVID movement that is speaking up for freedom and is going to hopefully take up that mantle? You know, I don't know. It's hard to say. There's a lot of them because I've been making a list. Actually, I've got a list pulled up right now because a few weeks ago on Twitter, I shared a big, long list of artists that were speaking out. And then I posted the initial post and people started adding more and more and more. So the list to me right here is obviously Eric Clapton and Van Morrison were two that spoke out from the 60s era. We got those two out of all the artists.

We got Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, which I'm so grateful for, and I'm glad that I can at least give them my respect. Ian Brown is a British artist, singer-songwriter that's been spoken out. John Rich and Travis Tritt are country artists. My buddy Joseph Arthur, another singer-songwriter who's been around for a long time, he's spoken out. I've mentioned The Defiant, the guys from Right Said Fred. They've been very outspoken the last few years. You know, Jimmy Levy, he's a gospel singer

who was doing some songs with Hi-Rez the Rapper, both very talented guys. And the list goes on and on. The great thing about it, about the list that I'm reading from, is that it covers so many different genres. And it's not just about the genre. It's what the person is saying and what they're about. And I think that that's going to be a huge part of the cultural movement moving forward. You know, we've idolized all these, honestly, a good amount of terrible people

over the last, you know, 50, 60, 70 years in entertainment who maybe they wrote great songs, but were they good fathers? Did they really believe in what they were saying? You know, how, who were they behind the scenes is my question. And the artists in this movement, you know, I don't look at any of us as celebrities. I look at us as, we're just part of this movement. And we're, and we're, we're the kind of people that are, that are not singer songwriters, that are not artists. And so we're all just sort of working together in that kind of sense. And so I'm excited to see where that goes. Me too. Absolutely. So I was going to, I wanted to tell everybody, Brad's been a good sport because you've been kind of laid up

the last few days. Have you? Yeah. If I sound nasally, it's because I've been laying in bed the last, last couple of days over the weekend, but you don't at all. But so he, Brad, Brad's not in a position to play anything tonight, which is totally cool, but you don't at all but so he brad's not in a position to play anything tonight which is totally cool but you did give us permission to play a song a video or whatever is can we play ain't no rock and roll i don't know if there's any issues with that that's okay is it should be okay yeah yeah okay if it gets flagged on the other end you have any trouble with youtube i will slap them down and say, get with it. So I'm going to play that song for everybody.

Give Brad's voice a rest here for a minute. And we'll come up and maybe you can, we'll maybe share for another five or 10 minutes and we'll get you out of here if that works for you. Cool. Great. All right. Give me one sec here, guys. And all right.

Sorry. I'm going to show you the video of the Oh, they're saying no sound. I'm not hearing it. I have to bust into acapella. Sorry, guys. I don't know why we're not getting any audio, but we will try one more. This is the beauty of hang on here. I kind of heard it for a moment in the background. Yeah. You know, I do this all the time, though. We will try one more. Sorry, You know, I do this all the time. So we will try one more. Sorry, guys. You know what?

This is the joy of live radio, isn't it? It's all good. We will try one more time here, guys. If we can get it. If not, I will add it in after the fact for you. I'll do my best. Ain't no rock and roll. Ever since they sold out Rolling Stone I do have my guitar here.

I just am not able to sing. But you know what's funny? As you were talking about getting flagged by YouTube, I get flagged for my own stuff on Facebook and stuff so it's a fight that I am always battling so hang on one second here it says share audio

I'm sorry guys it's one of those nights I don't think we're going to get it I will add it in if you're cool get it. I will add it in. If you're cool with it, Brad, I will add it in post afterwards. And that way, anybody who wants to see it afterwards, we can play it. I do not know why that. Man, we play audio all the time on here.

So, yeah. Sorry, brother. No, it's okay. We'll go with it. Yeah, we roll with it. It's live. So, what do you got coming up next, man? What are your next thing going on? Well, let's see.

I'm in the middle of a feud with Dolly Parton, and I don't know if she is aware of it or not, but I wrote her an open letter on Twitter, and it's been seen over two million times now, but she has not responded to my letter, so I feel like I might be writing her a song soon, and we'll see what happens with that. Beyond that, I feel like I'll probably look into more collaborations. I just released a song with my buddy Joseph Arthur a few weeks ago, which was one of his songs from back in the day. We re-recorded his song In the Sun, which is a pretty popular song.

Did you figure it out? Keep going. Yeah, I think I did. But he had a song called in the sun that was on a lot of different tv shows it was recorded by peter gabriel and and uh cold play and michael stipe from rem and so it had all these other versions of it and joseph and i have become good friends i was like hey um this actually brewed while we were up in the UK together in August. But I was like, hey, why don't we do your song together and do a new version of it?

And so we just put that out a few weeks ago and did a nice little video for it featuring Joseph's art. He drew for like hours and hours and then sped up the artwork. And then I put some texture on it and added some lyrics to it. But yeah, you check out Joseph Arthur and Five Times August in the Sun. That's a pretty recent release. And I enjoyed that collaboration. I think I want to see, you know, what other collaborations could come about in the next year, I guess. There's something, I don't know, there's something special. I say it on here a ton,

but, you know, a rising tide floats all boats. And when it comes down to that, when you get together with like-minded folk, incredible things happen. And yeah, I love it. I know a certain event that I'd love to get you at next year, and hopefully we can make that happen

because it's probably, you know, it's in Camden, Tennessee, and I think you'd fit in quite well there so yeah absolutely oh speaking of collabs um look you had a record i have a record here too but this is the defiance record and um that's joey he signed on it but um i have a song on here i recorded with dickie called flies and um like it's called Like Flies and that was another collaboration I had a good time writing that song with them and then I record I did a duet with Dickie on that record so it's another thing to check out they did a lot of collaborations throughout that

record as well Hi-Rez is that. And so it's cool to see that happening, you know, all this new art is going to come out of this. And, and that's what really gets me driving right now is everybody's sort of pulling together to make something new and kind of honestly, just leaving the old behind as painful as it may be, but, um, it's exciting. painful as it may be, but it's exciting. Speaking of that, do you, I'm sure it was painful when every, when, when you kind of, you know, you lost a bunch of fans, but, and I know this is a loaded question, but are you in a better place now?

And has it been more rewarding taking those huge steps and kind of finding the real audience? Yeah. You know, every risk that i was taking i knew what i was taking you know i knew the risk that i was taking um to the degree of the pushback i don't know you know i don't i once once i started getting censored and suppressed it was like oh okay was like, I've stepped into something here. But no, I mean, the friendships I have now are better friendships than I ever had before, just across the board. And, you know, not just musically, but friendships like yours and everybody I met at Prepper Camp. And, you know, it's the great thing about it is, you know, I can see the world that we're after. And at some point, this is all going to align.

And, you know, it's not just the medical freedom movement and the Prepper side of things and then the political side of things or whatever it may be but i'm i'm friends with all these amazing people now and it's going to come together to create this new world at least i i remain optimistic that it will you know there's a fight ahead of us to to make sure it you know it's it's going to be a it's going to be a hard fight to get there. But if we keep doing what we're doing and we put in everything we've got, then I think that we can get there. And that's the thing. That's why I feel like it's worth it because I've seen, to go from, I'm going to speak out and be on the outskirts of things and to feel like now there's,

we're in this pivotal shift where there's new music and culture, documentaries and films and podcasts and influencers. Everybody on our side of things has grown. And that's all the proof that I need if we just keep going. But every doctor that was censored and suppressed, you know, all these influencers, everybody that's spoken out, they've only grown. Nobody has disappeared. Nobody succumbed to the censorship. And that shows you how strong this whole movement is and that people are indeed waking up. And no one's going back to the other side. You know, no one's waking up and then going, ah, maybe I'm wrong over here. They're just you just wake up and then you're in this whole new mindset. And so that's an exciting thing as well. So it was all worth it. And I just had, you know, I always had faith it

would be worth it. It's just, you know, I think the thing that really dawned on me was that this fight is for the rest of our lives. The damage that's been done has been so detrimental. It's not going to be fixed just by Anthony Fauci going to jail one day or whoever it is that you want to go to jail. There's a whole generational tragedy that's happened here that we have to work on fixing again. And, you know, but, you know, the silver lining of it all is that there is this blank sort of blank canvas in front of us that is a beautiful really great opportunity to create a new world for ourselves if we really want it that bad well thank you for what you do man we're gonna try one more time here i think i figured out what the glitch was if you're cool with that let's get it going let's see what happens

cool and guys real quick if you hear it give me a thumbs up in the comments here i hear that Well, there ain't no rock and roll Ever since they sold out Rolling Stone All the words that were sung in the past Will never feel the same when we're looking back All the old men sitting in their makeup chair With their gold record walls really couldn't care All the fame feels the same when you've had enough So they don't bother standing up And there ain't no peace in love ever since the 60s kids grew up

All the drugs and the girls and the cash after all the songs it was gone in a flash All those bad boy rebels and the attitude What a show, we didn't know that none of it was true Only self-serve anti-establishment We were all so innocent Because there ain't no rock'n'roll And the blues has lost its soul

All the punks keep the man control And every pop star's ballin' his soul No, there ain't no ain't no rock ain't no rock and roll And there ain't no Jonah, no Bob

No one stuck around for the protest job All the stars and the big farmer whores Stealing for a check from their corporate shores all the actors say what they're paid to say while the fans take the blame

all the wasco fools that were me and you well they pushed us all away because there ain't no rock and roll And the blues is lost its soul All the punks keep the man control And every punk star is balling the soul No, there ain't no

Ain't no rock'n'roll And there ain't no boss, no queen Never was a rage against the damn machine No, there ain't no fighter in the food No more rockin' in those free world shoes All the high, strong, neo, young wannabes Yeah, their silence has been different then All the suits lick the boots of the government What they sang they never meant Because there ain't no rock and roll And the blues has lost its soul

All the punks gave the man control And every pop star is balling his soul No, there ain't no, ain't no rock'n'roll No, there ain't no, ain't no rock'n'roll Ain't no rock and roll No there ain't no Ain't no rock and roll No there ain't no

Ain't no rock and roll Yeah. Well, thanks, Brad, man. This was great. Thank you very, very much, man. Rob just come up here and said really strong Tom Petty vibes. What do you think about that? There it is. Yeah.

Thank you. That's cool. So how can people throw money at you, Brad? I mean, really. How can they support you? Where can they find all your stuff? Well, you can check out 5timesAugust.com, and we've got all the CDs and records and everything up for sale there.

And you can follow me on Twitter or X at 5xAugust on all the social media website platforms at 5xAugust. But mainly 5xAugust.com. That's where all the physical stuff is available exclusively. And we've got shirts up for sale and all that good stuff. So it's all there. Thank you, brother. I very much appreciate it. And you are welcome back to the workshop anytime you'd like to come back.

So thank you so much. Yeah, no, this has been great. I'm glad we got a chance to do this. Me too. Cool. Just hanging in the back for just one second while I close up. You got it. Thanks, brother.

Guys, what more can I say? Brad is a dude that I consider a friend. He is he's the real deal, guys. You get to see him when he's not looking at Prepper Camp. And he, yeah, he lives, he walks the talk and he lives it. He's a great family man. And man, I would talk to that guy all day and all night. And he powered through like a champ, even though he's on the mend.

So guys, make sure you support Brad. Make sure you support all of the artists in all the genres, in all the type of creator fields that are speaking out just like Brad is. Because if we don't, you know, what do I say all the time? You can help people and make money. They're not mutually exclusive. And this is a free market. So support the people that believe the things that we believe. Simple as that. And as always, stay happy, stay healthy, and have a great week.